Ares Management Corporation

This article is part of our monthly series where we highlight five large-cap, relatively safe, dividend-paying companies offering significant discounts to their historical norms. We go over our filtering process to select just five conservative DGI stocks from more than 7,500 companies that are traded on U.S. exchanges, including OTC networks. In addition to the primary list that yields 3.7%, we present two other groups of five DGI stocks, each with moderate to high yields of up to 8%.

Third quarter GAAP net income of $10.0 million or $0.18 per diluted common share and  Distributable Earnings 1   of $6.7 million or $0.12   per diluted common share - Subsequent to the three months ended September 30, 2026 - Fully repaid and terminated $90 million secured term loan Declared fourth quarter 2026 dividend of $0.15 per common share NEW YORK, Nov. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Ares Commercial Real Estate Corporation (the "Company") (NYSE:ACRE), a specialty finance company primarily engaged in directly originating and investing in commercial real estate loans and related investments, reported generally accepted accounting principles ("GAAP") net income of $10.0 million or $0.18 per diluted common share and Distributable Earnings1 of $6.7 million or $0.12 per diluted common share for the third quarter of 2026. "During the third quarter, we continued to make progress on our strategic priority of reducing office and REO investments, as demonstrated by the sale of our REO office property which resulted in a gain," said Bryan Donohoe, Chief Executive Officer of Ares Commercial Real Estate Corporation.

Ares Management (ARES) grew fee-paying assets under management by 13% year-over-year to $416.4 billion, and fee-related earnings margin expanded to 42.5%. The Series B preferreds offer a 7.92% yield and act as a high-income proxy for the common shares ahead of mandatory conversion next year. ARES trades at under 21x annualized FRE, with double-digit FPAUM growth expected as AUM not yet paying fees is deployed.

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