DigitalBridge Group, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Digital Bridge Group first quarter 2023 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Severn White, Managing Director, Head of Public Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to DigitalBridge's first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Speaking on the call today from the company is Mark Gansey, our CEO, and Jackie Wu, our CFO. I'll quickly cover the safe harbor, and then we can get started. Some of the statements that we make today regarding our business operations and financial performance may be considered forward-looking, and such statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. All information discussed on this call is as of today, May 3rd, 2023, and DigitalBridge does not intend and undertakes no duty to update it for future events or circumstances. For more information, please refer to the risk factors discussed in our most recent Form 10-K filed with the SEC for the year ending December 31st, 2022, and our Form 10-Q to be filed with the SEC for the quarter ending March 31st, 2023. Great. Let's get started with Mark providing a 1Q update. Jackie will outline our financial results and turn it back over to Mark to discuss how we're executing the Digital Bridge Playbook in today's market. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mark Gansey, our CEO. Mark.

Thanks, Devin. So today, let's start with an update on our key 2023 priorities, the three things that matter, which I outlined last quarter, and I'll continue to do that throughout the course of this year. First, I'm pleased to report that DigiBridge has made tangible progress on fundraising, on simplification, and on portfolio-level performance. Put simply, we are on track to deliver our 2023 targets. In the first quarter, we are back to generating strong year-over-year growth in our investment management platform, with fee income up over 36% and FRE up 40%, driven by higher fee on co-invest, the acquisition of InfraBridge, and FIEM activating across our new core and credit strategies, which we telegraphed last quarter. New capital formation was up substantially year over year. And on top of that, we're seeing our first commitments now in our flagship DigiBridge Partner Series strategy. These developments give us higher confidence we will be able to deliver on our capital formation targets in 2023. To be clear, we're sticking with our guidance. With respect to simplification, We've made continued progress, selling Brightspire for $200 million, paying off our 2023 converts, and advancing our alternative asset manager profile with enhanced reporting as we move closer to deconsolidation. I'll cover portfolio performance a bit later, but the headline is our portfolios continue to perform with growth across all of the verticals that we serve today in digital infrastructure. So let's detail fundraising and our simplification progress before we get into the financials. Next slide, please. As you know, scaling FEM is our number one KPI this year. It's the metric that will drive revenue, earnings, cash flows, and unlock substantial shareholder value. In the first quarter of 2023, our fee earning equity under management increased 8.9 billion, or 47% year-over-year, driven by a combination of organic capital formation, and co-invest, core and credit, and the full contribution from the InfraBridge acquisition we closed in February. On the right, you see a commiserate increase in AUM, which tracks the NAV of the assets that we control. That was up 49% year-over-year to 69.3 billion. We're looking forward to continuing to deliver strong growth all year on these metrics, but most importantly, on FIEM.