Perella Weinberg Partners

Good morning and welcome to the Perella Weinberg Partners First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. During today's discussion, all callers will be placed in a listen-only mode. And following management's prepared remarks, the conference call will be open for questions from the research community. This conference call 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 First Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. Joining me today are Andrew Bednar, Chief Executive Officer, and Gary Brancic, Chief Financial Officer. The 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 May 11, 2023. For those who listened to the rebroadcast of this presentation, we remind you that the remarks made herein are as of today, May 4, 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 risk, uncertainties, and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statement and are not guarantees of future events or performance. Please refer to PWP's most recent SEC filing for discussion of certain of these risks and incidences. 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. EWC has reconciled these items to the most comparable FAT measures in the press release files with today's Form 8K, which can be found on the company's website. I will now turn the call over to Andrew Bednar to discuss our results.

Thank you, Taylor, and good morning. Today we reported first quarter revenues of $131 million, down 13% from a year ago. And that's against the challenging operating environment for the traditional M&A business. During the quarter, we continued to see longer transaction timelines and a more tentative transaction environment generally, and as a result, recorded fewer fees related to large-scale transactions. Geographically, our revenues skewed even more towards the U.S., though still within the range of our historical split between the United States and Europe. Across our platform, healthcare and financials and technology continue to be active, as well as energy and infrastructure. Although mandates in our financing and capital solutions business are up meaningfully versus last year, driven by traditional restructuring, fees attributable to our financing and capital solutions business this quarter were down year over year, largely the result of a sizable restructuring transaction in Q1-22, which made for a difficult comparison. In our capital markets advisory business, we are now experiencing the lag effect from Fed policy decisions as market conditions worsened in 22 and remain challenging in this quarter. And in private capital markets specifically, we are still seeing a process of resetting of valuation expectations by both companies and investors, which has slowed the pace of closings. Looking at the border market, new uncertainty was ushered in with the bank failures and forced merger this spring that shook global markets, and importantly for our business, has affected CEO confidence. With less urgency and conviction in the boardroom relating to traditional M&A, we witnessed a number of deals expected to announce or close in Q1 get pushed to Q2 and beyond, contributing to the elongated transaction timelines across our platform that I mentioned earlier. Continued lack of economic clarity, a broad range of uncertainty, and the related market instability affect confidence, and perhaps as important, affect conviction. And these conditions are likely to adversely influence deal timing going forward. Notwithstanding these current conditions, we are playing the long game, and our focus remains the same, to scale our business. And here at PWP, we spend time on what we can control, getting even closer to our clients in challenging times, capitalizing on an attractive recruiting environment to build our coverage teams, and always remaining vigilant about our expense base. With all our efforts, we continue to position PWP for market-leading growth opportunity ahead. With a mission to scale our business, we are strategically investing in talent to increase our client footprint. Recruiting conditions have improved materially this year compared to prior periods. We added five senior bankers, three partners, and two MVs in key strategic coverage areas, and all are expected to join the firm in the coming months. Given where we are in our lifecycle, our platform offers a unique value proposition to experienced hires, and our recruiting pipeline remains very robust. Importantly, we continue to grow organically as well. Year-to-date, we promoted two partners and six managing directors in our advisory business. We are a small firm with a big brand, and the value outside is enclosing that gap. So we will continue expanding our industry reach and breadth of product capabilities while always doing what we do best, providing world-class advice to our clients. The firm was built to weather cycles and indeed to take advantage of cycles like this. So we are encouraged by the opportunity in front of us right now to grow our footprint. I want to take a moment to recognize the PWP team for their continued hard work and commitment to our mission. Across our 10 offices in five countries, our team stayed focused on our clients, helped scale the business, and collaborated effectively to deliver market-leading results in this quarter in very difficult conditions. Thank you, team. Gary, I will now turn the call over to you to discuss our results in more detail.