Evercore Inc.

Good morning and welcome to Evercore's second quarter 2025 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 the 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 Haber, Managing Director of Investor Relations at Evercore. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning and thank you for joining us today for Evercore's second quarter 2025 financial results conference call. I'm Katie Haber, Evercore's Head of Investor Relations. Joining 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 line for questions. Earlier today, we issued a press release announcing Evercore's second quarter 2025 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 in the statement. These factors include, but are not limited to, those discussed in Evercore's filings with the FCC, 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-GAT measures that we believe are meaningful when evaluating the company's performance. For detailed disclosures on these measures and the GAAP-Rack affiliations, 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. Before we review our second quarter financial results, I would like to spend a few minutes discussing our announcement from earlier this morning. We've entered into an agreement to acquire Robey Warshaw, a leading UK-based advisory firm with an extraordinary client franchise and relationships with some of the most prominent multinational companies in Europe. For 30 years, Evercore has been committed to delivering for clients by expanding our capabilities and talent each and every year, building a firm grounded in excellent and long-term high-quality growth. This acquisition continues that approach, enhancing our ability to create value for all of our stakeholders. Robey Warshaw's partners have advised on some of the largest and most complex transactions globally, including seven of the ten largest in UK history. This year, Robey Warshaw advised Santander on a $3.9 billion acquisition of TSB, Direct Line Insurance Group on its $4.5 billion acquisition via Viva, and Johnson & Matthew on its $2.4 billion sale of its CT division to Honeywell International. In the UK, Robey Warshaw has been a trusted advisor to over a quarter of the FTSE 100 and has significant reach in the continent and globally. Robey Warshaw's business is highly complementary to Evercore's broad and growing .A.S. platform. This acquisition is a significant step in our global expansion of strategy. By combining Robey Warshaw's long-standing trusted relationships with large-cap clients and Evercore's relationships, broad product capabilities, deep sector expertise, and global reach, we are enhancing the value we deliver to clients around the world. As you have seen, we've been accelerating our growth in .A.A. in recent years, including key additions in France, Spain, and most recently Italy. This acquisition will further strengthen our presence in the UK and the broader region. It will also strengthen our global efforts as we continue to serve large multinational companies on their most important transactions, including cross-border. With the addition of Robey Warshaw, Evercore will have more than 400 bankers across nine countries in the region. We believe this transaction will unlock synergies, creating value for our shareholders, and enhancing our ability to serve clients. Importantly, their values are an excellent match with ours, a commitment to partnership and collaboration and to long-term client relationships, excellence, integrity, and independence. We are looking forward to welcoming the Robey Warshaw team to Evercore and to what we will achieve together on behalf of our clients. Now let me discuss our business and second quarter results. Despite the rapidly changing market conditions experienced throughout the second quarter, Evercore delivered strong results, generating adjusted net revenues of $839 million, up nearly 21% -over-year. In the first half of 2025, Evercore generated over $1.5 billion in adjusted net revenues, a 20% increase compared to the same period a year ago. These results represent record revenues for both second quarter and first half. The strength and resilience we have demonstrated so far this year reflect the execution of our growth strategy and the versatility of our business model, which enable us to serve our clients and deliver results to our shareholders in various types of environments. Since the market disruption in late March and in early April, business conditions have improved with increasing CEO confidence levels, receptive debt and equity issuance markets, and healthy engagement with both corporates and sponsors. -to-date through the end of the second quarter, industry-wide global M&A volumes were 30% higher than a year ago, with volumes increasing steadily each month. Our backlogs continue to build throughout the quarter, and our clients' dialogue activity remains robust. While uncertainties remain, we continue to be optimistic about the path forward. As we move through the year, we expect greater clarity and stability in the market, which should support continued improvement in the investment banking environment. Shifting to talent, we continue to make progress on our recruiting goals. Since our last earnings call, four senior managing directors have joined our investment banking practice in private capital advisories, healthcare, industrials, and in Italy. And three investment banking SMDs have committed to join our franchise, two focused on logistics and transportation, and one focused on ratings advisories. So far for the year, nine investment banking SMDs and one senior advisor have started at the firm, or will be joining later in the year, and we continue to have a solid pipeline of external candidates. Attracting and developing the highest quality talent continues to be a core priority for us. The senior-level talent we've hired and promoted over the past several years is contributing meaningfully to our results. Now let me briefly discuss the quarter. As noted earlier, we delivered strong -over-year growth across our diversified mix of businesses in both the second quarter and the first half. In fact, in the second quarter and over the last 12 months, approximately 50% of our total revenues were from -M&A sources, reflecting the strength of our diversified platform. In M&A, we advised on a number of notable and complex transactions in the order of communications, valuing COX communications of $34.5 billion, Warner Brothers' discovery on its separation into two leading media companies, a transaction that leveraged the expertise of multiple teams across the firm, and the sale of Footlocker to Dick's Boarding Goods for $2.5 billion. We've continued to experience strong momentum in July, advising Becht and Dickinson on the solutions business with Waters in a $17.5 billion reverse mortgage trust transaction, and advising Huntington Bank shares on its acquisition of Veritex Holdings for $1.9 billion. -to-date, we have advised on four of the ten largest global transactions and remain active in a wide range of high-quality complex transactions spanning mid-cap, large-cap, and mega-cap deal sites. Our European business saw growth in the quarter with an increase in activity across most sectors and products, and momentum for deal activity in the region continues to build. Activity among financial sponsors continues to strengthen, and we are experiencing strong levels of sponsor dialogue. Our strategic defense and shareholder advisory group remained highly active as the number of activist campaigns in the U.S. reached new records in the first half of the year. The liability management and restructuring group continues to see strong activity levels. Private equity-led situations remain a key driver, and we expect the business to stay active in the near term as sponsors and corporates navigate upcoming maturity walls, elevated interest rates, and broader market uncertainty. Our industry-leading private advisory business delivered a record first half and second quarter driven by unprecedented volumes in GP-led continuation funds, LP secondaries, and securitizations. We advised on many of the most significant transactions across these products, including several high-profile secondary market deals for endowments and pension funds. Trends in our private funds group remain in line with the first quarter as fundraising conditions continue to be challenging. However, our team remains active and expects a pickup in activity towards the end of the year, consistent with seasonal patterns. After a slowdown in activity in April, the equity capital markets have seen signs of recovery with dollar issuance volumes in the second quarter reaching the highest level since the first quarter of 2021, so the number of transactions is still down year over year. Our underwriting business experienced an uptick in activity in May and June, and we expect these positive trends to continue as we enter the second half. Our equity franchise had its strongest second quarter ever, driven by market volatility, increased trading volumes, and strong client engagement. Lastly, wealth management reached a record quarter end AUM of approximately $14.5 billion, driven by market appreciation and net inflows. Before I turn it over to Tim, I'd like to make one final comment. We remain committed to executing on our growth strategy and on creating value for both our clients and our shareholders. This is evident in our -to-date financial results and in our acquisition of the Roe v. Warshaw. With that, let me turn it over to Tim.