Blackstone CEO: We're an 'earnings machine'
Blackstone reported much better-than-expected quarterly results on Thursday, prompting Chairman and CEO Steve Schwarzman to declare his private equity firm an "earnings machine."
"We are the most profitable money manager in the world," boasted the co-founder of Blackstone, which has $310 billion in assets under management. "We just have an economic model that doesn't depend on a [particular] quarter's earnings."
Blackstone reported economic net income of $1.37 a share—well above expectations of $1.04 a share. Revenue for the latest quarter was $2.51 billion, beating estimates of $2.09 billion.
"In the latest quarter, we raised $30 billion," Schwarzman said. "We raised $77 billion for new investments in one year."
He said about 30 percent of his business is in real estate.
As part of a wider restructuring to move away from financial services, General Electric announced plans last week to sell most of the assets of its GE Capital Real Estate unit to Blackstone and Wells Fargo for about $23 billion. The Blackstone chunk is worth $14 billion.
Blackstone has bought and sold things to GE in the past, Schwarzman said. "This is not our first rodeo together. So this deal doesn't come from outer space."
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The GE deal is Blackstone's largest since it acquired office landlord Equity Office Properties Trust from Chicago real estate magnate Samuel Zell in 2007 for $39 billion, including debt.
—Reuters contributed to this report.