Brookfield Corporation Class A Limited Voting Shares

Hello, and welcome to the Brookfield Corporation's second quarter 2024 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, Ms. Angela Yulo, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning. Welcome to Brookfield Corporation's second quarter 2024 conference call. On the call today are Bruce Flatt, our Chief Executive Officer, and Nick Goodman, President of Brookfield Corporation. Bruce will start off by giving a business update, followed by Nick, who will discuss our financial and operating results for the quarter. 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 request that you refrain from asking more than two questions. I'd like to remind you that in today's comments, including in responding to questions and in discussing new initiatives and their financial and operating performance, we may make forward-looking statements, including forward-looking statements within the meaning 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 are 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 Canada and the US and the information available on our website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Bruce.

Thank you, Angela, and welcome everyone on the call. Results for the second quarter were strong, with each of our businesses performing well and continuing to deliver strong cash flows. Distributable earnings before realizations were $1.1 billion for the quarter and $4.4 billion for the last 12 months, representing an increase compared to the prior year quarter of 11% on a total per share basis. Total distributable earnings increased by 80% to $2.1 billion for the quarter as transaction activity continues to pick up. With regard to the economy, inflation is cooling down, short-term interest rates are starting to decline in major economies around the world, and risk appetite has been coming back. In just the last six months, we successfully financed approximately $75 billion of debt and realized $15 billion from monetizations across a number of assets globally. With this constructive economic backdrop, albeit volatile over the last week, liquidity continues to return to the private markets, setting us up well to capitalize on attractive growth opportunities, monetize mature assets, and deliver strong returns. As we look forward, we believe this should be a great environment for real assets and specifically for those investment teams with operational expertise and access to scaled capital. At the same time, we continue to take the opportunity to repurchase our shares at significantly lower prices compared to our view of intrinsic value. Since the start of this year, we completed over $800 million of share buybacks, which added very meaningfully to the value of our company based on our view of that value. We intend to continue to allocate capital to share repurchases when it makes sense, enhancing the underlying value of the business for each remaining share. As we plan for the future, it is important to reflect on what has been the foundation of our growth and success from the past. Our ability to consistently generate strong investment returns over the long term is certainly one of those. This has contributed to our success in the past and should continue to drive success for years to come. Our investment philosophy has been and continues to be built on our key principles, which have applied while investing our own capital for over 100 years, And this has enabled us to compound our own capital, build a large perpetual capital base, and establish ourselves as one of the largest global asset managers with a very strong investment track record. These same principles, though, should apply as we further scale our wealth solutions business, which after just three years has generated annual returns compounded 20% and looks to be only getting started. Our strong investment performance has led therefore to our clients meeting their financial objectives, our manager further deepening client relationships, our balance sheet continuing to compound at approximately 20% annualized for the past 30 years, and our ability to realize carried interest, which can be reinvested back into the business or return to shareholders. Our differentiated platform, which has evolved with the backbone of the global economy, has enabled us to continue to compound capital and deliver strong returns on a per share base to our shareholders over the longer term. Note that we invest in the backbone of the global economy. That economy is always evolving and we must change with it. I would note for you that 50% or more of the assets that we own today did not exist as an asset class 20 years ago. One of the few areas where we're seeing very strong investment opportunities is the AI revolution. Fortunately, we are at the center of the backbone of this revolution, and our combined development pipeline of renewable power and data centers is by far the largest of any entity globally. There is an increase in demand for power to run data centers used in computing capacity for AI. As the largest builder of renewables and data centers combined in the world, this is very exciting for us. However, our scale must increase dramatically to meet the needs of our customers. As a result, we have acquired several renewable operating and development platforms as well as data center businesses over the past number of years to scale our capabilities. Our recent agreement with Microsoft and our advancements through our Westinghouse business also give us an enormous lead in pursuing this. Before I pass the floor over to Nick, I'll end by saying that we look forward to seeing you at our Investor Day on September 10th in New York. Additional details for that are on our website. And as always, thank you for your continued support and interest in Brookfield. Now I'll turn the call over to Nick.