Evercore Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Evercore first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Today's call is scheduled to last about one hour, including remarks by Evercore management and the question and answer session. In order to ask a question, please press the star key followed by the number one on your touchtone phone at any time. I will now turn the call over to Katie Haper, Managing Director of Investor Relations and ESG at Evercore. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today for Evercore's first quarter 2024 financial results conference call. I'm Katie Haber, Evercore's Head of Investor Relations and ESG. Joining me on the call today is John Weinberg, our Chairman and CEO, and Tim Lalonde, our CFO. After our prepared remarks, we will open up the call for questions. Earlier today, we issued a press release announcing Evercore's first quarter 2024 financial results. Our discussion of our results today is complementary to the press release, which is available on our website at evercore.com. This conference call is being webcast live in the For Investors section of our website, and an archive of it will be available for 30 days, beginning approximately one hour after the conclusion of this call. During the course of this conference call, we may make a number of forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statements that we make are subject to various risks and uncertainties, and there are important factors that could cause actual outcomes to differ materially from those indicated in these statements. These factors include but are not limited to those in Evercourse filings with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and current reports on Form 8-K. I want to remind you that the company assumes no duty to update any forward-looking statements. In our presentation today, unless otherwise indicated, we will be discussing adjusted financial measures, which are non-GAAP measures, which we believe are meaningful when evaluating the company's performance. For detailed disclosures on these measures and the GAAP reconciliations, you should refer to the financial data contained within our press release, which is posted on our website. We continue to believe that it is important to evaluate Evercore's performance on an annual basis. As we have noted previously, our results for any particular quarter are influenced by the timing of transaction closing. I will now turn the call over to John.

Thank you, Katie, and good morning, everyone. We've started 2024 on a strong note, having advised on five of the 15 largest global deals announced in the first quarter. Based on the current competitive landscape and our success so far this year in announced transactions, Evercore finished the first quarter among all firms ranked fourth in the global league tables and third in the U.S., Consistent with our commentary from a few months ago, we continue to see momentum build as client activity levels remain high. Additionally, the dollar value of industry-wide global deal announcements, particularly of larger size transactions, has increased. We also continue to see the broader market environment improve, including significantly increased equity issuance and leveraged finance volumes, indicating better financing availability for transactions. This has led to a further build of our backlogs. That said, activity levels in smaller to mid-sized transactions have been less robust, and while it is encouraging to see a significant increase in larger deals, the timeline to close these transactions can be longer and the process more complex. As for sponsor activity, we've seen sizable transactions in April, and we believe sponsor activity should continue to gain momentum. we continue to watch the trajectory of interest rates, which may have some impact. Overall, our first quarter financial results do not yet meaningfully reflect the improvement in the announcement activity levels, which we expect to see realized in revenue later this year and into next. That said, we continue to closely monitor the geopolitical, economic, and regulatory environment, which could further alter the trajectory of the recovery. As we have discussed at length last year, we hired our largest class of investment banking senior managing directors in the firm's history, and we are pleased to have all 11 new SMDs now at Evercore, including one who joined us in January who covers the real estate sector. Building on that momentum, we recently hired an investment banking SMD who has committed to join later this quarter to cover the asset management sector. we will continue to recruit A-plus talent into areas where we see significant opportunities, including those of geographic, sector, and product white space. We currently have a strong pipeline of high-quality candidates, though it is too early in the year to know the outcome of many of these discussions. In addition to our externally hired SMDs, we started the year off with a class of seven promoted investment banking SMDs. This newly promoted group, coupled with our other ramping SMDs, continue to be critical to our future growth. In our equities business, three SMDs have joined, including our Chief Strategist of International Political Affairs and Public Policy, our new Head of Sales, and a Senior Analyst covering semiconductors. Now, let me briefly discuss the quarter. there were several highlights in our investment banking business during the first quarter. We advised on some of the most notable transactions that have been announced year-to-date, including General Electric on its spinoff of GE Vernova for $37 billion, Synopsys on its $35 billion acquisition of Ansys, CD&R on its acquisition alongside Stone Point Capital of Truist Insurance from Truist financial for $15.5 billion, global infrastructure partners on its $12.5 billion sale to BlackRock, and Chesapeake Energy on its $11.3 billion combination with Southwestern Energy. Our European advisory team had a slower start to the year, and deal closing timelines remain elongated compared to years past. however we are seeing an encouraging pickup in deal announcement activity and we expect that to be significantly more heavily weighted in our results toward the second half of the year our strategic defense and shareholder advisory business started the year on an active note as the team continues to maintain leadership in many high-profile defenses and expand its footprint the momentum in our liability management and restructuring practice has continued in the first quarter. While credit markets have been accommodative, lower quality credits still face financing challenges which will continue to drive activity. Our private capital advisory and fundraising groups have had an active start and the pipeline continues to grow. While the fundraising environment industry-wide has faced some headwinds, our business has performed well. our teams once again continue to be recognized for their achievements, including having been named Secondary's Advisor of the Year in the Americas and Europe and Placement Agent of the Year by Private Equity International. Turning to underwriting, both the market and Evercore have seen a robust return of activity in the market generally and the beginning of a recovery among IPOs. Our first quarter results in this business represented our best quarter since the fourth quarter of 2021. Our activity in the quarter was diversified across sectors, including healthcare, tech, and consumer. Evercore was a book runner on two of the three largest IPOs in the quarter, including Asteria Labs' $820 million offering, which is the best performing IPO year to date among IPOs greater than $50 million. Our equities business had a solid quarter despite operating in a market with the lowest levels of volatility to start the year since 2017. Our sales and trading teams remain highly engaged with our clients, especially with our increased ECM activity. Our research analysts continue to produce some of the best content on Wall Street and hosted numerous high impact and differentiated corporate access events for clients. Lastly, in wealth management, we ended the quarter with a record AUM of approximately $13 billion, and long-term performance and client retention rates remain very strong. Looking forward, we remain optimistic. We have a stronger and deeper team of professionals than at any time in our history. The economy to date has been more stable and resilient than broadly anticipated, though we continue to monitor it closely. The capital-raising environment has shown signs of strengthening, and we are experiencing a pickup in transaction activity. This environment should provide a solid foundation for Evercore as we continue to execute on our strategy, and we believe we are well positioned for sustained growth and success in the medium and long term. With that, let me now turn it over to Tim, who will discuss our financial results in more detail.