Calls
Source: S&P Capital IQ transcripts via Xpressfeed · latest indexed call 2026-05-05 · generated 2026-07-29.
Latest call digest
KKR & Co. Inc., Q1 2026 Earnings Call, May 05, 2026 · 2026-05-05T14:00:00
Q1 2026 call, May 5, 2026. Prepared remarks led with results near firm records — fee-related earnings of $1.13 per share, up 23% year-over-year, total operating earnings of $1.47 and adjusted net income of $1.39 — alongside $28 billion of new capital, the $23 billion final close of North America XIV, the closing of the Arctos acquisition, and $317 million of stock repurchased or retired through May 1 at an average price of approximately $91.
The material change came late in the CFO's script rather than in Q&A. Management stepped back from the 2026 adjusted net income target, saying that if you were handicapping the $7-plus figure, it is more likely KKR lands below it. The framing offered was timing rather than value: gross monetization revenue was up more than 50% year-over-year in the quarter, and exits since March 31 plus signed transactions represent over $1.2 billion of gross monetization revenue, which management called the largest forward figure discussed on a call in its history.
Q&A pushed on two things the prepared remarks handled lightly. First, attribution — Glenn Schorr and Brennan Hawken each asked what specifically slipped, and the answers stayed at the level of degree, process and market backdrop rather than naming assets or sectors. Second, AI: analysts from Wolfe Research, Morgan Stanley and Autonomous Research asked how disintermediation risk has been underwritten and whether the benefit can be quantified. The answers gave exposure percentages (software around 7% of AUM, around 15% within private equity) and described process, but offered no KPIs and no quantified uplift. It was also only under questioning that management disclosed software marks largely declined in the quarter despite healthy revenue and EBITDA growth.
Management pre-empted the private credit debate with added pages in the earnings release, sizing direct lending at $39 billion or 5% of AUM and the private BDC at around $3 billion or 0.4% of AUM. One forward caution was new: after $4 billion of K-Series inflows against roughly $250 million of redemptions, management said it expects a slowdown in Q2.
Participant coverage from the latest call.
| Group | Participants | Count |
|---|---|---|
| Management | Operator; Craig Larson — Partner & Head of Investor Relations, KKR & Co. Inc.; Robert Lewin — Chief Financial Officer, KKR & Co. Inc.; Scott Nuttall — Co-CEO & Director, KKR & Co. Inc. | 4 |
| Analysts | Craig Siegenthaler — MD & Head of the North American Asset Managers, Brokers & Exchanges Team, BofA Securities, Research Division; Glenn Schorr — Senior MD & Senior Research Analyst, Evercore ISI Institutional Equities, Research Division; Alexander Blostein — Lead Capital Markets Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., Research Division; Bart Dziarski — Analyst, RBC Capital Markets, Research Division; Steven Chubak — Director of Equity Research, Wolfe Research, LLC; William Katz — Senior Analyst, TD Cowen, Research Division; Michael Brown — Managing Director, UBS Investment Bank, Research Division; Michael Cyprys — Executive Director and Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley, Research Division; Brian Mckenna — Director & Equity Research Analyst, Citizens JMP Securities, LLC, Research Division; Brennan Hawken — Analyst, BMO Capital Markets Equity Research; Daniel Fannon — Senior Equity Research Analyst, Jefferies LLC, Research Division; Arnaud Giblat — MD & Research Analyst, BNP Paribas, Research Division; Crispin Love — Director & Senior Research Analyst, Piper Sandler & Co., Research Division; Patrick Davitt | 14 |
Curated latest-call exchanges; one row per analyst topic.
| Analyst | Firm | Topic | What changed in Q&A |
|---|---|---|---|
| Glenn Schorr | Evercore ISI | Attribution of the 2026 ANI shortfall | Asked what changed and which parts of the portfolio the market will not absorb, given record embedded gains. The reply reframed it as a matter of degree and pointed back to the forward monetization guide; no asset- or sector-level attribution was given. |
| Brennan Hawken | BMO Capital Markets | LP reaction to delayed realizations | Followed Schorr, asking whether further delay is straining LP relationships. Management separated the two, citing the North America fund's final close and its record of returning more than it called in the U.S. private equity business in 9 of the last 10 years. |
| Steven Chubak | Wolfe Research | AI disintermediation risk in Strategic Holdings | Asked for KPIs to handicap AI risk in the business services concentration. The answer gave AUM exposure percentages and described the diligence and value-creation approach, and disclosed that software marks largely declined in the quarter, but no KPIs were provided. |
| Craig Siegenthaler | BofA Securities | Global Atlantic competition and ROE | Opened the call on annuity competition. Management conceded competition on liabilities is very high and spreads are as tight as they have been in a long time, and said it pulled back on origination in Q1; it pointed to $6 billion of dry powder equity as the offset. |
| William Katz | TD Cowen | Normalized insurance ROE and timeline | Asked directly for a normalized ROE level and a timeline. The answer gave a mark-adjusted run rate and noted the quarter missed its targeted mark return, then referred to the disclosure page; neither a normalized ROE nor a timeline was given. |
| Daniel Fannon | Jefferies | Private wealth after private credit vehicle stress | Asked whether the noise in private credit vehicles reshapes the retail lineup and the Capital Group roadmap. Management sized K-Series at 12% of trailing-12-month fundraising and said its view of the long-term path is unchanged, while conceding media attention will likely slow flows for a period. |
| Crispin Love | Piper Sandler | Institutional appetite for direct lending | Asked how institutional behaviour has shifted against the retail redemption headlines. Management said institutions had drifted toward asset-based finance over the prior 12 to 24 months and have re-engaged on direct lending in recent weeks on better spreads, fees, terms and leverage. |
| Patrick Davitt | Autonomous Research | AI exposure in the India portfolio | Asked whether the India book has been scrubbed for outsourcing disintermediation. Management said it has been scrubbed with no elevated concern, and that the firm is not exposed to the sharp decline it observes in Indian sector hiring; no exposure figure was disclosed. |
| Michael Cyprys | Morgan Stanley | Quantifying AI revenue uplift versus cost savings | Asked for a split and a quantification of AI benefit in the portfolio. Management said an EBITDA uplift is being seen broadly but declined to quantify, saying guideposts would come at some later point. |
| Michael Brown | UBS Investment Bank | Arctos fee profile and wealth roadmap | Asked for the fee rate on the $10 billion of fee-paying AUM. Management declined to disclose Arctos-specific financials, said terms generally resemble KKR closed-end funds, and that results will sit inside the private equity line for the foreseeable future. |
Theme tracker
Themes are curator-classified across supplied calls.
| Theme | Status | Quarters mentioned | Read-through |
|---|---|---|---|
| Linear deployment and portfolio construction as the answer to 2021-vintage criticism | persisted | Q2 2023, Q2 2024, Q3 2024, Q4 2024, Q1 2025, Q2 2025, Q3 2025, Q4 2025, Q1 2026 | This is the firm's single most repeated defence, and it has stayed word-for-word consistent across nine calls. It has also proven load-bearing: management uses it to explain outperformance on monetizations, on fundraising, and most recently on AI exposure, arguing the assets it did not want were sold years ago. When one argument is asked to carry that many different questions, it is worth watching whether it keeps being validated by realized outcomes. |
| Asset-based finance as the credit growth engine | persisted | Q2 2023, Q3 2023, Q4 2023, Q1 2024, Q2 2024, Q3 2024, Q4 2024, Q1 2025, Q2 2025, Q3 2025, Q4 2025, Q1 2026 | Present on every call in the index, with disclosed platform AUM rising from $45 billion in Q2 2023 to over $90 billion by Q1 2026. Its role in the story has changed: it started as an under-appreciated adjacency and by Q1 2026 is used as the reason credit fundraising held up while direct lending sentiment deteriorated. |
| Private wealth build-out (K-Series, then Capital Group) | persisted | Q2 2023, Q3 2023, Q4 2023, Q1 2024, Q2 2024, Q3 2024, Q4 2024, Q1 2025, Q2 2025, Q3 2025, Q4 2025, Q1 2026 | Disclosed K-Series AUM moves from $2.4 billion a year before Q4 2023 to over $38 billion at 3/31/26. The commentary has been consistently framed around long-horizon product quality rather than near-term flows, which makes the Q1 2026 admission that a Q2 slowdown is expected the first explicit forward caution in the sequence. |
| Reframing how insurance economics are measured | persisted | Q2 2023, Q3 2023, Q4 2023, Q1 2024, Q2 2024, Q3 2024, Q4 2024, Q1 2025, Q2 2025, Q3 2025, Q4 2025, Q1 2026 | The measuring stick has moved three times: a 14% to 15% pretax segment ROE through 2024, then an all-in ROE approaching 20% during 2025, then a total-economics disclosure page plus a cash-versus-accrued adjustment from Q3 2025. Each step is defensible on its own and each has moved attention away from the reported segment line. Analysts have asked for a normalized ROE in several of these quarters without getting a number. |
| Analyst focus on capital markets revenue trajectory | dropped | Q2 2023, Q3 2023, Q4 2023, Q1 2024, Q2 2024, Q3 2024, Q1 2025, Q2 2025, Q3 2025 | For nine calls this drew direct questions about run rate and the path back above the 2021 revenue level. It drew none on the Q4 2025 or Q1 2026 calls, where reported capital markets fees were $225 million and $224 million. The likeliest reading is that the line has stabilised and stopped being the swing factor, not that it deteriorated. |
| Real estate equity bottoming and leaning in | dropped | Q2 2023, Q3 2023, Q2 2024, Q3 2024, Q4 2024 | Management repeatedly argued real estate values had bottomed and that it was deploying against that view. The topic effectively disappears from Q1 2025 onward; the only later mention is a Q4 2025 question about real estate weighting inside the Global Atlantic portfolio, framed around yield and mix rather than the cycle call. The original call has not been revisited or scored on these calls. |
| Flagship fundraising super-cycle timing | dropped | Q2 2023, Q3 2023, Q4 2023, Q2 2024, Q3 2024, Q4 2024, Q1 2025 | A standing analyst question for seven calls: when do the flagships launch, close and turn on. It fades once North America XIV closed at $23 billion; by Q1 2026 an analyst frames the flagships as already in the run rate and asks instead about what replaces them. This is a topic resolving, not a topic being avoided. |
| AI as both underwriting risk and investment opportunity | emerged | Q4 2024, Q2 2025, Q4 2025, Q1 2026 | It enters in Q4 2024 as a narrow DeepSeek question about data centre demand, is a forward-looking curiosity in Q2 2025, and by Q4 2025 and Q1 2026 is the dominant Q&A theme, asked from the disintermediation side rather than the demand side. Management's disclosure has stayed at the exposure-percentage level throughout; requests for KPIs and for quantified uplift were both declined on the latest call. |
| Private credit stress and direct lending redemptions | emerged | Q3 2025, Q4 2025, Q1 2026 | Management raised it unprompted at the end of the Q3 2025 call to deny exposure to specific troubled names, and by Q1 2026 had added earnings-release pages sizing direct lending at 5% of AUM and the private BDC at 0.4%. The pattern of pre-empting rather than waiting to be asked is itself the signal here. |
| Secondaries and GP solutions | emerged | Q1 2024, Q2 2024, Q4 2025, Q1 2026 | Management said in Q1 2024 that secondaries was not a need-to-have and in Q2 2024 that it was not front and centre, then in Q4 2025 announced Arctos and a new KKR Solutions vertical targeting $100-plus billion of AUM. Management's own explanation is that it waited for the right partner rather than changing its view of the asset class. |
Guidance ledger
Quotes, calls, and speakers are source-verified; outcomes are curator-classified.
| Verbatim guidance | Call | Speaker | Curator outcome | Outcome note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| “$300 billion-plus of new capital raised over the course of 2024 through 2026” | KKR & Co. Inc., Q2 2024 Earnings Call, Jul 31, 2024 · 2024-07-31T14:00:00 | Robert Lewin | pending | Reiterated repeatedly since. On the Q4 2025 call management said over $240 billion had been raised, or over 80% of the target, and on the Q1 2026 call said it continues to feel very confident it can exceed the fundraising target. The 2024-2026 window is not closed within the supplied call history. |
| “by 2026, $4.50-plus per share of FRE, $7-plus per share of total operating earnings, and between $7 and $8 of adjusted net income per share” | KKR & Co. Inc., Q2 2024 Earnings Call, Jul 31, 2024 · 2024-07-31T14:00:00 | Robert Lewin | pending | The three metrics have diverged. FRE per share has been reaffirmed and management expects to exceed it. The total operating earnings target was explicitly de-emphasised on the Q3 2025 call as less relevant given the insurance cash-accounting choice. The ANI target was guided below on the Q1 2026 call. |
| “we've got a pretty good amount of visibility into Q4 right now, so call it plus or minus $500 million of monetization-related revenue” | KKR & Co. Inc., Q3 2024 Earnings Call, Oct 24, 2024 · 2024-10-24T14:00:00 | Robert Lewin | kept | The Q4 2024 call reported realized performance income of $676 million and realized investment income of $110 million, for total monetization activity of $786 million. |
| “We do see our monetizations up in 2025 relative to 2024” | KKR & Co. Inc., Q4 2024 Earnings Call, Feb 04, 2025 · 2025-02-04T15:00:00 | Robert Lewin | kept | The Q4 2025 call reported $2.7 billion of gross monetization activity for 2025 excluding the carried interest repayment obligation, with gross realized carried interest up approximately 30% year-on-year. |
| “we are increasing our guidance for Strategic Holdings operating earnings that we introduced roughly a year ago by $50 million in 2026 to $350-plus million” | KKR & Co. Inc., Q4 2024 Earnings Call, Feb 04, 2025 · 2025-02-04T15:00:00 | Robert Lewin | pending | Reaffirmed on every subsequent call. Q1 2026 reported $48 million for the quarter with management saying it continues to track toward the $350-plus million figure and that earnings will be back-end weighted over the year. |
| “Of that $800-plus million, we expect at least $250 million to be generated in Q2.” | KKR & Co. Inc., Q1 2025 Earnings Call, May 01, 2025 · 2025-05-01T13:00:00 | Robert Lewin | kept | The Q2 2025 call reported realized performance income of $419 million and realized investment income of $154 million. |
| “I would expect insurance operating earnings to stay in that $250 million plus or minus level during the next few quarters.” | KKR & Co. Inc., Q1 2025 Earnings Call, May 01, 2025 · 2025-05-01T13:00:00 | Robert Lewin | kept | Reported insurance segment operating earnings were $278 million in Q2 2025, $305 million in Q3 2025 including a $41 million actuarial benefit, and $268 million in Q4 2025 — at or modestly above the guided level in each quarter. |
| “We have direct line of sight to north of $800 million of monetization-related revenue, the vast majority of which will be performance income.” | KKR & Co. Inc., Q2 2025 Earnings Call, Jul 31, 2025 · 2025-07-31T13:00:00 | Robert Lewin | kept | The Q3 2025 call reported realized performance and investment income of $935 million within Asset Management plus $70 million of net realized investment income in Strategic Holdings. |
| “we expect net realized performance income in Q4 to be lower than it otherwise would have been, and ANI per share to be about $0.18 lower” | KKR & Co. Inc., Q3 2025 Earnings Call, Nov 07, 2025 · 2025-11-07T14:00:00 | Robert Lewin | kept | The Q4 2025 call reported ANI of $1.12 per share including the carried interest repayment obligation and $1.30 per share excluding it. |
| “we feel confident that we can achieve the $7-plus per share, and that includes the impact of our cash-based reporting approach for Global Atlantic” | KKR & Co. Inc., Q3 2025 Earnings Call, Nov 07, 2025 · 2025-11-07T14:00:00 | Robert Lewin | pending | Reaffirmed with a deterioration caveat on the Q4 2025 call. On the Q1 2026 call management said it is more likely to land below $7. The 2026 year is not complete within the supplied call history. |
| “We continue to think that the right level to model the business is in that 250-plus range per quarter over the next 4 quarters.” | KKR & Co. Inc., Q4 2025 Earnings Call, Feb 05, 2026 · 2026-02-05T14:00:00 | Robert Lewin | pending | One quarter has elapsed within the supplied history: Q1 2026 insurance segment operating earnings were $260 million, consistent with the guided level. |
| “that represents over $1.2 billion of gross monetization revenue for KKR” | KKR & Co. Inc., Q1 2026 Earnings Call, May 05, 2026 · 2026-05-05T14:00:00 | Robert Lewin | pending | Described by management as the largest forward monetization figure discussed on a call in the firm's history. No subsequent call exists in the supplied index against which to test it. |
| “if you were handicapping our ability to reach $7 per share, we do think it is more likely that we land below that level” | KKR & Co. Inc., Q1 2026 Earnings Call, May 05, 2026 · 2026-05-05T14:00:00 | Robert Lewin | pending | This is the first downward revision to the ANI target in the supplied history. Management said any delayed monetizations would shift to 2027 and beyond rather than being lost. No later call is available to test that. |
Q&A pressure map
Question counts and firms are curator tallies; analyst coverage shown above.
| Topic | Questions | Firms | Pressure / response |
|---|---|---|---|
| Insurance / Global Atlantic earnings power and ROE | 24 | BofA Securities, Evercore ISI, Barclays, TD Cowen, Wolfe Research, Morgan Stanley, Autonomous Research, Jefferies, Deutsche Bank, KBW, Piper Sandler, BNP Paribas, HSBC | The most persistently pressed topic in the index, present on all twelve calls. Analysts keep returning to one question - what is the normalized ROE and when is it reached - and it has not been answered with a number. On the Q3 2025 call management said there is no explicit target beyond moving all-in returns from high teens to north of 20; on the Q1 2026 call the same question drew a mark-adjusted run rate and a pointer to the disclosure page. Everything else about this business is disclosed generously, which makes the gap conspicuous. |
| Monetization visibility and realization timing | 19 | Evercore ISI, Autonomous Research, Jefferies, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Citizens JMP Securities, BMO Capital Markets, UBS Investment Bank | Present on eleven of twelve calls, usually as a request for the visible pipeline figure. Management has answered this one specifically and consistently, quarter after quarter, and the figures have generally been met or exceeded. That track record is the main reason the Q1 2026 walk-back on the annual target reads as a timing statement rather than a credibility problem. |
| Private wealth, K-Series and the Capital Group partnership | 17 | Evercore ISI, BNP Paribas, Wells Fargo Securities, BofA Securities, Goldman Sachs, Autonomous Research, Jefferies, TD Cowen, Wolfe Research, Piper Sandler | Sustained questioning about platform additions, product design and eventual 401(k) access, spread across ten of the twelve calls. Answers have been detailed on process and have consistently declined to forecast flows, with management repeating that it does not read into month-to-month sales - which is why the Q1 2026 statement that a Q2 slowdown is expected stands out. |
| Asset-based finance and private credit scale | 16 | Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Evercore ISI, TD Cowen, Wolfe Research, Barclays, Wells Fargo Securities, BNP Paribas, Piper Sandler | Consistent questioning on origination capacity, bank retrenchment and whether scale erodes returns. The character shifted on the most recent call from growth runway to redemptions and institutional appetite. |
| Capital markets revenue run rate | 14 | KBW, Wolfe Research, Citizens JMP Securities, Deutsche Bank, BofA Securities, TD Cowen, Jefferies, Barclays | A recurring topic through Q3 2025 and then entirely absent from the last two calls. Management's standing answer was that the business is not one to evaluate quarterly and that the 2021 revenue level is beatable; reported quarterly fees have since settled at $225 million and $224 million, which is the most likely reason the questions stopped. |
| 2026 guidance building blocks | 11 | KBW, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Citizens JMP Securities, TD Cowen | On the Q3 2025 call an analyst asked, in the same breath as an insurance question, what expense-side mitigants exist if the $7 target is missed. The reply covered insurance ROE and reaffirmed the target but never addressed the expense question. That was the one point in the sequence where the shortfall scenario was raised in advance, and it went unanswered. |
| AI exposure and disintermediation risk | 8 | Evercore ISI, Morgan Stanley, TD Cowen, Wolfe Research, Autonomous Research | Enters as a single DeepSeek question in Q4 2024 and is concentrated in the two most recent calls. Management has answered with exposure percentages, portfolio-scrub assurances and value-creation anecdotes; two direct requests on the Q1 2026 call - for KPIs and for a quantified revenue-versus-cost split - were both declined. |
Language shifts
Only language evidence verified against the referenced component is shown.
| Observation | Verbatim evidence | Call ID | Component |
|---|---|---|---|
| The hedging on 2026 earnings tightened in one step. The Q3 2025 language was unreserved confidence in the ANI target; Q4 2025 added a conditional about environment deterioration; Q1 2026 states reduced visibility outright and guides below the number. | “we do have modestly less visibility today than what our budget would have suggested at this point in the year” | 1993116377 | 2 |
| New vocabulary that enters in Q3 2025 and then recurs: the Q4 2025 prepared remarks say the firm is seeing much greater bifurcation across the industry, and the Q1 2026 Q&A calls it extreme bifurcation. The words do work — they let relative outperformance stand in for absolute results in a weaker environment. | “I think the 2 keywords are dispersion and bifurcation.” | 1962925140 | 34 |
| The perception-versus-reality frame has hardened. In Q2 2024 the closing note was simply that the market is open and the firm is active. By Q1 2026 the prepared remarks are built around a slide deck comparing operating metrics to the share price, and end by telling listeners not to trust the headlines. | “The fact is perception of the volatility of our business and industry is disconnected from the lived experience and that's okay.” | 1993116377 | 3 |
| Management retired an Investor Day target in-flight — the 2026 total operating earnings figure — on the grounds that its own insurance accounting choice made the metric less comparable. The reasoning is disclosed and internally consistent, but it is a target being reframed rather than met or missed. | “It's just not a metric as relevant to '26 guidance given this dynamic.” | 1962925140 | 9 |
| First explicit forward caution on wealth flows in the supplied history. Prior quarters consistently described K-Series activity as at or ahead of expectations without a forward qualifier. | “Given all the market noise, we were candidly surprised by the strength of flows in Q1. But we also do expect a slowdown in Q2, consistent with what we saw after the tariff announcements last year.” | 1993116377 | 2 |
| Insurance commentary shifted from opportunity to discipline. Management describes pulling back on origination and being more selective, where earlier calls described leaning in, elongating liabilities and adding alternatives. The competitive pressure is presented as cyclical and the firm points to $6 billion of dry powder equity as the way it intends to benefit when spreads widen. | “In the first quarter, we continued to see increased levels of competition here, particularly in the retail channel.” | 1993116377 | 2 |
Twelve calls show an operating story that has compounded with unusual consistency and a disclosure posture that keeps moving the measuring stick — the 2026 total operating earnings target retired in-flight, the insurance ROE question asked in most quarters and never answered with a number, and now the ANI target guided below not long after being reaffirmed. The fee engine is not really in dispute; what the call history sharpens is how much credit to extend to management's framing that the delayed monetizations are timing rather than value.