BlackRock expands in Private Markets and Tech amid market uncertainty

Overview

BlackRock delivered a strong start to 2025, achieving solid growth in revenue, adjusted earnings, and net inflows – despite a challenging macroeconomic environment. The firm benefited from continued momentum in ETFs, private markets, and Aladdin® technology, while recent acquisitions such as Preqin and the GIP Transaction further expanded capabilities in private markets and data infrastructure.

CEO Larry Fink emphasized the firm’s long-term positioning: “We delivered 6% organic base fee growth in the first quarter, representing our best start to a year since 2021 and secular strength against a complex market backdrop. We are helping clients navigate market and policy changes, while also providing insights on long-term structural growth opportunities. Uncertainty and anxiety about the future of markets and the economy are dominating client conversations. We’ve seen periods like this before when there were large, structural shifts in policy and markets – like the financial crisis, COVID, and surging inflation in 2022. We always stayed connected with clients, and some of BlackRock’s biggest leaps in growth followed.”

Q1 2025 vs. Q1 2024:

Revenue increased to $5.28bn (+12% YoY), which reflects positive impact of markets, organic base fee growth and fees related to the GIP Transaction, as well as higher technology services and subscription revenue, partially offset by lower performance fees.
Adjusted net income grew to $1.77bn (+20% YoY), while operating income recorded a value of $2.03bn (+14% YoY), with operating margin of 43.2% (vs. 42.2% in Q1 2024). In the same way, diluted EPS was $11.30 (compared to $9.81 in Q1 2024).
Assets under management (AUM) increased significantly, reaching the value of $11.58tn (+11% YoY), while net inflows were $84.2bn (+47% YoY), with higher annualized organic base fee growth led by ETFs (+$107bn), private markets (+$7bn), and digital assets (+$3bn).
- ETFs recorded Q1 net inflows of $107bn, primarily in fixed income and equity, and total AUM reached $4.3tn.
- Private Markets sector had strong inflows of $7.1bn, with AUM now at $212bn, boosted by the GIP acquisition.
- Technology Services had revenue up +16% YoY, reflecting continued Aladdin growth and the impact of the Preqin acquisition in March 2025.
- Performance fees fell to $60m (-70% YoY), due to weaker private markets and liquid alt returns.
- Institutional active index strategies saw outflows of $45bn, partially offsetting long-term flows.
In Q1 2025, BlackRock returned $375m to shareholders via share repurchases and increased its quarterly cash dividend by 2% to $5.21 per share.

BlackRock remains well-positioned for long-term growth, emphasizing its role as a “convener” in global finance, combining public and private markets with leading risk technology. Despite short-term uncertainty in markets and policy, management anticipates sustained demand for diversified investment solutions and technology services, particularly in private markets, ETFs, and Aladdin. The firm continues to focus on delivering value for both clients and shareholders across all market conditions.

Of course, it is also noticeable in the case of BLK shares, the week after the announcement of the main results did not bring such large movements on the market, as global uncertainties still remain at high levels. Thus, the stock price increased by approximately +3.5% in the last trading week, but at this year’s level, the company’s share price is still in a downward zone, decreasing by almost -14% in 2025. In addition, with the small exception of a few days, the company’s share price has remained below the 50-day moving average since the end of January, which continues to maintain a sense of uncertainty among investors, although just a few days before the results for the first-quarter were reported, according to the RSI indicator, BLK shares were in an oversold zone, which quickly changed the rather strong downward trend that began on April 2, the day President Donald Trump announced the imposition of tariffs on most countries in the world.