T. Rowe Price Group, Inc.

Good morning. My name is Daniel, and I will be your conference facilitator today. Welcome to T. Rowe Price's third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode until the question and answer period. I will give you instructions on how to ask a question at that time. As a reminder, this call is being recorded and will be available for replay on T. Rowe Price's website shortly after the call concludes. I will now turn the call over to Lindsley Carruth, T. Rowe Price's Director of Investor Relations.

Hello, and thank you for joining us today for our third quarter earnings call. The press release and the supplemental materials document can be found on our IR website at investors.troweprice.com. Today's call will last approximately 45 minutes. Our chair, CEO, and president, Rob Sharps, and CFO, Jen Dardis, will discuss the company's results for about 15 minutes, then we'll open it up for your questions. We ask that you limit it to one question per participant. I'd like to remind you that during the course of this call, we may make a number of forward-looking statements and reference certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the forward-looking statement language and the reconciliations to GAAP in the supplemental materials as well as in our press release in 10-Q. All investment performance references to peer groups on today's call are using Morningstar peer groups and for the quarter that ended September 30, 2024. Now I'll turn it over to Rob.

Thank you, Lindsley, and thank you all for joining our third quarter earnings call. We closed the quarter with $1.63 trillion in assets under management, up 3.9% from June 30th, despite $12.2 billion in net outflows. While net outflows increased in the third quarter, we are seeing encouraging signs that we are on the right path. Our active ETF franchise is expanding, We are deepening our retirement leadership position with the launch of innovative retirement solutions, and our associates are advancing our strategic initiatives across the business. We remain on track to reduce net outflows this year. I'll now turn to investment performance. Our long-term investment performance remains solid despite softer results this quarter. In our equity franchise, U.S. mid-cap value, U.S. equity research, integrated U.S. small mid-cap core equity, and integrated global equity all continue to be top quartile performers for the one, three, and five-year time periods. In our ETF franchise, our semi-transparent U.S. equity research ETF now has top quartile performance for both the one and three-year time periods, and in our more recently launched transparent equity ETFs, the growth of and small mid-cap ETFs remain top quartile performers for the one-year time period. In fixed income, our muni strategies continue to be strong performers, as do our floating rate and ultra-short-term bond ETFs, both of which have top quartile performance across multiple time periods. While underlying stock selection and an overweight toward U.S. equities were detractors to relative performance in the third quarter, Our flagship retirement funds and the new retirement blend funds continue to have strong long-term performance. Over 90% of our target date assets are in the top quartile for the 5, 10, and 15-year time periods on an AUM basis. Returns across alternative strategies were positive during the quarter and broadly consistent with the constructive market backdrop. Private, structured, and liquid strategies generated stronger results while distressed and special situations lagged. As I shared earlier, third quarter net outflows totaled $12.2 billion. We do expect further increases in net outflows during the fourth quarter, reflecting seasonal trends and a large subadvised variable annuity termination now expected in late Q4. Even with this loss, we remain on track to reduce net outflows this year, although not as significantly as we had previously expected. Excluding the VA termination, we estimated 2024 net outflows to be less than half of 2023 levels. Jen will share more detail in a moment, but I want to underscore that while this unanticipated loss was deeply disappointing, it doesn't undo the progress we have made in other areas. We are expanding our ETF business and deepening our leadership in retirement with innovative new strategies. With our recently launched technology ETF, We provide investors our first sector-focused, fully transparent portfolio with the tax-efficient, convenient, and cost-effective benefits of the ETF wrapper. We also recently launched two new retirement offerings, Personalized Retirement Manager and Managed Lifetime Income. Personalized Retirement Manager is the industry's first managed account designed to create a unique asset allocation tailored for the individual, incorporating personal data into the proven life cycle investment philosophy and process that underpin our leading target date strategies. Managed lifetime income is a new retirement solution designed to provide retirees in a defined contribution plan with stable and predictable monthly income for life. Managed lifetime income combines a managed payout investment from T. Rowe Price with a qualifying longevity annuity contract from Pacific Life to offer a unique union of professional asset management and guaranteed monthly payouts. We are also seeing increased client interest in co-developing and customizing our target date capabilities, and we're notified of a sizable custom glide path win expected next year. We are reaching key milestones in areas beyond retirement as well. We had our first close for O-Lend, our senior private lending fund, which drove much of this quarter's $3 billion increase in unfunded capital commitments. Our focus on U.S. wealth resulted in new relationships that are launching this year, new placements in home office models, and more partnerships focused on ETFs and SMAs. Finally, despite the VA termination I noted earlier, our weighted net pipeline grew quarter over quarter, suggesting that elevated fourth quarter outflows are not indicative of the underlying trajectory of our business. I want to recognize the tremendous work our associates are doing on behalf of our clients, our firm, and our stockholders. It's their focus on continuous improvement and their agile mindset that are driving our progress. I'll now turn to Jen to provide an overview of our financial results.