Update - Brookfield 4q call summaries
To whet the appetite in advance of 1q.
With my larger holdings, I manually summarise earnings call transcripts, a process I find really helps me track changes in management messaging. Here are the 1q summaries for the Brookfield universe.
BN
FY25
DE $6bn, DEBR $5.4bn = $2.27/share, +11%. DEBR CAGR since 2021: 18%.
Raised $112bn, financed $175bn, sold $91bn, and deployed $126bn.
Insurance assets now $145bn.
Operating business DE $1.6bn.
$11.6bn unrealised carried interest. Will realise significant amounts in next 3 years.
Bought back over $1bn at $36 per share.
Issued CAD1bn of 7- and 30-year notes.
17% increase in the dividend to 28c/year.
“Splitting market capitalisations” across multiple securities doesn’t work in the age of indexing. Now streamlining. “Initial step” was merging Business Partners and Corp. Next they will merge the insurance entity into BN, which will allow insurance to fully benefit from BN’s capital base and grow. Will assess other subsidiaries in the future and they are already issuing Corp shares to buy LP units in both BIP and BEP.
Long term stock returns: 19% 30y CAGR; $1m turned into $285m. Only works if you pick a good business, run it well, and don’t interrupt compounding, which requires excess capital and a flexible balance sheet.
Business relationships are “increasingly with the best”: Google, NVIDIA, JP Morgan, Microsoft, the US government.
Liquidity has returned in both debt and equity markets and interest rates are starting to come down, which “will do wonders” for the US economy.
Real Estate: with limited new supply and growing demand, asset values are “set to rise substantially”.
Sold $24bn in 2025, invested $33bn, financed $42bn.
FFO catching up to NOI on higher rents, tighter financing spreads, and some deleverage. Also, 20-25% of the debt is floating so 25bps lower rates adds $35m FFO.
Signed 17msf of office leases in 2025 at 18% spreads in super core and core plus. Virtually no new office supply coming in gateway cities globally, several of which are seeing prime office rents 50% above pre-covid levels.
“Capital markets get stronger by the day. Those really involved in the business [are starting] to appreciate what’s going on in the office market...I think as that…broadens, you’re going to see transaction activity really pick up…[and] we will be poised to monetize a number of assets”.
Have derisked the NA resi business by selling MPCs; now more capital light.
Wealth Solutions:
DE $1.7bn, up 24%. 2.25% spread, 15% ROE.
DE will exceed $2bn in 2026 on $20bn of capital.
Have worked hard to diversify the liability side across product types and geographies so they can allocate capital to wherever the cost of funding is lowest. Pricing can move fast.
In the UK, £500bn of pensions will come to the risk transfer market over the next 10 years.
Growing footprint in Asia where demographics make savings products key.
$3tn of life and savings insurance on Japanese insurer balance sheets alone. After 3 years of work they have strong relationships with half a dozen insurers and first deal done.
Asia Pac has broad trends towards investing in financial assets - building relationships.
P&C business delivers $8bn of float at “virtually no” cost, and should make underwriting profits in future. Will grow organically and buy other assets cheap in down markets, with a path to $20-25bn of float by the end of the decade. P&C is less competitive than annuities.
BAM
FY:
Raised $112bn, invested $66bn, sold $50bn.
FBC +12%, FRE +22%, DE +14%. FRE up 28% in the q.
Issued $500m of 5 year notes at 4.65% and $400m of 10-year notes at 5.3%.
Dividend +15%.
2026 looks very strong
Oaktree, Just Group, and acquisitions in Q4 will alone add $200m to FRE.
Expect a “further step change” in fundraising and likely dealmaking.
Closed flagship RE and Transition funds, giving dry powder to deploy at a very attractive point in the RE cycle.
Launched or launching new infrastructure and PE flagships.
Operating leverage is driving margins up in each business but consolidated margins will fall on
Acquisition of Oaktree. Oaktree is structurally lower margin, and is at a (counter)cyclical low.
Breakout of partner manager economics. BAM will now report their revenues and costs, not just FRE, and they are currently subscale and low margin, but rising.
By broadening the platform, “we have built a business that can raise capital more consistently and deliver an earnings profile that is more predictable, more resilient, and better positioned to grow across economic cycles”.
90% of 2025 fundraising was non-flagship.
In 4q they raised $35bn across 50 strategies; in 2026 they will raise across 60 strategies compared to 4 10 years ago.
They have 2,500 institutional relationships, up 10x over 10 years, plus 70k clients in private wealth and 800k in insurance.
Wealth is “an absolutely amazing opportunity” in terms of potential scale across 3 channels: retail/HNW, insurance policy/annuity, and 401(k)/retiree benefit.
“A step change in growth is emerging across our infrastructure and private equity platforms”.
Strong investor demand.
AI needs infrastructure.
PE needs change management to deal with AI. Operators will win not financial engineers. Half of Brookfield’s returns historically have been driven by operating improvements, “a real differentiator”.
Unlike many, they have returned $10bn of PE investor money over the last 2y.
AI is a strong net positive for the business.
Very little exposure to things that might be disrupted (software), much exposure to things that might benefit (industrials), and ability to deploy capital against long term contracts with world class counterparties (datacentres).
Huge client appetite for AI - first fund has $5bn committed of $10bn target, likely >$20bn with co-invest.
“There is no question. The bottleneck to AI growth today is not capital. It is not demand. It is electricity supply.”
Private credit demand remains very robust, driven by huge capital requirements to build out assets.
Demand outweighs supply in real asset and asset-backed credit.
Spreads are very tight in commoditised areas, but distress here is driving increased activity in opportunistic credit.
Teskey becomes CEO, formalising a change 4 years in the works. Flatt remains Chairman, and BN CEO.
Investments in partner managers are likely to slow but secondaries would be near the top of the list if something comes along.
BIP
FFO $2.6bn, $3.32 per unit, up 10% lfl. Distribution up 6%, 17th year over 5%. Payout 66%.
Sold $3.1bn, invested $2.2bn including $1.5bn inorganic, completed $16bn of financings.
On the NYSE, BIP has delivered 14% total returns since inception; higher for BIPC and on the TSX.
3 D’s “are driving an infrastructure investment super cycle that is broadening in both scope and scale”.
Backlog is $3.9bn for Intel and $5.3bn for everything else. Intel comes online late this year; the rest commissions at a rate of $1.5-2bn per year. Should support a return to 10%+ FFO growth.
Step change in data business in 2025.
More to come in 2026, with significant take-or-pay contracts signed on existing capacity, high-return densification projects, and lease-up of their land bank for development.
Develop datacentres at 9-10% yield on cost, and sell for 5.5-6%. Development leverage is 70% so this translates to high teens RoEs, or in the 20’s when everything goes right.
Agreed to sell 1 of their 4 Brazilian transmission concessions for $150m net to BIP, a 45% IRR, and an 8x MM. Will close 1q26.
A more pro-market energy policy for Alberta could boost their Midstream business.
Issuing equity in BPIC to buy back BIP 1-1.
BBU
FY LFL ebitda up 5% to $2.1bn. EFO $1.2bn.
Sold $2bn, repaid $1bn of corporate borrowing, bought 4 new investments for $700m, and repurchased $235m of stock at $26 per share, a 50% discount to their view of fair value.
$20bn of refinancings at a 50bp cost saving, with spreads very tight.
Have always focused on improving businesses. Two things make that even more important now: deglobalisation requires capital and change management, and AI beneficiaries will be those who can implement it. “This is the environment we were built for.”
Clarios: 30% of NAV. Ebitda is up 40% since they bought it, or $700m, can repeat this over the next 5 years with investment in advanced batteries, and enhanced recycling and critical mineral recovery. Will generate $5bn of FCF over that time before tax credits, more than the $4.5bn 2025 up-financing.
Nielsen margins are up 350bps since acquisition on $800m of cost savings.
Evaluating IPO’ing BRK - window seems to be opening and the business is derisked and growing strongly.
New investments
Fosber: equipment for corrugated packaging industry, 2/3rds aftermarket with high cost of downtime, carve-out at 10x ebitda, clear opportunities to improve performance.
First National: Canadian resi mortgages, asset light, $160bn of mortgages under administration.
Chemelex, heat management equipment, aftermarket, carve out at 11x ebitda, opportunities to improve margins.
BEP
4q FFOPU $0.51, +14%. Raising dividend 5%, 15th year in a row.
FY FFOPU $2.01, +10%.
Deployed or committed $8.9bn ($1.9bn net), sold $4.5bn ($1.3bn net) for 2.4x invested capital and returns above target, financed $37bn.
Issued $450m of 10-year debt in March 2025.
Raised $650m of new equity in November.
Issued CAD500m of 30-year debt in Jan 2026 at 5.2% and their lowest spread ever.
“It is now clear that power is a strategic priority around the world and is the bottleneck to growth for both governments and corporates”, driven by electrification, industrial growth, and AI, not just replacing fossil fuels as it was a few years ago.
Capital is an increasingly important competitive advantage and the environment for acquiring development assets is very attractive. Listed assets, carve outs from utilities, and “lower quality” developers lacking capital and operating scale but with big pipelines are particularly attractive.
Sales proceeds will become more programmatic/recurring as they scale. Have already agreed an $860m ($210m net) sale in 2026 and a framework for future asset sales up to $1.5bn to the same buyer. Expect to sign more of these frameworks soon. They derisk capital recycling and speed up the time from development completion to sale. “I will go out on a limb and say I think this is going to be a huge differentiator for our franchise”.
By asset type
Solar and onshore wind are low-cost and fast to market. Scaling development capacity from 8Gw in 2025 to 10Gw in 2027. US permitting for solar is accelerating; for onshore wind it is slowing somewhat, but still happening.
Have not done much offshore wind but opportunities are growing in Europe. Might include end-of contract assets than can be bought assuming merchant economics and then re-contracted.
“The value of hydro is being recognized more than ever before.”
Westinghouse: US govt commitment “provides long-term demand certainty, helping unlock supply chain investment”.
Battery costs are down 95% since 2010 and 60% over 2 years. In addition, over the last 2-3 years revenue models have switched from merchant to take-or-pay. Batteries are the fastest growing part of BEP today. Neoen was the largest acquisition in BEP history and included a large battery pipeline.
Will issue of $400m BEPC shares to repurchase BEP LP units for a net reduction.
Thanks for reading - if you enjoyed reading this please like and restack, and do get in touch if you have questions.
Pete
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