BlackRock Stock Forecast: Is BLK a Buy After GIP and HPS?
Forty-nine percent. That’s the jump consensus numbers assume for BlackRock‘s earnings per share over the next year, from $41.73 trailing to $62.31 forward. Almost none of the growth needed to hit that number comes from index funds or ETFs, the business that made BlackRock the largest money manager most people have heard of.
The stock trades around $1,069.78 as I write this, 25.6 times trailing earnings but only 17.2 times what analysts expect it to earn next year, against a five-year average trailing multiple of 22.5. A forward multiple that much lower than both the trailing number and the stock’s own history is either a bargain or a bet the market hasn’t fully made yet.
My thesis: BlackRock’s forward multiple only works if the two private-markets units it just bought convert their scale into fee revenue on roughly the schedule management has promised, and that promise is still unproven in the one number that would confirm it, net new business in the alternatives segment specifically, rather than the headline assets-under-management figure the company likes to lead with.
What two closings actually bought
BlackRock closed its acquisition of Global Infrastructure Partners on October 1, 2024, a deal worth about $12.5 billion that folded GIP’s infrastructure funds into BlackRock’s platform in one step, as the company confirmed at the time. Two months later BlackRock agreed to buy HPS Investment Partners as well, in a stock deal worth roughly $12 billion up front and as much as $12.7 billion once performance-linked payouts over five years are included, according to the acquisition announcement. That transaction closed on July 1, 2025. Two of the biggest names in infrastructure and private credit, both absorbed inside about nine months.
The logic behind paying that much is simple enough: fee rates on private-market products run several times higher than fees on a plain index fund, and institutional allocators have been asking for more private exposure for years. I’ve made a similar two-businesses-in-one-stock argument about Amazon, where cloud computing and retail get priced as though they were a single thing when they behave like two. BlackRock is now the same kind of company twice over, a scale-driven, fee-compressed index business bolted onto a newer, higher-margin alternatives business that is still proving itself.
BlackRock’s first big bet followed a similar pattern. Buying Barclays Global Investors, and with it the iShares ETF lineup, for $13.5 billion in 2009 turned a mid-sized asset manager into the largest one in the world within a few years, mostly because almost nobody else was willing to bet that index funds could be sold as a core holding rather than a niche product. The GIP and HPS deals read like the same playbook applied to private markets: buy scale and distribution before the rest of the industry decides the category matters, instead of building a competing platform from zero. What the first bet didn’t need, and this one does, is proof that cost synergies and cross-selling actually show up in the numbers rather than staying a line in an earnings-call script.
The fee math behind both deals
Revenue for the trailing year came in at $24.2 billion, up 19% from $20.4 billion the year before, and the two acquisitions explain most of that acceleration, since organic index and ETF growth rarely moves that fast in a single year. Net income did not follow revenue higher, though. It slipped to $5.9 billion from $6.5 billion, and gross margin compressed to 46.7% from 49.4%. That gap, revenue climbing while profit and margin both give ground, is the integration cost showing up in the income statement rather than staying in a press release.
Quarterly revenue told a similar story from a different angle: $7.1 billion, up 31% from a year earlier and 6% from the prior quarter. That’s the freshest read on how fast the combined businesses are growing, and it’s a faster clip than the trailing twelve months, which suggests the deals are still ramping rather than fully baked into the numbers yet. Annualizing that latest quarter puts revenue on pace for $28.3 billion, meaningfully above the $24.2 billion booked over the past twelve months. I take that as the clearest sign the growth rate is still accelerating rather than settling into a new plateau.
The index base that still funds it
None of this would matter if BlackRock’s core index and ETF business were shrinking, and it isn’t. That base is what funds the balance sheet room to close two multibillion-dollar deals in the same fiscal year without diluting shareholders more than it already has. The company’s market value sits near $165.7 billion, and the stock has traded between $908 and $1,194 over the past year, currently 10.4% below that high and 18% above the low. Operating margin held at 33% even through the acquisition costs, a sign the core business is still throwing off enough cash to absorb two deals without needing an immediate payoff from either one. I built a similar peer comparison for the big banks to make the point that scale by itself doesn’t set a multiple; growth relative to that scale does, and BlackRock’s index business supplies the scale while the new units are supposed to supply the growth.
Question worth asking directly: does the index business even need the private-markets bet to work for the stock to be fine? Mostly, yes. Fee compression on plain index funds has been slowing for a couple of years now rather than accelerating, since the cheapest products are already close to zero, and BlackRock’s iShares scale means it absorbs whatever compression is left better than smaller rivals do. That business alone could justify something close to the stock’s five-year average multiple of 22.5 times earnings. The private-markets bet is what has to work for the stock to justify trading meaningfully above that average again, which is a narrower, more specific ask than “is BlackRock a good company,” and it’s the one I keep coming back to.
Dividend investors get a smaller piece of this story: the trailing payout is $21.88 per share, a yield of 2.05% at today’s price, which is not why anyone owns this stock but does mean the payout is not what’s driving the valuation debate either way. A sub-3% yield on a company this size is a reminder that BlackRock still trades and gets valued like a growth-oriented asset manager rather than a mature financial utility, even after two enormous acquisitions in one year.
A quant score moving the wrong way
BlackRock’s own quant rating fell to a D from a C over the period this data covers, a downgrade that sits awkwardly next to a 49% forward earnings growth assumption. Seeking Alpha’s quant system grades stocks across a handful of factors rather than one analyst’s opinion, and a slide like this usually means at least one of those factors, often valuation or estimate revisions, moved against the stock even while the growth story stayed intact on paper. Short interest is still low, 1.2% of the float, so this isn’t a crowded bearish trade. It’s a rules-based scorecard getting less enthusiastic while the sell side stays almost uniformly bullish: all 12 analysts covering the stock rate it a buy, with an average target of $1,336, 25% above today’s price.
Even the low end of that range is telling. The most conservative of the twelve targets is $1,250, still 17% above today’s price, and the highest is $1,488, implying 39%. That’s an unusually tight, all-bullish spread for a stock that just took a quant downgrade, which tells me the sell-side consensus and the quant model are reading two different inputs rather than disagreeing about the same one.
The honest uncertainty here is timing. Management has been clear the private-markets push is a multi-year buildout, not a quarter-to-quarter payoff, which is a fair ask, but it also means I can’t point to one clean number yet that proves the 49% forward EPS jump is realistic rather than a spreadsheet extrapolation built on optimistic assumptions. The real risk to that patience runs the other way too: if alternatives net new business comes in strong for even one more quarter, the market may stop waiting for a second confirmation and re-rate the stock before the numbers are fully proven, the way it often does with earlier-stage growth stories.
There’s a risk in the other direction too, and it’s the one I’d act on. If net new business in alternatives slows for two straight quarters, that’s the concrete sign this thesis is wrong.
That would mean institutional clients are tolerating the combined pitch rather than actually buying it, and the forward multiple would stop looking cheap.
| Metric | Value | Context |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $1,069.78 | 10.4% below 52-week high of $1,194 |
| P/E, trailing | 25.6 | five-year average 22.5 |
| P/E, forward | 17.2 | implies 49% EPS growth |
| Revenue, trailing year | $24.2 billion | up 19% from $20.4 billion |
| Net income, trailing year | $5.9 billion | down from $6.5 billion |
| Gross margin | 46.7% | down from 49.4% a year earlier |
| Quant rating | D | down from C |
| Analyst target (avg) | $1,336 | 25% above current price, 12 analysts, all buy |
The number on the next earnings call
BlackRock last reported on 2026-07-15, when the stock moved +6.6% against an average expected swing of 4.7%, a bigger move than usual in either direction. The next report, likely in mid-October, is the one I’d use to test the thesis. A clean sequential improvement in net income alongside continued double-digit revenue growth, and I’d treat the current forward multiple of 17.2 times as earned rather than borrowed. A repeat of this quarter’s pattern instead, revenue up double digits with net income and gross margin both still sliding, and I’d treat that same 17.2 as too generous for a set of deals still being paid for.
Analysis and opinion only, not investment advice. Figures on price, margins, revenue and analyst targets come from BlackRock’s filings on SEC EDGAR and its investor site; acquisition terms and dates are drawn from BlackRock’s own announcements on the GIP closing and the HPS acquisition, and valuation multiples are approximate, checked on September 23, 2026.
Sources: Dividends (SEC Investor.gov glossary) (https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-basics/glossary/dividend) · Dividends tax topic (IRS) (https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc404)