Blue Owl Capital (NYSE:OWL) reported second-quarter 2026 fee-related earnings of $0.25 per share and distributable earnings of $0.22 per share, with distributable earnings rising 9% from the prior-year quarter. The alternative asset manager declared a quarterly dividend of $0.23 per share, payable Aug. 27 to shareholders of record on Aug. 13.
Chief Financial Officer Alan Kirshenbaum said management fees increased 8% year over year, excluding the effect of management-fee offsets, while fee-related earnings and distributable earnings each rose 9%. Blue Owl’s fee-related earnings margin was 58.5%, modestly higher than both the first quarter and the year-ago period and in line with the company’s outlook for the full year.
Unpaid Fee-Paying Capital Supports Growth Outlook
Blue Owl ended the quarter with $31 billion of assets under management not yet paying fees, representing about $380 million in expected annual management fees once deployed. Kirshenbaum said this amount equates to approximately 15% embedded growth relative to 2025 management fees.
“As this capital is drawn down and put to work, it converts into fee-paying AUM and will continue to support management fee growth across our platforms,” Kirshenbaum said.
The company expects management-fee growth to build in each of the next two quarters. Its outlook does not assume a sharp recovery in sponsor-led merger-and-acquisition activity, according to Co-Chief Executive Officer Marc Lipschultz, who said growth is being supported by newer credit strategies, real assets, and other areas of the platform.
Blue Owl raised $7.8 billion of total capital in the quarter and $50.5 billion over the past 12 months, equal to 18% of its assets under management at the same point last year. The company said all of the capital raised was organic. Institutional and insurance investors accounted for roughly three-quarters of equity capital raised during the second quarter and about two-thirds of equity capital raised over the past 12 months.
Real Assets and Alternative Credit Gain Scale
Lipschultz highlighted the growing role of real assets, which now represents nearly 30% of Blue Owl’s assets under management. Real-assets AUM rose 25% year over year and revenue from the platform increased 27%, led by the company’s Net Lease and Digital Infrastructure strategies.
Blue Owl’s Net Lease strategy raised $7.7 billion one year after its first close, exceeding its original hard cap. Including co-investment capital, the strategy has raised $8.7 billion, or 1.5 times the amount raised for its predecessor vintage. About 60% of commitments came from first-time investors in the strategy, the company said.
The firm said Net Lease Fund VI was 65% drawn at quarter-end and was expected to reach 77% drawn following a capital call. Blue Owl expects the fund to be virtually fully called by the end of the year. Its next Net Lease vintage has already exceeded a $7.5 billion hard cap, and fundraising is expected to conclude this year.
Digital Infrastructure remains another growth focus. Blue Owl said its data-center footprint includes more than 140 data centers owned or under construction globally, representing 15.3 gigawatts of leased and owned capacity. The company expects the first close of its next Digital Infrastructure flagship fund in the second half of 2026 and said it continues to target $10 billion for the strategy.
In credit, direct lending now accounts for approximately 35% of AUM, down from nearly half two years ago as other strategies have grown. Alternative Credit, which is approaching 10% of credit AUM, grew 35% over the past year. Blue Owl’s Alternative Credit interval fund surpassed $2.7 billion in size in its first year and outperformed the leveraged-loan index by more than 600 basis points over that period, according to Lipschultz.
Blue Owl also said it has raised more than $1 billion toward a $1.5 billion target for newly launched data-center credit and real-estate credit strategies.
Credit Performance and Wealth Flows
The company reported continued strong performance in direct lending, with portfolio companies growing at a mid- to high-single-digit pace on average. Lipschultz said Blue Owl’s direct-lending watch list showed no meaningful change from a year earlier. The platform’s average annual realized loss rate stood at 12 basis points, including a net gain in its technology-lending portfolio.
Blue Owl’s direct-lending investments generated a total return of 8.3% over the past 12 months, while Alternative Credit returned 11.4%, the company said. Credit deployment was led by Alternative Credit and investment-grade credit, with total credit deployment of nearly $7 billion over the past year, more than double the prior 12-month period.
Management addressed investor attention on non-traded business development companies and related redemption activity. Kirshenbaum said redemption requests for Blue Owl’s non-traded BDCs declined modestly in the second quarter, while 90% of OCIC fund investors did not request any redemptions for a second consecutive quarter.
He said loan repayments meaningfully exceeded net outflows during the quarter, and Blue Owl did not see increased redemption activity across its other evergreen products. For the July 1 close, evergreen inflows rose more than 50% from the May 1 close, although management said inflows remained below historical levels.
Lipschultz said the company’s wealth-focused direct-lending products account for 11% of Blue Owl’s fee-paying assets, despite receiving a disproportionate share of market attention. He said Blue Owl remains open to launching a more traditional drawdown direct-lending fund if investors favor that structure.
GP Strategic Capital and Forward Plans
Blue Owl raised about $1.3 billion in GP Strategic Capital during the quarter, including capital for its flagship large-cap strategy and an additional strip-sale transaction. The sixth vintage has raised $10.6 billion including co-investment capital, and management expects to complete fundraising this year.
Over the past two years, the company has completed five strip-sale transactions that produced an aggregate $4.6 billion of return of capital for investors. Lipschultz said Blue Owl sees a growing opportunity to provide capital solutions to larger alternative-asset management firms as the industry consolidates.
Looking ahead, management said it expects institutional fundraising to remain strong during the second half of 2026 and believes total fundraising could exceed the first-half level. Blue Owl also expects to introduce additional wealth products over the next six to 18 months, though executives did not provide details.
About Blue Owl Capital (NYSE:OWL)
Blue Owl Capital is a global alternative asset manager that focuses on private credit, direct lending and equity-related strategies for institutional investors. Headquartered in New York, the firm develops and manages a range of private markets products designed to provide capital solutions to middle-market and larger corporate borrowers, as well as liquidity and partnership arrangements with private equity firms and other alternative managers.
Its core activities include direct lending and credit strategies that provide senior, unitranche and other structured loan products to companies across industries.
