Key Points
- Blue Owl Capital shares have collapsed more than 65% from last year's highs, pushing the stock close to all-time lows.
- The selloff has been driven by fears around private credit and the SaaSpocalypse, but recent analyst upgrades suggest those concerns may be overdone.
- With a 10% dividend yield and expectations at rock bottom, the risk/reward profile looks increasingly attractive.
- Special Report: Elon Musk already made me a "wealthy man"
Blue Owl Capital Inc. (NYSE: OWL), an alternative investment asset management group, has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons lately.
Shares are currently trading around $9, down more than 65% from their highs last year and over 40% since the start of this year alone. It's not exactly a high-growth tech stock, though its recent price action would suggest otherwise.
For a company in the private credit space, where it specialises in loans to the software industry, that kind of collapse raises some worrying questions, and, as we'll see below, investor fears have been justified. They're right to ask whether something is fundamentally broken, but at the same time, a growing group of voices is calling it a screaming buy opportunity.
Let's take a closer look at what's going on and how real this opportunity might be.
What Spooked Investors
To set the scene, the multi-month selloff in Blue Owl shares has largely been driven by a combination of weakening sentiment in the private credit space and the selloff in traditional software stocks, which make up the bulk of Blue Owl's creditors. As we've been highlighting recently, software stocks have been under immense pressure to prove they can avoid being completely disrupted by the AI revolution.
Many of them have had to watch as stock price growth trajectories flatlined, causing shares to collapse to multi-year lows. As a major lender to these types of companies, Blue Owl is particularly exposed to any of its creditors getting into financial difficulties.
With investors' appetite for risk souring even more with the conflict in the Middle East, they've become particularly wary of any cracks in the credit markets. If defaults were to rise or liquidity were to tighten, firms like Blue Owl would face pressure on both asset values and fundraising. Add in growing concerns that the company might be looking to restrict investors from withdrawing their money, and you can see why the stock has been dumped en masse.
The Fundamentals Are Stable
However, there is a growing argument that the market may have overreacted, given Blue Owl's core business remains relatively stable. Its fee-based model, built on long-duration capital, provides a level of earnings visibility that many other financial firms lack. Unlike more transactional businesses, a significant portion of its revenue is not dependent on short-term market activity.
The dividend is another reason to be bullish. It has a four-year track record of increases, and, at current levels, carries a yield of around 10%. For income-focused investors, that alone makes the stock hard to ignore.
Analysts Are Turning Bullish
Perhaps the most telling shift in recent weeks has been the change in analyst sentiment. Having endured several downgrades in the early weeks of the year, Blue Owl is now collecting bullish ratings from the likes of BMO Capital Markets and TD Cowen, who both reiterated Buy-equivalent ratings this week. They echoed similar bullish calls from Oppenheimer earlier this month, and the messaging is consistent: market fears about private credit and AUM growth appear overblown relative to the company's actual performance.
The refreshed price targets reinforce that view, with some, like Citizens Jmp's $23, calling for more than 150% upside from current levels. That kind of disconnect between price and expectation is not only rare, but it also suggests the risk/reward profile has become heavily skewed towards the bulls.
Sizing up the Opportunity
At the same time, however, Blue Owl still trades with a price-to-earnings ratio above 80, which is not only elevated by most standards but also far higher than most of its peers.
That creates a risk in and of itself heading into next month's earnings report. While on the one hand, expectations are already close to rock bottom, with its P/E ratio still on the frothy side, there could be a lot of further downside if the company fails to impress. In other words, while the chart alone might make the stock look cheap relative to where it was, it's not necessarily cheap in absolute terms.
However, if Blue Owl can show signs of steady AUM growth, reaffirm dividend stability, and prove the bears wrong, the reaction could be impressive. In a stock that has already fallen this far, it wouldn't take much to trigger a rapid reversal, especially when you have recent analyst updates calling for 150% in upside.
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