Hamilton Lane Incorporated

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Hamilton Lane Fiscal Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Tuesday, February 3rd, 2026. I would now like to turn the conference over to John Oh, Head of Shareholder Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Natasha. Good morning, and welcome to the Hamilton Lane Q3 Fiscal 2026 Earnings Call. Today, I will be joined by Eric Hirsch, Co-Chief Executive Officer, and Jeff Armister, Chief Financial Officer. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release and a 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 risks 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 2025 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 full financial statements will be made available when our 10-Q 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. Let's begin with the highlights and I'll start with our total asset footprint. At quarter end, our total asset footprint stood at over $1 trillion and represents a 6% increase to our footprint year over year. AUM stood at $146 billion and grew $11 billion or 8% compared to the prior year period. The growth came from both our specialized funds and our customized separate accounts. AUA came in at $871 billion and grew $50 billion or 6% relative to the prior year period. This stemmed primarily from market value growth of the portfolio and the addition of a variety of technology solutions and back office mandates. Total management and advisory fees for the year to date period were up 11% year over year. Total fee related revenue for the period, which is the sum of management fees and fee related performance revenues, was $507 million and represents 31% growth year over year. Fee related earnings were $254.6 million year to date and represent 37% growth year-over-year. We generated fiscal year-to-date GAAP EPS of $4.35 based on $183 million of GAAP net income and non-GAAP EPS of $4.41 based on $240.1 million of adjusted net income. We have also declared a dividend of $0.54 per share this quarter, which keeps us on track for the 10% increase over last fiscal year. equating to the targeted $2.16 per share for fiscal year 2026. With that, I will now turn the call over to Eric.

Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. As we look back on calendar 2025, Juan and I are very proud of all that has been accomplished, and we are enthusiastic about the significant opportunity that lies ahead. Our team successfully navigated changing markets, industry evolution, and high client expectations. We delivered strong growth, and outstanding results and we exited calendar year 2025 with real momentum. We have a larger, more global reach, a more diversified platform, expanded and deeper client relationships, and new product lines that are gaining traction and growing. While Juan and I have the privilege of witnessing what this team does every day, it is also rewarding to be recognized by those outside of Hamilton Lane. So I am honored to say that Hamilton Lane was once again recognized by pension and investments as one of the best places to work in money management. We have now earned this recognition for the 14th consecutive year and are one of only five companies that has been recognized every single year since the awards inception in 2012. Our people are our asset and we have worked hard to create an environment that is collaborative and growth oriented where we all focus on what matters. doing the very best we can for our customers. Let me move now to a quick update on the strategic partnership with Guardian that I highlighted on our last call. I'm proud to announce that the partnership has officially closed and we are already hard at work. As a reminder, Hamilton Lane will oversee nearly $5 billion of Guardian's existing private equity portfolio, and these assets will be reflected in our total asset footprint beginning next quarter. Also, we expect to receive additional annual commitments of approximately $500 million for at least 10 years, enabling Guardian to access a broad range of private market opportunities across primary, secondary, and co-investment strategies through our platform. This also includes support for Hamilton Lane's global evergreen platform, where at least $250 million of capital will be invested into our evergreens. In addition, the partnership also Guardian with HL&E equity warrants and other financial incentives driving alignment and opportunities for long-term value creation. The initial economic impacts of the partnership will be recognized in our fiscal fourth quarter of 2026, and we will provide additional details on our next call. Our partnership with Guardian is a clear proof point of our ability to work alongside the world's most sophisticated institutional investors to design and execute comprehensive private market programs. In a very short period of time, we are already fully engaged. Capital has been allocated to our U.S. secondaries and venture evergreen funds, complemented by a sizable commitment to our latest closed-end direct equity fund and to the upcoming first close of our next secondary fund. Additionally, we have also successfully onboarded three of our U.S. evergreen offerings onto their Park Avenue securities platform, and we look forward to working closely with their extensive advisor network to deliver evergreen solutions for their clients. We remain excited about this partnership and all the opportunities for mutual success that lie ahead. Let me now turn to an update on our capital raising and fee earning AUM. Total fee earning AUM stood at $79.1 billion and grew $8.1 billion or 11% relative to the prior year period. Net quarter over quarter growth was $2.7 billion or 4%. The earning AUM growth continues to be largely driven by our specialized fund platform, with our semi-liquid Evergreen products leading our strong momentum. The combination of our net positive fundraising, product additions, and strong performance has driven the growth of total fund net asset value in our Evergreen offering. We have also executed well in our closed-end offerings, as evidenced by recent closes and momentum for those funds in market or that have recently held final closes. I will provide more detail on that shortly. Before I move on, I want to reiterate that our blended fee rate continues to benefit from the shift in the mix of fee-earning AUM towards higher fee rate specialized funds, most notably our Evergreen products. Today, our blended fee rate stands at 67 basis points, with the mix of separate accounts to specialized fund fee-earning AUM at 52% and 48%, respectively. This fee rate is 10 basis points or 18% higher than when we went public in 2017. Then, our mix was 67% customized separate accounts and 33% specialized funds. We view this shift as a powerful component of our business model and an important driver supporting the trajectory of our management fees over time. Let's move now to specialized funds where fee-earning AUM ended fiscal Q3 at $38.1 billion, having grown $6.9 billion over the last 12 months. This represents an increase of 22%. Quarter-over-quarter net growth was $2.4 billion, or 7%, with much of this driven by our Evergreen platform, with a strong combination of net new flows and positive net asset value appreciation. Additionally, we benefited from evergreen non-fee-earning AUM that turned to fee-earning AUM in the corner, as I had detailed on our prior call. In addition to the growth numbers we are experiencing, we have in front of us several recent closed-end fund launches, most notably our seventh secondary product, which we discussed on our last call, and more recently, our second venture access product. To put that in context, our sixth secondary fund raised $5.6 billion and extended our track record of raising larger successive funds in that franchise. We believe we are capable of successfully managing increasingly larger pools of capital in both of these spaces, and in neither space are we anywhere close to the largest player. We have plenty of room to continue to grow. On the venture side, we're looking to build on the success of our inaugural venture access product, which closed in February 2025 with nearly $610 million of investor commitments. We currently expect to hold first closes for both the new secondary fund and the second venture access fund sometime in the second calendar quarter of 2026. Now let's move to the rest of the product suite and I'll start with our sixth equity opportunities fund. As a quick reminder, this fund focuses on direct equity investments alongside leading general partners, And it offers two fee arrangements that either charge management fees on a committed capital basis and a 10% carry, or fees on a net invested basis with a 12.5% carry. Our prior direct equity fund offered the same arrangement and raised $2.1 billion. Now, during the quarter, we held additional closes totaling nearly $300 million of LP commitments. Then in January, we held another close of approximately $500 million. So taken together, the fund now stands at over $2.3 billion, and at that size, we have surpassed the prior fund by nearly 15%, and we have solid visibility on additional capital in the pipeline that has yet to close. The management fee mix is currently about 35% on committed capital and 65% on net invested. Jeff will provide additional detail on the retro fees associated with the capital that closed both in the quarter and post-quarter end. We expect to hold a final close for this fund over the coming months, and we remain focused on finishing this fundraise on a strong note. Turning now to our second infrastructure fund. As a reminder, this strategy focuses on direct equity and secondaries across the infrastructure landscape, and the fund earns management fees on a net invested basis. I am pleased to report that just yesterday, we announced the final close bringing total capital raised in and alongside the fund to nearly $2 billion, with over $1.5 billion coming into the fund and nearly $400 million alongside the fund in related vehicles. At this size, we have now more than tripled the capital raised in our inaugural infrastructure fund. This second vintage is off to a strong start with over 40% committed as of December 31st. We view this outcome as evidence of our ability to launch and scale new strategies, and we remain confident in our ability to further grow this franchise. Let's now turn to our annual strategic opportunities fund, which is our closed and direct credit strategy. As a reminder, this fund charges management fees on a net invested basis. On December 31st, we held the final close for the ninth series and raised a total of $527 million of investor commitments. This will be our final series of our strategic opportunities franchise. When we launched our strategic opportunities franchise more than a decade ago, private credit looked very different. Investors looking for a blended approach between senior and junior credit, and we build a product to match. Now over time, private credit has scaled and has become more segmented, and investor preferences have followed. We're now reshaping how we position and construct this closed-end franchise, so it's set up for the next leg of growth, and better aligned with how clients are allocating across senior, junior, and opportunistic credit. We are in process of launching a variety of closed-end credit funds that are more segmented, and those will sit alongside our credit evergreen funds, but they will now follow a more traditional fundraising cadence, where we raise capital every few years. Importantly, the management fee dynamics will be unchanged. Fees will continue to be charged on a net invested basis, and will move into fee-earning AUM as capital is deployed. We launched our first credit vehicle 10 years ago, and then we managed a sum total of $70 million in credit product AUM. Today, across closed-end and evergreen, we are managing nearly $4 billion in fee-earning AUM, reflecting a compounded growth rate of more than 45%. While we are proud of this success, we also recognize how modest this is in context of the credit markets, and we are excited to continue scaling this business in a very significant way. And we believe we have a clear path to do just that. Let's now move to our Evergreen platform. Our Evergreen platform delivered another strong quarter. For the quarter ended December 31st, 2025, we generated over $1.2 billion of net inflows across the suite, driven by a combination of expanded product offerings, robust fundraising, and solid investment performance. At quarter end, total evergreen AUM reached over $16 billion, representing over 70% year-over-year growth. Within that total, our core multi-strategy private markets offering continues to anchor the platform. It ended 2025 at over $11.7 billion of AUM and once again delivered sustained positive net inflows. We are making real progress broadening distribution for this flagship strategy in the U.S. and internationally. while also seeing healthy recurring flows from existing partners, many of whom are now adding allocations to our newer evergreen strategies. Turning to credit. Despite recent headlines in volatility in certain parts of the private credit market, our international credit evergreen fund remains on extremely solid footing. It continued to generate positive net inflows in the quarter, with AUM surpassing the $2 billion mark at calendar year end 2025. Performance remains strong with a since inception net annualized return of over 9.5% and positive monthly performance throughout all of calendar year 2025. December net inflows were the 4th highest month since its launch in 2022 and for calendar year 2025 we averaged over $90 million of monthly net inflows. In addition to that, we remain on track to introduce its US registered counterpart in the coming months. Finally, we are encouraged by the trajectory of our newer Evergreen offerings. Both our infrastructure Evergreen, which was launched in the second half of 2024, and our secondaries Evergreen, which was launched in early 2025, are both approaching the $1 billion AUM threshold, respectively. That progress reinforces our conviction that the Evergreen platform can be, and is increasingly becoming, a multi-strategy, multi-asset growth engine for the firm over time. Let's wrap up here with customized separate accounts. At quarter end, customized separate account fee earning AUM stood at $41.1 billion and grew 1.3 billion, or 3%, over the last 12 months. Net quarter over quarter growth was $280 million, or 1%, with the gross contributions stemming from a mix of new client wins, re-up activity from existing clients, and contributions for investment activity. This was offset by fee basis step downs and returns of capital stemming from exit activity. We continue to carry substantial committed and contractual dry powder ready to deploy, supported by a strong pipeline of mandates that have been awarded and are currently moving through the contracting stage. Across our platform, we have long dated relationships with the majority of our separate account clients and have experienced minimal term over our history, underscoring the durability and depth of these partnerships. Because separate account programs are highly tailored rather than formulaic, the pace at which they move from sale to full deployment can vary, introducing timing variability in which assets and revenues come online. In fact, in December alone, we closed on more than $2 billion of new SMA capital, coming from a mix of existing client re-ups, new service lines with current clients, and new relationships to Hamilton Lane. Behind that, our pipeline of live opportunities to various stages of negotiation remains sizable and in the multi-billion dollar range. That said, we continue to see our clients adopting and desiring product solutions at a faster pace than SMAs. We believe that serves them and us well. Let me move now to the update on our latest addition to the Hamilton Lane Innovations portfolio, where we utilize our balance sheet capital to invest in differentiated technology solutions, that broaden access to the asset class, enhance the investor experience, and strengthen the overall infrastructure of the private markets ecosystem. On January 6th, we announced an investment in Pluto Financial Technologies alongside Apollo, Motive Ventures, and Portage. Pluto operates at the intersection of two important trends for our industry, the continued expansion of private markets and the growing need for sophisticated technology enabled infrastructure to support that growth. Pluto's platform is built specifically for private market investors and uses AI driven technology to connect directly to underlying portfolios, providing access to credit without forcing the sale of positions or the need to work through multiple intermediaries. The objective is straightforward. Give investors a practical liquidity tool while allowing them to stay committed to their long-term private market allocations. As individual investors continue to allocate more capital to the private markets, and in turn, become incrementally larger and larger parts of investor portfolios, the importance of liquidity has only increased. Historically, many individual investors and their advisors view limited liquidity as a barrier to meaningful allocation, even when they were convinced of the return and diversification benefits. As structures, secondary solutions, and product design have evolved to offer more frequent liquidity windows, and better tools for managing flows, we are seeing that hesitancy begin to fade. We believe that continuing to improve the liquidity experience for individuals in a thoughtful, risk-aware way is one of the keys to deeper penetration of private markets in the wealth channel. Simply put, the more we can marry institutional quality exposure with a liquidity profile that works for individuals, the larger the opportunity set becomes. We believe that Pluto is helping to drive increased liquidity in our asset class and uniquely leveraging technology to make that happen. We are proud to join them on this important journey and look forward to providing you with future updates. And with that, I'll pass the call to Jeff to cover the financials.