Blackstone Q4 2023 Earnings Call

Morning, and welcome to Blackstone's fourth 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 k report later that later next month. 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 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 consent. Quickly on results, we reported GAAP net income for the quarter of $1,109,000,000. Distributable earnings were $1,400,000,000 or a dollar 11 per common share, and we declared a dividend of 94¢, which will be paid to holders of record as of February 5. 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 2023, including our highest distributable earnings in six quarters, which capped a volatile year for global markets. Most major equity indices rebounded from significant declines in 2022, but with wide intra year swings driven by historic movements in treasury yields, economic uncertainty, and geopolitical instability. Against this backdrop, Blackstone generated steady fee related earnings of 4,300,000,000.0 for the year, underpinning healthy distributable earnings of 5,100,000,000.0. Performance revenues were down as expected in the context of limited realizations as we choose to sell less in unfavorable markets. We've designed the firm to provide resiliency in times of stress and capture the upside as markets recover. In the fourth quarter, as bond yields declined and declined and markets rallied, we executed several realizations driving strong sequential growth in DE to 1,400,000,000. 2023 was also a year of important milestones for Blackstone. We were the first alternative manager to surpass $1,000,000,000,000 of assets under management. We were also the first in our sector to be added to the S and P 500 index, positioning our stock to be even more widely owned. We are pleased that BX shares ranked in the top 20 best performing out of the 500 stocks in the s and p 500 index last year. Blackstone is now the fifty fifth largest US public company by market cap, exceeding the market value of all other asset managers. And in December, we released our sixth annual holiday video, which has received over 8,000,000 views, which may not say something about our limited acting skills, but …