Earnings Call Transcript - BN Q2 2025

Katie Battaglia, Vice President, Investor Relations

Thank you, operator, and good morning. Welcome to Brookfield Corporation's Second Quarter 2025 Conference Call. On the call today are Bruce Flatt, our Chief Executive Officer; and Nick Goodman, President of Brookfield Corporation. Bruce will start off by giving a business update, followed by Nick, who will discuss our financial and operating results for the quarter. After our formal comments, we'll turn the call over to the operator and take analyst questions. I would remind you that in today's comments, including in responding to questions and in discussing new initiatives in our financial and operating performance, we may make forward-looking statements, including forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable Canadian and U.S. securities laws. These statements reflect predictions of future events and trends and do not relate to historic events. They are subject to known and unknown risks, and future events and results may differ materially from such statements. For further information on these risks and their potential impact on our company, please see our filings with the securities regulators in Canada and the U.S. and the information available on our website. In addition, when we speak about our Wealth Solutions business or Brookfield Wealth Solutions, we are referring to Brookfield's investments in this business that supported the acquisition of its underlying operating subsidiaries. With that, I'll turn the call over to Bruce.

Bruce Flatt, CEO

Thank you, and welcome, everyone, on the call. We delivered strong second quarter results. Distributed earnings before realizations increased 13% year-over-year to $1.3 billion. That was $0.80 per share for the quarter and $5.3 billion or $3.36 per share for the last 12 months. Performance was supported by continued momentum across our core businesses and a significant pickup in transaction activity. Strong underlying operating fundamentals are driving demand and cash flow growth in both our asset management and operating businesses. Our Wealth Solutions business continues to grow its asset base. Last week, we announced an agreement to acquire Just Group, a leading provider of pension risk transfer solutions in the United Kingdom. This acquisition builds on the foundation we established in the U.K. earlier this year and will allow us to accelerate our growth in the country. As already one of the largest infrastructure renewable and property investors in the U.K., this acquisition matches well with our capabilities and positions us to assist policyholders earn strong returns. Turning briefly to the macro environment. Conditions continue to become increasingly constructive. During the quarter, as most of you will know, global equities hit all-time highs. Credit spreads tightened dramatically, and interest rates remain largely unchanged, with growing expectations that we may see cuts on the short end of the curve in the next while. This relative stability has been supportive of increased monotone, which reflects both the quality of the businesses we own and assets we have. So far this year, we've completed $55 billion of asset sales, including $35 billion in the quarter, each generating excellent returns and returning meaningful capital to investors. We also saw continued strength in the financing markets where we opportunistically completed $94 billion of financings across the franchise, enhancing our capital structure and deploying significant capital within the business. Against this increasingly constructive backdrop, the key themes that ground our capital deployment, digitalization, deglobalization, and decarbonization are accelerating. With a record $177 billion of deployable capital, we are well positioned to be at the forefront of these opportunities, including the next evolution of the build-out of the global economy. As an example, we are launching our AI infrastructure strategy. At the core of this strategy is the development of AI factories, which are large-scale integrated sites that combine power, data shells, and the equipment to provide compute capacity to the industry's leaders as well as governments and corporations seeking compute capacity. This effort draws on the strength of our global operating teams in real estate, power, and infrastructure, each a global leader in their category today. Simultaneously, global electricity demand is accelerating at a very dramatic pace, driven by power demand for the AI revolution and the broader electrification of the energy grid. This, coupled with AI infrastructure, presents a tremendous investment opportunity, particularly for our renewables and infrastructure platforms. As the backbone of the global economy transforms, so does our approach to investing our capital. Today, we have $180 billion of our own capital on our balance sheet, predominantly invested in real assets alongside assisting our clients, where we have deep investment and operating expertise. Our long-term plan is to further enhance the efficiency of our capital structure, thereby increasing the returns we can earn on our equity without changing the risk profile of the business. This is being done by continuing to refocus overall Brookfield as an investment-led insurance organization, using our large-scale capital base to back low-risk, long-duration insurance. On the asset side of the balance sheet, importantly, we remain focused on the same asset classes where we have proven best-in-class investment skills for decades and which are ideally suited for wealth and insurance. This shift is a natural extension of our platform to continue to drive long-term shareholder value. To date, we have had two primary sources of capital, the first being our balance sheet and the second being institutional capital in our Asset Management business. In this next evolution, besides those two amounts, we are focusing our balance sheet to back our growing insurance operations, meaning that our capital will increasingly come from individual investors via our insurance float. Our intention is to continue funding our insurance operations from the Brookfield Corporation balance sheet to ensure that our policyholders and regulators know that we have our capital at risk to assist them. When we established our insurance business, we envisioned this as one arm of Brookfield. But after five years of meaningful growth and with many opportunities ahead, this business is becoming an increasingly foundational part of our long-term vision for Brookfield. There will be more to come, so stay tuned. As we plan for the future, it's also essential to reflect on what has been the foundation of our growth and success in the past. Simply stated, it is our ability to consistently adapt and evolve with the shifts in the global economy while staying focused on generating investment returns over the long term. This started 30 years ago with real estate, moved to pipelines and electricity transmission lines, and is now led by renewable power data centers, fiber lines, telecom towers, and more recently, AI infrastructure and battery storage, which are still developing. Each step has been about anticipating where the world is going and positioning ourselves and our investors at the center of each transformation. Our view is that AI is next, followed by AI-led advances in manufacturing. The world is always evolving, and it is exciting to be involved. I will end my comments by saying that we look forward to seeing you at our Investor Day on September 10 at Brookfield Place in New York. Additional details are on our website. As always, thank you for your continued support and interest in Brookfield. Over to Nick.

Nick Goodman, President

Thank you, Bruce, and good morning, everyone. Financial results were strong for the quarter. Distributable earnings or DE before realizations were $1.3 billion or $0.80 per share, representing an increase of 13% per share over the prior year quarter. Over the last 12 months, DE before realizations was $5.3 billion or $3.36 per share. Total DE, including realizations, was $1.4 billion or $0.88 per share for the quarter and $5.9 billion or $3.71 per share over the last 12 months with total net income of $2.9 billion over the same period. Starting with our operating performance, our Asset Management business generated distributable earnings of $650 million or $0.41 per share in the quarter and $2.7 billion or $1.72 per share over the last 12 months. Strong fundraising across our flagship funds and complementary strategies led to inflows during the quarter of $22 billion, including over $5 billion from our retail and Wealth Solutions clients. Fee-bearing capital grew to $563 billion, resulting in fee-related earnings of $676 million, an increase of 10% and 16%, respectively, over the prior year quarter. With final closes anticipated for our fifth vintage flagship opportunistic real estate strategy and our second vintage global transition strategy, we expect fundraising momentum to continue into the second half of 2025, which should support further earnings growth. Our Wealth Solutions business delivered another quarter of strong results, benefiting from robust investment performance and disciplined capital deployment. Distributable operating earnings were $391 million or $0.25 per share in the quarter and $1.6 billion or $1.02 per share over the last 12 months. During the quarter, we originated over $4 billion of retail and institutional annuities, bringing our total insurance assets to $135 billion. On the investment side, we deployed $3.5 billion into Brookfield managed strategies across our portfolio at an average net yield of 8%. Our investment portfolio generated an average yield of 5.8%, allowing us to achieve strong spread earnings, which were 1.8% higher than our average cost of funds. On both an LTM and annualized basis, we continue to deliver a return on equity that's broadly in line with our long-term target of 15% plus. As Bruce mentioned, we announced an agreement to acquire Just Group, a leading provider of pension risk transfer solutions in the U.K. This marks an important next step in scaling our global platform and expanding our presence in one of the world's fastest-growing retirement markets. Per the announcement, we plan to acquire the company for $3.2 billion and we plan to fund this with roughly two-thirds from an acquisition credit facility and the balance from cash on hand at Brookfield Wealth Solutions. While we anticipate net investment income will take some time to ramp up following the close, we expect the transaction to deliver a return on equity in line with the long-term target for the overall business of 15% plus. With this acquisition, our insurance assets are expected to grow by approximately $40 billion, significantly accelerating the growth of our business and advancing a short-term path towards $200 billion of insurance assets. Our operating businesses continue to deliver stable and growing cash flows, generating distributable earnings of $350 million or $0.22 per share in the quarter and $1.7 billion or $1.07 per share over the last 12 months. These results were supported by strong underlying fundamentals and resilient operating earnings. As an example, we signed a landmark agreement with Google to deliver up to 3,000 megawatts of hydroelectric capacity across the U.S., a first-of-its-kind partnership and a testament to our unique capabilities and demonstrates our relationships with the largest buyers of power in the world. In our real estate business, market fundamentals across the platform continue to strengthen. While this quarter's performance was impacted by softer conditions in our North American residential business, where land and housing sales have moderated, most of our real estate businesses performed well, and we saw strong same-store NOI growth across our core portfolio. Demand for high-quality office and retail space remains the first choice for tenants with active requirements. We signed nearly 4 million square feet of office and retail leases during the quarter, reflecting both strong tenant demand and limited availability across our premium space. Our core office and retail assets continue to perform exceptionally well with occupancy at 94% and 97%, respectively. As the global supply of trophy office space tightens, we're seeing leasing interest beginning to spill over into other high-quality, well-located assets across our portfolio, and we are seeing this trend play out in real time. For example, in downtown Toronto, one of our long-term tenants in a trophy office building approached us with expansion plans. With our trophy office space fully occupied for a requirement of that size, we leveraged our broader platform to meet their needs by offering space in a nearby premium building where they ultimately signed a 17-year lease. At the same time, we're already in late-stage discussions to backfill the space they vacated at rents approximately 10% higher than prior levels. Rents in premium space are well above their highest on a net-effective base ever. We expect this evolving shift in tenant demand to support performance across our broader office portfolio in the coming quarters. Moving to monetization, market sentiment is improving and increasingly supportive for transactions for high-quality assets. As Bruce mentioned, we've sold $55 billion of assets across the business so far this year, including over $35 billion since the last quarter alone. This includes $15 billion of real estate sales, nearly $13 billion of infrastructure investments, and $7 billion within energy. Some highlights include, in real estate, we exited a leading student housing platform in Southern Europe for EUR 1.2 billion, sold our triple net lease platform in the U.S. for $2.2 billion, completed the successful IPO of Leela Palaces in India, valuing the portfolio at $1.8 billion and marking the largest hospitality IPO in India's history, and executed the AUD 3.9 billion sale of a senior living platform in Australia, the largest direct real estate transaction in the country's history. In infrastructure, we sold our remaining interest in the U.S. gas pipeline for $1.4 billion of proceeds and a stake in PD Ports, one of the U.K.'s largest port operations for approximately $1.3 billion of proceeds. In energy, we sold $7 billion in assets, generating an aggregate 17% IRR, underscoring the strength of our strategy and execution while also illustrating that global demand for high-quality renewable power assets remains strong. Substantially all sales were completed at or above our carrying values, monetizing significant value for our clients at attractive returns. As a result, we realized $129 million of carried interest into income. But more importantly, with these asset sales, we've moved several of our funds closer to carried interest realization. Finally, across our assets, which are not our super premium assets, we continue to make progress on our monetization pipeline, completing over 10 transactions this year. One highlight was the sale of an office building in Washington, D.C. at an 11% premium to recent market comps, generating a 5.5x multiple on invested capital. That is over 5x equity of what we invested. As markets remain constructive, we expect this momentum in monetizations to continue through the remainder of 2025 and beyond as we continue to see strong demand for high-quality cash-generative assets we own. Shifting to capital allocation, during the quarter, we invested excess cash flow back into the business and returned $432 million to shareholders through regular dividends and share buybacks. Notably, we repurchased over $300 million of shares in the open market in the quarter at an average price of $49.03, adding $0.21 of value to each remaining share. We continue to have strong access to the capital markets, executing $94 billion of financing so far this year, further bolstering our capital structure and liquidity. We ended the quarter with conservative capitalization and high levels of liquidity, including record deployable capital of $177 billion. Bringing it all together, our financial results were strong, and we expect continued growth in our results over the remainder of the year. I'm pleased to confirm that our Board of Directors has declared a quarterly dividend of $0.09 per share, payable at the end of September to shareholders of record at the close of business on September 12, 2025. The Board of Directors also approved a 3-for-2 stock split of the outstanding Class A limited voting shares, implemented by way of a stock dividend, which will be payable on October 9, 2025, to shareholders of record at the close of business on October 3, 2025.

Bart Dziarski, Analyst

I wanted to ask about the growth mentioned in the letter to shareholders regarding the P&C business and the potential to scale it to $30 billion to $50 billion of equity. Can you elaborate on that and your thoughts on how to achieve this? What is the expected time frame and do you have any inorganic or organic plans?

Nick Goodman, President

Welcome to the call. Listen, when we started this business, our focus was and still is to focus on low-risk liabilities, and that's meant the predominant focus so far has been on the annuity business, the PRT market, and that's where we've scaled significantly. We also identified P&C as a potential opportunity for us if we could find product lines where we felt we could bring a competitive advantage where the Brookfield experience and insight could allow us to scale something. If operated well, we could run at a less than 100 combined ratio, effectively giving us access to attractive float to be invested into the things that we do at Brookfield, and it could be very profitable. We've taken our time to assess that. We continue to assess it. But as we do and as we identify those markets where we think we could scale while managing risk and operating something differentiated, then we will do that and allocate capital to scale. So that will be done organically to begin with, and that's where we focus with Argo and some P&C within American National. We are refocusing those businesses on the lines that we think have long-term potential. As we proceed, there could be inorganic opportunities. But for now, the focus is organic.

Bart Dziarski, Analyst

Great. And then just a follow-up on the pricing competitive advantage that you talked about within P&C. Like, help us understand some of those dynamics in terms of what you see in these assets your ability to price better than the incumbents?

Nick Goodman, President

I think that just comes down to risk tolerance, which comes down to your experience with an asset class. That's leveraging our operating capabilities around the assets where we are not just an investor, but we've been an operator in those assets for a very long time. That allows you to price risk better, we believe, while not actually increasing the risk profile of the business because we just have a deeper understanding of operations. So that's what we'll be leveraging as we look to grow.

Kenneth Worthington, Analyst

I wanted to dig into carry and real estate disposition really centered around this theme of market conditions getting better. So is the environment better enough to start to pull forward carry that might have logically been expected for 2027 and '26 into the second half of this year or maybe even early '26, if the market condition path continues on its current trajectory? And then from a real estate perspective, sort of fleshing out, Nick, your comments, are the conditions better enough to pull forward the timing of dispositions on that T&D portfolio as well?

Nick Goodman, President

Thanks, Ken. So I'll start with the timing of carry. Listen, we are making excellent progress on monetization. As we said, it's $55 billion year-to-date, and it's diversified across asset class and geography, which is very encouraging, and the breadth and depth of interest from various buyers has been very strong. As it relates to carried interest, it obviously takes time. The market is strong. The focus today is on well-run assets with good platform and good growth potential, and that's what we've been bringing to market. To bring them to market, execute sales, and complete the sales takes time. So I think what we are doing is executing probably in line with the plan that we had expected at the start of the year. Obviously, the capital markets and general conditions are conducive to executing that plan. So it has not changed significantly our expected timing on carry. We would still expect this year to be sort of a bridge year broadly in line with last year and then see a significant step up into next year. That will just really depend on the actual timing of the transactions and the processes. But right now, it points to us being broadly in line with what we would have laid out before. On real estate, what I'd say on real estate is we've talked extensively over the last few years, and we've been fairly consistent in saying that for real estate transaction activity pickup, we need two key foundations to be in place. One, we need to see strong operating fundamentals, and therefore, the sentiment turn more positive. Secondly, we need to see constructive capital markets to support transaction activity. I'd say that both of those boxes feel like they are checked now. The operating fundamentals for high-quality real estate across the board are very strong. Specifically, as you're asking on balance sheet for office and retail, as we talked about, the occupancy is high, supply-demand fundamentals are heavily in our favor. That is why we're seeing consistent record rents signed across the portfolio and globe. With those two boxes checked, we're now starting to see transaction activity pick up. Within the T&D portfolio, we said we sold over 13 assets so far this year. We have a lot of assets there contributing equity, and we'll continue to execute. Again, it takes time to execute those sales, but we have more assets coming to market. We have some actively in the market right now, and we will just continue to execute the plan.

Kenneth Worthington, Analyst

Okay. Great. And just a little one on the Just acquisition. I think you said 2/3 of the financing was coming from a facility. Can you sort of describe what that facility is? And how does that facility or the funding from that facility impact the economics for you and the accretion, if at all?

Nick Goodman, President

So Ken, I would just make a general comment, and this would apply to broadly most questions on Just that you may have on the call that this is a public to private transaction, and it's subject to pretty strict U.K. takeover rules. So we are limited in what we can and will say about the transaction at this stage. If you read the information contained in the public 2.7 announcement, it will give you extra detail, and there are extra documents filed on a micro site that we can point you to, but we're limited in what we can say at this time about the transaction.

Mario Saric, Analyst

Just one for me. And maybe coming back to the disclosed evolution of focusing the balance sheet on growing the insurance operations. With that in mind, are there any kind of longer-term kind of desired or implications for the corporate structure that exists today that perhaps you didn't envision five years ago when this initiative started, including perhaps desired ownership levels and other listed vehicles?

Nick Goodman, President

Not as it pertains to those, Mario. Listen, I think Bruce said it in his remarks that when we started this company, we thought it would be a very attractive opportunity to deploy capital. It would have synergies with broader Brookfield, but it would be a discrete investment. I think what we're seeing is that the opportunity and synergies are more significant, and therefore, it's becoming more integrated into overall Brookfield. I think when we started this, we always intended to fund it on balance sheet. What we are seeing in the business has just reaffirmed that expectation. This business will stay heavily integrated into Brookfield, and that will be the approach. I think the important three things to note as we scale the business are: one, it will be a tremendous engine for growth for BAM, who manages the capital; two, as pension markets open up, this will be very powerful for broader Brookfield; and three, we just think it could be or will be a more efficient capital structure and will allow us to enhance our returns on capital. So I think that's the key message. Probably the last thing I would add, and just to be very clear, our single skill in Brookfield is investing people's capital, institutions, sovereigns, individuals and making good risk-adjusted returns. None of that is changing. This is just potentially a more efficient way to accelerate the scale and the returns of our business.

Cherilyn Radbourne, Analyst

With respect to the dedicated AI infrastructure strategy that you're preparing to launch, can you give us some color on whether you expect to have cornerstone investors to support that launch, the way that you did with the inaugural transition strategy? And can you elaborate on how you will mitigate exposure to technological obsolescence risk inside the box?

Nick Goodman, President

Yes, it's Nick. We are actively working on launching these new strategies, which should attract interest from some of our largest global shareholders, particularly since this asset class is a key focus for them. We are currently engaging with several of our biggest clients. If everything goes as planned, it will resemble the approach we took for the transition fund. Regarding your second question, our engagement with the service providers will guide us in structuring these investments to minimize downside risk while effectively funding the essential infrastructure development. The structure of the capital we provide will adhere to the risk-return criteria similar to those of other funds we've raised.

Cherilyn Radbourne, Analyst

Great. And then just as a quick follow-up with respect to carried interest. Can you remind us which funds are currently recognizing carried interest and which are approaching that milestone?

Nick Goodman, President

Yes. So the carry contribution this year has come from some Oaktree funds. We've been finishing off the carry really in the first global vintage of our funds, which would have been the first infrastructure fund and the first real estate fund, which is actually now tied up. It's finished. It's complete, and it delivered an excellent return of north of 20%. That fund is now done with the final two transactions this quarter. It would have been our fourth private equity fund, which is also largely done. Those would have been the contributors to date. The next funds, which will be significant contributors as we execute on currently signed and planned sales, will be the next global infrastructure fund, so BIP II, then working into BSREP II, BSREP III, and then the Oaktree opportunity funds coming shortly into 10 and 11.

Jaeme Gloyn, Analyst

Just in the Wealth Solutions business, I just wanted to get a little bit more color. It looks like the spread at 1.8% came in a little lighter than the last couple of quarters by my calculations. Am I reading that right? And then maybe you can just sort of talk through some of the drivers of that slight step down.

Nick Goodman, President

Sure. Also, welcome to the call. Thanks for joining. We were roughly at 1.8% last quarter, so it's broadly consistent with last quarter. I think when you look at the rounding, it's down slightly compared to last quarter. I'd say there's nothing really instructive in that. We are still seeing excellent deployment opportunities, and it's probably more just about the timing of the inflows versus the speed of deployment. When we look at the opportunity set for deployment, we're really seeing an excellent opportunity set and don't see any risk to the downside on that spread as we sit here today.

Jaeme Gloyn, Analyst

Great. And then on the real estate operating business, two questions here. First, cash distributions coming in a little lighter than previous quarters. What could be driving that? And then with the improved operating environment for real estate, do you have a sense as to the timeline when operating FFO or NOI would begin to close the gap to those cash distributions?

Nick Goodman, President

Sure. Just on your first question, the cash distribution this quarter, the reduction is really just a product of the residential land and housing business, where last year we had one-time income from lot sales that were not repeated this year. We have seen a little bit of a slowdown in home sales. The long-term outlook for the business remains strong and intact, really driven by the supply and demand fundamentals in housing. But that reduction this quarter in the distributable earnings was primarily driven by the land and housing business. On your question about the operating FFO for the business and the outlook, listen, the underlying fundamentals for the business are very strong. We had the impact from resi. I would tell you that the FFO this quarter also, year-over-year, is impacted by the fact that we have sold assets. That has an impact on income. We have the absence of some one-time events that occurred last year. These impacts were offset by lower rates, tightening credit spreads, and the effects of the deleveraging we've undertaken in the business. I believe that deleveraging, better capital markets, tighter spreads, but that's supported by the core NOI continuing to grow in the business will drive FFO growth over the coming months and years. As we sign these new rents, like this week, we're poised to sign a rent in a building in New York at close to $300 a square foot. It's $300 a square foot for a new lease we are poised to sign in New York this week. As those leases start to work their way through earnings as we burn off the rent freeze and they start to filter through earnings, we have a tremendous tailwind for FFO coming from these assets. I believe you will see strong FFO coming from these assets. While the FFO may take time to pick up, these leases are fully reflected in the valuation of the assets as people do a long-term DCF on these assets. You have that positive driver. Additionally, the increased pace of monetization is going to bring significant capital and cash flow back to the business. If you consider the three transactions announced out of BSREP and our interest in those assets, that’s going to be $500 million to $600 million of cash flow for the real estate business from three transactions alone. The outlook for liquidity, capital, and FFO for the real estate business is very positive.

Sohrab Movahedi, Analyst

Sohrab, your line is now open. And as there are no more questions, I will now turn it back to Ms. Katie Battaglia for any closing remarks.

Katie Battaglia, Vice President, Investor Relations

Thank you, everybody, for joining us today. And with that, we'll end the call.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. This concludes the conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.