Blackstone Group (BX) recently announced a drop in its fourth-quarter net income, which fell to $151.8 million from the $557.8 million recorded during the same period last year. The per-share net income decreased from seventy-five cents to twenty cents. While the distributable earnings per share has slightly increased from $1.07 to $1.11, somewhere the Fee-Related Earnings experienced a meager dip from eighty-eight cents to eighty-six cents. It is noteworthy that the average estimate given by 18 analysts (surveyed by Thomson Reuters) was a profit of ninety-six cents per share.
The organization's overall revenues for the fourth quarter also witnessed a decline, reducing to $1.28 billion from $1.70 billion during the same period the preceding year. Although it'd an estimated revenue of $2.57 billion, the total segment revenues fell slightly at $2.53 billion from the previous year's $2.34 billion.
However, Blackstone's CEO, Stephen Schwarzman, expressed his positive outlook. He noted that the firm is in an exceptional position, with nearly $200 billion ready for investment.
In terms of Assets Under Management (AUM), Blackstone saw a year-over-year increase of 7%, amounting to $1.04 trillion. The Fee-earning AUM has also been raised by 6%, positioned at $762.6 billion. As of 31st December 2023, the company had a total of $8.4 billion in cash, cash equivalents, corporate treasury, and other investments with $16.9 billion of cash and net investments.
Further, Blackstone announced a quarterly dividend of ninety-four cents per share. The shareholders on record as of February 5th, 2024, will receive the dividend on February 12th, 2024.
In response to these developments, shares of Blackstone reportedly saw a 2% rise in pre-market trading on Thursday.
