Acadian Asset Management Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the BrightSphere Investment Group earnings conference call and webcast for the fourth quarter and year-ended 2018. During the call, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. To be added to the queue, please press star followed by one at any time during the call. If you need to reach an operator, please press star followed by zero. Please note that this call is being recorded today, February 7th at 10 a.m. Eastern Time. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Brett Berryman, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Brett.

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to BrightSphere's conference call to discuss our results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31st, 2018. Before we get started, I would like to note that certain comments made on this call may constitute forward-looking statements for the purposes of the Safe Harbor provision under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are identified by words such as expect, anticipate, may, intends, believes, estimate, project, and other similar expressions. Such statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. These factors include, but are not limited to, the factors described in Bright's fierce filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission including our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2017, filed with the SEC on February 28, 2018, under the heading Risk Factors. Any forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on assumptions as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. We urge you not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. During this call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in today's earnings press release, which is available on the Investor Relations section of our website, where you will also find the slides that we will use as part of our discussion this morning. Today's call will be led by Guang Yang, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Stern Rana, our Chief Financial Officer, Aidan Reardon, Head of Affiliate Management, and Dan Mahoney, our Head of Finance. I will now turn the call over to Guang.

Thanks, Brett. Good morning, and thank you for joining our call. Before we turn to our queue for results, let's spend a minute on BridesFair's highlights and why we believe this is an attractive business with strong growth potential. Our diversified multi-affiliate business has over $200 billion in assets under management and seven widely recognized at-scale affiliates. Together, they offer more than 100 investment strategies across a range of investment styles, asset classes, and geographies to more than 850 institutional and supervisory clients from 30 countries. Our unique operating model where our affiliates equity and share profit aligns our interests and provides meaningful incentives for long-term growth. These strengths have provided stability to our business across market cycles, including challenging periods of market volatility, such as the one our industry experienced last quarter. In the face of difficult market environments, BridesFair generated solid financial results, which we will discuss in a minute. Finally, we have a strong balance sheet with ample financial capacity, which will help support our growth going forward. Turning to the next page, BridesFair has a broad global reach that offers significant expansion opportunities. We and our affiliates have 20 offices around the globe serving sophisticated institutional investors in key international markets. We see meaningful potential in leveraging our scale to enhance our presence in underserved high growth areas such as the Asia Pacific region. The next slide sets out greater detail about the steps we have taken and plan to take to reposition our business for the future. First, we will focus on organic growth, seeking to serve more clients with a greater range of products to meet their evolving needs. We will expand our global distribution capabilities Again, with a view to achieving greater penetration in high demand markets, such as APAC region. We will also continue to use seed and core investment capital to support new product development and capacity expansion through investments in personnel and technology. While MA may be a lower capital allocation priority going forward, we will selectively consider deals that offer attractive synergies or distribution capabilities. Second, we'll focus on efficiency and entrepreneurship. In the first quarter of 2019, we reduced our workforce at the center by 20%. which translates into about $10 million of savings in compensation and the benefits for 2019. In the fourth quarter of 2018, we reduced center compensation by $20 million compared to 2017, as center and global distribution variable compensation was restructured to be more linked to results. We will continue to focus on efficiency and building a leaner and a stronger organization that can respond rapidly to new opportunities and changing conditions. But let me emphasize, however, that those cost reductions had no impact on our affiliate operations or our investment teams. We will continue to emphasize effective capital management, and use the strong cash flow from our diversified revenue streams and our balance sheet capacity to support growth and enhance value for our shareholders. We will maintain our accretive share repurchase program and a consistent dividend policy. Lastly, to simplify our corporate structure, we expect to complete our corporate re-domicile to the US in the first half of this year. In addition, our ownership transition from HNA to Pulse and Co remains on track. Turning to the next page, in terms of Q4 results, as you know, the fourth quarter was extremely difficult period for financial markets. But with our cost reduction measures and the stability provided by our operating model, we're able to report solid results. EI per share of 43 cents for Q4 was down 2% from Q4 17. And $1.86 for 2018 was up 15% over 2017. Let me pause here and turn to Soren, Aidan, and Dan to provide more detail on our results. As you know, Soren recently joined us as the CFO. Soren has many years of experience in corporate finance and the asset management industry and brings a strong understanding of Brightsphere's business from his previous service on the board. Soren.