Earnings Labs

Apollo Global Management, Inc. (APO)

Q2 2020 Earnings Call· Thu, Jul 30, 2020

$123.75

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. And welcome to Apollo Global Management's Second Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. During today's presentation, all callers will be placed in a listen-only mode, and following management's prepared remarks, the conference call will be open for questions. This conference call is being recorded. This call may include forward-looking statements and projections, which do not guarantee future events or performance. Please refer to Apollo's most recent SEC filings, including the 8-K Apollo filed this morning for risk factors related to these statements. Apollo will be discussing certain non-GAAP measures on this call, which management believes are relevant in assessing the financial performance of the business. These non-GAAP measures are reconciled to GAAP figures in Apollo's earnings presentation, which is available on the Company's website. Also, note that nothing on this call constitutes an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to purchase any interest in Apollo fund. I would now like to turn the call over to Gary Stein, Head of Investor Relations.

Gary Stein

Management

Welcome to our second quarter 2020 earnings call. We hope you and your families are doing well in these challenging times. Joining me this morning are Leon Black, Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Josh Harris, Co-Founder; and Martin Kelly, Chief Financial Officer and Co-Chief Operating Officer. Gary Parr, Senior Managing Director is also on the line and will be available during the Q&A session. Earlier this morning, we reported distributable earnings of $0.46 per common share, pretax fee-related earnings or FRE of $0.59 per share and a cash dividend of $0.49 per share for the second quarter. With that, I will turn the call over to Leon Black.

Leon Black

Management

Thanks, Gary, and thank you all for joining us. I'd like to express my wishes to everyone listening that this finds you and your families healthy and safe. And to our employees who have continued to work tirelessly on behalf of our clients and our shareholders, I'd like to convey my appreciation and gratitude. We are not working under typical circumstances, to say the least. And you have all continued to go above and beyond to drive the strong results that we're reporting today. I think, this speaks to the tenacity and spirit of our employees, as well as the collaborative and adventive culture we have at Apollo. Globally, companies continue to operate in incredibly challenging circumstances as we face what started as a health crisis, but it progressed into an economic crisis as well. Across the firm, we have responded quickly to this changing landscape with a focus on engagement and operations across our investment professionals, client and product solutions teams, and enterprise solutions group, which has helped us transition into a work-from-home environment smoothly. This quarter marked the achievement of a significant milestone as the Apollo’s AUM grew by approximately $100 billion to surpass $400 billion for the first time in our history. This growth was driven by Athene, Athora and strong inflows during the quarter and represents 33% growth year-over-year. With $414 billion of AUM as of June 30th, we are well on our way towards the $600 billion goal that we provided at Investor Day this past November. We continue to see robust demand for Apollo products and a strong pipeline for insurance transactions over the next few years. As a further indication of the breadth of our platform and our activity level through the pandemic, gross purchases were $45 billion across the platform in the…

Josh Harris

Management

Thanks, Leon. We are really pleased to further evolve our leadership team, and I look forward to continuing to drive growth for Apollo alongside you and Marc. Apollo has responded, as Leon mentioned, to the challenges of working through the global pandemic, exceptionally well. Our outmost priority during this time has been to focus on the health and safety of our people and their families, which include our 15 offices around the world. We have challenged ourselves to innovate and adapt to new technology and to make this work -- a remote work environment, as efficient as possible. Looking forward, we are approaching the return to office with an emphasis on ensuring the ongoing wellbeing and productivity of our employees. Now, turning to our results. Our business has done exceptionally well over the last six months. For many years, we've been making four key points about how our business would perform during a period of severe market dislocation or a recession. Number one, our FRE growth and margins would be durable and stable; two, our fundraising would be resilient and potentially accelerate, driving AUM growth; three, we would find attractive risk reward investment opportunities for our investors; and four, the majority of our markdowns in our funds portfolios would be transient. All of these are proving out during this period of time, reflecting the strength of our platform. I'd like to briefly highlight the two notable transactions that reflect our continued market leadership in serving our insurance clients. These transactions closed during the second quarter, despite a backdrop of continued market volatility and uncertainty. At the beginning of the second quarter, Athora closed on its acquisition of VIVAT. Athora’s assets now stand at $60 billion. This transaction is transformative for Athora, as it creates a meaningful scale, diversifies Athora’s business…

Operator

Operator

It looks like the line has dropped off.

Martin Kelly

Management

I'll finish that -- he's at the tail end. I'll finish his comments and then go into mine. So being well underway to surpassing $600 billion of AUM over a five-year period and growing our FRE mid-teens average annual rate, as we outlined in last November's Investor Day. To help achieve these goals, we continue to invest meaningfully across the platform, building out our investment talent and infrastructure. So, it's Martin. I’ll pick up on the comments. I’d firstly like to echo Josh’s appreciation for all our employees whose hard work has resulted in a seamless transition into our current remote working environment. So, on dividend, FRE&D. For the second quarter, we announced a dividend of $0.49 per share supported by our after tax FRE. Our reliable FRE stream supports the dividend at a level above our stated minimum of $0.40 per quarter. And in quarters of more meaningful transaction fees the dividend can be substantially higher, even without the benefit of performance fees. We generated FRE of $0.59 per share on a pretax basis for the quarter, driven by growth in management fees and some higher transaction fees. Transaction and advisory fees were $62 million in the quarter, driven by transactions including tech data, as well as Albertsons and other capital solutions transactions. The increase in compensation cost reflects continued investment in building out our capabilities across the areas of growth that Josh highlighted, including in infrastructure, our hybrid capital business and FRE [ph] platform, as well as in technology and various support functions across the firm. Turning to incentive realizations. We had a very low level of gross realized performance fees in the quarter, which drove negative pretax incentive earnings for the quarter after accounting for the profit share interests in realized carry and financing costs associated with…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And Josh Harris has returned to the conference. Our first question will come from the line of Alex Blostein with Goldman Sachs.

Alex Blostein

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning, everybody. So first, maybe just to touch on Marc's decision to step away from the business on a sabbatical, Leon, I guess, as you described. Is this a bigger picture succession plan effort, or is this more of a temporary change and Marc will be looking to reengage? And are there any implications on the pace of deal making within insurance space we should anticipate on the back of that?

Leon Black

Management

I think it's really that we've been in COVID lockdown now for five months. Marc has just quarter back, two transactions in the quarter, the second quarter, which we've talked to you a bunch about, which you're aware of. And you want to take a little time off from day-to-day operations, especially with the confidence that there is a team there now of over 100 who are totally focused on insurance, and Scott Kleinman been on the Board of Athene and he’s been very involved more increasingly on day-to-day. And as we've mentioned, and the reason we call it a semi sabbatical is Marc is still very, very engaged in the firm and on the strategic planning with Josh and myself. He remains on the Executive Committee; he remains on the Apollo Board as well as the Athene Board and Executive Committee and on Athora. So, I would really just take it at face of what we've said and not read more into it. I think, he has a well-deserved desire to not be involved in so much day-to-day, given the great team that's been built up and how much that's already been accomplished. But, I think he would tell you that he thinks we're still in early innings in terms of what he has really masterminded over the last 12 years in building the insurance operations to over $200 billion and I think believes that there's no reason that can't double over the next three, four years, and I think he plans to be a major part of that.

Operator

Operator

Our next question will come from the line of Craig Siegenthaler with Credit Suisse.

Craig Siegenthaler

Analyst

Good morning, everyone and congratulations on completing two very sizable transactions this quarter. Just on the two transactions, as we look forward, can you remind us on the level of deal capacity at both Athene in the U.S. and Athora Europe? And also, can you update us on the current M&A and reinsurance backdrop in both markets as we try to estimate the potential for future transactions?

Leon Black

Management

Gary, do you want to take that?

Gary Parr

Analyst

Yes, I'd be happy to. And, I need to address the second one first. And that is just the activity level that could be available. There's several ways to look at it. One is the market opportunity, and the second is how Apollo is positioned to address the issue. The market opportunity today is as robust as it has been over the last four years. The low interest rates continue to put a lot of pressure on traditional companies. Notably, the tight spreads on public securities make it very difficult in the spread business for other companies. We of course, invest so much in originating good investments and creating extra spread. The others, their capital rules continue to create pressure. Particularly in Europe Solvency II is problematic for some back books, the old books of companies. And lastly, a lot of companies continue try to focus more on lines where they can win business or just be winners. And that means they're exiting lines of business or entire geographies, and we're seeing that level of flow. So, I'd say, sitting today, comparing to any point in time in last four years, we are in is many substantive conversations, we have no idea exactly what the timing of transactions will be. But, as an overall backdrop, it's everybody as attractive today, is it spending at any point in time in the last four years? And in that four years, we've announced five material transactions, three in the U.S., two in Europe. You asked about the capacity. We said that -- as we said, it’s over $85 billion of buying power. And that basically relates to the excess capital at Athene, plus borrowing capacity. ADIP of course still has quite a lot of capacity and Athora also has about a 0.5 billion of capacity of equity. And I think the last point on this growth potential, that's our existing capacity to do transactions, so over 85 billion. But, as a reminder, as we said in Investor Day, we're very appreciative our investors believe in us. We've raised over $12 billion in the last three and a half years of equity capital to do transactions. And we continue to see that as our ability to raise capital. When we see opportunities, we think we have the credibility, at least up to this point and we've proven it and we think we will continue to.

Leon Black

Management

Just to add to that, it's very simply a low interest rate environment, but much of the industry is going to be challenged and will revert to shedding assets. We not only have the reference capital to do sizeable transactions, but we've also shown with both VOYA and with the recent Jackson, that we can do highly complex deals that provide holistic solutions to sellers. So, I think one, it’s in our favor that there should be real supply as long as there are going to be low interest rates, which I think we all agree and certainly in the near to medium term outlook; and two, that there's really nobody out there that has both, the combination of capital and ability to deal with complexity and come up with holistic solutions and the 100 to 150 people that we have incredible depth of management in this specific area. So, I think, this all augers very positively for us in the years to come.

Operator

Operator

Our next question will come from the line of Bill Katz with Citigroup.

Bill Katz

Analyst

Okay. Thank you very much for taking the questions. And Marc, best of luck in your short stay over. Question for maybe Martin just on the $1 billion. I wonder if you could just maybe fill that back a little bit and help us understand, which portfolios are affected by that. And then, just relatively, and I apologize for igniting this question. In your supplements you mentioned that only 18 of the $47 billion of dry powder has a potential or management fees. I wondered if you could just expand on that a little bit. Thank you.

Martin Kelly

Management

Yes. Sure, Bill. So, the $1 billion is specific to Fund VIII and it's also contained to the -- we provided a statistic last call, last quarter that approximately 5% of Fund VIII was on a watch list. These impairments relate exclusively to that. And it also includes an impairment that we referenced two quarters ago on our Q4 call. So, combined, the impact of all the impairments or a delay in carry distributions of about $0.25 a share. And as I said in my comments, it's partly energy, and it's partly one or two other names that have just been severely affected by the pandemic. And then, as far as your second question, when we raise capital, we either -- manage fees as it's committed, which is typical for most drawdown funds, including Fund VIII, Fund IX, or we earn management fees as we deploy the capital. And so, the $18 billion that you reference is capital that’s been committed to us but the one that management fees until it’s invested and that's more specific to the credit business. The remainder of the dry powder has been committed and is earning management fees and is typically in drawdown funds, fund line being the most prominent example of it.

Operator

Operator

The next question will come from the line of Glenn Schorr with Evercore.

Glenn Schorr

Analyst

Hi. Thanks very much. One quickie follow-up after all your comments on fee and insurances. Just curious, in your view, rates have been low for a while, spreads have been tight for a while. What is it that gets insurance company to pull the trigger? I know there's a lot of conversations out there. And then, how important are your proprietary origination platforms for them to choose Apollo over the others in the space?

Leon Black

Management

Well, ultimately they're -- I think, ultimately, it's idiosyncratic in each insurance company, transaction is highly customized. And so, there's not really a one size fits all answer to that, relative to kind of what -- the factors that have been laid out previously or what's sort of driving, the insurance company decision. I think, our ability to invest the -- our ability, both to create this customized bespoke deal situations and transactions that are highly engineered as well as our asset management capability, our ability to earn extra yield, I mean, we continue to earn -- and we continue to target and earn 50 basis points extra, and that extra juice on the asset management side also provides unique secret sauce that allows us to advise. So, it’s both, our ability to originate very idiosyncratic deals and it's the asset management capability that we have.

Operator

Operator

The next question will come from the line of Ken Worthington with JPMorgan.

Ken Worthington

Analyst

Hi. Good morning. First, I'm pretty impressed. You guys know each other so well that Martin can finish Josh's sentences and presentations without even pausing.

Josh Harris

Management

Technology doesn't always work. I apologize.

Ken Worthington

Analyst

So, maybe just on the outlook for the pace of deployment. First, maybe what kind of economic recovery do you see? Are we in a U or an L or maybe pick the letter that best describes what you think. And then, on the last call, you guys described three phases of deployment with bespoke capital solutions being sort of in the second phase. Do you see it being sort of early days or later days with regard to bespoke solution opportunities? And ultimately, do you see the -- or what do you see as the outlook for deployment as we look forward relative to 2Q levels? Is it going to pick up, does it slow down or does it generally stay the same?

Leon Black

Management

Well, let's the break the business into private equity and opportunistic and credit. I think, on an overall basis, the economy is behind -- the fundamentals of the economy are behind the technicals of the economy. The big run up in the market is driven by a very significant fiscal and monetary stimulus. And the S&P 500 earnings outlook continues to be surprisingly that ‘21 earnings are going to be ahead of ‘19 earnings. Like, we don't -- when we look at the underlying economy and try to compare that to the forecast of the S&P earnings, like, we don't see it. And therefore, we think there's just going to be volatility as the market absorbs earnings that are coming in a little softer than maybe they would have expected as well as obviously you have significant volatility around COVID, around the political environment here in the U.S. and so, and then the U.S.-China relationship. Those four factors are going to lead to just volatility. And so, we expect that we're going to have opportunities across our platform. As it relates to discreet pipeline, private equity pipeline is actually picking up. And so, even though the markets are -- look to be priced at a premium, when you bifurcate the markets, the bottom 25% of the S&P trades as 10, the top 25% trades above 30. And so, there continues to be value-oriented opportunities and sweet spot. And so, private equity, for the first time, we are looking at -- other than Tech Data, which we announced, most of what we've done -- all of what we've done has been in debt in our private equity businesses. And I think, we're seeing that change a bit as our pipeline is building and more traditional private equity. On the credit side, we're seeing a very robust flow of opportunities in terms of both, bespoke capital solutions that you mentioned where companies are uniquely impacted by COVID and need capital, either to overcome leverage issues or to grow as well -- both in the investment grade space and in the non-investment grade space. And so, private capital, the public markets continue to be hospitable for some of the larger companies. But, in many cases the sort of private capital sector that we operate in and is continuing to step in and be able to do transactions. And so, we see our pipeline across everything really being very robust.

Operator

Operator

The next question will come from the line of Patrick Davitt with Autonomous Research.

Patrick Davitt

Analyst

Hey. Good morning. Thanks. Quick follow-up on Bill's question, just to make sure we've got the understanding right. So, the $0.25 needed to still I guess the netting holding, that would just be realized cash carry, $0.25 of really cash carry than anything beyond that would flow through DE?

Martin Kelly

Management

Yes. That's right, Patrick. It's a timing in fact. So, the next set of realizations that are required to fill or cover that impairment are devoted exclusively to the LPs and thereafter it would then flow back into DE and the distribution. And so, everything else being unchanged, it pays down LP capital more quickly and then creates more carry after that to the fund.

Operator

Operator

The next question will come from the line of Robert Lee with KBW.

Robert Lee

Analyst

Hey. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I guess, maybe sticking with the insurance theme, just curious with Athora specifically. So, what is the opportunity there for redeployment of VIVAT assets? If I think historically, Leon has represented this way with Athene on a new block business and [indiscernible] roughly about 20% of the investments were made their way to various Apollo managed funds and what not. Is the same opportunity there for Athora, over given the different regulatory rules there, not as much potential to shift the portfolio around?

Leon Black

Management

Gary, why don’t you take this one?

Gary Parr

Analyst

I can do a part of it and then hand off to Martin. A few things. As you know, our arrangement with Athora is that we have a standard fee, our base fee, where we provide a variety of services to Athora and all the parts of Athora authority for asset liability management, risk management, mergers and acquisitions and so on. So, that base fee is in place. As it relates to the rest of Athora and the various parts of Athora, we sub-advise on various asset classes where we have expertise. And a big headline, of course, is that in Europe, roughly 50% of an insurer’s balance sheet is going to be sovereign’s, government’s. And that's just a part of managing asset liability and Solvency II. So that's not something that we do or apply. So, by definition, there's a smaller pool of the total of assets, but that's exactly then what we can provide our expertise. And over time, assets -- in those segments of expertise we have, touch wood, VIVAT will be and Athora generally, will be looking to us to provide. Maybe Martin, I know you, as to how we communicated certain numbers...

Martin Kelly

Management

Yes. I mean, next 12 to 24 months, we would expect that the -- to be redeploying Athora’s assets into higher yielding assets and Apollo will be sub-advising more of those assets. We haven't really set specifically or put a target our there specifically, but what we've ultimately said is that the economics, there are lots of nuances and differences between Athene and Athora. And what we've ultimately said is that the economics on the AUM of Athora to Apollo should be similar to Athene. And we’ve left ourselves 24 months or so to get there.

Operator

Operator

The next question will come from the line of Devin Ryan with JMP Securities.

Devin Ryan

Analyst

Good morning. Just a question here on the outlook for realizations, and appreciating the capital markets have reopened, I think, which has been a positive. But really trying to get a sense of whether you feel like there's going to be an ability to sell assets through M&A. I guess, I'm curious if virtual processes are starting, an ability to do that. And whether there's any kind of efficiencies that are being learned today that may last beyond the pandemic? Obviously, everyone's using technology quite a bit more. So, I'm curious, kind of how that connects as well. And then, just anything more you can say about kind of the realization outlook would be appreciated.

Leon Black

Management

Yes. I mean, the realization outlook is just difficult to predict. And I think that we hesitate, given all the volatility to predict, how that's going to go right now. I would say that it's more difficult. But, things are changing on a daily basis. And, I do -- I think that certainly in terms of transactions, people are getting used to doing diligence by Zoom, virtual data rooms, virtual management meetings. I actually experienced one myself. And then, ultimately, the face to face interaction that you need when you're partnering with the team, that gets more limited, but it has to be done carefully. So, the M&A markets, we'll work around the pandemic. But, I think that it's not -- I would say it's not -- it's certainly -- it makes it a little bit more cumbersome, but it's manageable. So, I think we continue to focus on -- so, we’ll hesitate from predicting realizations. I think that we continue to look for opportunities and we do have some public companies that are enabled to kind of take advantage of the public markets. But by and large, we're focused right now on growing and continue to deliver very significant and durable FRE, and high margins, and continue to grow FRE stream, which is much more predictable. And I think, when you think of cycle, our realizations would be there. We're building value on our portfolio.

Operator

Operator

The next question will come from the line of Gerry O'Hara with Jefferies.

Gerry O'Hara

Analyst

Great. Thanks for taking my question this morning, perhaps one on the strategic origination business. And if you could maybe add a little context or color on the opportunity set, what Apollo’s competitive advantage is there and perhaps even how you see that platform scaling going forward? Thank you.

Leon Black

Management

Yes. So, our Company’s advantage has been, obviously we have the largest alternative credit business in the world. And, we have hundreds of investors and originators and originators, and we have a really significant capital base. And so, what that allows us to do is commit $1 billion to upto $2 billion of capital to sort of larger companies, in the $1 billion to $5 billion TV that need capital solutions very quickly, very bespoke way. And I think that we -- because of our -- the size of our platform and the size of our capital base really puts us in a very unique position in today's markets where the need for capital is quite large. And so, I don't think, there's very many people that can -- that have those advantages. And so, we're in a very small group. And so, it's going to be a really interesting capability that not a lot of other people have.

Operator

Operator

Our next question will come from the line of Chris Harris with Wells Fargo.

Chris Harris

Analyst

Great. Can you guys maybe give us an update on trends you're seeing in your underlying portfolio? I know, in the past, I think you talked about 5% of the portfolio on watch. Has that changed at all since last quarter?

Leon Black

Management

Yes. At this point, it’s about 3%. And I think that right now, we've -- obviously, as we mentioned in the last call, we definitely took a hit in energy. And then, we've had one or two other situations that have been -- are in COVID affected industries, certainly restaurants being front and centre. And those have all been marked down and therefore -- or marked to zero. And that's part of what Martin is talking about, or pretty much all of what Martin's talking about on the $0.26. So, going forward, we don't see a lot of issues. I mean, obviously -- and works and sort of -- so we expect the portfolio to improve from here, subject to -- and head in a very positive direction, subject to obviously, kind of an economic downturn that goes the other way, which we don't really forecast right now. So, we think kind of a lot of our issues are behind us, and we're going to build value from here.

Operator

Operator

Next question comes from the line of Michael Cyprys with Morgan Stanley.

Michael Cyprys

Analyst · Morgan Stanley.

Hey. Good morning, thanks for taking the question. I just wanted to follow up a little bit on the strategic origination platform. I was just hoping maybe you could elaborate a little bit more on your aspirations there longer term, and maybe talk about how you're approaching planning to originate in this larger part of the marketplace. Maybe what are you building out in terms of headcount? And I know a lot of the private credit space has been more sponsor financed. It sounds like this is maybe a little bit less so. Maybe just talk a little bit about the hurdles in terms of moving beyond sponsor finance? How you're approaching that?

Leon Black

Management

Yes. I mean, I think, like basically we're building out -- we have a significant origination at midcap that's in the lower middle market. And then, we're making significant hires in the middle and upper market. And this all relates to the sort of withdraw or sort of the pullback of the banks from being willing to make significant underwriting and capital commitment. And we set up a situation where we have both client balance sheets that are able to hold as well as a vehicle that allows us to underwrite and then sell. And so, we're building up kind of a whole team, to do that. And we've already made a series of hires and expect that team to be in excess of 20 to just be out calling on companies and on sponsors. It's really that simple. And then, we're building up a capital markets effort. We're adding to our broker dealer and our capital markets effort to be able to kind of syndicate a little bit where we're committing to a little more than we ultimately want to own for our clients. And so, the ability to underwrite and sort of quickly underwrite up to $2 billion loan is something that is going to be unique or amongst a very small group of people. And so, we expect that to be highly needed in the marketplace. And so, we're hiring on both fronts, capital markets and origination. And ultimately, we expect there to be a lot of action there. And, I mean, it's no different. I mean, you literally are just calling on companies and calling on sponsors and it's a lot of the same skill sets. We have -- and across our platform because we're integrated, we have hundreds of professionals in private equity and credit that are -- now have just greater tools in their toolkits. So, because of the integration across our firm, private equity credit, real estate, this just -- we now have a lot more capability, private equity, a team member that might be calling on a company now knows, well, maybe you don't want to go private, maybe you don't want to sell your company, but we've got this other opportunity to offer you. And so, increasingly, under the leadership of Scott and Jim, we're seeing the whole firm, all 500 of our investment professionals, taking part in this. And so, we are building up unique people to do this, but it's across our platform. And our integrated platform is very different than how other people run their businesses.

Operator

Operator

The next question will come from the line of Jeremy Campbell with Barclays.

Jeremy Campbell

Analyst

Just maybe one on the insurance landscape. Obviously, given all your peers have jumped into the market relatively recently, over the past year or so, and your relationship with Athene, the capital [indiscernible] a little bit differentiated. Just kind of wondering, does this competitive market kind of relegate you and the partners to more kind of big game hunting here in insurance world as maybe the smaller deals get a little bit aggressively bid, given the competition? And then, if so, maybe just from the insurance executive side, what are some of the hurdles that you guys see to these executives doing a big deal like that?

Leon Black

Management

So, it's big deals and it's also like our ability to navigate complexity and structure, bespoke solutions to tackle, big insurance portfolios that might not be discreetly fixed annuity or discreetly variable annuity. And so, it's broad set of -- our broad set of capabilities, and then, it's our asset management capability. So it's all three of those things that make us unique. But, Gary, do you want to add to that.

Gary Parr

Analyst

Just briefly to say that we view our breadth of expertise and our size as indeed one of our big competitive advantage. We have six segments of expertise, U.S. spread business, European spread, variable capability, life settlements and structure settlements as in fund FCI and we have property casualty runoff and then P&C flow. With all those skills, we can then go to larger companies and talk about solutions. So, your question somewhat relates to, I think Glenn asked it earlier about comparative advantages in these transactions? Are there common themes? And if you take the three U.S. transactions, [indiscernible] Jackson, a common theme was that these companies were looking for a solution to something. They actually weren't selling something per se, their business wasn't for sale, per se, but they were trying to solve for different strategic directions. And that's where we go in with our expertise and capital, and we work with them. So, the CEO dialogue actually, if you would enjoy being in the room to hear the dialogue, because the CEO is talking about what they're trying to accomplish in their company, Prudential being the most recent in our conversations with Mike Wells, which were delightful and productive, but us trying to figure out win-win-win solutions. And by that we mean that -- in that instance Prudential, Athene, and Apollo stocks all outperformed their respective peers on the announcement of a transaction. The same happened in Voya, one of you all actually wrote about that. So, that's what prompts a CEO to want to engage is -- and now we actually have a track record. So, relative to our competition, we've now established this singular track record of creating value for multiple parties involved in a transaction. That's a competitive advantage that we will continue to in these substantive conversations we're having today. That's the kind of conversation we have.

Leon Black

Management

We have more permanent capital than anyone other than Berkshire Hathaway. And the truth of the matter is, we're so deep and so well-known in the insurance space, and our regulatory relationships are positive that all of these things create a franchise for us that is unparalleled. And, we're tracking -- the ability to track talent is probably positively impacted by that.

Operator

Operator

[Technical Difficulty] Kotowski with Oppenheimer & Co.

Chris Kotowski

Analyst

Yes. Good morning. Thanks. Josh, you were talking about the disconnect between the real economy and the market. I was just looking at the statistics which has the leveraged loans, default rates at around 3.9% in the almost all in energy resources at retail. If you had to guess six to nine months from now, where would that be? And, what is both the risk to existing investments and the opportunities to deploy against that?

Josh Harris

Management

Yes. So, I mean, obviously the answer to that's going to depend on ultimately the liquidity that's provided by the Federal Reserve that's indicated that it's all in and the economy, the recovery of the economy. I think, we expect that it'll go up from here. And I think that that well kind of open up a series of opportunities for us. And so, do we get to double digit? We could, for a year, for some period of time. I think that that will open distinctive opportunities for us. As to kind of like our portfolio, we're pretty much all first lien and top of the capital structure. We've been very oriented towards the safest, most high quality secure debt across our platform. And that did not serve us well as well in a risk on environment. But, it serves as a very well in an environment like the one you're describing. And so, we expect that our portfolio would be quite robust in that scenario and that our opportunities, I think, it would open up a lot. And so, certainly we're not -- for the world, obviously, we're not -- we hope that we're wrong and that the economy does as well as the stock market thinks it'll do. But, we're not planning for that in terms of how we invest. And so, therefore, we think we would be pretty robust in that situation. I think, capital would also find us.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Adam Beatty with UBS.

Adam Beatty

Analyst · UBS.

Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I just want to follow up on the existing portfolio companies, more so from the deployment angle. How much of the -- I wanted to get a sense of how much of the deployment so far this year has been with companies that you already owned and kind of the outlook on that. And also, if you could, the mix within that deployment of kind of offense versus defense, depending on the specific company circumstances? Thank you.

Martin Kelly

Management

Yes. So, that's a zero or negligible. So very little, I mean, there may have been something that went into the existing portfolio. So, I want to say very little has gone into the existing portfolio and nearly a 100% has been on offense. So, when we talk about the 3%, we're not -- we haven't had to deploy into existing situations across the company.

Operator

Operator

With that, I will now hand the conference back over to Gary Stein for closing remarks.

Gary Stein

Management

Great. Thanks operator. Thanks everyone for joining us. If you have any questions, please feel free to follow up with us, and the team looks forward to catching up with you again next quarter.

Operator

Operator

This does conclude today’s conference call. We thank you for your participation and ask that you please disconnect your lines.