Apollo Global Management Inc at Barclays Americas Select Franchise Conference Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Benjamin Budish - Barclays - Analyst : You bet. So you guys reported earnings last week. I definitely want to talk about that a little bit. But maybe just to start out, can you talk about what you're seeing in the environment in the wake of some of the recent tariff announcements? How is the change in the macro outlook impacting credit performance, demand to borrow, allocations from LPs, retail buyers, and the broader investment-grade private credit strategy? Yeah. It's lot in there.

Question: Benjamin Budish - Barclays - Analyst : What do you think?

Question: Benjamin Budish - Barclays - Analyst : Got it. Maybe now circling back to results from last week, an environment quite dynamic. In the Retirement Services segment, you've got a long history of navigating these environments through different periods. What are the kind of headwinds you're seeing right now that resulted in your full year SRE guidance revision? Does this alter the strategy in any way going forward? What's kind of your outlook for spreads, specifically within that business? How does this impact your longer-term kind of financial targets? Unpack what's going on there.

Question: Benjamin Budish - Barclays - Analyst : Well, on the liability side, how should investors be thinking about Athene's potential inflow profile this year versus your over $70 billion target, $70 billion -- or I think last year was $71 billion. And I'm particularly curious, one of the factors you called out on the earnings call was competition in the retail market. So what are you seeing? And how is that manifesting? And then more -- like more broadly, to what degree do you think a decline in rates could have some -- could be a headwind to potential demand?

Question: Benjamin Budish - Barclays - Analyst : And maybe can you talk a little bit more about the competitive pressure? Is it -- is there -- do you see incremental pricing pressure from other providers? In the past, you and Mark have talked about like a rational behavior in the channel. Can you just unpack that a bit a little bit more?

Question: Benjamin Budish - Barclays - Analyst : Got it. Well, that's a good segue. I'd like to ask now about origination, fixed income replacement. So maybe just to start growing proprietary origination capacity is clearly central to your longer-term growth plans. How would you characterize recent borrowing demand? Are you seeing tariff-related uncertainty causing delays? Like what does the team look like?

Question: Benjamin Budish - Barclays - Analyst : Yeah. So what about high-grade corporate solutions? So another unique sort of capability at Apollo that gets a lot of attention. How should we think about similarly demand there? And one of the key debates is this ongoing topic of competition with the traditional bank lending market. How do you see -- what are your expectations there for the year? What are you seeing from the kind of behavior from banks?

Question: Benjamin Budish - Barclays - Analyst : Staying in this area on the institutional side, you guys have talked about an opportunity with traditional LPs to service the fixed income portion of their balance sheets, not just the alternatives bucket. So where would you say we are in this evolution? And are there any helpful anecdotes you can share from initial conversations you've had with these clients?

Question: Benjamin Budish - Barclays - Analyst : Kind of wrapping up the conversation on IG Credit. There's been a number of media reports indicating Apollo is building out broader fixed income trading capabilities to help in view more liquidity into private markets. Clearly, something you'd be doing with State Street, although I think, I'm sure there are many different flavors of what you're doing. So can you talk about your activities here? And what are your -- what are Apollo's broader ambitions in terms of like market making for private credit?

Question: Benjamin Budish - Barclays - Analyst : Really interesting. Well, I want to come back to the State Street partnership in a little bit, and maybe spending a little time on the asset management business. Just we started out talking about the environment. Just a similar question here in terms of deployment, like how would you describe the deployment environment? Where are you finding the most compelling opportunities today?

Question: Benjamin Budish - Barclays - Analyst : How about on the private equity side? So in traditional private equity, less of a growth driver these days, but your performance has been quite strong. How should we think about firstly, the evolution of your private equity franchise and some of the newer equity adjacent franchises longer term within Apollo?

Question: Benjamin Budish - Barclays - Analyst : Maybe just lastly on the asset management within that kind of business. Q1 ACS fees were quite solid, a little bit better than people were expecting amid all the market volatility. How do you think the rest of the year should shape up? And what are the key like swing factors that we should be thinking about?

Question: Benjamin Budish - Barclays - Analyst : Great. All right. Let's talk about wealth a little bit. So I recall the messaging from your earnings call was really no change in April in terms of flows. What about just like general conversations with wealth advisers? I mean how have those changed over the past few months? Could it be that maybe what could have been some softness was offset by just ongoing organic growth, penetration of the adviser base? Like what are you hearing from that distribution channel?

Question: Benjamin Budish - Barclays - Analyst : I want to come back to your partnership comment, but maybe just on the product side. The last couple of years, you've been launching quite a few. There's a dozen maybe more products in the market. How do you feel about the suite? Any asset classes or any structures or anything like that, that's missing? Or do you feel like it's pretty fully built out?

Question: Benjamin Budish - Barclays - Analyst : Maybe come back to the partnerships now. Can you maybe just to start, can you walk through some of the larger partnerships that you forged on the wealth side? What are the current hybrid public-private products that you offer today?

Question: Benjamin Budish - Barclays - Analyst : We'll talk about State Street for a minute. And so you mentioned before, we talked about fixed income liquidity and that partnership. Maybe justgive us an update on early kind of progress. Like what are your reads on sort of initial fund flows, asset levels? How is the product being distributed, initial reception from advisers, that sort of thing?

Question: Benjamin Budish - Barclays - Analyst : Is there a future state where -- I mean, you talked about fixed income replacement and equity replacement. Could we see private equity investments in ETF? Is -- I mean this may be quite a ways off, but it's clearly part of your ambitions to make these markets more liquid, more accessible. Is that something that could be in the cards one day or too difficult?

Question: Benjamin Budish - Barclays - Analyst : Got it. One last question on this umbrella. On the earnings call, there was some discussion about your new markets unit. We talked a little bit about that earlier. Can you just maybe give us a high-level understanding like what this means? What are the strategic implications of that strategy?

Question: Benjamin Budish - Barclays - Analyst : I have one or two more questions, but if anybody in the audience has anything they'd like to ask, happy to open it up. If not, I can fire one more at you.

Question: Benjamin Budish - Barclays - Analyst : All right. Maybe just one more wrapping it up in terms of like your longer-term targets. I mean it sounds like a lot of confidence in the pipeline and the resumption of normalized credit spreads. But maybe just talk a little bit about your scenario planning in your longer-term targets. How does a more potentially challenging macro backdrop like the one we may be entering impact sort of like the range of outcomes?

Question: Benjamin Budish - Barclays - Analyst : Great. Well, with that, we're just about out of time. So we'll leave it there. Martin, thank you so much.