Patria Investments Limited

and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the PATRIA first quarter 2021 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listening 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 one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Josh Wood, head of shareholder relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to PATRIA's first quarter 2021 earnings call. Joining on the call today are our Chief Executive Officer, Alex Saig, and our Chief Financial Officer, Marco DiPolito. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release and earnings presentation detailing our first quarter 2021 results, which you can find posted on our investor relations website at ir.patria.com or on Form 6K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Any forward-looking statements made on this call are uncertain, do not guarantee future performance, and undue reliance should not be placed on them. PATRIA assumes no obligation and does not intend to update any such forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on current management expectations and involve inherent risks, including those discussed in the risk factor section of our Form 20F Annual Report filed last month. As a foreign private issuer, PATRA reports financial results using International Financial Reporting Standards, or IFRS, as opposed to US GAAP. Additionally, we will report and refer to certain non-GAAP industry measures which should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for measures prepared in accordance with IFRS. Reconciliations of these measures to the most comparable measures calculated in accordance with IFRS are included in our earnings presentation. As a quick overview of the results, PATRIA generated $13.1 million in IFRS net income in Q1-21. On key non-GAAP measures for the first quarter, fee-related earnings were $17.3 million and distributable earnings were $17 million, or 12.5 cents per share. In alignment with our policy, we declared a dividend of 10.6 cents per share, payable on June 16th to shareholders of record as of June 2nd. With that, I'll now turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Alex Saig. Alex?

Thank you, Josh. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We are very pleased with our first quarter results, which reflect solid execution across our investment platform. We are not only on track, but also leveraging current opportunities to deploy and commit larger amounts of capital into new investments, which accelerates our progress on key growth drivers for the firm. Our portfolio companies are performing very well, demonstrating the resilience of our investment approach and our ability to deliver outstanding returns to our LPs through many different environments. In private equity, we are delivering 750 basis points of outperformance relatively to the emerging markets benchmark. And our portfolio companies have capitalized on recent opportunities from consolidation completing a total of 34 M&A transactions in 2020, for example. In infrastructure, our investment opportunity is vast, and we have mapped about $80 billion in long-term development needs across Latin America, especially in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Peru. We are seeing record levels of government concessions, and PATRA is well positioned to be a selective bidder and wind projects with very attractive return profiles. Now, clearly the entire world is emerging from a health and economic crisis, and Latin America is emerging along with it. The latest pandemic data shows encouraging trends, suggesting that we may have turned a significant corner, with new cases and deaths both receding significantly from their highs in late April. There has also been substantial progress in the immunization programs with over 110 million vaccines given in the region. There's no question the second wave and recent environment has been difficult for society and many businesses. And regional macro concerns have clearly weighted on Patras shares in the last few months, alongside other companies with exposure to the region. While we cannot control these externalities, What can we do? We can continue to outperform. I want to emphasize the fundamental resilience of PATRA's business model and the impressive investment performance we are delivering. Over three decades, we have been fundraising, deploying capital, and generating attractive and, in most cases, top-portile returns for our LPs while navigating through many different environments. Over that time, we have faced, dealt, and learned to take advantage of the volatility in Latin America. Our returns have enabled us to raise several vintages. For example, for our two flagship funds, we are in vintage number six for private equity and vintage number four for infrastructure. And we have been able to scale these funds significantly. So let's focus on the key drivers of the investment lifecycle. Fundraising, deployment, and performance, and convey why we have such high confidence in our ability to deliver value to our shareholders. In order to raise larger and larger flagship funds every four years, we had to effectively deploy the capital entrusted to us by investors. In our business, periods of volatility can present better opportunities to put money to work. And indeed, we are seeing that play out now. For private equity in particular, you can see in our presentation that Fund 6 is now 68% deployed and reserved, and quickly closing in on the 75% threshold that would allow us to launch the fundraising of the next month. With our investment pipelines as strong as ever, we now see the timing of the private equity fundraising cycle accelerating, and we expect to be back in the market later this year with new investment activity transitioning to the new fund sometime in 2022. The most critical element of our long-term success is, of course, investment performance. And we believe Patra's approach to investing in the region is really a differentiator. In private equity, we are mostly investing in smaller companies at attractive valuation multiples and building them into market leaders through consolidation, and a relentless focus on fundamental value creation. Our two most recent private equity funds are performing phenomenally, with fund five at a 32% net IIR in US dollars, as it begins its harvesting phase, and fund six at a 19% net IIR in US dollars, while still in its investment period. In infrastructure, we are not typically buying mature assets but rather building new platforms or companies from the ground up to fill critical needs for society, which the government often does not have the means to address. Here we are seeing a vast range of opportunities to deploy capital into development projects. And we are in a position of strength to be a selective bidder. Across both strategies, we focus on resilient sectors of the economy that are linked to basic human needs, like healthcare, food, transportation, and energy, which have lower correlations to economic cycles and GDP growth. Over time, we believe our approach has led to more consistent returns and provided stability through market cycles. In our country-specific strategies targeting local investors, currently focused in Brazil, The question we hear recently is, with interest rates now reversing course, is the theme of the financial deepening in danger? Here, I think you have to step back and appreciate the magnitude. In Brazil, for example, the interbank rate has ranged from 10% to 20% for most of the last 20 years. Since 2016, we saw a plunge from 14% to 2%. and now recently reversing back to 3.5%, as the central bank looks to tame rising inflation. If anything, a modest rise in rates should continue to stabilize local currency, which we are currently seeing. With $18 trillion of negative yielding debt across the globe, we don't see the longer-term trend of low interest rates ending anytime soon. and we don't see moderately higher rates slowing the flow of capital into alternative assets. Indeed, we think the financial deepening in the region is well intact and will be a long-term trend that impacts PATRA positively. I'll wrap up by reiterating these very simple points. Number one, Our story for near-term fee-related earnings growth depends on our ability to deploy the remaining capital in our current flagship funds and go back to the market to raise new and larger funds. We have extremely high confidence in our ability to do that, and we are seeing that process accelerate. Number two, we believe the expansion of our country-specific strategies will be a steady organic growth engine for FRE as well, as these strategies achieve a more material scale over the next few years. Number three, we are actively exploring opportunities to use our IPO capital for strategic M&A, which we view as upside to an organic growth profile that is already very compelling. Number four, and lastly, and most importantly, we are constantly aware that our growth ultimately depends on one thing, great investment performance. If we continue to deliver strong returns, LPs will commit larger sums of capital to us, and for shareholders, the investment performance can generate substantial levels of performance fees. Considering those factors, it should be no surprise that we believe Patrick's stock presents an attractive valuation at current levels, and we believe our financial performance will make that clear over time. I'll now turn the call over to Marco for a deeper dive on the numbers. Marco, please.