Ares Management reported second-quarter 2026 revenue of $1.43 billion, above Wall Street’s $1.33 billion forecast, while adjusted earnings per share came in at $1.29, just below the $1.30 estimate. The mixed result came as the alternative asset manager posted record fundraising, higher assets under management and stronger fee-related earnings. The stock was recently up 1.68% at $126.20, compared with a prior close of $124.12, leaving it well below its 52-week high of $195.26 but above the year’s low of $95.80.
Key Takeaways
- Ares raised a record $36 billion of gross capital in the quarter, its highest quarterly fundraising total ever.
- Assets under management rose 17% from a year earlier to about $671 billion, while fee-paying AUM also increased 17% to about $410 billion.
- Fee-related earnings climbed 20% year over year to about $491 million.
- The company declared a quarterly dividend of $1.35 per share, more than 20% higher than a year earlier.
- The current dividend yield stands at 4.35%, and InvestingPro Tips highlight that Ares has raised its dividend for 6 consecutive years and maintained payments for 13 consecutive years. Subscribers have access to 13 total ProTips for deeper dividend analysis.
- Management said the firm’s pipeline and dry powder position it for continued growth in the second half of the year.
Company Performance
Ares delivered a strong second quarter, with growth across fundraising, assets and earnings. Management said the firm benefited from broad demand across credit, real assets, secondaries and wealth products, even as transaction activity in parts of the market remained slower than usual.
The company’s total AUM reached about $671 billion, supported by continued inflows and a large pool of capital available for future deployment. Fee-paying AUM rose to about $410 billion, helping drive management fees above $1 billion for the quarter. Fee-related earnings, a key measure for the firm, increased 20% from a year earlier.
Performance income also improved sharply. Realized net performance income was about $51 million, more than triple the prior-year quarter. After-tax realized income per share was $1.29, up 25% from a year earlier.
Ares said the results reflected the strength of its diversified platform, which spans private credit, infrastructure, real estate, secondaries and wealth management. The firm also highlighted the durability of its capital base, with 84% of AUM in perpetual capital or long-dated funds.
Financial Highlights
- Revenue: $1.43 billion, up 17% from a year earlier.
- Adjusted EPS: $1.29, up 25% year over year.
- Management fees: more than $1 billion, up 14% year over year.
- Fee-related earnings: about $491 million, up 20% year over year.
- Fee-related performance revenues: about $41 million, up 143% year over year.
- Realized net performance income: about $51 million, up from about $17 million a year earlier.
- Realized income: about $522 million, up 31% year over year.
- After-tax realized income: about $468 million, up 27% year over year.
- AUM: about $671 billion, up 17% year over year.
- Fee-paying AUM: about $410 billion, up 17% year over year.
Earnings vs. Forecast
Ares missed earnings expectations by a narrow margin. Adjusted EPS of $1.29 came in one cent below the $1.30 consensus estimate, a shortfall of about 0.77%.
Revenue, however, came in well ahead of expectations. The company reported $1.43 billion in revenue versus the $1.33 billion forecast, a beat of $100 million, or 7.52%.
The quarter therefore looked mixed on the surface, but the revenue outperformance and the strength in fee-related earnings, fundraising and AUM growth likely mattered more to investors than the small EPS miss. The earnings gap was modest and does not suggest a meaningful change in the company’s operating trend.
Market Reaction
The stock was recently up 1.68% at $126.20, compared with a previous close of $124.12. That move added $2.08 per share.
The shares remain far below their 52-week high of $195.26, suggesting the market has not fully rewarded the company’s long-term growth story, but they are also comfortably above the 52-week low of $95.80. The latest gain points to a measured positive reaction rather than a sharp post-earnings move.
Without volume data, there is no clear sign of unusual trading. The modest rise suggests investors were likely encouraged by the revenue beat, record fundraising and dividend increase, while treating the small EPS miss as limited in importance. The stock has shown volatility this year, down 21.4% year-to-date, with a beta of 1.54 indicating higher sensitivity to market movements. For investors seeking comprehensive analysis, InvestingPro offers a detailed Pro Research Report on Ares, one of 1,400+ US equities covered with expert insights and actionable intelligence.
Outlook & Guidance
Ares said it remains on track for another record year of fundraising and expects to approach the upper end of its full-year fee-related earnings margin guidance of 0 to 150 basis points of improvement.
Management also said it continues to expect strong realized net performance income for the year, helped by current visibility into realizations and portfolio performance.
The company pointed to several growth drivers ahead:
- A U.S. direct lending first close is expected in the fall for both a traditional commingled fund and a new evergreen core product.
- A seventh European direct lending fund is expected to launch early next year.
- The sixth infrastructure debt fund is expected to complete its final close later in 2026.
- A global digital infrastructure fund is expected to see meaningful closings in late third quarter and into the fourth quarter.
- A new real estate secondaries fund is expected to have an initial close in the second half of 2026.
Management said the firm’s $114 billion of AUM not yet paying fees, including $93 billion available for future deployment, gives it substantial visibility into future fee growth. It also said that if deployed, these assets and related development projects could generate about $828 million of potential incremental annual management fees.
Executive Commentary
Chief Executive Michael Arougheti said the quarter showed “the growing diversity and durability of our global platform,” adding that the firm’s institutional platform drove another record fundraising period.
He also said, “Our franchise and brand have never been stronger in the eyes of our institutional investors,” pointing to broad demand even without major equity fundraising from some of the firm’s largest flagship credit strategies.
Chief Financial Officer Jarrod Phillips said the company’s “durability of our capital base, the breadth of our investment capabilities, management fee-centric business model, and our asset-light balance sheet” help protect it from market cycles and support long-term earnings growth.
Arougheti also said the scale of the platform is creating “meaningful opportunities for continued margin improvement,” helped by operating leverage and investments in technology and artificial intelligence.
Risks and Challenges
- Slower M&A activity: weaker deal flow can limit deployment in direct lending and related strategies.
- Redemption pressure in the non-traded BDC: Ares said it is still working through about $600 million of redemption requests.
- Market volatility: shifts in credit spreads, rates or investor sentiment could affect fundraising and returns.
- Concentration in certain product cycles: some strategies depend on timing of fund launches and closings.
- Integration risk: the company is still absorbing acquisitions and new platforms, including digital infrastructure assets.
Q&A
Analysts focused on several key topics during the call.
Questions centered on institutional demand for private credit, with management saying institutions remain under-allocated and are moving toward the asset class as spreads widen and competition eases. Ares also said its wealth business remains active, with July flows of about $1.5 billion.
Another major topic was inorganic growth. Arougheti said Ares would consider acquisitions if they are culturally, strategically and financially accretive, and said private equity could be a candidate if the right opportunity appears.
Analysts also pressed for more detail on U.S. direct lending. Management said deployment improved across the platform despite slower sponsor M&A, helped by incumbent relationships and non-sponsored deals. It said the pipeline is improving and that sponsor activity appears to be picking up.
Other questions covered margin expansion, consumer exposure in asset-based finance, private equity secondaries performance, new wealth products such as interval funds, digital infrastructure economics, and the insurance platform. Across those topics, management emphasized scale, diversification and a growing set of products that can support future fee growth.
Full transcript – Ares Management Corp Class A (ARES) Q2 2026:
Operator: As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded on Friday, July 31st, 2026. I will now turn the call over to Greg Mason, Co-Head of Public Markets Investor Relations for Ares Management.
Greg Mason, Co-Head of Public Markets Investor Relations, Ares Management: Good morning. Thank you for joining us today for our second quarter 2026 conference call. I am joined today by Michael Arougheti, our Chief Executive Officer, and Jarrod Phillips, our Chief Financial Officer. We also have a number of executives with us today who will be available during Q&A. Before we begin, I want to remind you that comments made during this call contain certain forward-looking statements and are subject to risks and uncertainties, including those identified in our risk factors in our SEC filings. Our actual results could differ materially, and we undertake no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. Please also note that past performance is not a guarantee of future results, and nothing on this call constitutes an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to purchase an interest in Ares or any Ares fund.
During this call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures, which should not be considered in isolation from, or as a substitute for, measures prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. Please refer to our second quarter earnings presentation, available on the investor resources section of our website, for reconciliations to these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. Note that we plan to file our Form 10-Q early next month. This morning, we announced that we declared a quarterly dividend of $1.35 per share on the company’s Class A and non-voting common stock, representing an increase of over 20% over our dividend for the same quarter a year ago. The dividend will be paid on September 30th, 2026, to holders of record on September 16th.
I will turn the call over to Mike, who will start with some comments on the current market environment and our second quarter financial results.
Michael Arougheti, Chief Executive Officer, Ares Management: Thank you, Greg, and good morning, everyone. I hope you’re all doing well. Our strong second quarter results highlight the growing diversity and durability of our global platform. The depth of our global institutional platform drove another record quarter of fundraising, and our broad-based global investment capabilities enabled us to remain very active in a slower transaction environment. This drove 17% year-over-year increases in both our AUM and fee-paying AUM to approximately $671 billion and approximately $410 billion respectively. This AUM growth translated into even healthier increases in our fee-related earnings and realized income, which increased 20% and over 30% respectively, as we benefit from our growing scale and strong long-term fund performance. Notably, both growth rates are at the high end or above the long-term growth rate target ranges that we provided at our 2024 Investor Day.
Overall, we’re pleased with how we’re performing. We remain on track to achieve our financial objectives for the year. The underlying drivers of our future growth continue to improve. We now operate leading franchises in diversified credit, real estate, infrastructure, and secondaries across North America, Europe, and Asia. Beyond direct lending are scaled and leading businesses across asset-based finance, opportunistic credit, liquid credit, global real estate, infrastructure, insurance, and our diversified secondary strategies are increasingly contributing to fundraising, deployment, management fees, and earnings growth. For the second quarter, we raised approximately $36 billion of gross capital, the highest quarter of fundraising in our history. This positions us with a record $170 billion of dry powder and $114 billion of AUM not yet paying fees, which sets us up well for future earnings growth.
We’ve now raised approximately $66 billion through the first half of the year. We remain on track for another record year of fundraising. The breadth of fundraising across our platform is particularly notable. Approximately 70% of the capital that we’ve raised this year is outside of our four largest credit fund families, and investors committed capital across approximately 90 different funds and vehicles. This demonstrates the increasing diversification and global reach of our business. We raised our highest ever quarterly amount of capital. This was without a meaningful contribution from our SDL and ACE franchises, neither of which raised equity capital in their flagship commingled funds in the quarter. In our view, our franchise and brand have never been stronger in the eyes of our institutional investors.
Institutional investors account for approximately 75% of our overall AUM and have represented more than 80% of our gross equity inflows over the last 12 months. Ares is viewed as a key strategic partner with the scale, performance, and breadth of capabilities to serve a wider range of portfolio needs during a period where global institutional investors are seeking to consolidate their relationships. We’re seeing the benefits of significant investments in our broad origination capabilities, our time-tested investment approach, consistent credit and investment performance, and best-in-class client service. Let me provide some additional details on our various fundraising and investing activities. Starting with fundraising and credit, we continue to see very strong institutional demand across our highly diversified credit strategies and have hit the hard cap on our last two private credit fundraisers.
In alternative credit, which is our asset-based finance strategy, we completed the entire fundraise for Ares Pathfinder Fund III during the second quarter, raising approximately $8.5 billion in equity commitments. The fund significantly exceeded its $6.5 billion target and had demand well in excess of its hard cap. With this fundraise, we’ve strengthened our market-leading position in the non-rated asset-backed finance sector as we now manage four of the five largest institutional ABS funds in the market. We believe that the addressable market is measured in trillions of dollars, and our investment pipeline continues to expand as we partner with financial institutions and origination platforms across various asset classes. In U.S. and European direct lending, we raised over $12 billion of debt and equity capital during the quarter across our vehicles.
Institutional engagement for the next generation of our U.S. senior direct lending strategy is very strong, including for both our traditional commingled fund and our new evergreen core product. We continue to expect a first close for both products sometime in the fall with additional closings next year. We expect to launch our seventh European direct lending fund early next year. Taken together, our institutional fundraising pipeline remains robust with our two largest fund families in the market with successor funds in the year ahead. Within real assets, fundraising momentum was particularly strong across infrastructure and real estate. In infrastructure, our open-ended core infrastructure fund raised approximately $1.9 billion of equity during the quarter. Demand for the strategy has been exceptional, driven by investor interest in high-yielding, tax-advantaged real assets.
At the same time, the number of power and digital infrastructure assets coming to market across a diverse set of sub-sectors is as high as we’ve seen, which sets us up well for accelerating deployment. These same trends are driving strong momentum in our sixth infrastructure debt fund. The fund raised approximately $500 million during the quarter and has now raised approximately $3.7 billion. We expect to complete the final close later this year at a level above the $5 billion raised for the prior vintage, including leverage and related vehicles. Recent momentum with this fund reflects an increasingly attractive infrastructure investing environment and strong performance for our infrastructure debt strategy.
We’re also seeing strong investor interest in our global digital infrastructure fund, driven by our seed portfolio of attractive entitled and powered projects in top-tier global markets, the persistent and growing demand for computing power, the need for private capital, and the differentiated nature of our operating platform. We anticipate holding a series of meaningful closings in late Q3 and into the fourth quarter and expect to complete the fundraise in 2027. In real estate, we also had an active quarter. Our fifth Japan industrial development fund raised approximately $1.8 billion, bringing total commitments to date to $3.4 billion. We expect to hold our final close in the third quarter at our hard cap and at a level meaningfully above the prior vintage of $2.5 billion based on current exchange rates.
In our real estate debt strategy, we raised approximately $2.8 billion across a new global commingled fund and separately managed accounts. The current environment remains attractive for real estate credit, given early cycle conditions and a broadening of attractive sectors. We’re also encouraged by the improving fundraising trends in our non-traded REITs, where inflows have been building each quarter since the fourth quarter of last year. Within the market, gross sales and net flows are improving. As property values stabilize, transaction activity remains positive, and the supply outlook is becoming more favorable across several sectors. Within secondaries, we continue to see good momentum in our global structured solutions strategy, which raised over $500 million in the quarter. We also expect to complete an initial close for our next real estate secondaries fund in the second half of the year.
Investor interest remains strong, with the current fundraising pace both faster and ahead of the level that we were seeing at the same point in the prior vintage. Within our wealth management platform, our diversified product line continues to deliver solid investment performance, distinguishing us in the marketplace. We raised approximately $3.9 billion in gross equity commitments in the second quarter, an increase of approximately 15% from the prior year period, and roughly in line with the approximate $4 billion that we raised in each of the prior two quarters. We’ve raised approximately $8 billion during the first half of the year, and based on our current pipeline, which includes a strong start to Q3 with approximately $1.5 billion in July, we anticipate a similar level of gross fundraising in the second half of this year.
Based on industry data from Stanger, Ares has picked up meaningful market share within the channel and ranks number 2 in gross fundraising over the last 12 months through June. We finished the second quarter with over $76 billion of AUM in our wealth products, and even with some noise in the channel, our wealth AUM increased at an annualized rate of more than 25% quarter-over-quarter. Importantly, the composition of our wealth fundraising continues to broaden. Our goal from the outset was to build a diverse product offering that meets the needs of investors seeking durable income, tax-advantaged real assets, and diversified growth. By providing quality offerings across a variety of products, we’ve demonstrated that we can consistently scale in the wealth channel, even as investor sentiment shifts across asset classes.
Our evergreen core infrastructure product has taken the lead in terms of monthly inflows, and we’re still in the early stage of expanding our distribution partnerships. In just over two years, the fund has raised over $5.7 billion in AUM, securing the number 2 rank in TTM gross fundraising for infrastructure evergreen funds through June, representing approximately 20% market share. In the wealth channel, we’ve made significant investments in distribution, education, technology, operations, and product development with nearly 200 professionals focused on the channel. We’re currently working on interval fund solutions designed for the mass affluent and model portfolio markets in the U.S., and we have a robust forward pipeline of additional partners in the U.S., EMEA, and APAC to distribute our current flagship funds as well as product extensions. We continue to believe that we are in the early innings of capturing increased individual investor allocations to alternatives.
Within our non-traded BDC, redemption themes were consistent with last quarter, with roughly 95% of investor accounts electing to stay in the fund, and redemption requests primarily coming from a small number of non-U.S. family offices and smaller institutions. These types of investors represent only approximately 10% of the vehicle’s NAV, and we intend to make certain adjustments to new share classes that we would offer to them going forward. Looking specifically at our core U.S. individual investor base, redemption requests totaled only approximately 2.5% of NAV and declined approximately 35% compared to the prior quarter. Together, these trends support our view that the investment thesis and long-term opportunity within the wealth channel remain intact, with continued strength across our core U.S. investor base and sustained engagement from distribution partners and individual investors globally.
We built the portfolio within our non-traded BDC with strong credit underwriting, conservative loan structures, and a disciplined approach to deployment. Based on the latest public data, the portfolio is performing well with very low non-accruals at around 0.5%, healthy organic EBITDA growth of 13% year-over-year, and the fund has declared stable monthly distributions through September 2026. Let me now highlight some recent investment activities and discuss market conditions. In part, due to our broad and diversified platform, our overall investment activity increased meaningfully in Q2 to approximately $36 billion compared to approximately $27 billion in the prior year period. Our firm-wide forward investment pipeline also improved nearly 20% quarter-over-quarter to a new record, and current transaction discussions across our strategies point to a stronger second half outlook for deployment. Within U.S. direct lending, we deployed approximately $12.4 billion gross committed during the quarter.
Despite slower M&A activity in the market, deployment improved sequentially compared to the first quarter as we grew with our incumbent borrowers, which represented 75% of our Q2 deployment. We’re constructive on the second half environment for U.S. direct lending as sponsor dialogue improves and more companies return to market after delaying transactions earlier in the year. In European direct lending, second quarter and first half results were ahead of our initial expectations for the year, and we have a record pipeline going into the third quarter. The European direct lending market remains more fragmented than the U.S., with fewer scaled lenders and a greater premium on local origination, certainty of execution, and long-term sponsor partnerships. We believe that our market-leading origination platform, scaled capital base, and long tenure operating in local markets is driving more investment opportunities for us across the continent.
We’re also seeing tremendous demand across the firm for both debt and equity capital to finance the development of digital infrastructure and related power requirements. The capital needs are significant, and our platform is well positioned to address these opportunities. We have large and long tenure teams that have invested through multiple cycles in power generation, infrastructure equity, and infrastructure debt. Notably, our digital infrastructure business, with our vertically integrated data center development platform, Ada Infrastructure, continues to grow with over 100 professionals that have significant experience across investing, development, engineering, construction, and power procurement. Our Ada team, which has long-standing hyperscaler relationships, is currently executing on seven large data center campuses, representing 22 individual data center investments with approximately one gigawatt of compute and has a strong pipeline of future projects.
Within real estate, our transaction activity continues to rebound, particularly in North America and Japan, as we deployed over $4 billion in the quarter both sequentially and year-over-year. We continue to see attractive opportunities in our core logistics business and are beginning to selectively broaden our investments into properties where we’ve traditionally been underweight, including hospitality and retail. Our approach remains highly targeted and focused on assets with strong locations, limited supply, resilient tenant demand, and favorable demographic trends. Within secondaries, market volumes continue to grow as the need for distributions and enhanced liquidity remains a central theme across private markets. For example, industry volumes in credit secondaries through the first six months of the year have already matched 2025 full year volumes.
Within every asset class, we’re seeing certain institutional investors seeking liquidity for LP interests, while managers are evaluating GP-led solutions for high-quality assets that they want to continue owning while still delivering DPI to their investors. More broadly, portfolio performance remains strong across the firm. Jarrod will discuss our fund returns and financial results in greater detail, but the consistency of our performance continues to support fundraising, deepen our relationships with investors, and reinforce the strength of our franchise. With that, I will now turn the call over to Jarrod to provide additional details on our financial results. Jarrod?
Jarrod Phillips, Chief Financial Officer, Ares Management: Thanks, Mike. Good morning, everyone. Our second quarter and year-to-date financial results reflect continued strong growth across our key financial metrics, increasing scale and diversification of our platform, and the benefits of our strong long-term fund performance. We also continue to benefit from a large base of long-duration capital and strong fundraising and deployment activity across the platform. At quarter end, 84% of our AUM was in perpetual capital or long-dated funds, and 94% of our management fees were generated by those sources. We believe the durability of our capital base, the breadth of our investment capabilities, management fee-centric business model, and our asset-light balance sheet help insulate us from market and credit cycles and position us well to continue generating attractive long-term earnings growth. Turning to our results, management fees were over $1 billion for the quarter, increasing 14% compared to the prior year Q2.
Including FRPR and other fees, total revenues increased 17% over the prior year period. This growth continues to be supported by the expansion of fee-paying AUM, which increased 17% year-over-year to approximately $410 billion. The increase in fee-paying AUM was broad-based. Credit FP AUM increased 17%, secondaries increased 28%, private equity increased 27%, real assets increased 11%, and other businesses, which is primarily comprised of Ares Insurance Solutions, increased 54% compared to the prior year period. We’re benefiting from strong fundraising and consistent deployment across the platform. Part 1 fees, which are included in management fees, totaled approximately $154 million in the second quarter, up 20% from the prior year period, driven by positive inflows across five different funds that now generate Part 1 fees. Fee-related performance revenues totaled approximately $41 million in the quarter, increasing 143% compared to the prior year period.
The majority of this quarter’s FRPR was generated by APMF, reflecting both continued capital formation and strong underlying investment performance. As a reminder, the timing of FRPR varies by fund and investment strategy, with a meaningful portion of annual revenues typically recognized in the second half of the year. For the third quarter, we expect FRPR from our open-ended core alternative credit fund to be in line with the third quarter of 2025 at approximately $62 million. Regarding the potential for fourth quarter FRPR from our non-traded REITs, we currently have approximately $32 million of FRPR accrued by these REITs for potential recognition in the fourth quarter. As I mentioned on last quarter’s earnings call, G&A expenses increased this quarter partially due to our firm-wide AGM for institutional LPs, which we hold every other year during the second quarter.
The second quarter included approximately $9 million in expenses associated with this meeting that will not recur in the third and fourth quarters. Fee-related earnings were approximately $491 million in the quarter, increasing 20% year-over-year. Our year-to-date FRE margin was 42.3%, approximately 100 basis points above the prior year period. We continue to expect that we’ll be approaching the upper end of our margin guidance of zero to 150 basis points for the full year. Turning to performance income, we generated approximately $51 million of realized net performance income during the quarter, more than three times the amount generated in the prior year period. Year-to-date, realized net performance income was approximately $126 million, up 119% compared to approximately $58 million in the prior year period.
Based on our current visibility into realizations and the performance of our portfolios, we anticipate a limited amount of approximately $10 million of realized net performance income in the third quarter, but continue to feel good about our previously communicated full-year expectations. Realized income totaled approximately $522 million for the quarter, representing a growth of 31% year-over-year. After-tax realized income was approximately $468 million for the quarter, increasing 27% year-over-year. After-tax realized income per share of Class A and non-voting common stock was $1.29, representing a growth of 25%. Our tax rate for the quarter was 13.7%, which is within our full-year tax guidance range of 11%-15%. As Mike discussed, the underlying financial drivers in the business remain strong. We ended the quarter with approximately $170 billion of available capital, representing an increase of 13% year-over-year.
We also had approximately $114 billion of AUM that is not yet paying fees, including approximately $93 billion available for future deployment. If deployed, the AUM available for future deployment and development assets not yet stabilized could collectively generate approximately $828 million of potential incremental annual management fees. This provides substantial visibility into future growth in fee-paying AUM and management fees, even before considering future fundraising. Turning to investment performance, overall fund returns remain strong, led by our credit and real asset strategies. Over the last 12 months, we generated gross returns of 16.4% in alternative credit, 8.9% in opportunistic credit, 11.2% in U.S. senior direct lending, 8.9% in U.S. junior direct lending, 8.3% in European direct lending, and 19% in APAC credit. Across our direct lending portfolios, underlying credit fundamentals remain strong and stable, with low loan-to-values and healthy interest coverage.
In U.S. direct lending, non-accrual levels were flat quarter-over-quarter and remain low at less than 2%. We’re not seeing any signs of a turn in the credit cycle, evidenced by 9% year-over-year organic EBITDA growth from our portfolio companies. Within real assets, our infrastructure equity and infrastructure debt strategies generated gross 12-month returns of 9.8% and 7.5%, respectively. In secondaries, APMF generated a net quarterly return of 6.9%, a net 12-month return of 16.2%, and a net return since inception of 15%. In our latest institutional secondaries private equity fund, had a gross IRR of 26.5% since inception. Within private equity, our corporate private equity strategy generated a gross quarterly return of 2.4%, and ACoF VI continues to perform well with a gross IRR of 19.5% since inception.
Overall, the breadth and consistency of our investment performance continues to support fundraising, deployment, and growth in both management fees and performance-related revenues. We believe the combination of strong fund performance, significant available capital, and the scale of our origination platform provide meaningful visibility into continued financial growth. In conclusion, our second quarter and year-to-date results leave us well positioned to achieve our financial objectives for 2026, which remain consistent with our long-term compound annual growth targets of 16%-20% for FRE, 20%+ for RI and dividend growth. I’ll now turn the call back over to Mike for his concluding remarks.
Michael Arougheti, Chief Executive Officer, Ares Management: Thanks, Jarrod. In closing, we’re very pleased with our progress, the broad-based strength and momentum we’re seeing across the firm, and the positioning of our leading global businesses in dynamic growth markets. We raised a record amount of capital across a highly diversified set of strategies. Our deployment pipelines are increasing, and our portfolios continue to perform well for our investors. We believe that the breadth and diversity of our investment platform, the flexibility of our product set, the long duration of our capital base, our asset-light balance sheet, and the strength of our institutional and wealth franchises position us well for continued durable growth over the long term. These characteristics are even more valuable during periods of market volatility and shifts in business cycles, as we can pivot capital formation and deployment towards the most attractive opportunities in the market.
We also believe that the scale of our platform is creating meaningful opportunities for continued margin improvement. As we grow, we’re benefiting from operating leverage, while our investments in technology and AI are set to improve efficiencies and enhance investment capabilities as we leverage our proprietary data and increase the capacity of our teams. We’re also working on strategic growth initiatives like our capital solutions business, as well as extensions of certain investment strategies, both organically and inorganically, through potential joint ventures and opportunities that will continue to drive the business forward. Before wrapping up, I want to highlight the recent fifth anniversary of the Ares Charitable Foundation, which has now committed more than $68 million in grants since 2021 to advance economic mobility globally through initiatives that help people become workforce ready, start and scale up businesses, and strengthen personal finance skills.
In addition to the Ares Charitable Foundation, Promote Giving launched last year as an initiative established by Ares and our pathfinder funds that commits a portion of performance fees to charitable organizations without reducing returns to our fund investors. We are proud that we have expanded our Promote Giving initiative across our industry, and there are now 15 different asset managers with more than $44 billion of pledged assets that have the potential to generate an estimated $300 million-$350 million of charitable contributions over the next decade. This support will help to create a more durable source of funding for organizations that are advancing education, human wellbeing, and healthier communities around the world. We remain committed, as always, to using the reach of the Ares platform to deliver strong outcomes for our investors, our employees, our shareholders, and the communities in which we operate.
As always, I am just so deeply grateful to our employees around the world for their continued hard work, collaboration, and commitment to our clients. I also want to thank you, our investors, for the continued support and trust. We are excited about the opportunities ahead and remain focused on delivering strong long-term results for all of our stakeholders. With that, operator, could you please open up the line for questions?
Operator: At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star then one on your touchtone phone. We ask that you limit yourself to one question to allow as many callers to join the queue as possible. Our first question comes from Craig Siegenthaler with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Craig Siegenthaler, Analyst, Bank of America: Good morning, Mike, Jarrod. I hope everyone is doing well. It was nice to see another strong fundraising quarter, and also to see how much Ares has supported charitable organizations, especially out of the Ares Pathfinder Fund III, which all.
Michael Arougheti, Chief Executive Officer, Ares Management: Thanks, Craig.
Craig Siegenthaler, Analyst, Bank of America: Within that, we wanted to see if you could unpack your commentary that institutional demand for private credit is accelerating. What is driving institutions to private credit now, and when do you expect to see private wealth demand come back? Going forward, do you think these two channels will behave somewhat countercyclically?
Michael Arougheti, Chief Executive Officer, Ares Management: Sure. The evidence for the acceleration is just based on what we’re seeing in the field. To reiterate, in the quarter, we raised our third Pathfinder Fund, first and final close, $8.5 billion against a $6.5 billion cover, which was the hard cap, and had meaningful demand in excess of the hard cap. I don’t think in the history of Ares we’ve ever seen a fund get raised in a first and final at the hard cap. I think that’s a reflection of just extraordinary performance and market positioning, but also just increasing appetite. We had a similar, maybe not as dramatic experience in the third vintage of our opportunistic credit fund, which also raised quicker than prior vintage and got to the hard cap, which was well in excess of the prior. As we mentioned, we are in market with our fourth institutional loan fund.
Everything that we’re seeing on the ground in terms of demand would indicate that appetite is increasing. I think it’s both long-term secular, Craig. When you look at some of the industry data and consulting data, generally speaking, institutions still remain under-allocated to private credit. I think at this moment in time, given some of the reduction in capital coming from the wealth channel, people perceive an opportunity to capture excess return given a shift in the competitive set, meaning spreads have widened, less competition, and therefore an ability to deploy maybe quicker at better returns. That does go hand-in-hand with what we’re seeing in wealth. I do want to reiterate some of the commentary around wealth. First of all, the entire channel for us grew year-over-year. That’s just based on demand that we’re seeing broad-based for the non-U.S. private credit fund.
We’re particularly pleased with the significant demand that we’re seeing in our core infrastructure fund. The momentum in wealth continues. Our July flows on equity were about $1.5 billion. So we’re not seeing any slowdown on the diverse product set. When you drill down on the non-traded BDC, a couple of things to consider. Number one, we talked about in the prepared remarks, the fundamental performance there is delivering exactly what it’s supposed to deliver in terms of dividend yield. Non-accruals are 0.5%. EBITDA is growing 13%, so there’s nothing in that fund that would indicate the performance isn’t at or above underwriting. Two, when you look at the core ultra high net worth and individual investor market, which is supported by the advisor platforms in the U.S., we’re not seeing any acceleration in redemption requests.
It’s been consistent in the 2%-2.5% range, which is what it was before the noise in the channel began. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, redemptions in that particular part of our investor base were down 30% quarter-over-quarter. We’re actually seeing a reduced redemption queue in the core investor base. Then lastly, and I think our peers would say the same, the redemption queue in the U.S. private credit funds, and we’re not actually seeing it in our European funds, is largely concentrated in the hands of family offices and small institutions in the APAC region. To put that in perspective, if you were to look at the top 10 redeemers in our non-traded BDC, they were about half of redemption requests. Two-thirds of our Q2 redemption requests were from the Q1 queue.
While the individual investor is slowing its requests for redemptions, we’re satisfying the disproportionate demand coming out of Asia, and that number has been cut in half over the last two quarters, from about $1.2 billion to a little over $600 million. Assuming that those two trends hold, and I have no reason to believe that they won’t, that would probably mean that you get back to stasis in the next two to three quarters, is my guess. The other thing I would also highlight, because it’s going to impact the profitability coming out of that fund, despite the redemption queue, just based on Q1 inflows and being under-levered in that fund, I would expect that when we get to the end of the year, our non-traded BDC will actually be larger at year-end 2026 than it was at year-end 2025. Whether they act countercyclically, I think maybe.
Obviously, one of the reasons why we have been measured in the way that we’ve developed our wealth business is we learned through experience running ARCC for the last 20+ years, that the individual investor can sometimes look to divest when they should be investing, and running a diversified book in institutional and wealth markets is prudent. I still think it’s early days to know exactly how these will play over time. There is a risk that some of the wealth flows could be more procyclical than people thought they were, which is why we continue to index aggressively into the institutional market. Thanks, Mike.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question is coming from Alex Blostein with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Alex Blostein, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Hey, Mike. Good morning, everybody. Lots going on the organic side, and the business continues to hum. I have to ask, I think, the inorganic question, given the headlines in the last few days here. Mike, heard your comments around open to deals, both JVs as well as more inorganic opportunities broadly. Maybe you can comment about where on your priority list is something inorganic on the private equity side, and just remind us the key parameters around financial and strategic fit when you think about deals for Ares.
Michael Arougheti, Chief Executive Officer, Ares Management: Sure. Thanks for the question, Alex. Obviously I can’t comment on any rumors or speculation in the market, but I appreciate the opportunity to reiterate our framework for thinking about inorganic growth. As you said, at a very high level, regardless of the end market, it’s a simple framework, which is we need it to be culturally accretive because this is a people business at the end of the day. We need it to be strategically accretive, i.e., bring new capability or capacity, or distribution to the table. We need to have a view that we can actually make the business better by delivering revenue synergy, and information and resources. Lastly, it needs to be financially accretive. If you look at our recent history, that framework has served us very well as we’ve acquired and integrated Landmark and doubled that business with meaningful growth.
In secondaries, you’ve seen what we were able to do with the acquisition of Black Creek Group, turning that into what is now the engine of growth in our wealth management business, and so on and so forth. It’s a pretty well-honed framework both for identifying candidates and then also for unlocking growth post-acquisition. With regard to private equity, obviously Ares has been in the private equity business for 20 years with a very strong track record. As I mentioned, our sixth fund in PE right now is generating close to a 20% gross. It’s a top quartile performer. I think that the question that we have posed, and we’ve done it publicly with all of you as well is, as Ares continues to scale the way that it is, should we be bigger in private equity?
I think the answer is probably if we check all those three boxes, the industrial logic for that is that if you look at our institutional LP base, they are committed to being in the private equity business. As we continue to deepen and broaden those relationships, I think they would like to continue to invest with us in scale. To the extent that we scaled up in PE, I think that we would be able to drive incremental flows. That’s all happening at a time when GPs are seeing consolidation of relationships from their LPs. Two, as we kind of hone our origination engines here, being larger in PE will just allow us to offer broader solutions to the companies and entrepreneurs that find their way to Ares, and I think that that would be value add.
It would allow us to deepen our relationships with our banking partners and our capital markets partners in terms of this and financing, that’s obviously accretive to other parts of the business as we grow our wallet. It allows us to lean in more heavily to capital markets, and fee-generating business in a way that we can’t just given our scale. Probably lastly, as demand in the wealth channel continues to grow, and we’re seeing that, for example, in our APMF fund, the ability to deliver larger amounts of direct exposure, either through primary or secondary private equity, I think will become more relevant. There’s a lot to argue in favor of it. As I mentioned in last quarter’s call, the price has to be right because the growth profile of these businesses is less linear and more episodic than some of the core businesses.
We have to really believe that we can drive culture, strategy, and the financial piece of it. A lot of boxes to check, I think the industrial logic would make a lot of sense for the right situation.
Alex Blostein, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Yep. Totally get it. Thank you.
Michael Arougheti, Chief Executive Officer, Ares Management: Thanks.
Operator: Thank you. We will take our next question from Steven Chubak with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.
Steven Chubak, Analyst, Wolfe Research: Hi, good morning, Mike and Jarrod, thanks for taking my question. Wanted to double-click into the U.S. direct lending outlook. Despite more tepid activity in the quarter, you struck a more constructive tone on U.S. direct lending. Now, which is consistent with what Cord actually said on the ARCC call, talking about activity really building towards the end of 2Q and into 3Q. That said, sponsor M&A remains fairly subdued based on what we see in the public data. Just want to get a better sense as to what you’re hearing from sponsor clients regarding the appetite to transact. How does the pace of deployment that you envisage based on the pipeline inform expectations for management fee growth in the back half?
Michael Arougheti, Chief Executive Officer, Ares Management: Sure. A couple of things. Number 1, I think one of the most important things this quarter was the demonstration of just how broad-based and diversified the deployment has become. When you look at a slower Q1 in our U.S. direct lending business, we were still able to deploy $36 billion across the platform because we saw accelerated deployment in places like ABS, secondaries, real estate, digital infra. While direct lending in the U.S. and Europe continue to be big drivers of deployment, the P&L is just fundamentally less dependent on that core direct lending deployment than it has been in years past. If you look at the pipelines across the platform broadly, the pipeline sits at a record level. It’s about 20% higher than it was last quarter. We’re seeing broad-based acceleration in deployment as we head into the back part of the year.
Europe, as I said in the prepared remarks, has actually been a bright spot. We saw significant deployment in Q1 and Q2, the pipeline sits at probably the highest level that we’ve ever seen heading into Q3. With regard to U.S. direct lending, we have demonstrated both because of our incumbent relationships and our non-sponsored business that we are able to deploy quite considerably even when sponsor M&A is slow. I think that will continue. As Kort said, which I think is probably the most important, is when we look at the USDL pipeline, we are seeing an acceleration in the pipeline quarter-over-quarter. Then what I would call the shadow pipeline, which would be looking at how many confidentiality agreements are we logging, and how many new deals are we logging.
The number of NDAs that we’ve signed is up about 35% quarter-over-quarter, and the number of deals we’ve logged is slightly behind at 30%. That’s kind of the precursor to what we would call pipeline. I can’t say with perfect certainty that that 30%-35% converts perfectly, it is an indication that sponsor activity is picking up dramatically as we head into the back half of the year.
Steven Chubak, Analyst, Wolfe Research: That’s great color. Thanks for taking my question.
Michael Arougheti, Chief Executive Officer, Ares Management: Sure.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question is coming from Bill Katz with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.
Bill Katz, Analyst, TD Cowen: Great. Thank you very much. Appreciate all the call this morning. Maybe switching gears a little bit, one for Jarrod perhaps. Sort of intrigued by your comment that you should be accelerating toward the upper end of your 0 to 150 basis points year-on-year margin improvement into the back half of the year. I was wondering if you could unpack the drivers for that. Maybe which lines you sort of see the greatest opportunity. I appreciate it’s early days, but just given the step function of earnings power that seems to be building here based on your flows and deployment dynamics, et cetera, how are you thinking about maybe the incremental margin opportunity into 2027? Thank you.
Jarrod Phillips, Chief Financial Officer, Ares Management: Sure. Thanks, Bill. Great to hear from you. Margin is a number of different factors as you know. It’s not just the amount of expenses, but the velocity at which we increase our revenue. Right now, as we look forward and we talked a little bit about it in prepared remarks, we have a great line of sight on some new products like the data center business that’ll be coming online. With the acquisition of GCP, which we’ve talked about, we’ve moved past the TSA that we had with the left behind vehicle, and we’ve now really integrated them as part of Ares. When you’re adding those new revenues, you’re taking away some of those more fixed expenses.
This quarter, I talked about it in prepared remarks, the AGM that we had in the second quarter that every two years we do that for once in a year as opposed to spread out at a number of events. You have one giant expense quarter related to those meetings as opposed to it spread out over four periods. We have little structural items like that give us a lot of confidence on margin in the back half of the year. At the same time, the normal pace of the business is still very much driven by deployment. The more we’re able to deploy, the more revenue we then generate, which then provides that margin expansion. The one thing that I always caution though is our primary goal is growth. We want to hit those 16%-20% FRE targets, 20%+ on RI.
To do that, we often need to invest in it, Bill, one of the ways that we do that, you’ll see a really strong correlation between how much we spend on marketing expenses and the dollars we raise. At the same time, you also see a healthy correlation between the number of front office professionals we have and our ability to originate. Our business origination is really the king across our credit business in sourcing high quality assets, which are limited. The ability to do that and to originate is very, very valuable for us to invest in. Even when we have margin expansion, we’re constantly looking as a team, are there areas where we can be investing to create more business to sustain that growth?
Because once we have that margin expansion, that’s a one-time expansion of FRE, that’s not something that’s always as sustainable as just the organic growth of creating more revenue. We feel really, really good about the structure of the business in terms of how it will just provide that natural margin expansion. We also love how that forward look at our business allows us to choose those areas to reinvest that margin so we can continue to hit our growth targets.
Bill Katz, Analyst, TD Cowen: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. We’ll move next to Patrick Davitt with Autonomous Research. Please go ahead.
Patrick Davitt, Analyst, Autonomous Research: Hey, good morning, everyone. Thanks for the question. My question’s on the ABF pipeline that you mentioned. We’ve actually been seeing at least one of the large consumer lenders take more loans on balance sheet instead of pushing through the flow agreement channel. In that vein, I’d be curious to get your thoughts on to what extent you’re seeing issues with flows from the consumer ABF channel, or do you think there’s something else going on there? Thank you.
Michael Arougheti, Chief Executive Officer, Ares Management: Sure. As I said, our ABF business continues to be a real bright spot both on fundraising and deployment. It is a very large team that has been growing rapidly across all the different channels. One of the things that differentiates us is our lack of focus and exposure on the consumer part of the market, which is where I think a lot of our peers spend time because that is, to your point, a place where you can originate through flow agreements as opposed to kind of owned origination, which is the way that we think about it. If you were to actually look at consumer exposure in our ABF portfolio, very low, less than 5%. If you looked at subprime consumer, it’s de minimis, it’s less than 1%.
If you were to look at even auto as kind of an extension of consumer, all of our exposure there is prime, and it’s probably less than 1%. I think the market is probably 30%-plus exposed to consumer ABF. It’s just not been a big area of focus for us. To the extent that the captive consumer finance companies are taking more on balance sheet as opposed to flow, I don’t think that that’s going to have any meaningful impact on our ability to deploy.
Operator: Thank you. We’ll move next to Ken Worthington with JPMorgan.
Ken Worthington, Analyst, JPMorgan: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Returns in private equity secondaries was negative this quarter. You called out that APMF is performing particularly well, but some of the other funds are struggling. Maybe first, what’s going on there? Then, Mike, you mentioned in the prepared remarks that activity levels in secondary markets have been very strong. Can you talk about some of the industry dynamics around PE secondary returns?
Michael Arougheti, Chief Executive Officer, Ares Management: Yeah. With regard to the secondary performance, PMF obviously continues to have strong performance. That performance, though, I’d highlight also is going to be impacted on mix between LP portfolios and GP-led. To the extent that you are more aggressive in originating on the LP side, you tend to see higher returns as you capture the NAV discount, then as you transition to GP-led, more consistency but maybe less volatility. With regard to the secondary performance, Fund XVII, which was the first fund that we deployed under Ares, the performance there is pretty strong. Since inception, returns about 26% gross, net was about 17%. Fund XVI, which was the last fund, which is a much older vintage, but a much larger fund, can have an outsized impact on the composite as we report, that’s basically what’s happening there.
That older vintage fund, just given its size, moved down. If you look at all of the kind of active in-the-ground funds, Fund XVII, APMF, we’re actually continuing to see strong returns.
Ken Worthington, Analyst, JPMorgan: Great. Thank you.
Michael Arougheti, Chief Executive Officer, Ares Management: I think there was a question about private equity secondaries. I didn’t quite understand what the second part of the question was. I apologize.
Ken Worthington, Analyst, JPMorgan: Yeah. It’s just what we’ve observed is that even though secondaries is very popular, that the returns are lagging private equity in general. It seems like the lag is maybe more pronounced this cycle than we’ve seen last cycle. Any comments on how industry dynamics are impacting sort of PE secondary returns?
Michael Arougheti, Chief Executive Officer, Ares Management: Got it. I think if you were to look at the historical return data, the secondaries returns will generally be lower. They also tend to be range-bound. If you were to look at PE secondary returns, first quartile to fourth quartile, the dispersion of returns is much tighter than you see in the primary market. One of the ways I would encourage you to think about it is just when people are using the secondaries market, particularly the LP product, they’re trying to buy diversified private equity beta for the most part, but they’re doing it in a way that structures out a lot of the volatility in return. You’re going to get a generally lower return, but a much lower volatility of return versus the primary market. I think that’s always been the case.
That may change over time as the private equity secondary market moves a little bit more towards GP-led and continuation vehicles. I think what you’re highlighting is largely just the legacy LP-led part of the market that’s always been lower.
Ken Worthington, Analyst, JPMorgan: Great. Thank you.
Michael Arougheti, Chief Executive Officer, Ares Management: Sure.
Operator: Thank you. We’ll move next to Sid Patel with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Sid Patel, Analyst, Barclays: Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. Mike, in your prepared remarks, you talked about a slew of new products coming. I think you mentioned interval funds for mass market, model portfolios. Can you maybe talk about what these look like? How might liquidity need to be structured differently as you go maybe a little farther down market? Maybe what’s the timing? What should we be looking for over the next 12 months with these kind of initiatives? Thank you.
Michael Arougheti, Chief Executive Officer, Ares Management: Sure. Thanks for the question. Without getting into too much of the detail and kind of publicize trade secrets in the lab, I think that the key is interval fund structures, I think, will be the path forward to move down the individual investor spectrum, just in terms of ease of use ease of onboarding, et cetera. I think with regard to liquidity, despite, again, some of the noise and the way that the media would like to amplify the noise, I think that the individual investor is buying the product with the 5% quarterly liquidity and seems very happy with it. I’m not sure that the expectation in the market is that the wealth channel is expecting liquidity to change. I think it’s more about what does it look like to get onboarded, what’s the subscription process.
I think that for a segment of the market that’s used to buying CUSIP securities, the interval fund is probably just going to be more familiar and easier. A lot of what we now have the opportunity to do as well around product extension is when you think about our eight products in real estate, global direct lending, diversified credit, core infrastructure, et cetera, we now have building blocks that could be mixed and matched to provide different portfolio outcomes for people in different geographies and in different markets. A lot of the product extension work is continuing to focus on those building blocks and then thinking about how we wrap them and offer them into the market, whether it’s through fund format or model portfolios.
Devin Ryan, Analyst, Citizens JMP: Great. Thank you for all that.
Michael Arougheti, Chief Executive Officer, Ares Management: Sure.
Operator: Thank you. We’ll move next to Michael Brown with UBS. Please go ahead.
Michael Brown, Analyst, UBS: Great. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Mike, I wanted to ask on digital infrastructure, where it’s still a relatively small percentage of the firmwide AUM today, but it does stand to be a significant growth driver for FRE over the next several years. As the platform scales, new funds come to market, maybe just any updated views on how we should think about the longer-term fee rate, margin profile of the business versus the broader real asset segment, particularly given the vertical integrated development model that you have. Thank you.
Michael Arougheti, Chief Executive Officer, Ares Management: Sure. I’m going to let Blair take that one because he’s doing a lot of work driving that business formation and growth forward. Blair, if you want to take that.
Blair, Executive, Ares Management: Yeah, sure. It’s a great question. I think the first thing to say is that we continue to have a lot of excitement and conviction in the business, which we added to the firm at the beginning of last year when we folded GCP International into Ares. As we think about the development, that business came with a very large seed portfolio, which is incredibly attractive. From an investor perspective, when they look at what’s available, they see 700 megawatts of development opportunity that they can identify, and that’s helping to drive the strong fundraising momentum that Mike mentioned earlier. As we think about how that rolls out from a profitability perspective, I would say that the rack rate fees and economics on the fund are very attractive and in line with other Ares offerings.
One slight difference, as you noted, is that we do have a vertically integrated model. We’re able to articulate to the investor base that the existing team can deliver good service, controlled outcomes, whereas maybe our peer set would pay more to outsource those capabilities. We charge back the cost of that team to the fund, which ultimately we think leads to better returns for the investors, but also better economics for Ares. When we flow all of that through, I think we talked to all of you last fall in Baltimore about our forecasts for how that would flow through to the Ares FRE P&L. I think we said $50 million-$100 million of FRE in 2027 and beyond.
I think we would say that we feel very good about that forecast based on what we see today, given the portfolio, the fundraising traction, and the economics to the firm.
Michael Brown, Analyst, UBS: Thanks, Blair. Great to hear from you.
Operator: Thank you. We’ll take our next question from Bart Dzyrski with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Bart Dzyrski, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: Great. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Wanted to ask around GCP. Would love just a mark-to-market update on how that transaction is going in terms of performance, and maybe tie that into relative to the earn-out objective set when you completed the deal. Thanks so much.
Michael Arougheti, Chief Executive Officer, Ares Management: Yeah, thanks for the question. I could not be more pleased with the progress that we’ve made. Again, if folks remember the investment thesis for the acquisition, and this is consistent with what I talked about earlier with regard to just the M&A framework, was market-leading business in Japan, both institutional and retail through our market-leading J-REIT. Consolidated growth in our industrial and logistics platform globally, and then breakout growth opportunity in data center development and digital infrastructure. We have made significant progress on all three. If you were to look at the Japan business, as we talked about in the prepared remarks, we are in the market with the next vintage of our institutional development fund, and that will get to its hard cap and be significantly larger than prior.
Very quickly out of the gate, we closed a significant data center fund in Japan, probably larger than we had originally expected Julie and our global real estate teams have already consolidated our logistics platform globally. We have reorganized our business under a global brand, Mark Logistics, and we have integrated the teams and realized both revenue and expense synergy there. Then on the digital side, as Blair said, we could not be happier with the momentum that we have on the data center development side. I think we’re really pleased with the way that that fund family is growing as well. You tend to know very quickly whether you got it right, and I would say culturally, absolutely got it right. The teams are fully integrated, working well together.
Strategically, the synergy is what we hoped it would be, and obviously financially, the combination of the revenue coming in probably a little bit quicker. To Jarrod’s point, getting out of the PSA, and to Blair’s point, getting chargeback on the development platform. I think that we’re going to see an acceleration of earnings coming off of that business. That does have implications for the earn-out. So we would expect that with that continued momentum, that an earn-out will get paid. One of the beautiful things about that, though, is the way that we structure these transactions is the earn-outs are milestone based, but usually refer to fundraising management fee and/or FRE growth. When they get paid, it effectively is reflected as buying down our multiple. So one of the ways that we’re able to drive performance and align performance is through these earn-outs.
When they get paid, they actually come in at a reduced multiple. We’re kind of happy when we hit those earn-outs the same way we did, for example, with the Black Creek acquisition.
Bart Dzyrski, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: That is excellent color. Thanks, Mike.
Michael Arougheti, Chief Executive Officer, Ares Management: Sure.
Operator: Thank you. We’ll move next to Brennan Hawken with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Brennan Hawken, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets: It’s on for Brennan. Gross to net performance remained relatively resilient despite industry-wide pressure. What factors have helped support spreads and economics in the middle market, and what would need to occur for gross to net trends to improve meaningfully from current levels?
Michael Arougheti, Chief Executive Officer, Ares Management: Well, gross to net has been fairly consistent. I think Kort did a really nice job, and Jim on the ARCC call talking a little bit about improving conditions competitively and from a return perspective in the direct lending market. They leaned in pretty heavily to incumbent relationships in the quarter. About 75% of the USTL deployment was to existings. That will tend to show itself differently from a gross to net standpoint than when we are more active in the primary market. I don’t know that a lot needs to happen to see that gross to net improve quarter-over-quarter. Just referencing some of my prior commentary around how the pipeline is developing into the back half of the year and the momentum we are seeing in the sponsor M&A market. I think that that 75% number is obviously going to be lower this quarter.
I think to their credit, they were able to deploy actively while probably being more selective than they had been in quite some time. Kort talked a lot about just the lower closing rate this quarter relative to historical averages. I think that was a reflection of their experience and understanding that the market is improving from a spread and return perspective, and our competitive advantage is improving as some of the retail-heavy competitors are not forming capital to the same extent that we are. The opportunity to deploy more aggressively into an improving market I think is also a big driver. I don’t think a lot needs to happen. I think we just got to let the market continue to play out the way that it has been, and you should see that number normalize.
Operator: Thank you. We will move next to Devin Ryan with Citizens JMP. Please go ahead.
Devin Ryan, Analyst, Citizens JMP: Thanks. Good morning, Mike and Jarrod. Most have been asked here, but want to ask a question just on insurance. You saw fee paying AUM increase 54%, so materially faster than kind of broader platform. Just love to get a little bit more color on what is driving that and just the bigger picture kind of long-term opportunity that you see and just how much insurance could meaningfully change kind of the deployment visibility across alternative credit or infrastructure debt over time. Thanks.
Michael Arougheti, Chief Executive Officer, Ares Management: Yeah, look, we’re really, really pleased with the growth and continued kind of evolution and maturation of our insurance platform, both Ares Insurance Solutions, where we have been adding capability and management talent, as well as the growth of our Aspida platform. We have been quite public in articulating our view of the insurance market and how important it is to our future growth, but how similar to our views on diversifying between wealth and institutional fundraising that we want to maintain our diversification between our captive and affiliated insurance business and our third-party clients. So we’ve just chosen to build that business balance sheet light and as focused on third-party insurance clients and partners as driving the kind of unfettered growth of the Aspida.
We do have everything we need to continue to hit the targets that we laid out at our Investor Day, both in terms of our annuities platform, but also our reinsurance business. We feel really good about it. If you look at this quarter’s production, we did about $2 billion of growth in both channels, I think that that’s kind of a healthy place for us to be. I do think your question just about the importance of insurance to driving things like digital infrastructure credit, real estate credit is a good thing to point out. Obviously, one of the benefits of building that business is it enhances our origination, not just on the high grade, but also supporting the sub-investment grade part of the business as well.
So a lot of the talent adds and capability adds have been driven to further integrate that origination capability into the business.
Devin Ryan, Analyst, Citizens JMP: Great. Thanks so much.
Operator: Thank you. We’ll move next to Wilma Burdis with Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Wilma Burdis, Analyst, Raymond James: Hey, good morning. If Ares institutes new structures for private BDC redemptions by geography, how long would it take before Ares has some protection from outsized redemptions from certain regions? Thanks.
Michael Arougheti, Chief Executive Officer, Ares Management: Sure. It’s really about flows from here and structure on share classes on new product as well. I think going forward, to the extent that we implement some of the new features around lockups and redemption penalties and regional redemption queues, that would be protective of this happening again in the future. With regard to what’s already in the ground, I would just refer back to what I highlighted earlier, which is that queue of about $1.2 billion to $600 million is working its way through the system. If you look at the 5% that was satisfied last quarter, that was a little over $700 million. That redemption queue regionally now is below the 5% threshold, it’s working its way down. Again, I feel good about both, but I don’t know that the forward stuff, you’re not really going to see.
It’s more about just working through that remaining $600 million redemption queue.
Wilma Burdis, Analyst, Raymond James: Thank you.
Michael Arougheti, Chief Executive Officer, Ares Management: Sure.
Operator: Thank you. We will take our last question from Michael Cyprys with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Michael Cyprys, Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Hey, thanks for squeezing me in here. Just a question on AI. As you look across your portfolio companies, curious where you’re starting to see tangible revenue and EBITDA lift or even market share gains from portfolio companies adopting AI. When you think about the scope for AI dramatically changing workflows and increasing automation, where do you think those changes could be most meaningful to the bottom line, and over what time frame?
Michael Arougheti, Chief Executive Officer, Ares Management: Yeah. It’s a really broad question, Michael, but I appreciate it. We touch so many different types of businesses and assets. I think the opportunity for efficiency gains and margin improvement are significant, and we’re seeing it across the portfolio. We’re also seeing it across areas, both the deployment of what we call productivity AI, just for some of the off-the-shelf tools are increasing capacity within our teams. Then as we build out our applied AI frameworks, and deploy those, we’re seeing significant opportunities in places like workforce automation around some of our repeatable functions, RFPs, DDQs, AML, KYC. A lot of our investment teams are already harnessing a lot of our proprietary data to inform origination and portfolio management decisions. Our legal teams are deploying it around the reading and comparing of legal documents.
It’s not an easy question to answer other than to say that the deployment at Ares and within the portfolio is broad-based, and we’re already seeing the benefits in terms of capacity increasing and margin improvement. I think the biggest opportunity for us, once we get through that, what I would call first phase, is just harnessing all of the proprietary data that we have here, not just on the deals that we do and the deals that we own, but the deals that we don’t do, then redirecting that data into better decision-making. The early indications are that that’s going to be very, very value accretive to us.
Michael Cyprys, Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Great. Thank you.
Michael Arougheti, Chief Executive Officer, Ares Management: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our conference call for today. If you missed any part of today’s call, an archived replay of this conference call will be available through August 31st, 2026 to domestic callers by dialing 1-800-839-5676, and to international callers by dialing 1-402-220-2565. An archived replay will also be available on a webcast link located on the homepage of the Investor Resources section of our website.
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