Brookfield Corporation Class A Limited Voting Shares

Good day and welcome to the Brookfield Corporation first quarter 2026 conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in a 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 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Ms. Katie Battaglia, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning. Welcome to Brookfield Corporation's first quarter 2026 conference call. On the call today are Bruce Flatt, our Chief Executive Officer, Nick Goodman, President of Brookfield Corporation, and Sachin Shah, Chief Executive Officer of our Wealth Solutions business. Bruce will start it off by giving a business update, followed by Nick, who will discuss our financial and operating results for the quarter. And finally, Stafford will provide an update on our wealth solutions business. After our formal comments, we will 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 would like to remind you that in today's comments, including in responding to questions and in discussing new initiatives in our financial and operating performance, we may make forward-looking statements, including forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable Canadian and U.S. security laws. 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. In addition, when we speak about our wealth solutions business or Brookfield Wealth Solutions, we are referring to Brookfield's investments in this business that supported the acquisition of its underlying operating subsidiaries. With that, I'll turn the call over to Bruce.

Thank you, Katie, and welcome everyone on the call. We had a strong start to the year. Distributable earnings were $1.6 billion for the quarter and $6 billion over the last 12 months. More importantly, it also looks like the business will get stronger over the year. Our business has performed well, and we continue to execute against initiatives which will drive our next phase of growth. Our asset management business delivered strong earnings growth supported by continued fundraising momentum across our institutional client base. Our operating businesses generated stable cash flows backed by resilient underlying fundamentals. Our wealth solutions business performed well as it continues to scale globally. In April, we closed the acquisition of Just Group, a leading pension risk transfer platform in the U.K., This increased total insurance assets by $40 billion, and we're now heading to $200 billion, and strengthens our position in one of the world's most active, attractive retirement markets. Nick will cover our financial results in more detail, and Sachin will spend more time on Just Group and the continued growth of our wealth solutions business. Before that, I would note that the current advancements has had no shortage of macro developments competing for investors' attention, from geopolitics to trade issues, inflation, and interest rates. And while these factors are important to monitor, they often receive far, far more attention than their long-term impact warrants. Bottom line, we largely try to ignore them when building our business. This is particularly true in periods when capital flows, sentiment, and prevailing market narratives influence price, which can increase the impression that the business fundamentals have changed, when in most cases they have not. Value, on the other hand, you all know, is determined by the cash flows of a business that it generates and management's ability to reinvest that capital at attractive returns. Our role as investors is to capitalize on attractive entry points to acquire good businesses for value, operate them well, and allow compounding to work over time. Equally important is ensuring that compounding is not disrupted by being forced to act in detrimental ways during periods of market stress. This discipline shapes how we allocate capital and build our businesses. an industry, learn how it works, invest in a measured way, refine a business model, and only then scale a platform. This allows us to make small mistakes while avoiding large ones. In our experience, successful businesses are not built quickly. They are built deliberately with the resilience to allow one to compound cash flows and create value through economic cycles. And by adhering to these principles, our shareholders have earned excellent compound returns over long periods of time. Over that same period, we've navigated many market environments. Each felt dramatic at the time, but the most important point is that each period of market disruption, in hindsight, had very little impact on long-term outcomes. Today, we believe many of the market distortions we're seeing are temporary and will moderate in the sectors we focus on, And while the current environment may feel volatile, it is ultimately constructive for businesses like ours. In addition, as uncertainty around growth and inflation rises, capital tends to shift towards high-quality cash-generative assets, an environment that favors real assets, which we are specialists in. We are now seeing large flows of funds due to the halo effect. That's hard assets, low obsolescence. and are seeing this across the board within our businesses. Real estate is a good example of this. Sentiment is now catching up with fundamentals. Financing markets are much, much stronger. New supply is limited across our core markets, and demand for the best assets continues to grow. In office, as an example, replacement costs have risen significantly across our core markets. As a result, the rents required to justify new construction are well above, in many markets, double current market rents. This makes new supply very difficult to deliver, and with demand remaining strong, in fact very strong for the best buildings in the best markets, rents continue to rise substantially. To put this in perspective, at Manhattan West, one of our super core assets in our portfolio, it would cost around $2,500 a square foot to build that same building today compared to our cost of just over $1,000 a square foot. Fortunately, we started this at the depths of COVID in 2020, when few decided that they should build an office building. So we benefited in many ways due to our counter-cyclical investment. Our most recent lease there was signed at rents nearly three times higher than the first lease in the complex, and the financing recently completed cashed out approximately $400 million of net cash, which was due to the increase in value of the assets. This took our debt to almost the construction cost of the building, exemplifying the increase in cash flows since launching the building, and I know we continue to own the property. More important, despite rents and where they are, they actually need to go higher to justify a new tower like this being constructed today. And we're seeing the same dynamic play out across our global portfolio. Another example being one leaden hall in London, a brand new asset which we consider as core plus in our portfolio, was fully leased within six months of completion and achieved the highest rents ever in the city of London. With very limited new supply, and demand for the best buildings continuing to grow, premier assets are becoming increasingly scarce and values are set to continue to rise. Capital markets are also beginning to recognize this as well. The aforementioned financing of 2 Manhattan West was $1.9 billion for a 10-year non-recourse mortgage with a 5.5% coupon and was done at 107 basis points spread to treasuries. Buyers looking for solid assets are moving back from software to real assets like these. Given all the drama in the news over the last five years, I will repeat that comment. The cash flows of this property allows us to complete a non-recourse investment grade financing and generate real cash of $400 million from the property. This is the benefit of owning great real estate through cycles. As fundamentals strengthen and capital markets improve, the embedded value of portfolios that was always there become increasingly evident. At the same time, uncertainty is increasing the urgency for companies and governments to reposition around AI, energy security, data sovereignty, and supply chain resilience. These priorities sit at the intersection of the themes we have invested behind for years, namely digitalization, decarbonization, and deglobalization. Of course, if you have followed us, these themes are not new, but they are more prominent today than ever, and the form they take continues to evolve, taking them in order. Digitalization started with fiber networks and telecom towers, then hyperscale data centers. Today, artificial intelligence is driving the next wave of demand through AI factories, which require enormous amounts of computing capacity and reliable power. Second, decarbonization. The opportunity is no longer just energy transition. It is energy addition. In plain English, that means more. Electricity demand is rising at a pace not seen in decades, driven by electrification, reindustrialization, and digital infrastructure. Meeting this demand will require enormous amounts of new generation capacity with solar, wind, nuclear, and batteries increasingly well-placed given one or all of their attributes, being they are low-cost, they can be deployed quickly, or they have limited reliance on imported fuel. Last, deglobalization began as reshoring, manufacturing, and reorganizing supply chains. It has now evolved to include data sovereignty, where governments and companies want critical data stored and processed within their own borders, leading to the build-out of domestic digital infrastructure. including large-scale data centers. We are working with major governments and enterprises around the world to help build this infrastructure. And while digitalization, decarbonization, and deglobalization will continue to evolve, each is driving significant long-term demand for new infrastructure. Our ability to provide scalable solutions across technologies and regions reinforces our position as a partner of choice. And with almost $200 billion of capital to deploy, together with what we expect to be a record fundraising year in 26, we are well positioned to scale these businesses. Thank you all for your continued support in Brookfield. I'll now turn the call over to Nick.