Blackstone Q2 2023 Earnings Call

Good day, and welcome to the Blackstone Second Quarter twenty twenty three Investor Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to West and Tucker, head of shareholder relations. Please go ahead. Thank you, Katie, and good morning, and welcome to Blackstone's second 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, and 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 k. We'll also refer to 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 our consent. So on results, we reported GAAP net income for the quarter of $1,200,000,000. Distributable earnings were also 1,200,000,000.0 or 93¢ per common share, and we declared a dividend of 79¢ per share, which will be paid to holders of record as of July 31. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Steve. Thank you, Weston, and good morning. Thank you all for joining the call. Blackstone reached a remarkable milestone in the second quarter. We surpassed $1,000,000,000,000 of assets under management, the first alternative manager to do so, and more than three years ahead of the aspirational roadmap we presented at our investor day in 2018. This achievement is significant in many ways, including for me personally. I founded Blackstone with my partner, Pete Peterson, in 1985 with $400,000 of startup capital. We sent out 450 personal announcements of our new venture and published a full page newspaper ad with the expectation that the phone would start ringing off the hook. It was a humbling experience when no one called other than a few people wishing us luck. When we started raising our first private equity fund in 1986 with a $1,000,000,000 target, we discovered that getting a 5 or $10,000,000 commitment was a substantial accomplishment. Fortunately, we hung in there and we were ultimately successful. Looking at Blackstone today, I feel an immense source sense of pride. We've established an unparalleled global platform of leading business lines, offering over 70 distinct investment strategies. We believe our clients view us as the gold standard in alternative asset management, and this milestone reflects the extraordinary level of trust we …