Perella Weinberg Partners

Good morning and welcome to the Cruella Weinberg Partners second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Currently, all callers have been placed in a listen-only mode. And following management's prepared remarks, the call will be opened up for your questions. If you would like to ask a question at that time, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you need to remove yourself from the queue, press star 2. Anytime, if you should need operator assistance, press star zero. Please be advised that today's call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Taylor Reinhart, head of investor relations. You may begin.

Thank you, Operator, and welcome to our second quarter 2022 earnings call. Joining me today are Peter Weinberg, Chief Executive Officer, and Gary Brancic, Chief Financial Officer. A replay of this call will be available through the investor's page of the company's website approximately two hours following the conclusion of this live broadcast through August 11, 2022. For those of you listening to the rebroadcast of this presentation, we remind you that the remarks made herein are as of today, August 4, 2022, and have not been updated subsequent to the initial earnings call. Before we begin, I'd like to note that this call may contain forward-looking statements, including PWP's expectations of future financial and business performance and conditions and industry outlook. Forward-looking statements are inherently subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements and are not guarantees of future events or performance. Please refer to PWP's most recent SEC filings for discussion of certain of these risks and uncertainties. The forward-looking statements are based on our current beliefs and expectations, and the firm undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. During the call, there will also be a discussion of some metrics, which are non-GAAP financial measures, which management believes are relevant in affecting the financial performance of the business. PWP has reconciled these items to the most comparable GAAP measures in the press release filed with today's Form 8K, which can be found on the company's website. I will now send the call over to Peter Weinberg to discuss our results.

Thank you, Taylor. Good morning, and thank you all for joining us on our second quarter 2022 earnings call. Before I give some color on our financial performance, on the occasion of being public for just over a year, I wanted to put into context our aspiration and journey to become the leading global independent advisory firm. When we first approached the public market investors in the fall of 2020, we articulated a very precise vision for our firm, to grow our leading independent advisory franchise by broadening and deepening client relationships, by expanding the suite of our advisory services, and by adding best-in-class talent to the team. We saw an enormous market opportunity, and we felt the firm was exceptionally well-positioned to capitalize upon it. our pursuit of that goal would remain undaunted in booming operating environments and in stressed economic times. Well, we've tested the bookends of those extremes in our public life. In 2021, global M&A volume was at a record $5.8 trillion. Our revenues were up over 50%, and our earnings were up over four times the prior period. In 2022, we're facing very stressed macroeconomic and geopolitical conditions without any clear indication of improvement in the near term. Our mindset in this volatile and challenging environment is that the opportunity for our firm is greater even than it would have been in more stable and robust economic environments. we're focused on leaning into this market, investing and capitalizing intelligently so that when the clouds eventually part, our positioning is only strengthened. We continue to attract great talent to the firm from universities all the way up to partner. Particularly with senior bankers, we're finding our access and yield has never been higher. Since 2020, we've added 16 advisory partners, In 2022 so far, we've promoted three advisory partners from within the firm and another five have either joined or agreed to join the firm. Every one of these additions were in high activity industry subsectors and product areas that we had strategically targeted years ago, including private capital placement and capital structure solutions. Looking forward, we continue to have a clear roadmap of where and when we want to grow to meet our mission. Strategic dialogue with our clients around the world has remained extremely active, yet transaction announcement and closing timelines are elongated compared to prior periods. The number of new clients retaining our services remains robust, and we are continuing to see high levels of engagement across our platform. There has been an understandable increase in focus from the investment community on the timing of a pickup and restructuring activity and the potential contribution of this revenue stream. Today, even more so than three months ago, we're seeing the combination of inflation, rising rates, and supply chain issues putting pressure on balance sheets and causing increased demand for liability management services. While liability management and restructuring mandates and fee events can take time to materialize, we are seeing an increase in these conversations, which we believe may contribute favorably to our 2023 results. This environment also creates opportunities for the firm as we return capital to shareholders. Year to date, in addition to the funding of our quarterly dividend, we have bought back 15% of our total Class A common shares outstanding, based on our March 31st, 2022 basic share count via open market repurchases and net settled shares to satisfy employee tax obligations in lieu of share issuances upon vesting of equity grants. Collectively, we've returned nearly $70 million in capital. Additionally, we announced the commencement of an exchange offer for our warrants into common shares. Gary will go into more detail on these matters in a minute. Turning to the quarter, this morning we reported second quarter revenues of $151 million, about flat with our first quarter results. Our second quarter revenues turned out to be well higher than we had anticipated on our first quarter earnings call. I would characterize this improvement as primarily due to timing. We currently expect revenues for the back half of the year to be relatively in line with our first half results, but transaction timing and changes in market conditions could impact this expectation in either direction. To wrap up, we believe we are on a path of sustained long-term growth and are continuing to invest in our future by expanding our capabilities and reach. Periods of more muted M&A activity have allowed us the opportunity to aggressively invest in talent, and we expect to take advantage of today's market and use it as an accelerant to grow our market share and scale. We believe the opportunities in front of us are enormous and will provide many years of future growth potential. On that note, Gary, I'll turn it over to you.