KKR & Co. Inc. (NYSE:KKR) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Craig Larson: Yes. Thanks for the question. I think on deployment, I looked at the debt markets haven’t fully healed, but despite that, we’ve continued to find ways to deploy capital. I do think the capital markets business actually gives us a real leg up in helping to put together the debt side of a cap structure. Where we’re interested now would include those areas where we think we can really bring our operational resources to bear and move the needle. Again, we love carve-outs. We’ve been very active public to privates. I think by strategy, you actually hit on probably the single busiest area in our firm, and that’s infrastructure. And I think infrastructure has just continued to be a real success story and a real growth story for us.

I think it’s €“ when we look back at our April 2021 Investor Day, we gave a bunch of statistics there of actually where we thought Infra would be over the course of 2022. Just to give you a sense, at that point Infra-AUM was $17 billion. We estimated at that Investor Day that Infra-AUM would exceed $30 billion and as of year-end we’re at $51 billion against that $30 billion estimate all organic. We look for management fees effectively to double from that $150 million to $275 million to $300 million was our estimate for 2022. And for the full year, infra management fees came in at $340 million, so nicely ahead of the top end of that range. And we’ve got $9 billion of infra for capital that will become fee-paying as it’s invested at a weighted average fee rate of about 120 basis points.

So not only will we build the high end, but we’ve got lots of visibility towards future management fee growth. And I think as we look at opportunities for us, that opportunity for continued growth and innovation hasn’t stopped. So again, we think it’s an asset class that can lend itself nicely to the democratized marketplace. And we think the renewable space is again an area where our presence can increase. So I appreciate you’re asking about, but it’s been a real bright spot for us.

Scott Nuttall: Yes. The only color I’d add, Arnaud, is that our pipelines have been strong this year across asset classes. And I think to your question, it does take about a year for the public and private market valuations to start to align. We’re getting close to lapping that, and we’re starting to see that show up in the pipeline.

Operator: Our next question is from Rufus Hone with BMO. Please proceed with your question.

Rufus Hone: Great. Good morning. Thanks very much. Just a follow-up question on Global Atlantic. I was just curious to get your thoughts around the outlook for inorganic growth for GA in the coming quarters. Any color on the pipeline that would be helpful. And would you consider raising or bringing on third-party investors to accelerate organic growth and M&A even further? Thank you.

Rob Lewin: Yes. Thanks for the question, Rufus. You’ve hit on a spot of a lot of activity, actually. And our pipeline around the institutional side of our business at Global Atlantic as frankly is big as it’s been certainly since our ownership and probably since Jay’s founding. And so a lot of resources going into the institutional side of the business. And that’s both in the U.S., but that’s also global. I think there’s a real opportunity to leverage KKR’s franchise in Europe and Asia to help Global Atlantic grow in those parts of the world. So a lot of effort there. We do have today, as you talk about third-party close capital, we do have side car pool capital called IV Today that participates alongside some of our block reinsurance activity. It’s a big part of our go-forward strategy, and I would certainly look to continue to be able to add capacity to the IV strategy to help support Global Atlantic and its growth in the future.

Operator: Our next question is from Chris Kotowski with Oppenheimer. Please proceed with your question.

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