Blackstone Q1 2023 Earnings Call

Good day, and welcome to the Blackstone First Quarter twenty twenty three Investor Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Conference over to Weston Tucker, Head of Shareholder Relations. Please go ahead. Great. Thanks, Katie, and good morning, and welcome to Blackstone's first quarter conference call. Joining today are Steve Schwarzman, Chairman and CEO John Gray, President and Chief Operating Officer, and Michael Che, Chief Financial Officer. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release and slide presentation which are available on our website. We expect to file our 10 q report in a few weeks. I'd like to remind you that today's call may include forward looking statements which are uncertain and outside of the firm's control and may differ from actual results materially. We do not undertake any duty to update these statements. For a discussion of some of the risks that could affect results, please see the risk factor section of our 10 ks. We'll also refer to certain non GAAP measures, and you'll find reconciliations in the press release on the shareholders page of our website. Also note that nothing on this call constitutes an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to purchase an interest in any Blackstone fund. This audio cast is copyrighted material of Blackstone and may not be duplicated without consent. So, on results, we reported GAAP net income for the quarter of $211,000,000 Distributable earnings were 1,200,000,000.0 or 97¢ per common share, and we declared a dividend of 82¢ per share, which will be paid to holders of record as of May 1. With that, I'll turn the call over to Steve. Thanks, Weston, and good morning, and thank you for joining our call. The 2023 represented a turbulent period for markets with tightening financial conditions and growing concerns of a recession. While the S and P five hundred posted gains, they were concentrated in just a handful of large tech companies. Meanwhile, the median stock in The US was flat for the quarter and is down 35% from recent peak levels. Capital markets activity remains muted with IPOs and MNA activity down 50 to 60% year over year. To combat inflation, the Fed has increased the Fed funds rate by 475 basis points just in one year, representing the largest increase since 1980. While there is not widespread distress in the real economy, this tightening campaign has led to significant challenges for investors along with unintended consequences, which we saw with UK pensions last summer, more recently in The US and European banking systems. These challenges once again highlighted the exceptional strength and stability of Blackstone. Our clients and counterparties have learned there is inherent safety in dealing with us. We don't operate with the risk profile of financial firms that have fallen into trouble, almost always due to the combination of a highly leveraged balance sheet and a mismatch of assets and liabilities. At Blackstone, we have …