KKR Posts Record Profit, Tops $800 Billion in Assets as $17 Billion Insurance Sale Nears Close

KKR & Co. reported record quarterly fee income and a sharp rise in profit on Monday, as the private equity and alternative-asset giant pushed past $800 billion in assets under management and prepared to close a $17 billion sale of an insurance brokerage that will add billions more to its bottom line before year-end.

The New York-based firm's third-quarter 2026 results, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, showed fee-related earnings of $1.3 billion, up 27 percent from a year earlier and, as Commercial Observer reported, the highest quarterly total in the firm's history. Adjusted net income rose 29 percent to $1.6 billion, or $1.78 per share, beating the roughly $1.57 to $1.59 a share that Wall Street analysts polled by LSEG and Bloomberg had expected.

Record fees, assets near $1 trillion target

Total operating earnings climbed 25 percent to $1.7 billion, or $1.88 per adjusted share, according to the earnings release posted on KKR's investor relations site. Assets under management rose 11 percent year over year to $804 billion, short of the roughly $815 billion analysts had penciled in, after the firm raised $25 billion in new capital during the quarter and $116 billion over the trailing 12 months.

KKR also said it repurchased $567 million of its own shares between late June and early November and authorized an additional $500 million in buybacks. The firm now expects to return more than $40 billion to its clients in 2026, which it said would exceed its previous annual record by more than 50 percent, driven by a wave of asset sales including the data-center cooling company CoolIT Systems and the private aviation infrastructure platform Atlantic Aviation.

The results come as KKR works to reach $1 trillion in assets under management by 2030, a target co-chief executives Joseph Bae and Scott Nuttall have repeated on recent earnings calls as the firm pushes further into private credit, infrastructure and insurance alongside its traditional buyout business.

A decade-long insurance bet pays off

The quarter's headline figures were bolstered by an announcement that is not yet in them. In August, KKR agreed to sell USI Insurance Services, one of the largest U.S. insurance brokerages, to Aon for $17 billion in cash. KKR first invested in USI in 2017 at a valuation of about $4.3 billion, and the sale represents roughly a 3.4-times return on the capital it put in from its own balance sheet.

The deal, structured through KKR's Strategic Holdings unit — a portfolio of long-term, controlling stakes the firm has likened to a scaled-down Berkshire Hathaway — is expected to close in the fourth quarter, subject to regulatory approval. KKR said the transaction alone should add roughly $2 billion, or more than $2 per share, to its adjusted net income once it closes. Aon, in its own third-quarter earnings filing, confirmed it still expects the USI acquisition to close in the fourth quarter and said it incurred $25 million in related transaction costs during the quarter, with more integration costs to come.

USI has roughly 10,500 employees across nearly 200 U.S. offices, and its chairman and chief executive, Mike Sicard, is set to become president of Aon and global chief executive of its middle-market business once the deal closes. For USI's workforce, the transaction means folding into a far larger global broker that has also recently absorbed NFP, another middle-market insurance platform, as Aon builds out what it has called a "premier" U.S. middle-market franchise.

"We continue to monetize investments and return capital to our clients at record levels," KKR's co-chief executives Joseph Bae and Scott Nuttall said in the firm's earnings statement.

Strong numbers, skeptical stock

The results arrive at a moment of visible tension between KKR's operating performance and how investors have priced its stock. Shares of KKR have fallen roughly 24 percent so far this year, according to a Bloomberg analysis of the results, weighed down by broader worries about stress in private credit markets and questions about whether alternative-asset managers can keep selling assets and returning cash to clients at the pace they have promised. Craig Larson, a KKR partner who heads investor relations, described the firm as "constructive" on the current environment for clients able to tolerate cyclicality and volatility, even as higher interest rates have made some fundraising, particularly in real estate, more difficult.

Not every part of the business accelerated. Total revenue fell to about $4.56 billion, down roughly $1 billion from a year earlier, reflecting swings in how insurance and investment gains are recognized. KKR's Global Atlantic insurance arm reported operating earnings down 24 percent, partly because of a $26 million charge tied to its annual actuarial assumption review, while portfolio returns were mixed across strategies: infrastructure gained 4 percent and alternative credit rose 3 percent for the quarter, but traditional private equity holdings were roughly flat and opportunistic real estate slipped 2 percent.

What's next

KKR executives discussed the results on a conference call Monday morning, and investors will be watching for any update on regulatory progress toward closing the USI sale, which the firm has said should land before the end of the year and flow through as a one-time boost to fourth-quarter profit. Peer alternative-asset managers, including Blackstone, Apollo Global Management and Brookfield Asset Management, are reporting their own quarterly results this season, giving analysts a broader read on whether the industry's exit and fundraising environment is genuinely improving or whether KKR's record fee haul is an outlier. For now, the firm's own message to shareholders is that this year's capital-return pace, already its largest ever, is the clearest signal of how it wants to be judged as it works toward its 2030 asset target.