Beneficient

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Beneficent Third Quarter Fiscal 2025 Earnings Webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To answer your question, please press star 11 again. please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker for today, Dan Callahan. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Beneficent's fiscal third quarter 2025 conference call and webcast. In addition to the call and webcast, we issued an earnings press release that was posted to the shareholders section of our website at shareholders.trustben.com. Today's webcast, as the operator indicated, is being recorded, and a replay will be available on the company's website. On today's call, management's prepared remarks may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results that differ from those discussed today. Actual results and future events could materially differ from those discussed in these forward-looking statements because of factors described in our earnings press release and the risk factors section of our Form 10-K and in subsequent filings we make with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Forward-looking statements represent management's current estimates, and Beneficent assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements in the future. Today's call also contains certain non-GAAP financial measures, including tangible book value attributable to Ben's public company stockholders. Please refer to our earnings press release, which is available on our website for important disclosures regarding such measures, including reconciliation to the most comparable GAAP financial measures. On the call today are Brad Heppner, the CEO and Chairman, and Greg Ezell, Chief Financial Officer. I'll hand the meeting over to Brad Heppner. Go ahead, Brad.

Thank you, Dan. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I'm here this morning to share with you the accomplishments that the Beneficent team has achieved over the last quarter as we work to build on our previous successive two quarters of positive GAAP earnings per share. For our fiscal year to date, as of December 31, 2024, Ben has earned $10.30 of basic earnings per share and $0.12 of fully diluted earnings per common share. I will lead off with key platform developments designed to accelerate our capabilities for delivering both liquidity and primary capital to investors in and managers of alternative assets while preparing for the future emergence of digital alternative asset markets. Over the past quarter, we have strengthened our team, improved our balance sheet, and continue to execute our liquidity and primary capital financings in the private asset marketplace. We continue to educate the market regarding Ben's unique business model, our technology platform, and are growing service offerings that we believe have the potential to drive shareholder value. Ben was created to provide fiduciary products and services that deliver liquidity and primary capital for holders and managers of all types of alternative assets. In addition to serving general partners who manage and sponsor alternative assets, we are developing our business to focus on the target markets of high net worth individuals and small to mid-sized institutions. These markets have been underserved when it comes to exiting alternative assets prior to their maturity. We believe this market includes an unmet demand for liquidity of over $60 billion annually for smaller investors and institutions, plus another more than $150 billion annually in general partners seeking liquidity for their limited partners through restructurings and continuation vehicles in the secondary markets. Unfortunately, the traditional process, especially for our targeted market of smaller investors seeking liquidity, it's incredibly complex, it's expensive, and it's time-consuming if liquidity can be found at all. Our internally developed proprietary fintech platform, we've branded as AltAccess, provides a simple, expedient, and cost-efficient online tool to complete these important transactions online in a matter of days to weeks if it's desired. In addition to demand for liquidity from alternative assets, our market faces a substantial demand for more primary capital into new alternative assets. The PEI data shows that it has been taking an average of 18 months for general partners to raise their private equity funds. Now that's approximately double what it took them just three years ago. We believe we now have a solution to help address that need as well. These are the foundations of our business, and we've produced profitable progress for our stockholders of 12 cents of earnings per common share for the nine months into December 31, 2024, which we believe will accelerate our capabilities going forward. I'll now move on to the fiscal third quarter highlights. In October, we announced the addition of banking legal and compliance veteran Patrick Donegan to our board of directors, which I discussed on our last call. In November, we announced the addition of Karen Wendell to our board of directors. She currently serves as president and CEO of tokenization, blockchain, and cybersecurity advisory firm TrustChains. Karen brings deep expertise in the digital asset markets, technology M&A, cybersecurity, corporate governance, and the emerging blockchain and DeFi space. Her expertise provides unique decision-making skills for board-level strategic and tactical requirements. She's held executive and board roles in US and global private and public companies. In addition to being an independent director, Ben appointed her to serve on our audit, products and related party transactions, and enterprise risk committees of our board of directors. Now, in December, we announced that Ben entered into an agreement to acquire Mercantile Bank International Corporation, subject to certain closing conditions. In connection with this important proposed acquisition, we announced the hiring of Louise Jones as managing director of capital markets and custody operations for Beneficent. Louise's career on Wall Street spans four decades, including being the youngest woman to hold a seat as a member of the New York Stock Exchange. Among her responsibilities, she will manage the integration of Mercantile Bank, and she will spearhead Ben's capital markets activities, as well as oversee expansion of the company's fee-based alternative asset custody business, including the launch of a depository receipt companion line. Transactions that we completed in our fiscal third quarter include this proposed acquisition of Mercantile Bank, which is a proposed Puerto Rico, which is a Puerto Rico-based international financial entity known as an IFE. Puerto Rico is a leading jurisdiction working in conjunction with the OCC to provide expanded authorization for IFE banks to engage in activities such as asset management, clearing services, and digital asset market solutions, among other key areas. It is licensed and regulated by the Office of Financial Institutions of Puerto Rico and may provide specific banking and other financial activities for persons, entities, and organizations around the globe that are non-residents. We believe this acquisition will enable us to offer an expanded range of companion custody, clearing, and control account fee-based services that complement our existing businesses on a broader scale, which we expect has potential to generate additional cash flow in the near term. The objective of this acquisition is to deliver additional custody services for international investors and digital asset investors that generally have a higher fee rate structure and potential for higher margins than traditional custody services. We also believe the proposed acquisition of an IFE has the potential to enhance and broaden our current offerings in ways that may open new international opportunities, allowing us to further democratize the market for illiquid alternative assets. An IFE's authorized activities may include custody, clearing payments, and related traditional and digital asset market products and services. As approved by the OCIF, IFEs can also offer traditional banking services, such as correspondent deposits, lending, investments, and trusts. We anticipate the proposed acquisition, if and when completed, would position Ben to offer alternative asset custody services that include, among other potential items, a companion line of business focused on issuing depository receipts to assist holders of foreign investments gain access to the capital markets in international jurisdictions. It may yield higher fee assessments than more traditional custody offerings. Also in late December, as part of a separate transaction, we entered into an agreement to revise the liquidation priority of Beneficent Company Holdings LP. that's a subsidiary of the company, we refer to as BCH, in order to, among other things, enhance our current and future shareholder value, especially for Ben's public common stockholders, and to drive long-term growth. Pursuant to the agreement, the holders of the preferred equity of BCH agreed to amend the governing documents of BCH. to allow the company's public company common stockholders to share in, through the indirect ownership of the company in BCH, the liquidation priority previously reserved only for the preferred equity. We anticipate this transaction will result in creating tangible book value attributable to Ben's common public company stockholders, which we believe will provide substantial value for our stockholders and enhance long-term growth opportunities. Additionally, we anticipate this transaction has the potential to be a catalyst for closing future liquidity transactions and demonstrates our commitment to delivering shareholder value. Also during the fiscal third quarter, we continue to strengthen our capital structure, increasing our permanent equity by $35 million through a redesignation of certain preferred equity to permanent equity. Furthermore, During the fiscal third quarter, we closed a $1.4 million primary capital commitment transaction. Our originations team is now focused on progressing future prospective transactions now, both liquidity and primary capital. We look forward to building on this initial momentum all through 2025 as we continue to evaluate additional opportunities that align with our strategic objectives. These developments continue to provide meaningful enhancements to our business model and improvements on the competitive dynamics we believe we already possessed. I am very proud of our efforts over the last three quarters to broaden our capabilities and improve the product offerings of the business and welcome new experienced talent to our management team and our board of directors. We've taken steps to improve our financial position and are back to originating new financing. These steps have culminated in Ben earning $10.30 of basic earnings per share and $0.12 of fully diluted earnings per share to date as of our third quarter ending December 31, 2024. With these improvements in motion, we will continue to work to educate the market on who we are, on what we do, and on the value and growth opportunity we represent for our shareholders. Now, with that, I will turn the call over to our CFO, Greg Azell, to go over our operating and financial results.