BlackRock Hits $11.5 Trillion With Push into Private Markets
(Bloomberg) -- BlackRock Inc. pulled in a record $221 billion of total client cash last quarter, pushing the world’s largest money manager to an all-time high of $11.5 trillion of assets as it seeks to become a one-stop shop for stocks, bonds and, increasingly, private assets.
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Investors added $97 billion to exchange-traded funds and $63 billion to fixed-income overall in the third quarter, New York-based BlackRock said Friday in a statement. BlackRock has pulled in $360 billion of total net inflows so far this year, surpassing the full-year net flows of 2022 and 2023.
BlackRock “sets a high bar we expect few peers are likely to beat,” TD Cowen analysts wrote in a note after the earnings release.
Shares of BlackRock rose 3.6% to $990 at 10:29 a.m. in New York.
The firm pulled in $5.5 billion of total net flows for alternatives, compared with outflows of $4.2 billion a year ago. It reported $170 billion of illiquid alternative assets.
That’s set to surge. After the third quarter ended, the firm completed its $12.5 billion acquisition of Global Infrastructure Partners, in a deal adding $116 billion of private market assets.
BlackRock’s long-term investment funds took in $160 billion net flows in the period, a total that topped the $100 billion average estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
The company also had $61 billion in net flows to cash-management and money-market funds in the period. Operating income rose 26% from a year ago to $2.1 billion.
The firm added $2.4 trillion to its total assets over the past 12 months.
BlackRock is positioning itself as a single place for global clients to invest across public and private markets. It benefited this year from the surge in stocks and cash beginning to flow into fixed-income and private funds. The S&P 500 Index rose about 5.5% in the third quarter, and investors are betting the Federal Reserve won’t need to cut rates aggressively in the near-term to avoid a recession.
BlackRock is in the process of closing a £2.55 billion ($3.3 billion) acquisition of private-markets data firm Preqin.
The firm is also signaling that it wants to catch up in the fast-growing market for private credit, recently shaking up the senior executive team of its global private debt business and establishing a direct-lending group. BlackRock is exploring a purchase of HPS Investment Partners that could value the private credit firm in excess of $10 billion, Bloomberg reported this week.
BlackRock’s adjusted net income per share rose 5% from a year ago to $11.46 per share, beating analysts’ expectations of $10.40 a share. Revenue rose 15% to $5.2 billion from a year ago, which the firm said was driven by higher performance fees, organic base fee growth and the positive impact of markets.
Shares of BlackRock have risen about 18% this year as of market close Thursday, trailing the 21% advance of the S&P 500 Index.
(Updates with quote in third paragraph and shares in fourth.)
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