The Carlyle Group Inc.

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Carlisle Group's third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question each. You may get back in the queue as time allows. If you'd like to remove yourself from the queue, simply press star 11 again. As a reminder, today's program is being recorded. And now I'd like to introduce your host for today's program, Daniel Harris, head of investor relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Jonathan. Good morning and welcome to Carlisle's third 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 Radetz. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release and a detailed earnings presentation, which is 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 that differ materially from those indicated. Carlyle assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements at any time. In order to ensure participation by all is on the line 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. Over the past year and a half, we undertook several strategic actions to drive better performance, including realigning our compensation model, appointing new leadership, and prioritizing margin expansion, among other initiatives. As we stand here today, you're beginning to see the early impacts of those steps. These actions, combined with a pickup and activity across the platform, generated one of the best quarterly performances in the firm's history. We delivered record quarterly fee-related earnings, up 36% versus the third quarter of 2023, and our best-ever FRE margins at 47%, up more than 10 percentage points since last year. Overall, we are on track to hit our every target of $1.1 billion for the year. Our underlying investment portfolio is performing very well. This drove strong corporate private equity fund appreciation that fueled the nearly 30% increase in our net accrued performance revenues compared to the prior quarter. This accrual represents nearly $8 per share of future earnings for our shareholders. As we talked about previously, capital markets was a significantly underleveraged part of our platform that is gaining substantial momentum. This is the direct result of proactive steps we've taken to increase alignment around transaction fee generation. Including closed Q4 activity, we've already generated our highest level of annual transaction fees. This, despite a still subdued M&A and IPO environment. Obviously, we expect further growth in capital markets fees. On fundraising, we raised $9 billion of new capital in the quarter and have raised $43 billion over the past 12 months. We anticipate a very strong fourth quarter of capital raising to close out the year, and we continue to target about $40 billion of inflows for the year. Now, switching to the macro environment, obviously, let's start with the election results. Being past the election has removed market uncertainty first and foremost. Markets like certainty, and you're seeing that broadly across capital markets, particularly in the stock market yesterday. Over the medium to long term, this should be a further catalyst for IPOs, M&A, and key sectors we invest in. This should be an environment in which we are well positioned to capitalize on monetization opportunities and put capital to work. Prior to the election, we had already seen the U.S. Federal Reserve shift in stance on interest rates, and that was a clear sign that we'd entered a new era of monetary policy and that inflation had stabilized. The election certainty and the change in monetary policy are a powerful combination supporting economic growth and our business. We're already seeing a significant uptake in IPO activity this year. There's been a 30% increase in listings and a 50% increase in IPO proceeds in the first nine months of this year. We've seen this trend benefit our portfolios well, with two significant IPOs in just the last month, Standard Aero in the U.S. and Regaku in Japan. Standard Aero marked the second largest sponsored-backed U.S. IPO of the year and the best first-day performance for a U.S. IPO, raising over $1 million, this since 2021. Aerospace, defense, and government services is a key power alley for Carlyle. Our roots in D.C. and more than 30-year history in this space is a core differentiator for us. This was the largest aerospace IPO ever and demonstrates that the market is starved for high-quality businesses and growth outside of the tech sector. Fugaku was the second biggest Japanese IPO this year and the largest ever sponsored-backed IPO in Japan. Japan remains a very attractive market for us. This year's improved market sentiment has driven stronger investment activity and a more active pipeline across our platform, reflecting our ability to act on opportunities in a dynamic environment. A more liquid realization backdrop and strong underlying portfolio performance have supported higher investment returns. Our two largest U.S. bio funds were up north of 7% each this quarter, and our two largest Asia bio funds were up 9% and 13%, respectively. This quarter represented the third largest quarterly increase in net accrued performance revenues in our firm's history. Over 600 million of net performance revenues were generated. Switching to global wealth, another area of strategic focus, we're seeing strong momentum across the platform where we benefited from a record 1.8 billion of wealth inflows. Our wealth inflows this quarter were nearly three times the amount in the previous quarter, and our global wealth AUM is up 70% year over year. Part of the momentum is our newly launched secondaries wealth solution, CAPM, which is seeing very strong early traction with advisors and their clients. We're also making progress in our private equity wealth product and are still on track to launch in 2025. Another area where we see accelerating growth is in asset-backed finance. We continue to identify differentiated partnerships with specialty finance companies to further bolster our origination capabilities and give us a data edge in the market. We've also seen record leverage loan and CLO issuance in 2024. Loan spreads have tightened to post-GFC levels and demand for new paper is outpacing supply. Full year 2024 US leverage loan issuance is expected to exceed $1 trillion for only the third time. At Carlyle, the team has been very busy with our leading CLO business having priced 22 transactions globally, on track to be a record year of resets and transactions priced. The opportunities in our insurance business remain quite significant. Fortitude has grown its general account assets by almost 70% in the past year. It has increased its excess capital position to more than a billion dollars, allowing us to pursue a robust reinsurance pipeline. We also continue to grow our relationships with insurance clients broadly and further leverage our private investment grid and asset-backed finance capabilities in this important channel. To wrap things up, We have a strong third quartile with Carlisle extremely well positioned to capitalize on an improving macroeconomic environment. Our leadership team remains laser focused on driving performance and accelerating growth to drive long-term value for you, our shareholders. With that, let me now turn the call over to John.