Good morning. My name is Jennifer and I will be your conference facilitator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the BlackRock Incorporated Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Teleconference. Our host for today's call will be Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Lawrence D. Sink, Chief Financial Officer Martin S. Small, President Robert Escapito, and General Counsel Christopher J. Meade. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise after the speaker's remarks there will be a question and answer period if you'd like to ask a question during this time simply press star then the number one on your telephone keypad if you'd like to withdraw your question please press star too thank you mr mead you may begin your conference good morning everyone i'm chris mead the general counsel of black box before we begin i'd like to remind you that during the course of this call we may make a number of forward-looking statements we call your attention to the fact that BlackRock's actual results may of course differ from these statements

as you know BlackRock has filed reports with the FCC which lists some of the factors that may cause the results of BlackRock to differ materially from what we say today BlackRock assumes no duty and does not undertake to update any forward-looking symptoms so with that I'll turn it over to Martin thanks Chris Good morning and Happy New Year to everyone.

It's my pleasure to present results for the fourth quarter and full year 2025. Before I turn it over to Larry, I'll review our financial performance and business results. Our earnings release discloses both GAAP and as adjusted financial results. A reconciliation between GAAP and our as adjusted results is included in today's press release. I'll be focusing primarily on our as adjusted results. We're closing out one of the strongest years in our history. Clients awarded us nearly $700 billion in net new assets, 9% organic base fee growth, and 16% technology ACV expansion. Our whole portfolio strategy is winning both mind and wallet share with clients. It's bringing even more momentum to the breadth of our organic growth. We had nearly 150 products across our ETF and mutual fund ranges with over $1 billion in flows. We had over $24 billion in revenue, alongside nearly $10 billion in operating income, both up 50% since 2020, and earnings per share was a new record. Our platform demonstrated resilience and growth, even when markets were in turmoil back in April and captured steep upside when they rallied. 2025 was another proof point that BlackRock is a share gainer when there's money in motion. Our 10% increase to our 2026 dividend per share and increase in planned share repurchases to $1.8 billion are driven by our accelerating growth trajectory and platform success in 2025. That's our highest dividend increase since 2021 and comes after a record $5 billion payout to shareholders in 2025. Supported by both 9% organic base fee growth and favorable markets we enter 2026 with a base fees run rate that's approximately 35 higher than our base fees in 2024 and approximately 50 higher than 2023 this stronger entry point enhances our ability to deliver future earnings return capital to shareholders and execute on our 2030 ambitions we delivered six percent or higher organic base fee growth in each quarter of 2025. We finished the year with two consecutive quarters of double digit organic base fee growth, including 12% in the fourth quarter. That growth is broad-based across our systematic franchise, private markets, ETFs, digital assets, cash, and outsourcing. And it's across capabilities that we've had for decades and others that we've built or acquired in the last two years. That gives us confidence we're on the right track with clients and we have a lot of optimism for the years ahead. You've heard us say it's not that the big are getting bigger, it's that the best are getting bigger. Size and scale are outputs of performance. We've wrapped a successful 2025, and now we're moving with speed and scale to go upward from here. We're building leading franchises in newer high-growth markets across the industry, private markets to insurance, private markets to wealth, digital assets, and active ETS. We think these can all be $500 million revenue generators in the next five years. We already have industry-leading margins, and we see real opportunity to drive margin expansion through the FRE growth trajectory of our private markets and our highly scaled foundational businesses. We enter 2026 with strong momentum, and our first year as a fully integrated firm with GIP, Prequen, and HPS. We're pioneering what we believe is the asset management model of the future. It's one that seamlessly brings together public and private markets. It interoperates between traditional and decentralized financial ecosystems, and it's powered by technology and data with Aladdin, E-Front, and Prequen. BlackRock houses the world's number one ETF franchise, a top-five alternatives platform with more than $675 billion in client assets, half a trillion in target data um leading advisory services and a tech and data sas franchise with nearly two billion in revenue moving to financial results full year revenue of 24 billion was up 19 year-over-year operating income of 9.6 billion was up 18 percent and earnings per share of 48 dollars and nine cents increased 10 percent fourth quarter revenue of 7 billion was 23 percent higher year-over-year, driven by the acquisitions of HPS and Prequin, organic base fee growth over the trailing 12-month period, and the positive impact of market movements on average AUM. Quarterly operating income of $2.8 billion was up 22 percent, while earnings per share of $13.16 increased 10 percent versus a year ago. EPS also reflected a lower tax rate, lower non-operating income, and a higher share count in the current quarter linked to the close of the HPS transaction on July 1st. Non-operating results for the quarter included 106 million of net investment losses, primarily due to a non-cash mark-to-market loss linked to our minority investment in Circle. In mid-December, we contributed a portion of our stake in Circle to our existing donor-advised fund. Following this transaction, we maintain approximately 1.1 million shares of Circle common stock, which will continue to be marked through investment income. Our as adjusted tax rate for the fourth quarter was approximately 20% and benefited from discrete items. We currently estimate that 25% is a reasonable projected tax run rate for 2026. The actual effective tax rate may differ because of non-recurring or discrete items or potential changes in tax legislation. Fourth quarter base fees and securities lending revenue of $5.3 billion was up 19% year over year, driven by the positive impact of market beta on average AUM, organic base fee growth, and approximately $230 million in base fees from HPS. On an equivalent day count basis, our annualized effective fee rate was approximately one-tenth of a basis point lower compared to the third quarter. This decrease was primarily due to higher securities lending revenue in the third quarter, which benefited from specials. We're seeing client demand from our structural growers like private markets, systematic models, OCIO, ETFs, and SMAs, and these capabilities provide positive leverage to average fee rates. The fee yields on new asset flows this year are six to seven times higher than they were in 2023 and are at a premium to our overall fee rate. Fourth quarter performance fees of $754 million increased from a year ago, reflecting higher revenue from alternatives and included $158 million from HPS. Full quarter and full year technology services and subscription revenue each increased 24% year over year, reflecting the successful onboarding of a number of new clients, expanding relationships with existing clients, and the closing of the Prequin transaction. Prequin added approximately $65 million and $213 million of revenue in the fourth quarter and full year, respectively. Annual contract value, or ACV, increased 31% year-over-year, including the impact of frequent. ACV increased 16% organically. Total expense increased 19% in 2025, primarily driven by higher compensation, sales asset and account expense, and G&A expense. Full-year employee compensation and benefit expense was up 20%, primarily reflecting higher incentive compensation associated with performance fees, as well as higher operating income. The year-over-year increase also reflects the impact of onboarding GIP, Prequin, and HPS employees. Full-year G&A expense was up 15%, primarily due to M&A transactions and higher technology investment spend. Our fourth quarter as-adjusted operating margin of 45% was down 50 basis points year-over-year. Our full-year as-adjusted operating margin of 44.1% decreased 40 basis points from a Both periods reflect the impact of performance fees and related compensation. We continue to deliver margin expansion on recurring fee-related earnings. Excluding the impact of all performance fees and related compensation, our adjusted operating margin for the fourth quarter would have been 45.5% of 30 basis points year-over-year. Our full-year margin would have been 44.9%, 60 basis points higher relative to 2024. As we execute on our organic base fee growth and operating margin ambitions, we'll continue to be disciplined in both our hiring and our investments. After annualizing for the impact of HPS and Prequin, we would expect a mid-single-digit percentage increase in G&A. Additionally, we would expect BlackRock's headcount to be broadly flat in 2026. After investing for growth, we returned a record $5 billion to our shareholders through a combination of dividends and share repurchases in 2025. This includes $500 million and $1.6 billion of share repurchases for fourth quarter and full year, respectively. BlackRock's board of directors recently approved a 10% increase to our first quarter 2026 dividend per share, building on our track record of strong dividend growth and demonstrating confidence in our cash flow generation and durable earnings expansion. That represents a 13% increase in the dollar amount of dividends expected to be paid. The board also authorized the repurchase of an additional 7 million shares under our share repurchase program. At present, based on capital spending plans for the year and subject to market and other conditions, we are targeting the purchase of $1.8 billion worth of shares during 2026. Full-year total net inflows of $698 billion reflected positive flows and organic base fee growth across all asset classes and active in index. iShares led the industry and set a new flows record with $527 billion in 2025, representing 12% organic asset and 13% organic base fee growth. Net inflows were diversified across core equity and premium categories like fixed income, active, and digital assets ETPs. iShares net inflows of $181 billion in the fourth quarter once again demonstrated strong momentum into year-end, supported by seasonal portfolio reallocations. Full-year retail net inflows of $107 billion were led by the onboarding of the $80 billion SMA assignment from CitiWealth during the fourth quarter. Separate from this assignment, Appirio had its fifth consecutive record year of net inflows with $15 billion, active fixed income added $3 billion, and alternatives generated $12 billion in 2025. BlackRock's institutional active franchise generated net inflows of $54 billion in 2025, reflecting the onboarding of multiple outsourcing mandates, the above-target close of GIP-5, and deployment in private credit. Institutional index net outflows of $119 billion were mainly driven by redemptions from low-fee index equity strategies. Our scaled private markets platform delivered $40 billion of full-year net inflows led by private credit and infrastructure. We're targeting $400 billion in gross private markets fundraising through 2030, powered by origination, strong investment performance, and the depth of our client relationships. Our valuable position as a trusted long-term partner to corporates and sovereigns provides us with unique visibility and insight into capital markets and client activity, enabling differentiated deal flows, tailored solutions, and long-term value creation for our clients and shareholders. Finally, BlackRock Cash Management saw $74 billion of net inflows in the fourth quarter and $131 billion in 2025, driven by U.S. government, international prime, and circle reserve funds. BlackRock's platform is anchored by growth engines tied to the long-term expansion of global capital markets and fast-growing client and product channels. The opportunity ahead is inspiring to reshape portfolios for more complex markets, to deepen partnerships with clients, and to deliver durable, profitable growth for our shareholders. We enter 2026 with the combined strength of BlackRock, GIP, HPS, and Prequen, now all one BlackRock, and we're excited to share our growth with clients, employees, and shareholders. I'll turn it over to Larry.

Thank you, Martin. Good morning, everyone, and Happy New Year. Thank you for joining. We enter 2026 with accelerating momentum across our entire platform. It will be the first full year with the combined strength of BlackRock, GIP, HPS, and Prequin. We're coming off the strongest year and quarter of net inflows in our history. BlackRock awarded – clients awarded BlackRock for nearly $700 billion in new assets in 2025, including $342 billion in the fourth quarter. And the consistency of our results stands out even more over the long term, with nearly $2.5 trillion of net inflows over the last five years. Our pipeline of business has broadened across products and regions, expanding public and private markets, technology and data, and client channels. We're seeing excellent fundraising activity. We have an ambitious 2026 fundraising plan diversified across infrastructure, equity, and debt, private financing solutions, and multi-alternatives. Our client relationships have never been stronger and deeper. We're a scale operator in public and private markets, investments, and technology. That's significantly enhancing our position with clients worldwide. We're building off accelerating growth over the course of 2025. We delivered 6% or higher organic base fee growth each quarter, and we ended the year with 12% organic base fee growth and 16% technology ACV growth in the fourth quarter. These growth rates are both a four points higher than last year and 9% full year organic base fee growth represents one and a half billion of net new base fees. That means we enter 2026 with base fees approaching 21 billion, 13 percent higher than 2025. And we delivered a premium 45 operating margin. Our scale and Aladdin technology fuels growth and helps push down our marginal costs. We're in an upward trajectory in our margins on fee-occurring, reoccurring earnings as we continue to drive growth in private markets and scale businesses like ETFs and systematic equities. Our belief in our future growth, increasing profitability, and durability of cash flow led us to increase the dividend per share by 10% and step up plan share repurchases. Over the last 10 years, we delivered a 10% compounded annual growth rate in our dividend and over a 15% annual return on our repurchases. And we're confident than ever in our model and the outsized opportunity we see across multiple growth engines. Our foundational businesses like iShares are unlocking new markets like an active ETFs and digital assets. At the same time, we're a leader in emerging trends like private markets to wealth, 401ks, tokenization, and private market data. In private markets, our investments in infrastructure and private credit and alts to wealth underpin our ambitions to raise $400 billion in private markets by 2030. BlackRock is already managing $3 trillion on behalf of insurance, wealth, and OCIO clients. We have a significant opportunity to deliver better outcomes and experiences for clients in private market allocations, and for our shareholders, that shift represents new private markets AUM and potentially over $1 billion in new base fees. For example, BlackRock is the largest general account manager for insurers with $700 billion in AUM. With HPS, we're now also one of the largest asset-based finance and high-grade managers. We're in about 20 late-stage conversations to help insurers build more dynamic and diversified portfolios across public and private markets. Similarly, in wealth, we're focused on expanding access to private markets. We're bringing together strong investment performance track records with BlackRock's scaled global distribution model. We have the largest wholesaling team in the industry covering every corner of the United States marketplace. We have very strong relationships in private banks in Europe. Our more than $1 trillion of wealth platform spans end clients' whole portfolios from models and SMAs to ETFs and private markets. We're also a technology provider through Aladdin Wealth, which brings institutional quality portfolio construction right to the desktops of our financial advisors. We continue to expand and diversify distribution of HBS non-traded BDC to U.S. wire houses and RIAs, and we believe model portfolios will be another unlock. We're also planning to widen our product range through an H-series family of funds that would be led by the flagship HLEN alongside junior capital, real assets, crippled net lease, multi-strat credit, and secondaries and co-investment strategies. We plan to bring all the building blocks to serve wealth investors through coordinated multi-alt portfolios. Then in retirement, we're seeing important progress towards a framework to include private assets and target date funds. We expect to launch our first LifePath target date fund with private markets later this year. Most Americans' only experience with capital markets is through their 401 plan. I said many times that helping workers build and spend their retirement savings is one of the greatest challenges of our generation. We've long associated for better retirement solutions and easier access to investment options. BlackRock has also championed early childhood savings accounts and the policies that make them possible, and we're encouraged by and supportive of the launch of these accounts in the United States. For retirement savers, there's a real opportunity to bring additional returns and diversification to investors through private markets. BlackRock will be at the forefront with our leading DCIO business, our $600 billion LifePath franchise, top five alternative platforms, and definitely Periquin. We expect plan sponsors will need standardized benchmarking and performance data to validate their plan choices and Periquin can be the central provider. Our leadership in all of these areas distinguishes BlackRock with plans, sponsors, and policy makers. We've always been a leader in retirement and a first mover in developing new solutions in retirement. We started innovating Lifepath Paycheck in 2018 and it's been the fastest growing lifetime income target date strategy in the defined contribution market. We believe it will be the default retirement investment strategy. Guaranteed income and private markets are not two separate conversations. BlackRock can bring it all together. Our vision is not just for incremental addition of private markets. It's the design of an optimal target date solution, one that combines public markets, private markets, and guaranteed income like LifePath Paycheck. BlackRock has longstanding relationships and decades of experience in working with plan sponsors and building client-first retirement solutions for their members. We're a bit over a year into closing our GIP transaction, and we're already seeing synergies through our combined expertise and relationships. GIP 5 closed above its $25 billion target in July. and our AI partnership, which was not part of the deal model, continues to attract significant capital. AIP has raised over $12.5 billion from partnership founders and clients. Our initial target is to mobilize and deploy $30 billion of equity capital, with the potential of reaching $100 billion, including debt. More broadly, we're seeing excellent progress across the range of infrastructure strategies including mid-cap and emerging markets infra equity and investment grade high yield and credit sensitive infra debt the current cash flow and inflation protected return profile of infrastructure makes it an attractive sector for our clients especially those saving for retirement more broadly income-oriented strategies are a critical component of our clients portfolios BlackRock manages over $4.5 trillion in assets across both public fixed income, cash, and private credit. This means we can provide an integrated fixed income solution for clients that delivers scale benefits. In 2025, we generated over $45 billion of net inflows across our high-performing active fixed income franchise, led by Rick Reeder. we believe 2026 is shaping up to be another year where returns may be driven primarily by income rather than price appreciation we're well positioned to capture flows with strong performance and differentiated strategies across municipals high yield total return and unconstrained fixed income strategies and we're leveraging active etfs to provide access to our portfolio managers inside along with the benefits of the etf wrapper our active the ETFs drove more than 50 billion dollars in net inflows in 2025, nearly tripling their assets in the last year. RIT's Flexible Active Income ETF Bank, BINC, and our systematic U.S. Equity Factor Rotation ETF, DYNF, led our active ETF flows for the year. DYNF was the highest-influing active ETF in the industry with 14 billion of net inflows it is our flagship of our systematic equity platform overall our systematic equity franchise raised over 50 billion dollars in 2025 even as the active equity industry saw another year of outflows our systematic investments have been using data and ai for 20 years we've invested in this business and today its IP delivers alpha to clients and helps portfolio managers across BlackRock to invest better. As more investors are looking at how to use AI for investments, we already have one of the best platforms utilizing AI and big data to drive thousands of alpha signals. We're optimistic about our systematic platform, continued double-digit organic base feed growth potential, and its position as a bright spot in the active equity industry. iShares continues to be an innovation engine for BlackRock. iShares remains the market leader in ETFs in terms of organic assets and base feed growth, country served, and in product lineup. 2025 was another record year for iShares with 527 billion of net inflows. In 2000, With just 40 ETFs, BlackRock's iShares set out to revolutionize investing. And over those 25 years, iShares has led the way in democratization of access to the growth of capital markets. BlackRock shaped the industry, and we continued expanded choice and access for investors around the world. We brought U.S. investors access to international markets, and we introduced ETFs to Europe. We launched the world's first bond ETF. We provide over 1,700 ETFs today, more than six times the next largest issuer, and we're focused on providing investors value for their money while driving growth and margin expansion for our shareholders. iShares AUM was about $300 billion when we announced our acquisition in 2009. Today it's $5.5 trillion, and iShares revenues have more than quadruple to over $8 billion. iShares is delivering growth both through core channels and newer premium initiatives like active ETFs, digital assets, and in international markets. In Europe, ETF net inflows of $136 billion was approximately 50% higher than 2024, and we're seeing more individuals coming to iShares through digitally-enabled offerings and monthly savings plans. We're seeing similar trends in India, where our GEO BlackRock joint venture operates through a digital-first, direct-to-consumer model. GEO BlackRock raised $2 billion upon launch, six times the previous industry record, and now manages 12 funds spanning cash, index, systematic equities on behalf of nearly 400 institutions, and already more than 1 million Indian retail investors. More broadly, we're seeing great momentum and connectivity with clients in international markets. Both in Asia and in LATAM, we saw double-digit organic base feed growth in 2025. Growth in Asia was led by our active wealth strategies and 30 billion of ETF net inflows across our locally listed and global ETF range. In Latin America, our local presence is similarly resonating through our onshore ETFs and wealth offerings. And in the Middle East, we have a strong history as a trusted advisor to countries looking to allocate capital or to build out their own local markets. It is one of our fastest growing regions. Our Aladdin technology powers and unites all of our platform and all our work. The fact that BlackRock is the largest user of Aladdin allows us to stay attuned to changes in the marketplace and adapt Aladdin for our clients. Today we're enabling our clients to more easily manage their exposures through end-to-end integration across public and private markets. Sixteen percent technology ACV growth reflected several innovative multi-product wins which will drive future revenues through prequin we're expanding access to actionable private market data giving investors the analytics they need to build strong and reliable portfolios the blackrock platform is comprehensive it's global we're a leader in public markets we're a leader in private markets and we are a leader in technology and data we're a foundational provider in the traditional financial markets and the evolving decentralized financial ecosystem most importantly we bring it all together to deliver blackrock tour clients in a comprehensive consistent determined way we're entering 2026 with elevated momentum and we're positioned ahead of big future opportunities we ended the year with 12 organic base seed growth record flows and a new AUM high at 14 trillion dollars. This already lifts our Bay C entry level rate by 13 percent. We are confident in our organic Bay C growth ambitions. We plan to raise a cumulative 400 billion in private markets by 2030. We're focused on our margins and driving profitable growth. This all should translate to shareholder value through higher earnings and then multiple expansion. I'd like to thank our employees for the work they do every day on behalf of our clients. Each and every client we stand by as a fiduciary. When we do well for our clients, we also do well for our employees and then we do well for our shareholders. I believe they'll all be beneficiaries of our future growth. Operator, let's open it up for questions.

At this time, I'd like to remind everyone in order to ask a question that please press star then the number one on the telephone keypad if you do ask a question please take your phone off its speaker setting and use your handset to avoid any potential feedback please limit yourself to one question if you have a follow-up please re-enter the queue we'll pause for just a moment to compile the q a roster Your first question comes from Craig Stegenthaler of Banks America.

Happy New Year. Craig Stegenthaler Good morning, Larry. Happy New Year. And I have to congratulate you on the record-based fee organic growth, because, you know, 12% is pretty impressive for a $14 trillion manager.

Craig Stegenthaler Well, I hope it's going to be impressive when we're a much larger manager than $14 trillion. Craig Stegenthaler Okay.

As we look ahead to 2026, can you flush out what you're all seeing and thinking on the net flow pipeline? And a sort of follow-up would be your money market business, which is not a new modern business, has done really, really well over the last five years. Higher rates has been a factor there. But with the Fed cutting, do you see flows reversing in this business? And if it does, where do you think that liquidity goes?

Happy New Year. Let me just start by saying that, you know, organic base fee growth continues to outperform our 5-plus percent baseline target, you know, 10 percent in Q3, 12 percent print in Q4, 9 percent for the year. And it's the momentum, I think, that really gives us a lot of energy. The growth has ticked higher each quarter. We were 1% to start 2024, 6-plus percent each quarter this year, and then ending with two back-to-back quarters that are at double digits. That means clients want to do more business and are giving more business to BlackRock. I think the success we've had with this structural growth strategy, it's driving strength and is doing it across market environments in an all-weather way. And with more growth coming from our pipeline of private markets, systematic strategies, models, SMAs, digital assets, we think we can power organic base fee growth that's more consistently 6%, 7% or higher. And in supportive market environments, I think like Q4, where there's some risk on sentiment for higher fee international, precision exposures, private markets, that can tilt even higher. But we've always talked about our strategy being grounded in the whole portfolio. It's always been about breadth and serving every corner of a client's portfolio. This year, we had really excellent breadth in organic base fee growth, and we're seeing that same breadth in our pipeline. Our fundraising plan is diversified across infrastructure, private financing solutions, multi-alternatives. And I think 2026, to your point on money funds, it's shaping up to be the year of a steeper yield curve. And we think that era of easy 2A7 fund income looks to be fading. We think that bond returns are going to be driven more by income rather than rate moves or spread compression. And I think even though cash is always going to be an allocation in a well-balanced portfolios, we'd expect that rate cuts are going to cause money market yields to fall and that some of the best opportunities for investors to be locking in bond yields are going to be in intermediate term bonds. I think if the bond team was here, they'd say there's a generational opportunity to earn high-quality, steady income in the front and middle of the yield curve using that full toolkit in fixed income, credits, securitized, government bonds, munis, active and index. And we're seeing that energy on our platform. We saw more than $80 billion of fixed income flows in Q4 and more than $40 billion outside the new city mandate. You know, iShares bonds had $52 billion in Q4, $175 billion. That's 18% organic growth for the year. We manage over $3 trillion in fixed income, so we think we can meet clients with fixed income offerings across sectors and durations wherever they need it and to do it in the vehicle that works best for them. That's an ETF. It's a separate account, a mutual fund, or even yield-oriented exposures, being a top CLO issuer and manager, and by blending public and private fixed income through direct lending VDCs like HLend. Our field on new assets to the firm in this pipeline is running six or seven times higher than the field on new assets in 23. And we think clients want to do more with BlackRock across the platform. We saw it in the 2025 activity and in the early momentum in 26. So it gives us confidence that we're on the right track and gives us a lot of energy about what 2026 can look like on the organic growth front.

Let me just add one more point. As global capital markets grow, cash is going to grow alongside of it. So the base holdings of cash will be elevated as long as the global capital markets continues to grow. And if you overlay, if tokenization becomes more real, and the opportunity to have a tokenized money market fund alongside tokenizing other assets, I actually believe you're going to see probably above trend holdings in cash. That being said, I agree with everything what Martin said. We're going to see much more. You're going to see more and more investors going up the curve, especially if the yield curve becomes steeper and steeper, which probably is going to be the outcome. But I think we have to look at the overall scale of the capital markets and its growth globally. And that is one of the foundational reasons why cash holdings will, they look larger than ever, which they certainly are. But I think as the capital markets grows, so does holdings in capital markets cash. And I think that is important. There's an important connection between that. And cash is just not an outcome of people are nervous and holding and they're not looking to do it. As the capital markets grows and as more people's wallets are in the capital markets, The role of the money market fund just grows, and I think that is one of the foundational reasons why we continue to believe that money market holdings will continue to be quite large.

Your next question comes from Michael Cypress with Morgan Stanley.

Hey, good morning, Larry. Happy New Year, Michael. How are you? Great. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to ask one about Asia.

I was hoping you could speak to your priorities across your footprint in Asia, from your local partnership in India to initiatives you have in Japan, among other countries. How are you looking to accelerate growth and expand contribution from Asia over the next couple of years? And what aspects might be most meaningful to the overall firm?

Well, I would say first and foremost, Asian capital markets grew faster than the U.S. capital markets. More IPOs in Asia, especially in Hong Kong. So let's just start with that foundational base. The capital markets are going faster there. You're seeing historical changes in Japan because the NISA accounts and retirement accounts, you're just seeing more of wealth entering the capital markets out of the banking system. And that just represents more and more opportunities. So Japan has been an exceptional platform for growth. The insurance industry in Japan, the pension fund industry as the NISA accounts grow. So that's just one really good foundational example. As I said, the IPOs in Hong Kong and the scale of wealth management in Hong Kong and Singapore, the wealth that is being generated in Southeast Asia all leads to bigger opportunities, not just bigger opportunities to manage the money, but bigger opportunities to invest like GIP invested in the airports of Malaysia. In India, I believe we have the best single platform to grow in India with a geo-BlackRock partnership. I talked about the growth in 2025, but we have, we believe that the transmission of the growth of the capital markets in India is just at the very beginning historically Indians kept most of their money either in gold or in cash and I think the the opportunities developed a a self-directed retirement platform in India is real and as the as the as the platform grows in in in terms of retirement the opportunities for us are very large but even in places like in Saudi Arabia. There's conversations going on now to really build a pillar two retirement system there, and then obviously a pillar three. And we're engaged in those conversations and opportunities. So historically, we looked at a lot of these markets who were exporters of capital, but now in many cases, they're importers of capital, but more importantly, they're developing their own capital markets. This is a trend that I've been talking about for years, and I think it's just that we're at the early stages of the growth of the capital markets in every place in the world. If you look at our growth rates, the double-digit growth rates in base fees in LATAM, it is another example of the growth of wealth and the opportunities that we have. And so the key is BlackRock is going to grow as long as the world and the global capital markets grow. But what I would clearly say what 25 indicates and what 26 offers is the growth of these capital markets are very beneficial for platforms like BlackRock, and we are involved in these conversations. We're building our platform in each and every country, and I believe this is one of the real foundational opportunities for us in the future.

Your next question comes from Mike Brown with UBS.

Good morning, Mike. Hi, good morning. Hi, good morning. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to you. So, Larry, you touched on the insurance channel in your prepared remarks, and BlackRock is a major player in the space, and it's about 5% of your AUM today. But certainly, competition seems to be rising in the space. Can you just talk a little bit about how your differentiated offering, like a full-spectrum cash to private credit, differentiates here? Maybe unpack your comments about how the demand for the channel is shaping up here in 2026.

Thanks. Maybe I'll start, Martin, and then I know Larry will add some color. So I'd start with, yes, you know, the balance sheets of the world's largest insurance companies were traditionally invested in public fixed income. BlackRock has been very successful at capturing those allocations, and today we're the largest insurance company general account manager in the industry with $700 billion in assets, more than 450 insurance relationships. HPS also manages over $60 billion of credit assets for over 125 insurance companies. And I think with our combined platform, we're better positioned than ever to be a high-grade solutions provider. We also have service to the largest insurance companies on our Aladdin platform, as well as an array of middle office services and accounting services. We think that private credit and building great public-private portfolios is a very important growth vector within private markets, and there's an opportunity for growth with asset-based finance and private high-grade with insurance companies. Just the penetration in this market is much smaller when compared to the corporate credit market. We have over 20 conversations right now where we're working on high-grade SMAs with leading insurers and building private high-grade portfolios. A number are in later stages. We'd hope to start seeing deployments pull through through the second half of 2026, and we're really focused on three things with them. The first is delivering better outcomes for our insurance clients by working with them to migrate something on order of 10% of their existing public fixed income assets into private high grade. So think of a $700 billion base migrating to $70 billion on order of that in private high grade. The second is expanding high grade mandates, meaning new assets and winning new assets with clients away from our existing book. And the third is also pursuing strategic partnerships, minority investments, to increase the pool of insurance assets managed here at BlackRock, similar to the minority investment and strategic alliance that we announced with Viridian last year. I think on our competitive advantages, I'd note that insurance company asset management, it's a highly customized effort working with clients every day. It's not one of these mandates that's give me a benchmark and I'll beat it and give you a monthly report. Teams are basically insourced by the insurance company to be looking at cash flows, to be thinking about credit, to be thinking about the intersection of accounting and capital and managing those portfolios. It is a highly interactive day-to-day thing. So being able effectively to blend turnkey full service capabilities for insurance companies, that's a key competitive advantage for BlackRock. integrating public fixed income, private credit, Aladdin, accounting, middle office services makes working with BlackRock a performance enhancer, a scale enabler. So there's no doubt that this space has become more competitive, especially in private high grade. But I think our experience is that insurance companies want a full service partner and that we're well positioned to play that role given our track record in public fixed income technology and world-class capabilities in private credit.

Your next question comes from Alex Blossene with Goldman Sachs.

Happy New Year, Alex. Hi, good morning, Larry. Happy New Year to you guys as well. So question to you guys about margins. Larry, you mentioned it a couple of times and Martin did as well. Obviously, the business has grown really well. You outlined a number of really compelling initiatives, how this growth could continue for 26, 27. So when I think about the the 45% operating margin, excluding performance fees that you sort of highlighted for 2025. How should we think about that progressing over the course of 26, assuming kind of normal markets? And then Martin, just to follow up for you, the specifics around GNA, I heard mid single digits, but maybe you guys could just remind us what the right basis, thanks.

Sure, thanks Alex, Happy New Year. So, you know, BlackRock, as I mentioned, we continue to deliver industry leading margins. As we talked about at our investor day, we continue to target 45% or greater adjusted operating margin profile with our margin on recurring fee-related earnings running higher. Our operating margin in the quarter was 45%, and as I mentioned in my remarks, we continue to deliver margin expansion on recurring fee-related earnings. So excluding the impact of performance fees and related comp, our margin would have been 45.5% up 30 basis points. Think of that as more akin to an FRE margin burden for stock-based compensation. This growth here at BlackRock is fueled by strong FRE growth in our private markets franchises, along with high value, higher fee rate, and scaled strategies in active ETFs, digital assets, systematic equities, and other areas. So we think that over time we'll see the margin on fee recurring earnings driving upwards toward the trajectories of the best-in-class private market name, so think north of 50%. A couple of things, I'd remind you that we defer a portion of compensation linked to performance fees for talent retention so in years where we see higher performance fees we also see higher deferrals which impact comp in future years we continue to drive operating leverage and growth through technology and automation using the benefits of size and scale to reduce costs strategically footprinting our business and as we set out in the investor day we're targeting that 45 or higher greater adjusted operating margin. We're delivering steady operating margin expansion before the GIP, Prequent, and HPS transactions. As we talked about during the announcement of those transactions, GIP and HPS both have 50% or higher FRE margins. So that's accretive to our margin on fee-related earnings. So we think the growth in these franchises alongside the highly scaled platforms like iShares, Cash, model portfolios, they can fuel higher margins on fee-related earnings and over time, our overall adjusted operating margin. And just in terms of your question, Alex, on G&A, we talked about our financial rubric and how we aim to align organic revenue growth and controllable expenses across base salaries as well as G&A. Ultimately, I think with the long growth, the markets is our structural tailwind. That's going to deliver more beta to the bottom line in op income growth and the benefits of scale to our clients and shareholders. As I mentioned on my prepared remarks, after annualizing for the impact of HPS and Prequin, we'd expect a mid-single-digit percentage increase in GNA. In 2025, we didn't see the full-year impact of acquired HPS and Prequin GNA, so we'll impact the year-over-year comparison in 2026. If you annualize our second half 2025 GNA results, which fully captures HPS and frequent GNA, our 2026 expected GNA growth is in the mid-single digits. Once we've lapped the 2026 results with a full year of integrated expense in our results, we expect you'll continue to see controllable expenses within organic base fee growth as we drive our 2030 strategy forward. That implies future years are in the mid-single-digit percentage growth.

Your next question comes from Ken Worthington of J.P. Morgan.

Happy New Year to you. I wanted to dig a little bit further into Prequin. The alternative data business is evolving. Several alternative managers and index companies have launched private market partnerships over the last few quarters with plans to launch various private market indices. How should we view the evolution of Prequin and BlackRock's initiatives around private market data, and what sort of outlook do you see for Prequin and BlackRock to participate in investable alternative indices?

Thanks. I'd start with we're basically nine months plus past the close of Prequin. The integration has really been terrific. We're very excited about the plans going forward. The four big things to do as part of bringing PreQin into BlackRock is first expanding the distribution, obviously, of world-class PreQin data across our client base. The second is the build out of data and models for private markets with using the PreQin data, creating that great ecosystem where you have data and models being able to power how asset allocators think about investing in the private markets, how they think about benchmarking and comparing returns, effectively creating the language of private markets, both in risk models and in data. The third is enriching the data and building scale in the data factory. And then the fourth is the opportunity you're touching on, which we think is the larger long-term opportunity of leveraging our engines in Aladdin and iShares to build the machine for the indexing of the private markets. And when I think about what the creation of public markets did to drive stock markets, which especially we see through iShares. We think BlackRock and Prequen to do that for the private markets. We see that opportunity as being particularly compelling. We're working on building investable indices that we hope to bring to market here in the next few years. And I think the real opportunity is to try to standardize index rules, to try to standardize pricing frameworks, and ultimately publication so that you can create markets and transparency that ultimately can power futures contracts, can ultimately power iShares, and that's a big part of our strategy in the overall growth of PreQuint.

Let me add one other point. Because more and more insurance companies, more and more pension funds and sovereign funds are deploying more and more private market strategies, and more wealth managers are anticipating more private market strategies. The need to have a comprehensive risk management platform is even more imperative. So having a separate risk management system only for private markets is not going to be workable. And I think what Aladdin is bringing across the world and the spectrum of public and private markets, we're in a position of very large growth. And you saw that and our ACV growth in 2025, and we expect that to continue over the coming years. The need to have a comprehensive risk platform, and especially if the Department of Labor approves the utilization of private markets in the 401K and the defined contribution business, each and every firm is going to have to validate and authenticate the risk that is being implied when they add private markets. We are still going to have to live under some prudent ruling, maybe still a fiduciary ruling of some sort, we don't know, but I could say with absolute certainty the need to have a comprehensive of risk tools to understand the risks associated with adding private markets to a, what was an all-public market portfolio, is imperative. And so the need for a platform like Aladdin has never been greater, especially with the addition of private markets in the defined contribution space.

Your next question comes from Dan Sannon with Jefferies.

Thanks. Good morning. Good morning. So just a question on private credit. I was hoping you could first disclose what the HPS flows were in the quarter, and then more broadly, how you're thinking about the outlook for growth, given the headlines and news flow around this asset class. Has that changed at all as we think about 2026 and beyond?

Thanks a lot. So we deployed $25 billion in 2025 across private markets led by private credit and infrastructure. The deployment trends have been strong. We have $7 billion of private credit net inflows in the quarter, primarily due to deployment activity. We're seeing good and building momentum for private markets investing and private credit, I think, in particularly. So that number, I think, is in the in the tables. We're generally seeing stable credit conditions across the main HPS strategies that today form the core of our private credit platform. We think some of the headlines that we've read often highlight isolated stress points rather than painting the full picture, but we generally see, you know, stable credit conditions across the portfolios that we're managing. But I think the context is critical, like defaults and losses in the non-IG direct lending to corporates have been abnormally low for years following low rates. Default rates in the broader leveraged loan market are averaging slightly below the long-term average of 3%. And in economic slowdowns, like default rates rose to 4% to 5%, the all-time peak in the GFC hit 15% on an issuer-weighted basis. And so direct lending defaults are rising, but they remain in historical ranges. So I think we see this period, as do many of the other firms, as a period of expected catch-up following a long period of very low defaults. So returning to normal defaults is something I think we expect. When we look through the universe of BDC loans, the $400 billion across 20,000 loans sitting in the valuation databases, we see non-accruals that are inside the historical average. We see PIC as a percentage of total interest income in line with historical norms, recovery rates that are in line with historical norms. The data does show some stratification between smaller companies and larger companies. So a zero to $50 million EBITDA company looks very different than a $100 to $200 million EBITDA company in terms of the ability to generate earnings. So I think going forward, it's not that there's nothing to see here. It's just that we'd expect smaller borrowers, particularly those that were financed at very high or peak valuations and capital structures that didn't contemplate a three to 4% neutral rate. Those are the credits that we'd expect to be more challenged. The HPS teams have focused very consistently over the years on larger companies. The weighted average EBITDA on the HLEND portfolio is about $250 million. But these are lending businesses. There will be normalized default rates through cycles. And I think the team is very fond of saying the promise of private credit is not that there will be no defaults. It's that detailed credit work is going to be rewarded and that lenders will be in a better position to maximize recoveries. We continue to see good flows. We had strong gross subscriptions of $1.1 billion in the fourth quarter in HLAND. Redemptions were 4.1%, which was higher than recent quarters, but in line with the broader industry. I think a mix of factors affected the Q4 flows. There's generally elevated seasonal redemptions. There was media attention, some profit-taking. And then I think forward expectations on lower base rates also plays in. but still, most BDCs posted positive flows. In our frequent survey data, we see the structural pipeline for private credit fundraising and deployment as intact. In the frequent data, over 80% of investors plan to maintain or increase their allocations to private credit in the next 12 months. It's just becoming a more standard part of overall fixed income allocations to provide income and diversification.

Your next question comes from Ben Budish with Barclays. good morning ben happy new year hi good morning and happy new year to you um maybe just following up on dan's question um just curious if you could provide a little bit more color on your expectations for the wealth channel more generally in in 2026 um h land obviously some some good if not better than average trends in q4 you know what's the latest you're hearing from advisors um for gip i know there was some press indicating that there were maybe some challenges getting a product off the ground so just curious if there's anything you can share there and then i think in the prepared remarks you talked about, you know, model portfolios using private markets. So anything you can share in terms of, you know, what those products might look like, what, you know, we should expect in terms of timing would be helpful. Thank you.

Sure. I'll give that one a go. I'd start with the framing that, again, at our investor day, we discussed how our platform was going to target 400 billion in growth fundraising from 2025 through 2030. We raised over 40 billion in private markets in 2025. And we're entering 26, I think, with strong momentum, very excited about the integrated public-private capabilities that now include GIP, HPS, and Prequin. In private wealth and retail channels, we currently have the flagship private credit BDCH lend, as you mentioned, been raising about a billion a quarter. And we have semi-liquid strategies and senior secured loans, junior capital, and broadly syndicated loans. In 40-act interval and tender offer funds, we have multi-strategy credit and private equity solutions that combine for about a billion in AUM under the tickers CredEx and BPF. And in Europe, we recently launched multi-alternative solutions products using the LTIF vehicles, which stand at sort of 600 million plus in AUM, generally offered through private banks and retirement plans. Looking ahead, as Larry mentioned, we're bringing an H-Series of vehicles to the market for private wealth and retail channels, of course at 26. The H-Series is going to give investors access to key private markets building blocks, direct lending, junior capital, real assets, triple net lease, private equity solutions. And at our Investor Day, we set out a goal to grow the private markets to wealth series of products to at least $60 billion of AUM by 2030. So I think you'll see here in the near term, a real asset strategy coming to market in the U.S., European direct lending to European private wealth clients, and following the triple net lease and other strategies in the U.S. later this year.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have recently a lot of time for questions. Mr. Fink, do you have any closing remarks?

Thank you, operator. I want to thank all of you for joining us this morning and for the continued interest in BlackRock. Our results in 2025 validate the power of our integrated platform and the strength of our positioning with clients. We enter 2026 with differentiated momentum and opportunities ahead for us. I think we're well positioned to deliver for our clients, and in turn, create longer-term value for our shareholders. Everyone have a very good first quarter, and enjoy the winter.

This concludes today's teleconference. You may now disconnect.