Blackstone Inc. (BX) February 10, 2026 Conference Transcript

Good morning, everyone. Thank you all for joining Bank of America's 34th Annual Financial Services Conference. This is Craig Siegenthaler, North American Head of Diversified Financials at BFA, and it's my pleasure to introduce Michael Che. Nice to be here, Craig. Thanks for having me. So Michael is Vice Chair and the Chief Financial Officer of Blackstone. He joined Blackstone back in 1997. He served in several senior roles, including head of international private equity, head of private equity for Asia Pacific, and he was also a partner in the U.S. private equity business. Michael, so thank you for joining us. Just a quick intro. Blackstone manages now $1.3 trillion in AUM. It ranks it as the number one alt manager in the world. It also has the largest individual investor business, which it started much earlier and has dedicated significantly more resources to than peers. And I think the firm has grown AUM by more than 15x, might be a higher number now since the 2007 IPO. So very highly diverse business with scale businesses across real estate, private equity, credit, and even hedge funds, which have come a little bit back in favor this year. So with that, let's get started on the macro front. So you have a very expansive portfolio. You've also frequently cited your diverse, your differentiated insights. So I was hoping, you know, that you could share some perspective as you look around the world and look at the portfolio. What is the state of the macro environment today? And also, where is this heading?

Sure, Greg. And again, great to see everyone to be here. I'd start by saying, despite all of the noise out there and all the curveballs that have come our way over the last year, that the operating environment for our firm and the fundamentals in our portfolio are quite strong. In terms of the macro drivers, I'd say the most important factor, of course, is that we're undergoing a historic investment boom with what we expect to be a productivity boom coming behind that. In our Blackstone portfolio, we're seeing, you know, continued strength. We saw 9% revenue growth in our corporate private equity companies in the fourth quarter with resilient margins. And we're seeing particularly robust gains in those parts of our portfolio in the AI and related infrastructure ecosystem. Our data center platform in the U.S., QTS, grew leasing 50% in 2025. We expect similar trends in 2026. In terms of the consumer, and I heard our host Brian Moynihan talk about this this morning on TV, you know, clearly we see elements of that sort of two-speed or K-shaped consumer economy. You know, we see that in our economy, hotel assets, some of our water parks, some other consumer facing businesses, but the higher end consumer, you know, which drives so much of consumption in this country remains strong. And we see that in our luxury hotels, in premium travel, in credit card data broadly. And then in terms of inflation, you know, we've been pretty consistent on this. We see it as basically under control labor costs in our portfolio and I think broadly are stable. We see a labor market that's in balance, although possibly cooling gradually and shelter inflation in real time is running well below the lagging measures embedded in CPI. So all of this in terms of our portfolio is leading to corporate confidence. We survey our CEOs every quarter. Their optimism is at the highest level in over a year. And virtually none expect a recession in the next 12 months. So, you know, all this translates into a capital markets environment that is really quite robust, which is a very good thing for the operating environment for our businesses. You know, the combo of healthy economic growth, moderating inflation, we think that's supportive of short rates coming down along with the cost of capital overall. although the steepness I would say the yield curve over time is you know remains to be seen you know high yield spreads today are at nearly I think all-time heights tights sorry heights would bad investment grade spreads I think the tightest since like 1998 and you know we subscribe to the the view that AI related productivity is going to have a meaningful deflationary pull over time. So and then I would add in terms of sort of Fed monetary policy, you know, I think Kevin Warsh has really strong credibility with the market and with financial decision makers, and it'll be a stabilizing and positive force. So when you combine all that, overall, we think the economy and the operating environment for us remains on quite solid footing, healthy economic growth, moderate inflation, short rates coming down. And that makes for a constructive backdrop for our business.

So, you know, how does that translate into the investing backdrop? And do you expect 2026 to be a stronger deployment year year over year? And where is Blackstone leaning into in terms of deployments?

Yes, we do expect it to be a, you know, very active year. We are coming off a very strong 2025. We deployed throughout the year about $138 billion of investments. That was our highest annual level in four years, including $42 billion in the fourth quarter. We definitely leaned into the public market volatility. We signed or closed eight different public-to-privates in 2025 across real estate and private equity. We saw record deployment in credit and in our secondaries business. So robust deployment momentum moving forward into 2026. Where are we focused? You know, stepping back, it's a rapidly changing world, obviously, that's replete with critical markets of massive scale that actually are short of the long-term capital they require to grow. And private markets are a critical part of the answer. And for us, our extraordinary breadth and reach of our business in our view really allows us to be a strategic capital provider at huge scale. So it's a really kind of unprecedented and incredibly exciting time for us. So what does that mean? You know, there's this intersection of multiple megatrends that are, I think, that are driving our deployment, and I think will continue to do so for years. Obviously, AI and digital infrastructure, we talked about that a lot. Data center CapEx, you know, increasing by some forecast, projected to increase three and a half times over the next five years versus the last five years. That's probably low, something like $7 trillion required. We have the largest platform in the world, and we're really just aiming to be, simply put, the best position, most trusted partner to hyperscalers to deliver that critical infrastructure Alongside that, power and electrification, CapEx there for the sector is expected to grow 50% plus over the next five years versus the last five. We're one of the most active investors in that ecosystem in our private equity segment, mainly in infrastructure and in our energy private equity area. We've completed actually 31 investments representing over $10 billion of equity just over the last two years in this space. And that's really driving significant gains in our portfolio. We announced a few days ago the sale of a majority stake in a business called Sabre, which is one of our early kind of electrification thematic investments. Life Sciences, where we have a big business, you know, the extraordinary innovation that's happening, that sort of in drug development, that's sort of colliding with the reality of funding constraints by big pharma. And it creates an annual R&D funding gap of over $200 billion. So that positions our private capital business well. Private credit, as we all know, you know, it's expanding really into being a critical financing source for the real economy, mostly on an investment-grade basis, whether it's infrastructure, commercial, asset-based finance, consumer resi finance, fund finance, and other areas. So, and that's going to create, you know, a $30 trillion market opportunity that's just been barely penetrated by private credit today. And then, you know, the private markets themselves, they've doubled from like $6 or $7 trillion to $13 trillion over the last seven years. And with it, the need for liquidity solutions for both GPs and LPs. And yet, you know, less than 2% of those private markets turn over every year on the secondary market. So that's a huge opportunity, obviously, for secondaries and for those capital solutions. And then I just say from a global regional perspective, you know, Asia is 40% of the world's economy, and it's about 8% of all, let's say, U.M. globally. So that's a big opportunity. We've obviously leaned into India and Japan, among other markets. So, you know, I just step back and say it's never been a more exciting time. certainly in my career and I think for our firm where we're just never been a more vital capital provider in so many massive critical markets around the world.

So let's flip it from deployments to growth and fundraising. So how do you see fundraising trending in 2026 across asset class? Where do you expect to see the most strength? And while we're at it, there's been a lot of discussion around industry consolidation. How do you guys think about GP consolidation theme heading into the future?

So on fundraising, you know, in 2025, we generated $239 billion of inflows. That was up 40% year over year. And really with strength across each of our e-client channels, we call them the three I's. Inflows and institutional were up over 50% year-over-year. Fundraising, sales in the individual investor channel also grew over 50% year-over-year. And inflows from our insurance clients was up about 20%. So lots of momentum and good things happening across all three channels as we enter 2026. Starting in institutional, where I would say contrary to what you sometimes read in the press, this channel is alive and well. certainly at Blackstone. Our AUM in institutional is over $700 billion. That's up 60% or so in the last five years. We're raising a new cycle of drawdown vehicles, including multiple flagships. I think at the conference last year, I said that, you know, I thought we'd see even greater inflows in 2025. And I would say it's still early, but we're currently expecting our drawdown fundraising in 2026 to be well above 2025 levels and then away from drawdowns in infrastructure you know we expect continued strength AUM there is up 40 percent year over year entering the year 77 billion amazing performance BXMA you noted this at the beginning we're seeing a resurgence in client interest you know driven by performance 23 quarters of consecutive quarters for our business of positive performance. That led to our best year of organic net inflows in nearly 15 years last year. And then in credit, BXCI exited 2025 with record inflows from institutions, reflecting, you know, I think this kind of broad emerging secular shift among institutions in terms of their awareness and interest in private credit strategy. So that's a lot of momentum. In the insurance area, you know, we continue to see clients respond really favorably to our multi-client model. AUM in that area is over $270 billion. That's up four times in the last five years. We're the largest non-captive business, you know, in the insurance area, asset management for insurance in the world. We're seeing growing global opportunity with amazing partners like Nippon Life, the largest life insurance company in Japan, L&G, legal and general in the UK, the largest insurance and asset manager in the UK. And I would just say, when you look at the industry dynamics, we really like where we sit in our distinctive model. As you all know, in an annuities market, that's intensely competitive, but where spreads in the liquid markets are near historic tights, as I mentioned. The need for excess spread from private assets is more imperative than ever, and we're really ideally suited to serve that with our scale, to serve that demand without taking on the liabilities and risk associated with them ourselves. So we really like where we sit. And then finally, private wealth, I know we'll talk about that more. We crossed the $300 billion milestone in the fourth quarter, up three times in the last five years. You know, all of our flagship perpetuals really delivered in a big way in 2025, and we think are well-positioned going forward in our private equity strategy for individuals. It's grown to over $18 billion in two years of existence. We think we led the market in terms of sales in that area in 2025. Our infrastructure strategy, it's already one of the largest in that space, only a year after launch. B-Cred is coming off a record year of sales, and despite some of the noise impacting net flows, remains anchored in outstanding performance and a really great positioning. And then B-REIT, you know, we're seeing very positive momentum, and we're as optimistic as we've been in years in terms of the demand for that going forward. So, you know, looking forward, we'll continue to expand the product offering. And we have that strength from that sort of core group of products. And overall, we anticipate another strong year in 2026. And so then on consolidation, which you asked about, you know, I don't, I know others, peers have commented on this. I don't think it's about, you know, smaller firms, GPs disappearing, you know, in the near term. I think it's about concentration of capital and flows. I see growth accruing, continuing to accrue to and flows being directed disproportionately to the larger scale players with track records and brands. LPs are consolidating capital, consolidating relationships. And, you know, scale, I think, broadly speaking, is just critical in terms of the ability to deliver capital solutions and the most interesting investments at scale in terms of the advantages of data, intellectual capital, brand reach. And so, you know, while and while we've been, I think, successful in selectively making acquisitions over our history, you know, the beauty of our model, I think, is that we can continue to expand and innovate in an unconstrained way organically and in a capital A way.

So, you know, the macro outlook sounds pretty good. The investing outlook sounds pretty good. The fundraising outlook sounds pretty good. Now, how does all that translate into financial performance of Blackstone over time?

Yeah, well, we think it's a, you know, a multi-year picture of strength. You know, first in terms of 2026, as I said on our earnings call, you know, we saw mid-teens growth in base management fees in three of our four business segments in the fourth quarter. And we expect a continued strong trajectory in these businesses in 2026. The drivers are broad and deep in the private equity segment. I mentioned our latest drawdown fundraising cycle. You know, we expect five of those funds in the private equity area totaling over $50 billion to be launched at various points this year and to be fully fee earning by the end of the year. And just overall, that's a reflection, I think, of the vibrancy and breadth and expansion of the platform, you know, whether it's across Asia private equity or dedicated energy strategy our longer-dated core strategy, life sciences growth, and, of course, secondaries. So we think these businesses should scale really considerably from here. And I can't overstate the power of our private equity strategy for individuals in private wealth. It's early days, but we see this as a significant engine for management fee and FRE growth going forward. In credit, continued strong momentum in 2026, you know, with significant dry powder that will earn fees as it's invested. And then BXMA's open-ended strategies benefit from positive net inflows and NAV-based depreciation. And we enter 2026 with the fee-earning AUM in that area up 14%. You know, switching to transaction fees, we expect a strong year ahead, again, for our capital markets business in the context of both improving transaction backdrop and also this widening aperture, the firm's investment activity, which our BXCM business participates in. And then this overall expansion of our perpetual capital platform is now almost half of our firm-wide fee-earning AUM. It drives the expansion of our firm's earnings power in a substantial way, both in terms of management fee growth, management fees that compound with NAV and also incentive fees. So that's a really strong foundation for FRE growth in 2026 and beyond. and then net realizations, the transaction environment has improved significantly. And so we expect disposition activity to ramp as we move through the year. And then I'd say looking forward to 2027, even though it's early 2026. A lot of I think powerful drivers in the private equity segment will see the full year benefit of those drawdown funds that I mentioned being activated in 2026. We expect continued sort of powerful momentum in our private equity retail product. continued momentum in credit and BXMA, we'd look to a resumption of positive growth in real estate. And in terms of net realizations, would anticipate, you know, very significant benefits from the cyclical recovery, which is now underway. And then really importantly, there is another large scale scheduled crystallization of incentive fees of fee-related performance revenues in our institutional infrastructure business with respect to what will then be three years of gains. In 2024, that generated $1.1 billion of fee revenues, and we anticipate it'll be quite substantial again in 2027. So we see a very positive picture for Blackstone's financial outlook for the years ahead.

So, Michael, you have the number one private wealth business in the world, you know, kind of first at that, bigger at that. You have multiple category leaders, B-Cred in Credit, B-Read in Real Estate. and then you have some large funds that are scaling quite quickly like BXP and BX Infra what is next for Blackstone and private wealth are there still opportunities to expand distribution are you already covering a lot already and then also where does the retirement channel fit in because we might be getting something from the Department of Labor in the next month or two right so you've heard us say this before you know We think we're still in the very early stages of investor adoption in what is a $140 trillion global market with low single-digit penetration of private markets today.

We've got, we believe, the market-leading business, and the pace of innovation is accelerating. So, you know, our momentum is underpinned by these four core strategies with great performance, represents over $160 billion of AUM. These strategies are really foundational for our next phase of growth, particularly around multi-acid products and the retirement channel, which represents really a whole new dimension of our wealth business where we think we are uniquely positioned. In terms of new products, just to reference a few, the alliance with Wellington and Vanguard, the WVB alliance, we filed a registration statement for two products. We expect launches later this year. We announced a partnership with L&G, including public-private credit products for the UK wealth and retirement markets. And then alongside that, we expect other major multi-asset products that we plan to introduce. We've also filed for a new perpetual product that leverages our capabilities across BXMA, which we think we can deliver something very special. And then other new strategies always are in the lab and in process. You asked about distribution. We certainly think we can go much deeper, you know, within the existing footprint and expanding distribution around the globe. So the U.S. remains the largest market. It's still very early in its adoption, you know, including moving deeper into key subchannels like the RIA channel, which is a $10 trillion U.S. market, deeper into the credit investor area. And then major markets focus outside the U.S. So in Japan, that's the second largest market outside of the U.S. You know, as we know, an enormous pool of financial assets, about half are allocated to low-yielding cash or deposits among households, very low penetration vaults. In Canada, it's a $4 trillion market. You know, we now are offering all four of our core perpetuals there, and we're growing distribution across major hubs. Australia, it's a two and a half trillion dollar market, it's actually almost comparable in size to the UK. We recently established teams on the ground there. So we're in process of rolling out products across multiple distributors there. And then Korea actually is a newer market, but we'll have boots on the ground there. We expect for the first time later this year or so. So that's, I think, an exciting picture, you know, for divine contribution, massive opportunity over time. And here, again, we think we're the only firm with these large-scale building blocks across private market asset classes, which will position us exceptionally well to deliver private market solutions. You know, we think, as you mentioned, after we hear maybe soon from the DOL and after the comment period that the rulemaking could be finalized by the end of the year. And in the meantime, we're expanding relationships with leading players in the retirement market and preparing our existing products for inclusion in target date funds. We've created ERISA-compatible CITs for BREAT and our private equity strategy to start with, with a near-term goal to add private credit infrastructure to that. We recently announced a partnership with Empower, the country's second largest retirement plan provider, $2 trillion of AUA. And then with our partners, Vanguard and Wellington, we're focused on launching our wealth-focused products in the near term. And we're excited about the opportunity to potentially expand this relationship, including potentially to the U.S. retirement market. So overall, we're very optimistic about the picture here.

Great. Let's switch gears and go deeper into private credit. I look at the fourth quarter, 2025 results for Blackstone, very good across the board, including returns. Now, despite that, there's been some more focus on the area, and that includes in the last week on the software front. So how do you think Blackstone is positioned in private credit? And, you know, when you read, you know, some of the newspaper articles or watch how the stocks are reacting and talk to investors, do you think what's happening has been overblown?

Well, first, just stepping back before we get to software, you know, Blackstone, we think, continues to and has delivered really outstanding results in our credit business. Just to remind people, we have a $520 billion platform diversified across liquid credit, direct lending, infrastructure and asset-based finance, private investment grade, real estate debt. Our BXCI segment grew FRE 16% in 2025 and DE by 37%. Deployment was a record in 2025 and fundraising was nearly a record underpinned by record inflows from institutions. Our IG business within that grew 50% year over year. And in terms of investment performance, which you mentioned, 11% gross in our non-investment grade private credit, 17% in our real estate high yield area. Over two decades in private credit, we've delivered annualized realized losses of one-tenth of 1%. And today, credit quality remains strong. Defaults remain historically low. It's reasonable to assume we'll see some increase in defaults from this extremely low level, but believe the structural advantages will continue to produce superior results. So overall, outstanding momentum to our credit business as we move into 2026. So with that said, the market has been focused, as you mentioned, on the AI disruption risk, in particular in software. You ask, is it overblown? I just say when you see such indiscriminate and very technical trading against a whole sector, as you have with software stocks, which include some of the best companies in America, that almost definitionally means it's being overdone with a too broad brush. And there'll be a range of outcomes over time, but we expect larger, well-entrenched businesses to be better protected, and in many cases, beneficiaries of AI, given the attractive boats and resources to invest in their own businesses and apply AI as a competitive advantage, characteristics which we think are evident across our portfolio. For Blackstone overall, software represents 7% of our total AUM. More on that in a moment. In credit, software represents 10% of our platform across the firm, and we believe we're quite protected in terms of, first, where we are in the capital structure, and second, the nature of our portfolio. So our average loan-to-value was less than 40% at setup, which implies the original purchase price would need to be impaired by over 60% before our position is impaired at all. Our focus is on larger companies. The average TEV of our software holdings is over $4 billion, and this portfolio produced, on average, high single digits year-over-year revenue growth and low double-digit EBITDA growth for the most recent reported period. So bigger companies, low loan-to-values, and healthy growth overall. Some quick illustrative math, which we're all getting good at these days. If you take the year-to-date decline, for example, in the software index of, say, 20% and apply that to our $4 billion-plus average TV, you know, our loan-to-value would still be sub-50%. And maybe even more simply, you know, if the public software comparables have traded down from 17 to 14 times EBITDA, our net leverage multiple in our large vehicles still less than half of that. And, you know, Blackstone in our credit business and across the firm, we have significant resources to support our investments and help drive value, our operating teams, our deep sector expertise across the firm. So and also this volatility will definitely create buying opportunities. And I just end on, you know, overall across the firm, as I said, 7% of total AUM. We focused extensively on deeply embedded high retention businesses. where switching costs are high. And it's worth probably also repeating here in terms of playing offense that we've been one of the largest investors in the whole AI ecosystem, the largest in the infrastructure around it in data centers globally, one of the largest in power and electrification, as I said, really playing the picks and shovels that are making AI a reality in a way that's sort of neutral to picking winners and losers. And at the same time, we've also invested directly in AI leaders such as Anthropic and OpenAI and some of the application companies that sit on top. So we think we're positioned to make our business and our investors major beneficiaries of the AI revolution.

That's great. Let's turn to a different asset class, real estate. You know, real estate has been out of favor for a couple of years here, really since interest rates turned in 2022. too. But, you know, this has led to some positives, including potentially less competition going forward. But where are we now in terms of a net flow fundraising outlook? You know, I know John Gray called the bottom a couple years ago, and he was right. And he was also writing that it's been uneven. It wasn't a V-shaped bottom. But what is the fundraising return outlook look like now?

Yeah. So first, you know, I think we would acknowledge that the sector's recovery has taken longer than we would have hoped. But we do believe we're moving towards a better environment. You know, private real estate values have slowly improved from the trough about two years ago. So it's still down about 16% since the start of that interest rate cycle in 2022 versus the S&P being up 75% over the same period. You know, across our portfolio, and I think this is really important to highlight, we're seeing multiple areas of real strength. So data center fundamentals are obviously exceptional. Industrials have significant momentum. So our U.S. logistics platform saw record leasing in the fourth quarter. We're seeing corporate confidence return to the market. You hear that from some of the large public peers and industrials as well. This is a very important development for the real estate market and for real estate business. In multifamily, which represents the vast majority of our residential exposure, it's turning the corner, we think, or will be turning the corner given absorption of excess supply and new deliveries being past peak and coming down. In grocery anchored retail, often overlooked, we see rents in those markets having grown high single digits last year. And then even in the traditional office market, although represents a small part of our portfolio, we are seeing the recovery take hold in certain markets. Manhattan office leasing activities at like a six-year high. In San Francisco, rents on trophy properties are growing double digits. And then just more broadly, there are a number, I think, of really important tailwinds for the industry that we've talked about. First, new construction starts for virtually all kinds of real estate are down sharply. U.S. multi-family new starts, the lowest in over 14 years. Logistics, the lowest in 12 years. And this will increasingly translate into depressed deliveries and new supplies, just a time lag from starts. and it's become much more expensive to build. We estimate construction costs are up about 50% over the last five years across real estate sectors in the U.S. The cost of debt is down sharply. Debt issuance activity is up sharply. 2025 is the highest year of CMBS activity in the U.S. since the GFC. So that's a real harbinger, I think, of transaction activity, which you're starting to see pick up U.S. market activity was up over 20% in 2025. In terms of flows, which you asked about, we do believe the sentiment is improving. We see strong interest in real estate credit and significant improvement in BREAT flows driven by performance. So BREAT was up 8.1% net in 2025, the best annual performance in 2022. And as I said before, we're as optimistic as we've been in years around prospective demand. We're in between major drawdown fund raises in real estate, but we saw strong success in our most recent vintages despite the backdrop over the last couple of years. Last year, we closed the world's largest ever European real estate fund and our real estate credit fund. We raised a fund nearly the same size as the prior fund, which was a record size. And then in terms of our flagship global opportunistic strategy, it's over 50% committed in the current vintage, so we could be back in the market raising the successor fund before year end subject to deployment. So I would just say overall, Blackstone is exceptionally well positioned as the cycle turns in real estate, we think. It's really all about portfolio construction. As we've said before, 75% of our global portfolio in these three sectors, data centers, logistics, residential. B-REIT is nearly 90% across those three. And in those three, enormous strength in data centers, significant momentum in logistics, and strong underlying fundamentals in multifamily. And you asked about competition. I just say that, you know, our sector selection has been key through cycles to driving, we think, highly differentiated results versus our peers. And it's been our experience that with each real estate cycle, our business emerges stronger than before.

Great. I don't think I'll do a meeting this week without bringing up AI. So I'm curious in terms of how is Blackstone applying it today? What might you be doing with it in sort of five years? And is the output that we're going to see FRE margin progression and maybe better investment outcomes?

Great question. You know, it's early days. But, you know, at Blackstone, let's just talk about sort of operations. We're employing AI-enabled tools and processes across multiple areas in varying sort of breadth of use cases. In many cases, we're, this is sort of off the radar usually, but we're strategic partners with emerging application providers and all with very promising early results. So just some examples in software development, like a lot of folks, you know, AI coding assistants have made our engineers, we think, about twice as two times more efficient in the past couple years in those coding activities. In cybersecurity, we recently adopted an application from a company called 7AI, which is an AI-powered platform, which boosts cyber investigation speeds and accuracy, we think by about 30%. In legal and compliance, we talked about this quickly on the earnings call, we're using something called Norm AI, a Blackstone Portfolio company, to help review marketing materials. and we have a lot of them, which is already showing the opportunity we think to make our teams in this area with this use case 50% or so more efficient. And then evaluations and portfolio management, we're using a product called 73 Strings to automate data extraction and ingestion and model building. And it's been, you know, transformational, I think, in terms of the efficiency of these very extensive processes at the firm. So in nearly all of these cases I just mentioned, we're an investor in the platform and the businesses, as well as an anchor customer and a design partner. So we think we're sort of a first mover. We're very well positioned around adoption, and we're at the leading edge of the ecosystem. You asked about operating margins. I do think over time, these and other tools and platforms will enhance our productivity and impact our margins positively. But ultimately, though, really for us, the foundational opportunity for our business lies in our data. You know, in a world where public market investors are, we think, confined to public market data, which will be increasingly commoditized, instantly available to all. I think that being able to possess and integrate the deepest, richest troves of proprietary private market data will infer a true strategic advantage to a firm like ours. And in that, we're distinctively positioned, given our scale, the breadth of our businesses, our global footprint for decades of longitudinal data. So overall, we just, we expect to be a leader in enabling our business with AI and we do expect the impact to be very consequential.

Great. Well, with that, we are out of time. So on behalf of all of us at Bank of America, Michael, I just wanted to thank you very much for joining us.