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 first quarter 2019. 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 the star followed by one at any time during the call. If you need to reach an operator, please press the star followed by zero. Please note that this call is being recorded today, May 2nd, at 11 a.m. Eastern Time. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Brett Perryman, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Brett.

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to Bright Spheres Conference Call to discuss our results for the first quarter ended March 31st, 2019. 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 provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are identified by words such as expect, anticipate, may, intends, believes, estimate, projects, 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 Sphere's filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission including our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2018, filed with the SEC on February 28, 2019, 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 in 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, and Sir and Rana, our Chief Financial Officer. I will now turn the call over to Guang.

Thanks, Brett. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. After my first full quarter as CEO, I'm pleased to share our results and update you about our progress. Brightsphere is a strong, diverse business comprised of leading asset managers who offer a wide range of investment products that are in demand globally. We are optimistic about our growth prospects. Our business produced stable results for the first quarter as we benefited from improved equity market conditions and net client cash flows. And our assets under management increased 8% to $222 billion. Looking at the right side of page two, we see many opportunities for growth and expansion within our business. While we currently serve clients across 30 countries, you can see in the first chart that our client base is still predominantly US-based and 76% of assets, compared to 9% in Europe, 5% in Asia, and 5% in Australia. with a tremendous opportunity to grow our client base in key global markets. Similarly, while our revenue mix is both highly diversified and fairly well distributed across asset classes, we believe there is also opportunity to expand our alternative offerings, which currently contribute 21% of our management fee revenue. Quant solutions are an area we believe are particularly in demand in the coming years. We have roughly two-thirds of our revenue coming from alternatives and quant strategies. Turning to slide three and continue on those themes, let me stay back for a moment to discuss the progress we have made so far and where we are positioning the business. As Sura and I discussed on the last quarter call, given the understanding of BridesFair that we brought to our current responsibilities, we are able to hit the ground running in terms of implementing changes that would reposition the business for the next phase of growth. On one hand, we have eliminated a number of positions at the center that we believed were not critical to our mission. On the other hand, we have added team members and resources to areas of growth, which I will talk more about later. As a result of this process, we have built a nimble, efficient structure that is based on an entrepreneurial culture that encourages employees to identify and pursue opportunities to create shareholder value, whether it is by expanding our global sales presence, considering a new platform or product, or finding further efficiencies in how we manage our business. We have also enhanced shareholder value through the repurchase of about 30 million shares and highly accretive prices. We're also in the process of simplifying our business structure by re-domestifying to the US, which should be completed in the next few months. Looking ahead, our business is now better positioned to respond to the growing global demand for solutions, quantitative, and alternative-based strategies. And we will focus on our efforts on enhancing our capabilities in those areas. We believe that investors in international markets like Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East will increasingly look to us for those type of products. We have added several experienced senior professionals to our global team who have already begun to cultivate relationships with investors, and also to seek partnership and joint venture opportunities in key markets. We're also considering a range of seed capital and emerging manager opportunities in alternative and solution-based areas. And these growth initiatives will become a greater focus of our capital allocation. Turning now to slide four, our financial results for the quarter benefited from a strong market environment, improved NCCF and a fee rate, positive impact from share repurchases, and continued realization of central cost savings. GAAP EPS increased 145% from Q4 2018 as the landmark earn-out was completed last quarter. EMI per share decreased 7% from Q4 2018, impacted largely by a seasonal reduction in performance fee relative to Q4. Market appreciation drove the 8% increase in AUM I mentioned earlier to $222 billion, and while our NCCF on the net best net basis were negative 1.8 billion, producing an annualized revenue impact of negative 5.9 million for the quarter. Our Q1 NCCF improved from the prior quarter, driven by an increase in client inflow of 6.9 billion in Q1 versus 4.3 billion in Q4, and a decrease in outflows which were 8.6 billion in Q1 versus 9.9 billion in Q4. Moving to performance, for our liquid investment strategies, our long-term performance remains strong and consistent with strategies representing 59%, 72%, and 66% of revenue outperforming benchmark on three, five and 10 year basis respectively. Short term performance is little behind as growth outperform value style and our low volatility strategies underperformed in a strong market as they usually do. Our balance sheet is strong and we're actively returning capital to shareholders. We repurchased about 13% of our outstanding shares during the quarter at an average price of $13.28 for a total cost of $179 million. Our 10 cents per share quarterly dividends reflect a consistent dividend policy. And now Soren will provide additional commentary on our financial results. Soren.