The first half of 2021 has been nothing short of amazing for financial firms. With public equity markets reaching all-time highs for many indices, it would be unsurprising that publicly traded private equity firms took part in the euphoria. And that’s certainly true for the top five private equity firms that trade publicly.
Performance as measured by FRE
To show the incredible performance of the top five publicly trade private equity firms through the first half of 2021, the following two figures show quarterly FRE by manager (left pane) and TTM FRE by manager (right pane). Overall, for all members of the big five private equity firms, the first half of 2021 is coming in much stronger than the better-than-expected first half of 2020.
When looking at quarterly FRE, BX is up to $704.1 million, up more than $150 million from 2020’s $541.3 million. For KKR, the growth rate in FRE was almost 100%, with FRE up to $470.1 million from $279.7 million. For APO, FRE grew from $259.2 million in 2020 to $301.6 million in 2021. For CG, FRE grew to $143.2 million from $127.3 million. Lastly, for ARES, FRE grew to $146.9 million from $97.0 million.
Switching to TTM FRE, for BX, TTM FRE grew to $2.546 billion in 2021 compared to $2.001 billion in 2020. For KKR, TTM FRE went from $1.056 billion in 2020 to $1.577 billion in 2021. For APO, TTM FRE grew to $1.142 billion from $941 billion. For CG, TTM FRE went from $473 billion to $536 billion. Lastly, for ARES, TTM FRE grew from $365 billion in 2020 to $510 billion in 2021.
The View from Quarterly DE
Switching to the DE view, the following two panes provide that look. The left pane has quarterly DE, while the right pane has TTM DE.
Looking at quarterly DE by manager first, for BX, quarterly DE exploded from $548 million in 2020 to $1.070 billion in 2021. For KKR, quarterly DE went from $366 million to $926 million. For APO, quarterly DE went from $205 million to $502 million. For CG, quarterly DE went from $188 million in 2020 to $313 million in 2021. Lastly, for ARES, quarterly DE grew to $192 million from $105 million.
Switching to TTM DE, for BX, TTM DE went from $2.729 billion to $4.499 billion. For KKR, TTM DE went from $1.640 billion to $2.583 billion in 2021. For APO, TTM DE grew to $1.317 billion from $1.048 billion. For CG, TTM DE grew to $886 billion from $666 billion. Lastly, for ARES, TTM DE grew from $491 billion to $615 billion.
Summing up
Overall, the first half of 2021 has been an incredible time for private equity professionals. Discussed here was the performance of the top five publicly trade private equity firms and as suggested, performance of these five private equity firms has been quite good, aptly described as sizzling. May the good times keep rolling for the remainder of 2021.
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