Brookfield Asset Management Ltd.

Hello and welcome to Brookfield Asset Management's third quarter 2024 conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. I would now like to hand the conference over to our first speaker, Mr. Jason Fuchs, Managing Director, 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 Hadley Pierre-Marshall, our Chief Financial Officer. Bruce will start the call today with opening remarks about the most important themes we're focused on, followed by Connor, who will discuss the market environment for both deploying and monetizing assets. And finally, Hadley will discuss our financial results and business operations. 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 at the end if 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 meanings of applicable Canadian and U.S. 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 risks and future events and results may differ materially from such statements. For further information on these risks and the potential impacts on our company, please see our filings with the securities regulators in Canada and the United States and the information available on our website. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Bruce.

Thank you and good morning to everyone on the call. We are pleased to announce that we had a very active third quarter generating record results. We benefited from $135 billion of inflows over the past year. We acquired partnership stakes in two leading partner managers, and we made significant progress on asset monetizations across the franchise. Fee-bearing capital, or FBC, grew by nearly $100 billion over the past year to $539 billion, a 23% increase. Fee-related earnings for the third quarter were up 14% over the past year to a record $644 million, or $0.39 per share, and distributable earnings grew 9% to a record $619 million, or $0.38 per share. Our franchise showed tremendous resiliency on both the fundraising and deployment fronts, despite higher market uncertainty over the past few years. Since then, inflation has eased and central banks have begun to lower rates. Liquidity has returned to the markets as the direction of travel on rates is now clear. This shift has generated greater confidence among market participants and this normalization is unlocking value across our business. This has allowed transaction activity to pick up, leading to both a buyer's and a seller's market. We see attractive investment opportunities, especially for large transactions or opportunities that need capital to grow. But we also see a robust bid for high-quality cash generative assets, which serves us well given the makeup of our investments. In general, across the industry we anticipate a significant return of capital to limited partners and this recycling of capital will add further support to an increasingly constructive fundraising environment. Connor will speak more about how we are monetizing mature assets and realizing very attractive returns for our clients. In addition, Lower interest rates are supporting recovery in our yield-focused public stocks, which are now beginning to reflect their underlying strong performance, including our infrastructure and renewable power publicly listed affiliates. The management fees we earn from our listed affiliates are linked to their share prices, strongly aligning our interests. As yield stocks continue to gain public favor combined with strong continued underlying fundamental business performance, our earnings should increasingly benefit from this tailwind. With the market headwinds of the past couple of years turning into tailwinds for our businesses, we expect strong earnings growth to continue for the foreseeable future. Turning to investment themes, the super cycle in decarbonization de-globalization and digitalization that is reshaping the global economy continues to gain momentum. Tens of trillions of dollars will be required to fund these trends. Governments are capital constrained, leaving private capital well positioned to play a leading role. We sit at the epicenter of these themes, which will continue to drive growth across all of our businesses, especially in private credit AI infrastructure, renewable power, and energy transition. Let me briefly address each of these areas. As the large institutional credit investors, including insurance companies and pension funds, look to allocate more of their portfolios to private credit to benefit from the premium returns and lower risk, borrowers continue to diversify from traditional funding sources. They are seeking lenders who can provide certainty of funding, creative structures, speed of execution, and flexibility. We continue to leverage our real assets investing expertise across real asset credit products and borrowers in these segments see Brookfield as a partner of choice. Private credit will also play an integral role in the build out of global AI infrastructure and enabling the energy transition. In fact, all of our businesses, from renewable power infrastructure to real estate and private equity, are playing critical roles in facilitating the transition in net zero, helping meet the need for global, clean, reliable energy on an unprecedented scale, while at the same time supporting the exponential growth in need for other infrastructure demanded by AI. AI is accelerating further build-out of the backbone of the global economy. It requires substantial amounts of capital and our early investments in capabilities and renewal power, data centers, and semiconductor manufacturing have positioned us across the supply chain as a partner of choice for the largest and fastest growing tech companies in the world. Each of our business groups are investing in the substantial infrastructure that underpin AI. Our $30 billion semiconductor fabrication plant we are building with Intel in Arizona, our data center portfolio, which is among the largest in the world, and enough fiber optic cables to encircle the globe, all speak to our scale and capabilities that few others have. All of this is in addition to being the largest supplier of green power to the technology sector. AI depends on reliable, cost efficient, and clean energy sources. something we are uniquely positioned to provide at scale. Our 10.5 gigawatt renewable power development agreement with Microsoft representing more than $10 billion of investment is to facilitate their data center build out on the backs of this revolution. More recently, the conversation around energy has been shifting to include the need for nuclear. There is increasing appetite for nuclear energy to meet the significant demand for electricity in the coming years. With an acceleration in more plans for nuclear power being built around the world, driven by both governments and corporates, we are witnessing a significant shift in sentiment. We invested ahead of the curve with our acquisition five years ago of Westinghouse, the world's leading supplier of nuclear products, technology, and services to the industry. We believe there is no credible path to clean energy grids without a large and increasing amount of nuclear energy. Today, Westinghouse services approximately half the global fleet of nuclear power plants and has design and engineering capability to deliver micro, small modular, and utility scale nuclear reactor solutions. The world requires scalable, low-cost, 24-7 power, and the largest consumers of power are increasingly focused on a selected few trusted partners capable of delivering energy where and when it's needed. Adding nuclear to our broader renewable power capabilities positions us to offer unmatched clean energy solutions to the largest companies and other energy users. While the shift back toward nuclear is only beginning, it is just one component of the significant investment necessary over the next several decades. We're the only Western economy business that has access to nuclear technology, and we're working on the next phase of our AI plans to match our land entitlement property skills, our power franchise, our data center capabilities, and our nuclear SMR technology, which will soon power the most advanced data centers in the world. This is very exciting. As I wrap up, I'd like to underscore the importance of the key themes driving our business today, private credit, AI infrastructure, and energy transition. They are not just areas of focus. They represent the pillars of growth that are shaping the future of the backbone of the global economy. As a leader in renewable power, infrastructure, and real estate, combined with our broad private equity and credit capabilities, we are well positioned to significantly grow our franchise in the years ahead. With that, let me turn it over to Connor.