By Luis Garcia and Adriano Marchese

Apollo Global Management expects to keep expanding its reach beyond offering traditional private-equity and credit funds to institutional investors, after tapping some of those new pools to raise a record $228 billion in fresh capital last year, including $42 billion in the fourth quarter.

"We are going from serving one market -- institutional [alternative-asset] portfolios -- to serving six markets," Chief Executive Marc Rowan said Monday during a call with analysts to discuss the New York firm's quarterly results. He indicated that those pools include individual investors and their 401(k) retirement plans.

"Each of these markets has the ability to be roughly the same size as our original market, which powers the entire industry," Rowan said of the five new markets, which also include insurers, traditional asset managers, and private assets that institutional investors are increasingly adding to their traditional fixed-income and equity portfolios.

He pointed to the nearly 50% annual increase in capital flowing into at least nine strategies dedicated to individual investors, rising to more than $18 billion last year, including $4 billion collected in the fourth quarter. He also cited the over $15 billion brought in through the firm's insurance asset-management operations.

Apollo's retirement-services business Athene separately brought in a record $83 billion last year, including new annuity sales, funding agreements and reinsurance deals.

The record inflows helped lift Apollo's total assets 25% to $938 billion at the end of December from a year earlier, with $749 billion held through credit strategies and $189 billion in private-equity funds, an investor presentation showed.

The New York firm's fee-related earnings rose nearly 25% to $690 million for the just-ended quarter, while spread-related earnings -- which are tied to the company's retirement-services business -- edged up about 2.9% to $865 million from the same period a year earlier. Combined, fee-related and spread-related earnings climbed about 11.5% to a record of $1.56 billion in the fourth quarter compared with the year-earlier period.

As examples of Apollo's entrance into new markets, Rowan cited a fresh partnership with London-based asset manager Schroders to create products for individual investors and retirement savers. He also said the firm's exchange-traded fund, PRIV, set up last year with trust giant State Street's $5 trillion investment management arm, is nearing $700 million in size.

"Looking forward, all of the drivers that powered us in '25 are going to power us in '26," Rowan said of the new market entries. "In fact, I would say that they're more mature."

He added, however, that alternative asset managers, not just Apollo, need to adapt to tap those new markets, citing different products, access points and technology.

"All of the firms were built to serve the institutional alternative bucket -- drawdown funds, product-specific sales forces, relatively slow moving, fine with quarterly [portfolio valuations]," Rowan said. "These [new] markets are totally different."

Overall, Apollo invested a record $309 billion in new assets during last year, including $97 billion in the fourth quarter.

Apollo particularly sees opportunities to finance deals by other private-equity firms, having invested nearly $80 billion in these types of transactions last year, or quadrupling over the past four years, according to James Zelter, Apollo's president. Recent deals included a $3.5 billion financing to support the $5.4 billion acquisition by growth investor Valor Equity Partners of data center computing infrastructure that xAI, Elon Musk's artificial-intelligence company, is leasing.

However, the firm's holdings in software companies represent less than 2% of its total assets, according to Zelter. He said the firm will be "much more on the offensive" in the sector going into 2026 as a sharp decrease in valuations makes it more difficult for software makers to finance their businesses, creating investment opportunities.

"You had companies in this sector that were priced or purchased or valued at 15 times revenue several years ago, maybe even 20 times revenue, and now they're trading at 12 to 16 times earnings," he said. "There's a very large difference in that valuation gap."

"It doesn't say they're not good companies, but the growth trajectory and the capital...has changed," Zelter said.

The firm's adjusted net income, rose about 13% to $1.54 billion, or $2.47 a share. According to FactSet, analysts were expecting $2.04 a share.

Apollo shares closed little changed at $133.95 on the New York Stock Exchange Monday.

Write to Luis Garcia at luis.garcia@wsj.com and Adriano Marchese at adriano.marchese@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 09, 2026 16:59 ET (21:59 GMT)

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