Brookfield announced a normal course issuer bid for the new BAM this week. It's identical to the ongoing buyback authorization for BN, the parent, allowing repurchase of up to 10% of the public float over a 12-month period.

bam.brookfield.com - Brookfield asset management announces establishment normal course issuer bid

The announcement confirms a beginning share count for the new BAM (as of Dec. 28) of 412,201,980, of which the public float is 317,850,364. At a share price of U.S.$30.35 as I type, the new BAM has a market cap of $12.5 billion. That implies a market FRE multiple of 25x and a value of $37.5 billion for the 75% of the manager held by the parent.

Subtracting that from the current market cap of the parent, the market is currently valuing the rest of the business -- chiefly net invested capital and carried interest -- at ~$17.5 billion. As a reminder, at the end of Q3, Brookfield reported the value of its net invested capital at $35.7 billion using IFRS values for the component parts and $53.1 billion using its "blended" methodology. Those figures can be expected to decline marginally in the Q4 report.

The parent had not made significant use of its NCIB through Q3, but then, the share price hadn't been as cheap as it's been post-spin. It had a very brief opportunity to take advantage of post-spin prices in Q4, but our first chance to see management's view of the market prices assigned to BN and BAM post-spin should come in the spring with the Q1 2023 reports.