Brookfield Q2 2026 Earnings Call: Complete Transcript

On Thursday, Brookfield (NYSE: BN ) discussed second-quarter financial results during its earnings call. The full transcript is provided below. This content is powered APIs. For comprehensive financial data and transcripts, visit The full earnings call is available at Summary Brookfield Corporation reported a 15% year-over-year increase in distributable earnings before realizations to $1.4 billion in the second quarter and $5.7 billion over the last 12 months.

The company raised $98 billion in capital, deployed $100 billion, and monetized $40 billion in assets, highlighting strategic acquisitions like Just Group in the UK. Brookfield completed the acquisition of Oaktree, enhancing its global credit business, and announced a $100 billion AI factory project in partnership with the U.S. Government. Despite market uncertainties, the company remains focused on long-term value creation, leveraging trends in digitalization, decarbonization, and deglobalization.

Brookfield anticipates increased opportunities in AI infrastructure, energy, and retirement markets, aiming for over $300 billion in insurance assets by the decade's end. The company's asset management business generated $740 million in distributable earnings, with record fundraising of $77 billion and a 19% increase in fee-bearing capital. Management expressed confidence in scaling its Wealth Solutions business, focusing on annuities and P&C markets, and highlighted ongoing efforts to reduce costs and improve returns post-Just Group acquisition. Full Transcript OPERATOR Good day and welcome to the Brookfield Corporation Second Quarter 2026 Conference Call and webcast.

At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised.

To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference call over to our first speaker, Ms. Katie Battaglia, Vice President, Investor Relations.

Please go ahead. Katie Battaglia, Vice President, Investor Relations Thank you, operator, and good morning. Welcome to Brookfield Corporation's second quarter 2026 conference call. On the call today are Bruce Flatt, our Chief Executive Officer, Nick Goodman, President of Brookfield Corporation, and Sachin Shah, Chief Executive Officer of our Wealth Solutions business.

Bruce will start off by giving a business update, followed by Nick who will discuss our financial and operating results for the quarter, and finally, Sachin will provide an update on our Wealth Solutions business. After our formal comments, we will turn the call over to the operator and take analyst questions. In order to accommodate all those who want to ask questions, we request that you refrain from asking more than two questions.

I would like to remind you that in today's comments, including in responding to questions and in discussing new initiatives in our financial and operating performance, we may make forward-looking statements, including forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable Canadian and U.S. securities laws. These statements reflect predictions of future events and trends and do not relate to historic events. They are subject to known and unknown risks and future events and results may differ materially from such statements.

For further information on these risks and their potential impacts on our company, please see our filings with the securities regulators in Canada and the U.S. and the information available on our website. In addition, when we speak about our Wealth Solutions business or Brookfield's Wealth Solutions, we are referring to Brookfield's investments in this business that supported the acquisition of its underlying operating subsidiaries. With that, I'll turn the call over to Bruce.

Bruce Flatt, Chief Executive Officer Thank you, Katie, and welcome to the call. Our business performed well in the second quarter and through the first half. Distributable earnings before realizations increased 15% year over year to $1.4 billion in the quarter and $5.7 billion for the last 12 months. In the first half of the year we were active.

We raised $98 billion of capital, deployed $100 billion into opportunities, and monetized $40 billion of assets. We advanced several important strategic initiatives. We expanded our insurance business with the acquisition of Just in the UK. Our assets through that increased to $190 billion.

Shareholders approved the simplification of our capital structure, bringing our insurance and investment capabilities together. This creates a stronger and simpler Brookfield. Last, we completed the acquisition of Oaktree. Combined, our credit business is now one of the most comprehensive globally.

Turning briefly to the market environment, there is no shortage of noise in the markets today: geopolitical conflict, higher energy prices, and uncertainty around interest rates. While these factors may influence markets in the near term, our focus remains on firmly building long-term value across the business. None of these factors in the short term will matter too much to our long-term business success. The market environment continues to be constructive.

Economic resilience and functioning capital markets are supporting operating performance throughout the business and transaction activity, while uncertainty around growth and inflation is increasing demand for high-quality, heavy assets with low obsolescence risk—precisely the type of assets and businesses which we own. At the same time, long-term investment themes shaping our opportunity set are accelerating. Digitalization, decarbonization, and deglobalization, which we have been talking about for years, are now creating opportunities unlike anything we have ever seen.

The opportunities are accelerating across AI infrastructure, energy addition, supply chain reorganization, and data sovereignty. The opportunities are larger, more multifaceted, and more capital intensive. Participating in these investments requires a broad range of capabilities, and our advantage sits with our ability to deliver integrated solutions at scale. We have invested decades deliberately building and strengthening the capabilities needed to pursue opportunities of this scale.

Together they have become one of the defining advantages of our business and position us to capitalize on these transformational investment opportunities in the years ahead. For us, this starts with relationships. Many of the opportunities we pursue are not broadly marketed. They come to us through bilateral discussions and strategic partnerships.

Due to our scale or because certainty of execution matters, we aim to be the first call because of the relationships we have built across industries, geographies, and capital markets to originate differentiated opportunities and give our partners access to transactions they could not typically source or pursue directly. Our global presence helps us determine where the best opportunities exist at any point in time. With teams on the ground, across markets and asset classes, we see where demand is building, where capital is moving, and where risks are emerging. That perspective helps us focus on the best risk-adjusted opportunities.

Our operating expertise is then what allows us to execute. Many of today's most attractive opportunities span multiple disciplines, and we can bring together teams across Brookfield to deliver integrated solutions that address the full scope of the opportunity. Our ability to source and execute is driven by the capital we have available to deploy. Decades of strong investment performance have therefore enabled us to build a diversified capital base that draws on public markets, institutions, private wealth, long-duration insurance, and our own balance sheet.

These five things make us quite unique. This allows us to match the right capital to each investment and continue deploying through cycles. Nowhere is this more important of integrating these complementary capabilities more evident than in the rapid buildout of AI infrastructure. The buildout of AI infrastructure brings together the capabilities of our real estate, energy infrastructure, and credit businesses, each a leader in their field.

At the same time, the rapid adoption of AI is driving tremendous demand for electricity. And while constraints across the grid are limiting how quickly new supply can come online, the result is a widening gap between insatiable power and compute demand with constrained supply. Together, these trends are creating one of the most compelling investment opportunities we've seen in years—and precisely the type of opportunities our scale enables us to pursue without taking undue risks. We are bringing together power generation, transmission, land, entitlement skills, financing, and long-term customer relationships to deliver solutions that few organizations can provide.

Our recent $100 billion announcement to build one of the world's most advanced AI factories in Kentucky in partnership with the U.S. Government illustrates this well. We were selected by the U.S. Department of Energy to repurpose a federally owned industrial site and deliver a major world-class AI campus, drawing on our certainty of execution, our ability to bring together land, power transmission, and capital at scale.

This is federal land that has DOE uses on it and, as a result today, needs few approvals to move forward. Turning now to Westinghouse, this is another example of how these long-term trends are creating new opportunities. No business we own today is more directly positioned to benefit from the growing importance of energy security than Westinghouse. Governments and companies increasingly want reliable, domestically available generation.

Baseload nuclear, due to its scale, is really, really important. We are supporting the next wave of nuclear deployment, building on our strategic partnership with the U.S. Department of Commerce announced last year. The U.S.

Department of Energy recently announced a further $17.5 billion financing commitment to us, alongside our utility partners, to acquire long-lead-time items to advance the production of the reactors we're going to build. It will reduce the time periods dramatically. It will shorten development timelines and establish a repeatable model for large-scale nuclear construction. Westinghouse is in various stages of construction today on 14 reactors, has line of sight on another 40, and another 100 coming.

This is part of a $6 trillion industry buildout where we hold a very dominant position. Turning to our capital base, it's also continuing to evolve. One of the most significant developments today is the role of private markets and retirement savings. Most individual savers have had very little access to private assets, with their savings invested largely in public stocks and bonds.

Even as the investment world has evolved over the last 20 years, businesses today are staying private longer, meaning a growing share of the world's essential assets and value creation now sits outside the public markets. As a result, retirement savers are increasingly missing out on a meaningful share of global value creation and only participate once meaningful value has already been created. Recent changes to U.S. federal policy are beginning to open the door to greater private market participation in retirement portfolios.

Savers will soon have access to diversification, resilient cash flows, inflation-protected assets, and all these types of investment products. This will become another important source of long-duration capital for us, further growing and diversifying our capital base. I will end by saying that we look forward to seeing all of you at our Investor Day on September 17th in Manhattan. Additional details are on our website.

As always, thank you for your continued support and interest in Brookfield. I'll now turn the call over to Nick. Nick Goodman (President) Thank you, Bruce, and good morning, everyone. We delivered another quarter of strong financial results supported by broad-based momentum across the business.

Distributable earnings, or DE, before realizations were $1.4 billion, or $0.61 per share, for the quarter, representing an increase of 15% per share over the prior year. Over the last 12 months, DE before realizations was $5 billion, or $2.39 per share. Total DE, including realizations, was $1.5 billion, or $0.66 per share, for the quarter, and $6.2 billion, or $2.61 per share, over the last 12 months. Starting with our operating performance, our asset management business delivered another strong quarter, generating distributable earnings of $740 million, or $0.31 per share in the quarter, and $2.9 billion, or $1.24 per share, over the last 12 months.

Fundraising was a record $77 billion during the quarter, reflecting continued strong demand across our flagship and complementary strategies as well as growth. This included $17 billion raised across our flagship strategies, $7 billion for the seventh vintage of our private equity strategy, and $9 billion for the sixth vintage of our infrastructure strategy. Both are progressing well and are on track to be the largest in their respective series. Fee-bearing capital increased by 19% to $672 billion at quarter end, driving a 20% increase in fee-related earnings compared to the prior-year quarter.

With the momentum we have across the platform, we are on track for what should be another record fundraising year. In July, we completed the acquisition of Oaktree, bringing the organizations fully together, further enhancing the scale and breadth of our global platform and strengthening our ability to serve clients with a broader range of investment solutions. Turning briefly to wealth solutions, which Sachin will cover in more detail in his remarks, the business generated distributable earnings of $480 million, or $0.20 per share in the quarter, an increase of 23% compared to the prior-year quarter, and $1.8 billion, or $0.75 per share, over the last 12 months.

Results were driven by strong organic inflows, growth in net investment income, and the first full-quarter contribution from Just Group. We originated $5 billion of annuity sales during the quarter. Total insurance assets increased to over $190 billion, driven by positive net annuity flows and the closing of Just Group, which added $45 billion of insurance assets. Our North American businesses' investment performance remains strong.

During the quarter, we deployed $5 billion into real asset investments, contributing to an average net investment income yield of 5.7%. Disciplined underwriting in our P&C business contributed to a 99% combined ratio, lowering our overall cost of funds and supporting a gross spread of 2.2% for the quarter, further contributing to strong results on our invested capital. Turning to our operating businesses, they continue to generate resilient and stable cash flows, with distributable earnings of $361 million, or $0.15 per share in the quarter, and $1.5 billion, or $0.65 per share, over the last 12 months.

Underlying performance across our infrastructure, energy, and private equity businesses remains strong, supported by long-term secular trends increasing demand for their essential products and services. Our real estate business also continues to perform well. The operating fundamentals across our high-quality portfolio remain very strong. Our super-core and core-plus portfolios finished the quarter at over 95% occupancy, supported by continued tenant demand and very limited new supply.

In our retail portfolio, nearly 1 million square feet of leases commenced during the quarter at rents 12% higher than those expiring. In office, we signed 4.5 million square feet of leases globally, with average net rents 19% above expiring levels. That is worth emphasizing. Net rents on the leases we signed during the quarter were 19% higher than those expiring, providing meaningful embedded cash flow growth as these tenants take occupancy.

A few highlights include: in the U.S., we signed 1.3 million square feet of leases at rents 25% above expiring levels, including two leases totaling 673,000 square feet at One Liberty Plaza, a core-plus asset, at net rents 44% above expiring levels. In Canada, we signed over 700,000 square feet at rents more than 70% above expiring levels, including a 433,000 square foot lease at Bay Adelaide Centre, a super-core asset, at rents more than double expiring levels. And our leasing pipeline remains strong, with more than 2 million square feet under active discussion.

This leasing activity continues to demonstrate the strength of demand for high-quality real estate and the advantage of owning the best assets in supply-constrained markets. Turning to monetizations, transaction activity continued to build momentum through the first half of the year. We executed approximately $40 billion of asset sales year to date. We are now returning capital to our investors and crystallizing attractive returns.

A few notable examples include: in infrastructure, we completed the IPO of C Square, our U.S. colocation data center platform, generating approximately $1.2 billion of proceeds and an attractive valuation. We retain a 64% interest in the business and will continue to participate in future value creation as demand for AI infrastructure accelerates. In real estate, we sold 1 Churchill Place, a premier office tower on our estate at Canary Wharf, for £750 million, further demonstrating the recovery of high-quality real estate.

And in private equity, we completed the $650 million sale of Multiplex, our construction business.