2024 Fourth Quarter Letter to Shareholders (English)
Q4 2024
Brookfield Corporation Letter to Shareholders
Overview
We had a strong year in 2024, with record financial results and the completion of a number of strategic transactions. Our asset management business had over
We were active on the investment front and at the same time, sold nearly
Our access to capital remains very strong. During the year, we financed approximately
Looking ahead to 2025, we expect the positive momentum in each of our businesses to continue. This sets us up well to generate strong growth in our earnings and cash flows, which in tuleads to increased intrinsic value on a per share basis.
Markets Were Constructive, Despite Volatility
Markets were constructive for most of 2024, supported by easing of short-term interest rates by central banks. Growth has been solid and labor markets remain robust, particularly in the
Equity markets have been strong, but also experienced increased volatility caused by potential policy changes and geopolitical tension. Despite this, labor markets are coming into better balance and economic activity continues to be resilient.
Market conditions are looking to be increasingly constructive, which should contribute to a resurgence in transaction activity, especially for high-quality assets and businesses like the ones we own. 2025 appears to be another good year.
Our Intrinsic Value in 2024 Increased 19%; Our Share Price 55%
Our stock price performance was very strong in 2024, increasing by 55%. More importantly, our ability to consistently generate attractive investment returns has led to the continued growth of our intrinsic value over a long period of time. The intrinsic value of each share increased by
Q4 2024 Letter to Shareholders |
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underpins the conservative investment you own and, all else being equal, should allow you to eaa greater retuthan the underlying performance of our business.
As an indication of the returns that can be generated for investors over the longer term, outlined below are our stock market returns, on a compound retubasis over the past 30 years. For reference,
Compound Stock Market Performance of
Value of |
10-Year |
|||
Years |
Invested in BN |
BN NYSE |
S&P 500 |
Treasuries |
$ |
% |
% |
% |
|
1 |
1,550,000 |
55 |
26 |
- |
5 |
2,000,000 |
15 |
15 |
(2) |
10 |
4,000,000 |
15 |
14 |
- |
20 |
18,800,000 |
16 |
11 |
3 |
30 |
184,800,000 |
19 |
11 |
3 |
See endnotes on page 9.
Our Operating Results Were Also Strong
We generated strong results in 2024. Each of our businesses leveraged their operating platforms to generate growing cash flows, monetizations continue to accelerate, and our balance sheet is robust.
Financial Results
Distributable earnings ("DE") before realizations were a record
AS AT AND FOR THE 12 MONTHS ENDED |
2020 |
2021 |
2022 |
2023 |
2024 |
CAGR |
||||
|
||||||||||
DE before realizations - Per share2 |
|
$ |
1.89 |
$ |
2.38 |
$ |
2.66 |
$ |
3.07 |
19% |
- Total2 |
2,330 |
2,993 |
3,825 |
4,223 |
4,871 |
20% |
||||
Distributable Earnings - Per share |
2.74 |
3.96 |
3.25 |
3.03 |
3.96 |
10% |
||||
- Total |
4,220 |
6,282 |
5,229 |
4,806 |
6,274 |
10% |
See endnotes on page 9.
Asset Management - Our asset management business generated distributable earnings of
The closing of the mandate with
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Wealth Solutions - Our wealth solutions business generated distributable operating earnings of
During the year, we originated approximately
Operating Businesses - Our operating businesses delivered resilient and growing cash flows, generating distributable earnings of
Our core real estate portfolio continues to grow its same-store net operating income, delivering a 4% increase over the prior year quarter. In addition, we signed close to 27 million square feet of office and retail leases during the year, demonstrating strong tenant demand for our high-quality properties. As real estate markets continue to recover in the coming years, we expect earnings and valuations of the business to strengthen.
In our transition business, we closed the investment in
Monetizations - We continue to see strong demand for the globally diversified portfolio of high-quality, cash- generating assets and businesses we own. During the year, we monetized nearly
In our real estate business, we closed the sale of a portfolio of
At year end, accumulated unrealized carried interest was
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Balance Sheet and Liquidity
Our balance sheet is robust and remains very conservatively capitalized. This, combined with our high levels of liquidity and access to capital, continues to differentiate our business. Today we have a ±$175 billion perpetual capital base and record deployable capital of approximately
Our financial strength enabled us to continue to opportunistically repurchase our shares at significantly lower prices compared to our view of intrinsic value. In 2024, we accelerated our share buybacks and completed approximately
We had an active year in the capital markets, as we proactively refinanced maturities and took advantage of favorable market conditions. During the year, we executed on approximately
A few highlights include:
- In the fourth quarter, we accessed the hybrid debt markets, emphasizing our ability to raise capital from multiple sources. We issued
$700 million of 30-year subordinated notes at the Corporation, raised$300 million from an inaugural subordinated note offering atBrookfield Infrastructure Partners , and issued aC$200 million green subordinated note atBrookfield Renewable Partners . We saw high demand for all our issuances at relatively low spreads. - During the year, our real estate business financed approximately
$40 billion of debt across 182 individual investments globally, of which over$12 billion relates to our office portfolio. Liquidity is coming back to real estate markets around the world, particularly for the high-quality portfolio of assets that we own. - Subsequent to year-end, our infrastructure business completed two large financings. We issued a
$6.1 billion investment grade financing at our semiconductor facility joint venture inArizona . The successful financing further de-risked the investment with the original debt facility now fully termed out in the capital markets, two years ahead of plan and at a lower cost. We also executed aA$950 million subordinated financing at our regulated utility operations inAustralia to support growth. Both of these financings were oversubscribed, showcasing the depth of liquidity available for high-quality infrastructure assets.
Active Investing Continues to Go Passive - Offering Us Great Opportunity
Over the past twenty years, global stock markets, and in particular
This indexing affects us in a couple of ways. The first is that there are increasingly a group of companies that do not fit neatly into indexes and as a result, trade poorly relative to value. This creates a significant opportunity to take public companies private, as the value of the assets are far greater than the price that the assets trade in the market-often for no other reason than they have been left behind by indexes. Our recent take privates of container company Triton, industrial property company
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We expect that as indexing continues to grow, more companies will become lost in the public markets. As a result, it is possible that we will see even more opportunities. In the past, one-third of our acquisitions have been from public market take privates; we suspect that in the future this could be much higher.
Of course, we often get asked how it is that we, rather than others, were able to acquire a company, if it was public and everyone had access to the same information. The answer comes down to a few very simple points. The first is that it takes skill and resources to take companies private. We have now completed many of these and have therefore had a great deal of practice. Second, public companies are often large, and size eliminates competition from the process. This works in our favor. And third, it takes great knowledge of the underlying businesses, and one must be able to value assets and gauge their value against the price that one must pay. We have refined these skills over many decades, and few others have the collective knowledge and expertise we have in the areas of businesses in which we operate.
The other way that indexing affects us is that while our main job is to make money in our business for our owners, increasingly to ensure that the value of the business is appropriately reflected over time in the price of the shares, one has to pay attention to the indexes and whether the business is included in them or not. Our efforts to streamline the shares outstanding in
Carried Interest Is Our Hidden Gem
Our carried interest is a large asset-and is not well understood by most investors. It is, however, of immense value and is our hidden gem sitting in plain sight. We estimate the value of our carried interest at ±$30 billion. To emphasize how solid this estimate is, over the next 10 years alone, as we sell businesses for our clients, we should generate ±$20 billion of cash flow from carried interest to
Alignment Is Critical to Our Business
Our asset management business raises capital from pension plans, sovereigns, financial institutions, and private retail investors around the world with the objective of investing that capital in great assets and businesses in order to generate attractive risk-adjusted returns for them. To align our interests, we are a significant investor alongside our clients as a side-by-side partner. Further alignment is also created by us sharing in the returns or profits generated for clients above a prescribed level. This share of the profits is called carried interest.
Put simply, carried interest is our share of the profits realized on an entire fund, subject to that fund exceeding a minimum target retufor clients. If we meet fund expectations, we get 20% of the profits. If we eanothing for our investors, we get nothing.
Investing Is the Lifeblood of Asset Management
The lifecycle of carried interest starts with the raising of client capital for a dedicated strategy. With the growth of our asset management franchise over the years, we now manage
The second step is the deployment of the capital. We have established an investment track record of delivering strong returns over a long period of time, with almost all our funds meeting or exceeding their target returns. Much of our outsized returns are generated from our deep operating capabilities and as we implement our business plans, our carried interest accrues and compounds alongside the cash flow generation and value creation. The longer we have the capital working for us, the more the returns compound and in turn, so does the carried interest potential.
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The last step is monetization. Selling an investment is what crystalizes a large component of the profit of an investment. As assets and businesses are sold, capital is returned to clients. Once all the original invested capital, plus a minimum compound retuon drawn capital, has been returned to clients we start to share in the entirety of the profits. To be clear, carried interest is only triggered with realizedcash transactions; the valuations used prior to sale have no impact on carried interest, period.
We adopt a conservative approach to the recognition of carried interest in our financial statements. We wait for the invested capital of the entire fund (as opposed to individual deals) to be returned to clients, the passing of the minimum compound return, and the comfort that there is remote risk of claw-back before recording carried interest in our earnings. This conservative approach, which creates further alignment with our clients, delays the recognition towards the end of a fund's lifecycle but leads to a larger contribution when recognized.
Therefore, much of the value creation in our investments, reflected through carrying value increases or from early monetizations in a fund, has yet to be recognized in our earnings. Today we have accumulated
The key to the value of carried interest is creating value in businesses and selling assets opportunistically at attractive values to deliver good returns to our clients. Fortunately, demand for our assets and businesses remains strong, as we own assets and businesses that form the backbone of the global economy underpinned by stable, long-dated, largely contracted or regulated cash flows. The breadth of our fund offerings has enabled us to continue to transact through economic cycles. In 2024, we monetized close to
Carried Interest Generates Substantial "Real" Cash
The outlook for carried interest is significant. If we successfully execute our plans in our asset management business, we expect to receive ±$20 billion in cash directly paid to the Corporation over the next 10 years. These cash flows will come predominantly from funds that already exist today.
Further, the growth in size of each progressive vintage of funds, combined with the scale of our monetizations, should lead to even greater and more recurring carried interest over the longer term-well above our historical levels. This significant amount of incremental cash flow will allow us to deliver further value for you by either reinvesting back into the business or returning capital via opportunistically repurchasing our shares.
We believe that the value of our carried interest is ±$30 billion, which amounts to
Clarios Recapitalization Is Another Important Milestone for Our Private Equity Franchise
Over the years, our operations-oriented approach to investment management and our focus on high-quality, cash- generative and mission-critical businesses has differentiated our franchise across market cycles. This approach has led to us owning naturally strong compounding assets, and the execution of our operational value creation plans usually makes them even better. In our private equity business, this has driven significant value creation for our stakeholders which, on a combined flagship fund basis, has generated 27% gross and 20% net returns. Quite exceptional.
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The recent dividend distribution and recapitalization of
With the significant deleveraging from excess cash flow achieved over the past six years combined with
Since acquisition we have completed a significant operational transformation, focusing on investing in new product development, improving customer service levels, optimizing production and expanding the advanced battery manufacturing capabilities. Today,
As the global leader in advanced battery production,
It is rare to find a business as exceptional as
Owner or Renter ?
There is a psychological phenomenon in most humans which results in caring a lot about what they own but caring less about something they rent. Consider the car you own and the care you take not to go too fast over speed bumps, for example. Conversely, rental cars are driven with much less care, and their depreciation is dramatically higher than owned cars. In housing this is even more pronounced; wear and tear on rental apartments is dramatically higher than those that are owned-in fact, buildings built at the same time in the same area with the same demographics find that rentals have 50% more wear and tear than owned.
It is our observation that people sometimes act like owners with their house, but act like renters with their investments. This is one of the great errors in investing. Those who own shares in a listed business have just a fractional ownership; an owner of an entire business sticks with the investment, and he/she believes that reinvestment into the business creates value and that over time the cashflows will grow. If that same business happens to be traded in the market and the stock goes up, this is acknowledgement that others see what a great business you have, but it really does not matter because as a stockholder you are just a fractional long-term owner. By comparison, if you own the apartment or house you live in, you likely would not sell it because someone told you it moved up or down in price. When you have fractional ownership of a business, you own a small piece of that business and so unless you lose faith in the business, there should be no reason to do anything-just act like an owner and watch the business grow.
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Of course, decision making comes in because sometimes management teams go astray or business prospects decline. The above is based on the assumption that your management team is hard working and competent. This is important from the outset with an investment, as the future of a business is about not just what you own, but also the investment of the generated cash flow. It is extremely important that you maintain your house, and that management in a company makes good cash reinvestment decisions for you.
Many shareholders act like renters rather than owners, and "trade" simply because they think that the "stock price is up". This is not relevant to the long-term value of your business, and after taxes, trading makes the frictional costs even more damaging to long-term returns. If, on the other hand, one acts like an owner in investing, then you will watch out to ensure that your management is working hard and doing the right things. However, in the absence of bad decisions being made, you should act like you own the business and just put the shares away in your account. Of course, that is hard with daily quotations everywhere-we realize also that the problem is only getting worse, not better, due to the growth of social media.
Owning a house and a business (through the fractional ownership of a listed entity) are two of the great tax-free ways to compound wealth over the long term. If one can compound owner returns constantly over long periods of time at greater than 10%, the wealth created by being an owner is astonishing. The alternative is renting a residence or renting businesses. Our view is that unless you are one of the very few extremely talented and knowledgeable stock traders, you will surely underperform as a renter as opposed to being an owner.
Closing
We remain committed to investing capital for you in high-quality assets that easolid cash returns on equity, while emphasizing downside protection for the capital employed. The primary objective of the company continues to be generating increased cash flows on a per-share basis and, as a result, higher intrinsic value per share over the longer term.
Thank you for your interest in Brookfield, and please do not hesitate to contact any of us should you have suggestions, questions, comments, or ideas you wish to share.
Sincerely,
Chief Executive Officer
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Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements and Information
All references to "$" or "Dollars" are to
Although
- the effect of applying future accounting changes; (ix) business competition; (x) operational and reputational risks; (xi) technological change; (xii) changes in government regulation and legislation within the countries in which we operate; (xiii) governmental investigations and sanctions; (xiv) litigation; (xv) changes in tax laws; (xvi) ability to collect amounts owed; (xvii) catastrophic events, such as earthquakes, hurricanes and epidemics/pandemics; (xviii) the possible impact of international conflicts and other developments including terrorist acts and cyberterrorism; (xix) the introduction, withdrawal, success and timing of business initiatives and strategies; (xx) the failure of effective disclosure controls and procedures and internal controls over financial reporting and other risks; (xxi) health, safety and environmental risks; (xxii) the maintenance of adequate insurance coverage; (xxiii) the existence of information barriers between certain businesses within our asset management operations; (xxiv) risks specific to our business segments including asset management, wealth solutions, renewable power and transition, infrastructure, private equity, real estate and corporate activities; and (xxv) factors detailed from time to time in our documents filed with the securities regulators in
Canada andthe United States .
We caution that the foregoing list of important factors that may affect future results is not exhaustive and other factors could also adversely affect future results. Readers are urged to consider these risks, as well as other uncertainties, factors and assumptions carefully in evaluating the forward-looking statements and are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements, which are based only on information available to us as of the date of this letter or such other date specified herein. Except as required by law,
Past performance is not indicative nor a guarantee of future results. There can be no assurance that comparable results will be achieved in the future, that future investments will be similar to historic investments discussed herein, that targeted returns, growth objectives, diversification or asset allocations will be met or that an investment strategy or investment objectives will be achieved (because of economic conditions, the availability of appropriate opportunities or otherwise).
Target returns and growth objectives set forth in this letter are for illustrative and informational purposes only and have been presented based on various assumptions made by
When we speak about our wealth solutions business or
Cautionary Statement Regarding the Use of Non-IFRS Measures
This letter to shareholders contains references to financial measures that are calculated and presented using methodologies other than in accordance with IFRS. These financial measures, which include Distributable Earnings (as defined below), its components and its per share equivalent, should not be considered as the sole measure of our performance and should not be considered in isolation from, or as a substitute for, similar financial measures calculated in accordance with IFRS. We caution readers that these non-IFRS financial measures or other financial metrics are not standardized under IFRS and may differ from the financial measures or other financial metrics disclosed by other businesses and, as a result, may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other issuers and entities.
We make reference to Distributable Earnings, which refers to the sum of distributable earnings from our asset management business, distributable operating earnings from our wealth solutions business, distributions received from our ownership of investments, realized carried interest and disposition gains from principal investments, net of preferred share dividends and equity-based compensation costs. We also make reference to Distributable Earnings before realizations, which refers to Distributable Earnings before realized carried interest and disposition gains from principal investments, and net operating income, which refers to the revenues from our operations less direct expenses before the impact of depreciation and amortization within our real estate business. Our outlook for growth in Distributable Earnings assumes growth in fee-related earnings and realized carried interest in line with our business plans, which assume growth in our fee bearing capital consistent with our fundraising plans, capital deployment expectations, maintaining the fee rates we eaon fee bearing capital and earning margins consistent with our current margin. Actual results may vary materially and are subject to market conditions and other factors and risks set out above. For more information on non-IFRS measures and other financial metrics, see
Endnotes
- Results in the table are shown on a compound retubasis to the end of last month.
- Distributable earnings before realizations, including per share amounts, for the 12 months ended
December 31, 2020 to 2022 were adjusted for the special distribution of 25% of our asset management business onDecember 9, 2022 .
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