Affiliated Managers Group, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the AMG First Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. 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 Patricia Figueroa, Head of Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today to discuss AMG's results for the first quarter of 2024. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that during this call, we may make a number of forward-looking statements which could differ from our actual results materially, and AMG assumes no obligation to update these statements. A replay of today's call will be available on the Investor Relations section of our website along with a copy of our earnings release and a reconciliation of any non-GAAP financial measures, including any earnings guidance announced on this call. In addition, this morning, we posted an updated investor presentation to our website and encourage investors to consult our site regularly for updated information. With us today to discuss the company's results for the quarter are Jay Horgan, President and Chief Executive Officer. Tom Wojcik, Chief Operating Officer, and Deva Ritchie, Chief Financial Officer. With that, I'll turn the call over to Jay.

Thanks, Patricia, and good morning, everyone. AMG delivered strong results in the first quarter of 2024. With $260 million in EBITDA driven by continued momentum across both our private markets and liquid alternative strategies, And together with the positive impact of our disciplined capital allocation, we generated economic earnings per share of $5.37, representing a 28% growth rate year over year. During the quarter, our ongoing collaboration with affiliates resulted in a number of exciting developments, including new product launches and continued strength in private markets fundraisings. which position our affiliates for long-term success and accelerate AMG's growing exposure to alternatives, both private markets and liquid alternatives. Our value proposition for independent partner-owned firms continues to resonate with prospective affiliates given our proven partnership model and our ability to strategically magnify their competitive advantages while also preserving their independence. During the quarter, we advanced several attractive new investment opportunities. And with our increased financial flexibility, we have a significant opportunity to invest our capital in new and existing affiliates to accelerate AMG's business mix evolution and our long-term growth. And in April, we evolved AMG's leadership team, further aligning our talent with our growth prospects by expanding roles for key executives to capitalize on our momentum in capital formation and affiliate engagement, and by recruiting new leaders with experience in our focus areas of private markets and liquid alternatives. As a strategic partner, AMG engages with our independent affiliates to enhance their long-term success, including by offering seed and growth capital business and product development, institutional and wealth distribution, and succession planning expertise. This distinctive approach enables affiliates to build on existing strengths as illustrated by the success of two of our alternative affiliates, Pantheon and Systematica. In March, supported by our long-term engagement, Pantheon announced its management succession plan. Catherine Leaf will become Chief Executive Officer, succeeding Paul Ward, who will become Executive Chairman. Having built Pantheon's highly successful infrastructure business and given her extensive experience as a private markets investor, Catherine is well-positioned to lead the next generation of executives at Pantheon and the ongoing evolution of their business. In addition, AMG has collaborated closely with Pantheon on its growth opportunities over the years, investing our capital and resources to develop and distribute new Pantheon strategies and products to meet evolving client needs. Together, we successfully launched one of the first evergreen funds in the private equity space, the AMG Pantheon Fund, which is now one of the largest and most established private markets products in the U.S. wealth channel with more than $3 billion in assets under management. Building on that success, we have further supported Pantheon's strategic growth by seeding a new private equity fund for the non-U.S. wealth market and partnering to launch, seed, and distribute a first-of-its-kind private credit secondaries interval fund. Since AMG's investment 14 years ago which reestablished Pantheon as an independent partner-owned firm, its assets under management have grown from approximately $25 billion to more than $65 billion. The combination of Pantheon Partners' entrepreneurial spirit with AMG's strategic engagement catalyzed the firm's transformation from a private equity fund-to-fund business to a leading solutions provider in private markets across private equity, infrastructure, credit, and real estate. to both institutional and wealth clients globally. Also in 2024, in partnership with Systematica, one of the industry's leading independent technology-driven investment managers, we launched and seeded and will distribute a new trend-following fund, expanding Systematica's reach into the US wealth market. The firm is led by Leda Braga, whose decades of experience as an innovator in quantitative investing has enabled Systematica to deliver outstanding performance for clients. Similar to Pantheon, when we first invested in Systematica in partnership with Leda nearly a decade ago, we established it as an independent partner-owned firm. Our ongoing collaboration with Systematica's management team on strategic initiatives has resulted in substantial growth in business diversification, enhancing the firm's durability and its capabilities. Systematic has grown from a single product business at the time of our initial investment to a firm with $17 billion today, offering a suite of differentiated strategies and customized solutions across trend following, macro and relative value, and equity market neutral. Given Systematica's excellent long-term performance and the ongoing client demand for liquid alternatives, we are excited about the firm's prospects and the ability to continue to create significant value together. Pantheon's and Systematica's success demonstrate the power of AMG's unique partnership model to strategically engage with our affiliates to enhance their long-term prospects while also supporting their independence. More broadly, over the past several years, we have deliberately diversified our business through capital allocation. The combination of our investments in growth opportunities at existing affiliates and our investments in high-quality new affiliates operating in secular growth areas has reshaped AMG's business profile from one characterized largely by long-only strategies to one with a majority contribution from alternatives. Today, with half of our earnings coming from alternative strategies, balanced across private markets and liquid alternatives, AMG's business profile is unique in our industry. Our diversified portfolio of high-quality independent partner-owned firms operating across private markets, liquid alternatives, and differentiated long-only strategies is a competitive advantage that both enhances our earnings stability, given the complementary nature of these strategies, and also supports our capacity to continue investing in the areas of highest growth and return. AMG's strategic expertise in collaborating with partner-owned firms has been honed over the course of three decades of successful partnerships and is increasingly attractive to independent firms seeking an engaged strategic partner. We have been one of the most active investors in independent asset managers over the past five years, having made 10 investments in new affiliates since 2019. And looking ahead, given our 30-year track record, our new investment origination capabilities, and our significant financial flexibility, we are well positioned to increase our level of new investment activity, particularly in alternatives. As always, we will remain disciplined in our capital allocation decisions. as we continue to strategically evolve AMG, investing in growth while also returning excess capital to shareholders. Now, before I turn the call over to Tom, I want to take a moment to congratulate him on his new role as Chief Operating Officer in alignment with our increased focus on magnifying our affiliates' long-term success, especially through collaboration on capital formation initiatives. I also want to congratulate Kavitha Pattiyar on her new role as General Counsel and welcome Deva Ritchie, our newly appointed Chief Financial Officer, to the team. We have known Deva for many years and given her direct experience with AMG's partnership model and her extensive experience in private markets and liquid alternatives, she is uniquely positioned to make valuable contributions to AMG. As evidenced by our ability to both develop outstanding talent within AMG and also attract excellent leaders to our team, AMG is thriving and well-positioned for future growth. And with that, I'll turn it over to Tom.