This is Ann Dai. I'm Head of IR for Blue Owl, and we're rolling out a limited series of fireside chats with some of our senior business leaders at Blue Owl. This is really meant for our shareholders and prospective shareholders so they can do a little deep dive on the business before our Investor Day on February 7th. We're kicking off with Marc Zahr. He's one of our co-presidents. He's the head of our real estate business and just an all-around great person. Marc, I want to set the stage for real estate within the context of Blue Owl. So, you know, you built this very successful business called Oak Street prior to joining. It's focused on triple net lease.
Take us through the genesis of that business, why you built what you did, and how you built it standalone into what was about an $11 billion AUM business before you joined Blue Owl.
Sure. It's great to be here. Thank you for calling me a great person. I think you're a great person too. Genesis of the business. So look, take you back to 2009. We were at the time, from my perspective, in the depths of the financial crisis. And I saw a lot of friends, a lot of colleagues in multiple investment strategies get hurt, is the short way, short version of that. And what we wanted to do, what we set out to do, was put forth a strategy that we thought could withstand the environment that we had just been through and future black swan events. And for many years, and I looked a lot younger 15 years ago, walking into meetings and telling people what we were doing was set up to withstand a global financial crisis sounded a little bit audacious.
That said, if you think about the first 11 years and until the global pandemic that we all lived through, anything that you invested in, in alternative investments, especially if it was hard asset backed, generating income did well. But when the global pandemic hit in 2020, and you actually look back and measure managers, and every manager can be measured differently depending on what they do, within real estate, the most simplistic way to measure your managers is how much rent did they collect when the world was shut down? And I'm extremely proud to say, and it's a very self-serving point that I make.
Go right ahead.
We collected $0.01 on the dollar from every tenant in every portfolio, and that's saying a lot because those companies had a free pass for an extended period of time, and so that was the genesis, was to be able to have something that could pay income, predictable income through multiple environments and potentially face a black swan event and do all right, and now fast forward, I'm extremely proud of the track record that we've built, but we've been able to fulfill that promise.
So you kind of get to it, but I want to dig in a little more specifically on the downside protection, the income generation, and what's kind of unique about a net lease strategy, because it is very different than the real estate strategies for many of our peers, for others out there. So talk a little bit about the individual attributes, and then, you know, what has the evolution of that market looked like in terms of scaling and what type of TAM you're seeing there?
So it's interesting because, again, we hear this all the time, the net lease sector, and there is, there's a publicly traded net lease sector. There's a few private equity firms that do single tenant triple net lease. But I always remind people, triple net lease is simply a lease structure, right? And so you've heard me say this a bunch, but I'll say it again. If you take a step back and you think about investing in anything, okay, you have revenues and you have expenses. In real estate, your expenses consist of taxes, insurance, maintenance, utilities, and capital expenditures or CapEx. So if you structure your triple net lease the right way, right, you've basically pushed all of the expense out of the equation onto your counterparty, onto the tenant. So that's a big piece of what we do. The second is credit quality.
And again, it goes back to like Blue Owl DNA, if you will, right? We are focusing on credit quality even in our real estate strategy. So generally, the vast majority of our tenants in the assets that we are buying are investment grade rated companies. So we've got investment grade rated companies, primarily triple net leases, long duration leases, and we focus on our entry point, on our cap rates. And from my perspective, if you do those things, you're going to be able to withstand multiple market shocks and be able to pay that predictable income stream. And over the last 15 years, as the net lease sector has grown, even though what we do is somewhat unique within net lease, we've really been a tremendous beneficiary and grown our market share tremendously.
So you're really talking about selecting for the attributes you want through the structure and using that to look at the real estate sector at large.
That's exactly right.
And over the last couple of years, obviously being inflation hedged, that's been a huge benefit to the business. And single tenant mission critical, that's kind of specific to our net lease strategy, right? That's not necessarily a focus of all net lease players.
That's exactly right. So what is a focus to us is single-tenant, mission-critical assets, great credit quality in the building, long-duration leases. What does that mean? 15-, 20-, 25-year leases. And focusing, again, I say this all the time, on your entry point. So when interest rates come back down, or when they were down from 2015 to the end of 2021, and there was massive credit availability, a lot of groups chased the market. Having drawn a line in the sand on where you will buy assets is key because it gives you that margin of safety. And that's something that has served us very, very well.
In a lower rate environment, you were doing cap rates, maybe it was high sixes, something like that. Today, maybe it's like high sevens. You know, you're able to distribute a very nice income, a very nice yield on this product. What is it, like 7% or so?
Yeah. So depending on which vehicle you're invested in and leverage drawdown versus evergreen, we pay somewhere between a 7% and 8% current pay annualized monthly from cash flow.
Tax advantage.
Correct.
So this is kind of, this gets to the question that we get a lot, which is, what is that conversation you're having with these companies? Because on the face of it, you're talking about largely investment grade companies. They can access financing at lower rates than seven or eight cap rates. So why does a company come to you and enter into a net lease with Blue Owl?
So a couple of different things. Number one, some companies view this as a financing. I generally don't view this as a financing, right? I take a very different philosophical approach. If you look at the S&P, right, S&P data, and you took out every single investment grade rated company in the U.S. and Canada alone and looked at the amount of PP&E property, plant, and equipment they have on the balance sheet, that number is 12 trillion. Putting aside all the new assets that are going to be built, a massive CapEx need and tailwinds and digital infrastructure, data centers and manufacturing, right, existing products, if you add Europe to that equation, that adds another 10 trillion of assets, okay? So you've got all of these assets, and these companies earn zero to own those assets. It is a non-earning asset on their balance sheet.
So what our team does, spend a lot of time with CFOs and treasury departments, educating them on why they should unlock the value tied up in this non-earning asset that they're already paying the expense side of the equation for and redeploy back into operations. And so that's the first point that I made. But to answer your question, why would someone do that at a higher yield than they would interest rate on their debt, for example? And the short answer is it's different for every company, right? If you are a technology company and you're trading at 50x EBITDA, again, going back to the point that's made, it's completely inefficient for you to tie up those dollars and hard assets that you're not earning anything on. So redeploying back into operations is a credit to your shareholders.
If you are a company that's trading at 7x multiple and you do the inverse to a cap rate and you're doing a deal at even an 8% cap rate or 12x multiple, that's accretive to your shareholders because, again, you're unlocking a non-core asset and able to generate a multiple arbitrage. Then another way to look at it, and I know we're getting into the weeds a little bit, but it's important. Historically, companies could deduct all their interest expense. That changed, right? So when you're exceeding 30% of your EBIT, you lose your interest deductibility limitation, right? Why is that important? Rent expense is fully deductible. So when you start to look at it on an after-tax basis for a company that's losing its interest deductibility limitation, that can be valuable.
If a company issues debt, and I know I'll stop after this, I promise, company issues debt, they have a $1 billion liability on the balance sheet for 10 years. Company does a $1 billion sale-leaseback, they generate $1 billion of cash the same way they would with a $1 billion bond offering, except for the way it's calculated on their balance sheet is a net present value of that rental stream. So day one, it may not be a $1 billion liability, it may be $800 million or $900 million. So it's less debt day one, and it's an amortizing instrument. So again, I know I've thrown a lot at you and our listeners, but it's never a one size fits all.
This is very clearly for many of them a capital allocation decision as opposed to let's maximize value in the real estate itself. It serves other uses. It creates value across their platform in other ways.
Much better said than what I did. Yes, agreed.
And so, you know, what you said earlier kind of resonated with me. You went out to treasurers, you went out to CFOs, and you've now built this proprietary set of relationships. So in your current origination, it's very, you're not dependent on the auction market. You're creating flow for the platform through the work that you guys have done over the past decade plus.
That's exactly right. And I say this all the time, there's nothing wrong with the auction market. I would love to be able to buy every day in the auction market because someone's doing that work for me and my team. Unfortunately, the auction market results in higher prices and lower yields, which makes it substantially more difficult for us to do what we want to be doing, which is deliver higher returns while we believe taking less risk. By finding these opportunities, and there's a lot of them, there's a lot, there's thousands of companies, right? Investment-grade rated companies with needs. So what the team focuses on day in and day out is finding a company that may have a need for this capital and may have a need over the next quarter or two quarters, and we can help them achieve their goals.
In return, we'll be able to generate a slightly higher yield, which should create more value for our shareholders and our investors.
So that's interesting because when I think about our capital availability, you know, we have capital on hand at all times. And as part of Blue Owl, if we start to fast forward to you guys joining Blue Owl, that's a much bigger factor in that equation, whereas others in the marketplace may not be around all the time. That's also an advantage of the business, right?
Yeah, absolutely. Look, so said differently, we do have a meaningful market share. Again, by some measures, 80% market share. We have substantial scale. We have the longest track record, and we've done transactions with 600 different tenants, 3,500 properties, right? And we've built a reputation on doing what we say we're going to do when we're going to do it, and that means something.
So let's fast forward to joining Blue Owl. You came on board at the end of 2021. It's been just about three years. Since then, we've nearly tripled AUM. We've tripled fee revenues. That's incredible growth in and of itself. But when you consider the backdrop, which is it's been a terrible market for real estate, no one's been raising any significant money. So I want to dig into that a little bit because anytime you see that kind of divergence between us and the market, that's pretty notable. What's happening under the hood here? We've put up 50% management growth on an annual basis over the past few years, and we've expanded fee rates by 30%. So compare and contrast that for me, you know, market's tough, but we've generated this good growth. What have we been able to do as a combined platform?
Blue Owl was the perfect partner. And obviously, I'm not just saying that. It sounds great, but like the numbers that you just went through, I think speak for themselves. So what happened? You had an investment firm that was really good at doing this thing, right? And you took that investment firm and you plugged it into a phenomenal infrastructure, right? Which allowed me and my team to do what we do best, which is go out and find these deals and invest this capital. What the larger marketplace didn't have was a dedicated single tenant triple net investment grade focus strategy. And in good markets, like we had for many years, everybody can look good in those markets.
In this environment is when strategies that really are differentiated, that offer high current income and smart investors can understand the downside protection, and then on top of that, see the potential for opportunistic returns, you're going to do well, right? So what we did was we took this great strategy that primarily had been done through institutions, and we plugged it into our phenomenal private wealth system, right? And you take that, and again, launching in September of 2022, double-edged sword, right? It's a very difficult environment to raise money, but phenomenal buying environment. So a big testament to our team that was able to go out and tell the story and able to sort of break down those barriers. And fast forward to today, we raised, I don't know, $4 billion, right?
We are the number one capital raiser on a gross and net basis and really have been hit the ground running from a zero start. That's tremendous. And we spend a lot of time talking about that. What's also important is during that exact same period of time, we raised the largest institutional fund, drawdown fund in North America and maybe even globally. We raised $5.2 billion that we closed at the end of the first quarter of this year. So I'm guessing that'll be measured in 2024, not 2023. But again, to date, I think it is the largest fund that we've seen. That is a testament to these two firms coming together and finding these synergies and going out and doing what we do best.
By the way, that's a staggering stat because it's not just the largest net lease fund, it's the largest U.S.-focused real estate fund in all of 2023, right?
Correct.
That's wild.
And 2024.
and 2024. On the wealth piece, I mean, I think I don't want to put words in your mouth, but this is probably one of the reasons you wanted to join Blue Owl is the strength of our wealth platform. And so maybe you can just give us an inside look on what that was like for you. You know, the acquisition gets announced, we close. You know, at what point do you start working with the wealth team to conceptualize this product? And how did it break down barriers that you were facing as a standalone manager?
I don't know if I can say it. Pre-closing, we started working on it, but actually, I had the benefit of in my seat pre-Blue Owl evaluating most every firm, peer, competitor on the street. And I was so surprised at how amazing our private wealth team was. And that's a testament to Doug and Marc to lean into this space before it really was a space years and years ago when Owl Rock started. But Sean, Derek, the entire team was really forward-thinking. And I think as excited as I was about the potential of really taking what I thought was a unique product that would do very well in this channel, I think they were equally as excited because historically, just simply raising credit funds and seeing the strength of a real estate product was something that the team wanted.
I don't think anybody anticipated what was going to happen shortly after closing with commercial real estate and interest rates and inflation. But the team worked very hard. And while it was a difficult fundraising period, it was a great buying opportunity. And it's a testament to the team, the private wealth team, on being able to go out and counter that terrible backdrop in commercial real estate and explain what we do and gain that market share.
Yeah, I imagine Sean and Derek would have been really excited, you know, coming from Credit World. It has a lot of the same characteristics, the strategy in that it's high income, it's principal protected. But hey, if you weren't attaching to Blue Owl's wealth products in some way because you had credit or you weren't interested in credit at the moment, hey, we have something for you in real estate now. So like the way I picture it almost is we announce this thing and like day one, Sean just, you know, or Derek slaps a folder on your desk and you're like, here's your game plan. We're ready to go. Was it kind of like that?
I wish it was like that, actually. No, there was, everybody was really excited. It was very much a team effort. All right, we understood what structures made sense in the marketplace. And we had a very nice relationship with one of the large private wealth channels. And so being able to parlay that into Blue Owl day one and get started with them was tremendous. And then taking Blue Owl's history and relationships with the other channels, other private wealth platforms, and leaning in at a time when they weren't really adding anything else made this so compelling. And so again, when you take a step back and look at the platforms that we're on today, we're on the majors, but there's still so much room for growth as we go out and get on other platforms in the space.
And you said something that kind of just resonated for me. The platforms weren't adding anyone else. So I mean, you've existed as a standalone manager. You've gone through this process with us in a period where it's tough to get shelf space and it's tough to get a real estate product done. When you think about other smaller managers or standalone managers, like what do you think that process looks like for them to try to get onto wealth platforms?
I think it's twofold. Number one, I think wealth platforms, as you continue to see more demand for alternative investments, wealth platforms are going to be looking for unique strategies, something that is different. So if you are a manager with something that is different, that is unique, that is income producing, I think you have a shot, right? I think if you are going into something trying to compete with a larger manager that already exists and you're doing something very similar, that's a tough order.
Yeah, makes sense. So when we think about the strategy now, high income, principal protected, you're putting up mid-20s returns on a fully realized basis in the drawdown funds. And that's basically for investment-grade credit exposure. I can see why that's really attractive to investors, both wealth and institutional. And one question we get is, why aren't more people in this business? Like why haven't we attracted more competitors on the deployment side?
We have, and again, I think the reason. There's a couple of things. Number one is we have done one thing and we've parlayed that one thing into different strategies, and now we can talk about data centers and things like that, but it goes back to the point I made earlier. You can do a single tenant triple net lease on anything, so you have other groups that invest in industrial and retail and multifamily. We just choose to do that with a triple net lease, long duration, and focusing on tenant credit quality. Now, in the public sector, there's a number of groups that our net lease has grown to be a very large sector publicly. Privately, you've seen a handful of players stay in the marketplace that, again, we've had more realizations, we've grown faster, and our strategy is so much more myopic and focused.
And then you've seen a lot of other groups enter the market, but they come and go because they do everything, right? All the big names have done something in net lease. Now, most of them entered, I would argue, at the wrong times. And something that I focus on, especially with our team, is maintaining discipline, right? So what does that mean? That means when the market is frothy, not buying at lower yields. And a lot of people say, oh, well, that's, you just buy where the market is. That's not true. Private real estate is an inefficient asset class. And when you have a TAM as large as we have in what we do, putting aside all the existing product that is being built today and the massive CapEx needs that companies have, you can pick and choose where you can create alpha.
And that's what has allowed us to continue to succeed and grow in the space. Other people think, oh, it's just single tenant, triple net lease, investment grade, long. Anybody can go, yes, you can. And generally, those are the people that we're selling to. Last quarter, let's talk about last quarter. Last quarter, we acquired about $1.5 billion or put out $1.5 billion at a 9.4 weighted average cap rate, okay, on leverage yield. We sold a little over $300 million last quarter at a 5.8 cap rate, okay? So take a step back. And I've thrown a lot of numbers out there for a second. So I want to stay here and just double-click on that. And people talk in basis points. That's 360 basis points, but don't think of it that way.
Think of it 360 basis points on a 5.8 cap rate. We are buying 60% better than where we are selling, so we talk about buying at a 20% discount. In this environment, last quarter was an outlier, so let's not bank on that happening moving forward, but think about that. Buying at a 9.4, the exact same product that you're selling at a 5.8, and that's what we do, right, so that focus, that discipline, that 15-year track record allows us to take advantage of that market volatility.
It honestly sounds almost too good to be true. And I know that's actually why so many people internally are invested in this product. It's an incredible product. What I'm hearing from you on the deployment aspect of it, and I know we have a $20+ billion pipeline today, but even with more competitors in the market, there's something about our focus on exactly, you know, sticking to our cooking. There's something about our scale and the place. And I think, Marc, there's probably something about proprietary relationships as well. So repeat customers working with the same companies to do net lease, you know, all of that is protective of the business and of our deployment pipeline. And also there's just this kind of massive TAM versus even today having grown a lot, our size in the market.
Absolutely. And but we welcome some competition, right? In 2021, we sold $3 billion to competitors that were entering the marketplace. And some investors and even Doug and Marc at the time were like, why are we selling to someone who wants to pay 150 bips spread and allow us to print an opportunistic 20+ percent return? We welcome that. And we can go out and redeploy at the levels that I just described. And that's part of the strategy.
For them, those are cap rates that work perfectly fine for their business.
Absolutely.
Hopefully it works for everyone.
It does.
That makes a lot of sense. I think you alluded to this, but I just want to confirm, you know, when you're talking about the current interest rate environment, obviously huge swings in the last three years. And it doesn't sound like there's anything in today's environment or looking forward that really makes you feel like anything has fundamentally changed about the business where we're generally putting out capital where we're able to monetize.
No, not at all. And you've heard me say this before, but I think it's an important statistic for most people. We spend a lot of time, everybody in the industry, in our industry, not alternatives, if you will, talks about interest rates. We should be always talking about interest rates coupled with spreads and credit availability. And so if you, in my investing career, which has basically been over the last two decades, the highest interest rate environment that we've seen was 2006, okay? 2006, on average, the 10-year was at 4.8%, 4.79%, and at times over 5% throughout the year. But 2006 was a frothy environment for all asset classes. Why? Well, if you have banks, lenders lending at 85, 90 cents on the dollar, 10 years interest only with no spread, 25 bips, you're going to see a frothy environment, right?
So even today with a 10-year and interest rates where they are, the reason that you're seeing the buying opportunity, number one is volatility, but also because credit availability is not at that level. And the expense side of the equation that many people have not focused on, investors haven't focused on, was completely out of whack. It's difficult for investors if you don't have a triple net lease, if you're buying apartments and your taxes are going up dramatically and your insurance costs are going up dramatically at the exact same time that your occupancy is reduced, like your NOI is out of whack. So it's tough to be forward-facing and going out and buying in that environment because there's so much uncertainty. Our job is to eliminate that uncertainty and focus on the things that are important.
Yeah, and that's been an incredible structure over the past couple of years with everything we've seen. We get this next question a lot too. So I just want to, let me frame it for you real quick, which is credit quality. Now, we face mostly IG companies. The credit quality has been very good across the portfolio, but inevitably something somewhere will go wrong. So I want to kind of just walk through with you what we do from a risk mitigation standpoint and then what are the steps we take if we get to that point where something has gone wrong.
Sure. So look, let's take a step back again. We have over 3,500 properties, over, I don't know, 600, 700 tenants in our portfolios. Not everything is going to be perfect. Now, over the years, the fact that you can count on one hand the number of issues that we've had, by the way, when I say issues, I mean credit quality issues, not real estate issues in the portfolio, is staggering. I don't think anybody else in the industry can talk about that winning record, if you will. Now, that's because in a strategy where it's single tenant, triple net, investment grade, long duration, creditworthy.
Mission critical assets.
And mission critical assets, generally you should have fewer credit issues, right? Just statistically. And that's the nature of the strategy. But we're not a credit strategy. We focus on credit within a real estate strategy. So we are still focusing on real estate underwriting, understanding which sectors we want to be in and why. And not only that, when we use the word mission critical, what does that mean? It means different things depending on the sectors that you're investing in. So let's just, in retail, if we are buying a retailer, we want to make sure that the locations that we are buying are profitable locations for the retailer. So we can pick on Walgreens, right? That's a name in our portfolio. So there's been a lot of news about Walgreens. And generally people think, oh, it's a disaster. Well, yes, their credit has deteriorated.
That said, with all the closures and everything that you're reading about, and I knock on wood, we haven't had any in our portfolio because above and beyond the credit work that we're doing, we're buying locations that are profitable for Walgreens. Even with the massive negative headlines that we've seen, we sold a property at 200 basis points of spread two months ago, generating again, 20+ percent net returns on Walgreens. And by the way, Walgreens is still a BB company, right? So it's not just because it dropped from investment grade and it may be on a negative trajectory, it's still a good enough company, if you will. Another name in our portfolio that people have asked us about over the years, Bed Bath & Beyond, right? Another retailer. When we did that deal, we closed on that deal in January of 2020.
And again, looking back at all of our memos and even our existing investors, we're like, the credit is deteriorating. We're like, we know 100% it's deteriorating, but we are buying such good real estate that we think we're going to do well regardless of that credit deterioration. And by the way, I wasn't one of those people, our team wasn't smart enough to say, oh, COVID's hitting in 60 days and the world's going to be shut down. And so wasn't smart enough to see that. And that's the basis of the strategy again. But stay with me. We did 16 properties. Out of those 16 properties, we've already sold 14 out of the 16 properties, generating 30+ percent net returns. The last two, one is under contract to be sold and the other one is being leased up.
And so even if they are worth nothing, if they have zero residual value, which is impossible, we still generate an opportunistic return on that credit, on that name. So again, understanding more than just credit, real estate, operating metrics are key. In industrial, if it's a distribution facility, what percentage of the locations is it distributing to? If it's a manufacturing facility, what products is it making? What percentage of the revenue for the company are generated by these products? So you really want to think through it from a number of different underwriting standards.
Right. So I'm hearing diversification of portfolio, credit quality of the tenants, downside protection in due diligence of the real estate itself, and understanding the role of that facility or asset in the overall company's operations.
Very well said. I should write that down and answer it like that next time.
We'll have a transfer for you, Marc.
Thank you.
So you mentioned a few of these kind of key themes that we invest behind. There's industrial, logistics. We talked about essential retail. I think those have been pretty steady throughout the course of your time in the business, and we're kind of adding to that a little bit with data centers, so maybe this is just a good time to segue into the recent acquisition announcement of IPI. I know we're all really excited about it.
Yeah.
And you've seen firsthand what joining Blue Owl can do for a business. So as you look at it, and this is going to fall under real estate, is it the same playbook for IPI? And what was so attractive about the business?
Yes. So, okay. Now, when you think about a lot of the things that we've talked about, single tenant, credit quality, large total addressable market, and something that we didn't talk about, supply-demand imbalance, which we'll talk about. What IPI has done in the space, number one, I'd say pioneering is not an exaggeration. Their portfolio is the best credit quality of any portfolio that I've ever seen, right? Because the vast majority of the tenants, by nature, these hyperscalers are AA and AAA rated companies. They're the best credit-rated companies in the world. And when you think about what we do from a single tenant, triple net lease standpoint, we think about mission criticality, credit quality, lease structure, and duration. This is a perfect fit. Now we're just double-clicking into something that has the biggest supply-demand imbalance that I have seen in my investing career, right?
So what does that mean? That means today there is far more need by these companies to build these data centers, this digital infrastructure than there is capital available. Think about that, right? So in everything else that we do, there's usually a ton more money chasing a limited supply of stuff. With everybody and everybody talking about data centers, right? There isn't enough money to fulfill this need. Now, I believe, and I could be wrong, this is a moment in time, but it is somewhat irrelevant, right? If you can deploy capital into Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, and generate the returns that we're talking about and own the hard asset, own this mission critical digital infrastructure, to me, it feels like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And so besides the total addressable market, the CapEx needs that these companies have is staggering.
As you can tell, I'm pretty excited.
Yeah, I wouldn't have been able to tell.
Yeah.
What's also interesting, you talked about capital and scale being a differentiator for IPI, but that's not the only differentiator because there's a lot of people talking about raising capital to address the data center opportunity, but what they have is quite unique. Is that right?
Absolutely. So not only are they an asset manager in the space, but they are vertically integrated, if you will, right? They have an operating company called STACK that builds these assets and operates these assets. And that mission criticality for those companies is key, right? They're not just coming in like we are and providing capital, which is a need. They actually can build and operate for these companies and have done so over and over again. And that's really important for that counterparty today is understanding that you have a partner that has worked with you in the past, that isn't new to the space, that can operate and build the facilities that you need and has access to power.
These hyperscalers, I mean, these are their most important assets. That trusted relationship is key.
Very important.
Also, I mean, does it help? I'm assuming that IPI has a global footprint. It's growing by the day, and land, power, all of these things that are constraints in the industry, they're quite far ahead on as well.
Agreed. They have a similar to us in net lease, right? Starting early, having a dominant market share. That's exactly what IPI is in data centers. And the combination of our capital formation, our lease structuring with their data center expertise and relationships, we're excited. We think it's going to be a very powerful combination.
I want to leave some of the special thoughts for investors. So I think we'll leave it there on data centers. I feel like we could talk for another hour on this, but let's put a cap on that for now. Quickly, before we finish up, I just want to highlight a couple of the other new products, new businesses we have under the real estate umbrella today. So real estate credit, this is a business we acquired, Prima, closed in June. They've had an incredible record of investing successfully over 30 years. So I think like two losses over 30 years. That's insane, first of all. And a lot has happened in real estate over those decades. So when you look at what Prima is today, what do you see ahead for that business?
So for 13 years, every single time we would look at evaluating another strategy, right? I'd go back to what we are doing in single tenant, triple net lease, long duration, investment grade, and credit worthy. I can't replicate that risk-adjusted return and that total addressable market anywhere else, okay? And so I'm giving you this backdrop. I'll answer your question in a second because it's important. In 2022, when the world changed, for the first time in a very, very long time, being in the senior position, i.e., in the debt, not the equity, became the best risk-adjusted return that you can have, okay?
Now, it differs based on tax motivations, but to simply look at it and say, "Wait a second, I can generate," I'll oversimplify, just call it an 8%-10%, sitting at 60% in the capital stack, meaning somebody else is going to put up $0.40 of equity ahead of me that needs to be wiped out. And I can generate these types of returns owning hard assets is just amazing. Now, you think about total addressable market there, huge, right? So $5 trillion and massive structural shifts with moving from banks lending to private lending to asset managers lending, similar to what we do in private credit, right? We evaluated a number of different businesses and went back and forth between building versus buying. We wanted to focus on, we wanted to buy something.
And every single platform that we looked at, again, very good platforms, had so much risk from our perspective, issues that could come up in their portfolios. Prima was the first deal that we looked at that had a nimble team, small, longest track record, you hit it on the head, two defaults in 32 years is unheard of, and a leader in the securities business. So again, when you think about investing in real estate credit, you can originate loans, you can buy securities, you can buy loans. And at certain times, some are more profitable or valuable than others. In the environment that we've been in, real estate securities has been a phenomenal place to play. And Prima is a leader in the risk retention there. So couldn't be more excited.
Also, along that same period of time, brought Jesse Hom on board, somebody who has been a partner to us, an investor over the years from GIC to lead that business for us. And so we couldn't be more excited. Again, we've got today, we have 16 investment professionals, $15 billion in assets, and growing rapidly.
As you think about just Prima's first quarter as part of Blue Owl officially, they deployed $1 billion across their existing mandates, across the liquid piece of the non-traded REIT, and for insurance, which is a newer business for us, totally different cost of capital. So that to me implies it is very well integrated. It's enmeshed in our business today. You oversaw that integration. I just kind of want to see what your perspective was on that. How did we get everything in so quickly?
It's actually a great case study. We are integrated. It's done, right? So systems are in place, processes are in place. And you hit it right on the head again, Ann. It's like, think about it. So we had hired another individual from a different firm that was here that was helping and really running our liquid securities for our non-traded REIT, Chris. And then we announced bringing Jesse on board. And while we were doing that, we were also acquiring Kuvare's asset management arm, and we were also acquiring Prima. So we were doing a massive integration across, if you will, four different platforms. And you bring it all together today, it's all working very well because it's, again, not that many people, which is lucky for that deal, right? We had 15 professionals all based here in New York coming into the office together and long-standing relationships.
So Jesse and I had been working together for multiple years. We've done billions of acquisitions together. We understand how each other thinks. Jesse had been working with Prima for a decade. It was one of his largest positions, knowing Greg, knowing Nilesh, knowing that team so well. So now it was just bringing the band together, if you will. And I am biased, but I do think it's an all-star team.
And synergistically, when you think about what Prima used to do, they're very focused on the risk retention piece, but now with all these other pockets of capital and we're looking at maybe a commingled fund, this is the thing that we did with Oak Street. It's happening real-time with Prima. It's going to happen with Atalaya. We'll look to close IPI. And that's playbook, right? That's what we've been talking about.
Blue Owl Real Estate Credit will be a phenomenal business in real estate securities, loan originations, and we'll be buying loans. And the team is going to grow. And I'm very excited for what we're going to be telling people there.
Thank you, Marc. We covered a lot. I'm going to end our regularly scheduled programming here with just one question, and I'm putting you on the spot a little bit. But last Investor Day, we talked about growing real estate 50% CAGR, right? And that seemed like a really big number at the time. We hit a crazy market environment, and you still did it. So I'm not going to hold you to anything, but is that type of growth possible again for the business?
You are putting me on the spot. Look, I want to be thoughtful in this response. The short answer is yes, but what's most important is growing and being able to do what we've done for our investors in the disciplined manner in which we have. And so yes, we can do that. And we've added two legs to the stool that's going to help us do that in areas that produce predictable income with downside protection and have real upside capabilities. And if you look at each leg of that stool again, I've used this word, I'll use it again, pioneering in what we're talking about, leaders in the space. And so I'm excited about the growth prospects for the real estate platform at Blue Owl.
Okay. So we're going to leave it there on the business talk. Marc, you didn't know this was coming, but I just want to do a quick rapid-fire session with you on a more personal level just so people can get to know you a bit. We're going to call this Sip and Spill.
Great.
So given that it is still fall, even though it doesn't feel like that today, we're going to be sipping on pumpkin spice lattes. I don't know if you've ever had one.
I have.
You have, actually.
I actually have.
I didn't know the answer. I thought it was going to be a big no. All right. Here you go.
They're delicious. I do drink black coffee usually, but yeah, I'll take this.
You know, why don't we hop in? Because actually this segues into my first question, which is I've been told you're a bit of a health nut. So health and wellness, really into that stuff. I know we personally have talked about cryo. Anything else that you're into that you can share tips for our listeners?
Sauna and cold plunge, so I would say doing a sauna and being in cold water is very good for you based on what I have read and seen.
Is this like a weekly thing for you?
Yes. It is a weekly thing for me.
Okay. No, I kind of want to do it.
There's a difference. So again, for the cold plunge, everybody is different, right? You could enter a 60-degree body of water and that's cold. I am not somebody that's in like 38-degree bodies of water regularly, but I kind of like give or take 50. 50 degrees, I think, is a good level for me. 38 hurts my joints. But just like anything else, you can get used to it.
That sounds pretty cold to me, and actually, speaking of cold, so you live in Chicago. I'm assuming you're a Bears fan. I don't think we've actually talked about this before, but thoughts on Caleb Williams and also thoughts on, well, maybe how are you coping with the season that the Bears are having?
I am a Bears fan as much as you can be, right? It's been tough for a pretty long time. Again, I think we've just got to give this guy some time and give the team some time. There's some things that they need to work on. We've had a couple of tough losses, but I'm going to stay cautiously optimistic and not jump on the bandwagon of how terrible this is and how quickly we need to change things.
Okay. I like that. You're on the road a lot. What is your go-to airport food?
Burrito.
Burrito from where?
Yeah. At O'Hare Burrito Beach.
Okay. And then just so you know, this audience is going to be like buy side and sell side. We're all road warriors. So we all have that one travel mishap story, the worst thing that's ever happened. Do you have one in mind?
No. I don't. I can't think of anything off the top of my head. I've been in multiple airports where you're just stuck and you can't get home, but nothing that is an outlier to me.
You've been extraordinarily lucky then.
Yeah. Well, we just jinxed it. We just jinxed it, Ann.
Oh my God. Marc's not going to make it home. Okay. Best place you've traveled to, whether recent memory or ever, somewhere you recommend?
Lake Como. Went there last, not this past August, but last August for Work From Anywhere August. It was beautiful. Food was great. I had never been. Beautiful place.
I was just there in August. Amazing. Last thing. What are you reading or listening to?
I'm embarrassed to say nothing, and I answer this question a lot the same way. I don't have time, and I'm so sad to read or listen to anything for pleasure, so we've been busy. I mean, think about it, Ann. The last 36 months has been, I didn't think I could have been any busier, but I am, so I want to change the answer next time we do this, so I promise I'm going to find something to do for pleasure on the reading or listening side.
Okay. Perfect. We'll put you on the calendar for next year.
Great.
So Marc, thank you again for joining us. I really appreciate the insights that you're providing. I know our shareholders do as well. So we're really looking forward to seeing you on stage on February 7th. And for our listeners, we'd love to hear from you. Let us know who you'd like to hear from next, what questions you have for them, and we'll talk to you soon.
Thank you.