Morgan Stanley: Blackstone Has Outstanding Business Model

Morgan Stanley likes Blackstone BX stock because it believes the company has an outstanding business model that is frequently misunderstood and vastly underappreciated. The recent analyst day presentations, did an excellent job in laying that out. While BX is often thrown in the rubric of "alternative asset manager," that hardly does justice to a business model that combines some of the best aspects of both the investment banking and the asset management businesses. BX is an important actor in the economy that can earn non-commodity like returns by writing large checks and making transactions happen. It does so, however, primarily with other people's money in funds and thus uses little of its own capital. Morgan Stanley has an Outperform rating and a $20 price target on Blackstone BX shares are trading at $11.59