Record 2025 fundraising and deployment, expect 2026 to be as good or better
Ares Management reported record results for 2025, with strong growth in AUM, fundraising, and deployment. Management provided an optimistic outlook for 2026, expecting another record fundraising year driven by the launch of several large funds. They also addressed concerns about software credit exposure, arguing that their portfolio is well-positioned and that AI disruption risks are minimal. Record AUM of $622B (+29% YoY) and record fundraising of $113B in 2025.
Buzzberg readRecord 2025 fundraising and deployment, expect 2026 to be as good or betterAres Management reported record results for 2025, with strong growth in AUM, fundraising, and deployment. Management provided an optimistic outlook for 2026, expecting another record fundraising year driven by the launch of several large funds. They also addressed concerns about software credit exposure, arguing that their portfolio is well-positioned and that AI disruption risks are minimal. Record AUM of $622B (+29% YoY) and record fundraising of $113B in 2025.Read full analysisCollapse analysis
Ares Management reported record results for 2025, with strong growth in AUM, fundraising, and deployment. Management provided an optimistic outlook for 2026, expecting another record fundraising year driven by the launch of several large funds. They also addressed concerns about software credit exposure, arguing that their portfolio is well-positioned and that AI disruption risks are minimal. Record AUM of $622B (+29% YoY) and record fundraising of $113B in 2025.
Expects 2026 fundraising to be 'as good or better' than 2025, with major fund launches in US direct lending and alternative credit.
Highlights growth in real assets and secondaries, with real estate and infrastructure expected to be key drivers.
Revenue$1.7658B
reported
EPS$1.45
reported
Gross margin72.65%
reported
Op margin29.29%
reported
What changed this quarter
01
Guidance
Record 2025 fundraising and deployment, expect 2026 to be as good or better
Guidance tone
02
AI
Software exposure is low risk, AI disruption limited
Management addressed AI-related software credit risk, stating exposure is low and well-underwritten, and noted AI adoption is a tailwind for their digital infrastructure business, which is expected to generate meaningful AUM, management fees, and FRE growth.
03
Capex
Digital infrastructure key growth driver
Management is investing in data systems and AI projects across the firm to enhance investment decision processes, sales efforts, and back office productivity, which should support margin growth. The data center business is expected to flip from negative to positive FRE…
04
Demand
Wealth management inflows strong, January $1.2 billion
Management repeatedly emphasized record results, strong momentum, and a positive outlook for 2026, with expectations for fundraising and deployment to be as good or better than 2025.
AI, capex & demand read
AI
Platform & monetization
Management addressed AI-related software credit risk, stating exposure is low and well-underwritten, and noted AI adoption is a tailwind for their digital infrastructure business, which is expected to generate meaningful AUM, management fees, and FRE growth.
Demand
Bookings & conversion
Wealth management inflows strong, January $1.2 billion. Management repeatedly emphasized record results, strong momentum, and a positive outlook for 2026, with expectations for fundraising and deployment to be as good or better than 2025.
Capex
Investment and capacity
Management is investing in data systems and AI projects across the firm to enhance investment decision processes, sales efforts, and back office productivity, which should support margin growth. The data center business is expected to flip from negative to positive FRE contributor in 2026.
Tone · Confident
Management repeatedly emphasized record results, strong momentum, and a positive outlook for 2026, with expectations for fundraising and deployment to be as good or better than 2025.
Supply-chain alpha
A1
Ares' software lending exposure is concentrated in senior secured loans with high LTV in high-30s, EBITDA growth faster than the portfolio, and near-zero non-accruals, contradicting market fears of broad AI disruption.
Ares' ABF (Asset-Based Finance) strategy has zero exposure to e-commerce aggregators and minimal exposure to subprime consumer and auto, suggesting its portfolio is higher quality than peers.
“number one, we have zero exposure to e-commerce aggregators. number two, we have de minimis exposure to subprime consumer. It's less than 1% of what we do.”
Ares' digital infrastructure business is expected to be a key contributor in 2026, with significant capital raising and a vertically integrated model through ADA infrastructure.
Ares' software lending exposure is concentrated in senior secured loans with high LTV in high-30s, EBITDA growth faster than the portfolio, and near-zero non-accruals, contradicting market fears of broad AI disruption. — This provides a differentiated view that software credit risk is manageable and not uniformly exposed to AI disruption, which could support the stock if credit fears abate.
… typically three to four years of remaining maturity. The traded equity and debt market indices in software reinforce this point. with the public equity software index down roughly 20% year-to-date versus only 2.3% for the software index in the broadly syndicated loan market. Our software portfolio is highly diversified across many subsectors with a very small percentage of the portfolio that we deem to have high risk of AI disruption. We lend at lower loans to value on software, which are in the high 30% range, compared to mid-40s LTV on the rest of the portfolio. Our software portfolio companies generate significant cash flow with EBITDA margins over 40%, average EBITDA over $350 million, and a growth rate that is faster than the overall credit portfolio over the past year. We don't focus on ARR loans, which represent less than 1% of our global direct lending portfolio, and non-accruals in software are close to zero. As a balance sheet light manager, we have negligible look-through exposure to software on our balance sheet, and any potential credit losses would also have a limited impact on management fees and earnings. In fact, anytime there's a material disruption in …
Ares' ABF (Asset-Based Finance) strategy has zero exposure to e-commerce aggregators and minimal exposure to subprime consumer and auto, suggesting its portfolio is higher quality than peers. — Highlights the quality of Ares' ABF book versus competitors, reducing the risk of credit losses and potentially leading to better fund performance and fundraising outcomes.
Your line is now open. Ken Worthington Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to flesh out the comments in your prepared remarks on ABF and really the outlook for fundraising and deployment as we think about 2026. So it seems like the episodic or periodic credit quality fears that we're seeing in direct lending back half of 25 and early 26 might be focusing more demand on alt credit and ABF. I'll break it down in two parts. You mentioned the $25 billion on the rated side. Would you expect interest there to be improving? And as we think about Pathfinder and Pathfinder Core, how is the deployment opportunities on that side of the business?
… broadest investor on the non-rated side, because we felt like that's where we were going to be able to generate the highest return premia and generate the most alpha in the market. And with that capability set now very well entrenched here, we've been moving up the capital stack into the high grade of the market to the point now when you look at the business, it's roughly 50-50 kind of bottom of the stack, top of the stack. And I think that positions us well to meet the needs of our institutional clients on the non-rated side with the types of returns that you see we can generate, and then also to continue to feed the demand for the rated product into our affiliated insurer, Espida, and our third-party insurance clients. Maybe back to the credit quality point, and I want to hit it again because there's so many, you know, kind of false narratives out there. When you look at where we have positioned our ABF book historically, number one, we have zero exposure to e-commerce aggregators. Number two, we have de minimis exposure to subprime consumer. It's less than 1% of what we do. We have de minimis exposure to auto. It's about 1%, and it's all prime. So back to kind of underwriting standards, as these markets are growing, we have seen people moving into segments of the market, trade finance, where we just never tread. There are probably 25 subsectors that we cover within the broad waterfront of ABF, and there's plenty of attractive deployment opportunity to go around. We're spending a healthy amount of time still around digital infrastructure, partnering with our bank and insurance clients around all the various forms of fund finance. And as we said in the prepared remarks, the growth in deployment on both the rated and non-rated side has been pretty significant, and I'd expect that to continue. I think you will continue to see consolidation play out in this market, similar to the ways that you saw it play out in kind of the core corporate direct lending market, because the benefits of scale are are actually big drivers of return here. A lot of these deals are $1 billion plus transactions. They require a significant capital base in order to drive diversification, and they require a pretty unique set of skills to understand how to underwrite the underlying. So it has been one of our fastest growing businesses here. I think it will continue to be one of our …
Ares' digital infrastructure business is expected to be a key contributor in 2026, with significant capital raising and a vertically integrated model through ADA infrastructure. — This could indicate increased capital deployment into data centers and power, benefiting the broader digital infrastructure ecosystem and related suppliers.
… distinctive advantages to our vertically integrated model and our significant global pipeline of seed assets, which include cloud and AI data center projects already underway. Our digital infrastructure team and pipeline continue to grow as we source opportunities to execute through ADA infrastructure, our in-house data center development and operations team. Although data center exposure is a relatively small component of our current AUM at just under 2%, we expect digital infrastructure to be a key contributor to our business in 2026 and beyond. In our secondaries group, we held a final close for our inaugural credit secondaries fund, raising nearly $1 billion in the fourth quarter, bringing total equity commitments to $4 billion. This is a remarkable achievement for a first-time fund, the largest inaugural institutional fundraise for ARIES. Including anticipated leverage in related vehicles, total investment capacity for our credit secondary strategy now exceeds $7 billion. We believe that our team is well-positioned as a first mover in the burgeoning credit secondaries market with substantial capital and differentiated knowledge and experience in the asset class. Our PE …
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