BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

But remember, in asset allocation and when there’s money in motion, it moves to cash, it moves to longer-term assets, it’s something you must have as a liquidity tool to do all the things that clients need to do. And since we’re going to be I think a beneficiary of the long-term assets, going after corporations and treasury management and other institutions for their cash, puts us in the game in a much better way than if they’re just coming into our products from the outside. So it’s an important business for us. It also is a business which has to do with performance and it also has to do with quality. And as you’ve seen issues in the banking industry and other issues in the markets, people look for the high-quality and they look for the brand, and we have that.

So we’re very optimistic and we will continue to really build our sales force to continue to be a leader in the cash management business, knowing that it’s also going to lead to other opportunities for us.

Operator: Thank you. We’ll take our next question from Brian Bedell with Deutsche Bank.

Brian Bedell: Great. Thanks. Good morning, folks.

Laurence Fink: Hi, Brain.

Brian Bedell: Hi, good morning. Maybe just to focus a little bit on transition management, you talked a lot about this at Investor Day and I just wanted to sort of think about the timing in organic growth potential. I mean, you definitely have one of the most unique capabilities across multi-product areas in this endeavor, and obviously, we’re going to see the pace of global spending on this almost double to nearly $4 trillion per annum between the debt part of it, in particular, direct lending and venture debt and your Kreos acquisition, how quickly do you think you can put all of that together and significantly expand I think the $17 billion that you have right now in transition private markets? Is it a build that can happen as early as sort of in the next couple of quarters or is this more like ’24, ’25?

Robert Kapito: Well, first of all, thanks for the question. I think the transition investing is probably one of the greatest opportunities in the world today. The dialogs that we’re having with governments worldwide. Very unique. There’s not a government that is not focus on this, especially for countries that are dependent on importation of power. They’re all looking for different ways across-the-board in terms of how do they successfully navigate their economy. Energy and power is becoming one of the dominant conversations and then through the United States, IRA. We are seeing just huge interests with. U.S and non-U.S companies. Coming into the United States and take advantage of the opportunities that present to us in terms of elevated returns because the IRA.

And so we look at this as a multi-year growth opportunity. We are working. We announced. As I said earlier, my talk about the Acacia energy the largest. Battery storage capability in the world. And that just has set us. And the conversations we’re having with other countries related to that type of activity, it’s becoming. Is becoming much conversational component of what we’re doing. So we look at this, is it a significant, we’re talking 10s and 10s of trillions of dollars. Market opportunity. Now if you overlay. More-and-more issues around debt to GDP in more-and-more countries, more-and-more countries are going to have to look to private capital. It cannot be funded by the public sector. And that is one of the great positioning opportunity for BlackRock relationships worldwide.