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Goldman Sachs 2022 US Financial Services Conference

Dec 6, 2022

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Okay, great. Thanks, good morning, everybody. We're gonna move on to our next session. It is my pleasure to welcome Jarrod Phillips, CFO of Ares Management. With over $340 billion in assets under management, Ares has consistently been one of the fastest organically growing companies within our coverage, with a stated objective of 20%+ annual fee-related earnings growth. While the firm's expertise are deeply rooted in private credit, which I'm sure we'll get to talk a lot about today, Ares's been expanding into real estate, private equity, and secondaries over the years to really round out the firm's offering and ultimately what gives the firm durable 20%+ earnings growth.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Mm-hmm.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Thank you for being here. Looking forward to talking private credit and everything else.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Yeah. Great to be here, and thanks to all of you for coming.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Great. Why don't we start there? You know, a couple questions on credit business, not surprisingly, given the tone of the conference and obviously the time of the year. We've seen lots of volatility. Obviously, the markets have been pretty challenging. As one of the largest private credit managers in the world, what's your outlook for credit market performance over the next 12 to 18 months? Maybe hit on how Ares' credit portfolio is positioned to deal with potentially slower economic growth and pressure on margins.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Well, I think what's been pretty interesting so far this year is our portfolio at the asset level's performed very well. Year-over-year, EBITDA has grown by double digits. This is the ARCC portfolio, which is, you can take a look at, and a great proxy for the remainder of the direct lending portfolio. And we also at our under 2% non-accrual. We're very well positioned at the current, which maybe is a little bit different than you're hearing in the media or broader commentary. We like the performance of our assets so far.

As we look out into 2023, and we think about, well, how will rising interest rates impact the portfolio, how will it impact the private credit market more generally, what we see is ultimately there'll be a point where there could create some liquidity pressures for certain companies. In those cases, as a private credit manager, and especially as a private credit manager where you have more control over the credit, you can then start to work with that company on solutions. That's one of the advantages of a company using the private credit market is it's generally a single manager. It allows them to negotiate with that manager.

By having funding sources such as long-term locked-up capital in a fund or long-dated debt that might be associated with that fund, it does allow you to be very patient with that credit. In a rising rate environment, you may make the decision that some of that interest rate increase will go to PIK. That really becomes a shift of equity to debt.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Mm-hmm.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

If you think about it. There's always an equity investor that sits below this debt, and that kind of movement is really how those two things will shift to allow that company during that period of liquidity stress to regain its footing and perform well. The sponsors, so about 70 %+ of our book is sponsor-backed. The sponsors are often willing to step in and provide those liquidity needs so as not to essentially hand over that company to the lender.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Mm-hmm.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

And ultimately, that is a thesis that we saw play out on both sides during COVID. At the beginning of COVID, I know a lot of people remember there was no cash coming in for certain companies. At the same time, we had a very large sponsor-backed portfolio. We worked to PIK certain positions, and we worked with the sponsors to provide cash infusions there. With a lot of dry powder still on the sponsor level, they're not gonna walk away from assets that, you know, at underwriting or at the beginning of this year, we were at about a 45% LTV.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Mm.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

That meant there was 55% of the enterprise value of that company in equity. They're not willing to essentially walk away from that. As we look over the next 12 months- 18 months, I think we feel very well positioned. There'll certainly be some volatility, and there'll certainly be some companies that struggle. When you sit in the senior-most part of the capital structure, and when you have a number of these solutions and a number of these levers to pull, we feel very good about where we're at as a private credit manager.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Staying on the credit, private credit side, of the topic here, let's talk a little bit about deployment.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Mm-hmm.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

We've seen, really step function higher.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Mm.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Private credit participation over the course of 2022, and there's a number of reasons for that.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Mm-hmm.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Obviously banks retrenching, is a big part of it, and it's a theme that we've kind of continued to come back to, right? It feels like every time there is a meaningful market dislocation, private credit gains share, and then that share tends to stabilize.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Mm-hmm.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Do you anticipate the gains, you and some of your peers seen over 2022 are going to be sustainable, and again, the kind of continuation of that structural shift? Ultimately, how are you thinking about deployment into 2023?

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Sure. I'd say a lot of the gains will stay. That's gonna be the market and geography based largely. That'll be a little bit more individualized in terms of what happens there. A lot of folks began to access the private credit markets when they couldn't access the public markets. When they go back and they have the opportunity, I think they'll have learned from accessing the private credit markets and some of the advantages that I just talked about.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Yep.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

A single lender. It is a bought deal, so you have surety of execution, the ability to just negotiate out of a bad time and not have someone that might sell your loan immediately at the first sign of trouble. Those are advantages that they get, and that's why typically when they've come to the private credit market, at least some portion of their borrowing has stayed with the private credit market. Now, the United States has been going in that direction for a longer period of time, so there's a much higher penetration of private credit managers in that space. Europe is a place where we're very well-positioned, but it is still about 50% banked. As the banks have retrenched, that's given us the opportunity to take some of that business, which I think that's where I was describing geographies.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Mm-hmm.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

You might have an opportunity to keep even more of it. In Asia, what you've seen is that market's not very mature at all. There is a lot of room for private credit growth there as that is still primarily a banked region. As that region matures in terms of private equity transactions, in terms of regulation and what they're able to do, there's gonna be a lot more opportunity there for credit managers to gain share and maintain share.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Got it. With respect to deployment, 2022 has been a fairly busy year. Things have slowed down a little bit.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Yeah.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

to one of the points you mentioned earlier.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Yeah

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

-of the business or so is sponsor backed. The sponsors are not deploying capital.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Yeah.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

It's obviously making it harder for you guys to put capital to work.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Yeah.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

How do you put that together in the context of potentially more credit dislocations?

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Sure.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

In your kind of crystal ball, do you deploy more capital in 2023 than you did in 2022?

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

I'd say there's a few different factors at play, right? The first one is really about 50% of the book is coming from lending to existing borrowers. You're refinancing as they're growing. As I mentioned, we had double-digit EBITDA growth in the ARCC portfolio. As they grow their EBITDA, they may have a need for greater leverage. They may decide that they wanna open up a new doctor's office in a new location or something like that requires more leverage. You do have that small growth that comes from... It may still be a sponsor backed, so the lack of sponsor activity doesn't necessarily permeate all the way to that level where there still is activity that's occurring.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Mm-hmm.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

When we take a look at what's happened this year, there's been a lot less gross origination.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Mm-hmm

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Rates have obviously been increasing, so you're not seeing as many people actively refinance. The net numbers have still held up fairly well. What you have seen is a tightening of covenants, a clarity in the definition of EBITDA. You've seen a higher credit quality borrower that's come to the market, maybe a larger company size, I would say, as well. As we look into 2023 with a more stabilized interest rate environment, if the market has a better deal for what overall the interest rates will be over a, you know, a medium term, maybe you have a flattening out...

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Mm-hmm

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

... as opposed to what we've seen this year, which is.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Yeah

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

... kind of been a straight up on the curve, that you'll have people then more willing to enter into transactions. As you look at the back half of 2023, the hope is that you'll have that more stable view that'll allow more transactions to occur. I think as you're approaching that stable view of what interest rates may ultimately be, you may see some people decide that they're going to refi or do other types of transactions within that period too to take advantage of it. That transaction volume picks up. Ideally, that could lead to an attractive deployment situation.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Got it. What about the other, flip of the coin and talk about fundraising and private credit? It's been busy, For the better part of the last decade plus, we've been operating in a super low interest rate environment...

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Mm-hmm

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

... where the returns you're getting in private credit, were substantially higher than you get in liquid markets.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Mm-hmm.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

That has obviously exchanged. You can get to, you know, mid-single digit returns in liquid IG and high single digit in liquid high yield. Is that still an attractive place to be for institutions and retail? I guess, how do you think about the paradigm shift with respect to continued uptake of private credit?

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

First, my liquid credit colleagues would be upset with me if I didn't mention that we had $40 billion of liquid credit.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Fair enough.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

funds as well. We do have the ability to go there. In terms of private credit, actually at today's rates and with spreads widening to where they're at, we're able to originate loans that are in the double digits in terms of returns. Mm-hmm.

I think that it actually...

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

That's unlevered? Unlevered.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

That's unlevered, yes. I think actually what has worked to our advantage over the last couple years or last, you know, 10 years- 15 years, as you noted, is that more people have come into the space. More institutions understand the risk that they're getting paid for, and they're ultimately then able to maintain or actually increase, in some cases, their allocation to private credit, understanding that they will get a higher rate than they may necessarily get in the liquid credit space. Really, I think what that allows them to do is maybe take more risk off on the higher levels, especially as those rates increase at the private credit side.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about fundraising broadly, and kind of expanding the lens outside of just private credit, but, for the, for the whole franchise.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Mm-hmm.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

You guys are in kind of earlier stages of your next flagship cycle.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Mm-hmm.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

I think the official target you have out there is $45 billion in total capital raised, including leverage, in this kind of period. Given the changes in the marketplace we're seeing, how are you thinking about sizing various strategies, and how are you thinking about the opportunity set that sort of gives you confidence around that $45 billion?

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Yeah. Sure, we have seen in the marketplace the denominator impact for private equity, right? We didn't have a private equity fund that was in the market fundraising, but we certainly heard it from our peers. As we talk to LPs, we understand the constraints that they've had. We have not experienced that on the credit side or in the real estate side as we've gone out to fundraise. There's, you know, obviously you wanna make sure you're generating returns, and as we look at this vintage, what we just talked about is that we're gonna have a private credit vintage that is originating at, you know, over 10%.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Yeah

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

return. This is a very attractive time for people to come in. That's a very nice selling point to come into the private credit vintage. The nice thing about private credit is it is consistently returning capital, and it's not as episodic.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Yep.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

You, you know that there's a maturity date of these loans. You know that there's interest that's being paid on these loans, so there is cash that is coming back to the investors. Then they don't have to put out their cash immediately upon a fundraise. They're gonna put it out as we deploy it. They have this ability to fund their future investment with their current investment as it's paying off with more surety than they might have in private equity, which certainly causes some of that denominator effect as you have those values increase-But you have no capital returned to the investor. In looking at what we're raising over the next six or so months, what we're launching over the next six or so months, we've obviously talked to our LP base.

We've looked at the returns of the prior vintages. We've looked at the pipeline that we have available to us.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Mm-hmm.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

you know, we obviously share that pipeline, that, you know, it's looking good to those investors so that they understand that they won't just be sitting on a commitment.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Mm-hmm.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

It's important for them to be able to deploy some as well. That all gives us assurances that we will be able to raise within those targets. Those targets aren't, you know, grossly inflated or adjusted from what the prior vintages were. You know, we're very excited about all the strategies that we have coming into market. You know, with our European direct lending, with our senior direct lending, with our alternative credit funds that are in the market, we think this is a great time for that particular vintage. Our... Even our private equity fund, and we've spent a lot of time talking about the denominator effect in this answer.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Yeah

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

... that has the ability to flex into distressed-for-control.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Mm-hmm

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

... which is really core to how that fund strategy launched. This is a great time for that fund. If you look at historically in those vintages, our best returns actually came in the credit crisis, as we were deploying in that distressed with control manner. We're very excited about all the funds coming to market, and we think it is a really good time for those funds to be investing. That's frankly one of the nice thing about institutionally led products as well is.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Right

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

... you know, the capital kind of comes when it's the best time to invest.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Right

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

and allows you to get good returns as a result.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Right. W.ll, we didn't set this up this way, but it is a nice way to start talking about retail, which might not always react in the way you sort of just described, right?

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Yeah.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

When we think about your retail franchise.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Mm-hmm

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

... with the two non-traded REITs, they've held up incredibly well all year with respect to both performance and the flows that you're generating.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Mm-hmm.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Clearly there's been more challenges in the industry. We've seen redemptions accelerate from a number of the larger competitors. Maybe give us an update on what's going on with both gross sales and gross redemption side of things?

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Sure

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

... at both Ares REITs, and then we'll go from there.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

AREIT and AI REIT are our two non-traded. We have about $14 billion there, $9 billion and $5 billion, between the two funds. Ultimately, we just put out a 8-K at both funds, to say that, you know, there's been no gates, that we have actually seen net sales over October, November. We've continued to see inflows at those funds, whereas I know there's a number of others who may have been talking about gates and redemptions. We feel very happy with the position that we're in there. I think there's some uniqueness to those products.

One of the main unique parts of those products is that they both have a 1031 exchange capability, meaning that an investor that has some rental properties and is maybe looking to sell, can sell those rental properties and take that cash and put it directly into the REITs and not have to pay taxes on that as long as they hold those REITs for two years. Ultimately that makes a very sticky investor, and over the last 12 months, about 50% of the funding for those REITs has come from that type of exchange. That I think is a real. It's a great dynamic. The RIAs love it.

Our investors love it because it does allow them to avoid taxes for a long period of time and create diversification. Both of those funds have performed very well over the last 12 months. What we've seen there is because we're really focused on developing, that, we're able to have leases that are in line with the current market.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Mm-hmm.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

If you look at some of the facts that we've put out over the last couple quarters, you've seen that we've had lease increases that have increased dramatically, sometimes as much as over 40%. We've had vacancy at all-time lows, so we're, you know, at 90%-99% leased in all these products, and that's allowed us to have an inflation hedge, and it's allowed us to have some support against the increasing cost of capital that we've seen across that. There also has been a lack of transactions.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Mm-hmm

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

... in the real estate space, and I think that's what's really important as you're talking about valuation to what drives valuation.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Right.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Without significant transactions, you do have a harder time valuing it, so you really are focused on, well, what is my current lease rate? What am I ultimately gonna realize?

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Yeah. Well, let's unpack that a little bit because, as we've all been spending more time with various disclosures from non-public REITs, when I look at the two, products that you guys manage.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Mm-hmm

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

... the cap rates that you guys are using currently are roughly in line, maybe even actually a little bit lower than they were in the beginning of the year.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Mm-hmm

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

... which is counterintuitive.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Mm-hmm

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

... you know, given what happened with rates and obviously what happened with public REIT valuations. Walk us through that, the logic there?

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Yeah.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Is there a risk that potential hits to performance that could come from higher rates will slow down the pace of sales?

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Sure. You know, cap rates are gonna be, they're not gonna be uniform across the board, right. They're gonna be dependent on the type of asset and the market that the asset's in. Area like the Sun Belt has still seen very strong demand for industrial products, for warehouses. So there's gonna be an asset type that you have to factor into that and a geography that you're factoring into it. Being in tier one cities and having that type of product, I think is very important when you're considering any impact to your cap rates.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Yeah.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Ultimately there's always an impact that can have it, but the mitigant that you have, and again, as you're developing your asset and you're leasing your asset along the way, as long as you're able to keep it at a increasing leases as time goes by, increasing the amount of lease that you're getting, as well as making sure that you're minimizing vacancies. Those things can offset an increase in cap rate. If those things were to go down, or if cap rates were to rise dramatically based on sales that you were seeing in that region or for that asset type, all those things could have a negative impact on your pricing.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Right.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

I think certainly, you know, as you look at publicly traded REITs, maybe that's the thesis people have as they're driving the prices of those down and that could be causing some of that.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Yeah

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

... some of that dislocation.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Yeah. Let's kind of take a little bit of a step back, but staying with retail. You guys have clearly pretty ambitious plans for retail as a segment broadly, and you've launched a couple of products there. You talked about launching.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Mm-hmm

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

... additional products-

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Mm-hmm

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

... targeting retail, both on the credit side as well as on the secondary side of things. Given what's going on right now, how big of a concern that there is a contagion effect from some of the bigger products that it could sort of spoil the party for a lot of other managers that sort of try to break into retail? Maybe an update on where you are with various products and platforms in that journey.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Sure. I think as we look out at that market, the retail market has a very high demand long term, I believe for it. This may slow it down, this desire to have it, though I think it is still very strong. I think ultimately they are looking for more alt products that they can diversify their risk. I think having more players.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Mm-hmm

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

... within, whether it's the REIT space or the BDC space or other types of assets within that non-traded space actually benefits the consumer, and people are looking for that so that they're not just selling one singular product. I think that's the same thing when you think about just ourselves as a company and as we go out and launch product, we want to have a diversified product slate that the retail investor can access. I don't want to overemphasize the importance of retail because I did mention earlier how important institutional is to us and having those ability to launch large commingled funds. Retail, I think will continue to grow and will continue to have a nice pace over the long term.

You will have some slowing as people understand exactly how to respond to this type of market, how to respond to when these gates are met. I think a bigger risk would be if you saw someone who entered into a gate that wasn't kind of the regulatory 5% gate. If they.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Right

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

... they were to establish that and they said, "Hey, we're just looking at our first quarter and-

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Right

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

We've mismanaged our portfolio. We don't have the liquidity to meet.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Right

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

... redemption," I think that's where you would really have an issue. The fact is, these products are designed to be long-term held, in order not to have that market fluctuation in price. People want to be able to transact it now. You have to have those gates.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Mm-hmm.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

That's the way it's set up. I think people are beginning to understand that product, just like we talked about earlier. As more investors understood the alternatives in private debt, we've seen more players in it and, just an overall better understanding. I think the same thing will happen here. A lot of what you have to do when you go out and sell these products is education to the RIA and-

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Right

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

... how does the product work and what's the suitability and ultimately why would they want to invest in this product. A lot of those RIAs, they won't invest in a publicly traded REIT or they won't invest in a publicly traded BDC. They have a strategy that says it will only be this type of asset. It is a way of giving them access, and I think that there will continue to be demand for that.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Yeah. Great. Fair enough. Let's spend a couple of minutes on your secondaries business.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Mm-hmm.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

On the last call, you talked about the growing deal pipeline in the secondaries, both from a GP side and LP-

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Mm-hmm

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

... side of things, just kind of both sides of that coin trying to manage.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Mm-hmm

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

... the liquidity. Is there enough demand on the fundraising side of things to meet that supply?

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Mm-hmm.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

How do institutional investors think about secondary business in the context of just private markets? Is it a separate bucket? Do they think of that as private equity?

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Yeah.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Do the same headwinds like denominator effect, et cetera, could impact allocations to secondary? So it might be-

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Sure

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

enough opportunities to invest, but supply might not be there.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

It's tough to say because I think each investor is a little bit different. Some investors do regard it along with the strategy. If we say that it's an infrastructure secondary, they might put it in their infrastructure bucket.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Mm-hmm.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Other people may put it in a separate secondaries bucket. The thing about secondaries is it is much later in life in terms of when it's making the investment, so it is monetizing at a faster rate.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Mm-hmm.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

That's one of the reasons that we had a lot of strong conviction in releasing the Private Markets Fund in April, which is a non-traded retail product that does secondary investments because you're able to monetize more quickly and more frequently. Ultimately what we've seen in the past in talking to our colleagues in the secondaries group is that the LP demand for secondary transactions, not the investor side, but the deal flow side.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Mm-hmm

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

... that really generally lags. When we've seen it in a historical circumstance, it's about a 6 month-9 month lag. We still haven't seen as much of that LP-led secondary business kick up. The GP-led, I think, is where we've seen more in the current space, as GPs are looking for different options to monetize parts of their portfolio, return capital to deal with things like the denominator effect.

You know, overall, I think when you, when you look at our business and you see, our Private Markets Fund, that we have an infrastructure fund, a real estate fund, and our private equity, along with the ability to launch a credit fund, through that secondaries platform that combines our credit expertise with their secondaries platform, I think that there will be, ultimately more than enough funding to support those GP and LP-led transactions on the secondary side.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Got it. Okay. Let's shift gears a little bit and maybe put on your CFO hat as opposed to the strategic hat on for a second. Let's talk about fee-related earnings and a couple of other things here. One is, as I mentioned earlier, Ares has been consistently one of the highest FRE growing companies that we cover, north of 20% per year as your kind of stated target. As you look out into 2023, maybe can you help unpack some of the key sources of growth, and, you know, maybe hit on areas that could do a little bit better than that and areas where you can kind of see risk to growth?

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Sure. you know, looking out into the future, obviously, we talked about the fundraising on those flagship funds. The, the nice thing about credit is as we launch a new fund, that pays on deployment. A large percentage of our assets pay on deployed capital. As they're deploying, there's not a step down in the prior fund. When you're paying on committed, typically what happens is, committed comes online, and the prior vintage steps down at some percentage, and it might step down to also being uninvested as opposed to committed, and it is going down after that. When you're paying on deployed, it's kind of deployed across the board, right?

As we deploy, we're going to be stacking essentially those vintages of funds because we'll have all the prior vintages plus the current vintage that we're deploying into. Deployment of what we have now certainly drives a lot of the assurances over the targets that we've laid out. Really that pace and speed of deployment is what governs when exactly we hit those targets along the way. That's a number that we always focus on. When you look at historically where we're at, if you maybe go back 2017, 2018, 2019, our pace of deployment on shadow AUM, that was in that 18 month-24 month timeframe.

I think we hit a peak at in 2021 of about like 11 months would've been our deployment to our shadow AUM, looked like that's how fast we would deploy it. I don't think that we're gonna see it that fast. I think we're gonna be in that 18 month-2 4 month bucket, which is much more typical.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Mm-hmm.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

That deployment really is the governor. Even more so in credit than fundraising.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Yeah

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

because of that stacking factor, you really, as long as you're deploying, you just would be fundraising faster behind it to maintain that pace. That's really the thing that we look at. We look at where our shadow AUM is now, and frankly, if we didn't raise another $1 and we just focused on that deployment, that was averaging to about 20%-25% of our revenue right there.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Yeah.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

That will certainly help. As we deploy that also helps with margin expansion. We talked a lot about this year being a year of investment. We knew we had these commingled funds coming on, so that means both front and back office had to be hired up and prepared for new larger fund sizes, as well as I think just a reconciliation of bringing on four entities, where can we centralize, how can we automate, what changes can we make to make our business more efficient. We knew that we would have a moderated growth in our margin. We do think as we deploy, especially out into 2024 and 2025, that we'll have growth related to just the deployment and expansion of the platform.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Got it. Acceleration of that FRE margin into 2023 is what we should think about. One of the unique aspects of the model, and you've been certainly highlighting that, I think, since the investor day, is this concept of European waterfall performance fees, for a number of your credit strategies. Just to run through some of the numbers here, you talked about $100 million or so in net PRE coming through in 2023, and then $200 million coming through in 2024, as those kind of funds.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Yeah. Just related to European waterfall.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Just related to European waterfall. Exactly. How quickly do you think the cash flows could ramp from there, right? Because that business is much bigger than that sort of $300 million that you talked about collectively over two years. As a follow-up to that almost feels FRE-like nature to the cash flows.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Yeah.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

How are you thinking about deploying that back? Should we think about, you know, higher dividend payout effectively or something along those lines?

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Sure. Look, it's something that I think is really exciting because it hasn't really been seen in the alt space before.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Right.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

I know, I know there's been other players that have had European-style waterfalls, to have it in a traditional credit product where it wasn't episodic in nature, I think is what makes this so intriguing because it's gonna create stable, predictable growth of this PRE stream. Ultimately, when you're talking about that $300 million, that's really based on funds today based on the ultimate values that they're recorded at as of 9/30. That's a part of our net accrued. Our net accrued is recorded as if liquidated. That means if you just calculated the fair values today, we sold all the assets, how much promote would come to the house. We know that as of today, with rising interest rates, that our interest rate is actually ticking along higher than the hurdle rate.

For these assets, there is some component of fair value that gets baked into that accrued. It's not a massive shift in that fair value, but there is a small element of it, and ultimately, they're going to mature at par. You'll have that maturity at par with an interest rate that ticks along above the hurdle rate, allowing us to grow ultimately what today's.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Mm-hmm

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

... are able to earn in terms of PRE or carried interest. That $100 million will be kind of the first bit in 2023 that we see come through as the underlying portfolio's assets mature.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Mm-hmm.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Because the interest rates have ticked up enough, they're gonna cross over the preferred return that needs to be paid before the European waterfall starts. You'll have that fund, and this is really the first vintage of things like our senior direct lending fund that started largely in 2017 and 2018. You have your second vintage that will start. Our second vintages were larger than our first vintages. Ultimately, you'll be able to map out, and those vintages are currently deployed now and again, earning interest at a higher level than the hurdle rate.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Mm-hmm.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Those will ultimately start to pay once that first group's European waterfall has fully paid out, that second vintage will start to pay.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Right.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Creating that stable, predictable growth in European waterfalls, which again, I think is new to the industry.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Right.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Goes right along with what we've talked about with FRE for all these years, is that because of our deployment-based management fees, we've had stable, predictable growth in management fees and therefore FRE. This is gonna give us that ability to show that within PRE as well. Even in timeframes where there's not a lot of private equity monetizations, we'll still be able to count on these private debt monetizations because of just the natural interest payment and maturity of that portfolio.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Yeah. Yep. That second vintage dynamic that you just described, could that start to contribute in 2024 as well, or too early to know?

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

I think it's too early to know because there'll still be some leftover in the first vintage.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

First.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Right. You know, as we... You know, I think the last time we've mapped it out fully, you'd go back to our investor day, which is coincidentally right here in this room.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Yeah.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Back a couple of years ago you could map out exactly what we said then, which at that time, and we've launched funds since then, we had $1.5 billion related to European waterfalls that we believed ultimately could be earned from funds that were outstanding at that period.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Mm-hmm.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Again, that wasn't an as if liquidated number like I just talked about, which you can see on our balance sheet, but that was our estimate based on the funds that existed at that time.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Over time. Right. Got it.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Based on the interest rates, by the way, that we had in place at that time.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Got it. Okay. All right, we got two minutes left on the clock, so I wanna maybe check in with you on any sort of last-minute thoughts related to the fourth quarter.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Mm-hmm.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Any P&L items. The only ones that I have in my notes that you guys sort of flagged was around fee-related performance revenues. You said it's gonna be above what it was last year.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Mm-hmm.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Any updated thoughts on that? Again, any other items, whether it's expenses or revenues, that's kind of worth flagging before year-end.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Sure. you know, FRPR, it crystallizes in Q4 for the majority of the assets that pay that. Really comes out of real estate and credit. If you look at real estate, that is a publicly disclosed number. You can see that as of 10/31, what was reported on A-REIT and AI-REIT, it was about $162 million related to that. We are entitled to 100% of that this year. Last year, we were only entitled to 50% of that as part of the transaction. We also have the credit side of things. Now, we have seen tailwinds from increases in interest rates.

However, that portfolio adjusts to those interest rates in about 3 month- 6 month increments, so the large majority of that portfolio doesn't get the full benefit of an interest rate increase as it happens. That bleeds in over time. However, when spreads widen, it does have a bit of a fair value impact to that.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Mm-hmm.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

If a spread widens, you know, 25 basis points. If you think about a three-year duration or more, that'll have an impact to the fair value. And as we think about spread widenings of about 100 basis points, that can lead to about a $10 million-$15 million reduction in the overall FRPR. That's something that needs to be considered there. Both of those come in with predefined compensation levels that are below the 40% margin. I think that's another important thing to consider.

Yeah, we do believe that number will be higher than prior year was, and certainly, the rising interest rates, we will see a tailwind from that into future periods as those price levels have adjusted and those ultimately will pay off at par. It's really just a timing difference.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Timing

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

... in when the credit side of FRPR is recognized.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Right. to your point, the higher rates haven't really caught on yet- ... in the Q3, Q4 numbers just yet.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

That's right.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

That's next year, right. All right. We got a couple of minutes or actually a couple seconds left, but we can maybe go over one minute. Any questions from the audience? All right. We're gonna stay on time then.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Great.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

All right, Jarrett.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Hey, thanks so much for having me.

Alexander Blostein
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Yeah.

Jarrod Phillips
CFO, Ares Management

Thanks, thanks everyone for being here. Appreciate it.

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