Share count
161Mpeak FY2025
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BLK, BlackRock Inc.
Capital Markets & Asset Management financial
BlackRock manages other people's money. Individuals and institutions — pension plans, governments, insurers, savers — hand it their capital, and BlackRock invests it across stocks, bonds, and other assets, both through low-cost index and exchange-traded funds and through funds it actively picks. It earns most of its keep as a fee charged on the pile it manages, so its revenue rides on the size of those assets; it also licenses its investment and risk software to other firms.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Revenue · FY2025
$24.2B
+18.7% YoY · 11% 3-yr CAGR
Vital signs · TTM, with 4-yr average
Revenue $25.6B 4-yr avg $20.1B
Net margin 24.4% 4-yr avg 28.5%
Revenue $6.7B +27.0% vs yr-ago qtr
Operating margin 42.0% yr-ago 32.2%
Net income $2.3B yr-ago $1.5B
Net margin 34.7% yr-ago 28.7%
The business in brief
read the 10-K →What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.
- What moves the needle
- The business collects a slice of the assets under management, which makes the size and stickiness of that pile the whole game, and the test is whether the money stays put. In index funds the product is close to a commodity sold on price, capital is mobile, and a falling market shrinks the fee base without the firm lifting a finger — so the levers to watch are the cost position that sheer scale is meant to buy and any real switching cost, whether from the embedded risk-and-trading platform or from sheer habit, that would let fees hold instead of slide toward zero. The firm's own filing points to a scramble for scarce fund managers, analysts, and technology talent, and to litigation, as the frictions on that path. Whether the scale has in fact bought a durable edge shows in the margins and returns in the record below.
- Is it a good business?
- Operating margin has run at the high end of fee-business margins across the record (median 35%, above 25% in 4 of 4 years), the economics of a business that takes a cut without carrying the risk. It earns this on little capital, so return on equity has run near 14%, the leverage of a model that needs almost no plant to grow. A high return that does not fade can mark a moat, but whether the assets stay (net flows, not last year's market) is what the flow disclosures and the 10-K settle, not the multiple.
Drafted from the company's filings and reviewed by hand; every number is shown in full in the sections below.
Where the money comes from
read the 10-K →Americas is 66% of revenue, so this is largely a single-region business.
Revenue by geography, FY2025
- Americas66%$16.0B
- Europe30%$7.2B
- Asia Pacific5%$1.1B
From the segment footnote of the company's own 10-K. Shares are of total revenue; the profit bar shows each segment's share of segment operating profit, before unallocated corporate costs.
The record
Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.
The record, 2022–2025
realized figures from each filing · older years to the left| 2022’22 | 2023’23 | 2024’24 | 2025’25 | TTMTTMMar 2026 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Income statement | |||||
| $17.9B | $17.9B | $20.4B | $24.2B | $25.6B | RevenueRevenue |
| 35.7% | 35.1% | 37.1% | 29.1% | 31.8% | Operating marginOp. mgn |
| 29.0% | 30.8% | 31.2% | 22.9% | 24.4% | Net marginNet mgn |
| $5.2B | $5.5B | $6.4B | $5.6B | $6.3B | Net incomeNet inc. |
| 20% | 21% | 22% | 23% | 24% | Effective tax rateTax rate |
| Cash flow & returns | |||||
| $4.5B | $3.8B | $4.7B | $3.6B | $3.7B | Owner earningsOwner earn. |
| 14% | 14% | 13% | 10% | 11% | Return on equityROE |
| 6% | 6% | 7% | — | 5% | Retained to equityRetained/eq |
| Balance sheet | |||||
| — | $123.2B | $138.6B | $170.0B | $170.2B | Total assetsAssets |
| $7.4B | $8.7B | $12.8B | $11.5B | $9.8B | Cash & investmentsCash+inv |
| $37.9B | $39.3B | $47.5B | $55.9B | $56.7B | Shareholders’ equityEquity |
| Per share | |||||
| 152M | 151M | 152M | 161M | 165M | Shares out (diluted)Shares |
| $117.25 | $118.50 | $134.60 | $150.53 | $155.38 | Revenue / shareRev/sh |
| $33.97 | $36.51 | $42.01 | $34.52 | $37.91 | EPS (diluted)EPS |
| $29.77 | $25.35 | $31.01 | $22.08 | $22.25 | Owner earnings / shareOE/sh |
| $19.61 | $20.14 | $20.45 | — | $19.36 | Dividends / shareDiv/sh |
| $248.46 | $261.08 | $313.26 | $347.42 | $343.56 | Book value / shareBVPS |
Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded
| 3-yr | 5-yr | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue / share | +8.7%/yr | +8.7%/yr (3-yr) |
| Owner earnings / share | −9.5%/yr | −9.5%/yr (3-yr) |
| EPS | +0.5%/yr | +0.5%/yr (3-yr) |
| Dividends / share | +2.1%/yr (2-yr) | +2.1%/yr (2-yr) |
| Capital spending / share | −12.6%/yr | −12.6%/yr (3-yr) |
| Book value / share | +11.8%/yr | +11.8%/yr (3-yr) |
The year, in the company's words
the filing →Verbatim from the 10-K's management discussion. Each sentence is shown only because its subject, direction, and stated figures check out against the filed numbers on this page. The words are the company's; the arithmetic is the record's.
- Revenue+18.7%
“Sales, asset and account expense of $4.5 billion in 2025 increased $685 million from $3.8 billion in 2024, driven by higher direct fund expense and distribution and servicing costs, primarily reflecting higher average AUM.”
✓ figure matches the filed record
The record, charted
FY2022–2025Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.
Revenue
$24.2Blow FY2023
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
FY2025 10-K · source on SEC EDGAR →
Is it a good business?
- Operating margin 29.1%Solid fee marginOperating income $7.0B ÷ revenue $24.2BIndustry peers: median 22%
What this means
The heart of a asset manager: how much of each fee dollar survives the cost of running the business. Fees ride on assets under management, so the swing factors are net flows in or out and the market's move on the assets already there; the cost base is largely fixed, which lifts margins in a bull market and squeezes them in a bear one. A high margin held for years, through a market it does not control, is the operational mark of a real franchise.
- Net margin 22.9%WideNet income $5.6B ÷ revenue $24.2B
What this means
What reaches the owner after tax and interest. For a capital-light fee business this should be a wide share of revenue; when it is thin despite a high operating margin, debt taken on for acquisitions is usually the reason, so read it next to the balance sheet.
- Return on equity 10%Below the cost of equityNet income $5.6B ÷ equity $55.9BIndustry peers: median 13%
What this means
Because the business ties up little capital, a healthy fee stream throws off a high return on the equity behind it. Read it with the buyback record: returning capital lifts this ratio honestly, but heavy debt taken to do so can flatter it.
Does AI threaten the moat?
Moderate contestabilityAI is likely to reshape costs and some products here without clearly contesting or sparing the core moat; how the company itself frames it is the tell.
In its own filing Named as a competitive risk
Its FY2025 10-K names artificial intelligence as a competitive threat.
“AI technologies may also disrupt the competitive landscape for investment management and technology services, including in commercial and operational areas such as data aggregation and quantitative models.”
The question is whether a moat the record shows as durable outlasts a technology that lowers the cost of part of what the firm sells. The durability is read in the record above, the filing's own framing of AI beside it; the industry label decides nothing on its own.
Read from the filing's own risk factors, paired with the industry's structure under its SIC code; the durability is read above, the price below.
All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.
Lease obligations
the lease note, SEC EDGAR →Debt by another name. What the business owes on the property, aircraft, stores and equipment it rents rather than owns is a fixed claim due on a schedule; added back to the debt, it is the true leverage. That ladder, and what it adds to the debt on the page above.
Lease payments by year, scaled to the largest; “later” is everything beyond year five, shown apart. These are the contractual cash payments, before the interest the filing imputes back out to the balance-sheet liability.
Due in the next 12 months$237Ma fixed cash payment, owed whether or not the business has a good year
Total lease payments$2.8Bevery year plus the tail, undiscounted: the full cash the leases will take
On the balance sheet$2.2Bthe present value of those payments, the recognised lease liability
True leverage: debt plus leases
On-balance-sheet debt$12.8B
Lease obligations (present value)$2.2B
Total fixed claims on the business$15.0B
Counting the leases the way Buffett does, the fixed claims on this business come to $15.0B, of which the leases are 15%. The lease wall above and the debt schedule together are the calendar of what must be paid, and when.
Lease ladder read from the ASC 842 tags in the company’s Dec 31, 2025 annual report and reconciled: the yearly buckets sum to the undiscounted total, which less the imputed interest equals the balance-sheet liability; a ladder that doesn’t tie out is withheld.
Acquisitions & goodwill
from the balance sheet & the 4-year cash-flow recordGoodwill grows only when a company acquires and falls only when it concedes it overpaid. The size of that bet, the cash put into buying rather than building, and how much has already been written off.
Goodwill & intangibles$63.3B37% of all assets; the premium carried on the balance sheet for businesses acquired
Against book equity63%goodwill is this share of book equity; the rest is the company’s own retained and paid-in capital
Cash spent acquiring$6.6Bover 4 years buying other businesses, against $1.5B of capital spent building
None written down over the record; the goodwill is still carried at full cost. That is the deals holding their value on the books so far; whether they keep doing so is the test an owner watches, since the write-down, when it comes, is the admission the price was too high.
Goodwill, acquired intangibles and equity from the latest balance sheet; acquisition spend and write-downs summed across the 4-year record, from the company's own filings.
Management, ownership & pay
read the proxy →From the proxy: how much of the business the people running it own, and how they are paid, beside what the business earned for its owners in the same years.
| Fiscal year | Chief executive | Pay, as filed | “Actually paid” | Owner earnings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Mr. Fink | $32.6M | $65.3M | — |
| 2022 | Mr. Fink | $32.7M | −$5.8M | $4.5B |
| 2023 | Mr. Fink | $26.9M | $26.9M | $3.8B |
| 2024 | Mr. Fink | $30.8M | $56.5M | $4.7B |
| 2025 | Mr. Fink | $37.7M | $55.8M | $3.6B |
Both pay figures are the company’s own, from the pay-versus-performance table its proxy statement files. “As filed” is the Summary Compensation Table total: salary, bonus, and equity awards at their value on the day of grant. “Actually paid” is the SEC’s prescribed recalculation, which re-marks those equity awards to what they became as they vested; it can swing far above or below the filed figure in either direction, and negative years occur. Owner earnings are the whole business's, from the record above, for the same fiscal years.
- Insider ownership1.9%
The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.
- CEO pay ratio245:1
What the chief earns for every dollar the median employee makes, per the 2026 proxy. A high ratio alone settles nothing; some businesses are genuinely top-heavy in scarce skill. A runaway figure is where Buffett starts asking whether the board is doing its job.
- Stock-based compensation$1.3B
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 5% of revenue, equal to 19% of operating profit. Buffett's oldest accounting fight: this is compensation, compensation is an expense, real whether or not the headline earnings admit it. One trap: the cash-flow statement adds SBC back, so the operating cash, and the owner earnings drawn from it, are flattered by exactly this amount; counted as the cost it is, what an owner keeps is lower.
Peers, Capital Markets & Asset Management
The same industry, side by side on fee margins. Each figure is a through-cycle median, so a peak or trough year can’t distort it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each against.
| Company | Revenue | Op. margin | Net margin | ROE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GLXYGalaxy Digital Inc. | $60.4B | 0.5% | 0.4% | 13% |
| BLKBlackRock Inc. | $24.2B | 35.4% | 29.9% | 14% |
| KKRKKR & Co. Inc. | $19.5B | 75.8% | 28.6% | 14% |
| AMPAmeriprise Financial Inc. | $18.9B | 21.7% | 16.1% | 46% |
| LPLALPL Financial Holdings Inc. | $17.0B | 11.0% | 8.3% | 36% |
| JEFJefferies Financial Group | $10.8B | 30.1% | 6.1% | 6% |
| IBKRInteractive Brokers Group Inc. | $6.2B | 24.6% | 10.1% | 13% |
| HOODRobinhood Markets Inc. | $4.5B | -28.6% | -29.0% | -8% |
| Group median | — | 23.2% | 9.2% | 13% |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
reverse-DCFType today's close and see the owner-earnings growth you'd have to believe to justify it, beside what BlackRock Inc. has delivered.
$
Through the cycle, BlackRock Inc. earns about $5.4B on its 22.2% median owner-earnings margin. This year’s 14.7% margin runs below that; the reported figure may understate a lean year. Normalize, below, values the price on that through-cycle figure rather than the latest year.
Base
—
The assumptions
9.0% = the 4.55% 10-year Treasury (Jul 15, 2026) + 4.45 points of equity premium. The rate you require is yours to set.
Enter a price above to run it.
A dated snapshot of the price you typed, the assumptions you set, and what the page showed for them. A snapshot is never edited after it is saved. Your notebook is yours alone — the commitment states what is stored and what we will never do.
Implied by the price—
Owner-earnings growth · ’22→’25+0%/yr
Owner-earnings growth · ’22→’25−0%/yr
Owner-earnings yield—
What a growth belief costs, in multiples
The growth each return requires, at your price
P/E (3-yr earnings ’23–’25)—
P/B—
Graham’s price gate—
Graham capped the multiple at 15×; Buffett and Munger let that rule go: a wonderful business can deserve 50× if the thesis holds. The gate marks the bargain-hunter's floor.
Against a high-grade bond: Graham’s yardstick bond yield%
Prefilled with the 10-year Treasury (4.55%, as of Jul 15, 2026). Edit it for today’s exact figure, or a AAA corporate yield.
Graham measured a stock against the bond you could own instead, the heart of his margin of safety. Enter a price above to weigh the owner-earnings yield against this bond.
Owner-earnings yield—
High-grade bond yield—
Margin over the bond—
Owner earnings $3.7B on 155M shares outstanding, per the 10-Q cover, as of 2025-04-30; net debt $2.9B. The if-converted diluted count is 165M, 7% above the shares outstanding: the dilution overhang (convertibles, options) a buyer inherits. The base is the latest year by default; Normalize values it on the through-cycle median owner-earnings margin (to avoid paying on a peak year). Net of stock comp treats option pay as the expense it is. The dials set the multiple a growth belief justifies; the price, and every dollar on this page, is yours.
Cite: Owner Scorecard, "BlackRock Inc. (BLK), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/BLK, data as of 2026-07-09.
Manual order: ← BLFS its page in the Manual BLKB →
Industry order: ← BKKT the Capital Markets & Asset Management chapter BLSH →