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spk02: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the SEI First Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in 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 stars and zero. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would like to turn the conference over to our host, Ms. Lindsay Opsal. Please go ahead.
spk00: Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us on today's first quarter 2023 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 our business segments, Paul Plotter, Bill McCabe, Sanjay Sharma, and Wayne Withrow. Mark Warner, SEI's controller, is also with us. 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 seic.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 press 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 turn the call over to CEO Ryan Hickey. Ryan.
spk05: Thanks, Lindsay. Hello, everyone. I hope you're all doing well and enjoying the beginning of the spring season. We are nearly a year into the leadership changes at SDI, and I'm optimistic about our future and our ability to manage through times of market uncertainty. Turning to this quarter's financial results, first quarter revenues declined 19% from a year ago, First quarter earnings were down 53% from a year ago. First quarter EPS of 79 cents decreased 42% from the $1.36 reported in the first quarter of 2022. Adjusting this for the $88 million one-time revenue event in quarter one 2022, as we discussed at the time, revenue declined 5% and earnings per share decreased 11%. In the quarter, we repurchased 1.4 million shares of SCI stock at an average price of $59.03 per share. This translates into $80.3 million of stock purchases. We had a solid sales quarter. Net sales events totaled approximately $23.4 million, $19 million of which were net recurring. This was an increase over the $11 million net recurring number we reported in the previous quarter. First quarter sales reflect two important indications. First, the positive direction in which we are moving and the increase in overall sales momentum across SDI. Second, when you get underneath the numbers, sales results and pipelines are showing traction in the areas where we have increased our market focus and attention. I am encouraged by the sales results relative to last quarter, particularly the types of clients we are winning and the ability to install them quickly without significant investment to realize the revenue. I'm also happy to see positive sales contributions from multiple business lines across FDI. We remain immersed in closing sales and building our sales pipelines. Additionally, we have increased our focus on expense management. We will constantly assess and revise our alignment of capital to opportunity, and we'll make tough decisions to improve profitability, but without cannibalizing our medium to long-term growth agendas. Dennis will go into further details on our financial results. Turning to our line to business, the investment manager segment started the year well. I had the opportunity to attend our client conference this quarter, and the engagement and commitment we have from this client base gives us great pride. We truly have clients that value the strategic importance of SEI to their growth agendas. We are executing very well on the new business front. In our alternative segment, we onboarded a large West Coast private equity firm, as well as a competitive takeaway of a New York-based real estate manager. Existing clients raised and deployed significant capital across private equity, private credit, real estate, and infrastructure strategies during the quarter. The traditional business has been growing steadily with new clients and expanded product lines, and we see our CIT business experiencing significant growth. We recently signed a new SMA deal with a large U.S. manager, opening up more opportunity, and we're having success and increased traction in our client base with SEI Sphere, securing a large traditional client in the first quarter. On a global level, Our UK, European, and Irish businesses show positive growth. Our private equity, regulatory services, and private credit offerings expanded through cross-sales with existing clients. Turning to investment advisors, we had positive momentum in our business with almost $500 million in net cash flow. We saw more traction in the RIA segment with strong close in the quarter. We are excited about the growth opportunities this segment presents for SEI across our technology, investment processing, and asset management capabilities. We continue to work through the shift of product types used by our clients from mutual funds to SMA, ETFs, direct indexing, and third-party branded products. We expect to see this movement of assets continue, but while there may be a drag on our revenue rate earned on managed assets in the short term, the richness of our offering enables us to keep and capture assets, supporting our long-term growth and health. Our broader investment solutions are increasingly resonating with intermediary clients, and we also continue to invest in product and technology innovations. As I have mentioned many times in the past year, the growth of alternatives for all SEI segments is a key strategic agenda. During the quarter, we began the process of registering two new alternative investment funds, the liquid alternative fund and the alternative income fund. We also see terrific adoption of SEI Connect's investor portal, with clients having access to improved capabilities around advisor and end investor engagement and collaboration tools. In the institutional investor segment, we advanced the combination of OCIO and ECIO platforms to larger, sophisticated investors that embrace delegation but want more real-time portfolio information. Corporate-defined benefit curtailments and annuitizations continue to be a headwind in the U.K. and U.S., and were the primary reason for first-quarter losses. However, we managed to offset some of those losses by improved cross-sales and lead generation for other SEI services in our private wealth management business. In the private bank business, we had a very active quarter. We signed two new clients in the quarter and successfully implemented two clients. We also recontracted three clients, evidencing our focus on client engagement and retention to propel growth. One of the major points of stakeholder feedback last year was to get the private bank's business back on a growth trajectory and improve margins. I believe our results this quarter really displayed the great jobs Sanjay and the team have done in a short time to solidify the foundation for banking, manage expenses thoughtfully, but put us in a position to start adding profitable revenue moving forward. We've reoriented our sales focus over the last nine months with clear segments, including the U.S. community and regional bank space, U.K. private client investment managers and wealth managers, and a targeted universe of larger U.S. institutions. Those strategies have translated into a more robust and predictable pipeline for SCI, and we are focused on advancing those prospects through the sales funnel to get deals closed, install that revenue, and expand the pipeline. Finally, we had modest positive sales in the quarter in SCI's family office services business as well as SCI's sphere, both within existing markets and standalone. And additionally, our partnership with LSV remains strong. On the town and culture front, we have remained steadfast that to achieve our goal, we need to embrace change and align top talent across SCI to accelerate our growth. Today, I would like to highlight a couple immediate leadership changes. Paul Clauter will lead our investment advisors business, which will expand to focus on North American intermediaries. Jay Cipriano will take Paul's current role as head of our institutional asset management business and join the current executive management team at SEI. Jay was most recently senior vice president and head of SEI's alternatives processing business in the IMF segment. both will report to Wayne Withrow. These leadership moves give us greater opportunity to maintain and drive success in both the short and medium term, while also driving talent mobility and opportunity across the organization to position us for the future. Congratulations to both Jay and Paul. We will be issuing a press release tomorrow with the detailed changes and new leadership structure. So, in summary, SEI is going to be very decisive and focused on the following. Driving sales momentum and getting more engines growing like we have with the IMF segment. Managing our expenses and increasing earnings per share. Investing in talent and solutions to expand new and existing market penetration. This concludes my prepared remarks. I will now turn it over to Dennis to discuss our financial results for the quarter. Dennis?
spk08: Thanks, Ryan. I will cover information related to the quarter for the company and units. As Ryan mentioned, EPS for the quarter was 79 cents a share. This compares to $1.36 during the first quarter of 2022 and 83 cents for the fourth quarter of 2022. Revenue for the quarter was $469 million compared to $581 million in 2022 and $457 million in the fourth quarter. A reminder that the first quarter of last year included a one-time $88 million revenue event that equated to approximately 47 cents in earnings per share. Adjusted for that, revenue would have been $493 million, and EPS would have been 89 cents. Total expenses for the quarter were $367 million, which compares to $367 million last year and $363 million in the fourth quarter. Expense management at a corporate level has been and will continue to be a focus as we grow revenue. On the sales front, in our technology and investment processing businesses of private banking and IMS, net sales events totaled $21.2 million and are expected to generate $17 million in recurring revenue. In our asset management-related businesses, net sales were approximately $1.1 million In addition, we added an additional $1 million in sales from our newer initiatives. Total sales were $23.4 million, of which $19 million is recurring. Private banking sales were $2.5 million, of which $700,000 is recurring. This reflects two new SWP sales in the U.S. We also recontracted three clients during the quarter, representing $3.4 million in annual recurring revenue. During the quarter, we successfully installed two clients on SWP. The current backlog of sold but expected to be installed revenue in the next 18 months is $40.9 million. We are scheduled to install approximately 50% of this by the end of the second quarter. We have a clear focus on installing our backlog on time to enable our clients to grow and to drive revenue matriculation to SEI. Asset management revenues in private banking were up slightly during the quarter as a result of market appreciation and positive flows of approximately $304 million. Expenses in the quarter were flat from the fourth quarter of 2022. This reflects a focus on expense management as Sanjay and his team reset the foundation of the business for growth. On the IMS front, net sales for the quarter were $18.7 million, $16.3 million is recurring. During the quarter, we recontracted 11 clients, totaling $3.1 million in annual recurring revenue. Revenue for the quarter was up compared to fourth quarter, reflecting the impact of capital markets and client installations. Expenses were up slightly from the fourth quarter as we continued to invest in talent to support our growth. Our backlog of sold but expected to install in the next 18 months recurring revenue is $27.5 million. For investment advisors, net cash flow was approximately a positive $466 million. This reflects increased flows in the strategic programs and products we have launched over the past few years, offset by negative flows in mutual fund products. Our newer offerings are helping us move the business forward, providing more choice to our clients and helping us offset the negative flows we see out of mutual funds and the revenue impact from that. Revenues for the quarter were up slightly from fourth quarter as a result of capital market performance during the quarter and net flow activity. Expenses were up slightly due to asset appreciation. We recruited 46 new advisors during the quarter five of which are in the newer RIA channel. In the institutional investor segment, net sales events for the quarter were essentially flat. The unfunded client backlog of gross sales at quarter end was $2.2 billion. Revenues for the quarter were flat from fourth quarter due to capital market activity offset partially by net client fundings. We continue to see pricing pressure across all institutional markets and continued headwinds in the corporate defined benefit segment globally. Expenses were also flat, reflecting general expense management. In the investments and new business segment, revenues and expenses were flat the fourth quarter. We had net sales of approximately one million in the quarter. We expect expenses in this segment, while shifting to and supporting newer initiatives, to remain in this range. Moving to LSB, LSB produced $28.9 million in profit during the quarter. This compares to $31.7 million during the fourth quarter. Revenues for LSB were $98.2 million compared to $107 million in the fourth quarter, which I'll remind you included $13.4 million of performance fees. LSB recorded performance fees of $2.5 million during the first quarter, reflecting continued positive relative performance. Core revenue growth is a result of investment performance and capital growth in assets offset by net negative client flows. While sales in the first quarter were a challenge, LSB has an active pipeline and positive performance will help. Our tax rate for the quarter was 23.6%. This has elevated over fourth quarter, which was 18.1%. This higher rate is due to a reduced level of option exercises and the related tax timing difference benefit received from those. You can expect our tax rate to be in this range during 2023. That concludes my remarks. As a reminder, all of our unit heads are on the call, and we will now take any questions. Thank you.
spk02: Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press One and then zero on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw your question at any time by repeating the one-zero command. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset before pressing the numbers. Once again, if you have a question, you may press one and zero at this time. And first, we'll go to the line of Ryan Kenney with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
spk07: Hey, good afternoon. Hey, Ryan. Hi, Ryan. A couple questions. So first, wondering if you could touch on some of the recent events in the banking sector. One, do you have any direct exposure to any of the banks that have had issues? And then number two, how should we think about the impact, if any, on your pipeline and appetite from banks right now for new sales? It looks like sales held up, but would it be helpful to get some color? Thanks.
spk05: That's great, Brian. Sanjay is in the room, so I'll let Sanjay comment so we can break. Did you get both those questions, Sanjay?
spk06: Yeah, so the first one is about the Silicon Valley Bank of the Republic. Brief background before I answer the question. Silicon Valley Bank acquired one of our Trusty 1000 clients, and during the period of uncertainty, we acted as an excellent partner and performed our fiduciary responsibilities diligently. Essentially, we and they were and they are BAU. The client is smaller relative to our average client size. The acquired business is still with us, and it's supported by our Trusty 1000 platform and operates as and we have not seen any significant change to their business. During that uncertain period, we acted as a good partner. We have received excellent feedback from our clients about how we supported them during this period of uncertainty. Now, going on to the second question, how it has impacted our pipeline or regional community bank segment. Our belief is that such instability cycles generally result in increased M&A or consolidation activity. As consolidation occurs, the need to scale, integrate, and create efficiencies increases at the consolidator side. These needs do present opportunities to further grow our business footprint as the outsourcing function in which SEA excels and partners with our clients is a great period of growth for clients as well. So M&As are always very challenging as you have to deal with the business operations and technology rationalization, consolidation, while ensuring you don't lose acquired business. So SA has significant experience in this space, and we are very well prepared to help our clients to acquire and grow their business. That's the kind of traction we are seeing in our pipeline as well.
spk07: Thanks. And shifting gears to expenses, the pre-tax margin has been in the low 20s for a few quarters now. That's below your usual levels in the high 20s. Should we think about that as the run rate going forward? And if not, how should we think about the timeline to get overall margins up? Is there a mix shift between the businesses and that? And if you could layer in the outlook for margins across the various business lines, that would help.
spk08: Sure. So, I mean, from my perspective, margin improvement will come from revenue matriculation and growth and the ability to drive, get that to the bottom line. We've seen more evidence of that in the first quarter as we did get revenue improvement across our different business lines. But also, as you know, in the asset management-related businesses, when you have market contraction, which we had last year, and you have revenue contraction as a result, that has a pretty direct impact on margins. I think, in some sense, if markets continue to improve and we capture revenue just from that element of our business model, that tends to get to the bottom line. So that'll help margins kind of get back to closer to more historical levels. So our business models haven't changed. Our approach hasn't changed. Our scale and efficiency capabilities haven't changed. Although we have one business line, particularly institutional, we do have some pricing pressure. It's still a highly scalable business with revenue growth. So I would be optimistic that margins will continue to improve as top line approves. Thank you.
spk02: Next, we'll go to the line of Owen Lau with Oppenheimer.
spk09: Yeah, thank you for taking my question. Could you please talk about how the activity in the PE space has any impact on IMS? I mean, it looks like some of these activity has slowed down a little bit. but some of these larger firms can still, you know, waste money and waste external funds. How do you think about the potential impact here? Thank you.
spk05: Hey, Owen. It's Ryan. I hope you're doing well. Thanks for the question. Phil's in the room. I think it's a great question. I'll turn to him to give you an overview, kind of not just maybe in the PE space, but what we're seeing across the board because, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, Not only does the sales results remain pretty strong across the board with IMS, we're really encouraged about the pipeline, but especially also from existing clients. So, Phil, I don't know if you want to dive in a little deeper.
spk04: Sure. Thanks, Ryan. Hi, Owen. Just real quick, as you can tell by our sales in first quarter, they were pretty solid, especially Q1 is normally a little bit of a slower quarter for us. We have a very, very, very active pipeline. The market, there's a ton of activity going on. A lot of our clients are larger private equity and alternative managers. They have a lot of dry powder. They've been investing, you know, in taking these opportunities when the market's a little bit dislocated just to buy more and more companies and things along those lines. So, you know, our private credit book is strong, real estate's strong, infrastructure's strong. I mean, in general, we're in a really good spot. So the team is... you know, large and the bench is deep and, you know, we're doing really well.
spk09: Got it. That's very helpful. And I want to go back to a private banking side. The margin was up in the first quarter and the revenue was better than our expectation. Just me, can you please just add more color on the potential revenue trend and also margin from here and And then I think a couple of quarters ago, you highlighted State Street and Union Bank of California will deconvert in the first half of 2023. Could you please give us an update on that? Thank you.
spk05: Yeah, that's great, Owen. Sanjay and I will maybe tag-team this one. So, you know, to your opening point, I mean, I think we've been very clear and hopefully very consistent over the last few quarters about that we were really focused on getting those margins from banking back on a growth trajectory, on a path back to historical levels, and really doing that through a combination of not just managing expenses, but really getting that pipeline built up to a way that the revenue that's coming in is dropping through to the bottom line. I think Dennis touched on that in his remarks. So we are really encouraged by that progress. We know we have a couple headwinds that you just highlighted, and I'll turn to Sanjay on that front. But we have had an extremely aggressive effort over the last few quarters engaging our existing clients and really solidifying that foundation for growth and building those pipelines. So we feel good about where we are right now. We know what the expectation is to continue to grow those margins. But, Simon, do you want to talk about a couple of the specific examples, Owen, to have maybe your overall view of where we are?
spk06: Thank you, Ryan. Hey, Owen. How are you? Good. Oh, you're right. We are recovering from the previously announced decline in deconversions. And the full impact of those deconversions is visible this year. But at the same time, those deconversions are not easy. I mean, think about State Street. You just called out that deconversions got delayed many times. And last month itself, State Street reached out to us asking for further delay. But we know that there is a small deconversion queue. We have to deal with that. But at the same time, as Ryan mentioned, we have been very disciplined about our margin and expense management and improving our client engagement to solidify the banking foundation. As you could see, the number of re-contracts in the last nine months and securing long-term revenue, that's a good example of our efforts. At the same time, if you look at, Dennis called it out, the backlog deliveries are another major focus area with a view to improve our bottom line growth. You would see the results of our improved backlog delivery capabilities and discipline in coming quarters. Dennis mentioned 40-plus million worth of backlog, almost 50% of that getting delivered in the coming quarter. Also, the ongoing conversion of U.S. Bank as our first software as a service client is opening up new opportunities in the market. Good part is the union is getting acquired by U.S. Bank. Some of those clients, we are directly migrating on SWP, and that is presenting more opportunities for us to support such vendors.
spk09: Okay, that's perfect. And if I make it, just can I add one more housekeeping question on buyback? So you purchased $80 million of shares in the first quarter, and then you just announced an additional $250 million. So should we think about you have $183 million remaining for your share buyback, Dennis? Thanks.
spk08: No, the remaining, what we had remaining before the additional authorization was about $12 million. So we have about $262 million of authorization now.
spk09: And then you purchase 80 million in the first quarter. Should we subtract 80 million from 263 and get to 180?
spk08: Basically, what we did, we came into the quarter with 92 million of authorization. Oh, got it. You used up 80 of it and just increased it by two-fifths. Got it. Okay. Thank you very much.
spk02: Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder to queue up for questions, it is 1 and 0. 1 and 0 to queue up. And next, we'll go to a line of Jeff Schmidt with William Blair. Please go ahead.
spk10: Hi. Good afternoon. Looking at revenues in the institutional investor business, they were down 14% of the quarter. You know, I think you referenced some client losses around defined benefit plan. Clients, is that correct? And how should we think about growth for the year there?
spk08: I mean, Paul's on the call as well. So, you know, Paul's comment. But we did have some net kind of wins and losses during the quarter. And this business line, the pressure point on it has been on the corporate defined benefits segment of the market. And so Paul and the team's credit over time past five, six years, they've worked really hard to diversify their business to make that part of the business a smaller and smaller percentage of overall assets and revenue. But we do see that there's pressures in that segment of the market will continue. Even though there is opportunity to win business there, it'll continue. Now all the pressure is actually on Jay and Cipriano, so it's kind of shifted, or will shift in about... as soon as we hang up this call. But Paul, do you want to add anything?
spk01: Yeah, I could give my parting comments. A couple of things in the dynamics of the institutional business. First and foremost, even though we saw market recovery in the first quarter, the comparative you're using is comparing against perhaps a time when interest rates were lower. And the reason that's relevant is we have a lot of long duration fixed income assets that are there commensurate to the liabilities. As interest rates go up, those assets go down, equities went down, and alternatives went down. So we really had three levers, even though it was corrected in the first quarter, that impacted the asset values. And obviously our revenues are derived on the asset values. So hopefully with some of the correction we see in the first quarter, That is definitely lifting the baseline. We do see some activity around DB plans, around curtailments and annuitizations, which we've noted for quite some time. But part of the positive side is we talked about in the comments that Ryan had, this combination of ECIO and OCIO is really taking some positive feedback from large institutional investors that want to delegate but still want some sophisticated analytics and portfolio look through. So we have four active deals that we're currently working on that are all sizable, that are still in process, but we're quite optimistic about those after coming off one that we won last year that's still funding in the backlog. So hopefully that helps some additional commentary.
spk10: Yes, it does. Thank you. And then going back to the margins in the private banks business, you know, they jumped to close to 7%, I guess, despite kind of weaker top line growth. Was that mainly driven by amortization expense rolling off? And so should we sort of think about 7% as kind of the run rate going forward? And, you know, what would it take to get above 10%?
spk05: I think we've been really consistent. I think we've been really consistent on this. It's a great question. So that was not amortization rolling off the drove. That was real expense management around getting very focused on our R&D dollars and deployment aligned with where we believe we have opportunity. Sanjay and the team continue, Jeff, to be very focused on saying, where are we building new capabilities and investing in enhancements? for markets that we believe we can repeatedly sell and generate a return. So I would say that margin improvement was a combination of three things, installing the backlog that we had available over the quarter, a couple new name sales and some one-time revenue that Sanjay and the team generated, and really, really thoughtful and deliberate expense management. And you can expect all three of those things to persist.
spk10: Okay, great. Thank you. Sanjay, you got something? Yep, I got something.
spk08: Yeah, and I think just so you're, I mean, our margin improvement that we're really paying attention to is fourth quarter to first quarter. And that, you know, the amortization expense in fourth quarter was comparable to first quarter, so it would not have been amortization expense.
spk10: Okay. And what would it take to get above 10%? I mean, what is your path to that?
spk05: So our path to that, as Sanjay touched on earlier, is installing that $40 million backlog. And that backlog is in a really good spot in terms of timing and delivery and being kind of screen status as we think about it, Jeff, in terms of the implementation. So install that $40 million, manage through the headwinds of a couple of the losses that we talked about and that Owen touched on in his question. But I think Dennis touched on this and so did Sanjay. One of the reasons we're really encouraged about the sales pipeline is when we look at that sales pipeline, these are deals that we believe we can win and install, that that revenue will flow through to the bottom line, and we can refresh and refill those pipelines pretty quickly. Now, we need to evidence that. I understand that. But the first two things are right in our control in terms of installing the backlog of signed clients yet to be implemented and continuing to be really diligent about expense management. Sanjay, do you want me to touch on anything else there? You're right.
spk06: It's a combination of discipline, expense management, stable client base. You saw that the focus re-contract effort on our part. And then targeted sales pipeline efforts. And the other thing which I will again call out is our improved capabilities and the efficiency we have instilled in backlog delivery. And that's something we'll prove in the coming quarters.
spk05: And I think Sanjay and the team will get upgraded to concierge key soon for as much as they've been on the road in front of clients, and that's been really paying off.
spk10: All right, great. Thank you. Thanks for the answers.
spk02: You're welcome. Next we'll go to the line of Mike Brown with KBW. Please go ahead.
spk11: Okay, great. Hey, Ryan, you highlighted some of the cross-selling success that you guys have been seeing recently, which is certainly encouraging to hear. Can you just expand on where you think the, maybe the biggest opportunities are there as you've been, you know, certainly, um, seemingly much more focused on that opportunity set. And then if you could also just touch on the SC, SCI sphere, when that you, that you've mentioned in your prepared remarks, can you just expand on how that opportunity came up? And, you know, if you, if you see future opportunities for, for that to play out with your existing, your existing client base, um, particularly for SCI sphere.
spk05: Yeah, so Mike, thanks for the question. I might answer those in reverse, and Phil, if you have any comments here. The FCI Sphere deal we talked about was an IMS prospect that we were engaged with in 2022 on an IMS platform sale for front-end technology and administration. But through the sales process, the IMS sales team introduced FCI Sphere, which was really attractive to that client. Due to some of the things that they were doing strategically with their fundraising, they the agenda with SPHERE. So not only did we pick up a SPHERE win in the first quarter, we remained actively engaged in the sales process on the IMF side. And Phil, if you want to come in, I think that we're seeing an uptick in that activity across traditional and alternative asset managers.
spk04: So that particular client has multiple entities. So I think that sphere win was just the first of a couple different wins that could come there. But to talk to your point on cross-selling, we've been teaching and educating the whole entire sales team on how to sell some of these other products that we have a lot of. We're getting better traction across across not only the IMS market, but across all of the markets.
spk05: So that's a great point, Phil. Back to your earlier question, I think there's kind of where do we see the opportunity and what are we doing about it? As Phil just touched on, there's a lot more of what I would call kind of horizontal sales training and engagement across the company to make sure all of our client-facing representatives are aware of our capabilities, can talk about our capabilities, but know who the subject matter experts are inside SEI to introduce inside a sales agenda. And I think when we look across the continuum, if you think again about SEI having three core pillars around technology, investment processing, and asset management, As we extend into other large segments, you know, as Wayne and the team go into larger RIAs and we look at asset management distribution and the things that Sanjay is doing with the banking clients, especially our large enterprise clients, Honestly, Mike, I think we just see opportunity as firms look to consolidate vendors to try to leverage more capabilities out of their strategic partners. We feel optimistic that our suite of capabilities really does resonate in many of those spaces. I think excitedly, we don't think there's just one capability that we have that we think we can cross-sell a lot across the continuum. We think a product of increased client engagement and a better understanding of where those firms are trying to deploy capital is going to open up more opportunities. But I think Phil really hit it more around the investment we're making in education, engagement, and training across FDI to make sure our folks are aware and attentive to what we have at hand.
spk11: Okay, that was great. Thanks for all the all the thoughts there. Maybe just one last one for me. How are you guys seeing the prospects on the M&A front here? You kind of touched on the, you know, briefly on the buyback side of the equation, but just curious how you think about that lever when it comes to capital allocations?
spk05: Yeah, so we have ramped up our activity on the M&A front. We've put an SEI individual last year in charge of corporate development. We have actually added resource to that team. We have expanded our kind of pipeline of opportunities there. I would say we've been more proactive now as opposed to reactive, and we've got kind of a clear path forward. in terms of capabilities and segments where we are interested in potentially acquiring assets to accelerate growth. We gave an update to our board this week on that M&A pipeline, so it is much more active in 2023, and we have a kind of more tangible pipeline of opportunities. Okay, good to hear.
spk02: Thanks, Ryan. At this time, there's no one else in queue. I'll turn it back over to CEO Ryan Hickey.
spk05: Thank you. Appreciate all the questions and engagement today. In closing, we are going to continue to be really bold. We believe in our plan, and we're positive about employee, client, and market engagement. We're going to be deliberate and decisive to deliver solutions that the market values, continue to help our clients succeed, and position SEI for continued top-line and bottom-line growth. I'm confident in our strategy and our willingness to challenge ourselves. I'm also excited for our results to continue to validate our direction. Thank you all for joining today's call.
spk02: That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for your participation and for using AT&T conferencing services.
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