Final Four Edition - University of Houston’s Portfolio

A look at Houston's portfolio, including private investment IRRs and a new investment in Broad Reach

April 04, 2025

In honor of the upcoming Final Four, we took a look at the University of Houston’s portfolio this week. While we usually reserve full portfolio details for OWL subscribers, we’re sharing more detail this week. If you’d like to learn more about OWL’s allocator and manager profiles, reach out!

Relative to the other teams in the tournament, Houston’s returns fall below Duke’s but above Florida’s (Auburn doesn’t publicly report returns):

Source: OWL; university disclosures (as of 6/30/24)

The University of Houston uses NEPC as its investment consultant, which regularly shares detailed updates with the school’s Endowment Management Committee. Below are select asset class returns for 2024:

Source: University of Houston disclosures; all returns as of 12/31/24 unless otherwise noted

The table below shows a selection of the managers that the University of Houston invests with by asset class. As always, OWL users can access the full portfolio on our platform.

Source: University of Houston disclosures as of 12/31/24; OWL

The university also discloses detailed information about its private portfolio, including IRR by vintage year and by fund, as well as commitments by year (funded and unfunded):

Source: University of Houston disclosures

The table below shows the highest IRRs across Houston’s private portfolio:

Source: University of Houston disclosures

During Q4, Houston invested $20 million in Broad Reach, a global macro fund based in London. The Pritzker Foundation, Michigan State, and Hawaii ERS are also invested with Broad Reach. Per NEPC’s presentation to Houston’s Endowment Management Committee in September, Broad Reach has outperformed the global macro index:

Source: University of Houston disclosures

More information on their investment thesis is noted here:

Source: University of Houston disclosures

The University of Houston is one of thousands of allocators tracked on the OWL platform, and we continue to add more data and profiles every month.

 

OWL Feature Highlight

With managers recently filing their ADVs (2024 filings were due 3/31/25), our “Business Trends” dashboard is an important tool to see how managers’ businesses have changed over time. This dashboard can be found within any of your custom “My Portfolios” and includes AUM, headcount (investment team and total), and internal capital.

 

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About Old Well Labs

OWL is an intelligence platform built for allocators, by allocators. Leading endowments, foundations, and family offices use the system to find, monitor, and connect with thousands of fund managers globally. OWL's analytics engine has collected over one billion data points from 65 countries. We make it easy for allocators to find and track information about the managers they care about – not just positions but also performance analytics, people data, business information, and details about the manager investments of other allocators.

Disclaimers

This newsletter and the material on the Old Well Labs platform are for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or a recommendation of any particular security, manager, or strategy. Old Well Labs shall not be liable for any investment gain or loss that may occur from the use of this material. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form or used in any publication without express written permission from Old Well Labs.