By Chibuike Oguh
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Carlyle Group (NASDAQ:CG) said on Wednesday its first quarter distributable earnings jumped nearly 59% year-on-year driven by strong asset sales across its private equity portfolio.
Distributable earnings, which represents the cash used to pay dividends to shareholders, rose to $431.3 million compared with $271.6 million a year earlier. That translated to after-tax distributable earnings of $1.01 per share, which was ahead of the average Wall Street analyst estimate of 94 cents, according to LSEG data.
Washington, D.C.-based Carlyle said its net profit from asset sales more than doubled to nearly $400 million from $165.1 million a year earlier. A portion of those proceeds came from Carlyle's cashing out its interests in McDonald's (NYSE:MCD) local Chinese business and British oil firm Neptune Energy.
Carlyle's corporate private equity funds were flat during the quarter, global credit funds appreciated 2%, real estate funds added 1%, and secondaries funds gained 5%. Last month, Blackstone (NYSE:BX) reported that its corporate private equity funds appreciated by 3.4%, liquid credit funds gained 2.5%, and opportunistic real estate funds were flat.
Carlyle's net income under generally accepted accounting principles fell 35% to $65.6 million, down from $100.7 million a year earlier driven by investment losses.
Carlyle raised $5.3 billion of new capital, invested $5 billion to acquire new assets, retained $76 billion of unspent capital, and declared a quarterly dividend of 35 cents. Total assets under management stood at $425 billion.