Blackstone Q3 2024 Earnings Call

Good day, and welcome to the Blackstone Third Quarter twenty twenty four Investor Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Weston Tepper, head of shareholder relations. Please go ahead. Great. Thank you, Katie, and good morning, and welcome to Blackstone's third 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. And for a discussion of some of the factors 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, please 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. On results, we reported GAAP net income for the quarter of $1,600,000,000. Distributable earnings were $1,300,000,000 or $1.01 per common share, and we declared a dividend of 86¢ per share, which will be paid to holders of record as of October 28. With that, I'll turn the call over to Steve. Thank you, Weston. Good morning, and thank you for joining our call. Blackstone reported strong third quarter results, including distributable earnings of $1,300,000,000, as Weston mentioned, and the highest fee related earnings in two years. Since the Fed began its interest rate tightening cycle in 2022, we've spent considerable time on our earnings calls discussing how we see the macro environment unfolding. This included sharing our view on inflation when we saw it moderating more quickly than many other market participants, which paved the way for the Fed to begin cutting interest rates last month. We also stated our belief that an easing of the cost of capital would be very positive for Blackstone's asset values and would be a catalyst for transaction activity, including deployment and ultimately realizations, which in turn fuel fundraising. This is the virtuous cycle that powers our business. We believe we're now advancing towards the stage in the cycle that is always the most fun. In anticipating in anticipation of improving markets, we substantially increased our investment pace starting in the 2023, close to a year ago, which coincided with the peak of the ten year treasury yield. Since then, over the last twelve months, Blackstone has deployed a $123,000,000,000, representing one of the most active periods in our …