Brookfield Asset Management Ltd.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Brookfield Asset Management first quarter 2026 earnings call. 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'll need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I'd now like to hand the conference over to Jason Fuchs, Managing Director, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you for joining us today for Brookfield Asset Management's first quarter 2026 earnings call. On the call today, we have Connor Teske, our Chief Executive Officer, Armin Panossian, Co-CEO of Credit, and Hadley Pierre-Marshall, our Chief Financial Officer. 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 U.S. and Canadian 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 their potential impacts on our company, please see our filings with the securities regulators in the U.S. and Canada and the information available on our website. On the call today, Connor will begin with an overview of the quarter and highlight the strategic momentum across our business. We're also pleased to have Armin join us to provide an update on the Oak Tree integration and share his perspective on how our combined platform is positioned to be opportunistic in today's market. And finally, Hadley will discuss our financial and operating results and balance sheet. After our formal remarks, we'll open the line for questions. To ensure we can hear from as many participants as possible, we're asking everyone to please limit themselves to one question. If you have additional questions, please rejoin the queue and we'll be happy to take more questions if time permits. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Connor. Thank you, Jason.

And good morning to everyone on the call. 2026 will not only be a record year for Brookfield, but one where we expect to exceed our long-term growth targets. And we are already off to a great start with a strong first quarter. Fee-related earnings for the quarter were up 11% to $772 million, and distributable earnings were $702 million. We raised $21 billion of capital this quarter, and fee-bearing capital increased 12% over the last 12 months to $614 billion. Including the fundraising we have announced associated with the Just Group mandate and our flagship private equity fund, Year-to-date fundraising stands at $67 billion, more than half of the $112 billion we raised in all of 2025. More important than the numbers is what they reflect, the continued strength of our franchise, the quality of our client relationships, and the increasing importance of the areas where we invest. We are operating from a position of strength with scale, liquidity, and a portfolio centered on essential assets and businesses that form the backbone of the global economy. This year is being supported by a number of important strategic developments across the broader platform. In early April, Brookfield Wealth Solutions completed its purchase of Just Group, a leading pension risk transfer platform in the UK, and through that, BAM was awarded an additional $40 billion asset management mandate, further extending our presence in retirement and insurance-related capital. We are also very close to completing our acquisition of Oaktree, which we expect to close in the second quarter, which will further strengthen and integrate our global credit franchise. In a few minutes, Hadley will speak more specifically to the financial impact of both those transactions. At the same time, this year we have one of the broadest product sets in the market. This includes our flagship private equity strategy, which has already closed $6 billion and will be holding its first close in the coming months. And it also includes our flagship infrastructure fund, in fact all of our infrastructure funds, alongside a growing number of complementary strategies. We are also seeing excellent momentum across our partner managers, where each of Primary Wave, Seventeen Capital and Pine Grove recently held fund closes that not only exceeded their targets, but in all three cases represented the largest fund of their kind. That breadth is driving strong fundraising momentum and setting us up well for the balance of the year. Against this backdrop, we continue to expect 2026 to be Brookfield's largest fundraising year ever. One of the clearest ways our platform is evolving is in how we engage with our largest clients. For some time, we have said that investors are consolidating more of their business with fewer managers, particularly with firms that can invest at scale across asset classes, geographies, products, and up and down the capital structure. Our partners are not only asking us for a view on one sector or one fund, but rather they are asking what we are seeing across the $1.2 trillion of assets in our ecosystem, how capital is moving across markets, and how those linkages are shaping investment opportunities. More and more, those conversations are leading to broader strategic relationships where we start with the client's objectives across income, appreciation, duration, diversification, and liquidity, and then build customized solutions across our strategies to help meet those goals. We're seeing tangible momentum for multi-billion dollar partnerships across multiple strategies, and we are investing behind it through our investment solutions group. A dedicated team focused on delivering those insights and tailored solutions at greater scale. While this capability has long been a differentiator for our business, its importance has become more acute in recent years, and we expect it to be a key competitive advantage as alternatives continue to expand into retirement, insurance, and individual markets. In the near term, geopolitical uncertainty remains elevated. Trade and energy markets continue to adjust and investors are assessing what that means for growth, inflation, and rates, while also considering how quickly AI may disrupt certain business models. Those issues matter and they can move sentiment and market prices in the short run. But our view is that those movements are temporary and manageable, while the long-term trends we invest behind remain firmly in favor and continue to accelerate. Our job is to own good businesses, operate them well, protect downside and compound cash flows over time. That discipline has served us well through many cycles and today we are seeing it in the continued performance of our assets and we believe that this period will be no different. It's also worth reiterating something we have said before. We are fortunate to have outsized exposure to the largest and most attractive segments of the alternatives market and limited exposure to the areas where investor concern is currently the most concentrated. We have very limited exposure to software across our strategies. Sponsor-oriented direct lending is an immaterial part of our business. And our listed private wealth credit vehicles are disproportionately small with our private BDC representing less than 1% of fee-bearing capital. But we would caution against viewing our position as simply defensive. Limited downside does not fully capture where we sit today. In our view, we are not only protected from many of the areas under pressure, we are positively exposed to the areas that should outperform in this environment. The first reason is that in this environment, real assets win. When there is uncertainty around growth, rates, or the durability of earnings, investors move toward high quality cash generative assets and essential service businesses. That is exactly where we are concentrated. In real estate, we are clearly seeing the recovery accelerate. Sentiment is improving, financing markets are materially stronger, New supply remains muted in many sectors, and in a number of cases, assets can still be acquired well below replacement costs. In private equity, our strategy has always been focused on essential industrial and service businesses where value creation comes from operations, not financial engineering. That approach is particularly well suited to the current market. And lastly, in infrastructure, where digitalization, rising energy demand, and deglobalization are all creating sustained demand for capital, we continue to see exceptional client interest and a very large opportunity set. The second reason is that concerns regarding AI disruption are equally balanced by accelerating AI adoption. That is not a headwind for Brookfield, it is a very significant tailwind. AI requires enormous physical infrastructure, data centers, power generation, transmission, fiber, computing, cooling systems, and industrial capacity across the supply chain. We are already deeply invested across those areas. We have leadership positions in data centers and renewable power. We can combine real estate infrastructure and energy into integrated solutions at scale, and increasingly, That is exactly what the largest hyperscalers, governments, and enterprise customers are looking for. This is also why all of our infrastructure, energy, and AI infrastructure strategies are seeing such significant interest. As AI adoption accelerates, Brookfield's market-leading position and a very large portion of our assets become increasingly valuable. The third reason is credit. If current concerns and select pockets of credit persist, or the natural credit cycle continues to turn, that is precisely the type of environment where our platforms should be at its best. We have been disciplined in how we built our credit business. We have always preferred areas where underwriting matters, where structure matters, and where there is real downside protection, notably real asset credit, asset-backed finance, and opportunistic credit. And lastly, we could not be more thrilled with the timing of our integration with Oaktree. Through the combined BAM and Oaktree platform, we have what we believe is the preeminent opportunistic credit franchise in the world. When liquidity becomes scarce and capital is repriced, that is when disciplined investors with flexible capital and deep experience have historically generated some of their best returns. We will turn the call over to Armen in a moment, who will speak more specifically about the current credit environment and how Oak Tree is seeing the opportunity set today. In conclusion, our message is simple. We are entering this period with strong results, significant strategic momentum, limited exposure to the areas causing the most concern, and meaningful exposure to where capital should continue to flow. We are positioned not just to navigate this backdrop, but to outperform through it. Armin?