BlackRock, Inc.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I'm Chris Meade, the General Counsel of BlackRock. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that during the course of this call, we may make a number of forward-looking statements. We call your attention to the fact that BlackRock's actual results may, of course, differ from these statements. As you know, BlackRock has filed reports with the SEC, which list some of the factors that may cause the results of BlackRock to differ materially from what we say today. BlackRock assumes no duty and does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements. So, with that, I'll turn it over to Larry.

Thank you, Chris. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the call. I know this is a difficult time for many people, so first and foremost, I hope you, your families, your friends, your neighbors, We're all staying healthy and safe. And before I begin, I want to take a moment to express the gratitude of everyone at BlackRock for the men and women on the front line of this crisis, for the doctors and nurses and everyone working so hard today, putting their own health at risk to support the safety and health of all our communities and to our countries. And to all of you, thank you. As I wrote in my chairman's letter to shareholders, we're living and working in an unprecedented environment. In just a few short months, the COVID-19 outbreak has transformed the world for all of us as individuals, as businesses, small and large, for entire industries. for every government around the world. It has presented tremendous medical, economic, and human challenges that will be long-lasting and will reverberate for years to come. While global markets were impacted by extreme volatility, liquidity receded, and an oil price war exasperated stress, swift actions by policy makers And several central banks represented the type of decisive responses that are needed to overcome this extreme market adversity. There has been tremendous monetary policy to stabilize financial markets. And we're beginning to see the type of fiscal policy that could stabilize our economies. No one knows precisely how long these conditions will persist. However, I expect the continued actions taken by governments, taken by central banks, with careful design and coordination, will help the economy recover. And I believe that coming out of the crisis, we have an opportunity to accelerate towards a more sustainable world. Through these challenging times, the strengths and resilience of BlackRock's business model has become even more apparent than ever before. The investments that we've spoken to in many, many quarterly updates over the long term to diversify our investment capabilities and to operate on a unifying technology platform, Aladdin, are differentiating us in this moment for clients, for our shareholders, and for our employees. We did not design our operating model for this pandemic or in almost any virtual work environment in mind. But because of BlackRock's strong culture and our long history of connecting a global organization on one technology platform has enabled more than 95% of our 16,000 employees to work remotely from home while continuously delivering seamlessly for our clients. The areas in which we strategically invested over the last few years, I share ETFs, illiquid alternatives, sustainable investment strategies, and Aladdin, are all helping solve clients' unique needs in this environment and continually deliver strong performance and growth for BlackRock. Momentum in 2019 continued into the first quarter, and we saw $75 billion of net inflows in the first seven weeks of the year. Despite market-related outflows, including over $40 billion of de-risking by institutional clients and index strategies in the last five weeks of the quarter, we ended the quarter with $35 billion of net inflows driven by cash and liquid alternatives, iShares Sustainable and Factor ETFs, and our active equity platform. Over the last month, BlackRock's biggest priority has been focusing on the health and safety of our employees and all their families. By focusing first on our employees, ensuring their well-being, and positioning them with our technology, our tools, and the support they need, BlackRock has been able to accomplish a tremendous amount. These times, having a unified technology platform that connects us all digitally is more important than ever. Our performance during the quarter would not have been possible without a unifying technology, without a unifying risk management system, and careful business continuity planning. I'm incredibly proud on how Aladdin has enabled us to rebuild BlackRock beyond its walls to deliver the operational resilience, advice and solutions our clients need at this time. Aladdin processed record trade volume in recent weeks, even with a remote global workforce, and has provided a transparent view, which is a risk and scenario analysis for the benefit of our asset management clients. But not only has Aladdin proven to be a significant differentiator for BlackRock itself, but it has enabled nearly 250 third-party Aladdin clients, other asset managers, asset owners, banks, and insurance clients to also operate seamlessly during this time. We've been hearing incredible positive feedback from the Aladdin community about its resilience, its benefits, and so our clients we're able to proceed just as strongly as BlackRock. Rob Goldstein, BlackRock's Chief Operating Officer and Head of BlackRock Solutions, will join us today and we'll discuss in a few moments BlackRock's organizational and technology strengths during this time and also how Aladdin is delivering for third-party clients. In addition to our technology, certain products, especially iShares, have once again proven to be critically important tools for providing liquidity and transparency to investors and markets. As we have seen repeatedly in periods of market volatility, investors, including many first-time asset managers and institutional users, turn to iShares for incremental liquidity, market access, as well as long-term investments. ISHA has generated $14 billion of net inflows in the most volatile quarter we've experienced in recent history, benefiting from the $44 billion of inflows in the first seven weeks of the year. Our diverse product lineup across sustainable investments, factor strategies, and core equity continue to drive growth, the sustainable ETFs bringing in $10 billion of net inflows alone. The best quarter in its history. Despite outflows from market-driven fixed income and precision segments, these ETFs performed exactly as expected as clients used them to actively reposition portfolios, reduce risk during market stress. As we invested in the growth of fixed-income ETFs, many speculated on how these products would behave during market shock and whether or not they could withstand waves of selling. Having now been through a once-in-a-generation market shock, and market participants have noted that fixed income ETFs were tested beyond a doubt and worked incredibly well, we believe this will serve as a further accelerant for fixed income ETFs growth going forward. Salim Ramji, Global Head of ETFs and Index, Investments is with us today, and we'll speak about how iShares experienced increased investor adoption, delivered tighter bid-ask spreads than any other ETF and underlying securities, provided incremental liquidity and price transparency, especially in fixed income for all markets and for all the investors. With interest rates globally back to historic lows, the investments that BlackRock continues to make to build a diversified illiquid investment strategy and differentiated global sourcing capability across our alternative platform are benefiting our clients as they took to meet their long-duration liabilities. BlackRock raised a total of $7 billion of net inflows and commitments in illiquid alternatives this quarter, our third-best quarter in history. We also deployed $2 billion on behalf of our clients and closed several large client commitments in the midst of market volatility, including our third vintage global energy and power fund. It's our third fund which raised a total of $5 billion, surpassing the total assets in the first two capital raises. Investments we made in our active equity platform are also showing results. We generated a fourth consecutive quarter of active equity inflows with $4 billion. Even as the broad active equity mutual fund industry saw more than $100 billion of outflows during the first quarter. We have invested for years in our active equity platform and in better data analytics and technology, in more informed risk-taking culture, and having global scale and reach. We are seeing strong performance today with 76% of our fundamental active equity assets above benchmark or pair median for one year, and I'm confident the business is well positioned to capture more client demand as clients reposition their portfolios in the coming months. Throughout the recent market volatility, what enduring trend has been the move to sustainable investing. In addition to the $10 billion of sustainable ETF inflows I've already mentioned, we continue to see broad and strong interest in active sustainable strategies, even as equity sold off more broadly. In January, BlackRock committed to be placing sustainability at the core of our approach as an investment manager in how we manage risk, how we construct portfolios, design products, and engage with companies and to be making sustainable investing accessible to more people. These commitments remain a priority, and we continue to make progress in executing on them. The pandemic we're experiencing now is furthering highlighting the value of sustainable portfolios. We've seen sustainable portfolios deliver stronger performance than traditional portfolios during this period. And we expect clients rebalancing in the current environment will include a substitution of some traditional assets to sustainable ones as they see the potential for the long-term benefits. BlackRock's goal is to be a global leader in sustainable investing. We believe the assets we manage for clients in this category will reach over a trillion dollars by the end of the decade. We also saw a strong quarter for our multi-asset platform, which also generated $4 billion in net inflows. Our global allocation franchise, a long-term flagship product, now under Rick Reeder's leadership, significantly outperformed peers and stayed true to its three-decade promise of providing upside return with limited downside capture. Global allocation is now positioned in the top quintile of its peer group for the one, three, and five-year period, respectively. BlackRock's cash management platform generated a record $52 billion of net inflows in the first quarter, benefiting from a surge of industry flows into U.S. government funds over the past three weeks. Our commitment to build scale in our cash management business and extends a rigorous risk management platform to every part of BlackRock is providing a key differentiator for our clients. The strength of our results in the first quarter are directly linked to our efforts to stay connected with clients throughout the crisis. Investors globally are looking to BlackRock for even more insights, more thought leadership on the economy, on markets, on geopolitics, on asset allocation. Our goal is to help clients navigate market volatility while also staying focused on the long-term goals. Through virtual connectivity, we're having a richer conversation with clients than ever before about their whole portfolio, and in many cases, deepening our partnership with them. Over the last three weeks, BlackRock has connected with nearly 50,000 clients, significantly ellipsing all historical records for client contacts. BII has hosted dozens of calls reaching thousands of institutional investors and financial advisors and providing daily update emails to thousands more who have subscribed. In the last week of March alone, BlackRock's senior business leaders met virtually with approximately 100 CEOs, CIOs, executives, public officials, further amplifying hundreds of outreach calls from our client-facing team. This connectivity enables us to better understand the challenges of our clients they're facing, and a comprehensive platform of solutions have enabled us to help clients reallocate risk to help clients rebalance, helping clients provide more liquidity, and capturing opportunities in response to market moves. BlackRock Investment Institute, BII, our financial markets advisory group, FMA team, and our global public policy group has closely engaged with regulators, central bankers, and other public officials to provide guidance on practical, targeted monetary and fiscal solutions in support of the global economy during this time. BlackRock's FMA Group, which advises financial and official institutions, as well as other public and private capital market participants, has been awarded mandates to advise both the New York Federal Reserve Bank and the Bank of Canada on programs designed to facilitate access to capital, for businesses to support the economy. We are honored to have been awarded these mandates and approach these assignments with great sense of responsibility. Advisory work is built into the fabric of BlackRock. Beginning as early as 1994, when we worked with General Electric to unwind Kitterpot Seabuddy's mortgage assets, Our FMA practice has adopted and evolved over time, working across an array of mandates from crisis-oriented assignments to regulatory and sustainability frameworks. Given the sensitive nature of these assignments, FMA is a segregated, walled-off business within BlackRock and operates behind a stringent information barrier. While still providing the benefits of Aladdin, BII, and BlackRock's global scale and reach to our clients of FMA. Our most recent partnerships are a testament to the trust we have earned over time, and we will continue to work with others around the world to navigate during this difficult period. Through these extraordinary times, BlackRock remains focused on continuing to drive forward on our commitments to our clients, shareholders, and employees. This has required greater and more frequent connectivity than ever before with our board of directors, our global executive committee, and our broader employee base. Since the start of the crisis, I am sending weekly strategic financial and operational updates to our board. Our global leadership team is meeting every single day, rather weekly, as we do during normal times. And we're hosting global firm-wide town halls each week to ensure our people, our partners are feeling updated and feeling connected. Just as we are focused on strong corporate governance and communication across BlackRock, our investment stewardship team continues to engage and communicate with companies through this time on behalf of our clients. In addition to proxy season, fast approaching. The team is actively engaging with companies on topics like operational resiliency and how companies are taking the care of their employees, contributing to their community and living their purpose. These issues are more important than ever before. BlackRock is helping our communities during this time of great need. Early in the first quarter, before the full impact of the pandemic of ending global markets, We contributed our remaining 20% stake in PennyMac to our existing donor advising fund, and we created a newly established BlackRock Foundation with a goal of supporting a more inclusive and sustainable economy. Since then, through these charitable funds, we committed $50 million to immediate COVID-19 relief efforts. Our focus has been twofold, supporting frontline medical workers who are the true heroes in the crisis and supporting food banks, which are on the front line of helping address the financial hardship and social disallocation that the pandemic is bringing to so many. Challenging environments have always been, always offered BlackRock an opportunity to further differentiate ourselves with all our stakeholders and in the industry itself. And I'm proud to say that it's happening once again. And I believe BlackRock's position has never been stronger. We remain committed in growing and investing at BlackRock. Our performance today reflects the investments we made in the resilience of our platform by supporting our people, by building our culture, and forging deep partnerships with our clients. We have consistently and strategically invested for the long term to create the most diverse global asset management and technology service firm in the world. And we believe we are a better position than any firm to weather shocks like these and help our clients do the same. Throughout the firm, there have been countless examples of everyone living our purpose to help more people achieve financial well-being. And I could not be prouder or more grateful for the commitment of Black Box people. The world is facing a challenge that is truly unprecedented in our lifetimes. BlackRock will continue to do everything we can to support our clients, the societies where we operate more broadly, as we seek to overcome this. To everyone on the call, to all our shareholders, to BlackRock's employees, and our colleagues around the world, please stay safe and healthy. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Gary to talk about our financial results.

Thanks, Larry, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our earnings call, and I hope everyone and their families are remaining safe and healthy. Before I turn it over to Rob and Saleem, I'll briefly review our financial performance and business results for the first quarter of 2020. While our earnings results discloses both GAAP and As Adjusted financial results, I'll be focusing primarily on our As Adjusted results which exclude the financial impact of our previously announced charitable contribution. The investments we have continuously made over the years to build a scale business model with diverse global investment capabilities, best-in-class technology, and rigorous risk management have enabled us to differentiate ourselves and serve clients in a variety of market environments. Our ability to deliver for clients, employees, and shareholders during this global crisis was absolutely sustained by that commitment. As Larry mentioned, BlackRock entered the year with incredibly strong momentum. During the first seven weeks of the year, total net inflows of approximately $75 billion, representing 7% organic asset and 9% organic-based fee growth, were paced by strength in iShares and Americas in EMEA retail. However, as the market reacted to the COVID-19 health crisis and its projected economic impact in late February, the BlackRock equity index declined approximately 25% by quarter end, and we saw institutional and retail clients de-risk and seek liquidity. Consistent with broader industry trends, we experienced outflows for the balance of the quarter, primarily an institutional index, high shares, and active fixed income, partially offset by strong inflows into our cash management franchise. In the aggregate, BlackRock still generated approximately $35 billion of total net inflows during the quarter, representing 2% annualized organic asset growth. However, annualized organic-based fee decay of approximately 1% reflected outflows from higher-fee iShares precision exposures, mixed chains favoring lower-fee fixed-income ETFs, and broad-based redemptions in active fixed-income strategies. As BlackRock has demonstrated, environments like this create unique opportunities for growth, as long as we have the discipline to realize them. While we will not reduce our workforce this year as a result of COVID-19, we have determined to freeze hiring in the current environment. We remain committed, act decisively, as one BlackRock, to focus our existing resources where the impact will be greatest and to aggressively reallocate in challenging markets. We intend to continue playing offense so we are able to deliver differentiated organic growth once we emerge from this crisis. First quarter revenue of $3.7 billion increased 11% year over year, while operating income of $1.3 billion was up 3%, and reflected the impact of $84 million of costs associated with a successful closed-end fund launched this past January. Earnings per share of $6.60 were essentially flat compared to a year ago, As higher operating income, a lower effective tax rate, and a lower diluted share count in the current quarter were more than offset by lower non-operating income versus a year ago. Our adjusted tax rate for the first quarter was approximately 18% and included $64 million of discrete tax benefits, including benefits related to stock-based compensation awards that vest in the first quarter of each year. We continue to estimate that 23% is a reasonable projected tax run rate for the remainder of 2020, though the actual effective tax rate may differ as a consequence of non-recurring or discrete items and issuance of additional guidance on previously enacted tax legislation. Non-operating results for the court reflected $17 million of net investment income as mark-to-market losses on unhedged seed capital investments and or minority stake in InvestNet are more than offset by a $244 million unrealized gain related to our investment in iCapital, which completed a successful recapitalization during the first quarter. First quarter base fees of $3.1 billion were up 9% year over year, primarily driven by organic growth of 4%, the net positive impact of market beta and foreign exchange on average AUM, the effect of one more day in the quarter, and higher securities lending revenues partially offset by strategic pricing changes to certain products. On an equivalent day count basis, base fees were flat sequentially, and our effective fee rate increased 0.2 basis points from the fourth quarter, reflecting strong fundraising activity in illiquid alternatives. However, as a result of significant global market declines, including the impacts of divergent equity data and FX-related dollar appreciation, We entered the second quarter with an estimated base fee run rate approximately 12% lower than our total base fees for the first quarter. Performance fees were $41 million for the quarter, up $15 million year over year, reflecting higher fees from liquid alternative products. Recent market volatility has impacted the performance of certain long-only and liquid alternative products and could result in reduced ability to earn performance fees for the remainder of 2020. Quarterly technology services revenue increased 34% year-over-year, reflecting the impact of the eFront acquisition and continued growth in Aladdin. Excluding the impact of eFront, technology services revenue grew 13% year-over-year. As Rob Volstein will discuss in more detail, we continue to complete Aladdin implementations for new clients, and overall demand remains strong for our full range of technology solutions. While we continue to target low- to mid-teens technology services revenue growth over the long term, near-term revenue growth may be impacted by extended sales cycles and longer implementation periods as clients work remotely. Advisory and other revenue of $64 million was up $15 million year-over-year, primarily reflecting higher transition management assignments and increased equity method earnings related to our historical investment in PennyMax. Please note that as a result of the charitable contribution of our remaining 20% equity stake in PennyMac earlier this quarter, we will no longer recognize non-cash equity method income related to this investment going forward. Total expense increased 15% year-over-year, driven by higher G&A, compensation, and direct fund expense. G&A expense was up $165 million year-over-year, reflecting $84 million of closed-end fund launch costs associated with the successful January close to $2.3 billion BlackRock Health Sciences Trust II. We exclude the impact of these product launch costs when reporting our as-adjusted operating margin. The increase in year-over-year G&A expense also reflected higher technology expense, including certain one-time costs related to facilitating remote operations associated with COVID-19 and higher professional services expense, partially offset by lower marketing and promotional expense. Quarterly G&A expense also included approximately $60 million in contingent consideration fair value adjustments and costs related to certain legal matters, including Averon Capital, LLC. Sequentially, G&A expense increased $38 million, largely driven by the aforementioned fund launch and legal costs, partially offset by seasonally lower marketing and promotional expense, lower contingent consideration fair value adjustments, and lower FS remeasurement expense. Our first quarter results reflect the final fair value adjustment to our contingent payment related to the successful acquisition of First Reserve, and we would expect less variability in contingent consideration fair value adjustments going forward. Employee compensation and benefit expense was up 7% year-over-year, reflecting higher base compensation partially linked to higher headcount. Sequentially, comp and benefit expense was down 6%, primarily reflecting lower incentive compensation driven by lower operating income and performance fees, partially offset by higher seasonal payroll taxes and higher base compensations. direct fund expense was up $35 million or 14% year over year, primarily reflecting higher average index AUM. Our first quarter as adjusted operating margin of 41.7% was down 20 basis points from a year ago, primarily reflecting higher levels of non-core G&A expense, including legal costs and contingent consideration fair value adjustments. As Larry stated earlier, Our current priority is to ensure the health and safety of our employees and to maintain operational excellence to best serve clients in this environment. We're continually focusing on managing our entire discretionary expense base, and we will be prudent in reevaluating our overall level of spend once we are able to more confidently assess the longer-term revenue impact of this crisis over the coming months. As always, we remain margin-aware, committed to optimizing organic growth in the most efficient way possible, and laser-focused on a long-term strategy centered around iShares, illiquid alternatives, technology, and creating whole portfolio solutions. We are well-positioned for differentiated growth, even during this crisis, much as we were when we began the year. Our capital management strategy remains to first invest in our business and then consistently return excess cash to shareholders through a combination of dividends and share repurchases. BlackRock's cash generation and liquidity position remains strong. Our debt-to-equity ratio is less than one times EBITDA with no debt maturities in the next 12 months, and we continue to use our cash flow to seed and co-invest new products. As we previously announced in late January, we increased our quarterly cash dividend by 10% to $3.63 per share and have no plans to reduce our dividend during the remainder of the year. We also repurchased $400 million worth of common shares in the first quarter. At present, based on our capital spending plans for the year and subject to market conditions, including the absolute and relative valuation of our stock price, We still anticipate repurchasing at least $300 billion of shares per quarter for the balance of the year, consistent with our previous guidance in January. Larry referenced that BlackRock has recently held thousands of conversations with clients, providing reassurance, guidance, and strategic advice in the midst of this crisis. Our connectivity with clients and a commitment to a solutions-based approach is resonating more than ever before. Total net inflows of $35 billion were led by cash management, alternative, and iShares, reflecting the positive impact of the investments we have consistently made to diversify and scale our globally integrated platform. Our cash management business generated a record $52 billion of net inflows as clients sought the safety of our scaled platform during the market slide. And we sought $3 billion in illiquid alternative net inflows and raised an additional $4 billion in commitments across infrastructure, private credit, and secondary private equity. As Salim will cover in more detail, iShares saw record on exchange volume, serving as a critical investor tool for liquidity and price discovery in volatile markets, and generated $14 billion of net inflows led by $11 billion of core equity and $10 billion of sustainable ETF flows. As expected, iShares' highly liquid trading-oriented precision exposures saw outflows in this market, but performs as designed to help investors quickly and efficiently reallocate risk exposure in a volatile market. Finally, a number of our active strategies continue to generate strong performance and positive flows. Active equity and multi-asset strategies each generated $4 billion of net inflows, respectively, during the quarter. In summary, our first quarter results once again demonstrate the resilience of our platform. While we're not immune to market headwinds and the impact those headwinds can have on our near-term financial results, we remain confident that we will navigate this crisis, as we have others, and emerge better positioned for relative growth. We intend to remain focused on investing in our highest growth priorities while exercising prudent expense discipline to ensure we meet the critical needs of our employees, clients, and shareholders. The diversity of our platform and stability of our operating model position us to outperform in a variety of market environments, and will enable us to generate differentiated organic growth over the long term. With that, I'll turn it over to our Chief Operating Officer, Rob Goldstein, who led the efforts to rebuild BlackRock beyond its four walls and ensure our operational capabilities remained resilient and best-in-class.