By Isla Binnie and Manya Saini
NEW YORK, July 30 (Reuters) - Alternative asset manager Blue Owl posted quarterly profit in line with estimates and growth in its data center-focused business, but a pullback by the wealthy individuals who powered its rapid growth weighed on its credit unit.
The company has sought to move past the private credit turmoil that rattled the sector earlier this year by highlighting the breadth of its business beyond direct lending - spanning investments in data centers and
related infrastructure, real estate and stakes in other asset managers - as evidence that its earnings are less reliant on any single asset class.
Total equity fundraising fell to $7.6 billion in the second quarter from $12.1 billion a year earlier, while assets under management in its credit business edged down to $158.1 billion from $159.2 billion at the end of the previous quarter, it said on Thursday.
"Blue Owl’s ongoing growth in the second quarter reflects the strong investment performance we continue to generate across strategies and the diversification of our business across platforms and geographies," Co-CEOs Doug Ostrover and Marc Lipschultz said in a statement.
New capital commitments of $7.8 billion in the quarter were close to half the $13.9 billion it raised in the same period a year earlier. New money from private wealth, an investor group that has been a key driver of Blue Owl's growth, was $1.7 billion versus $4.4 billion in the year-ago quarter.
Adjusted distributable earnings per share came in at 22 cents for the three months ended June 30, compared with 21 cents a year earlier. It was in line with estimates compiled by LSEG.
The stock was volatile after the results, swinging between gains and losses. It was last up 1.7% before the bell.
Blue Owl's AUM increased 12% in the second quarter over the same period in the prior year. A rebound in financial markets has lifted AUM across the industry, as investors continued to embrace risk despite heightened market volatility.
DIRECT LENDING IN FOCUS
The private credit sell-off sparked by fears that AI would fundamentally reshape software and technology business models has subsided in recent months, but retail investors have continued to request redemptions from funds that gave them access to rarely-traded loans.
Within Blue Owl's credit platform, direct lending originations were $3.6 billion in the second quarter. Deployment was $600 million.
Gross returns from direct lending strategies were 2.6% in the quarter, rebounding from negative 0.4% in the first quarter and shy of 3% in the same quarter of 2025.
A key part of the private credit market, direct lending involves asset managers making loans directly to companies outside traditional banks to finance buyouts, growth and refinancing. The business has faced heightened investor scrutiny this year.
Still, several industry executives have dismissed fears of broader contagion, arguing that credit stress is limited to isolated cases and that market sentiment has been driven more by negative headlines than deteriorating fundamentals.
The firm's own shares became a proxy for market jitters around private credit and have lost around 36% of their value this year.
Earlier this month, the company maintained a 5% quarterly withdrawal limit for two of its private credit funds as redemption requests remained substantially above the cap despite falling by a few percentage points in the second quarter.
For alternative asset managers, fundraising is a critical measure of business momentum, signaling both investor confidence and the industry's ability to generate future management fees and investment income.
(Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru and Isla Binnie in New York; Editing by Devika Syamnath)
