New York, June 4, 2026, 15:03 EDT
- Blue Owl shares climbed roughly 5.5% in afternoon trade, ahead of a small move higher for the S&P 500 proxy SPY.
- Alternative-asset managers bounced after Blackstone put new limits on withdrawals at a key private-credit fund.
- Redemptions remain the key risk. Investors are watching if withdrawal pressure lets up or moves wider.
Blue Owl Capital Inc. shares surged Thursday. The stock was lifted as asset managers tied to private credit bounced back. Investors saw Blackstone’s recent withdrawal cap as not as bad as some thought.
Blue Owl was last seen at $10.225, up 53.5 cents, or around 5.5%, at 2:47 p.m. in New York. The stock opened at $9.79 and hit a high of $10.49, trading about 31.6 million shares. That came in the regular New York Stock Exchange session, open from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern. Trading Hours
Blue Owl is now a key public marker for sentiment in private credit, where loans tend to sit outside the banking network and go to private equity-owned firms. Investors have been watching for Q2 redemption news after a big jump in withdrawal requests from non-traded private-credit funds in Q1. Reuters
Blackstone said Thursday investors asked to redeem 10% of shares from its $79 billion Blackstone Private Credit Fund during the second quarter, more than the 7.9% in the previous period. The fund will enforce its standard 5% withdrawal cap. The stock jumped, with rivals moving higher too. Reuters
Private equity stocks moved higher. Blackstone jumped 7.8%. Shares of Ares Management climbed 5.5%. Apollo Global Management added 4.0%. The SPY ETF, which tracks the S&P 500, was up around 0.5%.
Blue Owl is facing its own withdrawal crunch. In April, Reuters said investors wanted to pull $5.4 billion out of two Blue Owl funds. One tech fund got redemption requests for 40.7% of its shares, and a credit fund saw requests equal to 21.9%. Blue Owl set out to meet just 5% of the total. Reuters
Those funds use the business development company, or BDC, structure. BDCs are closed-end funds built to invest in loans and stakes of smaller and mid-sized firms. Non-traded BDCs don’t list on exchanges. They usually set up windows to let investors cash out, but often with caps. Reuters
Blue Owl is pushing the focus back on operating growth. The firm said assets under management reached $314.9 billion as of March 31, with $188.4 billion in fee-paying AUM. Fee-related earnings, which strips out certain accounting items and one-offs, came in at $393.6 million. Distributable earnings, a non-GAAP metric for money that can go to dividends or reinvestment, climbed to $292.5 million. SEC
Co-CEOs Doug Ostrover and Marc Lipschultz said in Blue Owl’s Q1 release that current markets favor groups with “patient capital and longer duration.” The firm also set a quarterly dividend at 23 cents a Class A share, paid in May. Blue Owl Capital
Blue Owl execs keep saying the firm is much bigger than just direct lending. “Nearly 3/4 of equity capital” raised in the last year came from outside direct lending, Lipschultz told analysts back in April. CFO Alan Kirshenbaum said Blue Owl was “working down” its software exposure and hadn’t “seen no material negative developments” in its portfolios. Reuters
But the risk is still there. If redemption numbers for the second quarter at Blue Owl’s own funds or rivals come in worse than traders expect, the rally could turn fast. TD Cowen analyst Bill Katz said this week that bad updates could push out the sector’s rebound until after Labor Day. Top asset-management execs are also warning that withdrawal requests could stay high all year. Reuters
Downside looks like this: not enough new buyers, more people wanting out, and managers pulling back on cash deployments to save money. That would squeeze a model that counts on constant fundraising and fees moving up. But for now, Thursday was a bounce, not a judgment.
