Q4 2024 Brookfield Corp Earnings Call
Speaker Change: Hello and welcome to the Brookfield Corporation fourth quarter 2024 conference call and webcast. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone.
Speaker Change: I would now like to hand the conference call over to our first speaker, Ms. Angela Yulo, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Thank you, Angela. Thank you.
Speaker Change: Thank you, operator, and good morning. Welcome to Brookfield Corporation's fourth quarter and full year 2024 conference call.
Speaker Change: On the call today are Bruce Flatt, our Chief Executive Officer, and Nick Goodman, President of Brookfield Corporation.
Nick Goodman: Bruce will start off by giving a business update, followed by Nick, who will discuss our financial and operating results for the quarter and the year.
Nick Goodman: After our formal comments, we'll turn the call over to the operator and take analyst questions.
Nick Goodman: In order to accommodate all those who want to ask questions, we request that you refrain from asking more than two questions.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Nick Goodman: I would like to remind you that in today's comments, including in responding to questions and in discussing new initiatives in our financial and operating performance, we may make forward-looking statements, including forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable Canadian and U.S. securities laws.
Nick Goodman: These statements reflect predictions of future events and trends, and do not relate to historic events. They are subject to known and unknown risks, and future events and results may differ materially from such statements.
Nick Goodman: For further information on these risks and their potential impacts on our company, please see our filings with the securities regulators in Canada and the U.S. and the information available on our website.
Nick Goodman: In addition, when we speak about our Wealth Solutions business, or Brookfield Wealth Solutions, we are referring to Brookfield's investments in this business that supported the acquisition of its underlying operating subsidiaries.
With that, I'll turn the call over to Bruce.
Thank you for watching.
Thank you, Angela, and welcome everyone on the call.
Nick Goodman: We had a strong year in 2024 with record financial results.
Distributable earnings before realizations increased 15% to $4.9 billion.
Nick Goodman: That's $3.07 per share for the year. And total distributed earnings increased 31% to $6.3 billion.
Nick will expand on these results later.
Thank you for watching.
Nick Goodman: Our manager had over $135 billion of inflows and further expanded its credit platform.
Nick Goodman: Our Wealth Solutions business is now firmly established as a top tier annuity writer in the U.S.
and we are just getting started in the UK.
Nick Goodman: Our operating businesses continue to generate stable and growing cash flows backed by our high quality essential service assets and businesses.
Thank you for watching!
Nick Goodman: With a 55% return in stock market during 24, that moved our 30-year track record up to a compound annualized return of 19% for the 30 years.
Nick Goodman: said differently, a million dollars then became about 189 million dollars today.
That is a lot of compounding.
Thank you for watching!
Turning briefly to the economic environment.
Nick Goodman: Markets were constructive for most of 24 despite increased volatility caused by
potential policy changes and geopolitics.
Thank you for watching.
Nick Goodman: But with inflation tempered, short-term rates are stabilizing at levels consistent with more normalized economic conditions.
Nick Goodman: We capitalized on this backdrop, financing approximately $135 billion of debt and selling nearly $40 billion of assets at strong returns.
Thank you for watching!
Nick Goodman: Looking ahead, market conditions are becoming increasingly constructive, which should contribute to a continued recovery in transaction activity, especially for high-quality assets and businesses like ours.
Nick Goodman: We expect to advance our robust pipeline of asset sales at attractive returns.
Nick Goodman: which will lead to significant carried interest in the coming years.
Nick Goodman: Nick will speak to that in more detail in his remarks.
Nick Goodman: At the same time, with record deployable capital of approximately $160 billion and a constructive market backdrop, the outlook for deployment is strong.
Nick Goodman: This makes us quite confident in the outlook for growth in our earnings and cash flows which should lead to increased intrinsic value for your shares.
2025 looks like it should be another good year.
Nick Goodman: Our strong stock performance in 2024 was great. More importantly, though, the business's ability to consistently generate attractive investment returns has led to continued growth of our intrinsic value over the long term.
Nick Goodman: The intrinsic value per share is now approximately $100 per share.
Nick Goodman: which underpins your shares and should allow you to earn a greater return than the underlying performance of our business over time.
Nick Goodman: In addition to that, this offers us an easy way to continue to add value per share by repurchasing shares.
with another $200 million to date in 2025.
Thank you for watching!
Nick Goodman: Our businesses also continue to get better. Our operations-oriented approach and our focus on high-quality, cash-generative businesses has driven significant value creation for stakeholders.
Nick Goodman: One such recent example is the dividend distribution and recapitalization of Clarios, which is the world's leading provider of advanced low-voltage batteries.
Nick Goodman: In our six years of ownership, which I might emphasize included a lot of market volatility, the COVID era included, profitability increased by more than $500 million to over $2 billion a year of annual EBITDA.
Nick Goodman: This allowed us to reduce debt by $2 billion, and we solidified the business to service virtually all hybrids and electric cars.
Nick Goodman: All of this enabled us to refinance the business recently, funding a $4.5 billion distribution to Clario shareholders that generated a 1.5 multiple of our original equity.
Nick Goodman: Just to be clear on that outcome, all owners, including ourselves, received back 1.5 times our original invested equity, and we still own 100% of the business.
Nick Goodman: Thank you for watching. Please subscribe to my channel. Thank you for watching.
Nick Goodman: On the opposite side, our observation on the public markets is that we continue to see a shift from active to passive investing.
Nick Goodman: Over the past few decades, much of the investing for regular, non-professional investors has transferred to passive index investing.
Nick Goodman: While, on balance, indexing has probably been beneficial for the average investor, there have been implications for listed businesses.
This indexing impacts us in a couple of ways.
Thank you for watching!
Nick Goodman: First, increasingly there are a group of companies that do not fit neatly into indexes and as a result trade poorly relative to value.
Nick Goodman: Our recent take privates, such as Triton, Tritec's Eurobox, and Network International are all examples of companies that were excluded from the indexes and therefore were acquired at good value.
Nick Goodman: Our collective knowledge and expertise, combined with our scale and resources, have enabled us to execute these transactions, and we see more opportunities to come.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker Change: Indexing also affects our own companies, and while our main job is to make money for you,
Nick Goodman: We also pay attention to how that value trades in the market to ensure that the value of the business is ultimately reflected in the share price over the longer term.
Speaker Change: Our efforts to simplify the structure of our asset management business and establish its eligibility for all relevant major U.S. indexes is the outcome of this reality.
Nick Goodman: In summary, and before I turn it over to Nick, our access to capital and the embedded growth within each of our businesses.
Nick Goodman: In conjunction with the transaction activity picking up in 2025, positions us well to continue to deliver strong growth in our cash flows and intrinsic value per share over the long term.
Nick Goodman: Thank you for your support and interest in Brookfield. I'll turn it over to Nick.
Thank you, Bruce, and good morning, everyone.
Nick Goodman: We delivered record financial results in 2024. Distributable earnings, or DE, before realizations were $4.9 billion, or $3.07 per share for the year. This represents an increase of 15% per share over the prior year.
Nick Goodman: Total DE, including realizations, was $6.3 billion, or $3.96 per share, a 31% increase over the prior year, with total net income of $1.9 billion for the year.
Nick Goodman: Focusing first on our operating performance, each of our businesses leveraged their strong operating platforms to deliver growing cash flows. Our asset management business generated distributable earnings of $2.6 billion, or $1.67 per share for the year.
Nick Goodman: Total inflows were over $135 billion in 2024, driving an increase to fee-bearing capital of 18%, which ended the year at $539 billion. This resulted in a 17% growth in fee-related earnings compared to the prior year quarter.
Nick Goodman: Heading into 2025, we expect to hold final clauses for our latest flagship funds and continue to actively deploy capital, which should contribute to strong earnings growth.
Nick Goodman: Our Wealth Solutions business is scaling rapidly amidst a very attractive market backdrop.
Nick Goodman: Distributable Operating Earnings were $1.4 billion or 85 cents per share for the year, nearly double compared to the prior year. That was close to $700 million of incremental cash flow and earnings this year and growing.
Nick Goodman: Following the close of AEL, Aware Solutions Business is now firmly established as a top-tier annuity writer in the U.S. and when including the growth in our pension business has the potential to originate over 25 billion dollars of predictable liabilities annually.
Nick Goodman: During the year we originated approximately 19 billion dollars of retail and institutional annuities, increasing insurance assets to over a hundred and twenty billion dollars.
Nick Goodman: We continue to scale our credit investment platform, leveraging our unique positioning around real assets.
Nick Goodman: During the quarter, the average investment yield on our assets was 5.4%, that's 1.8% higher than the average cost of capital.
Nick Goodman: And as we continue to gradually rotate the investment portfolio, spread earnings are expected to increase to approximately 2%, which will in turn grow annualized earnings for approximately $1.6 billion today to $2 billion in the near term.
Thank you.
Nick Goodman: It is worth emphasizing that this business continues to generate stable and growing long-dated cash flows.
by leveraging the investment capabilities of our asset management business.
Nick Goodman: We're able to focus on long-duration investing in real assets and private credit that matches with our long-dated liabilities, which have an average duration of nine years and low annual churn. This is a key driver of selling best-in-class retirement income solutions for Americans.
Nick Goodman: Furthermore, we continue to scale our strong operating platforms and progress our plans to expand into new markets with teams on the ground in the UK and Japan.
Nick Goodman: Our focus remains to compound capital and deliver 15% plus returns on our equity.
Nick Goodman: Through our combined wealth solutions platform, we are raising close to $2 billion of retail capital per month, which includes over $450 million a month from our private wealth channel.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Nick Goodman: Our operating businesses continue to deliver stable and growing cash flows, generating distributable earnings of $1.6 billion, or $1.03 per share for the year.
Nick Goodman: Operating funds from operations within our Renewable Power Transition and Infrastructure businesses increased by 10% over the prior year, and our private equity business continues to contribute resilient, high-quality cash flows.
Nick Goodman: In our real estate business, our core portfolio delivered 4% growth in same-store net operating income over the prior year quarter.
Nick Goodman: During the year, we signed close to 27 million square feet of office and retail leases.
Nick Goodman: A few highlights of our robust office leasing activity include approximately 5.0 million square feet leased in India, 2.5 million square feet in Toronto and New York, and 1.3 million square feet in the UK.
Nick Goodman: In our retail portfolio, our occupancy levels remain high at 96%. Overall, rents on the newly signed leases in our office and retail portfolios were approximately 35% higher compared to those leases expiring in the fourth quarter.
Nick Goodman: Also, during the fourth quarter, our DE further benefited by approximately $125 million from monetizing a land parcel within our North American residential operations.
Thank you for watching.
Nick Goodman: Given the positive market dynamics for high-quality assets, we expect earnings and valuations from our real estate business to continue to strengthen in the coming years.
Nick Goodman: Turning now to monetization activity. We continue to see strong demand for the globally diversified portfolio of high quality cash generating assets and businesses we own.
Nick Goodman: In 2024, we monetized nearly $40 billion of assets across the business.
Nick Goodman: In our real estate business, we closed the sale of a portfolio of U.S.-manufactured housing assets for approximately $570 million, crystallizing in approximately 29% IRR and 3.4 times multiple of capital.
Nick Goodman: Our renewable power and transition business generated record proceeds of $2.8 billion from asset monetizations, returning a two-and-a-half times multiple of capital and an IRR of approximately 25%.
Nick Goodman: In our infrastructure business, we advanced a number of sales, including the close of the previously announced sale of our fiber platform in France, delivering an IRR of 17%.
Nick Goodman: Monetizing assets is the last step of the life cycle of carried interest, as it crystallizes a large component of the profit of an investment.
Nick Goodman: And as a reminder, we adopt a conservative approach to realizing carried interest into our earnings.
Nick Goodman: Specifically, we only recognize CARI once we have returned the invested capital of the entire fund, as opposed to on individual deals, to clients and have achieved a minimum compound return resulting in a remote risk of clawback.
Nick Goodman: This approach delays the carry recognition towards the end of a fund's life cycle, but leads to a larger contribution when recognized.
Nick Goodman: Today, our total accumulated unrealized carried interest is $11.5 billion, of which $10 billion is directly owned by the corporation and most of which we expect to recognize into our earnings over the next five years.
Nick Goodman: In 2024, we recognized approximately $400 million of net realized carried interest into income. And more importantly, as we advance our investment plans and continue to monetize assets.
Nick Goodman: We expect to generate approximately $20 billion of cash flows directly to the corporation over the next 10 years.
Nick Goodman: This will allow us to deliver further value for you by either reinvesting the cash back into the business or by returning capital through opportunistically repurchasing our shares.
Thank you for watching.
Nick Goodman: Shifting to our balance sheet and liquidity, we continue to differentiate our business through the combination of our conservatively capitalized balance sheet and high levels of liquidity, with record deployable capital of approximately $160 billion.
Nick Goodman: Our financial strength enabled us to continue to opportunistically repurchase our shares at significantly lower prices compared to our view of intrinsic value.
Nick Goodman: In 2024, we completed approximately $1 billion of share buybacks, adding approximately $0.80 of value to each remaining share.
Nick Goodman: Alternatively said, you now own 1.5% more of the assets we own for each share and you did not have to put up any more money. In 2025 so far, we have repurchased over $200 million of shares.
Nick Goodman: In the capital markets we had an active year. We executed approximately 135 billion dollars of financings.
Nick Goodman: And notable examples include, we accessed the hybrid debt markets, emphasizing our ability to raise capital from multiple sources. At the corporation, we issued $700 million dollars of 30-year subordinated notes in December, which saw high demand from investors at relatively low spreads.
Nick Goodman: We also closed a $1 billion seven-year non-recourse asset-level loan to a large institutional partner of ours, the proceeds of which will mainly be directed towards share repurchases.
Nick Goodman: In our real estate business, we financed approximately $40 billion of debt across 182 investments globally, of which over $12 billion relates to our office portfolio.
Nick Goodman: Liquidity is coming back to real estate markets around the world and particularly for the high quality portfolio of assets that we own.
Subsequent to year-end, our infrastructure business completed two large financings.
Nick Goodman: This included the issuance of a $6.1 billion investment-grade financing at our Semiconductor Facility Joint Venture in Arizona, which further de-risked the investment with the original VET facility now fully termed out in the capital markets, two years ahead of plan and at a lower cost.
Nick Goodman: Both of the financings we executed were oversubscribed, showcasing the depth of liquidity available for high-quality infrastructure assets.
Nick Goodman: Overall, 2024 was a strong year. As we look ahead to 2025, we expect that the positive momentum in our financial performance, combined with our robust balance sheet and liquidity, sets us up well to drive further earnings growth and create significant value in the business.
Nick Goodman: Lastly, I am pleased to confirm that our Board of Directors has declared a 13% increase in the quarterly dividend to $0.09 per share.
Nick Goodman: Payable at the end of March to shareholders of record at the close of business in March 14, 2025. Thank you for your time and I'll now hand the call back to the operator for questions.
Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker Change: Thank you. As a reminder, if you have a question, please press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If your question has been answered or you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press star 11 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster.
Thank you.
Thank you for watching!
Speaker Change: And our first question will come from Ken Worthington from J.P. Morgan. Your line is open.
Ken Worthington: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. So much to ask here, but I think I'll focus on
Capital Management.
Ken Worthington: It would seem like a target-rich environment for Brookfield, and I would love to better understand what makes the most sense for you now, given your view of the future, especially in the context of improving cash flows. So in terms of insurance...
Could a large insurance deal still make sense?
you know, assuming a good fit and price.
or are blocks, boltons, and organic growth.
Ken Worthington: Really sort of the exclusive path forward on the insurance side
and then...
Ken Worthington: infrastructure and renewables for Brookfield Corp. Given the size of the opportunity that that you, asset management, your peers are all sort of talking about.
Ken Worthington: and given the size of these deals, like Intel and now the French AI announcement.
Ken Worthington: Do you see increased indirect opportunity here, such as BIP and BEP, or even more direct opportunities for Brookfield Corp. from an investment perspective? Thanks.
Ken Worthington: Hi Ken, good morning. Thanks for the question. I would say that as we think about capital management at Brookfield, there are
Ken Worthington: a lot of highly attractive areas for capital deployment right now and we sit at the center of the capital flows.
Ken Worthington: and allocate capital for what we think will be attractive returns. I think to answer your question specifically on insurance, it will probably be a combination of everything, that's the way we tend to grow our businesses. We like to build platforms that can deliver organic growth that are attractive returns, but then we also look at
Ken Worthington: And so I think you'll see continued strong organic growth in that business but still focusing on potentially bolting on M&A growth and that could be geographic diversification or product diversification.
Ken Worthington: As it relates to infrastructure and renewables, we've talked about this a lot with decarbonisation and de-globalisation and almost intersecting with each other, the investment opportunity is enormous.
Ken Worthington: And we have a unique combination of capabilities to play across that spectrum with the provision of renewable power, the data center capability, and the real estate expertise.
Ken Worthington: I think the investment for that largely resides within our listed affiliates and our clients where we have significant capital available to us, but the opportunity is significant and I expect Brookfield to be a large player in that.
Ken Worthington: largely comes directly off of the list affiliates and in partnership with our clients who have very significant appetite for these sectors.
Thank you for watching.
Great, thank you very much.
Thank you for watching!
Speaker Change: Thank you. Our next question will come from Michael Cypress from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Michael Cypress: Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe just one on real estate. I was hoping maybe you could elaborate a bit more.
Michael Cypress: on your expectations for monetizations this year. You sound pretty optimistic. Maybe you could unpack what sort of instills that confidence. How do you see sort of the impact from?
Michael Cypress: the recent uplift in 10-year treasury yields over the past six months and potential risks from tariffs and such. Maybe just talk a little bit about what gives you the confidence there and how do you see the sort of pace, magnitude, and cadence of this evolving throughout the year. Thank you.
Speaker Change: Hi, Mike. So, yeah, I'd just make a general comment on real estate. I would say...
Michael Cypress: Overall, globally, real estate markets continue to improve, and I'd say that's based on a few factors. Ones which we said we should be watching out for over the last couple of years. One is the underlying fundamentals continue to improve across sectors.
Michael Cypress: And two, the depth of liquidity in the capital markets is getting better every day and the cost of capital is compressing with spreads tightening. And yes, the 10-year may have...
Thank you.
Michael Cypress: And I think that is the ingredients that you need for a pick-up in monetization activity. And on a global scale, we're seeing that activity. We've been selling assets in different sectors and different markets around the world. And I expect that to continue, and specifically in the U.S.
Michael Cypress: As we see the capital markets continue to improve, the operating performance is incredibly strong, the demand for assets...
Michael Cypress: is probably the most robust we've seen it. The tone is improving all the time and so we do expect this year to be an attractive environment for monetization.
Michael Cypress: We have assets across the franchise that we will be looking to bring to market. The balance of that between fund assets or those directly held on balance sheet, we'll see how that plays out. But as we sit here today and with the tone in the market, we do expect it to be an active year.
Thank you for watching.
Michael Cypress: Great, and just a follow-up question if I could on the wealth solution side. Maybe you could talk a little bit to the organic growth of annuities and flows broadly on the wealth solution side. Maybe you talk a little bit about where you are in the process of expanding distribution. What steps are you looking to take in 2025 to drive continued growth from here? How might credit ratings upgrade be helpful, if at all, and how you might think about achieving that?
Michael Cypress: Listen, I'd say again that in the industry, in the broad industry, the tailwinds are strong with strong drivers and the most fundamental one being demographics and within our business we're seeing strong sales and strong demand and the momentum is continuing.
Michael Cypress: When you talk about how we're setting ourselves up, we've expanded our distribution channels and our partners, as well as the product lineup, including sort of new proprietary.
Michael Cypress: products, and we're starting to see the benefits of that diversified capability.
Michael Cypress: We've built out capabilities across PRT. We've done the largest deal I think ever done in Canada this year. We did our first large transaction in the UK and we're doing large deals.
Michael Cypress: in the U.S. So that is broadening and diversifying our growth channels.
Michael Cypress: We're also now set up to issue in the institutional market. We did our first FABN product which is really an institutional annuity for 500 million in the first quarter and we expect that to continue to scale and in January alone we wrote two billion dollars of annuities out of the business. So it feels like momentum is strong and I'd say the growth
Michael Cypress: potential coming from the business is getting better every day as we continue to diversify into new products and growing into new markets.
Michael Cypress: As for the rating, the entity is already fairly high rated, so we're more focused on broadening out the growth channels, but the business is heavily overcapitalized in all of the markets and all of our insurance entities. We think we're really well set up to continue growing.
Thank you for watching.
Great, thank you.
Speaker Change: Thank you. Our next question will come from Robert Kwan from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.
Robert Kwan: Great, good morning. I just wanted to ask you about the carried interest.
Robert Kwan: And so you've got the $11.5 billion or $7 billion net. And most, you're talking about realizing it in the next five years.
Robert Kwan: Can you just talk about how you could see that pace of realization?
Robert Kwan: annually and if you want to talk about 2025. That would be obviously very interesting and then just as that 20 billion number you put out there over 10 years, is there any material amount of that that you would see falling into the five year period?
Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker Change: Hi Rob. I think we laid out for you investor day the 10-year view and the five-year view. Five-year closer to sort of maybe five billion, the balance coming over the longer term period.
and beyond five years and as you know the
Speaker Change: In our view, it's really a matter of when, not if, the performance of the underlying investments is very strong. And as market tone continues to improve, and we work our way
Speaker Change: through the early return of capital which are now in higher funds with larger investments we expect to get to the point where CARI will meaningfully step up.
as it relates to 2025.
Speaker Change: It looks like it will be another sort of bridge year, similar to last year, maybe a bit higher. But then we expect a significant pick-up to really come in 2026 and 2027, and that's just a product of where we are in the life cycle of the funds. So the story hasn't really changed compared to what we would have seen in the last few quarters.
Speaker Change: Okay, got it. No update there. And then just on the listed affiliates, just overall, the fundraising
Speaker Change: has been strong at BAM, and we heard that commentary yesterday. Just some of the listed affiliate valuations and just how they're trading, struggling a bit, and just given you've done such a good job with growing the other fundraising channels, just to have some updated thoughts as to how you're
Speaker Change: Thinking about the VF holes is the solution that they maybe just participate in future funds at a lower amount or is there something larger that you're considering here?
Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker Change: Yeah, listen, I think with the listed affiliates you have to not get distracted by the price at times and look at the underlying value creation That's being generated in those businesses and they continue To invest for excellent value and deliver excellent returns. Just look at the returns We're generating on the funds. Those returns are also being realized by the listed affiliates and price is temporary markets are volatile But I think I mean, you know bit quite well
Thank you for your time.
Thank you for watching.
Okay, that's great. Thank you for the call.
Speaker Change: Thank you. Our next question comes from Cherilyn Radbourne from TD Cowan. Your line is open.
Thanks very much and good morning.
Speaker Change: You mentioned that your internal view of intrinsic value has increased to $100 versus $84 in late September. Can you comment on some of the major contributors to that increase?
Speaker Change: Yes, I would just say it's broad-based growth across the business as you know BAM has performed incredibly well in the capital markets We continue to scale the earnings on the wealth solutions platform Those would be two large contributors to the growth in that value, and I just think it's continued execution of the plant It's really earnings growth coming from the underlying operations
Thank you for watching.
Speaker Change: Separately, in terms of the private wealth market, as I understand it, Brookfield is very competitive in terms of its product offerings and shelf space, but has been a bit more conservative versus peers as far as modulating intake to stay disciplined on deployment. Does that give you any concern from a competitive perspective?
Speaker Change: Not really. I mean, the numbers that we are raising are significant. I think through our wealth platform within the Asset Manager, we raised about $5 billion across 2024, and we see that probably accelerating.
Speaker Change: this year. I don't think we're worried about being competitive. What we're worried about is building products that we believe are sustainable.
Speaker Change: Credit and Infrastructure and others are coming to the market and we're very well set up to scale significantly over the coming years
Thank you very much.
Speaker Change: A quick follow-up, like do you have any concern that there might be an accident elsewhere that could change the market for everyone?
Speaker Change: It's hard for me to say, I don't have insight into how everyone deploys capital, but it's like anything else, it's competitive and people are deploying capital and maybe mistakes will be made along the way, but I don't have the insight into how everyone else is investing their capital.
Thank you for watching!
Thank you for watching.
That's all for me, thank you.
Speaker Change: Thank you. Our next question will come from Mario Zarek from Scotiabank. Your line is open.
Thank you for watching.
Speaker Change: Thank you and good morning. When it comes to Brookfield, I think the market's historically been very focused on the trading discount intrinsic value as part of the investment thesis. That said, at the Investor Day, you did highlight a five-year CAGR on DE of 25%, which I think still kind of flies under the radar a little bit.
Speaker Change: How do you think about the corporation's ability to exceed that 25% target in the short-term, like let's say over the next couple of years, perhaps highlighting some of the puts and takes in terms of 25 and 26 versus the five-year horizon?
Thank you for watching.
Speaker Change: Hi Mario, I think that the important part of that growth plan, 25% was the headline growth, I think 17% was the growth.
Speaker Change: that we can deliver, we target to deliver from the existing platform pre-monetization carried interest. That's the amount I would say more directly within our control and we feel good about the 17% and the ability to achieve that. Maybe the slight chance of outperformance but I think if we achieve that we're doing pretty well over a five-year period.
Speaker Change: The chance of outperformance obviously comes from monetization activity, cash reinvestment, which will be highly accretive, and as it comes in we'll allocate it. And I think over five years we still, 25% growth, I think is a very attractive earnings profile for a business over the next five years, and we're very well positioned to achieve it.
Speaker Change: Okay, and then just coming back to the intrinsic value versus trading price, you're continuing to buy back shares.
Speaker Change: The year-to-date volume exceeded the combined second half of 2024, despite the share price being at 55% in 2024.
Speaker Change: Are you open to putting a target out there like you did for 24? And then I guess the second part of the question would be when you think about the intrinsic value per share growth driver in 25 in the business.
Speaker Change: What do you think is the one part of business that you're most excited about today in terms of near-term growth that the market's underappreciating?
Speaker Change: Listen, I don't think we need to put a specific target, but all I would say is, yes, the share price has gone up, but so has the value of the business, and we continue to see a discount that is attractive for us to repurchase shares, and we will opportunistically do that throughout the year. We've done over $200 million already so far this year, and we'll continue to be
Speaker Change: active as it relates to the value of the business. Listen, we look across the business and.
Speaker Change: Every part of the business is performing incredibly well right now. I think the wealth solutions platform will continue to scale the organic
and...
Speaker Change: growth platform there as I talked about, is continue to really perform well and exceed even our expectations, we had a couple of years ago. so that's going incredible well Asset Management Business as you heard from Connor yesterday, is poised to have a really really strong year with fundraising from institutional retail and high net worth
Speaker Change: And so I think when we look across the business, I think it's broad-based strength.
Thank you for watching!
Thank you.
Speaker Change: Okay, those are my two. I'll hop back into Qt. Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Speaker Change: And our next question will come from Saurabh Movahedi from BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open.
Thank you. Nick, I appreciate lots of liquidity.
But is there a preference to monetize
before investing?
Speaker Change: And monetize what specifically, Mario? Monetize assets. Yeah, just monetize assets. I mean, you know, obviously, I think we've heard also yesterday that it's a good market to both buy and sell. How important is it to preferential? I guess, you know, what's the preference to monetize?
Speaker Change: first or just remain opportunistic and we'll have you know roll with the punches.
Speaker Change: I think we remain opportunistic. What is unique, we've often said, and one of the key differentiators of the corporation is we have
Speaker Change: significant scale capital available to us and significant liquidity with lots of levers that we can pull and so we're not dependent on monetizations to be doing acquisitions and I think we believe there's lots of potentially interesting things we'll be able to do and it's not dependent on executing sales first.
Speaker Change: Okay, and so so when you think about at least what some of us think through that the uncertainty whether it's around trade whether it's policy Doesn't seem to be just unique to to the US I mean, I suppose it's creating this near-term uncertainty, which which you guys like because it creates medium-term opportunities but if you had to think through the the various vectors
Speaker Change: or the silos of investing that you do. Like, where is the opportunity greatest and where are you being a little bit more cautious?
because of the uncertainty caused in the current environment.
Speaker Change: Yeah, not to skirt your question, but I think the opportunity really is broad-based and the underlying fundamentals of each of the businesses and where the opportunities lie in terms of the sectors we want to invest in
Inelastic to Demand
Speaker Change: And with our operating capabilities, we believe that our operations are largely insulated from what's going on right now.
Speaker Change: But it does create volatility, and when we see that in the market and scarcity of capital in certain pockets...
Speaker Change: that could create better value entry points for the asset classes around which we're focused, but that's not specific to one sector or asset class, I don't think. I think for all of us, and independent of what's going on, we came into the year believing this would be a good year for deployment and for monetization, and it has not really changed based on what's happened in the last few weeks.
Thank you.
Speaker Change: So, just a quick one on that one, so it hasn't changed, so you are just as, I'll call it optimistic today as you would have been, I don't know, six months ago or four months ago when you had an outlook on 2025 for your business. That's correct. That's correct, Saurabh.
Thank you for taking my questions. Thank you.
Speaker Change: Thank you. And that does conclude our question and answer session for today's call. I'd now like to turn the conference back to Ms. Angela Yulo for any closing remarks.
Speaker Change: Thank you everybody for joining us today. With that, we'll end the call.
Thank you for watching.
Speaker Change: This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. Everyone have a wonderful day.
Thank you.