Ares (ARES) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Motley Fool Transcribing, The Motley Fool

Thu, February 5, 2026 astatine 11:41 AM CST 55 min read

Image source: The Motley Fool.

Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026 astatine 11 a.m. ET

• Chief Executive Officer — Court Schnabel

• Chief Financial Officer — Scott

• [Executive relating to Investment Activities] — Jim

Need a punctuation from a Motley Fool analyst? Email [email protected]

Operator: Start by providing a fewer thoughts connected ARCC's performance, existent marketplace conditions, and our outlook for the twelvemonth ahead. 2025 was different bully twelvemonth for our company. We generated beardown fiscal results, supported by our unchangeable recognition prime and increasing portfolio. Our halfway net per stock of $0.50 for the 4th fourth and $2.01 for the afloat twelvemonth afloat covered our dividends and drove an ROE successful excess of 10% for some the 4th fourth and the afloat year. Reinforcing our semipermanent way grounds of generating NAV maturation with charismatic dividends, we ended 2025 with modestly higher NAV per stock and person present paid a accordant oregon increasing level of regular quarterly dividends for implicit sixteen years.

The drivers of these results are embedded successful what we judge are our semipermanent competitory advantages, including the acquisition of our team, our long-standing marketplace relationships, the standard of our superior base, and our rigorous recognition standards. We stay assured that these enduring competitory advantages volition proceed to enactment compelling show for the institution successful the future. Looking backmost connected 2025, arsenic uncertainty astir macroeconomic policies from the aboriginal months of the twelvemonth subsided, and unit connected backstage equity firms to instrumentality superior to investors mounted, we saw a rebound successful transaction enactment during the 2nd fractional of the year. This, successful turn, led to a meaningful acceleration successful caller concern commitments for america implicit the aforesaid period.

Despite a comparatively tepid M&A market, successful 2025, we remained engaged with the bulk of our originations coming from incumbent borrowers arsenic we sought to enactment the maturation objectives of our portfolio companies. We judge that our quality to beryllium a dependable superior supplier astatine standard done periods of economical and superior markets volatility is particularly invaluable to our portfolio companies and continues to pb to further marketplace stock gains arsenic our existing borrowers consolidate their lending relationships with us. Specifically, crossed our apical 10 incumbent transactions during 2025, we much than doubled our stock of the wide financing. These incumbent transactions tin connection charismatic opportunities to summation our vulnerability to immoderate of our best-performing portfolio companies.