BlackRock, Inc.

Operator: Good morning. My name is Shelley, and I will be your conference facilitator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the BlackRock, Inc. second quarter 2026 earnings teleconference. Our host for today's call will be Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Laurence D. Fink, Chief Financial Officer, Martin S. Small, President, Robert S. Kapito, and General Counsel, Christopher J. Meade. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer period. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star two. Thank you and Mr. Meade, you may begin your conference. Christopher Meade: Good morning, everyone. I'm Chris Meade, the General Counsel of BlackRock. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that during the course of this call, we may make a number of forward-looking statements. We call your attention to the fact that BlackRock's actual results may, of course, differ from these statements. As you know, BlackRock has filed reports with the SEC, which lists some of the factors that may cause the results of BlackRock to differ materially from what we say today. BlackRock assumes no duty and does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements. With that, I'll turn it over to Martin. Martin Small: Thanks, Chris. Good morning, everyone. It's my pleasure to present results for the second quarter of 2026. Before I turn it over to Larry, I'll review our financial performance and business results. Our earnings release discloses both GAAP and as adjusted financial results. A reconciliation between GAAP and our as adjusted results has been included in the tables attached to today's press release. I'll be focusing primarily on our as adjusted results. BlackRock's record net inflows and organic base fees in the first half of 2026 are vivid proof points of a firm at the center of mega trends shaping the investment landscape across public markets, private markets, and technology. Wealth managers and institutions all over the world are growing with BlackRock consistently through market cycles, from ETF model portfolios to personalized SMAs, to systematic and income-focused strategies, and in infrastructure and private credit. With $868 billion of net inflows and 10% organic base fee growth over the last 12 months, our results demonstrate that BlackRock is the total portfolio all-weather strategic partner that helps clients look past short-term uncertainties and towards long-term growth. We create and we connect clients to the vast opportunities in artificial intelligence and digital and physical infrastructure. We help them position for success in generational changes to benchmarks and equity market structure. We're driving expanded investor access to capital markets and digital assets. We're a market leader and high share gainer in manufacturing hyper-personalized, tax-efficient portfolios that power wealth management platforms. We're reshaping the future of retirement portfolios with access to guaranteed income and private markets. Clients are rewarding our integrated platform of asset management and technology across public and private markets. It's what clients want because they're building one portfolio. A world that's more fragmented brings clients closer to BlackRock to make sense of the pieces, to put them together in one coherent strategy for a whole portfolio, and to drive outcomes at scale. BlackRock's a leader at the center of these accelerating forces. An ecosystem disruption means more money in motion and more value to play for and win. We see strong momentum. Organic base fees are more than 50% higher compared to this time last year. Higher quality organic growth, discipline on our financial framework, and consistent capital return create a clear path to structurally higher margins and sustained double-digit earnings growth. We have high conviction in our free cash flow growth and are increasing our planned level of share repurchases. In the second quarter, we delivered double-digit increases in revenue, operating income, and earnings per share, with all three measures reaching new quarterly records. Our operating margin of 45.9% expanded 260 basis points from a year ago and reached its highest level in nearly five years. We generated $192 billion of net inflows, representing 8% organic base fee growth. Two full years of above target organic base fee growth underscores that this level of performance is sustainable. It reflects the durability of our client relationships and the diversification of our growth. Turning to financial results. Second quarter revenue of $7.1 billion was 31% higher year-over-year. The increase was driven by organic growth, the impact of higher markets on average AUM, the acquisition of HPS, and higher technology services and subscription revenue. Operating income of $2.9 billion was up 39%, and earnings per share of $13.91 was 15% higher versus a year ago. EPS also reflected lower non-operating income, a higher effective tax rate, and a higher share count in the current quarter linked to the closing of the HPS transaction on July 1st, 2025. Non-operating results for the quarter included $170 million of net investment gains, primarily driven by equity method earnings and non-cash valuation gains in our investment portfolio. Additionally, following Securitize's public listing earlier this July, we hold 7.3 million common shares, which will continue to be marked through investment income going forward. Our as-adjusted tax rate for the second quarter was approximately 25%. We continue to estimate that 25% is a reasonable projected tax run rate for the remainder of 2026. The actual effective tax rate may differ because of non-recurring or discrete items or potential changes in tax legislation. Second quarter base fee and securities lending revenue of $5.7 billion was up 29% year-over-year, driven by the positive impact of market beta on average AUM, organic base fee growth, and approximately $230 million in base fees from HPS. On an equivalent day count basis, our annualized effective fee rate was broadly flat compared to the first quarter. Client demand for structural growers like private markets, active ETFs, and systematic continues to lift the fee rate on net flows. Performance fees of $305 million increased from a year ago, primarily reflecting higher revenue from alternatives, including $115 million of performance fees from HPS. Quarterly technology services and subscription revenue was up 13% compared to a year ago. Annual contract value, or ACV, increased 15% year-over-year. We remain committed to low to mid-teens ACV growth over the long term. Total expense increased 25% year-over-year, with higher compensation, sales, asset, and account, and G&A expense. Employee compensation and benefit expense was up 28%, reflecting higher incentive compensation linked to higher operating income and performance fees and higher headcount associated with the onboarding of HPS employees. Sales, asset, and account expense increased 26% compared to a year ago, primarily driven by higher distribution and servicing costs and direct fund expense. G&A expense increased 17%, primarily due to the impact of the HPS acquisition. After annualizing for the impact of HPS and Preqin, we continue to expect a mid-single-digit percentage increase in full-year G&A. We continue to deliver even greater margin expansion on recurring fee-related earnings. Excluding the impact of all performance fees and related compensation, our adjusted operating margin for the second quarter would have been 46.5%, up 260 basis points year-over-year. Our capital management strategy continues to be invest first and then return excess cash to shareholders through a combination of dividends and share repurchases. We repurchased $450 million worth of shares in the second quarter. At present, based on our capital spending plans for the year and subject to market and other conditions, we anticipate repurchasing at least $550 million of shares per quarter going forward, higher than our previous guidance communicated in January. Turning to flows. In the second quarter, BlackRock generated total net inflows of $192 billion. Flows were diversified across client channels, product types, regions, and active and index strategies. We saw $178 billion of net inflows in the second quarter. Core equity and index bond ETFs led the way with net inflows of $85 billion and $61 billion respectively. Momentum in active ETFs continued with $20 billion of net inflows as clients seek performance through a liquid tax-efficient wrapper. Precision added $15 billion as clients used iShares international and sector equity ETFs to express tactical views. iShares ETFs delivered a fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit organic base fee growth, powered by higher value ETF categories such as active and precision. Retail net inflows of $19 billion were led by broad-based flows into our active fixed income offerings, as well as continued inflows into Aperio and liquid alternative funds. Institutional active net inflows of $44 billion were driven by strength in private markets, fixed income, systematic strategies, as well as OCIO and target date offerings. Institutional index net outflows of $41 billion were concentrated in low-fee index equities. Overall, our institutional channel delivered 9% long-term organic base fee growth in the quarter, benefiting from client demand for active and alternatives. In private markets, the BlackRock flywheel is in motion, raising capital, deploying with discipline, and returning it to clients. We saw an aggregate $15 billion of net inflows led by deployment in private credit, fundraising in infrastructure, and partial onboarding of an outsourcing mandate in private equity solutions. Finally, cash net outflows of $7 billion in the quarter were due to redemptions from U.S. government funds, partially offset by the creation of bespoke liquidity solutions. Our customization capabilities and scale are driving sustained growth in cash management, with AUM up 10% from a year ago. We see the road to 2030 and beyond as presenting one of the largest expansions in capital markets growth and participation in history. The forces of demographics, growing retirement needs, generational wealth transfer, structural deficits, rapid innovation cycles. These forces are increasing demand for investment solutions built by professional asset managers steeped in product breadth, scale, technology, and a global presence. These forces are expanding the investor base, increasing assets flowing through capital markets, and creating a powerful long-term growth opportunity for the breadth of global whole portfolio solutions that BlackRock's best positioned to provide. The strong financial results we're delivering today reflect a disciplined execution against our breadth of opportunity. We generated record revenue, operating income, and EPS, a nearly 46% operating margin, and 8% organic base fee growth. We're confident in the durability of our growth and in the opportunity ahead. With that, I'll turn it over to Larry. Laurence Fink: Thank you, Martin. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining the call. For almost four decades, BlackRock has been built around the conviction in the long-term growth of our global capital markets. The global capital markets are one of the most dynamic engines of opportunity for economies around the world and the companies and the people that power them. The U.S. equity markets continue to climb to new highs. Returns are broadening beyond the U.S. I'm very optimistic on the outlook for global markets. We see great market fundamentals with higher corporate margins and earnings momentum catalyzed by new technology. BlackRock is a direct beneficiary of this growth. Our scale and position with clients in every region of the world enables us to capture upside to capital market expansion through organic growth. The scale and depth of our clients' relationships have never been better. Clients are turning to BlackRock for insight and opportunities, as evident in our results this quarter and in over the $1 trillion increase in BlackRock's AUM so far in 2026. This time last year, we had just closed our acquisition of HPS and launched our 2030 ambitions. Only four quarters in, our combination of GIP, HPS, and Preqin is already delivering above our plans and accelerating our 2030 growth trajectory. Clients have rewarded BlackRock $868 billion in net inflows in the last 12 months, driving 10% organic base fee growth. Our quarterly operating income is up 39% to approximately $3 billion. We set out a strategy built around our integrated public and private market platform, underpinned by the industry's most comprehensive investment technology. Now it's enabling us to serve clients more deeply and accelerating our growth. Clients entrusted BlackRock with $192 billion of net inflows in the second quarter, contributing to our strongest first half on record. Flows in the first six months are more than double what we saw in the first half of 2025, driving AUM to a record $15.3 trillion. Second quarter organic base fee growth of 8% also contributes to a record first half of net new base fees. We expanded our premium operating margin by 260 basis points year-over-year to nearly 46%. As Martin noted, our conviction in the growth ahead for BlackRock led us to add to our planned share repurchase. Through our planned dividend and share repurchases, we expect to return over $5.7 billion to shareholders this year, which is a 16% increase over 2025. BlackRock is simultaneously a leading public markets manager, a skilled private markets platform, and a global technology company. That's a model built to deliver sustained growth, it's showing up in eight consecutive quarters of organic base fee growth at or above target. It also means expanding margins and a scaling capital return program. I believe momentum is only building from here. The work we've done to bring together public and private market asset managers and technology positions BlackRock as a preferred destination for our clients' capital. Clients are increasingly choosing BlackRock for large-scale customized solutions in asset management and technology. Second quarter client activity included the funding of a $7 billion pension mandate from an international client, alongside the initial funding of a multi-billion dollar private equity solution outsourcing mandate. Retirement is where BlackRock's mission comes to life for millions of individuals around the world, and it's one of our most important growth priorities. LifePath Paycheck continues to attract new plan sponsors focused on retirement income. It has now grown to $30 billion in AUM, we believe the retirement portfolios of the future will draw on public markets, private markets, and guaranteed income together. BlackRock is centrally positioned to provide the LifePath, the investment expertise, and the technology and data needed to manage these type of accounts at scale. Technology ACV grew 15% in the second quarter as clients leveraged Aladdin for multi-product solutions and a unified operating system. We continue to build new capabilities and AI analysis tools to give our clients a comprehensive data and workflow solution across both public and private markets. iShares is the largest and broadest ETF platform in the world with over $6 trillion in AUM. We are leading and benefiting from category innovation and broader ETF adoption globally. In Europe, iShares has raised $80 billion year to date, bringing our AUM to $1.5 trillion. In Asia Pacific, locally domiciled iShares crossed $100 billion in assets in the quarter. iShares' global scale, our local reach, and pace of innovation is differentiating us in every client channel. iShares second quarter net inflows of $178 billion contribute to a record first half. We're leading the industry with 12% organic base fee growth this year. Index bond ETFs has had a new record quarter with $61 billion. Our active ETFs have gathered more than $70 billion in net inflows over the last year and are leading the industry in active flows in 2026. In just the last three years, we've gone from the seventh largest active ETF manager to the third largest, and we have ambitions to take our position even higher. We have momentum across our broader active prep franchise, which saw $53 billion in net inflows diversified across asset classes. Our strategic income opportunity and high yield bond funds led $18 billion of active fixed income net inflows. Our systematic platform is one of the clearest examples of how BlackRock can turn scale, data, and technology into outcomes for our clients. Over 90% of our systematic equity AUM is ahead of peer, medium, or benchmark over the three and five-year periods, the team is delivering active returns for clients. Our systematic equity investors are leveraging decades of proprietary data, over 1,000 alpha signals, and our AI-driven research engine to deliver returns. Alpha streams from systematic equities travel across wrappers like ETFs, '40 Act funds, and institutional hedge funds. That breadth is showing up in our systematic net inflows of $20 billion this quarter. AUM has doubled in just the last two years from $200 billion to now $400 billion. Demand is accelerating as investors look for strategies that can dynamically allocate across factors and signals to generate alpha. BlackRock systematic ETFs delivered $6 billion of active ETF net inflows in the quarter. Our top quartile Global Equity Market Neutral Fund drove a record $7 billion in net inflows into liquid alternatives. Our combination of high-performing systematic long-short strategies alongside private markets evergreen funds differentiates BlackRock as an outcomes-based alternative provider in the wealth channel. We enable clients to balance long-term private investments with liquid, dynamic sources of return and risk management. In wealth, demand is increasing for customized solutions. Advisors are looking to tailor portfolios for the specific needs of their end clients. BlackRock is well positioned to deliver in these capabilities at scale, whether through model portfolios, option strategies, or direct indexing. Aperio continues to see double-digit organic growth as advisors leverage its tax-aware direct indexing and long-short strategies. Aperio's AUM is now approaching $200 billion, up more than four times since we closed our acquisition of Aperio just five years ago. SpiderRock is following a similar path. This year it's delivered two consecutive record quarters of over $1 billion of flows. Since our acquisition of SpiderRock two years ago, AUM has nearly tripled to $13 billion. These are just latest examples of BlackRock's successful M&A approach. We acquire capabilities our clients are in need of, we integrate them onto and into our global platform, and we scale them faster than they could have scaled on their own. I have all the confidence that at GIP, HPS, and Preqin we'll follow the same pattern for future growth. We're executing on significant opportunities to mobilize capital in private markets, and our momentum is already exceeding our expectations. In infrastructure, the reach of BlackRock and GIP platform has resulted in a faster pace of deployment into premier investment opportunities, and in turn, then a faster pace of fundraising. The expected close of Aligned Data Centers in the coming weeks is proof point. We brought together AIP, GIP, and MGX in the largest data center infrastructure transaction ever announced. Institutional demand for private markets continues to grow, including from insurers looking to capture higher yields in their general accounts. We signed several scaled high-grade investment debt mandates, infrastructure debt mandates this quarter, and we're deploying capital from public to private rotation awarded to us in the last year. GIP and HPS are also coming together on the origination side. The pipeline of joint opportunities is building in ways that reinforce our conviction in the combined platform, particularly in digital infrastructure. BlackRock is not a traditional asset manager, and we're not a pure play private markets firm. What differentiates us is the breadth of what we deliver on one common platform, public and private markets, active and index, data and technology, and whole portfolio advice. The decades we sat at the intersection of technology and investing and AI is now accelerating our ability to bring more people into the markets that will help them build long-term saving strategies. Expanding access to the capital markets remains core to our work at BlackRock. I've said before that one of the most important things we can do is help more people grow with their country. In the United States, BlackRock is proud to support the Treasury in the recent launch of the Trump Accounts programs. We expect two iShares ETFs to be available as investment options later this year. Helping more people benefit from the long-term growth of the capital markets is our greatest source of opportunity. That is how we deliver higher, more durable organic growth. Every investor we connect to the capital markets expands the pool of capital that BlackRock is entrusted to manage, whether through retirement, through ETFs, through Trump Accounts, or through private markets. Organic growth accelerates as clients entrust BlackRock with more of their portfolio, more of share of their wallet. It's our breadth, not data, that powers organic growth, meaning we could deliver across market environments. Our scale lets us grow with widening margins. We see it in our results this quarter, 8% organic base fee growth and nearly 46% operating margins, 15% EPS growth, and increasingly, capital returns to our shareholders. The more clients we help participate in the markets, the more our own growth builds to higher organic growth, higher earnings growth, and more value creation for our shareholders. As I said earlier, our momentum is accelerating. I can say again, I've never been more optimistic about BlackRock's future growth ahead of us. Operator, let's open it up for questions. Operator: Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, you can press star one to ask a question. We'll pause for a brief moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. We'll now take your first question, coming from the line of Craig Siegenthaler with Bank of America. Laurence Fink: Good morning, Craig. How are you? Craig Siegenthaler: Good morning, Larry. I'm well. Hope you guys are doing well, too. Laurence Fink: Yep. Yep. All good. Craig Siegenthaler: Our question is on Aperio. I wanted to see if you could provide us an update on both the direct indexing, but also the long short tax-aware side, which falls in your liquid alts bucket. It looks like the underlying demand there continues to strengthen in this category, but also would appreciate your perspective on if this theme has legs. Laurence Fink: Let me have Martin answer that. Martin Small: Hi, Craig. Thanks for the question. I want to start with one macro phrasing on that was, what attracted BlackRock to Aperio was beyond technology, it was beyond scale, it was beyond investment excellence. It was beyond culture fit. It was a real mission at the Aperio firm and ethos to build optimized after-tax portfolios. Our clients don't pay for education, home, security, and wellbeing with asset class level returns. They pay for it with after-tax dollars. I think our industry could generally do a better job at optimizing portfolios with what clients keep after taxes. That's a structural growth theme. Building after-tax portfolios that are optimized, it's good for clients. It's applicable not just to the direct indexing and long short business. It's applicable to all the portfolio construction we do here at BlackRock across our whole managed accounts, SMAs, and models business that's closing in on $800 billion. I think Aperio is a great example of an acquisition where we anticipated and delivered on those needs. We scaled strong existing technologies and built new revenue streams for shareholders. SMAs are a real structural grower in the industry across wealth, private wealth, mass affluent, ultra-high net worth. Aperio had $7 billion of net inflows in the second quarter, split about half and half between long only and long short strategies. Our 2026 flows in Aperio are about $20 billion. They've already surpassed 2025's record flows of $15 billion, representing a fifth straight record year. As Larry said in his comments, AUM is up four times since the acquisition, near $200 billion. I do think that long short strategies, whether they're 130-30 or other variants of taking alpha streams and optimizing for tax, I do think that's the next category of growth in tax-aware investing, I do think that BlackRock has a really, really strong toolkit to solve some of the investors' biggest challenges. We can do that across ETFs, SMAs, direct indexing, private markets, and long short strategies will be complementary to offset some of the gains happening in private markets. This is a whole portfolio phenomenon, being able to integrate long short strategies in an after-tax optimized portfolio, we see as one of the key structural growth engines in our 2030 plan. Operator: Next question will come from the line of Michael Cyprys with Morgan Stanley. Laurence Fink: Good morning, Michael. Michael Cyprys: Larry, good morning. Martin Small: Morning. Michael Cyprys: I want to ask a question on tokenization. You've articulated a vision to tokenize iShares ETFs, among other assets, and have already demonstrated progress with BUIDL. I was hoping you could talk about the steps you're planning to take over the next 12 months to drive further progress toward your vision, what are some of the key milestones that you're tracking? Martin Small: Thanks, Michael. It's Martin. I'll take that one. We see the operating environment in digital assets becoming more and more constructive, our strategy remains client led. We're focused on scales regulated access. We already have about $110 billion in AUM connected to digital assets. As part of our 2030 plan, we're aiming to make this a $500 million revenue business at BlackRock. Over the longer term, we want BlackRock's products to be accessible natively, where many investors already hold digital assets. We're exploring ways to tokenize long-term investment products, as you mentioned, like iShares. Investors never need to leave digital wallets to allocate efficiently across crypto, stablecoins, and exposure to long-term stocks and bonds. We're working with a really wide group of traditional and new players on building access to high quality long-term investment products that can grow and thrive in digital wallets. We have three things we're doing and tracking milestones against each. The first is to bridge traditional finance world and the decentralized finance markets. We're doing that through our digital assets products, IBIT, ETHA, BUIDL. They all invest in digital native products and are the largest in their categories. They're driving meaningful growth in the traditional capital markets and bridging digital and traditional finance. Second, we want to be the stablecoin reserve manager of choice in the industry. We already manage $60 billion of reserves for Circle, representing about a 1/4 of the $300 billion stablecoin market. We see lots of growth ahead in stablecoin, and we want to be the reserve manager of choice. The third, and I think the most exciting for us, is tokenizing long-term investment products like Treasury funds, iShares ETFs, and even private markets in the long term. To that end, two actions we've taken. We've recently filed two registration statements with the SEC for tokenized money market funds. One is a tokenized share class on Ethereum of an existing fund, and the other is a more digitally native strategy with additional features like daily dividend reinvestment and the like. We expect it to be accessible through multiple chains and to operate in an ecosystem where third parties support stablecoin-enabled subscription and redemptions so that the funding mechanism can happen all on-chain in the digital wallet. As stablecoins and digital wallets grow, clients will need high quality reserve and liquidity products that can operate natively in that digital ecosystem. These filings that we've made recently are about bringing BlackRock's core cash management capabilities to where digital assets clients are already operating. They reinforce our broader ambition to help connect traditional capital markets and tokenized assets. The thing I'd observe is that there's 5 billion digital wallets in the world. When we talk about tokenized assets, tokenized assets are the spear tip into an entirely new distribution channel. Accessing an entire new class of investor, it's a pure organic growth opportunity for BlackRock. We have a whole scaled ecosystem of products that could, over time, be tokenized. When I think about $2+ trillion of crypto and digital wallets, when I think about another $300 billion of stablecoins all growing, these are all potential new investors with iShares. They're all potential new users of model portfolios, SMAs, and managed accounts in tokenized format. We want to build a digital wallet native asset manager. We're working with market participants, regulators in a way to do that creates growth and resiliency and brings more investors into the markets and more organic growth at BlackRock. Operator: Next question will come from the line of Alex Blostein with Goldman Sachs. Laurence Fink: Good morning, Alex. Alex Blostein: Hi Larry, good morning. Good morning, Martin. Larry, I was hoping to go back to your comments around GIP and HPS performing ahead of the plan, helping you accelerate towards your 2030 objectives, but really through the lens of the insurance opportunities. I think a few quarters ago, you outlined the asset base that exists within BlackRock today that could participate in some of the conversion from liquid to illiquid fixed income market. Was hoping to get an update on that, how that progress is unfolding, and where you see the private markets insurance related AUM end up at BlackRock over the next couple of years. Laurence Fink: So far in 2026, we've closed about $10 billion in high-grade and infra debt mandates for insurance companies. Obviously, there's different complexities, different sectors, deal structure, where the insurance company, especially the insurance company with long liabilities, could earn 150-350 basis points over Treasuries. In our conversations with insurance companies, and probably every week we have two or three more of them, with more and more insurance companies worldwide, I want to underline worldwide, are looking to access more private markets to achieve those higher yields for their asset base. We just see this accelerating. Probably the most important thing that I said also is I am really pleased in how well integrated both HPS and GIP are on these opportunities. We're working right now simultaneously into some very large financings together related to infrastructure that obviously equity plays a large part of it, but the debt side of the component is even much larger. We expect this to continue to accelerate, not just for obviously insurance companies, but throughout the world. The J curve for infrastructure investing is really only just starting to accelerate. Accordingly, to complete these types of large scale deals, it just is requiring large scales amount of debt. We're at the very beginning of that. We are being asked by more and more companies in technology that how can we help them across their entire stack of need to investing. As you think about these hyperscalers, they went from balance sheet-light companies to major balance sheet needs in building out data centers, building out the infrastructure. They're looking for strategic partners that can provide them the totality of that relationship. There's only a few firms that can be doing that. The marriage of BlackRock, HPS, and GIP across the board on the origination side is only accelerating. As we originate more and more, then we can go to our clients, like insurance companies, and see much more conversion. When we first announced the HPS and GIP transaction, we talked about the $800 billion of insurance assets that we have. If we can convert 5% or 10% of those assets, it adds a tremendous lift to our average net fees. It helps us to complete that type of relationship that we have with the insurance industry. It is materially happening right now. It's only accelerating. I believe we're in a great position to effectively extend the opportunities we have across all of our investors, but particularly the insurance industry that is recognizing they can take somewhat more illiquidity risk for higher returns on their balance sheet. That is what's driving a lot of the demand today. Across even our private credit mandates, we have net inflows across all the different mandates. Obviously there's a lot of headlines related to the retail side of it. We could say that there isn't a week that doesn't go by where our institutional investors are asking, "Is there any discounts to some of the private credit?" We had the idiosyncratic risk in some of the private credit the last quarter of last year. We've seen actually a stabilization in terms of credit. We're not seeing any real change in the credit quality of payments from our private investments. Overall, fundraising is closed and notified about $22 billion. We expect that to continue to drive and accelerate. Operator: Next question will come from the line of Mike Brown with UBS. Laurence Fink: Hello, Mike. Mike Brown: Yeah. Hello. Laurence Fink: Hey, Mike. Here we are. Mike Brown: Great. Good morning. Martin, I wanted to maybe ask about the margin here. You reached 45.9% this quarter, so you're tracking to the 45%+ full year guide. You're at the highest level in nearly five years. Maybe just unpack some of the drivers of expansion in the quarter, whether it was a mix-driven operating leverage. Was it performance fees, any of the acquisition synergies starting to come through more meaningful, and just talk about maybe how sustainable some of those benefits are. As we look ahead, how much additional margin expansion is achievable over that next kind of 12, 18 month horizon, and what would be the structural drivers in terms of revenue mix, scale, tech, and maybe how do you balance that with continued investments in areas like AI, technology broadly, and private markets? Martin Small: Thanks, Mike, for the question. BlackRock continues to deliver industry-leading margins over the cycle. We continue to target a 45% or greater adjusted operating margin with our margin on recurring fee-related earnings running higher. We've talked about building BlackRock around the whole portfolio, around the structural growth categories of investment solutions like private markets, ETFs, especially in higher value categories like digital assets, non-cap weighted indexing, outcomes, active ETFs, SMAs, models, target date technology. The flows and base fee growth in these categories, they're more all-weather. They're less market sensitive. That's an important part about driving more structural growth and driving more consistent revenue growth that can power higher earnings and higher margin. They play a key part in driving structurally higher adjusted operating margins. The markets, of course, might continue to have an impact on our margins, both up and down, but our 2030 goal of reaching over 30% of revenue from private markets and technology that we laid out at Investor Day last year, that goal of 30% of revenue from private markets and technology is aimed to dampen that effect and power more steady double-digit EPS growth and margin expansion. We did record our highest margin in almost five years this quarter, with both operating and recurring FRE margins expanding by over 250 basis points year-over-year. Our operating margin for the quarter was 45.9%, and the margin ex performance fees and related comp was 46.5%, so we're well on our way to those numbers that we laid out in the 2030 plan. I don't see this quarter's margin as a ceiling. We've run BlackRock at margins close to 47% back in 2021, and that was at a time when we didn't have the large-scale private markets franchises. I don't think we had the performance across our systematic equities platform or the breadth across that platform. We didn't have the scale that we have today in SMAs and tax-managed strategies in multi-asset. We have many more engines, including GIP and HPS, both of which were north of 50% FRE margins when they joined BlackRock. I think there's two main levers really to structurally engineering continued margin expansion. The first one is we'll see margin on the FRE side driving higher towards the levels of the best-in-class private markets names, north of 50%. We can do that through the acquired businesses and continuing to scale and grow them, as well as with the existing highly scaled franchises we have in iShares, digital assets, and systematic equities. Then, with constructive markets, second, higher fee rates on flows and strong organic growth, we think we can pull the fully burdened operating margin of the company up as well. As I've said before, we've run the company at 47%, I don't see 45% or 46% as a ceiling. We see the totality of our 2030 strategy as structurally engineering higher growth and margin through both faster revenue growth, higher fee rates on flows, efficient use of technology automation to create more scale and operating leverage. That's what we think takes us to those margin targets that we've laid out in the 2030 plan. Operator: Next question will come from the line of Patrick Davitt with Autonomous Research. Laurence Fink: Good morning, Patrick. Patrick Davitt: Hey, good morning, everyone. My question's on the distribution side. There's news this week that Merrill Lynch is making some fairly dramatic increases in revenue-sharing fees. This comes after Schwab announced they were increasing platform fees on ETFs. I'm sure you won't speak to what specific partners are doing, but could you speak to the risk that this is becoming a broader trend, and that you could see some net revenue headwind from this? Do you think BlackRock's scale and importance could allow you to avoid these incremental platform fees in some way? Thank you. Martin Small: Thanks, Patrick. I'll take that one. It's Martin. Hope you're doing well. BlackRock has longstanding, very differentiated relationships with our distribution partners that look much different to those of the smaller-scale issuers or some of the niche players. Our index ETF distribution philosophy and practice does not include tolls. We've not been approached by any major U.S. distributors, and we're not in any active negotiations about tolls on index ETFs. More importantly, we have a really successful track record of creating really broad win-win distribution partnerships beyond just product that help both the distribution partners, their advisors, the clients. They help all of them grow faster, and they help BlackRock grow faster and more consistently, too. Our brand and our capabilities, combined with our distribution partners, create more value and more growth. We have always partnered with our distribution partners around alpha-seeking '40 Act products across wrappers. That's all public in regulatory disclosures. As client and distributor demand for active ETFs grows, our commercial arrangements are designed to support distribution while maintaining attractive economics. To be honest, Patrick, the economics are not meaningfully different based on whether client demand is expressed through a mutual fund or an active ETF. If anything, it's better on active ETFs for both the distributors and the issuers. The continued migration that we're seeing of client assets from brokerage into fee-based advisory accounts supports long-term profitable growth for both the distribution partners and BlackRock. We are the largest global ETF provider with the broadest, highest quality lineup, but we bring so much more than product to these relationships, and our distribution partners value that. We bring advice and technology-driven capabilities through models, Aladdin Wealth, portfolio construction tools like Advisor Center. We bring thought leadership through our BlackRock Investment Institute. We have a dedicated advisor insights team that works with advisors on practice consulting, and we bring access to leading portfolio managers. We also happen to have the largest sales force dedicated to providing millions of customers access to iShares solutions. What I'd stress is that iShares and BlackRock help make wealth management platforms more attractive for their financial advisor and individual investor customers. Our clients consistently tell us, and the distribution partners, that the platforms they want to use have to include iShares. They have to include iShares as the biggest and most diversified provider of ETFs. That's the win-win for everybody. We grow faster, more consistently, they grow faster, more consistently, and we all grow more profitably together. Operator: Next question will come from the line of Ben Budish with Barclays. Laurence Fink: Good morning. Ben Budish: Hey, good morning, Larry, and thanks for taking the question. A couple times throughout the call today, you guys gave a little bit of color on the makeup of private markets flows in the quarter. I think, Martin, you called out credit deployment, infrastructure fundraising. Larry, you talked about some IG mandates that you've won. I was wondering if you could unpack that a little bit more. I'm curious on the credit side, what sort of deployment activity are you seeing on the infrastructure side? I think you're sort of out of the major flagship cycle, I assume it's a lot of SMAs. You talked about this private equity outsourcing deal. Just curious if you could give a little bit more color on specifically what you're seeing that led to such a solid quarter of flows, and what that sort of implies for the next couple of quarters. Thank you. Martin Small: I'd start by saying there's three things going on around kind of fundraising and deployment. Maybe I can just give you some high levels, just targets and progress, tell you a little bit about infra and private credit deployment. We'll start by saying we're executing on a really strong pipeline for private markets deployment as well as fundraising. We're in the market for a number of first-time and successor strategies across infrastructure and credit. We're seeing really strong engagement, as Larry set out, for high-grade and infrastructure debt SMAs, including several mandates that signed this quarter. I'd remind you that at our Investor Day in 2025, we talked about how our investment performance, differentiated deal flow, client relationships, would support a target of $400 billion in gross fundraising from 2025 through 2030. We're continuing to make good progress there. Part of making good progress in fundraising is raising the capital, deploying it with discipline, and then returning it to clients on an appropriate timeline. That's how you compound growth in private markets, and we're really compounding in all three. We had $15 billion of inflows in private markets in Q2. $6 billion of that was really from private credit. We've seen incredible opportunities, I think, in the marketplace. Private credit spreads have widened. The team sees good opportunities and is deploying very well there. On a relative value basis against sort of public market comparables in single B, institutional investors are very enthusiastic about putting more private credit money to work in this environment. The first half of the year in our infrastructure platform has been one of the busiest on records. We announced the planned acquisitions, the take private of the AES, the ground leasing company in Europe, TCR, obviously the Aligned Data Centers deal. Just this week, our mid-market strategy took an acquisition stake in Summit Ridge Partners. It's been a really active environment for both infrastructure and private credit. The $6 billion of private credit is really deployment-based. On the infrastructure side, the $5 billion was a bit of mix of fundraising and deployment. We had fundraising in our middle market strategy, our emerging market strategy, as well as in infradebt SMAs. We had a $3 billion funding of a partial outsourcing mandate in private equity solutions with a client in Latin America. That continues to be a really attractive opportunity for BlackRock. When I look at the LP community, they often have dozens, if not hundreds, of private equity managers that ultimately need to be rationalized. They need to consolidate their buying power to become a top LP with PE, and our ability to provide GP/LP solutions to manage those portfolios, optimize them, reinvest them well, that's a great opportunity. I think that $3 billion of inflows in PE solutions is a good indicator of potential other things we can do in that space to continue growing. Operator: Your next question will come from the line of Brian Bedell with Deutsche Bank. Laurence Fink: Hey, Brian. Brian Bedell: Great. Hey, good morning. If I can just ask on Europe, in terms of the iShares traction there, and good to see the $80 billion of net flows year to date. Can you talk a little bit about how you see the democratization of retail investing in Europe shifting toward more acquisition of U.S. assets, U.S. equities, and how iShares can play a role in that, and particularly on rising demand for tokenization of U.S. equities, which are available in Europe right now, but not in the U.S.? Brian Bedell: Can you just, yeah, talk about how you see iShares playing a role in that dynamic? What are you doing to catalyze that? Laurence Fink: Well, first and foremost, the growth in ETFs in Europe is experiencing the same type of curve that the U.S. did. Obviously, maybe five to eight years later, the adaptation of using ETFs, as you called it, the democratization of investing in Europe, it's growing. The growth of the European capital markets is growing. We crossed a $1.5 trillion mark in Europe. As you mentioned, $80 billion of flows this year. We're seeing, for the first time in years, a greater movement towards investing in your country. It's not just buying U.S. assets, but we're seeing a real nationalization going on in so many countries where more and more people believe they need to be investing in their country or at least investing in Europe. That is occurring through the utilization of iShares or through ETFs. We're continuing to lead. Our flows are the sum of the next four ETF players in Europe. It's because of the broadness of our platform, the ability to customize also solutions on behalf. As you frame the question also, we are seeing more investing in the U.S. globally through ETFs that are domiciled in those locations. Across the board, the adaptation and the democratization of investing, the moving away from the total reliance of bank and bank savings to growing with your country, we're seeing this more and more worldwide, and it's showing up vividly in Europe, and that's one of the big reasons why we believe we're so well positioned. I do believe by being the global market leader in ETFs globally allows us to have that differentiation. Whether there is demand for a U.S.-based investment or Asian or European, I can't tell you we're seeing any more or less investing from Europe into U.S.-based assets. I would've said a year ago, I would say so many investors globally were so over-allocated in dollar-based assets that we actually witnessed last year, a modest reduction in that over-allocation. I would say very clearly because of the growth of U.S. and U.S. technology companies, I would say most global investors' allocation to dollar-based assets are back to their fullest level. That being said, let me be clear, the volatility of the dollar does play a role in how people think about the allocation of dollar-based assets. This is all interconnected, and obviously the value of the dollar is so interconnected to what will the Federal Reserve do related to higher or lower interest rates, which would affect the valuation of the dollar. Overall, we are the most well-positioned firm in Europe to take flow as more and more individual investors are moving towards capital markets as a mechanism to grow their country. Martin Small: Can I have one flow highlight that, Larry? I think it's interesting to what you add is, if I think about iShares globally as access vehicles to markets all around the world, we've run that playbook in the U.S., we've run it in Canada, we run it in Europe. I thought one thing that was really interesting in the quarter is that we saw obviously declines in crypto, in Bitcoin and Ethereum by 30%. We actually had very strong inflows into the European Bitcoin ETF, about $650+ million in international exposures. I think it's just as clients build portfolios, look for diversifiers, iShares are the access vehicle. Being able to bring them to Europe, Canada, Latin America, Asia, U.S., in a way that people make 1%, 2% allocations to their portfolios. We're seeing that strategy really starting to work and root. Operator: Next question will come from the line of Alex Bond with KBW. Laurence Fink: Morning, Alex. Alex Bond: Hey, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking the question. Wanted to ask around Aladdin and Preqin. Maybe if you could just add a little bit more color on the trends you're seeing in and around those businesses at the moment. How are synergies progressing here? Also maybe how is demand for these services progressing in light of calls for more transparency in private markets? Lastly, can you also expand upon how you see AI impacting this area of the business, both currently and also in the future? Thank you. Laurence Fink: Let me start it off with Martin, and then I'll follow up. Martin Small: Yeah. We had a strong quarter. Laurence Fink: Martin. Hit the button, Martin. Martin Small: We had a strong quarter in Aladdin and continue to see really good growth across the technology and subscription revenue business. Obviously 13% revenue growth, 15% ACV growth in the quarter. Technology is the main engine for investment performance. It's the main engine for operating leverage. It's the engine for great client experiences, and clients are investing more in technology. They're accelerating their tech spend, and they're consolidating to leverage fewer providers that have deep integrations across fintech and data ecosystems. They want to work with BlackRock as a firm that can bring it together across the whole portfolio of services, public and private markets. The combination of Preqin with our capabilities in Aladdin and eFront, it's complementary. It's delivering more value for clients and BlackRock. We look forward to executing on the opportunities that bring the benefits of Aladdin to new clients and expanding relationships with existing clients. I'd say some of the gyrations in the private markets and moves on the regulatory landscapes have been real accelerants for Preqin, eFront and Aladdin more broadly. We have a really strong pipeline ahead of deals across Aladdin, eFront and Preqin. I'd offer, for example, the Department of Labor's proposed Safe Harbor rule is clear that fiduciary standards are going to demand rigorous data performance benchmarking for private assets in 401(k). Some of the recent gyrations in non-traded BDCs and private credit have led investors across the whole portfolio to say, "Where do I really have exposure to software? Where do I have exposure that is literally to software? Where do I have exposure to something that's classified as healthcare but is really healthcare IT?" That ability to bring more transparency is a real accelerant for Preqin. We reiterated our low to mid-teens ACV target, from what we see in the pipeline and some of these external catalysts like regulatory and the markets, we think it's a great environment for Aladdin, Preqin and eFront. Laurence Fink: I would just say as Martin was describing, this is one of the biggest priorities within BlackRock. That we are the technology provider to help investors from retail to institutions to have a seamless blending of public and private markets across their portfolio. We are not there. Nobody is there yet in the totality of the analytics and data that is provided in the public market space. This is why we bought Preqin, why we bought eFront, and we have a huge task force in making sure that we could deliver, in the future, a seamless analytical platform to help evaluate the attended risks across public and private markets. Each and every client, from a retail client to an institutional client, can seamlessly understand their risk across their entire platform, public, private, and that is going to be the real destination for BlackRock. This also, as Martin was saying, this confirms and validates the purchase of Preqin and why we needed that to bring this forth. We're not 100% there yet, but the demand and the pending demand to having those analytics to seamlessly move across public and private markets on one common technology platform is very, very important. It's very important for us to be that deliverer of that content, and this is one of the key priorities for BlackRock over the coming year. Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the allotted time for questions. Mr. Fink, do you have any closing remarks? Laurence Fink: Thank you, operator, and I want to thank everybody for joining us this morning and your continued interest in BlackRock. BlackRock continues to deliver record growth for the first half of 2026, representing the strongest start to our year in our history. The investments we made in our platform are showing up in our results, and I believe the best of BlackRock is still ahead. I'm very confident in our ability to continue to deliver for our clients and for our shareholders alike. Everyone have a good quarter and enjoy the summer. Operator: This concludes today's teleconference. You may now disconnect.