After years of lackluster performance, shares of private-equity firms have hit their stride.
In the decade or more since Blackstone Group Inc., KKR & Co., Apollo Global Management Inc. and Carlyle Group Inc. went public, their assets under management have exploded as they branched out beyond leveraged buyouts into areas such as real estate, lending and insurance.
But their stocks languished, leading executives such as Blackstone chief Stephen Schwarzman to publicly gripe that the market was undervaluing them.
That has changed in a big way since the U.S. economy began to emerge from the coronavirus-driven downturn.
Including dividends, shares of Blackstone have tripled since April 1, 2020, roughly when the recovery began, pushing its market capitalization to around $140 billion. That is bigger than those of financial giants Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and BlackRock Inc. KKR’s stock performance has been even stronger over that period, edging out Blackstone’s by a few percentage points. (Blackstone’s performance over the past three years has trounced that of all three rivals.)
