Blackstone COO on Q1 results: extraordinary quarter against tough backdrop

Shares of Blackstone Inc (NYSE: BX) opened roughly 5.0% up on Thursday after the alternative investment management company reported better-than-expected results for its fiscal first quarter.

What Blackstone Q1 earnings report tells us

• Profit came in at $1.22 billion versus the year-ago figure of $1.75 billion.
• Per-share profit slid from $2.46 to $1.66 in the recent fiscal quarter.
• Revenue also tanked 3.0% YoY to $5.3 billion, as per the earnings press release.
• Distributable earnings jumped 63% in fiscal Q1 to $1.94 billion.
• Distributable per-share earnings of $1.55 were well above last year’s 96 cents.
• Distributable earnings revenue shot up 71% to $3.5 billion.

According to FactSet, experts had forecast $1.06 of distributable per-share earnings on $2.9 billion in distributable earnings revenue.

Other notable figures and COO’s remarks on CNBC

Other notable figures in Blackstone’s Q1 earnings report include a 41% increase in total assets under management to $915.5 billion. Fee-related AUMs also jumped 41%. On CNBC’s “Squawk Box”, COO Jon Gray said:

We had an extraordinary quarter against a tough backdrop because our business model is simple; deliver great returns for our customers and they’ll allocate more capital to us. We managed to deliver positive performance in virtually all of our strategies, led by our real estate business.

According to Gray, Blackstone continues to broaden its platform that also helped boost results in the fiscal first quarter. Earlier this week, Blackstone said it will buy American Campus Communities $12.8 billion.