Brookfield Asset Management Ltd.

Hello, and welcome to Brookfield Asset Management's third quarter 2023 conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. I would now like to hand the conference call over to our first speaker, Mr. Jason Fuchs, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you for joining us today for Brookfield Asset Management's earnings call. On the call today, we have Bruce Flatt, our Chief Executive Officer, Connor Teske, our President, and Bahir Manios, our Chief Financial Officer. Bruce will start the call today with opening remarks, followed by Connor, who will talk about our private credit platform, and finally, Bahir will discuss our financial and operating results for the business. After our formal comments, we'll turn the call over to the operator and take analyst questions. In order to accommodate all those who want to ask questions, we ask that you refrain from asking more than two questions at one time. If you have additional questions, please rejoin the queue and we'll be happy to take additional questions as time permits. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that in today's comments, including in responding to questions and in discussing new initiatives and our financial and operating performance, we may make forward-looking statements, including forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable Canadian and US securities law. These statements reflect predictions of future events and trends and do not relate to historic events. They're subject to known and unknown risk and future events results may differ materially from such statements. For further information on these risks and their potential impacts on our company, please see our filings with the securities regulators in Canada and the US and the information available on our website. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Bruce.

Thank you, Jason, and welcome everyone on the call. Our results were strong in the third quarter and our capital raising momentum is building. Our fee-related earnings grew to $565 million and distributable earnings to $568 million, each representing a year-over-year growth of 8%. The resiliency of our results in the current macroeconomic environment demonstrates the quality and diversity of our cash flow streams. This durability stems in large part from the fact that 86% of our capital is long-term or perpetual in nature, driving the overwhelming majority of our fee-related earnings. Today, essentially all of our distributable earnings come from these highly predictable free-related earnings. Earnings stability is further bolstered by our ability to raise capital from institutional investors around the world and invested across our five diversified businesses that represent essential and growing parts of the global economy. Turning to overall markets, central banks have made significant progress in lowering headline inflation while trying to navigate a soft landing for the economies. Market participants increasingly believe the current rate hiking cycle has crested. And while the move in rates has been historically sharp, the absolute level of interest rates is still relatively low as compared to historic levels. and at a level where we have operated and grown successfully for many years and for what we do does not impact the success of our business. On the contrary, the advantages we derive from the broader Brookfield ecosystem allow us to invest across all market cycles and in all economic environments. When markets are more uncertain, businesses must differentiate themselves by providing attractive returns And investors like us who have capital put to work and that can underwrite with conviction find better opportunities than in most other markets. There has been no shortage of uncertainty and volatility this year, but we have continued to execute. We have committed to over $50 billion of new investments at very attractive value entry points while also being very active on the monetization front, selling some of our de-risks and mature assets. We currently have over $100 billion of dry powder from uncalled fund commitments to invest into attractive opportunities across the business. Our fee-bearing capital stood at $440 billion at the end of the quarter and assets under management are now $865 billion. This scale, partnered with the interconnectivity of our businesses, enables us to spot trends early source proprietary deal opportunities, underwrite with accuracy, drive better operations, and have best-in-class access to capital. At the same time, we continue to drive fundraising. With inflows of $61 billion year to date, including $26 billion in the third quarter, which represents our strongest fundraising quarter for the year. This sets us up nicely for what we expect to be a strong next few months towards our $150 billion capital raising target. We expect to hold several meaningful fund closes and anticipate completing our contract to manage the assets of AEL within the coming months. We are fortunate that the businesses in which we have a leadership position remain very much in favor with global investors. In fact, our latest flagship infrastructure fund, Our infrastructure debt fund and our transition energy fund should represent the largest funds ever raised by any sponsor for each of these respective strategies. We are also very pleased that the sixth vintage of our flagship private equity strategy held its final close at $12 billion, making it the largest private equity strategy that we have ever raised. At the same time, we are raising significant capital across a number of private credit funds, seeing strong interest for our flagship real estate fund as opportunities are starting to surface in real estate. Our strong fundraising success this year should lead to strong revenue growth next year. And at the same time, direct cost growth should slow as much of the necessary investments have been made in the platforms we have. The combination of faster revenue growth and slower expense growth should mean next year should be a very strong year for FRE and DE growth. Our ability to succeed at this time, in part due to our businesses being positioned around three global trends that we've talked about before, decarbonization, deglobalization, and digitalization, is very important. Decarbonization is at the heart of global initiatives to reach a net zero carbon economy. Of course, this work is taking place within our renewable power and transition businesses, but decarbonization goes beyond just cleaning our energy sources. We're also leveraging our expertise to actively reduce the carbon footprint of virtually every asset that Brookfield owns globally. Notably, some of our most ambitious decarbonization efforts are rooted within our infrastructure and our private equity businesses. Within deglobalization, international supply chains have started to decentralize and are turning to more regional-focused operations. We have the global footprint, expertise, relationships, and operational boots on the ground to understand local requirements and meet these logistical challenges wherever they may be. We have capabilities to meet supply chain needs from ports, toll roads, rails, logistical facilities, and now with the recent acquisition of Triton, we're also now the largest owner and lesser of intermodal shipping containers to move these goods globally. And last, there is a very large need for significant investment in digital infrastructure around the world. said very simply, this is what is behind your phone. Data is the fastest growing commodity, and like any commodity, it needs to be processed, transported, and stored. AI is also starting to have a dramatic impact on usage of data centers and power, and is only at its infancy. We are creating end-to-end capabilities from data tower transmission, fiber, and data center storage. The need to satisfy these three investment areas will inevitably require many trillions of capital investment. This should serve as a tailwind for our businesses for years to come. All of this is alongside the growing opportunity we see in private credit, which Connor will speak to shortly. These combined items are what allow us to confidently state our five-year targets of doubling distributed earnings to $5 billion and growing our fee-bearing capital to over a trillion dollars. Thank you for your continued support and interest in Brookfield Asset Management. With that, I'll turn the call over to Connor.