Brookfield Quarterly Distributable Earnings Rise

By Robb M. Stewart

Brookfield's underlying earnings rose in the second quarter as the asset-management company saw growth in cash flows across its asset management, wealth solutions and operating businesses, it said on Thursday.

Distributable earnings, a measure of cash that can be returned to shareholders, rose to $1.11 billion, or 71 cents a share, for the three months from $1.01 billion, or 64 cents, a year earlier. That fell short of the 76 cents a share analysts polled by FactSet were expecting.

Brookfield swung to a loss of $285 million from total income last year of $1.51 billion, or 3 cents a share, and revenue for the quarter declined 2.6% to $23.05 billion for the quarter.

Toronto-based Brookfield, which in late 2022 spun off a 25% stake in its asset management business, said assets under management are now roughly $1 trillion and fee-bearing capital was $514 billion as of the end of June, an increase of 17% over the last 12 months. Inflows during the quarter were $68 billion, which the company said contributed to 11% and 6% growth in annualized fee-related earnings and fee-related earnings.

The company ended June with about $150 billion of deployable capital available for new investments and President Nick Goodman said that with capital markets improving and a constructive economic backdrop transaction activity is expected to continue to increase over the coming quarters.

Brookfield said it expects fundraising to ramp up in the back half of 2024, with closes expected for its latest flagship funds in the market, which should result in further earnings growth. After $800 million in share buybacks so far in 2024, the company said it also will continue to allocate capital to share repurchases when it makes sense.

On Wednesday, Brookfield Asset Management reported $548 million in distributable earnings for the recent quarter, with a 7% fall in revenue to $916 million.

Write to Robb M. Stewart at robb.stewart@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 08, 2024 07:55 ET (11:55 GMT)

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