By Isla Binnie and Pritam Biswas Feb 6 (Reuters) – Asset manager Carlyle Group slightly beat Wall Street estimates for fourth-quarter profit on Friday, helped by income from deals at its private-equity arm and solid gains across its credit and secondaries businesses. Distributable earnings, or profit that can be returned to shareholders, rose 13.7% from a year earlier to $436 million, or $1.01 per share. This compared with analyst expectations of $1 per share, according to LSEG data. Shares of the company were up nearly 4% in light trading before the bell. "2025 was a record year for Carlyle, and we significantly outperformed the targets we set at the beginning of the year," CEO Harvey Schwartz said in a statement. Cashing in on assets at its private-equity unit and global credit business pushed the company's net realized performance revenue up to $123 million in the quarter. Carlyle also pointed to so-called exit activity at its U.S. buyout fund, two European technology funds and an opportunistic credit fund. Mergers and acquisitions rebounded late last year after a long downturn as lower interest rates made it cheaper to finance deals and worries over the effects of policies introduced by U.S. President Donald Trump began to ease. Fee-related earnings increased 1% to $290 million. Carlyle sold its stake in U.S. chip startup Ampere and British fund network Calastone in 2025. It also took medical supplies company Medline public in December. The company raised $53.7 billion in fresh capital in fiscal 2025, bringing its total assets under management to $477 billion, 8% higher than a year ago. Inflows were mainly focused on its secondaries business, Carlyle AlpInvest, which trades in a growing market for second-hand private-equity stakes, and its credit funds. Carlyle's shares have lost around 6% so far in 2026 amid a global selloff, but are still up more than 5% over the past year. (Reporting by Isla Binnie in New York and Pritam Biswas in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar and Joe Bavier)
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