By Bill Alpert

Having lost their charm for many investors, Wall Street private credit specialists Ares Management and Blow Owl Capital reported another quarter of growing fees and assets on Thursday. The releases weren't enough to keep their stocks from sliding.

The field's pioneer Ares Management grew its assets 29% in the December quarter, and now manages over $600 billion. Earnings from fees rose 33% for the quarter and 30% for the 2025 year.

Ares' realized earnings per share grew about 20% in the quarter and year, to $1.45 and $4.76. That's a nice increase, but less than the analyst consensus forecasts for $1.69 and $5.00, and the stock opened down 7% at $127.50.

Blue Owl Capital has fallen farther out of favor than its big rival, in the past few months. But its results were closer to expectations, with distributable earnings of 24 cents a share for the quarter, and 82 cents for the year. Assets under management rose 22% over the year, to $307 billion.

Blue Owl stock also was lower, however, down 5% to $11.40.

What worries investors isn't the firms' fund-raising or fees. It's the creditworthiness of their loans going forward. Some 20% of the industry's loans have been to software companies, and fears are growing that new artificial intelligence tools will allow software customers to dispense with their software licenses.

In that regard, Blue Owl took pains to highlight that two of its business development funds had gross returns of 10% and 11% in 2025.

On conference calls later this morning, the companies will surely have more to say about their credits. Whether it reassures investors remains to be seen.

Write to Bill Alpert at william.alpert@barrons.com

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February 05, 2026 10:40 ET (15:40 GMT)

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