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spk09: Your conference will begin momentarily. Please continue to hold.
spk06: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the SEI second quarter 2022 earning call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. Instructions will be given at that time. If you should require assistance during the call, please press star then zero. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, head of investor relations, Lindsay Opsall. Please go ahead.
spk09: Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us on today's second quarter 2022 earnings call. Joining me on today's call are Ryan Hickey, SEI's chief executive officer, Dennis McGonigal, chief financial officer, and the leaders of each of our business segments, Phil McCabe, Sanjay Sharma, Paul Clotter, and Wayne Withrow. Kathy Heilig, SDI's Controller, is also with us. I've had the opportunity to connect with many of you regarding the format of this call and appreciate your input, so we're switching things up. Moving forward, you'll hear opening remarks from me, Ryan will provide a business and strategy update, and Dennis will provide an overview of the company's quarterly results, including those for each of our business segments. After our prepared remarks, we'll open up the call to questions for Ryan, Dennis, and the leaders of each business segment. Before we begin, I'd like to point out that our earnings press release can be found under the investor relations section of our website at sdic.com. This call is being webcast live and a replay will be available on the events and webcast page of our website. We would like to remind you that during today's presentation and in our responses to your questions, we have and will make certain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially. Please refer to our notices regarding forward-looking statements that appear in today's earnings release and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We do not undertake to update any of our forward-looking statements. With that, I'll now turn the call over to CEO Ryan Hagee. Ryan?
spk03: Thank you, Lindsay. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I hope everybody is staying healthy and enjoying the summer. Since stepping into the role of CEO on June 1st, I've had the opportunity to spend time with our employees, clients, and many of you on the call. I've appreciated the engagement and insight from our investor and analyst community, and I look forward to future meetings to discuss the strategic approach we are taking, the opportunities it represents, and the progress we are making. One thing is clear. We are focused on making the necessary changes and investments to grow our great company. We are clearly focused on three key strategic areas, growth, talent, and culture. Our objectives are clear. We are going to be... an innovative entrepreneurial market leader in the delivery of solutions that drive change, growth, and add significant value to our clients. We will be focused on strong, profitable, recurring revenues diversified across segments and markets. We will be willing to take risks to exponentially grow existing and new revenue engines. We will remain client-centric and market-aware, taking the best of SEI outside of our walls and bringing fresh perspective inside our walls. We will have a lean, nimble, diverse, and flexible workforce with an unrivaled employee base of talent. And we will be engaged, positive, and aware of nurturing and refreshing our culture constantly, always curious and passionate about the future. We announced many important actions over the quarter, including welcoming Jonathan Brassington to our Board of Directors. We brought on Dennis Okema as the Director of Diversity and Inclusion at SDI to enhance our commitment to having the best workforce in the industry. We continued to execute daily successfully in key markets and installed new clients and business. We launched programs focused on our talent, including initiating a voluntary separation program with our workforce to open opportunity while providing a positive exit process for those who helped make SDI so successful. Finally, we began to lay the groundwork for our future growth plans, including the appointment of Sanjay Sharma to lead our private banking business. Later in my remarks, I will dive further into this strategy for each of our focal areas. Now turning to our results from the quarter. Second quarter revenues grew 1% from a year ago. Our second quarter earnings were down 17% from a year ago. Second quarter EPS of 81 cents decreased 13% from the 93 cents reported in the second quarter of 2021. In the quarter, we repurchased 2 million shares of SDI stock at a price of $55.48 per share. That translates into $109.3 million of stock repurchases. Net sales events total $8.8 million, $6.5 million of which is net recurring. Dennis will go into further details on our financial results. We are acutely aware of the need to grow our revenues by driving increased sales results. I am confident we are making the right decisions to generate the sales results that we and our shareholder community expect. We will align our talent and spending to capitalize on market opportunities for both the short and medium term. The second quarter of 2022 was marked by the same market volatility and geopolitical disruption that we felt in the first quarter, with an even bigger deterioration of capital market returns. Inflation, as well as changing economy, also had an impact. While our results include these challenges and we expect there to be more ahead, we remain steadfast in our conviction that we are moving in the right direction. The overall market trend of outsourcing continues to increase. SEI's expertise in investment management, investment processing and operations, and financial technology and cybersecurity position us extremely well to take advantage of this dynamic. As business challenges continue to intensify, many firms don't have all the capabilities to keep pace. We recognize that talent retention and acquisition further amplifies this need, and it reinforces the benefit of partnering with established leaders and experts like SDI. We understand the competitive landscape, and we're able to bring platforms and people to clients and prospects that help them grow and maintain their business. Alternatively, we appreciate the impact that has on our business. and we are acting appropriately to invest in our talent. Turning to the three strategic areas of focus, growth, culture, and talent. I'll start with growth. We are committed to driving greater top-line revenue growth, both organically and through new engines. We are aggressively assessing our investment spend against the potential return. This includes keeping an eye on margins and reducing spend where necessary. However, we also recognize we have areas of strong momentum and opportunity, and to increase our revenue engines, there will be investments to make. This may include expanding our global footprint or using M&A to enhance an existing capability or build a new solution. We will continue to refresh our strategy and align our spend with market opportunity and growth. The investment manager segment had another strong quarter with significant implementations of our backlog. continued client delivery, and strong growth prospects moving forward. In the alternatives market, we signed a number of new names, and our cross-sale strategy continues to resonate. It's resulting in robust sales to existing clients. Of particular note, we were selected to provide fund administration for two large private equity real estate firms. In the traditional market, we continue to add new business lines and all products with new and existing clients. And in Europe, we continue to expand our ETF, private equity, and private debt business, primarily through cross-sales with existing clients. I met with the executives of a few of our largest IMS clients in the quarter, and I am very enthusiastic about our growth opportunity in this market with continued execution, innovation, and platform delivery. Turning to the investment advisors business, During the quarter, we leveraged the depth of our investment management expertise to launch SEI-branded factor-based ETS. We also launched a strategic partnership with Dimensional Fund Advisors, further increasing investment solution flexibility to our advisor clients. We expanded our sales capabilities with the deployment of a new RIA sales team led by industry veteran Gabe Garcia, and we rolled out a beta version of SEI Connect, a digital collaboration tool built on the Orange platform, which we acquired last year. We are on track for a full launch by the end of the year. We remain excited and focused on our strategy of growing our business in the RIA market. The breadth of our technology and investment architecture, combined with the market-leading capabilities of SDI's own investment management expertise, makes me personally very bullish on our opportunity to expand our footprint with current advisors and widen SCI's market penetration. The institutional investor segment had a solid quarter. During the quarter, a large global investor selected SCI for a combination of our outsourced CIO and enhanced CIO platforms. This signing aligns with our committed strategy of expanding our footprint into sophisticated allocators on a global scale showcasing the OCIO to ECIO continuum to large investors, leveraging our proprietary portfolio intelligence technology, SEI Novus, which we acquired in the fall of last year, increasing our UK master trust business, as well as growing our traditional markets. In the quarter, we also announced Sanjay Sharma, a 15-year SEI veteran, and his appointment to lead the private banking segment. Sanjay's expertise in the technology and wealth management landscape will be invaluable to progressing our business strategy and driving future growth. I am confident that not only will Sanjay create a revenue and growth plan that will succeed, he will also drive discipline and efficiency on the expense and profit side of our business. His fresh perspective is already having a positive impact. In the private bank business, we signed an agreement with a current Trust 3000 client to move to the SEI Wealth Platform. We also successfully migrated another client from Trust3000 to SWP and installed a new client from a competitor platform. We additionally re-contracted two clients in the quarter. Working with Sanjay, we are making efforts to right-size the expenses in this segment as we accelerate sales activity. To do so, we are working to improve operating efficiency, but also consolidating teams across our business, operations, and technology platforms. Additionally, we are focused on improving client engagement to create more cross-sale opportunities across our enterprise. While we continue to have good success in the regional and community bank space, we will work with our jumbo clients and prospects to grow that important segment. We also remain committed to building a pipeline of clients globally. I'd like to take a minute to highlight some positive traction and growth areas in our investments and new business segments. One of those investments is SEI Sphere. Representing a new growth engine to drive diversified revenue streams, Sphere is situated in the fast-growing space of cybersecurity and cloud. We have signed clients in both existing and new market verticals, and we are excited about the potential for this business. Our private wealth management business is also growing. This quarter, we achieved increasing sales as our business strategy gains momentum with our target market. Our pipeline remains healthy. We also continue to explore new markets where we can successfully meet client needs. Finally, in investments in new business, our partnership with LLSV remains very strong. Dennis will report on their financial results for the quarter. As part of my opening comments, I mentioned that talent is one of our key strategic focal areas. In the quarter, we announced a voluntary separation program. This program was not designed to reduce expenses or remove a specific demographic from our workforce. I want to be very clear on that. It was designed to create an opportunity for tenured SEI employees to have an option to explore their life ambitions and concurrently create space for internal mobility, fresh perspectives, diversity, and external experience. We believe creating opportunities for diverse perspectives and talent inside and outside of SCI will position us for growth and, in fact, accelerate our growth as we challenge and refresh our strategy. We are committed to our employees bringing their best selves to SCI every day. We will embrace internal mobility and diversity and inclusion in our talent and leadership development. We are investing in programs and initiatives focused on future skills, rotating talent, idea sharing, and professional development. SEI has a global pool of talent to unlock an unlimited amount of potential. The final strategic area of focus is culture. We believe culture drives a company forward and plays an integral part in its success. You can deliver something similar to a competitor's product or playbook, but you can't copy a culture. An SEI's culture is unique and valuable, and we are going to continue to invest in making it a huge differentiator. We recently refreshed our corporate values, examining them to cultivate an environment where our behavior aligns with those values. We will be nimble, maintaining focus and attention on our clients and opportunities. We are also looking at the future of our workforce. As the pandemic has shown us all, the traditional work model is shifting and it's permanently disrupted. In June, our workforce returned to our global offices, adopting a hybrid working model that will play a key part in reigniting our culture and bringing our teams back together. We have always understood the importance of integrating work and life because finding harmony in your professional and personal activities is key to achieving fulfillment. As the year progresses, we will continue our efforts to make changes that truly capitalize on our opportunities. We will remain focused on maintaining and accelerating growth in existing businesses, expanding our focus on new growth engines, and reinvigorating our current talent and culture strategies across the company. In future calls, we will continue to share our progress on these initiatives, as well as provide additional clarity on our evolving strategy. This concludes my prepared remarks. I will now turn it over to Dennis to discuss our financial results for the quarter. Dennis?
spk07: Thanks, Ryan. With our new format, I plan to cover financial information related to the quarter for the company and our business unit. As Ryan mentioned, EPS for the quarter was 81 cents per share. This compares to 93 cents during second quarter of 2021 and $1.36 for the first quarter of 2022. A reminder that the first quarter reflected a one-time event that equated to approximately 47 cents per share in earnings. Revenue for the quarter was $482 million compared to 476 million in 2021 and $581 million in the first quarter of 2022. First quarter reflected an $88 million one-time event. Total expenses for the quarter were $366 million, which compares to $340 million last year and $367 million in the first quarter. Revenues from asset management and administration were impacted by lower capital markets during the quarter. Processing revenues remained relatively flat from first quarter. There were no unusual revenue items during the quarter. Expenses increased year over year and were essentially flat from first quarter. The main drivers of expense growth continues to be compensation, inflation, and talent growth to support our growing business lines. We have also seen inflationary pressures impacting some of our third-party service costs and in professional fees related to the growing regulatory environment we operate in. we do not see these inflationary pressures abating. As Ryan mentioned, rightsizing our expenses to business growth and allocating spending to areas of accelerated growth are a priority. On the sales front, in our processing businesses of private banking and IMS, net sales events total 7.9 million and are expected to generate 5.6 million in recurring revenue. In our asset management related businesses, net sales were just under $1 million. Private banking net processing sales were negative 3.7 million. This reflects one new SWP sale to a current Trust 3000 client. Sales were offset by three Trust 3000 client losses. We re-contracted two clients during the quarter and installed two new clients on SWP. The current backlog of sold but expected to be installed revenue in the next 18 months is $38.9 million. This backlog does not reflect any revenue from Wells Fargo. Wells continues to assess its own strategy, which has led to some business divestment. We continue to service them on Trust 3000 and are working closely with them to be ready to move when they are. In addition to current quarter sales activity, we have two clients that are involved in M&A activity, State Street and Union Bank of California. Both firms have been acquired, State Street by FNZ and UBOC by U.S. Bank, a client. We are working closely with all organizations as they move to consolidate. The total revenue represented by State Street and UBOC is approximately $15 million. Profits and private banking reflect the impact of capital markets on its asset under management-related revenues. While net revenue from sales was a positive 1 million, lower capital markets resulted in reduced revenues from the first quarter. We are seeing good adoption of our asset management offering globally. Expenses in the quarter were down from the first quarter of 2022. This was partly due to direct costs associated with asset management, along with a concentrated effort on spending. We expect this effort to continue and grow in emphasis as we move forward under Sanjay's leadership. On the IMS front, net sales for the quarter were 11.6 million, 10.2 million of which is recurring. The quarter sales activity remains robust, reflecting an active market. Sales during the quarter should be considered in concert with the strong sales we had in first quarter, leading to one of the best first six months of any year. Revenue for the quarter was down slightly from first quarter, reflecting the impact of capital markets. Expenses grew slightly directly related to the addition of talent tied to our growth and the continued inflation pressures. Our backlog of sold but expected to install in the next 18 months recurring revenue is $29 million in this segment. Margins, while strong particularly in light of the market environment, reflect both the movement of revenue for market activity and our spending on attracting and retaining talent. Investment advisors experience essentially net flat cash flows during the quarter. Revenues for the quarter were down slightly from the first quarter as a direct result of capital market pressures and portfolio de-risking. Expenses were down slightly for the same period, helping margins hold in the mid-40s. We recruited 57 new advisors during the quarter and re-engaged 13 existing advisory firms. Advisor activity remains strong, but we are seeing a slowdown in market activity on the part of both advisors and their clients. As a reminder, during the quarter we prepared for the departure of Retirement Planners of America. This was addressed in an 8 file last November. At that time, the departure was planned for May 15th. The actual deconversion of these assets was in early July, and their accounts were fully invested in money market funds at the end of the second quarter. You will see this move in assets reflected in the Q3 asset balances. While this loss will be felt, one of the original five partners decided to move his business out of retirement planners and to continue to rely on us. We are thankful for this vote of confidence in our vision. In the institutional investor segment, OCIO net sales events for the second quarter were a positive $2.8 billion in assets. Growth sales were $3.2 billion, and client losses totaled $400 million. Second quarter new sales were diversified across U.S. endowment and foundations, governmental, and healthcare clients. Additionally, a large global investor selected SEI for a combination of our outsourced CIO and enhanced CIO platforms. Sales for the quarter equated to $3.3 million in new recurring revenue when implemented. The unfunded client backlog of gross sales at quarter end was $3.2 billion. Revenues for the quarter were down from first quarter due to capital market activity offset by slightly positive client flows. Expenses were also down, reflecting reduced costs as well as general expense management. In the investments in new business segment, revenues were flat to first quarter. Expenses in this segment were up slightly due to investments in our SEI SPHERE initiative. Spending on our one SEI work was up slightly also to first quarter due to a $900,000 write-down of a third-party software asset. We expect expenses in this segment while shifting to new initiatives to remain relatively flat to first quarter. LSB produced $29.8 million in profit during the quarter. This compares to $32.5 million during the first quarter of 2022. Revenues for LSB were $99.8 million compared to $108.5 million in the first quarter. LSB recorded performance fees of $4.3 million during the quarter reflecting improved relative performance. The reduction in revenues is a result of capital markets declining and the impact of net client flows. Net sales were essentially flat, while net flows from existing clients due to de-risking and reallocation were a negative 3 billion. Market depreciation was approximately 12 billion. The outlook for LSV is brightening as value investing continues to gain favor. Our tax rate for the quarter was 23.1%, consistent with first quarter. As we look forward, we are finalizing the financial impact related to our voluntary separation program we announced in June. Our initial assessment are that the cost associated with that program will approximate $54 to $58 million. The majority of this will be booked in the third quarter as a reserve. Most of those employees participating in the program are expected to leave by the end of 2022. While we do expect to capture recurring expense reductions, the main purpose of the program, as Ryan's discussed, is to enhance talent attraction and development to drive future growth. Finally, while capital markets are difficult to predict, A reminder that we are starting the third quarter with lower asset balances, which will put pressure on asset-based revenues. The matriculation of our backlog will help us move through this. On the expense front, the continued pressure on cost of talent and business overall seems to be moderating slightly, but still present. As Ryan said, we will manage through the current environment as we work on resetting our spending. That concludes my remarks. As a reminder, all of our unit heads are on the call. We will now take questions. Thank you.
spk06: Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press 1, then 0 on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw your question at any time by repeating the 1, 0 command. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset before pressing numbers. Once again, if you have a question, you may press 1, 0 at this time. And the first question from Ryan Kinney. with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
spk05: Hey, good afternoon. Good afternoon, Ryan. So question for Ryan. You mentioned that one of your key priorities is delivering growth while keeping an eye on margins. Could you just give a bit more color on how you're thinking about delivering growth versus delivering margin? And are you willing to let the pre-tax margin run a little bit lower now to get growth later?
spk03: Yeah, Ryan, I think one of the, Ryan, the thing that we've been really focused on right out of the gates is looking at our investment spend aligned with our short and medium-term revenue opportunities. So we're definitely going to keep a close eye on margin, but I think as we've said in kind of previous conversations, One of the first things you're going to see us do is really look to right-size expenses or realign expenses relative to the opportunities. So you might see a shift in some of our investment spend from current allocations to one unit to another where we believe the market opportunity and revenue opportunity is greater. So I think corporately we'll have the same focus on margins. You just may see some differences within the segments.
spk05: And then just to follow up on the backlog, heard the comment that Wells Fargo is no longer in there. I'm just wondering if you could give us any color on what's currently in the backlog and the timing that we should expect it to start to come through. Thanks.
spk07: Sure. So I try to be clear that the backlog number we put out there is that that is revenue that's going to matriculate in the next 18 months. So while Wells Fargo is still under contract and We're still working closely with Wells Fargo. They're still a big client, and we're very engaged with them. There's no plan right now for them to move any time in the next 18 months. So that's why they're not in that backlog number. So the banking backlog number, if you need it again, was... No, no, no. 38.9 million. And the backlog number under that same time period, 18 months for the IMS segment was 29 million. So we're really trying to get the back. As we go forward, the backlog numbers we're going to provide are those within that 18 month window because they're much more predictable. We know that we're highly confident they're going to occur on time. And I think that helps everybody better, you know, um, kind of predict the future, if you will.
spk05: Thank you.
spk07: You're welcome.
spk06: And next, we'll go to the line of Robert Lee with KBW. Please go ahead.
spk04: Great. Thanks. Good afternoon, everyone. Maybe, Dennis, the first question is just on the voluntary separation. I mean, I know it's not being done to drive cost savings per se, but You did mention there could be some recurring expense reductions. I mean, is there any way of kind of helping us think about how that would flow through? Should we be thinking that maybe that just kind of, you know, with the inflation pressures, that kind of helps mitigate it to some degree? Or is it really just you kind of expect whatever savings you have is going to, you know, be reinvested in the business kind of over the next, you know, year or so? Just trying to get a sense of how to think about that.
spk07: Yeah, I mean, it's hard to, you know, a year from now, it'll be hard to, to me, separate spending in July of 2023 relative to that particular program. So I think that's a little bit further out. I think the, our expectations are that, you know, this is a program we're trying to be, you know, not only smart with and about because, you know, because our long, some of our longstanding really valuable valued employees are involved. But also, as Ryan discussed, we wanted to reset a little bit the workforce, open up opportunity, create more mobility, bring in some external talent, use it as an opportunity where we have gaps to get some talent outside the company that enhances our current talent. Along the way there, particularly with timing of things, there's a good chance that some of the roles we won't specifically backfill, and we'll get some benefit there. But I also mentioned that most of those involved in the program we would expect would be moving on from SCI before the end of the year, so the timing is also kind of laddered out over the next, I'd say, four months or so, five months or so. Then some folks will extend into next year. So while we do And I do expect that we'll get some recurring savings specific to this event. It's not the driver, but it would certainly help us if we did get that. The other thing that, you know, we have talked about is, you know, the markets are tough right now. So, you know, we will be discerning and as Ryan kind of sorts through and all the sort through strategy, and how we're going to continue to go forward. It changes. Ryan, he can speak to this, but we'll continue to consider. We'll take that into account as well. We still are going through the details of the individuals involved, the roles, how or whether we would backfill those roles, who we would backfill them with to the extent we did, and then what things will change, and then we'll have a better feel for kind of the economics over time.
spk04: Okay, fair enough. And maybe in the investment advisor segment, I think, Dennis, you mentioned relatively flat flows overall, but could you maybe give us some color because, you know, it's kind of the mix between advisory, you know, AUA assets, you know, flows into kind of administrative assets versus flows into, you know, asset management programs, you know, and maybe progress in each.
spk03: Hey, Rob. Wayne's in the room. Turn that one to Wayne.
spk00: Yeah. Hey, Wayne. Hi. Hey, Rob. Yeah, really, that comment was basically a comment on what would traditionally be called AUM, so the assets we manage. If you wanted to look at platform-only assets or, you know, assets that we just administered. Actually, the quarter was pretty good. I mean, I think when you looked at it was down from the first quarter flows while we were getting more and more momentum on sort of our platform strategy, but actually the second quarter flows were strong compared to what we had last year. But that's not, so the comments on essentially flat were really around assets under management.
spk04: Okay, great. That's helpful. And then one last one, maybe back to Dennis, I apologize for going back and forth with the new format, but in the private bank segment, I think you talked about, um, two banks, you know, the process of being acquired, uh, you know, I, I guess the 15 million you pointed out, you know, that they generate in revenue between the two, I guess the right way to think of that, just to make sure I'm on the right page. is that you would consider that to be kind of at risk, you know, depending on how those mergers shake out and whether you, you know, retain the business or not. Just want to make sure that's how you're thinking of it.
spk07: Yeah, that was really the purpose of putting that number out there, Rob, was just to lay out that those, you know, that's what's at risk. You know, and like I said, and Sanjay's here, he can comment, that we are working with both those clients as well as, at least in one case, the buyer, to see how things go forward from there. But that is what's at risk. I don't know, Sanjay, if you... Great.
spk04: No, I agree with that. Great. I'll get back in the queue. Thanks for taking my question. Thanks, Rob.
spk06: And next, we'll go to the line of Owen Lau with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.
spk01: Good afternoon, and thank you for taking my questions. So even though the market was quite challenging in the second quarter, and I think your average asset under management, excluding LSV, was down about a low teens, quarter of a quarter, but your revenue was only down by about a low single digit or so, based on my math. I'm just wondering how you can manage to do that. Your revenue seems to outperform your AUM decline. So it will be great if you can unpack a little bit more on that. Thanks.
spk07: Sure. I mean, there's a couple reasons for it. Cash flow timing is everything, too, in the business, so that has an impact. The institutional business is not a business where we book revenues based on average assets during the period. That revenue is booked based on ending assets over the prior four-month periods. So second quarter would be March, April, May, and June ending assets. And while June, you know, things kind of fell off a cliff a little bit, you know, we did have the benefit of March in the revenue calculations. So there's, you know, some of it's also just the timing. And then the, you know, if you're including in your revenue calculation, Owen, the IMS assets under administration side of things, they're the book of businesses so diversified that there's really not a correlation, direct correlation between market performance and ultimately asset performance. And they're also cash flows, meaning client implementations in clients maybe that are shutting down a fund or leaving. It's a little more choppy. But they're the diversification of the business really helps us in down markets because it doesn't correlate to the equity and fixed income markets.
spk01: Got it. That's very helpful. And then a question about the strategy, Ryan. We appreciate your comment about your overall strategy. In terms of the growth one, the growth strategy, could you please talk about whether you have any aspirational medium to longer term target of your top line growth and margin expansion and things like that? And how should investors think about your growth strategy quantitatively? Thank you.
spk03: Hey, Alan, thanks for the question. As far as the growth strategy is concerned, we're absolutely working on some more tangible kind of quantitative targets. We're not kind of the point where we'll be sharing that yet, but we're really looking at it through a few different lenses. One, as we talked about last time, looking at the organic growth potential of our existing businesses and our existing engines. looking at some of the new ideas and incubation ideas that we have underway and what their potential is. And then as you saw last year with SEI with the acquisitions we've made, you know, where does M&A play a role in that? I do think that over time we're going to be a little bit clearer around what our aspirations are, but I think you can be rest assured our plan is to exponentially grow the top-line revenue and maintain margins. Got it.
spk01: Thank you very much. Thank you.
spk06: And the next questioner is Robert Lee with KBW. Please go ahead.
spk04: Great. Thanks for taking my follow-up. This is probably a little bit of semantics or geography on the asset balances, but just kind of curious and investment managers. I mean, I know you called out winning a couple of big real estate mandates from some real estate managers in the quarter, but just kind of curious why that would all mean that collective investment trust fund programs jumped, you know, what, like $60 billion. I'm just kind of curious why that would fall under AUM and not AUA, and maybe it's because it's in a collective trust or you're technically the manager, but just kind of curious, you know, why it falls there as opposed to AUA.
spk02: Yeah, sure. Hey, Rob, this is Phil McCabe. How are you?
spk04: Good, Phil. How are you?
spk02: Great. Thank you. Yeah, as Dennis said before, the... balances sort of ebb and flow a little bit. If you look on the traditional side, some of the long-only managers struggled a little bit in June. On the alternative side, some of them did much better. If you point to your question on CITs in particular, the client that we referenced in the last quarter was Allspring Capital. I'm not sure if we mentioned that name before. With that being said, they did fund at the very end of this quarter, and those balances are reflected in the particular number that you're looking at.
spk04: Okay, great. Okay, that was it, simple enough. Thank you.
spk07: Thanks, Rob.
spk06: And at this time, that's all the questions. We'll turn it back over to CEO Ryan Hickey. Please go ahead.
spk03: Thanks, everyone. In closing, SEI's future is bright. We will remain vigilant about how we deploy capital, and we will make the changes we believe are necessary to improve our results. Keeping that in mind, we will look for ways we can redirect some discretionary investments that best align with revenue opportunities. We have the people, the platforms, and the assets to exploit the growing demand in wealth management for organizations to partner with credible and strategic leaders like SDI. As Philadelphia native Noah Chomsky once said, optimism is a strategy for making a better future, because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so. Make no mistake, we are optimistic. In the fourth quarter, we will be hosting an Investor Day. It's been a number of years since we hosted this community on our Oaks campus, and we look forward to welcoming you all back. Additional details will be provided in the coming months. Thank you for attending our call today.
spk06: That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for your participation and for using AT&T conferencing services. You may now disconnect.
spk08: We're sorry. Your conference is ending now. Please hang up.
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