SS&C Technologies Holdings, Inc.

Good afternoon. Thank you for standing by. My name is Brent and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the SS&C Technologies fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question at that time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, again, press star one. Thank you. It's now my pleasure to turn today's call over to Justine Stone, head of investor relations. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Hi, everyone. Welcome and thank you for joining us for our fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings call. I'm Justine Stone, Investor Relations for SS&C Technologies. With me today is Bill Stone, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Rahul Kanwar, President and Chief Operating Officer, and Patrick Vedanti, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, we need to review the Safe Harbor Statement. Please note that various remarks we make today about future expectations, plans, and prospects, including the financial outlook we provide, constitute forward-looking statements for the purposes of the Safe Harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including those discussed in the risk factor section of our most recent annual report on Form 10-K, which is on file at the SEC and can also be accessed on our website. These forward-looking statements represent our expectations only as of today, February 10th, 2021. While the company may elect to update these forward-looking statements, it specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. During today's call, we'll be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures or reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures, comparable GAAP financial measures. It's included in today's earnings release, which is located in the Investor Relations section of our website at www.sfctech.com. In the third quarter of 2021, we entered into a joint venture named DomaniRx LLC, which we are the majority interest holder and primary beneficiary. All earnings figures discussed today, including operating income, EBITDA, net income, and EPS are attributable to SS&C based on the ownership interest retained by SS&C. I will now call the turnover to Bill.

Thanks, Justine, and thanks, everyone, for joining. Our results for the fourth quarter are $1.296 billion in adjusted revenue, up 7.5 percent, and $1.28 in adjusted diluted earnings per share, up 13.3 percent. For the year, adjusted revenue was $5,058.9 million, up 8.1 percent, and adjusted diluted APS was $5.02. up 16.7 percent. Adjusted consolidated EBITDA was $522.9 million for the quarter, and our EBITDA margin was 40.3 percent. Our fourth quarter adjusted organic revenue was up 6.9 percent, ahead of our expectations. Our alternatives at interlex businesses, interlinks businesses continue to drive our top-line growth, growing at 12.9 and 23 percent, respectively. As I mentioned in our earnings press release, the pandemic and its impact on the labor force has put pressure on our costs. Much of our R&D efforts are diverted towards automation and efficiency in our services business, and these productivity gains should counteract the pressure from higher labor costs. At the same time, the great resignation is drawing attention at the highest levels of fund companies, causing many to consider third-party administrators. This creates opportunity. We continue to see shifts in talent across the industry. Firms with in-house operations cannot hire talent fast enough and our competitors are not able to replace talent or meet the needs of scaling their businesses. We see this phenomenon worldwide and we expect it to be a catalyst for outsourcing services as well as clients being willing to invest in technology. 2021 was a record-breaking year for M&A. propelling our interlinks business to new heights while our execution generated market share gain. Global M&A volumes topped $5 trillion for the first time ever, comfortably eclipsing the previous record of $4.55 trillion. Based on publicly announced deals, we gained 5 percent market share in the M&A market. Our current forecast, based on a survey of over 300 dealmakers, found a majority expected level of M&A activity to increase in 2022. SF&C generated net cash from operating activities of $1,429,000,000 for the 12 months ended December 31st, 2021, up 20.6% or $244,000,000 from 2020. We paid down $519.9 million in debt in 2021 and our leverage ratio stand at 1.72 secured and 2.69 total. Our shareholder-friendly capital allocation strategy remains a top priority. In 2021, we bought back 6.8 million shares at an average price of $71.74 per share for a total of $487.9 million. We were restricted from buying back stock in Q4-21 due to material non-public information related to the Blue Prism acquisitions. In November, the Board approved a 25% increase in our quarterly dividend payout, now at $0.20 per share. We are still limited to what we can say regarding the Blue Prism acquisition. We have made good progress with regulatory approvals and expect to close in Q1 or Q2. For more background on this acquisition and information on our strategic rationale, please refer to our scheme documents. I'll now turn the call over to Rahul to discuss the quarter in more detail.