BLUE OWL CAPITAL INC. (OWL) — payout ratio, two ways

Fiscal year ending 2025-12-31 · sector Financial services · payout ratios computed from SEC filings, not taken from a data vendor.

Basis	Payout	Why it differs
Operating cash flow	43.5%	Before capital spending, so it understates the payout that free cash flow shows.
Free cash flow	45.6%	What is left after maintaining the business.

No GAAP earnings figure is shown. This company does not report the inputs for it in its XBRL filings — capital expenditure, in particular, is often folded into a single investing total rather than tagged on its own. The figure is absent from the filings, not zero, and inventing one from a balance-sheet movement would be a guess dressed as a measurement.

Spread between highest and lowest: 2 percentage points. Same filings, different denominators.

Coverage rating 27 / 100 — Strained. ? Peer standing 15/50Direction 4/30Stability 9/20

Free cash flow payout, last 5 years

Fiscal year	Payout
2025-12-31	45.6%
2024-12-31	39.4%
2023-12-31	28.1%
2022-12-31	27.5%
2021-12-31	17.0%

Coverage has deteriorated three years running, 27.5% to 45.6%. Still covered, but moving the wrong way.

Among the 24 financial services companies here, 29% pay out a larger share on this basis.

The arithmetic

Operating cash flow — dividends paid $546.7m ÷ operating cash flow $1,256.0m
Free cash flow — dividends paid $546.7m ÷ (operating cash flow $1,256.0m − capex $57.7m)

Where the figures came from

10-K filed 2026-02-19 · accession 0001823945-26-000009

Every one is public at sec.gov and free to check. That is the point — you should not have to take my word for any of it.

Caveats on this company

basis discarded as outside the sane band (distribution far larger than the year's income — usually a special dividend or a return of capital, not a payout ratio): earnings

Computed by an open pipeline reading SEC XBRL directly. If any number here looks wrong to you, tell me — that is more useful to me than agreement.