Earnings Call Transcript - DBRG Q4 2024

Operator, Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the DigitalBridge Group Fourth Quarter and Year-End Earnings Call 2024. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Severin White. Please go ahead.

Severin White, Head of Investor Relations

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to DigitalBridge's fourth quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Speaking on the call today from the company is Marc Ganzi, our CEO, and Tom Mayrhofer, our CFO. I'll quickly cover the safe harbor. Some of the statements that we make today regarding our business operations and financial performance may be considered forward-looking and such statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. All information discussed on this call is as of today, February 20, 2025, and DigitalBridge does not intend and undertakes no duty to update it for future events or circumstances. For more information, please refer to the risk factors discussed in our most recent Form 10-K to be filed with the SEC for the year ending December 31, 2024. With that, let's get started. I'll turn the call over to Marc Ganzi, our CEO. Marc?

Marc Ganzi, CEO

Thanks, Severin. Let's start with our business update and put performance in the fourth quarter and over the course of 2024 into proper perspective. There are three core headlines that I want to talk to you about today: fundraising, how we're investing, and how we intend to scale the business. Let's start with fundraising. This is the key first headline. We had record fundraising of $9 billion in 2024. That includes $4.8 billion in the fourth quarter, putting us 28% ahead of our $7 billion annual target and marking a very strong finish to the year. Next, we outlined our objectives for 2024. I highlighted we had $15 billion of CapEx we were scheduled to deploy, principally into the data center sector. Here, we actually ended up putting to work around $16 billion in 2024 at the portfolio level. Framing that in proper perspective as an asset manager, our assets under management grew from $80 billion to $96 billion in a period of one year. This is over a 20% growth rate in terms of the assets and really showing proof positive that we're scaling the business. The last piece I want to highlight, which is essential to our investment thesis, and Tom will cover it in greater detail, is our ability to deliver strong financial performance with growing revenues and earnings. And I know this was a tough year in terms of our ability to deliver on those numbers in the second and third quarter, but in the fourth quarter, we put that to bed. Management fees grew over 20% this year and over 35% in the fourth quarter, while fee-related earnings grew over 30% in both the fourth quarter and over the course of 2024, with margins expanding in a trend that we expect to continue as DigitalBridge scales. This is the key tenet of what we're planning to deliver this year: scale. I'll talk a little bit more about it in the third section of my presentation and commentary today. Let's go to the next page. On fundraising, as I mentioned, we generated record capital formation of $9 billion in 2024, with a strong finish to the year of $4.8 billion in the fourth quarter alone. We've asked public investors in the past not to focus on quarterly fluctuations and trust that we'll get the job done on fundraising. We have long-term relationships with LPs and our ability to grow our capital base over a year or longer is a much more relevant measure. In the public environment, not all investors are prepared to be that patient, but we're gratified to have delivered fundraising 28% ahead of the $7 billion target. At $5.5 billion, co-invest capital to go out and buy and build new data center capacity to meet persistent cloud and rapidly expanding AI demand was the biggest driver of fundraising over the course of the year, including significant commitments to fund growth at DataBank, led by AusSuper, as well as a fourth quarter commitment to support the acquisition of Yondr, our seventh distinct data center platform. In 2024, we raised $2.7 billion around our third flagship strategy, which now has total commitments over $5.5 billion. This platform gives investors diversified global exposure to the digital infrastructure ecosystem. This is where investors typically start their journey with us, and we've continued to expand our roster of LPs over the course of the year and will continue to raise capital in this flagship product through the second quarter of this year. Finally, in our core credit and liquid strategies, we added around $800 million of new capital, driven by commitments to our second credit strategy, an alpha that's attracting capital to our liquid strategies. I want to give big credit to my partner Alan Bezoza and his team for a particularly strong 2024. Fundraising, in essence, is the lifeblood of our platform to continue scaling and to meet the demands of large, capital-intensive, and rapidly growing addressable markets. In 2024, we're pleased to have met the call. Next slide, please. I want to drill down on fundraising and particularly focus on co-investment and how the composition of our fundraising not only impacted our ability to achieve our earnings targets, but also highlights co-investment's strategic relevance to our platform. We definitely raised a lot more co-invest than we planned at the beginning of the year. Why did this happen? First and foremost, it was driven by strong bookings growth across our data center companies responding to AI and cloud demand. This in turn impacted our ability to generate our 2024 fee-related earnings in-line with our guidance. That being said, I'm not going to apologize for $9 billion of fundraising. Even though we raised that at a lower blended rate of 70 basis points, it had the same impact as raising $7 billion at 90 basis points, our typical blended fee rate. Further, in 2025, we expect to raise less co-investment. We expect this to be in our typical share of fundraising in the 30% to 35% range. I also want to highlight why strategically co-investment represents a key component of our differentiated buy-and-build strategy. First, it gives us an ability to fundraise continuously, generating persistent capital flows to fuel growth at our portfolio companies and develop a steady cadence of off-cycle capital formation at the corporate level. It keeps the dialogue fresh with our LPs. Second, while co-investment doesn't generate high management fees, it represents high-margin incremental revenue since we're already managing the asset with little additional cost. Finally, co-invest expands our carry-eligible capital under management, allowing us to build carry value to DigitalBridge shareholders off a larger capital base. While carried interest continues to be episodic in nature, it is an important part of our long-term strategic growth and a significant component of the embedded value of the DigitalBridge share price. We've got to take that argument to shareholders this year and deliver on carried interest and make sure that that manifests itself in our fee-related earnings and our distributable earnings, which we intend to do this year. Bottom line, we raised more co-invest than we expected this year, and while that impacted our ability to achieve our FRE targets based on timing, we see it as an incredibly strategic facet of our investment program. Next slide, please. When we look at fundraising, I want to broaden the aperture beyond fee-earning assets under management and put in perspective the total quantum of capital that we successfully raised in 2024. Raising this capital is critical to supporting the growth of our portfolio companies as well as our ability to unlock capital that generates DPI. As you heard throughout 2024, DPI is the critical metric at which LPs judge GPs today. If you're not delivering DPI, it's really difficult to go out and ask for new capital. We delivered on DPI in 2024. This matters because it's not only about delivering DPI, it's also about supporting our portfolio companies and their ability to meet customer bookings and orders, while achieving a key function: returning capital back to our LPs. In 2024, we raised over $24 billion in capital through a combination of primary equity to fuel new investments and secondary equity to generate DPI. On the other side of the ledger, we continued to be very successful accessing the debt capital markets through a variety of techniques and relationships. First, we were successful in tapping the traditional bank financing market. Second, we were also very successful in accessing the securitized market, where we've historically lowered our portfolio companies' cost of capital through ABS and CMBS issuances. In fact, last week you saw that on display with the successful issuance of securitized notes at Zayo. That transaction alone was initially 28 times over-subscribed. The power of the DigitalBridge portfolio and our ability to get out and talk to institutional investors and raise capital is what differentiates our platform. Next slide, please. In 2024, we invested in a number of new platforms and partnered with key limited partners to continue to build and scale our businesses. In terms of new businesses, we took JTower, the largest independent tower company in Japan, private, and announced the acquisition of Yondr, our seventh global data center platform. We also invested in a number of our established platforms in 2024, including the bolt-on acquisition of Verizon cell towers for $3.3 billion. This added over 6,300 towers to Vertical Bridge's portfolio, making it the number three tower portfolio in the United States. We talked last quarter about the equity raise at DataBank, our edge data center platform in the United States, where AusSuper led a $2-plus billion equity raise, which was recently upsized and gave us the opportunity to harvest some gains we had built up on our balance sheet. This demonstrates that when we use the balance sheet tactically and strategically, we generate the right outcomes for public shareholders. DataBank is Exhibit A on how you use the balance sheet and create great returns and return capital to our public shareholders. Finally, we brought in partners at Silver Lake and ADIA to join us in supporting the continued growth of Vantage and Landmark. Both financings were strategic and tactical as those platforms continue to exceed underwriting and generate new bookings and acquisition opportunities. I'm excited about the growth potential at Vantage and about what we're doing in Landmark in terms of buying land under critical mission infrastructure assets like towers and data centers. Next slide, please. The third component of our roadmap for 2025 is all about scaling DigitalBridge. In 2024, we generated strong financial performance, perhaps not exactly the financial performance we wanted from a timing perspective, but with double-digit revenue growth and expanding margins aligning with our long-term roadmap. This is the key when you're investing in infrastructure: you have to invest for the long term. Capital allocation is increasingly relevant as DigitalBridge begins to generate a steadier cadence of cash flow which we expect to be supplemented by carried interest over the coming years. Carried interest is a very big part of our business model. Consider where we've grown assets under management from $80 billion to $96 billion. That equity is at work. As assets under management grow, the profit's interest and carried interest grow at the same time. That cadence will become more pronounced and steadier; the goal is to reduce the episodic nature so public shareholders can enjoy the benefit of that work. In 2024, the bulk of our corporate capital deployment was alongside our LPs in the form of GP co-invest, principally into our newest flagship strategy. We like eating our own cooking, and the idea of compounding capital on a fee-free, carry-free basis for public shareholders is a great use of capital. As we look forward to 2025, we expect our GP co-invest allocation to be supplemented by complementary and strategic M&A. Next slide, please. So, what does the DigitalBridge roadmap feed into? Why are fundraising, investing, and scaling so critical to shareholders? When successful in these three arenas, it allows us to deliver on our mission to be the infrastructure partner to the digital economy. Raising and deploying capital successfully gives us the global scale that drives efficiency, growth and market presence. This allows us to show up for our customers where they need us. This was on display in 2024. It's a formula that resulted in building the third-largest global data center footprint across seven separate platforms and the fourth-largest independent global tower portfolio across 10 different companies. With that, I want to turn the call over to my partner Tom to walk you through our financial results.

Tom Mayrhofer, CFO

Thanks, Marc, and good morning, everyone. As a reminder, this earnings presentation is available within the Shareholders section of our website. Today, I'll start with our financial highlights for the fourth quarter and full year 2024, followed by our non-GAAP metrics and balance sheet profile, and we'll finish by covering our outlook for 2025. Starting with fee revenues, we recorded $102 million of fee revenue in the fourth quarter, which resulted in full year fees of $330 million, an increase year-over-year of 37% for the fourth quarter and 23% for the full year. This was driven by capital raised in our flagship strategy and, to a lesser extent, a particularly strong year in our liquid funds. The increased revenue generated fee-related earnings of $35 million in the fourth quarter and $107 million for the full year 2024, increases of over 30% for both periods. As of December 31, our fee-earning equity under management stood at $35.5 billion, an increase of 8% compared to the prior year. Additionally, we have $4.5 billion of capital that will begin adding to fee-earning equity under management in 2025 as the fees on that capital are activated. We ended the year on a particularly strong note as far as capital formation, raising $4.8 billion of new capital in the fourth quarter, bringing us to $9 billion of capital raised for the year. We continue to maintain substantial liquidity with $140 million of corporate cash and total liquidity of $440 million, including our undrawn corporate revolver. Over the course of the year, we funded $88 million towards our GP commitments, and as discussed in prior quarters, eliminated $78 million of senior notes in the first half of the year. Turning to the next page. We had a particularly strong close to the year from a capital raising perspective with meaningful increases in FEEUM in our DBP series and co-investment offerings, offset partially by capital return to limited partners and a reduction in FEEUM within our InfraBridge platform. Within the InfraBridge platform, one of the funds hit the end of its investment period in December and we now earn fees on invested as opposed to committed capital in that fund. Moving to the next page, which summarizes our non-GAAP financial results. Full year fee-related earnings increased to $107 million from $82 million last year, representing a 31% increase. We generated approximately $20 million of distributable earnings in the fourth quarter, resulting in $53 million for the full year, an 8% increase over our distributable earnings from 2023. Turning to the next page, which summarizes our carried interest and principal investment income. We reported a net carried interest reversal of $18 million in the fourth quarter. On the full year basis, we show positive net carried interest revenue of $46.6 million for 2024, increasing our share of the net carried interest asset from $120 million at the beginning of the year to $167 million at the end of the year. As a reminder, the company accrues carried interest based on quarterly changes in fair value of the investments held across our portfolio of funds and this does not represent a cash realization unless it's classified under realized carried interest. Net principal investment earnings were roughly flat for the fourth quarter and $22.6 million for the full year. This primarily represents income earned on capital invested alongside our limited partners. Moving to the next page, this chart highlights the stability and consistency in growth both in revenues and margins that we've experienced over the last two years. LTM margin has steadily ticked up to 32% as of the fourth quarter. Based on our fundraising outlook, I expect this chart to continue to show growth in LTM revenues, fee-related earnings, and margin over the coming quarters as we benefit from catch-up fees on our flagship fundraising. The fourth quarter saw $3.2 billion of fee-earning equity under management inflows, primarily capital raised in the DBP funds and a few large co-investments, offset by $1.6 billion of outflows, principally related to the expiration of the commitment period on one InfraBridge fund that I mentioned earlier. Turning to the next page, you'll see that the company continues to maintain a strong balance sheet with $1.4 billion of investments alongside our limited partners and ample liquidity. We continue to evaluate the appropriate capital structure for the business, including our preferred stock obligations. As mentioned earlier, available corporate cash as of December 31 was $140 million, with total current liquidity of $440 million, including our $300 million undrawn revolver. Turning to the final page of the financial section, I'd like to provide some guidance on what we expect for 2025 and how that compares to our longer-term financial objectives that I laid out at our Investor Day in May last year. Over the course of 2025, we expect to continue progressing toward our longer-term goals for fee-earning equity under management, fee-related earnings, and FRE margin. We believe that we have the opportunity to grow fee-earning equity under management to $40 billion over the course of 2025 on a net basis when taking into account capital raised offset by distributions to limited partners. Additionally, we expect to grow fee-related earnings between 10% and 20% as compared to 2024 and improve our FRE margins by approximately 200 basis points over the course of 2025. Lastly, unlike 2024 in which our FRE performance was disproportionately back-ended, we would expect our performance for 2025 to be somewhat front-loaded from a quarterly perspective this year due to the timing of expected fundraising. With that, I'll wrap up the financial results section of our presentation and turn it back to Marc.

Marc Ganzi, CEO

Thanks, Tom. Let's look ahead to our 2025 roadmap and cover the three things that really matter. First, fundraising: we've set a net target to grow our fee-earning AUM to over $40 billion over the course of the year. Our fee revenue and earnings growth are closely correlated to our active FEEUM over the period, so it is a better proxy for our financial performance. This year, we will make sure that cadence is in-line with our fundraising so that it tracks for FRE, making it predictable and easy for investors to understand and bank on our earnings potential throughout the year. Taking FEEUM from $35.5 billion to over $40 billion will involve finishing fundraising for our third flagship and second credit strategies. We will also launch two new investment products and continue to build on our initial success in tapping the private wealth channel where Andrew Cox has done a great job for us. On investing, in addition to building out cloud and AI training data centers, we're starting to see customers prepare for the next phase of AI, inference, where location matters and performance across the entire network matters. I'll discuss this more in a few pages. Finally, as I said earlier, we will continue to scale our platform, DigitalBridge. Tom walked you through our guidance and I believe we're in a strong position to deliver double-digit earnings growth and expanding margins that are central to our investment thesis. This is the year where we scale and get efficiency in our platform. Next slide, please. When we look at 2025, it will be about continuing to scale our multi-strategy platform. We've mapped out our fundraising cadence by product over the course of the year. The first half of the year will focus on finalizing capital formation around our third flagship DigitalBridge Partner strategy and our second credit fund. In the second half, you will see new strategic capital formation initiatives kicking into high gear, including our second private wealth offering and strategies built around digital energy and stabilized data center assets. We think these new product offerings are natural and strategic, offering potential to scale over time. We've been engaged with LPs to architect these solutions to fit their mandates. Throughout the year, our co-investment program will continue to form capital around some of our best new ideas that were formulated in our third fund. Whether it's JTower, Yondr, or others, these are the next great platforms that we are scaling at DigitalBridge and they will require co-invest capital. When you take a step back, between new capital formation and investment realizations, we see this multi-strategy program generating $4 billion or more of net growth, bringing our FEEUM to over $40 billion by the end of next year. Next slide, please. When evaluating the investing landscape in 2025, a big question is how technology advances like DeepSeek are impacting hyperscale CapEx and more broadly the investment in the AI infrastructure ecosystem. When we updated our 2025 CapEx targets to the big five hyperscalers over the past couple of weeks, the total actually increased about 20% compared to six months ago, rising from $250 billion to over $300 billion. The velocity of CapEx for our customers is increasing. Serving cloud and growing generative AI workloads is generating very good incremental margins for these companies. They are motivated to build capacity to meet demand and avoid hitting bottlenecks. Everyone thinks it's all about data centers, but it's actually about an ecosystem. You need the delivery mechanism to bring generative AI to devices, to IoT networks, to autonomous vehicles, to mobile phones, to wireless utility meter readings, to refrigerators. It's about the delivery and the promise of AI, not solely about building the largest data centers in remote locations. This is an ecosystem. It's worth noting these numbers don't include some emerging players that are becoming more active, particularly OpenAI and some of its partners. Next slide, please. Regarding the debate over AI investment, I've been building infrastructure since the early 1990s. On one hand, investors talk about the need to accelerate investment to scale compute. Projects like the Stargate Project received attention for proposing up to $500 billion of investment over five years to support the needs of a customer like OpenAI. On the other hand, innovations like DeepSeek appear to materially lower the investment necessary to develop high-performance large language models. While we haven't validated the exact cost to build DeepSeek, there are lessons in its protocol and the language it uses to perform. Our perspective is that both sides are right; you don't have to choose. This is about how the technology works and is captured by Jevons paradox: as the cost per unit of compute falls, consumption and demand for compute rise. DeepSeek is the latest development in a trend toward improving efficiency that was already in place. It's a trend that stimulates demand and supports hyperscale investment, and that investment is accelerating. Next slide, please. Lower cost tends to drive demand for faster, more compute over time. On the left side, there's detail on the generative AI large language model cost curve, which has been decreasing exponentially. DeepSeek appears on the lower right part of the graph as an example of improved efficiency. On the right, successive waves of technology adaptation have been catalyzed by cheaper, ubiquitous compute, bandwidth, and connectivity. I've managed digital infrastructure businesses through these cycles: building the first mobile network towers in the early '90s, early fiber networks after the Telecom Reform Act of 1997, and supporting 3G and 4G in the 2000s that provided the backbone of mobile data. Over the last 10 years we were also part of building public cloud, and now the opportunity to build AI infrastructure is unfolding similarly. Earlier this week at a board meeting of one of our growth-stage investments, Articul8, the CEO highlighted an uptick in pipeline tied to the recent deployment of DeepSeek, with enterprise customers activated by improving affordability of developing AI capabilities. When compute becomes cheaper and more ubiquitous, it's easier for smaller enterprises to decide to build their own generative AI models, and that's what we're seeing at Articul8 and in many of the over 50 investments we hold. We get to see both infrastructure and customer demand across the AI stack. The natural innovation across the AI ecosystem is driving rapid adoption of new technology. Next slide, please. Let's look at how these developments are playing out in our ecosystem. One trend we're starting to see with our hyperscaler customers is a focus on the next phase of AI: inference. While data centers remain at the core of the opportunity, the investment in training clusters will be increasingly augmented by compute footprints that serve inference, which is the actual use or application of pre-trained generative AI models. Location and performance across the network begin to matter a lot more. We saw this pattern with public cloud from 2013 to 2024, where capacity was initially dominated by training. Over the next few years, we expect inference to represent the bulk of workloads in data centers as AI applications proliferate and move closer to consumers and enterprises. To do that, you need network infrastructure to deliver those workloads. Public cloud workloads moved closer to use cases, and generative AI will follow that footprint in a more pronounced way, requiring more dark fiber, more small cell infrastructure, and more mobile edge infrastructure in the form of towers and edge data centers. We're at the beginning of building the generative AI delivery mechanism for infrastructure. This is what we're discussing with LPs: not just large hyperscale campuses, but the associated ecosystem to deliver generative AI. Next slide, please. A framework for inference is to think of it as Cloud 2.0. Inference workloads infuse traditional cloud use cases with new intelligence. These rely on infrastructure closer to the enterprise and consumer. AI agents will increasingly execute and orchestrate use cases such as search, enterprise workflows, e-commerce, and social media. These are latency-sensitive workloads that benefit from integration of generative AI agents and will accelerate the age of inference. Next slide, please. To distill industry-wide trends for DigitalBridge shareholders, the demand for cloud and AI training and inference workloads is driving rapid growth across our data center platforms globally. We have grown from under 1 gigawatt of cumulative capacity four years ago to nearly 4 gigawatts of leased capacity across our portfolio that was lit at the end of 2024. By the end of this year, we expect capacity to have grown at a 68% compound annual growth rate over the past five years. We also have a secured power bank that is almost four times that size—over 16 gigawatts—positioning us to continue to scale in the years ahead. Having a land bank and a power bank that we can lease into over 12 gigawatts in the next two to three years is valuable. Many competitors and other developers are trying to secure power; we already have the power in place today, the land, and the building permits. Power is the most important component today. We've spent a lot of time at the portfolio company level supporting efforts to bank future capacity, and this is on display for our investors today. Next slide, please. We've talked a lot about megawatts and gigawatts, but we haven't explained what that means for DigitalBridge shareholders. I want to unpack the value of a megawatt in a tangible way tied to fee streams we generate managing a growing pool of capital. Carried interest participation for shareholders is embedded in the value of our data center businesses. The example we presented starts with CapEx around $10 million per megawatt. Working down, it's reasonable to see how we can generate a 2 times MOIC on equity investment, which translates to around $290,000 of carry per megawatt for every $5 million of equity deployed. That $290,000 per megawatt turns into $290 million when building at gigawatt scale. In this scenario, 1 gigawatt equates to roughly $1.55 of value on a per share basis. This framework helps translate megawatts into shareholder value through carried interest and is why we raise co-investment to fuel growth at our portfolio companies and continue applying our buy-and-build strategy to new platforms. You're welcome to apply your own assumptions. This is a theoretical framework but useful to bridge megawatts to what it means for shareholders. Next slide, please. As always at the start of the year in our fourth quarter earnings call I lay out my agenda for the coming year—our 2025 CEO checklist. One: fundraising—the goal is to hit net FEEUM of over $40 billion by year-end, finalizing capital formation around the third flagship fund and second credit fund, and launching two new strategies: digital energy and stabilized investment-grade data centers. Third, we'll launch our second private wealth offering, which is already in flight. We forecasted $600 million in the private wealth channel last year and raised over $1 billion. I'm excited about what we can do as we scale that business. Two: on the investment side, we expect to deploy another approximately $20 billion into AI infrastructure to support cloud and AI buildouts, from training clusters to early-stage inference deployments at the edge. We plan to be the leading investor this year in the AI infrastructure ecosystem. Again, it's not just about hyperscale campuses, it's about connectivity and ensuring workloads get to the right place with the right portfolio companies and strategies. Three: scale—continuing to generate double-digit earnings growth and expanding margins is central to our investment thesis. We'll make the business more efficient and more profitable and deliver better earnings growth for shareholders. These initiatives position us to support accelerating growth across digital infrastructure in AI, cloud, and mobility. I'll wrap up now. I deeply appreciate your ongoing interest in DigitalBridge. I'm happy to open up the call to Q&A. Operator?

Operator, Operator

So we will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. The first question comes from Michael Elias with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

Michael Elias, Analyst (TD Cowen)

Great. Thanks for taking the questions. Two from me. First, the color you guys provided on value creation per megawatt and gigawatt was really helpful. And just for what it's worth, I do think it's a bit conservative. But building on that point, 2024 was a record leasing year for the data center industry. As we look at your qualified demand pipeline across your data center platform entering 2025, I want to get a sense for how that compares to the pipeline you had this time last year. Second, Marc, if I ask you to put your prognostication hat on, how do you see hyperscale data center development yields and pricing evolving in 2025? Thanks.

Marc Ganzi, CEO

Good morning, Michael, and thank you. Those are two thoughtful questions. First on leasing pipelines: you have to look beyond just data centers—towers, small cell infrastructure, fiber, and data centers all matter. On data center pipelines, our pipeline is up year-over-year. Last year we had a leasing pipeline across our seven platforms of just over 5 gigawatts of total interest in our portfolio; we now translate that to just over 6.2 gigawatts of new leasing proposals. So the pipeline is up about 22% year-over-year in terms of activity and new customer applications. Across the globe, towers pipelines are up materially, and importantly, fiber pipelines are up over 50% year-over-year, largely fueled by dark fiber transport routes, metro rings, and data center connectivity. The entire ecosystem is performing—not just data centers—and we are the investor that looks at the whole ecosystem, not just a trend. Regarding your second question on development yield and pricing: in locations where we have an advantage—power, permits, land and existing campus—we can set our own price. If it's a de novo greenfield in a competitive area, we're probably not the right partner. There are many entrants playing in data center land now, but we've been building strategic campuses with reliability, redundancy, power, cooling, and connectivity for a long time. Those capabilities take time to develop. Some of our companies have distinct advantages with power sources, microgrids to control power flow, and strong security—customers building private cloud environments with high reliability turn to us. We've seen development yields stabilize through 2024. We strategically chose not to opportunistically raise prices last year in a manner that would harm long-term relationships. Looking at our pipeline for 2025, we will continue to deliver solid cash-on-cash yields. Additionally, our ability to access ABS and CMBS markets—demonstrated recently—lets us lever returns efficiently and preserve yields. We don't chase raw land and power banks without a customer lease. Everything we build usually has a customer lease tethered to it and is typically in markets where we've operated for some time. We're still seeing single-tenant yields in the double-digit range and will continue to deploy capital in right locations with right customers and lease terms. Thanks, Michael.

Operator, Operator

Next question, Jade Rahmani with KBW. Please go ahead.

Jade Rahmani, Analyst (KBW)

Funds one and two are 2018 and 2020 vintage. Do you expect most exits and monetizations to take place this year and next?

Marc Ganzi, CEO

Good morning, Jade. We're very focused on delivering DPI on InfraBridge 1 and our first flagship. InfraBridge 1 is winding down that portfolio and we have exits in flight, so we're excited about returning capital back to that platform. In Fund 1 we've also begun creating DPI and intend to deliver more. Our average hold tends to be between five and nine years. Fund 2—despite an early exit of Vantage Towers—remains under assessment for exits. There have been market rumors about some Fund 2 assets being for sale, but I can't speak to that specifically. We're astute sellers when we can achieve outcomes at a 20% to 40% premium to NAV. The vintage on 2018 is moving into a zone where it would be logical to expect some exits. We recently brought in partners for Vantage EMEA with AusSuper and GIC and increased the opportunity to sell assets from the devco to a yieldco, creating DPI for investors. Several Fund 1 assets are in strategic review and could be held, sold to strategics, or moved into continuation funds. In 2023 and 2024 we delivered eight different DPI outcomes and returned over $9 billion to LPs. Returning capital is essential if we are to continue to raise significant capital, and we absolutely anticipate delivering more DPI and some carried interest for our shareholders.

Jade Rahmani, Analyst (KBW)

Looking at DigitalBridge's own capital allocation, can you talk to how much preferred has been repurchased so far this year and what do you expect? Although the cost of the preferred isn't too bad as a cost of capital, it has a big outsized impact on EPS—around $0.30 a share—so buying back preferred seems accretive. Do you expect to do much of that this year?

Marc Ganzi, CEO

We did not purchase any of the preferred last year as they traded back up near par. We didn't see a total return that compared to other uses of the balance sheet. From my perspective, when you look at our third fund returns being 300 to 400 basis points wider than Fund 1 and Fund 2, and when our funds can generate high-teens returns, buying back the prefs at a 7% to 8% trade hasn't been the highest and best use of the balance sheet. We have been opportunistic in the past buying back preferreds. With interest rates moving, the prefs can be a relatively low cost of capital, but if interest rates come down and securitization markets return—using the Zayo transaction as a proxy where instruments priced near 6%—there is opportunity to reduce preferreds over time. Tom and I talk about this a lot. If we can access debt capital sub-7%, we see a great opportunity to retire preferreds. I agree that $0.30 is significant, and we'll be opportunistic.

Tom Mayrhofer, CFO

I agree with Marc. The preferreds are relatively attractive securities from a structural perspective—few covenants and no maturity—but we are sensitive to the absolute magnitude outstanding. On an individual basis, the structure is favorable, but we remain mindful of the overall size of the preferreds.

Marc Ganzi, CEO

Thanks, Jade. Any other questions?

Jade Rahmani, Analyst (KBW)

If I could ask one more because I get a lot of questions on this, which is the fund performance slide—are those returns in-line with your targets, or do you expect any improvement with realizations?

Marc Ganzi, CEO

We had two quarters where the absolute IRR has been marked down a little. Since Tom took over, we've implemented a new framework for quarterly valuations with a lot of transparency and independence, consistent with SEC expectations. That did reduce returns a bit over the summer, with some continued effect in Q4. Importantly, we get paid on MOIC, not IRR. In this quarter, our MOIC multiple increased across funds which means carried interest is increasing over time. Many of our portfolio companies had a strong 2024, and we should see the impact of those financials in upcoming marks. Portfolio company performance in 2024 was outstanding: record leasing in towers, fiber, and strong data center performances from companies like Scala, Switch and DataBank. I anticipate the portfolio will continue to perform well and that marks will improve in Q1 and through 2025. Historically, our exits have sold at premiums to NAV—approximately 20% to 30%—and examples like Wildstone and Vantage EMEA support that. As we return capital on Fund 1 and InfraBridge 1, you should see positive movement in portfolio marks. I'm confident in Tom's team and the independent marking process we've implemented; it's not a synthetic NAV exercise—we strive to be accurate in our valuations.

Operator, Operator

Next question, Ric Prentiss with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Ric Prentiss, Analyst (Raymond James)

Thanks. Good morning, everybody. Couple questions for you. First on fundraising, you emphasized fundraising as your top priority. When we think about DPI—you mentioned $9 billion returned over '23 and '24 combined—how much DPI is baked into the '25 ending FEEUM estimate? Is it similar to the $4.5 billion we saw in '24 or is it an acceleration given what you said on Flagship 1 and InfraBridge 1?

Marc Ganzi, CEO

Thanks, Ric. We think about this in terms of total FEEUM. In 2024 we finished around $36 billion. We're guiding to $40 billion-plus for 2025. That assumes some chutes and ladders: fundraising lifts and DPI reduces FEEUM. We are anticipating returning more DPI through 2025 as part of our normal progression. We think on the low side of guidance we can form roughly $5 billion to $6 billion of new capital with $1 billion to $2 billion in DPI, arriving at roughly a $4 billion net FEEUM increase. That's our guidance. Given last year's lessons, we'll be thoughtful with guidance and aim to deliver results that beat expectations.

Tom Mayrhofer, CFO

That's exactly right.

Ric Prentiss, Analyst (Raymond James)

On the longer-term guidance from Investor Day for 2028 of $60 billion to $70 billion FEEUM, that implies acceleration. Is that driven by higher gross fundraising, less DPI, or a change in mix? What leads to that kind of acceleration from $40 billion in '25 to $60–70 billion in three years?

Marc Ganzi, CEO

You're thinking about it correctly. We haven't spent a ton of time publicly on new product launches, but we're now a multi-strategy firm. Our credit business, led by Dean, Mike, Josh Parrish, Chris Moon and the team, has matured and is performing exceptionally well. Our credit returns are strong—at times better than our flagship funds—and that platform will accelerate. Our liquid portfolio is profitable and raising money. Our private wealth channel led by Andrew Cox is scaling—we outperformed our private wealth target last year and we see more opportunity. In addition, the digital energy and stabilized data center strategies will open new capital pools. Real estate allocators and other LPs are large and we can tap those pools with products that fit their mandates. Also, returning capital helps us re-ask LPs for capital into new products. The firm has evolved into a global alternative asset manager with multiple products and strong fundraising infrastructure. That combination of credit, liquid strategies, private wealth, and new products supports the path to $60–70 billion by 2028. We think we have the right people and products and that our fundraising cadence is now in order. As we keep returning capital, it gives LPs reason to commit fresh capital, which you saw in the fourth quarter.

Operator, Operator

Next question, Richard Choe with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Richard Choe, Analyst (JPMorgan)

Hi, I wanted to follow up on the sales and fundraising infrastructure you outlined at Analyst Day. Can we get an update there?

Marc Ganzi, CEO

The global sales team today is 38 people total. We've continued to invest in our salesforce, led by Kevin Smithen and Leslie Golden. We added Andrew Cox in the private wealth channel and expect to add at least two to four full-time employees to support Andrew as we scale. Our platform is run globally with teams in London, the U.S. (Boca and New York), and Asia (headquartered in Singapore). We had 28 fundraising employees in 2024; today we're at 35. We've added specialists in credit—Chris Falzon has been instrumental—and private wealth with Andrew. We look at the team by geography and product set, putting salespeople in markets where we can bring products to investors. Our Asia team performed well in 2024, and the Gulf region led by Sylvio Tabet also stood out. North America remains our home market with significant commitments from U.S. pensions. A bigger geographically distributed team with product specialists has proven effective and we expect even better results in 2025.

Richard Choe, Analyst (JPMorgan)

Makes sense. You mentioned that the data center growth from AI is showing up in fiber now. How do you expect that to play out this year and next for small cells, towers, and other edge infrastructure? Many people are waiting to see it.

Marc Ganzi, CEO

Across fiber, small cells, and towers, we saw pronounced pickups in the fourth quarter. January was our best January of domestic U.S. tower leasing activity in my 31 years in the industry. As generative AI moves to mobile devices, mobile data traffic will increase significantly. With finite spectrum, frequency reuse requires cell splitting and densification, which leads to more macros and small cells. We're seeing carriers increase CapEx—announced in recent earnings—and we saw strong performance across our global tower platforms, including Vertical Bridge and GD Towers in Europe. EdgePoint, ATP, and Highline all showed strong organic growth. Fiber has been an incredible surprise: businesses like Xenith and Zayo saw strong hyperscale bookings and increased strand counts, with customers taking 12 to 28 pairs instead of just a few. The bandwidth required to deliver AI workloads is substantial, and our dark fiber and data center connectivity businesses are well-positioned. Small cells will pick up meaningfully as densification accelerates—my view has been 2026 to 2029 as the big period for small cells. The market today has under one million nodes in the U.S.; post-5G and AI use cases could push that to roughly 2 million nodes over time. So, it's coming—perhaps not overnight—but the secular trend is clear.

Operator, Operator

Next question, Randy Binner with B. Riley. Please go ahead.

Randy Binner, Analyst (B. Riley)

Good morning. A couple quick items. Marc, on fundraising for 2025, are you laying out a dollar expectation like you did in '24, or is the focus just on FEEUM?

Marc Ganzi, CEO

We'll stick to FEEUM and FRE as the primary metrics. They're the right measures to judge firms like Blackstone, KKR, and Apollo. If we do our job, fee-related earnings and distributable earnings will follow. Tom and I are focused on delivering steady FEEUM and FRE growth and improving margins. We increased margin by 200 basis points last year and are focused on further cost efficiencies and margin expansion through better discipline and removing redundancies.

Randy Binner, Analyst (B. Riley)

In the fourth quarter admin expense was around $37 million, higher than expected. Was there anything unusual driving that, and how should we think about admin going forward?

Tom Mayrhofer, CFO

There was some noise in the fourth quarter. We had slightly higher expenses related to fundraising initiatives given the amount of capital raised and a few other smaller items. Historically we've run between $17 million and $19 million in the admin component of FRE-related costs; Q4 was a couple million higher. We expect to be within that range on a quarterly basis next year.

Operator, Operator

Go ahead. Anthony, your line is live.

Anthony Howe, Analyst

Good morning. From talking to your LPs, do you think there's a preference for co-investment over the flagship fund, given the current focus on data center development over acquisition?

Marc Ganzi, CEO

Good question. In the third fund, LPs were excited about co-invest opportunities like JTower and Yondr, but overall there were more subscriptions to the flagship fund than to co-invests. So it's not accurate to say LPs prefer co-invest over flagship. Many clients allocate to both: they commit to flagship funds and set aside capital for co-invest opportunities. We increasingly offer stapled co-invest vehicles attached to flagship commitments, which many clients like. Co-invest tends to have lower management fees—often 30 to 60 basis points blended—and carried interest generally ranges from 10% to 15%. Co-invest carries can be attractive because historically our co-investment vehicles have performed well. We also don't work for free; co-investment structures include fees or carried interest that appropriately compensate us.

Anthony Howe, Analyst

Can you tell us more about the digital energy and stabilized data center strategy products?

Marc Ganzi, CEO

The digital energy strategy focuses on building power infrastructure adjacent to data centers to address transmission and distribution bottlenecks in the U.S. and Europe. It's not just an energy transition fund; it's about ensuring consistent power flow through battery storage, microgrids, and other solutions—renewable and non-renewable when necessary—to provide value to customers. We have a backlog of about a dozen projects, an operating partner, and a team that has worked on these ideas for two years, with applied learnings from portfolio companies like Scala and Switch. Investors have shown interest and we believe there is capital on the sidelines for these initiatives. The stabilized data center strategy targets buying stabilized, investment-grade data centers—essentially a real estate product designed to monetize stranded assets and yield opportunities. We already operate yieldco structures in the U.S. and EMEA for Vantage and have experience moving assets from devco to yieldco. This fund will target the roughly $90 billion of stranded assets in the market and partner with other GPs as appropriate. These products will open new pools of capital, especially from real estate allocators. Both strategies will likely become more visible in the third quarter as they launch and, if successful, could contribute meaningfully to fourth quarter fundraising.

Operator, Operator

I would like to turn the floor over to Marc Ganzi for closing remarks.

Marc Ganzi, CEO

Thank you, everyone. We appreciate your time and attention. From our perspective, this was a good quarter. While the second and third quarters were disappointing, in the fourth quarter we worked hard and delivered results: record fundraising for the year at $9 billion and fee-related earnings delivery in the upper end of our revised guidance with double-digit earnings growth. Our portfolio companies are performing across data centers, towers, fiber, small cell infrastructure, Wi-Fi and IoT networks. Our story is about the ecosystem—not just data centers or AI—and DigitalBridge is the leading alternative asset manager focused on the digital economy for the long term. Our multi-strategy approach was on display in the fourth quarter with strong performance across products, not just the flagship. As we introduce new products, scale, and improve margins, we believe DigitalBridge is a stock to watch in 2025. I take responsibility for the performance earlier last year; Tom and I are focused on under-promising and over-delivering. We have a sensible business plan for 2025 and believe we have all the ingredients to beat expectations. Thank you for your support and interest in DigitalBridge. Tom and I are available to host investors in Boca Raton, and we plan a series of investor days with different analysts over the next six months. Thanks again and have a great day.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. This does conclude today's teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.