Blackstone Had Its Best Year Ever Last Quarter

Investment giant Blackstone had its best quarter ever for assets under management in Q4 2021. In fact, fourth-quarter assets under management inflows were greater than for any previous full year, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Blackstone reported $154.8B of inflows to assets under management during Q4. Inflows include capital raised and other increases in available capital, purchases and acquisitions. Overall, the behemoth reported that its income nearly doubled year-over-year in the fourth quarter, a surge helped in great part by the company's real estate holdings. Its earnings rose to $1.4B in Q4 2021 from $748.9M during the same quarter a year earlier.

A flood of new holdings pushed Blackstone’s total assets under management to $880.9B at the end of 2021, up from $618.6B at the end of 2020. 

In the real estate sector, Blackstone enjoyed an inflow of $41.8B in assets under management for the fourth quarter and $75.3B for the year, bringing the total at the end of 2021 to $279.5B.

BREIT, Blackstone's nontraded REIT, provided a net return of about 30% for the year, as assets under management swelled by $9.9B for BREIT during the fourth quarter.

Just this week, BREIT announced it was buying apartment owner Resource REIT for $3.7B in cash, the latest in the company's streak of acquisitions. BREIT has also acquired affordable housing assets from American International Group and Home Partners of America within the past year.

Blackstone also reports that its returns for opportunistic real estate in the fourth quarter were 12%, and total 2021 returns came in at a whopping 43.8%. Returns for core-plus real estate assets were a more modest 7.2% for the quarter but a more sizable 25% for the year.

By contrast, Blackstone's returns from corporate private equity for the quarter were only 4.8%, though the investor did much better in that realm for the year, pulling in returns of 42.2%.