Franklin Resources, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to Franklin Resources Earnings Conference Call for the quarter and fiscal year ended September 30, 2019. Please note that the financial results to be presented in this commentary are preliminary. Statements made in this conference call regarding Franklin Resources, Inc., which are not historical facts, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements involve a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other important factors that that could cause actual results to differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These and other risks, uncertainties, and other important factors are described in more detail in Franklin's recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including in the Risk Factors and MD&A sections of Franklin's most recent Form 10-K and 10-Q filings.

Good morning. My name is Rob, and I'll be your call operator today. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. If you'd like to ask a question at that time, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. The confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star 0 from your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. So that we may address as many questions as possible, we ask that you please limit yourselves to one initial question and one follow-up question. If you have additional questions, you may then re-queue, and time permitting, those questions will be addressed. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Franklin Resources Chairman and CEO, Mr. Greg Johnson. Mr. Johnson, you may begin.

Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for joining us to discuss the fourth quarter and fiscal year results. Joining me today is Matthew Nichols, our CFO, and Jenny Johnson, President and Chief Operating Officer. Our industry remains in the midst of rapid change that we worked diligently to address in fiscal year 2019 by evolving certain parts of our business while remaining steadfast in our core convictions. We were pleased to see improved sales and share in the U.S. retail channel. Our U.S. equity sales also improved again this quarter, reflecting strong performance and recent sales momentum continued in our U.S. fixed income strategies. Overall investment performance improved throughout most of the year, but trended down in the final months following global events it negatively impacted certain strategies. Capital allocation remains a very important focus for our board management team. We continue to actively evaluate the industry landscape for opportunities to grow and enhance our business through acquisitions, and we rewarded our investors through dividends and repurchases this fiscal year that amounted to 107% of net income. I'd now like to open the line to your questions.