Owner Scorecard


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KKRS, KKR & Co. Inc.

KKR is a leading global investment firm that offers alternative asset management as well as capital markets and insurance solutions.

Since the inception of our firm, we have expanded our investment strategies and product offerings from traditional private equity to other alternative asset classes such as leveraged credit, alternative credit, infrastructure, real estate, energy, growth equity, and core private equity.

We have a pre-eminent global integrated platform for sourcing and originating investments, raising capital, and carrying out capital markets activities.

Latest annual: FY2025 10-K
KKRS · KKR & Co. Inc.
I

The business

What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.

Revenue · FY2025
$19.5B
−11.0% YoY · 58% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average
Revenue $20.7B 5-yr avg $15.6B
Operating margin 32.9% 5-yr avg 36.3%
Net margin 14.3% 5-yr avg 14.4%
Return on equity 10% 5-yr avg 12%

The business in brief

read the 10-K →

What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.

What it is
Revenue is Insurance (60%) and Asset Management and Strategic Holdings (40%).
What moves the needle
Assets under management and the fee rate on them. What decides it: net flows in or out, the market's move on the assets already there (the firm rises and falls with the indices it invests in), the drift toward cheaper passive products, and the operating leverage on a largely fixed cost base. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on pricing power & competition, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
Is it a good business?
Operating margin has run at the high end of fee-business margins across the record (median 76%, above 25% in 9 of 10 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.

Every line is arithmetic on the company's filings, shown in full in the sections below.

Where the money comes from

read the 10-K →

Insurance is 60% of revenue, with Asset Management and Strategic Holdings the other meaningful segment at 40%.

Revenue by reportable segment, FY2025
  • Insurance60%$11.6B
  • Asset Management and Strategic Holdings40%$7.8B

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.

II

The record

Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.

The record, 2016–2025

realized figures from each filing · older years to the left
2016’162017’172018’182019’192020’202021’212022’222023’232024’242025’25TTMTTMMar 2026
Income statement
$1.1B$1.5B$1.8B$1.8B$2.0B$16.2B$5.7B$14.5B$21.9B$19.5B$20.7BRevenueRevenue
101.7%133.1%98.5%199.8%178.5%44.4%20.2%53.1%32.3%31.3%32.9%Operating marginOp. mgn
28.0%66.1%61.4%112.0%99.8%29.2%−9.1%25.7%14.1%12.2%14.3%Net marginNet mgn
$309M$1.0B$1.1B$2.0B$2.0B$4.7B($522M)$3.7B$3.1B$2.4B$3.0BNet incomeNet inc.
7%18%21%23%23%24%24%29%26%Effective tax rateTax rate
Cash flow & returns
($1.5B)($3.5B)($7.6B)($5.7B)($6.0B)($7.2B)($5.3B)($325M)Owner earningsOwner earn.
14%13%19%15%27%-3%16%13%8%10%Return on equityROE
10%9%16%12%25%−5%14%10%6%8%Retained to equityRetained/eq
Balance sheet
$39.0B$45.8B$50.7B$60.9B$79.8B$275.3B$317.3B$360.1B$410.1B$412.1BTotal assetsAssets
$2.5B$1.9B$1.8B$2.3B$5.4B$10.5B$13.4B$20.8B$15.4B$17.2B$19.5BCash & investmentsCash+inv
$7.2B$8.6B$10.8B$13.7B$17.6B$18.8B$22.9B$23.7B$30.9B$30.5BShareholders’ equityEquity
Per share
483M506M560M573M596M861M885M888M891M891MShares out (diluted)Shares
$2.29$3.04$3.20$3.50$27.24$6.62$16.38$24.63$21.83$23.19Revenue / shareRev/sh
$0.64$2.01$3.58$3.50$7.94$-0.61$4.22$3.46$2.66$3.32EPS (diluted)EPS
$-3.01$-7.01$-10.18$-10.41$-12.05$-6.13$-0.36Owner earnings / shareOE/sh
$0.59$0.62$0.48$0.52$0.56$0.52$0.64$0.69$0.73$0.74Dividends / shareDiv/sh
$14.19$19.30$23.94$29.52$21.84$25.83$26.63$34.67$34.21Book value / shareBVPS

The diluted share count moved ×1.45 into 2022 — shares issued, not a split the totals corroborate — and the per-share figures carry the counts as filed.

Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded
9-yr5-yr
Revenue / share+28.5%/yr+44.2%/yr
EPS+17.1%/yr−5.3%/yr
Dividends / share+2.4%/yr+7.0%/yr
Book value / share+11.8%/yr (8-yr)+7.7%/yr

The record, charted

FY2016–2025

Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.

Share count
891Mpeak FY2025
Revenue
$19.5Blow FY2016
III

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?

  • Wide fee margin (≥30%)
    Operating income $6.1B ÷ revenue $19.5B
    Industry 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 12.2%
    Solid
    Net income $2.4B ÷ revenue $19.5B
    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.

  • Below the cost of equity
    Net income $2.4B ÷ equity $30.9B
    Industry peers: median 21%
    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 contestability

AI 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.

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.

Management, ownership & pay

read the proxy →

From the proxy: how much of the business the people running it own, and how they are paid.

  • Insider ownership23.2%

    The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.

  • Stock-based compensation$722M

    The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 4% of revenue, equal to 12% 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.

What an owner would ask, FY2025

read the 10-K →
  • Does management own its misses?
    1 plain admission in this year's filing
    “As of December 31, 2025 , certain of our investment funds had met the first and second criteria, as described above, but did not meet the third criteria.”verify →
  • Which reported numbers are a judgment call?
    Management names Insurance reserves as critical estimates

    each rests partly on management's judgment; the filing's note sets out the assumptionsverify →

The questions the record and the charts do not answer on their own; each carries the figure and the place to look.

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.

CompanyRevenueOp. marginNet marginROE
APOApollo Global Management$32.0B13.8%13.2%21%
KKRSKKR & Co. Inc.$19.5B75.8%28.6%14%
AMPAmeriprise Financial Inc.$18.9B21.7%16.1%46%
BXBlackstone Inc.$14.5B46.3%20.7%27%
BENFranklin Resources Inc.$8.8B21.8%15.0%10%
TROWT. Rowe Price Group Inc.$7.3B41.5%30.2%25%
IVZInvesco$6.4B18.4%10.3%4%
ARESAres Management$5.6B13.1%9.0%13%
Group median21.8%15.5%17%
IV

The price

What a price has to assume.

What the price implies

reverse-DCF

KKR & Co. Inc. is profitable, but owner earnings are negative this year because capital spending currently outruns operating cash, a build-out, so the owner-earnings reverse-DCF has no positive base to grow. We read the price from both ends instead: type a price to see the steady-state profitability it demands, then set the mature margin you would believe and weigh the two against each other. Nothing leaves your browser unless you enter it in your notebook.

$
The assumptions

Revenue, delivered46%/yr’20→’25

Enter a price to run it.

Owner earnings it must reach
Margin the price demands
Owner-earnings margin today−2%

Two reads of one future. From your price: the owner earnings the company must reach, valued at a mature multiple and discounted back at your rate, expressed as the margin it implies on revenue grown at your rate. From your belief: the mature margin you would credit, set on the dial above. When the margin the price demands runs above the one you would believe, you are paying for a future taken on faith. For a deep cyclical at a trough, normalized through-cycle earnings are the better lens; this mode is for the genuinely unprofitable, and for the profitable business whose capital spending currently outruns its cash.

Cite: Owner Scorecard, "KKR & Co. Inc. (KKRS), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/KKRS, data as of 2026-07-09.

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Industry order: ← KKR the Capital Markets & Asset Management chapter KLAR →