Whats the boards thoughts on the Public Private Equity names? They have not participated in the market rally at all the last several years and trading below IPO prices. This weekends news out of Trump's trip to Riyadh seem to signal he is pro PE, especially Blackstone. I think there's a lot of possible upside catalysts that could cause these names to play catch up quickly ex. conversion to C corp when/if corp tax rate gets dropped and possibly the opening of PE to 401k money) The conversion to C corp was ValueAct's thesis for buying 5% of KKR, Rubenstein and Schwarzman have also mentioned that this would be an option they would look at as well.
These are pretty complicated business's to understand, at least for me. If you have a good grasp on whats going on, the calls on all three are dirt cheap. For example....December CG $15's are $2.88 with the stock at $17.60. KKR's Jan 2019 $15's are $4.15 with the stock at $18.45. It wouldn't take much of a move to get a nice percentage return. Blackstone has an 11.88% dividend. Don't know whats up with that. (?) Basing an investment decision on Trumps remarks this weekend without a strong understanding of the fundamental inner workings of these things could be a bad move. One needs to be a seasoned tax attorney to understand what these things do. jmho G/L though.
BX average dividend is 7.1% since it's 2007 IPO. Blackstone’s intention is to distribute quarterly to common unitholders approximately 85% of The Blackstone Group L.P.’s share of Distributable Earnings.