For important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley Research disclosure website at morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. Note the taking of photographs and use of recording devices is also not allowed. If you have any questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales representative. All right, good afternoon. With that out of the way, thanks for staying with us here on day one of the Morgan Stanley Financials Conference. I'm Mike Cyprys, equity analyst covering brokers, asset managers and exchanges for Morgan Stanley Research. We are excited to have with us here Jarrod Phillips, the Chief Financial Officer of Ares Management. With nearly $550 billion of assets under management, Ares is one of the world's largest alternative asset managers. Jared, thank you for joining us and making the trip out here to New York.
Absolutely. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.
Great. Why don't we start off with your thoughts on the macro. First half has been a bit volatile, to put it kindly, a lot of uncertainty. Some of this has normalized a bit here since some of the peak volatility that we have seen in April. I guess through the lens of your portfolio companies at Ares, how are you seeing the state of the global economy? Inflation and how's the portfolio holding up?
Sure.
Look, I will just start and say we've been really pleased with how the portfolio has held up. I think it's important for people to understand that in a given year in U.S. direct lending alone we'll look at over 2,200 different unique companies. We then have 550 portfolio companies, give or take, in ARCC alone. We see a lot of different.
Companies and we get to see how.
They're performing through a lot of these different cycles. What we saw in this cycle was no red flags we've seen before in prior potential cycles.
A drawing of all available liquidity or.
A prep that there could be issues with inbounds from the borrowers.
In this we saw people more just being cautious and waiting.
We didn't see that big draw happen on any of the revolvers.
We entered into it with a lot of strength and I believe that helped.
We're at LTVs in our portfolio in the low 40s across the board. What that means is sponsors have a pretty big equity check that sits in front of you. We have interest coverage at 2x , and having that interest rate shock over the last couple of years, you saw that go to about 1.6x .
What you've seen in this.
Current interest rate environment where it's been more flat with an anticipation of down in the future, that's enabled that coverage to creep back up.
Because importantly, and probably most importantly, in.
In terms of your question, we've continued.
To see EBITDA growth and that EBITDA.
Growth has been in the low double digits. We are at 11% in the portfolio in the first quarter and we've seen that continue to move forward. Now, the sectors that we primarily invest in, the service side of things, the software business, they're less impacted by tariffs. So there wasn't any immediate flow through.
That we saw from the tariffs.
We did a big analysis across the whole portfolio, saw that it was a single-digit % number that had first-level impacts of the tariffs. Certainly everything could have had a larger impact if there was a macro dislocation. In terms of the overall portfolio performance, it stayed strong. The credit characteristics, they proved well.
We did not see any unnatural again.
Red flag behavior. We were really happy with how the portfolio has performed through that. That has got us to where we're at now, which is, I think.
That some of that optimism is returning.
That it is a great time or it will be a great time and a necessary time to transact. You'll see a lot of the private equity firms thinking about some of.
Their aged vintages and their aged assets.
That they need to move on from and that it's now time to monetize. You'll see that there's a lot of dry powder that's expiring, and this will be a time where that will need to be deployed. Some of that optimism that we.
Entered the year with that then was.
Tamped down as the rumor of tariffs came about towards the end of February with more caution in March and then obviously the very beginning of April having.
The actual tariffs come to light, that created that pause.
When it's just a pause and there wasn't anything that happened in addition to that, assuming that we don't have more negative news around the tariff front or we don't have more negative economic news, I know on Friday we had the jobs report and that was a little bit more positive than people were anticipating. I think with more, more data.
Like that, you'll see that maybe excitement to transact come back a little bit.
That pause won't be enough to.
Really throw 2025 off.
You might have a little bit of slower second quarter from folks, but that could really leak into making the third quarter better than it seasonally is. It certainly sets you up well for a strong fourth quarter, which going into this year we all anticipated the back half of the year would be pretty strong. Now I think there's optimism that.
The pause wasn't necessarily long enough to.
Prevent that from occurring.
Do you think maybe activity that otherwise would have taken place in 2Q kind of gets pushed out 3Q, 4Q and A?
I think that's because nothing dropped out of the pipeline but things, you know.
People put pencils down and said, well.
I don't want to be the one that transacts if the market's about to explode, I don't want to be the one that transacts into a bottom. Essentially, you have maybe it's a month or two pause that then restarts and instead of it taking you three to six months to settle, maybe it's a little bit faster through the process. That could just shift some of that timing for what we would have hoped would have been a pretty active second quarter.
Maybe that makes for a more active.
Third quarter and certainly still bodes pretty well for the fourth quarter.
Just given that backdrop, you guys have over $140 billion of dry powder on the platform today. Where are you seeing some of the most interesting areas to put capital to work? Any particular areas that you're avoiding? Could ultimately 2025 here be a better year than last year from a deployment standpoint?
I'd say when you think about that from a direct lending standpoint, there's not.
Areas that we don't periodically avoid, there's.
Areas that we always avoid and we do not come in and out of them. Those are more cyclical. Like the areas that I talked about earlier, that is where we are always focused in terms of our overall deployment. We talked about it a little bit.
On our earnings call in May, that.
The pipeline looked fairly similar despite the dislocations that we saw in April. The geography of that pipeline was a little bit different to your question.
Secondaries has been an area where there's.
Been a tremendous amount of deployment year- over- year.
We had 160% increase in our secondaries deployment.
You can see that that's been a popular area. I think especially with that pause that I just talked about and then LPs and others feeling more like maybe I'm not as close to monetization as I thought, the Secondaries environment becomes a much more attractive place to deploy, whether it's GP led or LP led asset-backed financing. I know it's been a hot topic at this conference, and I'm sure many of you have heard about it, that's continued its strength in terms of deployment.
Really showing that it is not as.
Correlated to the overall CNI lending market, to singular companies as a whole. That has shown that it has continued to have a lot of different deployment opportunities and certainly what we do out of our alternative credit business or our ABF business.
On the illiquid side, one of their.
Main hypothesis is that they want to be as flexible as possible and go in and out of different industries at different times. That means they can always be active. Things like SRTs and fund finance have been very popular places of deployment for our alt credit business. Real estate and real estate debt are starting to tick back up and be more active. We have a pretty large real estate business. It is even larger now with the GCP acquisition. Really built for a macro environment that is a lot busier and I think.
In the face of potential interest rates.
Being lower or more normalized, that's enabled people to come back to more transaction.
Activity there and with a, you know.
A headwind to the banks in terms of they have $1.2 trillion of each.
Of the next couple years on the.
Debt side maturing that is going to provide some real estate debt opportunities as well over the next couple of years.
Past couple quarters you talked.
About gross to net deployment ratio improving, suggesting deployment was less skewed toward refis and therefore supporting fee paying A growth. How is that evolving here in the second quarter? What's your expectation as you look out over the next 12 months?
Sure, and I'd say, you know, it's important.
Last year was, I would categorize it as maybe historically low of a ratio.
Of gross to net. We were around 37% for the year. In the first quarter we were actually at 22%. That's in the prior year.
This year we were at 49% in the first quarter.
You're already seeing about normalized percentage there. That's my expectation is in a normal year you're going to be around 50% on gross to net. Now there's a couple different factors at play. Last year the main factor was you had spreads at very, very tight levels.
You had a forward look.
Of interest rates that at the time people were anticipating would move down.
Normally when interest rates move down, you see spreads expand a little bit.
People looked at that as this is a time that I can refi and lock in because these are floating rate loans, a better spread.
It also coincided with the BSL market.
Really turning back on. There was more optionality for borrowers at that time. You had a bit of a rush to market and a rush to refi. It was not driven by M&A activity. You had one of the two factors. You need to see more now, M&A activity. What that does is it drives both your gross and your net. You will see more velocity within your portfolio.
We did not have a tremendous amount.
Of M&A activity in the first quarter, just on a macro level. In the second quarter there has not been, on a macro level, a lot of M&A.
Although seems like there's more deals coming.
It seems like there's been more publicity around deals over the last couple weeks. What you'll see there is you'll see more gross, but that will mean your net isn't as strong. Ironically, your net number is probably strongest.
In an environment where there's not that.
Much refi, obviously, but also not that.
Much M&A because then your.
Portfolio is not turning over as much. I would expect that as you see, if you see a little bit lower M&A count, you'll see a stronger gross to net ratio.
All in all, for the year.
I do expect M&A to bounce back if everything maintains where it's at currently. So I would expect that we'd be in that 50-50 range. Great.
Private credit has seen significant growth across the industry. It's now attracting some newer entrants. We see existing players doubling down on private credit opportunity. We've seen acquisitions across the space as firms want to lean in. What sort of impact are you seeing on the industry? Whether it's spreads, terms, overall behavior among participants, and maybe talk about your moat around your credit business and how you sustain that as more firms are entering.
Yeah, and there's a lot of different pieces there. You know, it gets a lot more publicity now than it did. I think some of those transactions you've talked about certainly drive that. Many times when there's a transaction.
It's not creating a new player, it's.
Maybe being additive or it's just adding to an overall portfolio of a manager to make them more diverse. It's not creating someone that we're actively competing with that's any different. In fact, I think if you were to talk to any of our portfolio managers, they'd say that they're really competing against the same five parties that they've been competing against for the last 10 or more years really, with only one or two really being new entrants.
In that 10 year timeframe, the biggest change has been the retail dollars that have flown in.
You've seen a lot of retail product be launched. We have ASIF obviously as our non traded product. You've seen a lot of those larger scale players launch those retail products. As that channel's opened up more and more and you see more of the wire houses, the RIAs, the IBDs and wealth managers being much more amenable to that product and building out their portfolios to include it. You've seen those dollars come in and what those dollars do is they do have to come in with some discipline. Those BDCs, they have to meet.
Their dividend, otherwise they're going to need.
Support from their manager. The managers do not want to support those dividends. They also have to meet a certain level of return otherwise people are going to allocate away from them. They are disciplined in terms of the behavior. It does have some impact in that when you bring a lot of dollars in quickly, you need to deploy those dollars quickly. When you need to deploy those dollars quickly and if you do not have a large team, you need to deploy them in the upper middle market. Meaning you are competing a little bit.
More against the BSL market, that also.
Means that you're looking to do those larger check sizes. That is where we've seen over the last two years that spread has compressed.
On those larger check sizes on those.
Upper middle market deals. You're still getting about 150 basis points, maybe a little more to the liquid markets. It also informs us to why last year around this time you saw.
Us make a pretty meaningful pivot into.
The core and lower middle markets in terms of our median deal size actually.
Decreased at that period because we saw.
That as an area of less competition and more opportunity. You then counterpoint to in April when.
The BSL market temporarily shut off, we jumped in and we led the $5 billion.
Billion Dun & Bradstreet deal. That ability to go from those.
Large upper middle market deals to the.
Lower middle market deals and the core.
In between, that really creates a competitive.
Advantage, but it's also expensive.
If you're just bringing in those.
Dollars on the retail side now and you haven't had that chance to invest in the team, and we have one.
Of the largest underwriting teams, we have one of the largest asset management teams.
That can deal with the assets after they're on the books. Then potentially if you have issues within your portfolio, having that enables us to play across a wide variety of loan sizes and constantly be deploying where we can generate the best return. Ultimately that creates a moat.
It also will create return dispersion over the long term.
The last several years have been very beneficial to private credit with high base rates.
It's been easy to show.
A low double-digit yield to your.
Investors as interest rates come down. As portfolios may have episodic or idiosyncratic.
Issues, you will begin to see those managers have return dispersion and having more.
Talent available to look after your portfolio.
To deploy your portfolio. That creates a pretty large competitive advantage. What it also does is create incumbency. If you note the last two years we have set deployment high water marks and that has been because of incumbency.
These were macro years in terms of.
The M&A environment that were more depressed. If you look over the last 25 years and we were still able to.
Set deployment high water marks.
That's largely because of the size.
Of our team and the ability to.
Participate in all types of middle market. That is something that we look at as those new dollars have come in. They have really been, it has been more on that fundraising side and how do you dep and how do you best deploy.
That's how those dollars are changing.
Things, is making sure people are focused on that.
The other question that comes up as we think about sort of the competitive backdrop is around the bank side of the equation and expectation is capital rules could be lightened up for the banks here. How do you think about the impact that could have on the overall marketplace? The magnitude of lending moving out of the banking system, which was a big sort of view in recent years and had been playing out. What areas do you think the banks might have more appetite?
Yeah, and look, it's actually over a 30 year trend. It's a little bit more than 30 years that there's been a migration from banked to non banked, especially as it relates to sponsor backed transactions. If you look at what they've been saying around bank regulations, I believe what the focus is is allowing banks to do more of what they're currently doing.
How do they hold more Treasuries?
How are they able to do more mortgages, strengthening up the community banks and reducing some of the regulatory cost or burden that they're seeing? Not really as much a shift away and hey, start doing new products that you were not doing before. I think that banks have seen by and large that we are a very.
Good partner to them, that as they lend to us, they are able to still get exposure to that asset type while having less people associated with it.
Just like I just articulated in terms of when you're doing size loans.
If they do a billion dollars to us and we do somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-20 loans underlying.
That billion, they get the exposure. They needed one relationship.
They needed the Ares relationship, not those.
10-20 that they'd be sourcing, that they'd be paying for that team, then they'd be paying for the workout team that they would need in case something happened to those loans. They actually get a much better ROE.
By not having all of that expense.
Load and allowing us to hold those loans and then lend to us and provide us that leverage. Ultimately, I believe that it's a very solid relationship. I'm not sure that any of the regulatory changes will mean that you'll see banks all of a sudden willing to hire up large teams to go in and begin to make these loans. Maybe on the BSL side, it maybe makes them more likely to do something that they might have to.
Hold for a little bit longer, as.
Opposed to being able to syndicate right away.
I'm not sure it means that.
They're going to be doing more of that lower or core middle market lending.
Great. As you think about the private credit market opportunity, say over the next five years, how do you think about that next chapter in the evolution of private credit, whether it's asset-backed finance, whether it's on the investment grade side, sub investment grade side, ABF to real estate credit. Where are some of the biggest opportunities? Talk about some of the steps you're taking there.
Absolutely.
You know, I'd be remiss not.
To just highlight as regular way direct lending. Every time people kind of look away and say, well, what's next? It still grows at 15%-20%.
Is that sustainable from here next five years?
Look, it's part of what we mapped out in our investors. We did have a growth rate that was right in line with the rest of the company for us direct lending. Some of that is because we see what their dry powder is waiting to be deployed. You see things like the dollars that you're bringing in from retail on that side. There are a lot of other high growth areas. ABF as you highlighted is among them. It's really both sides of ABF. When we talk about ABF and.
We call it alt credit, but I.
Fully recognize that everybody else has been referring to it as ABF, so I have adopted that as well. We call it either liquid rated or illiquid non-rated. Those are really the two main buckets for our business. We have about $40 billion and slightly.
More than 50% of that is in.
That illiquid non-rated. That happens through our commingled products primarily. That is our Pathfinder series of funds. We have a closed-end Pathfinder and then we have an open-end.
Pathfinder core that deliver non-correlated returns to institutional investors.
On the liquid rated side that's more the domain of SMAs and insurance partnerships.
There's a tremendous amount of growth there.
Because there's a tremendous desire by insurance companies to generate that IG+ type return. You have something that's investment grade rated, but it's generating somewhere in the neighborhood of 100-200 basis points more that is really, really meaningful to an insurance company. That is an area where there's a tremendous amount of growth.
That is slightly lower fee, not even slightly lower.
It is a lower fee than what we generate on the illiquid non rated side.
Having the ability to do both.
Means that as banks or other originators come to us, they know that we do not necessarily have to have something rated or put into a structure. It may fit within Pathfinder or Pathfinder Core. It really does enable us to see a lot of deals.
At the size we're currently at.
On the non-rated side, we believe that we are the largest in that space and that we have the ability to do the most creative types of transactions, the largest check sizes within that space as well. That has provided a great growth rate over the last couple years in advance of that 16%-20% and still has a lot of runway to go. That is a dollar that comes in at a, you know, sometimes a two to three times higher fee rate plus.
Getting an incentive or carried interest along with it.
Very valuable growth engine for the firm going forward. You also highlighted real estate debt.
I mentioned it a little bit earlier.
I said in the next two years, each year you'll have about $1.2 trillion of real estate debt maturing off of bank balance sheets. They're not going to necessarily want to.
Participate in all of that on their own. They're going to look to us again as partners where they can start.
To establish those same relationships where lending to us and then allowing us to create all of those other loans gives them better capital treatment, gives them more staffing efficiencies, and gives them overall a better ROE potentially. That is an area where we see there could be a lot of growth in the near future and the ability to really fundraise and deploy off of that.
Great. Why don't we pivot and talk about private wealth? You alluded to that earlier. Very large addressable market where you and your peers have all been making some headway here with new products and distribution efforts. Just curious what you think will ultimately drive success in the channel and separate the winners from the laggards and talk about some of the steps that you're taking in the coming years to be on the winning side of that.
Sure. Talent is first and foremost product and then your distribution partners. I'll go into each one of those individually. Talent, we have over 140 people now globally in 10 different offices globally that are looking to raise capital.
If you notice, you know that's our own build.
We still have the distribution fees that we need to pay to the wirehouses. Having people and having the ability.
To have capital to put against is expensive to start.
That creates a moat. That is one of the reasons you see the scaled players really advancing the ball and taking more share in that market, because it is expensive to start. You need to be able to go out and not just deal with the wirehouses, but deal with all of the RIAs and IBDs. That means you have a sales force that is based all throughout the United States, in fact all throughout the globe, that is able to individually visit these offices, provide training, provide information. We have launched a training website that can assist in RIAs, IBDs, and other investors understanding the product. Having the talent and the capital to devote towards the sales and the education of these assets is extremely important. Having the right product set, and as we sit here today, we have seven products that are above $1 billion.
We believe that we're the only provider that currently has that many products above a billion dollars in the retail space. We just launched an eighth that is very, very popular. It's our Sports Media Entertainment Fund. It just went live with retail investors here recently and I believe that that one will scale fairly quickly because of its popularity. That was created based as much on inbound from the distribution partners as anything. It was them saying we know that you have this capability. They saw obviously the NFL press release, they said, we'd love to get this in retail investors' hands. We think that there's going to be a substantial demand for it. That's launched with two of the largest distribution partners right off the bat.
Normally those partners wait until you show some kind of scale, but that shows you how interested they are in that product. Having that wealth of products that when your sales force is going out and meeting with RIAs and is meeting with the IBDs is able to explain to them these are the different ways you might construct a portfolio. These are the different funds that we have and how you can think about them in terms of what you want to provide. That way they also begin to know the Ares brand name and the Ares name. That breadth of products matters as well. Then having the right distribution partner. It needs to be globally, you know, it needs to. You need to make sure that you're not overwhelming your capacity to originate.
You have good partners that understand that you're going to be methodical about onboarding all of your products over time and that you're going to do it at the right time so you're benefiting their investors. Those are all really important things.
You build out that platform.
I'm very excited about where we're at. We mapped out that we'd be at $100 billion in AUM in 2028. We're well on that pace. That's kind of a run rate pace for what we've been doing recently.
It's something that's exciting to us.
It's a great new avenue for fundraising and it acts as a great ballast against our institutional business. It's really important to not just be reliant on one or the other, but.
Have those two that work together.
They work a little bit in opposition to do things like protect fees.
How are flows holding up here in April and May, just given all the volatility in the markets?
Absolutely. We've been very pleased with how flows have held up. The retail investors have continued to deploy as importantly. What we didn't see was a rush of redemptions. That's something that you're always looking for. Certainly we've seen that in recent history with some retail funds is that there's been overall redemptions. A great point to highlight is that TAT, our interval fund that had its.
Redemption date as April 10, that was.
Right in the middle, if everyone remembers, of the tariff tantrum. That had in line redemptions with every other period.
That means that they had that.
Week to be looking at the markets to feel that dislocation and they still did not choose to redeem. That was great.
In terms of fundraising, April.
Numbers were very strong. May numbers were slightly down.
The reason that is just to.
Explain to everybody how the retail dollars.
Work is April is going to be.
A mix of what you raise in March and April and that happens on the first day. April flows come in on May 1 along with what you raise for the rest of May depends on your distribution partner. What you saw is that May number coming down. That was really a reflection of that May 1 date which reflected your April which was down slightly. We have seen a return that I would say we had our record retail inflows.
In Q1 of $3.2 billion.
I'd expect that we'd have similar flows here in the second quarter. With the addition of the sports media entertainment and the strength of what the April flows were against the bounce back in June, that we'd still have a very strong quarter in there.
Sounds quite encouraging. That's great. Maybe just on fee-related earnings, back at your investor day, you put out a target to grow fee-related earnings to 16%-20%. You alluded to that earlier. Over the next five years. Maybe just talk about some of the key building blocks you see behind that. Maybe the direct lending growing 15%-20% sort of being part of that. Just how do you think about that algo there and where might there be some scope for upside?
Sure.
It's one of the things I'm really.
Proud of as a firm and how we model it out is the conviction that we're able to do that. There's not many people that are able to give a five year plan and be able to operate within that plan and hit it. A lot of that is the predictability of our model. When you just look today, if you just said nothing else today except.
For our AUM not yet paying fees available for future deployment, that's 25% of.
Our current management fee revenue. That's going to come on largely margin accretive. There's a slight cost maybe to deploying that, but that number right there tells you that you have that amount of growth baked in if nothing else happens. That drives a lot of that direct lending growth that is still there in both Europe, the U.S. and Asia. The strong mature businesses continue to.
Be growing and strong.
You have our investment in other businesses. I would highlight last year at this.
Time, real estate was probably approaching its trough in terms of valuation.
It was probably approaching its trough in terms of market activity. If I had Bill Benjamin or Julie Solomon up here with me, they would have told you that at this time last year they were canceling more investment.
Committees that we were having a year later.
Now those investment committees are running longer. So there is more deal activity.
That real estate business, even though it's a mature business, is built for a macro environment that's much more active than it was. You're going to have just that.
Organic growth of something like that. Our ability as a scaled franchise to hold on to talent, to work with that talent through periods where it's not.
As active, that enables us to then grow in excess of what we might.
Have otherwise been able to do if we did not have that team already in place. You will have growth that comes from that. You will have growth in things like retail, so sports media, entertainment and launching that retail product. That was not in that roadmap. That is zero to something that is meaningful and that is happening with a team. You know, Mark Athalter and his team have been in place. It is happening with a nice amount of margin accretion.
I know that it wasn't.
In the plan last year, but I think data centers is a great example of how we think about growth because there's other smaller areas throughout the business. It just happens to be one of the larger dollar ones where we walk through that that was operating at a.
$20 million FRE loss.
That business as it comes online is, you know, we're going to have a first close of the Japan or final close of the Japan business coming up of that first location.
We'll launch at least one other location.
Based fund within the next year here and then we have several more that are waiting that were land backed. So you're going to go from negative $20 million to a positive number, which.
Is going to have an infinite impact.
On your FRE growth. Areas like that, real estate debt is another example that we highlighted in our investor day. We have already walked through the growth in alt credit. We have a number of different areas that we see expansion capabilities. What we want to do is give you high conviction that we can meet or exceed those numbers.
We try to model it out as if it is a, you know.
Kind of muted macro environment. If it is a robust environment, that's going to be a little different. If it's a depressed environment, it'll go the opposite way. We kind of just use a normalized environment over that five year period. Within a five year period, if you have a tremendously active environment, you can meaningfully beat or exceed. I talk about that with our margins as well. If we have a meaningful deployment environment, those are the type of years when your margin expansion expands greatly and you can really exceed that 16%-20% within that year, which gives you a nice base of your CAGR over that five year period.
Great. We have just a few minutes left. You mentioned data centers. Maybe we'll just double click on that as we think about the AI opportunity for Ares. Just taking a step back. Advances in sort of new technology, AI reshaping a number of different sectors. I was hoping you'd talk about how you see AI impacting the asset management industry and in particular the alternative asset management industry. One thing unique for the alts is that AI cuts across a number of opportunities from AI application at the management company to harnessing AI as a tool for value creation as well as AI as a deployment theme. On each of those three threads, I know we just have a few minutes left. Maybe just talk about, you know, how you're seeing some of the opportunities around that.
AI is, to me it's incredibly exciting. I love to think about what the future capabilities of IT are. We bought last year Bootstraps Lab, which is a venture capital firm focused on AI.
Our hypothesis was multifold.
Not just twofold, but multifold. There one was, you know, we're very happy with them as investors certainly. But as you know, we're not a venture capital investor. What we wanted is their interaction with our portfolio companies in terms of how they could meaningfully impact our portfolio companies' EBITDA growth, their overall profit levels, and then how they could impact Ares as a manager and what different types of AI that we should be looking at and working with those teams. We've put over 100 different use cases up on the whiteboard. So far we have 15 that are in active flight. The easiest way in a short period of time for you to think about it is, and where AI is today is think.
Of it like you're hiring a junior analyst and that if you're asking it.
The right questions and you give it access to the right centralized data, it.
Is able to quickly interrogate that for you.
It's able to help you identify patterns, it's able to assist with your due diligence of deals, it's able to put things together in a very summarized manner that in some cases would take days or even weeks. It's taking a lot of that initial lower level work off the table to allow for much faster analysis and faster decision making. That's really in terms of our use case, that's I think the easiest way for you to think about it. There's a number of different other channels that will ultimately I think benefit us there. Even in the last year, just the growth and the ability of it to do that has been exponential. It's getting better, it's getting smarter, it's getting more usable. You still need to be good at.
Asking the questions, but you do not need.
To be as good at asking the questions as you were before. You still do need to test the data as it comes out. You have it in terms of how do you work with it in portfolio companies. In terms of your portfolio companies, if it's increasing EBITDA, even on lending, that means you're increasing your interest coverage. That means they have the ability to potentially borrow more and invest more in other areas. That is how you can use it to help grow your portfolio. If you use that same basic premise of hey, right now it's acting like a good junior person in your business and if you're leveraging it, you're able to reduce your overall time spent, that's where you're going to see most of the impact to value.
Lastly in deployment, you know, I know I'm out of time now, but in terms of the data centers, the important things about our data centers is AI is a tailwind.
We don't build to spec, we build to suit the locations that we have.
We have currently land banked them. They are urban adjacent, so they are designed to provide low latency to those environments and be as beneficial to AI as they are to cloud computing, which was the original thesis behind them. AI just makes them even more desirable, but they still work in an.
Environment where AI is either non existent or cheaper.
Great, we'll have to leave it there. Thank you, greatly appreciate it.
Thank you. Thanks all of you.