A Blackstone executive criticized a Citigroup analyst in a testy exchange during the asset manager's earnings call Thursday.
"We think the value is there, but we don't have confidence enough in you guys to figure that out because you have disappointed us consistently," said President and Chief Operating Officer Tony James on the firm's conference call.
Earlier on the call, Stephen Schwarzman, Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of Blackstone, said that shares of the private equity firm should be trading above $100 a share if it was valued the same way as the average S&P company based on dividend yield.
Citgroup analyst Bill Katz then asked if that was the case, why didn't Blackstone repurchase shares if the firm saw its stock as so grossly undervalued at its current levels around $30 a share. Schwarzman answered that the firm wanted capital on hand to make more purchases.
But then the COO James jumped in with the response above, perturbed that a Wall Street analyst would attempt to throw the founder's words back in his face.
The average dividend yield on the S&P is 2 percent, versus an average annual dividend yield of 8.3 percent over the last three years for Blackstone shares, Schwarzman said on the call.
Blackstone shares closed up 0.2 percent at $30.28 Friday.
Twitter user Jordan Wathen first pointed out the exchange on the call, but referred to a faulty transcript that attributed James' quote to another executive.
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