Share count
79Mpeak FY2026
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STEP, StepStone Group
We are a global private markets investment firm focused on providing customized investment solutions and advisory and data services to our clients.
We partner with our clients to develop and build private markets portfolios designed to meet their specific objectives across the private equity, infrastructure, private debt and real estate asset classes.
We set out to build a firm that would be tailored to meet this new market environment, and differentiated from the fund-of-funds and adviser-only models in existence at the time.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Revenue · FY2026
$2.0B
+69.7% YoY · 20% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average
Revenue $587M +73.0% vs yr-ago qtr
Net income ($162M) yr-ago ($287M)
Net margin −27.7% yr-ago −84.7%
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 led by Management and advisory fees, net (46%) and Focused commingled funds (27%), with 4 more lines behind.
- Situation
- Unprofitable. No sustained operating profit across the record; an earnings multiple has nothing to rest on. What the record does show is revenue, the gross-margin trajectory, and the burn against the cash on hand.
- 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 held high for a asset manager (median 25% across the record). It earns this on little capital, so return on equity has run near 18%, 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 →Revenue spreads across 7 lines, the largest Management and advisory fees, net at 46%.
Revenue by product line, FY2026
- Management and advisory fees, net46%$926M
- Focused commingled funds27%$548M
- Incentive fees11%$220M
- Focused commingled funds11%$210M
- Advisory and other services4%$74M
- Income Based Incentive Fees1%$23M
- Other1%$21M
By geographyUnited States54%International46%
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, 2019–2026
realized figures from each filing · older years to the left| 2019’19 | 2020’20 | 2021’21 | 2022’22 | 2023’23 | 2024’24 | 2025’25 | 2026’26 | TTMTTMMar 2026 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Income statement | |||||||||
| $256M | $447M | $788M | $1.4B | ($68M) | $712M | $1.2B | $2.0B | $2.0B | RevenueRevenue |
| 25.9% | 34.0% | 41.7% | 33.1% | 0.7% | 24.1% | −22.7% | −51.3% | −51.3% | Operating marginOp. mgn |
| 0.0% | 0.0% | 8.0% | 14.2% | 27.2% | 8.2% | −15.3% | −26.9% | −26.9% | Net marginNet mgn |
| $0 | $0 | $63M | $194M | ($18M) | $58M | ($180M) | ($536M) | ($536M) | Net incomeNet inc. |
| — | — | 27% | 13% | — | 32% | — | — | — | Effective tax rateTax rate |
| Cash flow & returns | |||||||||
| $48M | $65M | $148M | $212M | $146M | $142M | $60M | $64M | $64M | Owner earningsOwner earn. |
| — | — | 25% | 24% | -2% | 18% | -100% | — | — | Return on equityROE |
| — | — | 24% | 21% | −9% | −3% | −142% | — | — | Retained to equityRetained/eq |
| Balance sheet | |||||||||
| — | $681M | $1.3B | $4.2B | $3.5B | $3.8B | $4.6B | $6.8B | $6.8B | Total assetsAssets |
| $41M | $90M | $180M | $116M | $130M | $182M | $290M | $1.1B | $1.1B | Cash & investmentsCash+inv |
| — | — | $249M | $818M | $772M | $324M | $179M | ($414M) | ($414M) | Shareholders’ equityEquity |
| Per share | |||||||||
| — | — | 33.3M | 53.6M | 61.9M | 66.5M | 71.1M | 79.0M | 79.0M | Shares out (diluted)Shares |
| — | — | $23.67 | $25.48 | $-1.09 | $10.69 | $16.51 | $25.22 | $25.22 | Revenue / shareRev/sh |
| — | — | $1.88 | $3.62 | $-0.30 | $0.87 | $-2.52 | $-6.78 | $-6.78 | EPS (diluted)EPS |
| — | — | $4.45 | $3.96 | $2.35 | $2.13 | $0.84 | $0.81 | $0.81 | Owner earnings / shareOE/sh |
| — | — | $0.06 | $0.45 | $0.81 | $1.03 | $1.07 | $1.49 | $1.49 | Dividends / shareDiv/sh |
| — | — | $7.50 | $15.25 | $12.47 | $4.88 | $2.52 | $-5.23 | $-5.23 | Book value / shareBVPS |
The diluted share count moved ×1.61 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
| 7-yr | 5-yr | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue / share | +1.3%/yr (5-yr) | +1.3%/yr |
| Owner earnings / share | −28.9%/yr (5-yr) | −28.9%/yr |
| Dividends / share | +89.2%/yr (5-yr) | +89.2%/yr |
| Capital spending / share | −2.6%/yr (5-yr) | −2.6%/yr |
The record, charted
FY2019–2026Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.
Revenue
$2.0Blow FY2023
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
FY2026 10-K · source on SEC EDGAR →
Is it a good business?
- Operating margin −51.3%Thin for a fee businessOperating income ($1.0B) ÷ revenue $2.0BIndustry peers: median 21%
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 −26.9%SlimNet income ($536M) ÷ revenue $2.0B
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.
- Not enough dataIndustry peers: median 18%
What this means
Equity is zero or negative (often from buybacks), so the ratio would mislead.
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 A competitive risk, new this year
Its FY2026 10-K names artificial intelligence as a competitive threat, in language that was not in the prior year's filing.
“Additionally, volatility and disruption in the equity and credit markets, including the concentration of public-market valuations in a limited number of sectors such as AI-related companies or those companies whose strategies are more directly and negatively affected by AI, can adversely affect the portfolio companies …”
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, 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. Hart | $1.6M | $8.8M | $148M |
| 2021 | Mr. Hart | $2.7M | $2.7M | $148M |
| 2022 | Mr. Hart | $6.2M | $5.9M | $212M |
| 2022 | Mr. Hart | $6.0M | $6.0M | $212M |
| 2023 | Mr. Hart | $3.6M | $2.4M | $146M |
| 2024 | Mr. Hart | $2.7M | $3.5M | $142M |
| 2025 | Mr. Hart | $4.7M | $5.5M | $60M |
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 ownership1.2%
The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2025 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.
- Stock-based compensation$1.6B
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 81% of revenue. 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, FY2026
read the 10-K →- Which reported numbers are a judgment call?Management names Revenue recognition, Stock compensation 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.
| Company | Revenue | Op. margin | Net margin | ROE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OWLBlue Owl Capital | $2.9B | 14.3% | 2.7% | 4% |
| HLIHoulihan Lokey | $2.6B | 20.5% | 16.1% | 18% |
| MORNMorningstar Inc. | $2.4B | 17.4% | 15.2% | 17% |
| AMGAffiliated Managers Group Inc. | $2.1B | 42.8% | 24.3% | 17% |
| STEPStepStone Group | $2.0B | 25.0% | 4.0% | 18% |
| FHIFederated Hermes | $1.8B | 28.4% | 20.0% | 26% |
| PJTPJT Partners | $1.7B | 16.0% | 8.0% | 72% |
| VCTRVictory Capital Holdings | $1.3B | 38.3% | 25.6% | 19% |
| Group median | — | 22.8% | 15.6% | 18% |
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 StepStone Group has delivered.
$
Through the cycle, StepStone Group earns about $310M on its 15.5% median owner-earnings margin. This year’s 3.2% 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→’26−23%/yr
Owner-earnings growth · ’19→’26+1%/yr
Owner-earnings growth · ’19→’26+1%/yr
Owner-earnings yield—
What a growth belief costs, in multiples
The growth each return requires, at your price
P/E (3-yr earnings ’24–’26)—
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 $64M on 79M shares outstanding (a weighted basic average, the only count this filer tags); net cash $849M. 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, "StepStone Group (STEP), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/STEP, data as of 2026-07-09.
Manual order: ← STEL its page in the Manual STGW →
Industry order: ← SORA the Capital Markets & Asset Management chapter STKE →