The Carlyle Group Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Carlyle Group Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are on 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 will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Daniel Harris, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Shannon. Good morning, and welcome to Carlyle's second quarter 2024 earnings call. With me on the call this morning is our Chief Executive Officer, Harvey Schwartz, and our Chief Financial Officer and Head of Corporate Strategy, John Redet. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release and a detailed earnings presentation, which is also available on our Investor Relations website. This call is being webcast and a replay will be available. 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 reconciliation of these measures to GAAP in our earnings release to the extent reasonably available. 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. Carlisle assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements at any time. In order to ensure participation by all those on the call today, please limit yourself to one question and return to the queue for any additional follow-ups. With that, let me turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Harvey Schwartz.

Thanks, Dan. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. The first half of 24 reflects strong momentum across our business. And as you can see, when you look at it, this momentum truly clear in our results. For the first six months, we generated record F.R.E., record F.R.E. margins, record assets under management, and strong fundraising. Let me take a moment to talk about the current market activity. Obviously, we've all seen over the last few trading days and this morning, the market remains quite volatile. You know, from our perspective, it's important to take a big step back. When we look at our proprietary portfolio data, this is what we see. The trajectory for GDP, the expected Fed rate cuts this year, All the dynamics still tell us the underlying fundamentals support improving activity across our platform for the balance of the year. Now, consistent with that, we've announced two large recent transactions and have others in the pipeline we expect to finalize soon. In asset-backed finance, we announced a landmark $10 billion transaction required portfolio loans from Discover Financial Services. This transaction is a great example of the intersection of our asset-backed finance capabilities, our credit and insurance businesses, and our capital markets expertise all coming together to drive value for our clients and generate transaction fees. As we've discussed, asset-backed finance is a critical provider of capital for the financial sector. There is a significant opportunity here to grow as we're in the early innings of a multi-trillion dollar market opportunity, which we're well positioned for. On exits, we have a considerable pipeline of active IPO and sale processes underway. You just saw today we announced the sale of our portfolio company, Cogentrix Energy, a leading power producer and the assets it manages at a valuation of nearly $3 billion. We expect exit activity in the second half of the year likely to be materially higher than the first half with several large transactions in our pipeline. Moving to fundraising. We raised $18 billion year-to-date and north of $40 billion over the last 12 months. We closed our fifth Japan buyout fund, saw strong inflows into our U.S. real estate business, and raised $5 billion in credit this quarter alone. This was our third best fundraising quarter on record for the credit business. And importantly, we're working towards our target of $40 billion for 2024. Let me just quickly run you through some specific areas of activity across our business. I'm quite optimistic about where our business is today compared to a year ago. As I said, there's a lot of momentum across the franchise. In global credit, we're well positioned to capitalize industry tailwinds and capture market share. In addition to the Discover Financial Services transaction, we saw strong activity in opportunistic and real asset credit strategies. In our CLO business, we remain very active. The first six months of the year were the second busiest in our 20-year CLO history. We ended Q2 as the world's largest CLO manager, and we feel quite good about the forward pipeline. Finally, in global investment solutions, the activity levels remain quite high as we address the investment needs of our clients. We deployed $9 billion and raised $12 million over the last 12 months and continue to see attractive opportunities across secondaries and co-investments. In global wealth, our brand continues to resonate with our wealth advisor partners. SeaTac, our private credit product, had a strong first half, and CapM, our solutions wealth product, has significant momentum and has been added to several new wealth distribution platforms. To wrap things up, our results this quarter reflect strong momentum across the firm. As the environment continues to improve, which we believe it will, despite, as I said, recent market activity, Harlow and our stakeholders are well-positioned to benefit. With that, let me now turn the call over to John.