Blackstone Group Misses EPS Estimates But Beats On ENI

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The Blackstone Group L.P. (NYSE:BX) released its latest earnings report this morning, posting earnings of 65 cents per share on revenue of $938.88 million for the second quarter. Analysts had been expecting earnings of 69 cents per share on $1.53 billion in revenue.

Breaking down Blackstone’s results

The firm reported that its economic net income was $1.33 billion, a new record, compared to $703 million in the same quarter a share. That amounts to $1.15 per share, which was ahead of the expected 71 cents per share analysts had been expecting for this metric.

Blackstone’s distributable earnings were $770.8 million, compared to $338.5 million in the same quarter a year ago. The firm had $278.9 billion in assets under management at the end of the quarter, compared to $272 billion at the end of the first quarter. Fee-earning assets under management increased from $203.6 billion at the end of the first quarter to $209.9 billion at the end of June.

Stephen A. Schwarzman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said in a statement, “Blackstone’s second quarter results marked one of our best ever in terms of both ENI and distributable earnings. As more of our assets under management have seasoned, we’ve been increasingly active in harvesting the value we’ve created over several years. At the same time, ENI, which reflects our current value creation, remains at record levels, reaching $4.3 billion for the past twelve months.”

Blackstone also declared a quarterly dividend of 55 cents per share to shareholders of record on July 28. The dividend is payable on Aug. 4.

Blackstone buys Catalunya Banc’s loans

Earlier this morning, Blackstone announced that it will buy Spanish bank Catalunya Banc SA’s loan portfolio. It’s worth $8.64 billion (€6.39 billion), and Blackstone is paying €3.6 billion for it. The Spanish government nationalized Catalunya Banc in 2011, spending €12 billion to bail out and clean up the lender.

The Spanish bank auctioned off its loan portfolio, choosing Blackstone as the winner over other big names like Oaktree Capital Group LLC (NYSE:OAK), Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE:GS) Apollo Global Management LLC (NYSE:APO) and Lone Star Funds.

Shares of Blackstone rose more than 8% on the initial report from The Wall Street Journal, which Catalunya later confirmed.

“Blackstone’s results show that investors continue to pour money into private equity and other alternative strategies even as the stock market reaches all time highs. In contrast to the big Wall Street firms, where trading volume has plummeted, volumes in private equity have surged,” said Nicholas Tsafos, a partner at EisnerAmper who audits and advises PE firms, both large and midsize.

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