NEW YORK (Reuters) - Carlyle Group ( CG ) said on Wednesday its first quarter distributable earnings jumped nearly 59% year-on-year driven by strong asset sales across its private equity portfolio.

Distributable earnings, which represents the cash used to pay dividends to shareholders, rose to $431.3 million compared with $271.6 million a year earlier. That translated to after-tax distributable earnings of $1.01 per share, which was ahead of the average Wall Street analyst estimate of 94 cents, according to LSEG data.

Washington, D.C.-based Carlyle said its net profit from asset sales more than doubled to nearly $400 million from $165.1 million a year earlier. A portion of those proceeds came from Carlyle's cashing out its interests in McDonald's local Chinese business and British oil firm Neptune Energy.

Carlyle's corporate private equity funds were flat during the quarter, global credit funds appreciated 2%, real estate funds added 1%, and secondaries funds gained 5%. Last month, Blackstone reported that its corporate private equity funds appreciated by 3.4%, liquid credit funds gained 2.5%, and opportunistic real estate funds were flat.

Carlyle's net income under generally accepted accounting principles fell 35% to $65.6 million, down from $100.7 million a year earlier driven by investment losses.

Carlyle raised $5.3 billion of new capital, invested $5 billion to acquire new assets, retained $76 billion of unspent capital, and declared a quarterly dividend of 35 cents. Total assets under management stood at $425 billion.