Evercore Inc.

Good morning and welcome to Evercore's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Today's call is scheduled to last about one hour, including remarks by Evercore management and the question and answer session. 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 Katy Haber, Head 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 2026 financial results conference call. I'm Katy Haber, Evercore's head of Investor Relations. 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 second quarter of 2026 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 Forward 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 maturely from those indicated in these statements. These sectors include, but are not limited to, those discussed in Avocourse 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 that 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 Evercraft's performance on an annual basis. As we've 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, Katy, and good morning, everyone. Our record second quarter revenues capped off a record first half for the firm, underscoring the strength of our platform and strategy. For the quarter, we generated $1 billion of adjusted net revenues and adjusted diluted earnings per share of $2.91, up 19% and 20% respectively from the second quarter of last year. and for the first four billion of 56% year over year. Performance in the quarter continued to be broad-based across nearly all of our businesses with record second quarter revenues in our North American strategic advisory business, the private funds group and equity business. And it was the best quarter ever for underwriting and wealth management. Our results reflect the strength of our client franchise, the benefits of our diversified business model, and the continued execution of our long-term strategy despite pockets of market uncertainty experienced throughout the year. Global industry-wide announced M&A activity remains healthy and is currently tracking well above last year's year-to-date levels, which was the second most active year for M&A on record. Large-cap strategic M&A remains the primary driver of activity, while middle market and sponsor-related deals, though active, continue to run below historical levels. Equity markets have been resilient, reaching all-time highs in the quarter, and broader financing markets remain active. All in all, the building blocks are in place for a healthy deal-making environment. As it relates to Evercore, we continue to see solid activity across a broad range of sectors, products, and geographies. Looking ahead to the second half of the year, client engagement remains strong, and our backlog currently sits near record levels, though, as is always the case, the timing of backlog conversion into revenue can vary from quarter to quarter, and it is best to evaluate our business on a longer-term basis. We believe the M&A cycle has further room to run over the medium to longer term supported by both large cap activity and increased participation from financial sponsors in the middle market. We are also seeing more companies pursue M&A to achieve scale and to respond to the technological transformation and disruption brought on by AI, which we expect to be a driver of activity across a number of sectors over time. While the market backdrop remains dynamic, we are encouraged by the outlook for our business and expect to see continued activity in the latter part of this year and into next. Turning to talent, since our last earnings call, four senior management directors have joined our investment banking practice in healthcare, industrials, private capital advisory, and our private capital markets group, all based in New York. Further, seven additional SMBs have committed to join our growing global investment banking franchise in key areas, including restructuring in the U.S. and Europe, healthcare, chemicals, and equity capital markets, as well as two new hire space in our Frankfurt office. As of today, we have 19 new SMB additions year to date, 11 external hires, including those that have committed but not yet joined and eight internal promotions. That brings the total of SMVs in our global investment banking practice to 188 with more than 50 currently ramping. In addition, we had one SMV join our equities business in equity trading. Investing in talent is core to our strategy and we remain committed to thoughtfully expanding our platform over time. Now let me turn to our businesses. In North America's strategic advisory, activity was robust in nearly all sectors with particular strengths in healthcare, technology, and industrials. While industry-wide announcement trends among financial sponsors are still below historical average levels, our sponsor-related activity is up meaningfully year over year as we extend our coverage effort with that client base. Our EMEA strategic advisory business had a strong quarter and a record first half. In 2025, we announced the Robey-Warshaw transaction, and we also established local presence in new European markets. Our enhanced and integrated teams across the region are seeing a real pickup in activity. Our strategic defense and shareholder advisory group continue to be busy as activist campaigns push companies to explore sales and strategic reviews. Globally, in the second quarter, we advise on a number of significant transactions including ARCOSA's $8.5 billion sale to CRH, Iridium Communications' $8 billion sale to Rocket Lab, National Grid's $1.75 billion investment in Julent, and Victoria's Secret in its successful proxy fight against VBRC. We also continued to see strong performance across our non-M&A businesses, which generated more than 40% of total revenues over the last 12 months as of the second quarter. Liability management and strong activity and dialogue levels consistent with trends we have seen over the last several quarters. Our private capital markets and debt advisory team remained active with particular strengths in structured equity transactions and securitization as clients continue to seek innovative capital solutions. Private capital advisory maintained its position as the market leading business in this space and delivered another strong quarter. Our private funds group delivered a record second quarter even as the fundraising market remained subdued, driven by continued strong demand for the highest quality funds. Our equity capital markets business had its best quarter ever, supported by more receptive issuance markets and strong investor demand. We served as an active book runner on 19 transactions with a balanced mix of IPOs and follow-on offerings and benefited from a resurgence in healthcare activity as well as strength across several other sectors. In the second quarter, we were active book runner on Parabolus Medicine, $771 million IPO. the largest biotech IPO of all time, and lead left book runner on Red Cat's $259 million follow-on offering. Our equities business had record second quarter revenues as our team continues to deliver best-in-class content, corporate access, and execution services to our institutional client base. and finally our wealth management business delivered its best revenue quarter and finished with quarter end AUM of $16.2 billion. Our record first half results reflect the breadth and durability of our platform and the continued execution of our long-term strategy. We remain encouraged by the level of client dialogue and engagement we are seeing across our global franchise. We continue to invest in our business, positioning us to capture opportunities as they emerge. With that, let me turn it over to Tim.