KKR & Co. Inc. heads into its May 8 earnings call with a striking contrast at the heart of the investment case: the firm's own co-CEOs bought shares aggressively during the February sell-off, while the Street has spent the past month cutting price targets en masse.
The insider story is the standout here. Both co-CEOs — Scott Nuttall and Joseph Bae — made substantial open-market purchases in February, collectively spending over $21 million between them across multiple tranches priced between $87 and $103. Director Timothy Barakett added another $4.7 million in early March at $94.47, and director Mary Dillon put in roughly $2 million. Net insider buying over the 90-day window reached more than $50.9 million across 516,000 shares — entirely in purchase transactions, with no offsetting sales. When two co-CEOs spend that kind of money in the open market at distressed prices, it is a credible signal of conviction from people who know the business most intimately.
The Street's tone is more guarded. Bulls acknowledge KKR's momentum in fee-paying assets under management, 18% year-over-year management fee growth as of mid-2025, and a forward EPS growth rank near the top of the universe — the 12-month forward EPS growth factor scores in the 87th percentile. Bears point to opacity in the private portfolio, regulatory risk around capital-raising and exits, and the difficulty of modelling mark-to-market exposure in a wobbly macro environment. On targets, the direction of travel has been almost entirely downward. Goldman Sachs cut from $145 to $110 in early April, maintaining a Buy. Barclays shaved from $127 to $122 on Wednesday while keeping Overweight. RBC trimmed from $132 to $128, also Overweight. The mean target across the analyst community now sits at $123, implying roughly 21% upside to Tuesday's close at $102 — meaningful but considerably reduced from earlier-year targets in the $170s. That compression reflects both a valuation de-rating and macro uncertainty, not a fundamental view change.
Positioning in the lending market is about as relaxed as it gets for a large-cap asset manager. Short interest is only 1.4% of the free float — far too thin to drive a short-driven narrative — and availability is extremely loose, meaning there is no constraint whatsoever on adding new short exposure. Borrowing costs are a negligible 0.32% annualised. The short score has barely moved in two weeks, hovering near 29.6. None of this is a short-side story. The options market adds slightly more colour: the put/call ratio has drifted higher over the past three weeks to 1.32, about 1.1 standard deviations above its 20-day mean of 1.21, reaching its highest level since early March. That does not signal panic, but it reflects modestly elevated demand for downside protection heading into Thursday's print.
KKR's closest peers had a notably stronger week. ARES gained 8.8% and OWL surged 21.3% — both outpacing KKR's modest 0.6% weekly gain. BX was nearly flat. The relative underperformance looks less like a fundamental divergence and more like positioning caution ahead of a specific catalyst. The last two earnings reactions for KKR show some asymmetry worth noting: the most recent print (April 21) produced a 1.9% one-day gain but faded to a 2.4% loss over the following five sessions, while the prior print (February 2026) delivered a sharp 8.2% one-day jump that held over the subsequent week. The market at $92 billion cap is not priced for disappointment, but neither is the short side positioned aggressively enough to set up a squeeze if results disappoint.
Thursday's earnings call is where each of these threads converges: whether the co-CEOs' conviction buys near the lows get validated, whether management fee growth held its pace, and whether the PCR uptick reflects hedging that is about to be monetised or simply unwound.
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