Blackstone beats estimates on strong dealmaking activity

The ticker and trading information for Blackstone Group is displayed at the post where it is traded on the floor of the New York Stock exchange

Blackstone, the world’s largest alternative asset manager, beat Wall Street expectations for fourth-quarter profit on Thursday, as it cashed in on heightened dealmaking activity and saw growth in its data center business.

Shares of the New York-based firm rose one per cent in premarket trading.

Financial investors and corporations piled back into mergers and acquisitions in 2025 after a volatile start, helped by easing interest rates and lessening policy uncertainty.

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Blackstone made US$957 million selling assets in the three months to December, 59 per cent more than in the same period of 2024.

The firm raked in $71.5 billion in fresh capital in the quarter and now manages assets worth $1.27 trillion.

The results highlight a growing trend for larger private capital firms to keep raising money apace while smaller, newer funds struggle in a more competitive environment.

Blackstone’s infrastructure funds performed strongly, with valuations up 8.4 per cent in the period. This was driven by data center operator QTS, which Blackstone bought in 2021 and is now benefiting from demand to develop artificial intelligence.

“Our focus on investing at massive scale in the build-out of digital and energy infrastructure continues to create significant value,” Chief Executive Officer Stephen Schwarzman said.

Blackstone also holds QTS through a real estate investment trust (BREIT) which returned 8.1 per cent in 2025, staging a recovery after a difficult couple of years starting in late 2022 when investors queued up to pull out their money amid falling property prices and rising interest rates.

Distributable earnings, or cash that can be used to pay dividends to shareholders, rose three per cent to $2.2 billion in the three months to December.

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That translated to $1.75 per share, surpassing the $1.54 analysts expected on average, according to LSEG data. For the full year, the closely watched metric came in at $5.57 per share, versus expectations of $5.35 in the LSEG poll.

Blackstone spent $42 billion on purchases including Japanese engineering staffing firm TechnoPro in the period, and committed a further $23 billion to buying large assets including medical device maker Hologic.

Unloved by the stock market

Blackstone shares fell about 11 per cent last year, in line with other large alternative asset managers.

Piper Sandler analysts said the stock had been “unloved” and rated it “neutral” but said it should benefit from a pickup in transaction activity and performance revenues.

With a global real estate portfolio worth $611 billion, the company drew scrutiny this month when U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to ban large institutional investors from buying single-family homes.

Blackstone’s stock is currently trading at 23 times its forecast 2026 earnings, although its projected fee growth is only in low double digits, Piper Sandler said.

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Shares briefly traded down as much as eight per cent but analysts shrugged off the risk. Oppenheimer analyst Chris Kotowski put its exposure at about $6 billion, out of more than $1.2 trillion total, calling it “obviously trivial.”

(Reporting by Isla Binnie in New York and Arasu Kannagi Basil in Bengaluru; Editing by Tasim Zahid)