Blackstone Q1 2024 Earnings Call

Good day, and welcome to the Blackstone First Quarter twenty twenty four Investor Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, all participants are in a star zero. If you'd like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to return with me. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Weston Tucker, head of shareholder relations. Please go ahead. 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 may differ from actual results materially. We do not undertake any duty to update these statements. For a discussion of some of the factors that could affect results, please see the risk factors 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 in interest in any Blackstone fund. This audio cast is copyrighted material of Blackstone and may not be duplicated without consent. So on results quickly, we reported GAAP net income for the quarter of $1,600,000,000. Distributable earnings were $1,300,000,000 or 98¢ per common share, and we declared a dividend of 83¢, which will be paid to holders of record as of April 29. With that, I'll turn the call over to Steve. Good morning, and thank you for joining our call. Blackstone reported strong results for the 2024, including healthy distributable earnings of $1,300,000,000 as Weston mentioned, underpinned by the highest fee related earnings in six quarters. On our January earnings call, following a vol volatile multiyear period for global markets, we noted an improving external environment and shared our view that 2023 would be the cyclical bottom for our firm. While changing market conditions take time to translate to financial results, including realizations and performance revenues, we are seeing positive momentum across many key forward indicators at our firm. Inflows were $34,000,000,000 in the first quarter and 87,000,000,000 over the past two quarters. We invested $25,000,000,000 in quarter one and $56,000,000,000 in the past two quarters with a strengthening pipeline of new commitments. We are planting the seeds of future value at what we believe is a favorable time for deployment. At the same time, our fundraising in the private wealth channel meaningfully accelerated in the first quarter. Sales for our professional vehicles increased more than 80% from the fourth …