KKR & Co. Inc. (KKR) Q1 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to KKR's first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following management's prepared remarks, the conference will be open for questions. I will now hand the call over to Craig Larson, partner and head of investor relations for KKR. Craig, please go ahead. Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our first quarter 2026 earnings call. This morning, as usual, I'm joined by Rob Lewin, our Chief Financial Officer, and Scott Nuttall, our Co-Chief Executive Officer. We would like to remind everyone that we will refer to non-GAAP measures on the call, which are reconciled to GAAP figures in our press release, which is available on the Investor Center section at KKR.com. And as a reminder, we report our segment numbers on an adjusted share basis. This call will contain forward-looking statements which do not guarantee future events or performance. Please refer to our earnings release as well as our SEC filings for cautionary factors about these statements. So first, beginning with our results for the quarter, fee-related earnings per share came in at $1.13. That's up 23% year-over-year. Total operating earnings of $1.47 are up 18% year-over-year. An adjusted net income of $1.39 per share is up 20% compared to one year ago. All of these figures are among the highest we've reported in our firm's history. Now going into a little more detail, management fees in the quarter were $1.2 billion. That's up 30% on a year-over-year basis. driven both by continued fundraising momentum alongside deployment activity really across the platform. Excluding catch-up fees in both periods, management fee growth was strong at a touch north of 20%. And as...