Over the course of 2015 Blackstone Group L.P. (NYSE: BX) has made a solid performance. In short, the stock has beat the markets, even with recent volatility concerns. As a result, one key analyst firm has upgraded Blackstone, also considering a strong earnings outlook.
Despite market volatility and a big pullback in the stock, Blackstone reported third-quarter gross distributable earnings of $0.60, which was relatively close to Oppenheimer’s estimate. While the firm will admit that it missed on any number of constituent components on this quarter’s report, Oppenheimer thinks its basic view that the cash earnings are decisive and consistently positive are borne out by the report.
The firm has always looked to the cash earnings over “economic net income” metric, which is both volatile and non-cash, taking a short-term view on the potential for earnings. Blackstone has always traded at a substantial premium to peers and still does. In absolute terms, it’s very compelling at this valuation since the cash earnings outlook remains very strong.
As a result Oppenheimer upgraded the stock to an Outperform rating with a $38 price target.
Looking at this quarter, economic net income (ENI) came in at -$0.35, below Oppenheimer’s nominally negative estimate. While the firm doesn’t think that means much, the misses came primarily in negative investment income, the Credit business and PE. Real Estate was better than expected, as the performance of the privately held properties more than offset the declines in the large, publicly traded holdings.
There has been a 7.3% appreciation in the fourth quarter to date already in the publicly traded companies, reversing more than half of the depreciation from the third quarter. This is why the firm doesn’t really care about ENI; markets move up and down, and the capital base is designed to weather volatility.
Net accrued performance fees, the measure of future carry, was down in third quarter to $3.5 billion ($3.03 per share) from $4.5 billion in the previous quarter.
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So far in 2015, Blackstone has outperformed the markets, with the stock up 7%. Over the past 52 weeks, the stock is up 26%.
Shares of Blackstone were last seen trading up about 1% at $34.41, with a consensus analyst price target of $42.66 and a 52-week trading range of $28.56 to $44.43.
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