BlackRock Inc at Bank of America Financial Services Conference Summary

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

Question: Craig Siegenthaler - BofA Securities - Analyst : <_ALACRA_META_ABSTRACT>So quick background on BlackRock. I think everybody here knows it, but largest asset manager in the world, largest global distribution platform, $11 trillion of assets under management. More importantly, it's a leader or first mover in most of the secular businesses, iShares and ETFs, Aladdin in technology, Preqin in alternative data, retirement solutions and privates where they massively upgraded the platform this year with the acquisitions of HPS and GIP. With that, let's get started. So I have a question on the macro front here. We're now entering year three of the bull market. The yield curve has steepened. There's record money market AUM on the sidelines. What are you expecting for industry net flows in 2025?

Question: Craig Siegenthaler - BofA Securities - Analyst : I wanted to dive a little deeper in fixed income. I mean this is the original business at BlackRock from the '90s, leader in this globally in terms of AUM across vehicle, across product. We started seeing a recovery last year, you could argue it was a little bit derailed the rise in the 10-year in the fourth quarter. What are you thinking in terms of the pace of essentially duration extensions? And what metrics are you looking at, leading indicators, macro indicators in terms of when this money in motion could really accelerate?

Question: Craig Siegenthaler - BofA Securities - Analyst : So sticking with that last point, if there are duration extensions in the bonds, if there is re-risking into alts or passive equity, it has to come from somewhere. And that somewhere is probably cash, money market. Now your business is mostly institutional. What we're talking about maybe more retail in terms of these flow trends. What is the outlook for money market funds? And given your business is mostly institutional, how should that behave in an environment or maybe some money is coming out of money market funds?

Question: Craig Siegenthaler - BofA Securities - Analyst : So I want to spend a minute on the EPS algo at BlackRock. There's multiple levers here to drive double-digit EPS growth across the cycle. You have your 5% base fee organic growth, which you're at now. You have beta, you have operating leverage, you have capital management. How do you think about these various contributors? And what is the sensitivity to upside or even downside in the markets?

Question: Craig Siegenthaler - BofA Securities - Analyst : Martin, BlackRock had a huge year in M&A last year. Three big deals, HPS, GIP, Preqin, you can see that alts was a major theme in private markets. You did all these deals without diluting shareholders, accretive to the base fee organic growth. My question now is, are you done with big deals for now? And what do you see as the remaining product gaps?

Question: Craig Siegenthaler - BofA Securities - Analyst : Martin, I want to spend a minute and go through some of the strategic merits of each of the transactions. So to start with the HPS, in the insurance channel where you guys are very big, there is a rotation going on to privates, which HPS could help you with. And in the retail channel, there's a large adoption going on within private wealth, which this helps you address. So maybe walk through some of the real strategic benefits that when you saw this asset, you said, I can help them grow faster.

Question: Craig Siegenthaler - BofA Securities - Analyst : The data point I really picked up on there was the 5x fee rate pickup. Let's talk about GIP for a minute. So infrastructure is in a sweet spot. Governments around the world are in deficits. There's a lot of need to improve infrastructure out there. There's also a very nice theme in there with data centers, artificial intelligence. So I was curious, how is GIP tracking? Anything new to report today?

Question: Craig Siegenthaler - BofA Securities - Analyst : So last deal I wanted to talk about was Preqin. And when I first heard the Preqin announcement, I was thinking, alts data, Venn diagram looks pretty attractive. But I think one thing I was missing is what you can really do that for that they're not doing today. So creating indexes around private markets funds, private equity, real estate, potentially having someone else create a future contract around that, using market makers to make markets around that and eventually dropping that into a BlackRock iShares ETF, which is never been done before, maybe you can walk us through the potential to do something pretty cool at that.

Question: Craig Siegenthaler - BofA Securities - Analyst : Great. I have a question on iShares, but I just want to let you know, if any of you in the audience have a question, we can go to you after me. But iShares inside of BGI was arguably the most successful asset manager acquisition of all time. You did it in the depths of the financial crisis, you got it for a good multiple. I don't know if it's grown.

Question: Craig Siegenthaler - BofA Securities - Analyst : Back then, it was a little controversial, which is crazy if you think about it. But I don't know if it's grown 20x or 15x, maybe you know that number, but massive growth. So what's new at iShares today? And I have to ask this second parter. We had some news from a competitor last week. They slashed on pricing, although most of it wasn't in their flagship ETFs. There's actually a lot in their active products, but what does that mean for your ETF business?

Question: Craig Siegenthaler - BofA Securities - Analyst : All right. With that, we are almost out of time, but I just want to see if there's one question from the audience. We have one here in the front row. Thomas, you can ask the question. Unidentified Participant (inaudible - microphone inaccessible)

Question: Craig Siegenthaler - BofA Securities - Analyst : With that, we are out of time. But Martin, on behalf of all of us at Bank of America, I want to thank you very much very much.