Firm News

Achieving More – and Partnering With You

We would like to take an opportunity to update you on the latest from Blackstone, which forged ahead in the third quarter with especially strong results.

Reaching New Heights

Among the highlights of Blackstone’s third quarter:

  • The strongest quarterly results in the firm’s 36-year history.
  • In an environment that continues to be deeply impacted by the pandemic, Blackstone, in our view, remains well-positioned to continue producing strong results for our clients.
  • The firm had record capital deployment of $37 billion in the third quarter and another $30 billion in committed capital. Simultaneously, Blackstone had record realization activity of $22 billion, delivering real value to clients.
Strong Q3 results, driven in part by Private Wealth Solutions as of 9/30/2021

$731B

Total firm assets under management

$37B

Investor capital deployed by the firm in the third quarter

$166B

Retail assets under management

Last week, Blackstone released the most impressive quarterly earnings report in the firm’s 36-year history. Private Wealth Solutions (PWS), the team at Blackstone dedicated to expanding access to alternatives to a wider range of investors, is an important driver of that result. PWS is reinventing the alternatives asset class in terms of who can invest and the types of investments they can make. We view our mission accordingly: the success of our clients is what drives the success of PWS.

High Conviction, Thematic Investing

Blackstone believes its portfolio overall is well-positioned for future cycles, including a likely scenario of rising interest rates and inflation. The firm has been harnessing the power of thematic investing in megatrends where its investors have identified sectors with strong secular tailwinds. Additionally, the firm has invested in sectors that are coming out of a Covid environment. Investments have been focused in growth sectors driving the modern economy, such as e-commerce, life sciences, digitization, and those where there are structural mismatches between supply and demand, such as multi-family housing. In private credit, the vast majority of the firm’s investments are floating rate, which Blackstone believes should benefit in a rising rate environment. The firm believes it remains well-positioned and equipped with ample dry powder (uncalled capital commitments) to act when new opportunities arise.

Here are four transactions which, in our view, illustrate Blackstone’s investment themes particularly well.

Medline

Healthcare: Blackstone’s joint acquisition of a majority stake in Medline, a strategic, high-performing healthcare infrastructure asset which is also the largest privately held U.S. manufacturer and distributor of healthcare supplies.

Hello Sunshine

Digital Content: Hello Sunshine, the female-led content and media business founded by Reese Witherspoon which became the first acquisition of Blackstone’s next-gen media and entertainment platform.

SaaS Software: The exit of a successful investment in Blue Yonder, a leader in the rapidly growing machine learning supply chain solutions market, which the firm sold to Panasonic for a headline total enterprise value of $8.5 billion. 

E-Commerce: Blackstone Credit led the debt financing for Stamps.com, supporting the acquisition of this leading provider of e-commerce shipping software solutions for $6.6 billion. This debt financing ranked as the largest new direct loan ever completed in private markets, nicely highlighting the trend of larger private transactions.

Staying Connected with Blackstone

The breadth and depth of the firm’s product offerings, with over 50 discrete investment strategies, gives us insights and perspectives on the investing landscape.

As you position your business for the future, we are here to partner with you – and we are grateful for your trust. We will continue to work hard to maintain that trust, expand resources dedicated to helping your business, and to listen to your feedback on what we can do even better.

We wish you and your family health and well-being during the closing months of 2021.

Joan Solotar

Global Head of Private Wealth Solutions


Past performance is not indicative of future results. There can be no assurance that any Blackstone fund or investment will achieve its objectives or avoid substantial losses.

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