Perella Weinberg Partners

Good morning and welcome to the Perrella Weinberg Partners full year and fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call. During today's discussion, all callers will be placed in listen-only mode and following management's prepared remarks, the conference will be open for questions from the research community. This conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Taylor Reinhart, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and welcome to our full year and fourth quarter 2022 earnings call. Joining me today are Peter Weinberg, founding partner and chairman, Andrew Bednar, chief executive officer, and Gary Brancic, chief financial officer. A replay of this call will be available through the investors page on the company's website approximately two hours following the conclusion of this live broadcast through February 16th, 2023. For those who listened to the rebroadcast of this presentation, we remind you that the remarks made herein are as of today, February 9, 2023, 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 a 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 assessing the financial performance of the business. PWP has recompiled these items to the most comparable GAAP measures in the press release files of today's Form 8K, which can be found on the company's website. I will now turn the call over to Peter Weiberg to discuss our results.

Thank you, Taylor. Good morning, everybody, and thank you all for joining us on our earnings call. I will take a few moments to review our 2022 results and accomplishments, and then turn the call over to Andrew and Gary to discuss outlook and financials respectively. Before I start though, I just wanted to acknowledge that we lost one of our colleagues who prematurely passed away very recently. He was a friend and a member of the PWP family. And I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge his passing and reiterate our deepest condolences to his family. So this morning, we reported full-year revenues of $632 million, adjusted pre-tax income of $98 million, and adjusted EPS of 78 cents a share. Our top-line results, while down 21% versus the prior year's record performance, are strong in the context of the tumultuous environment of 2022. an achievement which speaks to the tenacity of our team and the commitment of our clients within a challenged market backdrop. Within our traditional M&A business and in line with market trends, we experienced a broad-based contraction in activity levels across industries. That said, industrials, financial technology, and healthcare represent positive performers. While European M&A faced many headwinds this year, the completion of a few large deals on our platform supported stable, absolute revenue contribution from this geography year over year. These attributed to our financing and capital solutions business, which includes global restructuring, capital markets advisory, and private capital placement, were up in 2022. a trend we hope to see continue as we further invest in this business and diversify the scope of our client solutions. Andrew will speak more to the importance of this growth opportunity shortly. To me, as both the founder and shareholder, the value of our franchise is measured by more than just financial metrics, and I would like to quickly touch on a few of these items which defined our success during the year. In 2022, we were a trusted advisor on the largest bankruptcy, the largest completed take private, the largest public debt restructuring in U.S. history, and several complex spin-offs. We were involved in some of the most significant M&A transactions, both in the U.S. and Europe, and solidified our position as a preeminent ESG advisor, an area of focus for our clients across industries and geographies. These high profile deals are not only great for our brand, they also showcase our commitment to broadening our product suite and moving our capabilities and competence beyond traditional advisory. We continue to invest in top notch senior talent and cultivate talent from within. As of December 31st, 2022, we had 64 partners and 47 managing directors in our advisory business. These figures include eight partners and 14 managing directors who were added to the platform in 2022, both as lateral hires and internal promotes. Through external hiring, we have broadened our product sector and geographic reach and have begun realizing synergies across the business. The future productivity potential from these newly made partners and MDs alone is tremendous. And finally, we acted on our commitment to return capital in total returning north of $100 million in 2022. After announcing $100 million share repurchase authorization in February of 2022, we have deployed approximately 75% of it in under a year's time. And we announced this morning an incremental $100 million authorization. Our new authorization reflects our continued commitment to our capital return objectives. We have also paid out a consistent quarterly dividend of seven cents a share and further mitigated dilution via net settlement of vesting employee RSUs. While this is my last earnings call, I will remain very involved in the firm as chairman of the board of directors and as an active partner. Andrew has my full support and I strongly believe PWP's best days lie ahead. On that note, Andrew, I will turn it over to you.