The Carlyle Group Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Carlisle Group fourth quarter 2020 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you need to press star 1 on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star then 0. I would now like to introduce your host for today, Mr. Daniel Harris. You may begin.

Thank you, Kevin. Good morning and welcome to Carlisle's fourth quarter and full year 2020 earnings call. With me on the call is our Chief Executive Officer, Kyu-Sung Lee, and our Chief Financial Officer, Kurt Buser. This call is being webcast and a replay will be available on our website. We will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures during today's call. These measures should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for measures prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. We have provided reconciliations of these measures to GAAP in our earnings release. Any forward-looking statements made today do not guarantee future performance and undue reliance should not be placed on them. These statements are based on current management expectations and involve inherent risks and uncertainties, including those identified in the risk factor section of our annual report on Form 10-K that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated. Carlyle assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements at any time. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release and a detailed earnings presentation, which is also available on our investor relations website. For the fourth quarter, we generated $145 million in fee-related earnings and $237 million in distributable earnings, with DE per common share of $0.64. For the year, FRE was $520 million and DE per common share was $2.05, both up from 2019 levels. Thank you for joining us. As a reminder, we look forward to hosting our first Investor Day as a corporation on February 23rd at 8.30 a.m. Registration is open and we do encourage you to pre-register if possible at ir.carlyle.com. At our upcoming Investor Day, our leadership team will discuss our corporate strategy and financial objectives as well as opportunities for each of our businesses. I'm sure many of your questions today could be tied to our longer-term outlook and topics we'd like to cover comprehensively at Investor Day. And as such, we may defer responding to these questions and address them at that time and in context with our broader plan. And with that, let me turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Kyu Sung Lee.

Thank you, Dan. 2020 was a year of growth and positive change for Carlyle, despite the challenging and complex environment. Our focus in 2021 is to build on our current momentum and we look forward to providing more detail on our strategy for accelerating growth at our investor day in two weeks. Today, I'd like to focus on three points. First, Carlyle delivered very strong results for shareholders in 2020. Second, our investment portfolio is in great shape. And third, our business model and organization proved extremely resilient and adaptable to the changing environment. Let me start by focusing on our 2020 results, which were strong across all metrics. We generated a record $520 million in fee-related earnings, with margins in excess of 30%. This is substantial progress from just a few short years ago, when FRE was less than half of this year's level. Continuing to grow FRE remains a primary strategic focus. Distributable earnings increased 18% in 2020, and we expect continued growth in earnings as our investment portfolios perform and mature. Our investment activity picked up sharply throughout the year. Despite a challenging environment, we exited the year with great momentum, deploying $9 billion of capital in the fourth quarter alone and $18 billion for the year. Thank you for joining us. and have over $17 billion of current value in public securities that when realized will generate proceeds for our LPs and earnings for our shareholders. And the final highlight, we raised $27.5 billion in new capital during the year with nearly 90% of the capital raised from our global credit and investment solutions segments. We will have much more to say about the trajectory and scale of our next fundraising cycle at Investor Day. Let me now move to some remarks on our investment portfolio, which is diverse and balanced and in great shape. A few highlights. Our private equity buyout funds appreciated 19% in aggregate in 2020. Our largest fully invested fund, U.S. Buyout 6, Thank you for joining us. Our strong performance drove our net accrued carry balance up 36% in 2020 to a record $2.3 billion, which positions us very well for a substantial step-up in realized performance revenue over the next few years. The last point I want to make is on the resiliency of our business model and adaptability of our firm. Nearly all, just about 98%, Thank you for joining us. Our investment teams effectively sourced and closed new deals, carefully monitored our portfolio, and completed IPOs and exits. We found new investment opportunities in regions like India and China and pivoted to private equity growth, particularly in healthcare and technology. And we provided flexible credit solutions to sponsors and corporates despite the volatile environment. At the same time, we spent countless hours with our limited partners developing a new cadence that enabled us to forge deeper relationships with them despite not meeting in person and raised over $27 billion in a year when we weren't in the market with our flagship global private equity funds. 2020 has demonstrated our resiliency and ability to adapt, and we find ourselves well positioned to manage through the challenges ahead to deal with the continued impact of COVID on economies, markets, and our portfolios. Most importantly, we remain focused on the health and safety of our people, and we owe our success in 2020 to their dedication, hard work, and expertise. I want to say a sincere thank you to each and every one of them for their extraordinary efforts last year. Let me turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Kurt Buser, to go through our results, and then I'll come back with some final thoughts. Kurt.