StepStone Group Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the StepStone Fiscal Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Seth Weiss, Head of Investor Relations. Thank you, Seth. You may begin.

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Joining me on the call today are Scott Hart, Chief Executive Officer, Jason Ment, President and Co-Chief Operating Officer, Mike McCabe, Head of Strategy, and Johnny Randall, Chief Financial Officer. During our prepared remarks, we will be referring to a presentation which is available on our investor relations website at shareholders.stepstonegroup.com. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that this conference call, as well as the presentation, contains certain forward-looking statements regarding the company's expected operating and financial performance for future periods. Forward-looking statements reflect management's current plans estimates and expectations and are inherently uncertain and are subject to various risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Actual results for future periods may differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements due to a number of risks or other factors that are described in the risk factors section of StepStone's most recent 10-K. Turning to our financial results on slide three for the third quarter of fiscal 2022. We reported gap net income of $126.3 million for the quarter ended December 31st, 2021. Gap net income attributable to StepStone Group Incorporated was $48.3 million. We generated fee-related earnings of $36.8 million, adjusted net income of $48.6 million, and adjusted net income per share of 42 cents. The quarter reflected retroactive fees resulting from the final closing of StepStone's Tactical Growth Fund III and additional closings of our private equity co-investment fund that contributed $1.2 million to revenue and $1.1 million to fee-related earnings and pre-tax adjusted net income. There were no material retroactive fees in the prior year's quarter. I now look to turn the call over to StepStone's Chief Executive Officer, Scott Hart.

Thank you, Seth, and good afternoon, everyone. We delivered our strongest quarter to date on both an absolute and per share basis. We reported record results for fee-related earnings and adjusted net income, while growing our total assets under advisement and management to nearly $550 billion. Our private market solutions continue to demonstrate their value in what has been a turbulent period for public markets, marked by recent volatility in stock prices, a more inflationary environment, and a rising interest rate outlook. Our breadth and scale across all four of the private market asset classes provides the full spectrum of tools to allow our clients to thrive in every environment. We construct balanced and customized portfolios that deliver attractive results to our clients, including consistent alpha generation from private equity, exposure to growth and the innovation economy through venture capital, income and yield enhancement from private debt, and natural inflation protection embedded in real estate and infrastructure. Furthermore, our business model is primed for steady growth and durable operating results that can withstand the peaks and valleys of cyclical economic patterns. We have deliberately invested in asset classes, strategies, and geographies that are benefiting from secular tailwinds, while the long-term nature of our client relationships and the diversity of our asset classes and geographic footprint provide stability to our fee-related earnings. Turning to our results on slide five, we generated $48.6 million in adjusted net income for the quarter, or 42 cents per share, up 50% from the prior fiscal year's third quarter on a per share basis. We generated fee-related earnings of $36.8 million, up 65% from the prior year quarter, as we produced strong organic growth and benefited from the Greenspring acquisition. Accounting for the increase in our share count, we grew fee-related earnings per share by 41%, This was our first full quarter with Greenspring. The integration process is progressing well, and early results are coming in ahead of expectations. The impact to our clients has been seamless, and we are seeing positive interest from both legacy StepStone and Greenspring LPs in exploring the added breadth of StepStone solutions. We produced another strong quarter of asset growth, finishing the quarter with $127 billion of assets under management and $71 billion of fee-earning AUM. Excluding acquired assets, we have organically grown fee-earning AUM by 28% over the last 12 months, with balanced growth across both asset class and structure. I'll now turn the call over to Mike McCabe to speak about our asset growth and fee-related revenue growth in more detail.