Ares Capital Keeps Up Activity Amid Uncertain Tariff Environment

After missing the mark on its fourth-quarter earnings, Ares Capital is focused on making more moves in 2025, even amid an uncertain tariff environment.

During the first quarter of 2025, the New York-based alternative investment manager reported profits of $365 million, or 54 cents per share, a slight drop compared to $359 million, or 55 cents per share, it had during the fourth quarter of 2024, according to Ares’ report released Tuesday.

Still, the firm made new investment commitments of approximately $3.5 billion during 2025’s first quarter, including 28 new portfolio companies and 42 existing portfolio companies, the report said.

That’s in addition to the approximately $3.8 billion of new commitments the company made during the fourth quarter of 2024, and an increase of 54 percent from the same period last year, according to the report.

“We are starting the year with solid first-quarter results, underpinned by a healthy portfolio, stable credit quality and significant financial flexibility,” Kort Schnabel, co-president of Ares, said in a statement.

“With our scale, experience and disciplined approach, we believe we are well positioned to further build on our 20-year track record of delivering stockholder value during periods of uncertainty,” Schnabel added.

As previously announced, Schnabel will replace current CEO Kipp deVeer on April 30, while deVeer will continue to serve as a director at the company, deVeer said during a Tuesday earnings call.

But a topic on everyone’s mind during the Tuesday call was market “volatility” created by new tariffs under the Trump administration.

Ares has a total of 566 portfolio companies across various asset classes — most of which are more “service-oriented” domestic companies that are expected to be “insulated from direct impacts of higher tariffs,” Schnabel said.

But as the trade policies take shape, Schnabel said Ares will remain focused on its existing portfolio and “continue to have conversations” with its portfolio companies.

“In the last four weeks, the deals that we’re building to conclusion have moved forward,” Schnabel said during the call. “But that doesn’t mean that things aren’t going to change. … It stands to reason that we could see a little bit of a slowdown.

“There’s so much uncertainty right now, and I think all we can do is kind of point to what we’re seeing in the last four weeks, and try to draw some conclusions about what we’re going to see in the future,” he added.

Isabelle Durso can be reached at idurso@commercialobserver.com.