Earnings Labs

KKR & Co. Inc. (KKR)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 11, 2016

$104.14

+4.73%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

+7.28%

1 Week

+15.18%

1 Month

+25.34%

vs S&P

+14.78%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to KKR's Fourth Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following management's prepared remarks, the conference will be open for questions. I will now hand the call over to Craig Larson, Head of Investor Relations for KKR. Craig, please go ahead.

Craig Larson - Head-Investor Relations

Management

Thank you, Brian. Welcome everyone to our fourth quarter 2015 earnings call. Thank you for joining us. This morning, I'm joined by Bill Janetschek, our CFO, and Scott Nuttall, Global Head of Capital and Asset Management. As always, we would like to remind everyone that we'll refer to non-GAAP measures on the call which are reconciled to GAAP figures in our press release. This call will also contain forward-looking statements, which do not guarantee future events or performance. Please refer to our SEC filings for cautionary factors related to these statements. And also, like previous quarters, we've posted a supplementary presentation on our website that we'll be referring to over the course of the call. This morning, we reported fourth quarter and full year 2015 results. Of note, we reported fourth quarter and full year ENI of $145 million and $1.3 billion, equating to $0.08 and $1.21 of after-tax ENI per unit. Total cash earnings were $169 million for the quarter and $1.5 billion for the full year. In terms of our distribution and share repurchase activity, as you'll likely remember, on our last earnings call we announced some key changes to our capital management priorities and moved from a purely variable distribution to a fixed distribution policy. And at the same time, we announced a $500 million share buyback authorization. In turn, we announced this morning for the fourth quarter the regular fixed distribution of $0.16 per unit, which implies an annualized yield of 5.5% based on last night's closing price, well above the yield levels seen across most S&P 500 companies. As it relates to the buyback, as we walk through on the front cover of the press release, since October 27, which was the date when we announced our authorization, we repurchased and canceled 17.5 million units…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. I would now like to hand the call back over to Craig Larson, Head of Investor Relations for KKR for further comments. Please proceed.

Craig Larson - Head-Investor Relations

Management

Thanks Brian. I was just going to note, just looking at the queue, looks like we actually have quite a few people in the queue. So if everyone wouldn't mind limiting your questions to one question and a follow-up and then get back in the queue, we'd appreciate it. So with that, let's – why don't we go ahead, Brian. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Patrick Davitt with Autonomous. Your line is now open, please go ahead.

Patrick Davitt - Autonomous Research US LP

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open, please go ahead

Good morning guys, thanks. Real quick on that case study you just gave, Scott. When you syndicate a $850 million package like that, what kind of fee would we expect to come through the capital markets business? Scott C. Nuttall - Member & Head of Global Capital and Asset Management Group, KKR & Co. LP: Well it's really going to depend, Patrick. First, it was $815 million, and to be clear, the way some of these will work – and so it's impossible to give you a precise answer that will apply in every situation. In some instances, we'll originate something like that, we may hold some of it in our credit funds, or we may syndicate all of it. Sometimes we hold all of it and sometimes we syndicate all of it. So, the short answer is, typically on what we're underwriting to syndicate, we'll get a fee of 2% to 3% on the syndicated portion. But that will vary from market to market. But in this market, that's typically about right. And in an environment like this one we may be able to do it a bit better than that.

Patrick Davitt - Autonomous Research US LP

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open, please go ahead

Okay. That's really helpful. And then my follow-up is on the fundraising. You noted the seeding of real estate credit, could you give us an idea of the pace to raising an actual third party fund there? And also, do you have any more visibility on a target size for the real estate Europe fund? Scott C. Nuttall - Member & Head of Global Capital and Asset Management Group, KKR & Co. LP: Real estate credit, I don't have an update for you yet. Probably have one next quarter. We're in the process of working through how we're going to fund that strategy, whether it's going to be a fund or a different type of more permanent capital vehicle, but those conversations are ongoing. And in terms of real estate Europe, we're in the market; I would tell you our first-time funds tend to be in the range of $500 million to $1 billion, give or take.

Patrick Davitt - Autonomous Research US LP

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open, please go ahead

Okay. Thanks a lot. Scott C. Nuttall - Member & Head of Global Capital and Asset Management Group, KKR & Co. LP: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Luke Montgomery with Bernstein Research. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Luke Montgomery - Bernstein Research

Analyst · Luke Montgomery with Bernstein Research. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Great, thanks. Good morning. Big picture question, I think clearly investors are worried about an implosion of credit in China and the potential need for China to recapitalize its banking system, devalue the currency, and the implications of that for global risk asset prices. I think it's a view you share, to a degree, based on Mr. McVeigh's commentary on your website. And I think, of course, most of that is still to come, but you also cited record deployment in the credit business in Q4. So, I'm just wondering how you're thinking about managing risk and navigating the global macro pitfalls as you ramp up deployment in credit. Scott C. Nuttall - Member & Head of Global Capital and Asset Management Group, KKR & Co. LP: Sure. I think first, Luke, on China in particular, it's important to understand, we have not done much in credit in China to date. We actually just announced a joint venture which will hopefully set us up to be able to take advantage of what is happening in China, from a direct lending standpoint and otherwise. But our exposure in China today is on the private equity front and in some real estate, but relatively small, and those companies, as I mentioned, are performing well. I'd say more broadly in credit, in terms of the deployment opportunity, it's quite broad-based. One of the great things about this market environment, we are seeing significantly enhanced pipelines in direct lending, mezzanine and special situations on a global basis. Part of that is in Asia, which will be in effect the fallout from the slowdown in the Chinese economy on companies and countries outside of China. But the larger percentage of it is the U.S. and Europe. And so I mentioned the deployment is up significantly, the capital raising is up, our dry powder is at the highest levels ever, and we feel really well positioned to take advantage of that, and that's everything from senior secured direct lending to middle-market corporates in the U.S. and Europe, all the way through to rescue capital for companies on a global basis.

Luke Montgomery - Bernstein Research

Analyst · Luke Montgomery with Bernstein Research. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Okay, thanks. And then from a capital management standpoint, I'm wondering what your thoughts are around the CLO book that came in with KFN. I think there's some debate about whether that book provides you with a sufficient return on capital, if the capital tied up might be better deployed to accelerate share repurchase. So I was just hoping you'd comment on whether you plan to wind down the CLO book, and if you do that, would it be through gradual maturation or would you actively sell a big chunk of it? Scott C. Nuttall - Member & Head of Global Capital and Asset Management Group, KKR & Co. LP: Yeah. Good question. So if you go to page four of the deck we prepared, you'll see on the bottom left that we actually have been monetizing assets in the CLO portfolio and the credit portfolio. So you can see, between the two of them, the better part of $800 million came back last year, and that is – some of that's natural runoff, but most of that is a purposeful decision on our part, Luke, to monetize and call some of these older CLOs, and redeploy capital into a lot of the things we're doing on the right hand side of that page, including share buybacks. I think you continue to see us call those older CLOs as market conditions allow us to. We are at the same time issuing new CLOs, which is bringing in asset management revenues. But in effect, when we did this KFN transaction, we said we would seek to monetize that portfolio and put it into higher returning opportunities, and we're in the process of doing that. William Joseph Janetschek - Member & Chief Financial Officer: And on the newer CLOs, what we're typically doing is just investing in the sub-notes, and providing just enough capital for risk retention. Obviously we are raising significant CLOs and have been over the past year, and the economics on putting up a small amount of capital and receiving fees on the entire CLO is quite attractive.

Luke Montgomery - Bernstein Research

Analyst · Luke Montgomery with Bernstein Research. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Okay. Thank you very much. William Joseph Janetschek - Member & Chief Financial Officer: Yup.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Bill Katz with Citigroup. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

William Raymond Katz - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Bill Katz with Citigroup. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Okay. Thanks very much, I appreciate it. Just a couple questions, just sticking with the capital management, just want to take that one step further. As you think about where stock is trading today versus some of the opportunity to put more into work around the world, you mentioned the volatility. How do you sort of stack rank that right now, and so you made good inroad into the initial $500 million? How are you thinking on the other side of that right now, as well, in terms of incremental repurchase potential? Scott C. Nuttall - Member & Head of Global Capital and Asset Management Group, KKR & Co. LP: Sure, Bill. It's Scott. So, as we mentioned, we did the $500 million authorization last quarter, so we've spent $270 million of that $500 million, away from the other $30 million that Craig took you through. So we have about $230 million left. We think that this stock represents extraordinarily compelling value at these prices, so we'll be actively buying the stock as soon as we're able to after these earnings are out. And then we'll address the question as to reloading the buyback authorization in due course. Our message at the time we announced it was that we wanted to control our share count dilution. That is still very much something that we're committed to, but we're glad we have the buyback in place and we'll be actively using it, and then we'll come back and let you know when we're ready to reload.

William Raymond Katz - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Bill Katz with Citigroup. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Okay. Second question is on margins, and Craig had mentioned that you came in a little bit – or maybe it was Bill – came in a little bit shy of your, so your margin goal for the year. How much of that might have been just sort of some sticky spending, given all the growth in the business, versus maybe just dealing with the market dynamics, and how you think about that as you look into 2016? William Joseph Janetschek - Member & Chief Financial Officer: Bill, this is Bill. Some of that was capital that we spent to jumpstart some of these businesses, but that isn't a big number. Obviously what happened is, with the markdown of our balance sheet in the third quarter and fourth quarter, when you're looking at a total revenue to total profitability, to the extent that you have on a mark-to-market basis some write-downs in a particular quarter, your margins are going to shrink. But again, based upon performance, and we've been now a public company in the past six years, we feel pretty comfortable that we're going to target, on average, a margin of anywhere in between that 50% and 60%.

William Raymond Katz - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Bill Katz with Citigroup. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Okay. Thank you. Scott C. Nuttall - Member & Head of Global Capital and Asset Management Group, KKR & Co. LP: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mike Carrier with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Michael Needham - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Mike Carrier with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Hi, good morning. This is Mike Needham in for Mike Carrier. So first, just on – you gave the trailing 12-month revenue growth for your portfolio companies somewhere in the high single digits, and then EBITDA growth in the low double digits for last year. Did that trend hold up throughout the year, or was there some decline? Scott C. Nuttall - Member & Head of Global Capital and Asset Management Group, KKR & Co. LP: Hey, Mike, it's Scott. I'd say the overall trend has held up quite well. The places where there's been a little bit given back would be the places that you'd expect. So, think of the U.S industrials portfolio to some extent has slowed a bit. But those numbers have been in the range of 8% or 9% top line growth and 10% to 12% EBITDA growth for the last several quarters. So, nothing that I'd call out in terms of meaningful move.

Michael Needham - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Mike Carrier with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Okay. Great, thanks. And then on expenses for 4Q, I appreciate the disclosure on the reconciliation details for the new FRE number. But then just on overall expenses, can you give us an idea of what's sort of the pick-up on a sequential basis in 4Q on the core expenses of cash comp and G&A? And then the full year wasn't up as much, so it could be some true-up for 4Q, but should we expect that to moderate in the first quarter, or is the new base is going to be a bit higher? Thanks. William Joseph Janetschek - Member & Chief Financial Officer: Mike, what you should look at – you hit the nail on the head, is really year-over-year. And so, when you see the increase in operating expenses, it was up a little less than 2%. What happened in the fourth quarter, there were just some expenses that tend to come in in the fourth quarter. So if you're comparing fourth to third, it always looks like there's a little bit of a jump. But on a normalized basis, when you go year-over-year, we've done a pretty good job of managing expenses. As far as cash comp is concerned, it was up in this particular quarter only for the fact that a lot of the cash comp is driven by fee income. So fee income was quite robust in the fourth quarter of 2015 compared to the third quarter of 2015, and that's why you saw that increase.

Michael Needham - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Mike Carrier with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Harris with Wells Fargo. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Christopher M. Harris - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Chris Harris with Wells Fargo. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thank you. Can you guys tell us what percent of your energy investments right now are income-positive with commodity prices where they are, excluding hedges? Scott C. Nuttall - Member & Head of Global Capital and Asset Management Group, KKR & Co. LP: I don't know if we can answer that question specifically for you. But maybe we can give you a little bit of a context though, that might help you frame the – your thinking about energy exposure, and then we can follow up offline. But just to frame it, direct energy for us is a very, very large – a small percentage of our overall exposure. So, to put numbers around, if you look at our credit AUM, it's less than 3.5% energy. If you look at our private equity portfolio, it's about 2% energy. And if you look at our balance sheet in terms of its exposure to direct energy, it's about 6%, 6.5%, give or take. So it's a very small percentage of our overall third-party AUM and our overall balance sheet. And in terms of the actual investments that we still have, in terms of the vast majority of those are cash flowing. Keep in mind, what we're left with in terms of our energy income and growth fund are largely unlevered positions in natural gas assets or oil assets or in the royalty or drilling space. But to date, they're performing reasonably well given the commodity environment; we have hedges in place for most of those. And what I would point you to in terms of focus, as you think about marks on that 2% to 6% of our assets, depending on how you look at it, is really what matters is what happens with the forward curve three years to five years out. It's basically a DCF base valuation, but that's going to have the biggest impact.

Christopher M. Harris - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Chris Harris with Wells Fargo. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Okay. Follow-up question then on the CLO portfolio. Right now, it's valued at 69% of cost, and I'm not sure how that compares to the broader levered loan index, I think it might be below perhaps where the levered loan index is; maybe you guys correct me if that's wrong. But wondering what's in there where the value's so below cost. I mean, I know that there's been a drastic blow-out in high yield and so on. But it seems like there might be a fairly high degree of risk in this particular portfolio of investments, and maybe you guys can shed little bit light on that? Scott C. Nuttall - Member & Head of Global Capital and Asset Management Group, KKR & Co. LP: Yeah, happy to. So, some of this is structural, Chris. You have to understand how these CLOs are structured. So on average, our CLOs are levered at about five times. And so, just to give you a sense for how to think about it, the LSTA, so the loan index in Q4 was down 2.1% in the quarter. Okay, so all else equal, you would have expected our equity underneath five-times-levered CLOs to be down 10% to 11%. We were actually down 8% in the quarter, because the underlying portfolio outperformed the LSTA index. So really when you look at the face of the press release, what you're seeing there is the mark on the equity underneath the CLO structures. So you should not compare that mark as a percentage of cost to where the index is trading; you'd almost want to take the index, multiply that by five or six to get a feel for the relative comparison in terms of that math. But really what's happening even further, and I won't get too much in the detail here because it gets complex quickly, is we have some older CLOs from KFN that are – that we've called and are running off, and some of those positions we're in the process of monetizing, and some of those traded down in Q3 and Q4. And then we have a number of newer CLOs that we've done on the basis of risk retention only in terms of our hold and the equity underlying those CLOs, and those are performing quite well. So there's a lot going on underneath the waves, but the punch line is, we're monetizing the old stuff and the new stuff's coming on. And if you look through the portfolio on a 100% basis, the overall performance of the portfolio has been quite good relative to the index.

Christopher M. Harris - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Chris Harris with Wells Fargo. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Okay. Helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Kotowski with Oppenheimer. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Chris M. Kotowski - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (Broker): Yeah. Couple of things. First, you highlighted WMIH in this release. And I'm wondering – as a balance sheet investment – and I'm wondering, is that conceived of as a vehicle for investing or co-investing in an ordinary private equity type investment, or is that a strategic tool for strategic parent company investments, or how – what should we expect to see there? Scott C. Nuttall - Member & Head of Global Capital and Asset Management Group, KKR & Co. LP: Sure, Chris. It's a great question. So WMIH is actually a NASDAQ-traded entity. And think of it this way. It is the old holding company of Washington Mutual, which has a meaningful NOL. And so – and there's lots of public disclosures that that entity puts out, so there's lots that you could find out about it. But the punch line from KKR's standpoint is, we view it as a very interesting tax-advantaged vehicle for us to make some kind of strategic acquisition for KKR, in the financial space or otherwise, through that vehicle where we would have an ownership position in it. So in effect we've got a tax-advantaged vehicle through which we have the option of going and doing something interesting with balance sheet capital. So, I would think of it almost as a tax-advantaged SPAC that we can use to go do some interesting things. It's not a client account, to be clear, it's actually a public company. Chris M. Kotowski - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (Broker): Okay. And then sort of as a follow-up to that, I mean, as I remember, KFN debt extended out like 20 years or 23 years, or it was long, long time debt. And if you are running down and selling the CLOs in that, does that mean you can take the capacity – the debt capacity, that long-term non-recourse debt capacity in the old KFN, and deploy it wherever you want? William Joseph Janetschek - Member & Chief Financial Officer: Yeah. The short answer is yes. This is Bill. The one thing we've got is, we've got flexibility in that; we've got KFN, which is 100% owned by KKR and it's got its own debt and that debt is recourse to those assets; and then we've got KKR proper, with its own leverage. And so, to the extent that we could use that debt to our advantage, we have the ability to fund investments in either the KKR proper balance sheet or through KFN. Chris M. Kotowski - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (Broker): Okay. Great. Thank you. Scott C. Nuttall - Member & Head of Global Capital and Asset Management Group, KKR & Co. LP: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Devin Ryan with JMP Securities. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Devin P. Ryan - JMP Securities LLC

Analyst · Devin Ryan with JMP Securities. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Hey, great. Thanks, good morning. Appreciate the perspective around the capital markets business and how that can disintermediate the traditional financing streams. And so, question is really, how does that impact the timing of deals, and are you capacity constrained? Meaning that if you have to rely even less on the traditional financing markets moving forward, does that reduce the volume of the transactions you can move forward on at the same time? Just trying to get a sense of how that's going to impact the pace of deal flow. Scott C. Nuttall - Member & Head of Global Capital and Asset Management Group, KKR & Co. LP: Yeah. It's a great question, Devin. So I would answer it in a couple of different ways. One, in the first instance I would think more holistically about the firm. So when the traditional lending markets get more difficult, as we discussed before, we love that volatility, because what that does is provide an opportunity for us in our credit business from a deployment standpoint. And so a lot of companies, a lot of sponsors can't get financing; that creates a lot of deployment opportunity for us in credit in the first instance. And so you've seen those deployment numbers continue to kick up, and we've seen that business continue to grow. On private equity, it's a little bifurcated right now. So the U.S. market really pulled back pretty dramatically in the fourth quarter, and Europe was more open for new deals. So in the U.S., there's no question, right now it's a risk-off environment. Markets are starting to open up a little bit; some of the deals that were originated in Q4 are starting to come back to market. But the stories need to be really simple, and it needs to…

Devin P. Ryan - JMP Securities LLC

Analyst · Devin Ryan with JMP Securities. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Yeah, that's very helpful. And maybe just a follow-up to those comments. I'm just trying to think about some of the differences between what you're seeing in valuation spreads from maybe the publically traded markets to the private markets right now, and how that's influencing the capital deployment thought process where you're seeing better opportunities? Scott C. Nuttall - Member & Head of Global Capital and Asset Management Group, KKR & Co. LP: Look, the bottom line, this is great. I mean, what tends to happen in an environment like this, valuations come down and the deals that we do in these types of environments tend to be our best deals. And so there may not be as much volume in PE that's done, but the deals that we do get done are done at a lower valuation, lower leverage; then the financing markets open back up and you're able frankly to put a different and longer-term capital structure in place in some instances. But the biggest driver of return in a lot of these transactions is getting an entry valuation that's very attractive, then creating operational improvement at the company, and then exiting at a time, as I said, when we've kind of swung back from fear to greed. And if you look back to what happened in the 2008-2009 period, we had a number of excellent transactions done during that period of time, because we were willing to lean in when everybody else was running the other direction. And that's why I say we love volatility, because it provides those types of opportunities. And so you'll continue to see us be judicious and patient, but when we find something we really like and there's an opportunity to move forward, we'll be able to do it because we have the capital and the teams are ready.

Devin P. Ryan - JMP Securities LLC

Analyst · Devin Ryan with JMP Securities. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Great. Thanks very much. Scott C. Nuttall - Member & Head of Global Capital and Asset Management Group, KKR & Co. LP: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Kim with Sandler O'Neill. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Michael S. Kim - Sandler O'Neill & Partners LP: Okay. Thanks for getting me on. First, now that you're retaining more capital, just wondering if your thinking has changed at all as it relates to M&A, either from a strategic standpoint or as it relates to financial criteria? And then, how do you see the dynamic of lower valuations, broadly speaking, playing out, versus maybe a bit more competition from buyers? Scott C. Nuttall - Member & Head of Global Capital and Asset Management Group, KKR & Co. LP: Sure. So Michael, on the first one, just to clarify one thing in terms of our being one quarter into our new distribution program, we've actually retained less capital, because we spent more on the combination of the dividend and buybacks than we would have on our old distribution policy. So, that's – you are right in the long term. We have the potential to retain more capital, but we've actually chosen to change the mix of how we're using our capital to do buy-backs, and the fixed distribution obviously. And so the short answer, it hasn't really changed the way we're thinking about M&A in this environment. We've mentioned that most of the businesses that we're in today, we would expect to grow organically as opposed to through acquisition. We've got some opportunities like WMI that we talked about that could be interesting to do some things from the non- – inorganic standpoint, but no change in thought process there. And in terms of lower valuations, look, what we find is in the M&A market, when valuations go down, there is sometimes a bit of a lag,…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Robert Lee with KBW. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Robert Lee - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Thanks. Good morning, guys. Scott C. Nuttall - Member & Head of Global Capital and Asset Management Group, KKR & Co. LP: Good morning. Robert Lee - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: I was just sort of – maybe go on to page five, I'm just thinking about fundraising, just trying to get maybe an update on – I mean, as you talked about, it's going well; I guess had some first closings and Special Sits has done well. But could you update us on kind of your various – what you're thinking about as we look to the year ahead, in terms of fundraising capacity on existing strategies, kind of what you think is doable? And then also, I guess, as part of that, where things are with the new North American fund? Scott C. Nuttall - Member & Head of Global Capital and Asset Management Group, KKR & Co. LP: Sure. Happy to take that. So I think in terms of – as you think about what's happening in the year ahead, handful of things I'd point you to. One is, we'll be finishing up our Special Sits II fundraise here in the first quarter, so I'd expect by the time we speak again we'll have an update on a final close there. The big dollar amount for this year, in terms of the main event, is our Americas XII private equity fundraise, so that's a flagship American – Americas PE fund. We are in the market with that fund right now, and it's early days but going quite well. Then you've got a series of other funds…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brian Bedell with Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Brian B. Bedell - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Brian Bedell with Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Thanks. Good morning, folks. Just to the – back to the deployment backdrop, maybe Scott, if you can talk a little bit more about – also trying to sort of understand the pace of that, given the dislocation in the markets. In which areas do you think there are more attractive opportunities, near term? And then going back to the comments that you mentioned on the ability to syndicate financing in the capital markets, how do you think about that from a capacity perspective on your balance sheet? And then in your funds, if the environment is indeed something that you wanted to accelerate the deployment, what's sort of the capacity to do that? I guess, just a bit more of a broader view as well, of how long you think the dislocation will last? Scott C. Nuttall - Member & Head of Global Capital and Asset Management Group, KKR & Co. LP: Got it. You snuck a few in there.

Brian B. Bedell - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Brian Bedell with Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Sorry. Scott C. Nuttall - Member & Head of Global Capital and Asset Management Group, KKR & Co. LP: Let me try to take them in turn. In the slide deck, we actually have a chart that's probably worth taking a look at. We referenced it quickly, on our dry powder. So if you go to page eight, you can see at the top half of that slide that our dry powder is now somewhere between $29 billion and $30 billion. You can see it's up 40% year-over-year. And if you go to the right hand part of that, the slide, you can see how it breaks down between asset classes. So as I said, we feel great because we are heading into this market of dislocation and volatility at the same time that we have a lot of capital with which to work, and those are all record numbers for us. So we feel really well positioned. In terms of where we see the opportunities, it's quite broad-based. I mentioned several times that we see opportunities in credit. I'd say probably last year the opportunity set was more on the private credit side. Now we're seeing enhanced opportunities in private credit, and also increasingly in what we call leveraged credit. The high-yield and leveraged loan markets are starting to dislocate. There's opportunistic credit opportunities. We see those opportunities clearly in the U.S. today, but increasingly we're starting to think that Europe's coming our way and there will be more to do in credit in Europe as well, not just in the private side, where the opportunity has been in place, but also in the more liquid markets as well. I'd also point you to areas like infrastructure, which we talked about in the prepared remarks, where we're seeing more…

Brian B. Bedell - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Brian Bedell with Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Yeah. It's certainly a learning – and then on the – especially with the balance sheet capacity and that as a strategic tool for you guys. I guess, considering all of those opportunities and also that your stock's very cheap, maybe just a quick comment on how you view that, versus upping the buyback from the $500 million? Scott C. Nuttall - Member & Head of Global Capital and Asset Management Group, KKR & Co. LP: Well, we don't really have to answer that question, as of yet, because we still have the capacity under the initial $500 million. So, but obviously, we are looking at the trade-off in terms of investing in our own stock versus investing into this market environment. And we just look at our stock as like any other investment opportunity. And so we'll continue to do that trade-off. We think our stock has really extraordinarily compelling value at these levels. But we also are seeing other investment opportunities come our way and become much more compelling it seems day by day. So we'll continue to do that relative trade-off. As I said, we'll be active buyers in the market in our stock next week. And we'll continue to do that trade-off and tell you what we're seeing on a relative basis and how we think about it. But right now, we see opportunities in both.

Brian B. Bedell - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Brian Bedell with Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

Okay. Fair enough. Thank you very much. William Joseph Janetschek - Member & Chief Financial Officer: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Patrick Davitt with Autonomous. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Patrick Davitt - Autonomous Research US LP

Analyst · Patrick Davitt with Autonomous. Your line is now open. Please go ahead

My follow-up was asked. Thanks. Scott C. Nuttall - Member & Head of Global Capital and Asset Management Group, KKR & Co. LP: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Kotowski with Oppenheimer. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Chris M. Kotowski - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (Broker): Yeah, hi. You mentioned that the realized losses were from crystallizing EFU, and I wonder, is there more to go on that and Samson, and what's the process of realizing those losses that you've got already fully written down? And what impact will it have on DE and ENI and all of that? William Joseph Janetschek - Member & Chief Financial Officer: Hey, Chris. This is Bill. With regard to EFH, the investment is now written off completely. So as it relates to our funds, as it relates to our balance sheet, everything is done as we look at EFH. As it relates to Samson, we've written net investment down to zero. However, we haven't written it off. So from a cash earnings point of view, when that company emerges from bankruptcy, and we may not receive any equity, at that time we'll have a realization event from a cash earnings point of view. But – I don't want to overemphasize this, but I want to. The impact, when Samson comes out of bankruptcy and we write the investment to zero, if in fact that's where we end up, has no impact to ENI, because all of the pain on the write-down of that investment from inception till today has already been taken through the P&L. So, again, no impact to ENI when we have a crystallization event for Samson. Chris M. Kotowski - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (Broker): But it would show up in the DE calculation? William Joseph Janetschek - Member & Chief Financial Officer: It certainly would. Chris M. Kotowski - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (Broker):…

Craig Larson - Head-Investor Relations

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would now hand the call over to Craig Larson, Head of Investor Relations for KKR, for closing comments. Craig, please go ahead.

Craig Larson - Head-Investor Relations

Management

Thanks, Brian. Thank you everybody for joining our call. Please feel free to give us a buzz, obviously, with any follow-ups, and we'll speak to you next quarter. Scott C. Nuttall - Member & Head of Global Capital and Asset Management Group, KKR & Co. LP: Thanks so much.