Operator: Please stand by. We are about to begin. Welcome to Ares Management Corporation's Q3 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded on Thursday, 29 October 2026. I will now turn the call over to Greg Mason, Co-Head of Public Markets, Investor Relations for Ares Management. Please go ahead.
Greg Mason: Good morning, and thank you for joining us today for our Q3 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 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.
Greg Mason: 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 Q3 earnings presentation available on the investor resources section of our website for reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures with 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 31 December 2026, to holders of record on 17 December.
Greg Mason: Now, I'll turn the call over to Mike, who will start with some comments on the current market environment and our Q3 financial results.
Michael Arougheti: Great. Thank you, Greg, and good morning. I hope everyone is doing well. Our strong Q3 results demonstrate the breadth and increasing diversification of our global platform. While transaction activity was uneven across many of our markets, our leadership and scale enabled us to actively invest $35 billion across a growing array of strategies and geographic markets while maintaining our highly selective investment approach. Institutional investor appetite for our strategies remains as strong as ever and is broadening across sectors and regions. During the Q3, we once again raised over $31 billion of gross capital. We have visibility on another strong Q4, setting us up for another record year in fundraising. We ended the quarter with $691 billion of AUM and $416 billion of fee-paying AUM, representing year-over-year growth of 16% and 13%, respectively.
Michael Arougheti: Importantly, our core earnings metrics continue to grow within our long-term target ranges, and we remain on pace to meet our financial goals for the year. This quarter's results also underscore the expansion of our investment activities, which are increasingly more diversified resulting from our organic and inorganic growth initiatives. We have scaled several strategies that position us to maintain strong fundraising, deployment, and fee growth through volatile markets. Because many of our businesses provide complementary exposure to various markets, different parts of capital structures, and varying sources of investment supply, we have more strategic paths for growth and greater flexibility to invest where the relative value opportunity is most attractive. During the Q3, for example, our most active areas of net deployment were European direct lending, alternative credit, and infrastructure equity, which are all benefiting from attractive market dynamics and increasing demand for our scaled capital solutions.
Michael Arougheti: Looking to Q4, we believe these businesses have the momentum to continue delivering strong results while we expect a pickup in activity in our US Senior Direct Lending business. From a longer-term perspective, our growth outlook is a function of our ability to originate and manage differentiated investment opportunities in the vast and growing private markets in which we operate across the globe. We believe that our addressable markets across private credit, real assets, and secondaries are in the tens of trillions of dollars. Despite our leading positions in these growing markets, we still have significant upside through further penetration across these markets. Our portfolios also have significant embedded growth opportunities as our underlying companies and asset owners seek additional financing opportunities to support their continuing growth. You can see these dynamics driving growth across each of our businesses.
Michael Arougheti: In credit, we have built leading market positions in nearly every private credit strategy we operate, where scale, relationships, sourcing, and structuring capabilities drive outperformance. We manage a leading liquid credit business with established track records of outperformance. We continue to believe that this collaboration enables us to identify the best real-time relative value for our investors across the private credit, bank loan, and high yield markets. It also serves to hedge deployment and profitability in markets where the loan and high yield markets are more competitive with the upper end of the private credit markets. In real estate, we are one of the largest managers globally with over $126 billion of AUM. We are seeing the benefits of our vertically integrated capabilities and meaningful geographic scale across North America, Europe, and Asia.
Michael Arougheti: In secondaries, AUM has grown approximately 70% over the past two years as we have expanded across private equity, real estate, infrastructure, and credit solutions. We have raised several of the largest institutional and wealth funds in these strategies, and we are rapidly scaling and expanding our fund families. The more recent growth of our infrastructure platform is another important example of the combination of TAM expansion and platform breadth. Our total infrastructure AUM has increased more than 50% over the past year. Our core value add and vertically integrated development and operating capabilities, along with significant debt and equity capital, reinforces our positioning to invest across assets and their capital structures in the current digital and power infrastructure CapEx super cycle.
Michael Arougheti: We have meaningful capabilities across power generation, including as a top 10 owner of renewable assets in the US as of mid-October, as well as data centers, power transmission, and traditional transportation infrastructure like highways and rail. In addition to these longer-term structural trends, the shift in the outlook for higher short-term interest rates is generally constructive for our credit business and firm profitability. at quarter end, 83% of the debt assets in our credit group are floating rate, and higher base rates translate into higher returns for our credit funds, all else equal. That increase in income can be meaningful for our credit fund investors because they receive the benefit of higher base rates without having to take additional risk by moving down the capital structure. Historically, this has also supported fundraising demand for our credit products as investors look to capture attractive floating rate income.
Michael Arougheti: We saw this during the period of elevated rates from the middle of 2022 through the end of 2023. During that period, our credit group AUM increased at an annualized rate of approximately 21%. While we wouldn't assume the same outcome in every rate cycle, history has shown that a higher rate environment can create both stronger current returns for existing credit investors and incremental demand for long-term exposure to the asset class. Of course, higher rates increase interest expense for borrowers, but we believe that our portfolios are in a strong position today with interest coverage in our US and European direct lending portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2.1 times and 2.3 times, respectively, and non-accrual rates are stable and well below historical industry averages.
Michael Arougheti: Combined with loan-to-value ratios that remain near historic lows, meaningful equity cushions, and the larger average size of the companies that we finance, we believe the portfolios remain well positioned. Turning to fundraising, an illustration of the strong ongoing institutional demand that we're seeing this quarter came within credit. While we had no LP closings in any of our large flagship commingled credit fund families during the quarter, we still raised nearly $15 billion of total capital across open-ended institutional funds, separately managed accounts, and wealth vehicles. This activity represents nearly half of the total gross capital that we raised in the quarter, and our ability to raise this level of capital without a major commingled fund closing demonstrates how broad our franchise has become.
Michael Arougheti: In another sign of strong institutional demand for our private credit funds, last week we held a first close for our latest US Senior Direct Lending institutional funds, totaling over $8 billion of equity commitments. As previously announced, we launched our fourth closed-end US Senior Direct Lending fund and first institutional open-ended core product just six months ago. The combined first close of these two funds already represents 80% of our target and is 60% greater than the prior vintage's first close. Including anticipated fund-level leverage, which will close over time in the coming quarters, fundraising for these initial closings collectively represents approximately $15 billion of total investable capital. We expect additional closes this year, with the fundraising continuing through the first half of 2027. In European direct lending, we expect to launch our seventh institutional fund in the first half of 2027.
Michael Arougheti: Consistent with our recent fundraisers involving our Pathfinder and US Senior Direct Lending series, we expect to offer investors both an open-end and closed-end fund option. In real estate, we completed the final close of our fifth Japan Logistics Development fund, JDP V, at its $4 billion hard cap after an oversubscribed fundraise. This fund represented the first vintage of a legacy GCP fund that we launched on the Ares platform. The fundraise was completed in only 12 months and was nearly 50% larger than the predecessor fund, representing our largest closed-end real estate fundraise to date. The fund included strong support from existing investors, as well as a significant number of investors making their first commitment to the JDP series, with our new US dollar sleeve representing more than 20% of the capital raised.
Michael Arougheti: We believe this demonstrates the benefits of combining a strong local market investing track record with the scale and distribution of the broader Ares platform. The fund is off to a strong start, with 6 new projects underway and a robust pipeline of opportunities across Japan. We recently launched our fifth US opportunistic real estate equity fund, and we believe that there will be significant demand for the fund given the strong track record of our previous opportunistic real estate equity funds. Our real estate debt platform has also generated robust fundraising momentum, with nearly $3 billion of LP equity commitments raised year to date from global institutional investors, marking the strongest fundraising since this platform's inception. We continue to see strong capital appetite around our real estate credit strategies and have a robust fundraising pipeline.
Michael Arougheti: Outside of our commingled funds, we're benefiting from major strategic relationships with some of the largest global real estate investors, where our partners see the value of our vertically integrated development platform. In just the past 2 months, we have raised over $3 billion from 2 such strategic partnerships. Within infrastructure, we continue to see strong demand across both debt and equity strategies. In infrastructure debt, we expect to hold a final close for our latest commingled vintage in early November, above the fund's $6 billion target. In infrastructure equity, we raised approximately $2.7 billion of equity commitments in the third quarter in our open-ended core infrastructure fund, the largest quarterly fundraising amount in the wealth channel for any Ares fund. We also expect to launch the third vintage of our institutional value-add infrastructure equity strategy in the first quarter of next year.
Michael Arougheti: Investor interest in our global digital infrastructure equity strategy also remains very strong, and we expect to hold a meaningful first close for the fund in the fourth quarter. The strategy is benefiting from the significant secular demand for computing capacity and power, but our approach remains highly selective. We are focused on core major global markets like Tokyo, London, Northern Virginia, Atlanta, and Amsterdam, and developing capacity that is designed to support the growth of both cloud use cases as well as AI inference with strong hyperscaler counterparties and long-term leases. Taken together, we expect these various fundraisers will provide us with substantial capital to invest against the significant opportunities that we're seeing across the infrastructure landscape. Secondaries is another area where fundraising momentum continues to build.
Michael Arougheti: Our inaugural Global Structured Solutions fund held its final close at $4.2 billion of total capital, significantly exceeding its initial $1 billion target. We believe that this result further strengthens our position in the growing GP solutions market, which is seeking flexible capital to support a range of strategic objectives, including increasing GP fund commitments, seeding new strategies with structured LP commitments, and facilitating succession plans. Following the tremendous success of our third infrastructure secondary strategy, which increased its hard cap and raised over $5 billion, we're launching an infrastructure fund that focuses solely on GP-led transactions based upon our strong track record in the segment.
Michael Arougheti: Finally, our 10th real estate secondaries fund is expected to complete its first close by year-end at more than 50% of its initial $2.5 billion target, as persistent interest rate volatility and limited DPI continue to provide meaningful opportunities for real estate LP and GP investments. Within wealth management, Q3 total equity commitments increased to more than $4.2 billion, making it our second-best quarter on record, bringing total wealth AUM to $82 billion, up 41% year-over-year. In addition to a record fundraising quarter for our core infrastructure fund, real estate fundraising continued to trend positively with nearly $600 million raised through common stock issuance and exchanges, while our credit funds raised nearly $700 million combined. Our continued strength in the wealth channel is supported in part by the breadth of our suite of evergreen solutions across all major private market asset classes.
Michael Arougheti: We continue to believe the long-term wealth opportunity is significant and under-penetrated, and our diversified product lineup allows us to respond to changing investor demand rather than relying on any single asset class to drive growth. Including a similar amount that we expect to raise in Q4, full year gross equity inflows are anticipated to be roughly in line with the $16 billion that we raised last year. This consistent fundraising performance stands in contrast to the declines that we've seen across the industry this year. Looking forward to next year, we anticipate further growth in flows driven by expanded distribution partnerships, broader access to our eight flagship strategies for international investors, and a rebound in flows into ASIF, supported by strong fund performance, core earnings in excess of its dividend, and the potential for higher base rates to further enhance dividend coverage, all else equal.
Michael Arougheti: Our newest strategies, core infrastructure and sports, media, and entertainment, are seeing strong market support. We're continuing to work on interval fund solutions, which have the potential to expand market access to our investment capabilities across channels. These solutions will focus on the defined contribution market, model portfolios, and the mass affluent investor segment. Let me finish with more detail about our investment activities. We invested $35 billion across the firm during the quarter, with strength in European direct lending, alternative credit, real estate, and infrastructure. US direct lending was slower due to more muted M&A activity. However, we have already seen several transactions close early in the quarter, and our pipeline remains at record levels. We expect a more balanced deployment mix in Q4 as US direct lending activity ramps up.
Michael Arougheti: We're entering what has historically been a seasonally strong period with record available capital and current pipelines point to healthy activity across each of our major credit strategies. We continue to maintain a high degree of investment selectivity, and we're using our scale and relationships to develop creative solutions for our investors and counterparties. As an example, at the end of September, we signed an agreement to purchase a $1.1 billion direct lending portfolio from an institutional investor, and the transaction will close throughout Q4. Earlier this week, Ares Capital Corporation announced the acquisition of MidCap Financial Investment Corporation, which is expected to close in H1 2027, subject to customary conditions, including the approval of MFIC's stockholders. We believe that this transaction will be a very positive outcome for ARCC, MFIC, and Ares Management shareholders.
Michael Arougheti: With that, I will now turn the call over to Jarrod to provide additional details on our financial results. Jarrod?
Jarrod Phillips: Thank you, Mike. Good morning, everyone. Our Q3 results reflect continued growth in our key earnings metrics and the increasing scale and diversification of our platform. We continue to benefit from a large base of long-duration capital, broad-based fundraising, significant available capital, and a management fee-centric earnings model. These characteristics provide strong visibility into future fee-paying AUM and management fee growth, even when deployment and realizations vary from quarter to quarter. Turning to our results, management fees were nearly $1.1 billion for the quarter, increasing 10% compared to the prior year period. The growth was supported by higher fee pay in AUM from deployment across European direct lending and alternative credit, continued capital formation in our perpetual vehicles, and growth across our real assets businesses. Part I fees within management fees totaled $169 million, up 21% from the prior year period.
Jarrod Phillips: For the first 9 months, management fees, FRPR, and other fees increased 16% versus the prior year-to-date period. We continue to expect to see greater contributions from FRPR and other fees in the coming years as we scale not only our perpetual strategies, but also our capital solutions activities and certain real estate development funds. Fee-related performance revenues this quarter were $79 million, primarily generated by our open-ended core alternative credit fund, with additional contributions from our Japanese open-ended industrial real estate equity fund. As we have discussed in prior quarters, the timing of these revenues varies by fund and strategy. So quarterly comparisons can be uneven, even when the underlying incentive-eligible asset base is growing.
Jarrod Phillips: In Q4, we expect to receive gross fee-related performance revenues of approximately $115 to $125 million in gross FRPR from credit SMAs, which assumes no significant changes in credit spreads but remains subject to changes in market values through year-end. In real estate, our two non-traded REITs have collectively accrued $51 million as of 30 September in gross FRPR, and this amount is subject to change based on market conditions. In secondaries, following the exceptionally strong performance of APMF in Q2, Q3 performance left a small high water mark to overcome in Q4. But we are on track, subject to market conditions, to generate FRPR in Q4. Turning to expenses, the most notable change was in G&A expenses.
Jarrod Phillips: While the expenses were flat quarter-over-quarter, we saw the one-time Q2 expenses related to our annual investor conference, mostly offset by an increase of $8 million from higher distribution expenses, primarily related to the increased inflows in our open-ended core infrastructure fund from a large distribution platform. Fee-related earnings were $524 million, and our FRE margin was 42.5% for the quarter, compared to 41.4% in the prior year period. Our year-to-date FRE margin was 42.4%, approximately 100 basis points above the same period last year, and year-to-date fee-related earnings were $1.5 billion, increasing 19% over the same period last year. As Mike mentioned, we now expect the first close of the digital infrastructure fund later in Q4.
Jarrod Phillips: Given the later timing of the first close for this fund and certain other funds that pay management fees on committed capital, we expect FRE margin growth for the full year 2026 will be slightly above the midpoint of our zero to 150 annual basis point range. We expect to see greater margin benefits from this fund and others in 2027, with catch-up fees providing additional support for our margins in the top half of our margin guidance range for 2027. Turning to performance income, realized net performance income was $12 million in the quarter. The slower transaction and realization environment in the industry over the past several years has mathematically pushed back the timing of European-style waterfall payments for some of our funds, in many cases by a year or more.
Jarrod Phillips: These delays will modestly impact our expectations for the full year, which we now expect will come in at a range of $300 to $325 million in total net realized performance income, implying $160 to $185 million for Q4. This amount is expected to be roughly 90% from our European waterfall style funds. At the midpoint, this amount would represent an 85% growth compared to 2025 levels. Despite the timing delays, the underlying assets eligible to generate European style performance fees at the end of Q3 are more than three times the comparable assets we had in 2020. This growth is relevant since the payments we are receiving today are largely from our 2017 to 2020 vintage funds, which today total $48 billion of incentive-eligible AUM.
Jarrod Phillips: Due to our fundraising success over the years, we now have more than $185 billion of EU style incentive-eligible AUM, which we expect will drive significantly higher EU style net realized performance fees in future years. Importantly, 75% of this incentive-eligible AUM is in our private credit funds that are compounding performance income above their hurdles, and therefore, the slower repayment environment could theoretically increase the amount of performance income, all else equal. Realized income was $490 million for the quarter. After-tax realized income per share of Class A and non-voting common stock was $1.26. Through the first nine months of the year, realized income increased 20% to $1.5 billion, and after-tax realized income per share increased 15% to $3.79. The tax rate for the quarter was just over 10%.
Jarrod Phillips: We expect to be at the higher end of our 11% to 15% range in Q4 due to the higher expected levels of FRPR and realized performance income in Q4. The underlying balance of future fee-generating capital also continues to grow. We ended the quarter with $174 billion of available capital. AUM not yet paying fees was $117 billion, including approximately $94 billion available for future deployment and over $2 billion of development assets not yet stabilized. If deployed or stabilized, these categories could collectively generate over $800 million of potential incremental annual management fees before considering future fundraising and subject to the assumptions described in our earnings materials. During the quarter, gross deployment was $35 billion, including over $18 billion by our drawdown funds.
Jarrod Phillips: This embedded fee potential is important because it gives us visibility into future management fee growth without requiring a particular level of fundraising in any single quarter. It also reflects the breadth of our deployment engine. As Mike discussed, activity was particularly strong across European direct lending, alternative credit, real estate, and infrastructure, and we anticipate stronger deployment in Q4, which is nearly always our strongest deployment quarter of the year. As those transactions close, we would expect a greater portion of the capital we have already raised to begin contributing to fee-paying AUM. For Q3, we had strong overall fund performance, with particular strength across our private credit strategies. In alternative credit, the Pathfinder series generated a gross return of 3.6% for the quarter and 15.2% over the last 12 months.
Jarrod Phillips: US Senior Direct Lending generated a gross return of 3.3% for the quarter and 12% over the past 12 months. European direct lending’s gross returns were 2.2% and 8.1% respectively. APAC credit generated a gross return of 5% for the quarter and 17% over the last 12 months. Infrastructure debt generated 1.2% for the quarter and 7.3% over the last 12 months. Within direct lending, underlying corporate fundamentals remain strong as portfolio companies generated strong year-over-year EBITDA growth in the 8% to 9% range. Interest coverage is at 2.1x and 2.3x respectively for US and Europe.
Jarrod Phillips: Loan to values remain near historic lows in the mid-40% range, and the average company we finance today is much larger than in our earlier vintages that were tested in recessionary periods. Default rates in our portfolio continue to be very low, and US direct lending non-accruals improved modestly to 1.8% from 1.9% the prior quarter. While we focus on the middle market, the companies we lend to are sizable, and we believe would typically rank in the top 1% to 2% of the largest companies in the US by revenues. The relative size of our portfolios, as well as the high diversification and low loan-to-value metrics within our portfolios, should support strong aggregate recoveries on defaults, in our view, given the significant amount of equity capital support in our loans. Within our secondaries group, we continue to see strong performance.
Jarrod Phillips: As a reminder, our private equity secondaries composite is disproportionately influenced by a legacy fund, which was primarily invested under the previous ownership. Fund XVII, which is the first fund invested on the Ares platform by the current team, continues to perform very well, generating a since inception gross IRR of 24%. The strong performance of Fund XVII, along with APMF, is corroborated by the significant investor demand we have seen in our recent PE secondaries fundraising. Real estate performance held up relatively well in the quarter, as the impact from rising rates was more than offset by improved operating cash flows, particularly in our global logistics properties, which account for 65% of our global real estate assets. Our two non-traded REITs each generated 2% quarterly returns, and our European and Americas real estate equity composites both demonstrated gross quarterly returns between 1% and 3%.
Jarrod Phillips: While the impact on markets from rising interest rates has been minimal so far, commercial real estate markets are still digesting the recent adjustments and could see some near-term disruption in capital markets as a result. However, we remain cautiously optimistic on the medium-term outlook as we believe real estate fundamentals are improving while construction activity remains limited and new leasing continues to strengthen. Also within our real assets group, infrastructure equity continues to see strong fundamentals across the power, digital, and transmission segments, and generated a 3.7% return in the Q3. In private equity, ACOF VI generated positive returns of 1.4% in the quarter, and has a since inception gross IRR of 18.7%. The fund benefited from a strong partial exit from one of its portfolio companies during the Q3. In conclusion, our progress in the Q3 provides considerable momentum heading into the year-end.
Jarrod Phillips: We expect fundraising to remain strong, the deployment pipeline is broad and remains at record levels, and US direct lending activity is improving as meaningful transactions have already closed in the Q4. For the full year 2026, we expect FRE growth to be within our 16% to 20% annualized growth target, with some added growth tailwinds going into next year. We also expect growth in realized income within our 20% to 25%-plus range, and as I previously mentioned, FRE margin growth slightly above the midpoint of our zero to 150 basis points of annual expansion. Additionally, our substantial embedded fee growth from capital already raised but not yet paying fees provides meaningful visibility into future management fee and FRE growth as we head into 2027. I will now turn the call back over to Mike for his concluding remarks.
Michael Arougheti: Thanks, Jarrod. As we step back from the quarter, the most important takeaway is that the Ares growth story is increasingly supported by multiple scale businesses rather than any single strategy or market. We are a performance-first investment firm, and we take a patient, highly selective, long-term approach to investing. The investments that we have made in expanding our origination capabilities enable us to see a very broad view of our end markets, so that we can be aggressive with our considerable dry powder as opportunities arise. The private market opportunity set continues to expand in large and growing TAMs, and investor penetration remains relatively low. Our businesses are benefiting from the organic and inorganic investments that we have made in expanding our tailored solutions offering, bolstering our sector and geographic origination capabilities, as well as from the embedded and compounding growth in our large portfolios.
Michael Arougheti: At the same time, our emphasis on fostering our long-term investor, sponsor, borrower, and lender relationships reinforces our ability to act as a stable, reliable capital provider through market volatility and unexpected exogenous events. We believe this plays to our strengths as markets are becoming more volatile via rising interest rates and geopolitical concerns. Fundraising remains robust across our investment groups and across distribution channels. The combination of record dry powder, along with significant fundraising in our US Senior Direct Lending strategy, and expectations for continued fundraising momentum across infrastructure, digital infrastructure, real estate, and secondaries gives us substantial capacity to invest and provides meaningful embedded earnings visibility. We are pleased with the progress that we are making and with the breadth of the opportunity ahead.
Michael Arougheti: As always, I want to end by thanking our employees around the world for their continued hard work and commitment to our clients, and to our clients and our investors and shareholders for their trust and partnership. Operator, could you now please open the line for questions?
Operator: Certainly. At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star then 1 on your touch tone phone. We ask that you limit to 1 question to allow as many callers to join the queue as possible. Our first question will come from Alex Blostein with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Alex Blostein: Hey, Mike, everybody, good morning. Thank you for taking the question. I wanted to start with a question just around the interest rate backdrop and implications for deployment activity, particularly in the US direct lending space. Obviously, the private equity space has been stuck in the mud here for quite some time. We have seen a little bit of an improvement, but since has taken a bit of a step back. So how big of a reset do you think this is? Is it a pause, or do you think that the projection for 2027 could also be somewhat impacted by the changing interest rate backdrop for your deployment in US direct lending? Thanks.
Michael Arougheti: Thanks for the question, Alex. I don't read across high rates to mean slower deployment. As we've talked about on prior calls, there are broader factors at play, namely the aging of the installed base of private equity-owned businesses. There's about 32,000 companies that are currently owned by private equity firms. It's about $3.5 trillion plus of capital on the ground, and you've got $1.5 trillion plus of dry powder that's also aging out, so the weight of capital is ultimately going to be the driver of deployment. As I've said before, when the primary market slows, we begin to see a lot of that deployment opportunity pick up in other parts of the firm. Not surprisingly, when the M&A environment is slowing for PE, we start to see a pickup in places like opportunistic credit, secondaries, credit secondaries, GP solutions, and the like.
Michael Arougheti: When you look at the diversification of the deployment, I just don't think that you're going to see the historical dependence on US direct lending that we've seen in years past. To US direct lending specifically, I also think it's important that people understand where the pipelines sit today. As Kort and Jim articulated on the ARCC earnings call, we are going into the Q4, which is our historically seasonally strongest period for deployment with record pipeline levels, and we're beginning to see that pipeline convert early in the quarter. While we can't say for sure that that record pipeline will convert in Q4, we would expect it to start to roll through in Q4 and into the new year. So I think we're cautiously optimistic that we're going to see deployment in US direct lending pick up here in the not-too-distant future.
Operator: Thank you. We'll move next to Steven Chubak with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.
Steven Chubak: Hi, good morning, Mike and Jarrod, and thanks for taking my question. So I did want to dig into the digital infra space and specifically around your position, given you're one of the largest credit managers globally. Admittedly, it has been a bit surprising that you were absent from some of the larger IG chip financings. I know the ABF team outlined their concerns on IG chip financing activity in the In the Gaps newsletter, but I was hoping to hear your perspective on which exposures you're comfortable underwriting within digital infra, what informs that stance, and where you're seeing the most attractive deployment opportunities and the types of spreads that you're generating on that activity today.
Michael Arougheti: Sure. I will try to be concise because we can probably take the whole call on talking about digital infra and AI. As you have seen, we have developed a full set of capital capabilities in debt and equity in the global markets around funding the CapEx super cycle. I think that does give us an opportunity, as you articulated, to really think about relative value in different places in the capital structure, with different counterparties, et cetera. In its most simplistic form, the way I think about it is the identified CapEx need as of today is a little over $5 trillion between now and 2030. If you break that down further, about $2 trillion of that is for the physical data center buildings and the adjacent power gen infrastructure and transmission. Then there is about $3 trillion of financing for GPUs and chips.
Michael Arougheti: I ground people in that because the $2 trillion is a huge TAM relative to the available capital in the market. We think it is frankly a simpler underwriting with really attractive relative value. Without casting aspersions on GPU financing, I would maybe say that we are finding plenty of really attractive risk-return opportunities in debt and equity in that first $2 trillion bucket. As we have talked about on prior calls, our data center development strategy is very focused on large metropolitan areas, places like Tokyo, Osaka, London, Atlanta, Amsterdam, São Paulo, where we are building what we think are core compute data centers with the optionality to grow into the service the needs of the AI customer. They are pre-let to large investment-grade hyperscale counterparties on 12 to 15-year leases with no termination and inflation escalators.
Michael Arougheti: With that risk boxed, no pun intended, we feel like we can generate really attractive returns regardless of the ultimate technology outcomes here. I think our colleagues in ABF did a really nice job articulating some of the concerns around GPU financings. They tend to be a little bit more complex. They tend to be a little bit more concentrated. At least I, for one, personally, do not know how to underwrite the decline in depreciation curves on that type of technology. At least for the time being, we are kind of sticking to the half of the market that we understand best and where our capability set is the deepest.
Operator: We will move now to Craig Siegenthaler with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Craig Siegenthaler: Hey, good morning, Mike. Hope everyone's doing well.
Michael Arougheti: Same to you. We are, thanks.
Craig Siegenthaler: So big picture question on the growth trajectories across AUM, FRE, management fees. Growth rates were a little slower in Q3, but curious on your outlook on how they should trend into 2027. Do you view US Senior Direct Lending as the biggest source of upside or downside potential? Besides US Senior Direct Lending, what other businesses do you think could surprise us?
Michael Arougheti: Again, I would not focus on a single quarter in US Senior Direct Lending. When you look at the momentum that business continues to have, as illustrated by the SDL first closing, the size of that, the pacing of that, the growth opportunity in the US Senior Direct Lending business is very much intact. It is really just a function of seeing some of that deployment that is growing in the pipeline come through. I think Jarrod talked about the AUM not yet earning fees. If you look at the math of it all, I would not articulate this as a decelerating growth trend. We are squarely in the middle of our guided ranges on our financial metrics. The accumulation of the AUM that we have now that is not yet earning fees is up about $100 million of potential management fee revenue year-on-year.
Michael Arougheti: And just given the fundraising momentum that we have, I think that sets us up for some pretty meaningful upside into 2027. I think one place where I would articulate we probably have some upside that people can't see yet is on the digital infrastructure side. We have talked a lot about the data center fund, the size of that, and the pull-through of the revenue from that business. Because of the delay, what also will happen in 2027 is we will get a pull-through of some of the catch-up fees on that fund when it pulls through. So I think, all else being equal, if that fund does what we expect it to, I think that will be a meaningful earnings catalyst for 2027 as well.
Operator: We will move now to Benjamin Budish with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Benjamin Budish: Hi, good morning, and thanks for taking my question. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about Ares Core Infrastructure. I think that has been one of your pretty significant out-performers. Curious if there is any color you can share on capacity in that fund. What is going particularly well. How should we think about near and medium-term progress there. Any color there would be helpful. Thank you.
Michael Arougheti: Yeah, I appreciate you highlighting it. It has been a real bright spot, not just for our wealth business writ large, but for the infrastructure team. As I said in the prepared remarks, we pulled through about $2.7 billion of equity in the quarter. The AUM in that fund now is about $8.5 billion, and continues to have a lot of success, both on the capital raising and deployment side. From the infrastructure perspective, what it also has done is just broaden out our cost of capital and broaden out the nature of things that we can invest in to include more core infrastructure type projects and assets than we have typically been able to do before. Needless to say, just given the momentum there, we have been continuously adding to our origination and portfolio management capabilities to support that growth.
Michael Arougheti: The performance has been exactly as we hoped it would be. The unlock there for us, aside from just identifying the scale of the addressable market opportunity there, was structurally it is a tax advantaged fund, so we are actually able to deliver some pretty attractive equity-like returns on some core infrastructure assets. I think it is a combination of the core infra exposure plus the tax attributes of the fund itself. We are really excited about that. Again, I think it just demonstrates the continued diversification of the product set, the continued strength and wealth of the right products.
Operator: Thank you. We will hear next from Bill Katz with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.
Bill Katz: Thank you so much. Just a quick question, just a clarification for Jarrod. I am wondering if you could just review the margin dynamics again. I thought I heard two different things between the prepared remarks and the wrap up. The broader question I have for you, Mike, is one of the traditional managers hosted a call this morning and mentioned that M&A is at a frenetic pace for the industry, and certainly seeing a lot of deals happening around the industry. Maybe give us an update on where we stand or where you stand in terms of M&A, and I think there has been some articles out in terms of your interest in private equity, so I wondered if you could update us on your thinking from here. Thank you.
Jarrod Phillips: Well, Mike, I will take the margin question first, and great to hear from you, Bill. On margins, what I said in the prepared remarks is just based on where we are at with how to go fundraise in terms of the year, we thought we would be closer to the midpoint of our margin guidance of the 0 to 150 basis points. Just like as Mike noted, that will enable us to get some catch-up fees. That does give us a tailwind towards that upper end of the guidance for next year. Those are the two things I highlighted in the guidance in the prepared remarks.
Michael Arougheti: With regard to M&A, our thinking has not changed. We have an incredibly robust corporate and operational strategy group that is consistently looking at things that are in the market as well as creating opportunities to grow organically and inorganically. The market backdrop is a good setup. I think that, I do not know which of the managers said it, but the whole asset management space is moving to scale and consolidation. I think that is just because the benefits of scale are becoming more apparent in terms of the ability to invest in origination and portfolio management, distribution, compliance, technology. I think a lot of folks seeing that dynamic do not want to get left behind.
Michael Arougheti: The bar for us has always been high, and I would say it is higher now than it has ever been, just given the competitive advantages we have and the opportunities that exist for us to continue to drive really high organic growth rates on new business builds. But we are constantly looking. Obviously, this week we announced the merger of MFIC into ARCC. We will be opportunistic when the markets get choppy and show us opportunities, and we will be strategic in continuing to build out the global product set, but we are only going to do it at the right price with the right people. Those are two boxes that are not always easy to check, and so the bar is pretty high here.
Operator: Thank you. We will move next to Patrick Davitt with Autonomous Research.
Patrick Davitt: Hey, good morning. Thanks for the question. I have a follow-up on the ASIF gross flow improvement comment you made, Mike. Any tangible discussion points or indications from distributors underlying that comment or more just what you would expect given the dynamics? Thanks.
Michael Arougheti: Yeah. Again, I don't want to say that the BDC redemption story is a canard, but it's kind of getting, in my opinion, a little bit too much airtime relative to the appetite that we're seeing broadly in wealth and broadly for private credit. I would highlight that the speed and scale of the fundraise for SDL is demonstrating that the institutional investor is not at all spooked about private credit, and in fact, is viewing the current market opportunity as giving them the advantage to maybe come back in and capture some share. The numbers that we see is what's giving us the confidence. If you look at where we sit today, 80% of the capital has been returned to investors who submitted a tender in Q1. If you look at net new redemptions, we're down 60% quarter over quarter.
Michael Arougheti: When you look at net new tender requests, we're down. That translates about 8% to 3.4%. As we've said before, that redemption queue has largely been concentrated in international wealth with small institutional and family office investors. It's very easy for us to see those organizations and see them burning down quarter over quarter. As I articulated last quarter too, that core well-advised individual wealth client is not exhibiting any kind of elevated redemption activity, and the redemption levels that we've seen there are consistent and have been consistent with historical levels. It's kind of getting this pig through the python of this concentrated international wealth queue, and we're really advanced in that. I would also just point you to the success that we're having in the other products.
Michael Arougheti: Despite the noise in US private credit, we had our second-best quarter on record in the wealth channel with a lot of appetite coming from the core platform. The secular growth theme of continued democratization of alts and individual investor appetite is squarely intact.
Operator: We'll move now to Crispin Love with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.
Crispin Love: Thank you. Appreciate you taking my question. My question is on digital infrastructure, but a little bit broader. Fixed income markets have been quite volatile recent weeks around data center financing, neocloud spread widening. You are of course involved in the data center financing space. Can you share your outlook here? Do you think the market is overreacting? Just curious on your near and longer-term outlook, just in light of that recent price action. Thank you.
Michael Arougheti: I do not know if the market is overreacting. I think you have a little bit of just price discovery as people are trying to understand the structural differences in each of these deals, and there are structural nuances that exist in each one of these financings that people are just having to get level set on. I think people are being a little bit more discerning and discriminating about counterparty risk and how they want to price that. There is probably some crowding out of capital in the fixed income markets. That is a combination of just the insatiable demand for AI CapEx coupled with sovereign yields widening, and I think people are just trying to figure out where the rel val settles out. I would not call it overreacting.
Michael Arougheti: I think it is reacting appropriately just to the demand for capital and making sure that it gets structured and priced appropriately. I would expect that to continue.
Operator: We will hear now from Bart Dziarski with RBC Capital Markets.
Bart Dziarski: Great. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking the question. We heard the term increasing diversification several times during prepared remarks, and you have done a good job diversifying the asset base. Real assets are now about a quarter of AUM. Should we expect that diversification to continue organically? Are you looking to increase diversification even further across asset classes? Thanks.
Michael Arougheti: I did not realize we had said diversification that much. Thanks for the question. Look, when you look at the credit franchise here, we have got market-leading position in alternative credit and ABF that is growing secularly and cyclically. We have got a market-leading franchise in US direct lending, market-leading franchise in European direct lending, market-leading franchise in infradebt, so on and so forth. As big and mature as some of those businesses are here, our market share, as I said in the prepared remarks, is still pretty small against really large and growing TAMs. I start there only to say that as we continue to grow and deepen the capability in the other parts of the business, it is just going to be hard for them to catch up to the scale and continued embedded growth in credit.
Michael Arougheti: I think the nice thing about this diversification is each of our businesses is growing on the identified trend line. It is not just the diversification, but it is the diversification and contribution from each of these. Secondaries is growing well, real estate is growing well, infra is growing well. The credit business is growing well, the insurance business is growing well. I think everything is keeping pace. In terms of inorganic, I would expect that inorganic activities would focus on the non-credit parts of the business, just given the market share and capability dynamics there. We have said before, places that we have been looking are around the infrastructure asset classes, private equity, insurance. It is possible that through acquisition or partnership, the non-credit businesses play catch up.
Michael Arougheti: I just think given the scale of the credit business, you should expect that the complexion of the product set is going to look a lot like it does today for the foreseeable future.
Operator: We will hear now from Mike Brown with UBS.
Mike Brown: Hi, everyone. Good morning. Maybe a question for you, Jarrod. You gave a lot of color on the net realized performance fee income. Q4 tracking a little bit below where we had expected, but understandable just given the muted exit environment here. With some of those realizations effectively shifting out into the right into 2027, any view into the potential range of outcomes for 2027, just given some of the visibility you have, but obviously there is a bit of a range around that?
Jarrod Phillips: Sure. Mike, the important part of that is really what I highlighted in the prepared remarks, the extraordinary growth we have had in the assets that generate those balances and those payments. We are still at the very beginning of highlighting that. So that is the 2017 to 2020 vintages that have entered into a harvest period. What I would say right now is it is a little harder for us to project out exactly within a year. We typically give multi-year, and we will do that again at the end of the year in Q4 and give an idea of what we figure the number will be for 2027 and 2028. That is something I think in our investor day, you will see us refresh with a longer-term period.
Jarrod Phillips: The challenge really is, and we have talked about this a lot, if it happens in December, it happens in January, we are thrilled that it happened, but it is really hard to predict the exact date, and then that matters for the calendar and when it ultimately is seen and recorded. For what we are looking at, we have seen durations extend a little bit, to your point, which has pushed some of these balances out. Now because it is predominantly credit assets, that is actually not a negative because we continue to tick above our hurdle rate in all of those funds, actually earning a larger dollar amount that we will eventually harvest. So stay tuned for more updates on exact numbers. But the fact is that we feel really good about the earnings power that we have developed on the balance sheet as a result of our fundraising.
Operator: We'll move now to Devin Ryan with Citizens Bank. Please go ahead.
Devin Ryan: Thanks. Good morning, Mike and Jarrod. Good to hear about the direct lending pipeline and some of the acceleration you're seeing there. You mentioned that you agreed to purchase a $1.1 billion direct lending portfolio from an institutional investor. I'm just curious how that kind of plays into the broader pipeline commentary. Are you seeing more of these portfolios potentially coming to the market? Just curious if it's maybe something that could become a more meaningful deployment channel. Just also what the returns look like on those types of purchases versus the directly originated loans. Thanks.
Michael Arougheti: Well, that's a good question. It was coincidentally that we had the two. We had the announcement of the MFIC transaction, which won't close until H1 of next year. But we did have the $1.1 billion portfolio. I would think given, again, some of the commentary I made just around the aging of the installed base of PE deals and therefore PE credit as well, and the rate backdrop that we'll see more of this. What's interesting about it, these are not underperforming portfolios. Both the institutional book we bought and MFIC are largely performing books and are not priced at distressed levels. But it's really a reflection of people repositioning their portfolios to meet the current market environment. If history is any indicator, we would expect to see more of this in the coming year or two.
Michael Arougheti: We are uniquely positioned to do it both on the corporate M&A side and the portfolio acquisition side, just given the resources that we have to work through these things. If you look at the MFIC transaction, that's a 220-name portfolio, $2.6 billion of assets. You need to have familiarity with a lot of those names, but you also need to have the underwriting and portfolio management resources to understand the risk exposures you're taking, and then the financing relationships and capital to do it. I think for some of these larger books, we're really uniquely positioned to be the buyer of choice there.
Michael Arougheti: You will see a fair amount of that roll through the direct lending portfolios in the US and Europe, and you will see some of that also roll through our credit secondaries business, which is enjoying a lot of growth right now because of that same dynamic. There may be some upside from those types of things to the USDL deployment. But again, I think I want to reemphasize the core pipelines in US direct lending are sitting at record levels, and they are beginning to convert in Q4. The deal flow is there. It is really just a question of seeing when it pulls through, but we are pretty confident that it will.
Operator: We will move next to Michael Cyprys with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Michael Cyprys: Great. Thanks for taking the question here. Just wanted to circle back to some of the commentary earlier around the large AI CapEx financing numbers that you cited over the next 5 years. Just curious how sensitive you think that is to higher financing costs, just given the rate backdrop. You talked about some of the potential protections you put in place with high-quality counterparties and such, but just curious how you think about the potential risks there and what risks do those contracts not protect you against?
Michael Arougheti: I am looking at Blair. I will let him chime in here. I do not know that it is sensitive to rates, Michael, as much as maybe people think it is, because the alternative is to finance it with equity. I think what we have been experiencing is as the CapEx numbers have continued to scale, they went from largely equity funded to then high grade funded, and now you are starting to see some of that funding demand flow through into the leverage finance and private credit market. There is an evolution here, but even as spreads are widening in certain parts of the market, it is still accretive relative to the cost of equity capital. I do not think that the weight of this demand is necessarily going to stop because of rate sensitivity.
Michael Arougheti: I do not know, Blair, if you have any comments on just kind of contractual protections and the way that we think about it.
Blair Jacobson: Yeah. I think when we compare and contrast what we are seeing in the broader bond markets, those tend to be tier 3 and frontier locations. They do not tend to face hyperscalers directly. They tend to be a little bit weaker developers. When you contrast what we are doing, we have a lot of inherent protections given the sites we are targeting, given the counterparties, given the fact that they are pre-leased. Mike mentioned some of the terms of those leases, which tend to be very strong. From a financing perspective, given the fact that these are $3 billion to $5 billion projects, not $40 billion projects, we have always gone to the bank markets, and that capital is still ready, willing, and available. So I think there is a real distinction between our strategy and perhaps what you are seeing roil the bond markets a bit in the press.
Michael Arougheti: I would also make one other comment. I do not know if people focus on it enough, but if you look at data center capacity and demand, 65% plus of that is just core compute and not AI. So if you just think about the long-term secular trends of digitization of everything, increased streaming, e-commerce, data storage, et cetera, that base load demand is kind of protective in and of itself. I think to Blair's point, given the locations of where we are investing, they tend to feel a lot more like core infrastructure than high out on the risk curve in terms of the technology or frontier.
Operator: Thank you. We will hear now from Brennan Hawken with BMO Capital Markets.
Brennan Hawken: Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I just had a follow-up to Alex's question. You spoke to the impact of rates backing up, and what I am curious about though is whether or not that has had any impact on spreads that you are seeing in the market. If you could speak to that would be great. Also, you said you do not expect it to necessarily impact deployment, but previously you had expected a pickup in deployment in the back half, and now that feels like it is pushed to Q4, and it is going to be a little more seasonality. Am I reading too much into that, or do you expect a Q4 pickup in deployment to translate into Q1 and maybe the H1 of 2027 here?
Michael Arougheti: I think you may be reading a little bit too much into it. Historical deployment patterns in the direct lending business were seasonally slow in Q1 and Q3, and seasonally strong in Q2 and Q4, with Q4 typically being the strongest. That is just generally the pacing of the deployment cycle, given summer breaks and holidays and tax planning. It also has to do with just the allocation cadence from the LP community, and that has been a 30-year structure of the market. I think that that structure is still in place. It is not surprising to us to see a slow Q3 and a strong Q4. That is generally how the deployment works. The rate opportunity for us is pretty significant. If you look at our credit business, 83% of our assets in the credit group are floating rate.
Michael Arougheti: As base rates go up, that return flows through, not just to the investor in increased IRR, but it flows through to us in increased profit. What is interesting about where we are now, these credit portfolios have already been through a rate environment that was 100 basis points higher than where we are today. If you look at interest coverage levels at the trough, they were 1.6 to 1.7, and now they are sitting at 2.1 to 2.3 or 2.4. We know that these companies can handle a higher debt service load because they have already managed through it. I think when we are looking at kind of a risk on the credit side from rates backing up relative to the opportunity to see that profit pull through, I think there is more of a P&L opportunity than not.
Michael Arougheti: In terms of spreads are kind of flat. As we talked about with some of the competitive dynamics and capital leaving the market, we saw spreads gap out 50 to 75 basis points earlier in the year. We saw fees and OID follow a similar pattern. We did see and continue to see better documentation and tighter covenants. Spreads typically react to changes in credit performance, not changes in base rate. Until we see meaningful uptick in defaults and losses, I do not think that base rates in and of themselves are going to impact the spread environment. The only other cross-current there is some of the things I mentioned earlier, just around the crowding out of capital that is going on in the market and whether or not people are just going to demand wider credit spreads across the spectrum. That is altogether possible.
Operator: We will hear next from Wilma Burdis with Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Wilma Burdis: Hey, good morning. You guys guide to $160 million to $185 million of realized net performance income for Q4 2026. Does this mean a significant pickup in the transaction environment, or is it based on what you are currently seeing in the market? Thanks.
Michael Arougheti: Yeah, a lot of that, Wilma, is already baked in terms of tax payments that we receive towards the end of the year for some of our vintage funds. As I talked about a little bit earlier and in the prepared remarks, as we look at that 2017 to 2020 vintage, we are seeing repayments begin to come from those, and we are seeing the associated then European waterfalls that are occurring. Because these are credit funds, it is easier to predict when some of those tax-related payments or some of those payments on monetizations underlying it are going to occur. So it is really based more on the predictability of the portfolio than it is based on a tremendous amount of transaction activity.
Operator: Thank you. With no additional questions in queue at this time, I would like to turn the floor back over to management for any additional or closing comments.
Michael Arougheti: None here. Just thanks for everybody's time today and appreciate the continued support and look forward to talking to you guys next quarter. Thank you.
Operator: 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 29 November 2026, to domestic callers by dialing 1-800-839-1192, and to international callers by dialing 1-402-220-0402. An archived replay will also be available on a webcast link located on the homepage of the Investor Relations section of our website. Thank you.
