Finance portfolio

Parker Campbell

I'm a first-year Bachelor of Business Administration student in Management and Finance at the University of Toronto Scarborough, expected to graduate in April 2030. I'm most interested in corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, and company valuation.

Outside class, I study public companies through their annual reports and earnings releases, and I build simple valuation models to test what a share price assumes. I'm looking for co-op and summer internship roles in investment banking, corporate finance and financial analysis.

LinkedIn pdcampbell10@gmail.com

Projects

BlackRock equity analysis

Complete

Question: Is BlackRock's share price justified by its growth, profitability and risks?
Methods: Review of the 10-K and earnings releases, margin and ratio analysis, and a bear, base and bull earnings valuation
Finding
Skills: Financial statement analysis, valuation, scenario analysis

BlackRock's acquisition of HPS

Complete

Question: Did BlackRock pay a sensible price for HPS Investment Partners, and does the deal make strategic sense?
Methods: Precedent transactions, earnings and AUM multiples, an accretion check, and results since closing
Finding: A strong strategic fit at a full but defensible price, though the final verdict depends on HPS's growth through about 2030
Skills: M&A analysis, transaction multiples, accretion and dilution

Hypothetical portfolio dashboard

Tool

Question: How do allocation and saving choices change a hypothetical portfolio?
Methods: Weighted 1-year price returns and a monthly compound growth projection
Note: Uses example weights and a chosen return, not real investments
Skills: Portfolio weighting, time value of money

Education

University of Toronto Scarborough Bachelor of Business Administration, Management and Finance (Co-op) Expected April 2030 · Toronto, Ontario

Relevant coursework

Financial Accounting I & II
Microeconomics
Macroeconomics
Calculus for Management
Principles of Marketing
Communications
Human Resource Management

Job simulations and certifications

Forage job simulations are self-paced virtual programs, not employment.

Investment Banking Job Simulation: JPMorganChase · Forage
Operations Job Simulation: Goldman Sachs · Forage
Financial Accounting Foundations: LinkedIn Learning
Creating PDF Balance Report using HTML, Excel & Power Automate: Coursera
Analyzing and Visualizing Data with Microsoft Power BI: Simplilearn

Skills

Financial analysis

Financial statement analysis
Equity research
Financial modelling
Company valuation
DCF valuation
Scenario analysis
M&A analysis
Accretion/dilution analysis
Financial forecasting

Technical and analytical

Microsoft Power BI
Power Automate
Microsoft Excel
LaTeX
Market research
Risk assessment
Business analysis
Generative AI tools

Professional

Analytical problem-solving
Written communication
Team collaboration
Research
Attention to detail

Experience

Municipal Operations Intern: May–Aug 2026

Areas of interest

Equity markets
Investment banking
Mergers and acquisitions
Corporate finance
Financial analysis and valuation

Outside finance: weightlifting and track and field.

Volunteering

Junior Firefighting Counselor: Oct 2024

Originally from Port Elgin, Ontario.

Equity analysis · NYSE: BLK · Figures in US$ · Results to Sept 30, 2026 · Price at Nov 5 close

BlackRock

BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, earns most of its revenue from fees on the money it manages. Results are strong, and the share price looks about fair.

Question: Is BlackRock's share price justified by its growth, profitability and risks?
Approach: Read the 2025 10-K and recent earnings releases, compared GAAP and adjusted results, and valued the shares under three scenarios
Finding
Skills shown: Financial statement analysis, ratio analysis, valuation, scenario analysis

Investment conclusion · My estimate

Key figures

Reported data

$1,170.67Share price, Nov 5 close

$181BMarket cap, about $190B with exchangeable units

$15.5TAssets under management

21.1xPrice to trailing adjusted EPS of $55.53

26.6xPrice to trailing GAAP EPS of $43.98

2.0%Dividend yield on $22.92 a year

Ratios use the Nov 5 close and the four quarters to Sept 30, 2026. Market cap uses the 154.6M shares and 7.6M exchangeable units outstanding at Sept 30. The share price swung more than 5% in each of the first days of November, so check the current price before relying on these ratios.

Assets and revenue

Reported

Year-end AUM and full-year revenue, plus AUM at Sept 30, 2026. In 2022, AUM fell 14% and revenue fell 8%.

Third quarter 2026

Reported

Revenue: $7.75B, +19%
Base fees: $5.78B, +19%
Net inflows: $205.5B
Operating margin, adjusted: 47.8%
Operating margin, GAAP: 30.0%
Diluted EPS, adjusted: $15.93, +38%
Diluted EPS, GAAP: $10.57, +25%

Growth rates compare with the third quarter of 2025.

How BlackRock makes money

Reported

BlackRock charges clients a fee based on the assets it manages, so most of its revenue rises and falls with AUM and market levels. It also earns performance fees when some funds beat their targets, and it licenses its Aladdin investment platform to other institutions.

Third quarter 2026 revenue of $7.75B, from the income statement in the earnings release.

Where the $15.5 trillion sits

Reported

At Sept 30, 2026. Private markets are a product category within these totals, at $336B or about 2% of AUM.

Growth drivers

Clients added a net $868.6B over the twelve months to September, and organic base fees grew 10% in that period. ETFs led the third quarter with $134.5B of net inflows.

BlackRock has also been buying its way into private markets. It closed GIP in October 2024, Preqin in March 2025 and HPS on July 1, 2025. Technology services and subscription revenue, which includes Aladdin, rose 14% to $588M.

Risks

Fees move with asset values, so a falling market cuts revenue even when clients stay. Institutional index mandates also lost a net $103.6B in the first nine months of 2026.

Adjusted results flatter the picture. The third-quarter gap between the 47.8% adjusted margin and the 30.0% GAAP margin comes mainly from a $564M change in contingent consideration and $276M of amortization. Performance fees are also uneven: $630M of this year's $1.2B came in the third quarter, mostly from one hedge fund whose annual performance period ends then.

Try your own valuation

Estimates

Pick a scenario or move the sliders. Every number in this panel is a projection based on the assumptions below, not reported data.

EPS growth per year

Exit P/E

Required return

Dividend growth per year

Estimated value per share

Compared with $1,170.67

EPS growth the price implies

Assumptions and method

Starting points are reported figures: trailing adjusted EPS of $55.53 for the four quarters to Sept 30, 2026, an annual dividend of $22.92 ($5.73 a quarter), and the $1,170.67 share price at the Nov 5 close.

Assumption	Bear	Base	Bull	Basis
EPS growth per year	6%	10%	14%	Organic base fee growth was 10% over the 12 months to Sept 2026. The base case assumes earnings grow at that pace.
Exit P/E	15x	18x	21x	The trailing adjusted P/E is 21.1x at the Nov 5 close. The base case assumes a modest decline as growth slows.
Required return	9%	9%	9%	My own hurdle rate for a large, established stock, not the output of a cost-of-capital model.
Dividend growth per year	2%	4%	8%	The quarterly dividend grew about 4% a year from $4.88 in 2022 to $5.73 in 2026. Raises were about 2% a year in 2023 to 2025, then 10% in 2026.

Grow trailing adjusted EPS for five years.
Multiply year-five EPS by the exit P/E to estimate the share price in five years.
Discount that price to today at the required return.
Add each of the next five years' dividends, growing at the dividend growth rate and discounted the same way.

This values earnings, not cash flows, so it isn't a full DCF. Adjusted EPS excludes items such as acquisition-related amortization and changes in contingent consideration, so values are higher than they would be using GAAP EPS. This is a student exercise, not investment advice.

Sources

M&A case study · Deal closed July 1, 2025 · Figures in US$

BlackRock's acquisition of HPS

In 2025, BlackRock bought HPS Investment Partners, one of the largest private credit managers, for about $12 billion in BlackRock equity. I looked at why BlackRock wanted it, what it paid, and whether the deal is working.

Question: Did BlackRock pay a sensible price for HPS, and does the deal make strategic and financial sense?
Methods: Precedent transactions, earnings and AUM multiples, an accretion check, and a review of results since closing
Finding: A strong strategic fit at a full but defensible price. Early results support it, but the final verdict depends on HPS's growth through about 2030.
Skills shown: M&A analysis, transaction multiples, accretion and dilution, risk assessment

Recommendation · My assessment

Supports the deal, with conditions

HPS gave BlackRock immediate scale in the fastest-growing part of asset management, and the price was in line with BlackRock's other private markets deals. Paying about 30 times HPS's earnings only makes sense if HPS keeps growing quickly. Paying in stock, with part of the price held back until about 2030, puts some of that risk on HPS's sellers. The first year of results is encouraging, but withdrawal pressure in HPS's main retail fund is a risk to watch.

StrongStrategic fit

~30xPrice to HPS's expected 2025 fee-related earnings, BlackRock's figure

8.1%Price as a share of HPS client assets

16%BlackRock's estimated return on the deal

$25BPrivate credit raised in the first full year with HPS

Multiples and percentages marked as mine are calculated from the reported figures cited below. HPS's own financials come from BlackRock's 2025 estimates in its deal presentation, because HPS was private and didn't publish results.

Deal terms

Reported

Announced: Dec 3, 2024
Closed: July 1, 2025
Headline price: About $12B, all in BlackRock equity
Paid at closing: About 8.5M units, valued at $8.5B
Deferred payment: About 2.8M units
Earnout: Up to 1.6M units
Employee retention pool: Up to $675M
BlackRock's stated expectations: See note

1. Strategic rationale

My analysis

Private credit means loans made by investment funds instead of banks, usually to mid-sized companies. BlackRock estimated the traditional private credit market at $1.7 trillion at the end of 2023 and expects it to exceed $4.5 trillion by 2030. That's about 15% growth a year, far faster than BlackRock's core index business. It's BlackRock's own forecast, so I treat it as optimistic but directionally supported: in its deal presentation, BlackRock cited research showing private debt financed 58% of sponsor-backed acquisitions in 2022, up from 5% in 2013.

HPS fills the biggest gap left after BlackRock's other two 2024–2025 deals. GIP added infrastructure, Preqin added private markets data, and HPS adds credit. BlackRock's goal is for private markets and technology to produce over 30% of its revenue by 2030. One early example of the combination: in July 2026, BlackRock used GIP and HPS together to take an 80% stake in a venture that owns Meta's roughly $14 billion data center campus in El Paso, Texas.

Building this from scratch would have taken years. As one industry executive told Fortune, BlackRock "might as well acquire a good firm versus trying to build one from scratch."

2. Target overview

Reported

HPS started in 2007 as Highbridge Principal Strategies, part of J.P. Morgan Asset Management's Highbridge business. Its management team, led by former Goldman Sachs executive Scott Kapnick, spun it out of J.P. Morgan in 2016. HPS was considering an IPO in 2024 before agreeing to sell to BlackRock.

It lends mostly to mid-sized companies, including senior loans, mezzanine debt and tailored financing. More than 60% of its lending comes from deals not run by private equity firms. Insurance companies and pension plans provide 68% of its assets, and it had over $20B in funds sold to individual investors.

HPS at a glance

Reported, Sept 30, 2024

Client assets: $148B
Fee-paying AUM: $107B
Private credit fee-paying AUM: $85B
Public credit fee-paying AUM: $22B
Uncommitted capital (dry powder): $31B
Employees: About 800
Client assets at closing, July 2025: $165B

Figures are as of the deal announcement unless noted. Its main competitors include large alternative managers such as Ares Management, Blue Owl Capital, Apollo Global Management and Blackstone.

3. Financial profile

BlackRock's 2025 estimates

Base management fees: About $850M
Fee-related earnings, after tax: $360M
Fee-related earnings margin, before tax: Nearly 50%
Base fees as a share of fee-paying AUM: About 0.8%
Base fees vs BlackRock's 2025 revenue: About 3.5%

The last two rows are my calculations from BlackRock's figures.

What the numbers say

Fee-related earnings are the profit from steady management fees, leaving out less predictable performance fees. They are the main earnings measure for valuing private markets managers.

HPS earns about 0.8% a year on fee-paying assets, several times what index funds charge, and keeps nearly half of it as profit before tax. At about 3.5% of BlackRock's revenue, it doesn't change BlackRock's size much, but it shifts the mix toward higher-fee, faster-growing business. That mix is what BlackRock is paying for.

HPS didn't publish historical financials, so I couldn't check its growth record directly. These figures are the buyer's estimates.

4. Valuation and precedent deals

My analysis

I compared the price with two similar acquisitions of alternative asset managers. Price as a share of assets is a rough check, because fee rates differ by asset type. Price to fee-related earnings is the better measure where it's available.

Deal	Announced	Price	Assets	Price / assets	Price / FRE
T. Rowe Price buys Oak Hill Advisors (credit)	Oct 2021	Up to $4.2B	$53B	7.9%	Not disclosed
BlackRock buys GIP (infrastructure)	Jan 2024	Over $12.5B	Over $106B	About 11.8%	25–29x, 2024 estimate
BlackRock buys HPS (credit)	Dec 2024	About $12B	$148B	8.1%	About 30x, 2025 estimate

On assets, HPS cost almost exactly what T. Rowe paid for Oak Hill, the closest credit-focused comparison, and less than GIP. On earnings, the roughly 30 times multiple is a little above GIP's. BlackRock said leading listed private markets managers traded at 30 to 34 times, which would put HPS at the low end. I couldn't independently verify those peer multiples at the deal date, so I treat them as the buyer's view.

Price-to-FRE multiples are BlackRock's, excluding the retention pool and the value BlackRock put on performance-related earnings. Using the full $12B over $360M gives about 33x. Price-to-asset figures are my calculations.

5. Transaction structure

My analysis

Why pay in stock. BlackRock kept its cash and debt capacity, and HPS's owners became BlackRock shareholders, so they gain if the combination works. The cost is dilution: about 8.5M units at closing, compared with about 155M BlackRock shares, adds about 5.5% more shares. Counting employee stock units and every deferred and earnout unit, BlackRock said it expects to issue no more than about 13.8M shares, or about 9%.

Why defer part of the price. About a quarter of the units are paid only after about five years, and the earnout only if HPS hits financial targets. That keeps HPS's leaders committed and moves some of the risk of overpaying onto the sellers.

Accretion check

My estimate

A stock deal adds to earnings per share when the buyer's shares are valued more highly than the earnings it's buying.

BlackRock's P/E at announcement: About 24x
Price paid for HPS's earnings: About 30–33x
Based on units issued at closing: About 25x

On the full price, the deal would slightly reduce EPS. Counting only the units issued at closing, it's close to break-even, which fits BlackRock's "modestly accretive" forecast once HPS grows. Without that growth, the deferred units would make the deal dilutive later.

6. Synergies

My analysis

BlackRock didn't publish a dollar synergy target, and it kept HPS as a separate business unit, so I don't expect meaningful cost savings. The case rests on selling more HPS products to BlackRock's clients.

Few shared investors. BlackRock said only about 6% of the two firms' private credit investors overlapped, leaving room to cross-sell.
Insurance clients. BlackRock manages over $700B for insurers, the type of client that already provides most of HPS's money.
Combined deals. The Meta data center financing used GIP and HPS together, which neither could easily have done alone.

7. Risks

My analysis

Retail fund withdrawals. HPS Corporate Lending Fund, its flagship fund for individual investors, received withdrawal requests of 13.3% of shares in its second-quarter 2026 offer and 11.5% in the third. It paid out its 5% quarterly limit each time.
Credit losses. A recession would raise defaults on middle-market loans and slow fundraising.
Keeping people. Credit teams can leave. The retention pool and five-year deferred units are designed to prevent that.
Dilution and price. Up to about 9% more shares at about 30x earnings. If growth slows, BlackRock overpaid.

8. Results since closing

Reported

Private credit raised in the first full year with HPS: $25B
HPS performance fees, Q3 2026: $110M
GIP and HPS fee-related earnings margins: Above 50%
BlackRock adjusted EPS growth, first comparable quarter after closing: Over 35%
BlackRock private markets net inflows, Q3 2026: $15B

From BlackRock's Q3 2026 earnings release and call. HPS, GIP and Preqin were all part of BlackRock in the year-ago quarter too, so the EPS growth comes mainly from markets, flows, performance fees and investment gains. It shows the combined firm is growing, not how much HPS added.

Sources

Historical snapshot · Not live

Stock tracker

Indices, Nov 5 close

Stocks fell sharply on Nov 5, erasing the rally that followed the U.S. midterm elections. The Nasdaq lost 5.5% and the S&P 500 lost 4.4%.

Watchlist

Find a company or sector

						Live quote

Select a column heading to sort. 1-year figures are price changes and exclude dividends. Dollarama and CN Rail 1-year changes run to Oct 30 because I couldn't confirm their Nov 5, 2025 closes. 52-week ranges use intraday highs and lows. BlackRock and NVIDIA are in US dollars and the rest are in Canadian dollars.

Sources

Hypothetical portfolio · Not real investments

Portfolio dashboard

Split a hypothetical portfolio across the watchlist, then see its mix, what it would have returned over the past year and what regular saving could grow to.

Holdings

Saving plan

Projection

Starting amount (C$)

Monthly saving (C$)

Years

Expected return per year

Expected 2 points higher or lower Money you put in

The projection compounds monthly at the return you choose, with savings added at the end of each month. It isn't a forecast for these stocks. The 1-year return weights each stock's price change from the watchlist, excludes dividends, ignores currency moves, mixes the end dates noted on the watchlist and doesn't predict future results.