Hamilton Lane Incorporated

Good morning, afternoon, or evening. My name is JL and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Hamilton Lane Fiscal First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. A supplemental slide presentation to accompany the prepared remarks can be found on the company's website. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the star 1 again. Thank you. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to John Oh, Head of Shareholder Relations. Mr. Oh, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, JL. Good morning and welcome to the Hamilton Lane Q1 Fiscal 2024 Earnings Call. Today, I will be joined by Mario Giannini, CEO, Eric Hirsch, Vice Chairman, and Atul Varma, CFO. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release and slide presentation, which are available on our website. Before we discuss the quarter's results, we want to remind you that we will be making forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements discuss our current expectations and projections relating to our financial position, results of operations, plans, objectives, future performance, and business. These forward-looking statements do not guarantee future events or performance. and are subject to risk and uncertainties that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those projected. For discussion of these risks, please review the cautionary statements and risk factors included in the Hamilton Lane Fiscal 2023 10-K and subsequent reports we file with the SEC. These forward-looking statements are made only as of today and, except as required, we undertake no obligation to update or revise any of them. We will also be referring to non-GAAP measures that we view as important in assessing the performance of our business. Reconciliation of those non-GAAP measures to GAAP can be found in the earnings presentation materials made available on the shareholder section of the Hamilton Lane website. Our detailed financial results will be made available when our 10Q is filed. Please note that nothing on this call represents an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to purchase interest in any of Hamilton Lane's products. Beginning with the financial highlights. For the quarter, management and advisory-free revenue grew by 23%, while our fee-related earnings also grew by 23% versus the prior year, period. This translated into GAAP BPS of 81 cents, based on $31 million of GAAP net income, and non-GAAP BPS of 94 cents, based on $51 million of adjusted net income. We have also declared a dividend of 44.5 cents per share this quarter. which keeps us on track for the 11% increase over last fiscal year, equating to the targeted $1.78 per share for fiscal year 2024. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mario.

Thanks, John, and good morning, everyone. I want to take a moment and touch on the announcement we made a few weeks back around several senior leadership appointments throughout the firm. Our personnel goals are simple, hire and retain the absolute best people put them on a successful path, and ensure that path allows for continued growth. With all but one of the appointments being internal resources, the changes clearly reflect our personnel philosophy and show our continued focus on delivering results for our clients, shareholders, and partners. As part of last week's announcement, you saw that Atul Varma will be moving into a senior advisor role here at Hamilton Lane and that Jeff Armbruster will become our new CFO, effective August 8th. Jeff has spent the last five years at Hamilton Lane and was most recently the global head of our direct equity platform, which under his leadership has achieved strong growth and concluded a successful fundraise earlier this year. Prior to joining Hamilton Lane, Jeff spent 19 years in private equity, but the final five years as managing director at a private equity firm where he participated in all major investment functions and also provided oversight for certain finance related operational activities, including financial analysis and reporting and cash flow management for a number of their portfolio companies. We think Jeff's experience, firm tenure, and strong investment and strategic skill set will serve us well as we are now well into our seventh year of being a public company. Let me end here by thanking Atul for his service and leadership during his tenure as CFO. Before we move to the quarter's results, I want to take this opportunity and highlight that Hamilton Lane was recently recognized in Private Equity International's 2023 New Private Impacts 50 list. This list brings together the largest managers of private market capital across different asset classes, including private debt, infrastructure, private equity, and real estate, and measures the amount of impact-focused capital raised over a five-year period. The firms represented on this list are united by a common approach of intentional pursuit of positive, measurable, social, or environmental impact alongside financial returns. We are honored to be recognized as one of the 50 largest managers of impact-focused capital and look forward to the continued growth of this platform. I will now turn it over to Eric.