Greenhill & Co., Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Greenhill third quarter 2021 earnings call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. And to withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Patrick Soonhals. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Good afternoon and thank you all for joining us today for Greenhill's third quarter 2021 financial results conference call. I'm Patrick Soonholz, Greenhill's head of investor relations. Joining me on the call today is Scott Bach, our chairman and chief executive officer. Today's call may include forward-looking statements. These statements are based on our current expectations regarding future events that, by their nature, are outside of the firm's control and are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. The firm's actual results and financial condition may differ, possibly materially, from what is indicated in those forward-looking statements. For discussion of some of the risks and factors that could affect the firm's future results, please see our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and current reports on Form 8-K. Neither we nor any other person assumes responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of any of these forward-looking statements. You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. We are under no duty to update any of these forward-looking statements after the date on which they are made. I would now like to turn the call over to Scott Bach.

Thank you, Patrick. We've reported third quarter revenue of $88.6 million and earnings per share of 85 cents. For the year to date, we had revenue of $200.8 million and earnings per share of 55 cents. Revenue for the year to date is up 17% from the same period last year. Industry data makes clear that we continue to be in a very strong M&A market globally. For our firm, that is evident in the significant increase in new client assignments we have won this year relative to last year and the year before. It is also evident in the fact that on a trailing four-quarters basis, the number of deal announcements with which we are associated is at an all-time high. While many of those transactions were for large companies, for the year to date, the sizes of deals we have completed have skewed toward the smaller end of the normal spectrum, resulting in a year-to-date revenue increase smaller than that of our peers. Nonetheless, we are pleased with the progress we made in the third quarter, continue to expect a strong finish to the year, and are confident that our revenue going forward will benefit from a reversion to the norm in terms of deal sizes and commensurate fees. On a regional basis, for the year, we expect to show a stronger year than last year in the U.S. and Canada and a much stronger year in Australia, offset by reduced revenue in Europe, where we had a particularly strong revenue year last year. By type of advice, M&A continues to be the area in which we see the most opportunity. Restructuring remains relatively slow given the strength of credit markets, but we are pleased with the progress of our new initiative to win more financing advisory assignments. In the private capital advisory area, we've made great progress in building out our global team for both primary fundraising and secondary sale transactions, and both of those businesses now have strong assignment backlogs. Across all our businesses, we are pleased with the progress in our new initiative to do more business with financial sponsors. With respect to recruiting, our press release notes two more senior hires in M&A, one each in Germany and Australia. We are pleased with what we have accomplished in recruiting this year and remain focused on adding more senior talent in the months to come. Now turning to costs, our compensation costs have been lower than last year in absolute terms, given our objective to bring quarterly compensation more in line with quarterly revenue. Our compensation ratio of 50% for the quarter brought down the year-to-date ratio to 65%, and our objective is to bring that ratio down further by year-end while still paying our team increased compensation in absolute dollars. Where we end up in terms of compensation costs and expense ratio for the year depends, as always, on our revenue outcome for the year. Our non-compensation costs were materially lower than last year and are running at the low end of our target range for the year-to-date. Our interest expense continues to trend lower given a declining debt level and continued low short-term interest rates. We continue to expect our annual tax rate to be in the mid-20% range before adjusting for charges relating to changes in the value of restricted stock upon vesting. We ended the quarter with $100.4 million in cash and $291.9 million of debt, and after the quarter end, we made an additional voluntary debt repayment of $10 million. During the quarter, we repurchased more than 637,000 shares and share equivalents for a total cost of $9.5 million. And in October, we repurchased an additional 194,000 shares for a cost of $3.1 million. For the year today, we've used our cash flow to repay $45 million of debt and repurchase $36.4 million of shares and share equivalents. In addition, we declared our usual quarterly dividend of $0.05 per share. As I said last quarter, our principal focus is on deleveraging, but we also intend to continue to purchase shares in a prudent manner to further enhance the upside potential for continuing shareholders. Our employees currently own about half of the economics of our firm through stock and restricted stock, and thus are fully aligned in trying to drive shareholder value creation in the quarters and years to come. To sum up, we are pleased with our revenue growth and profitability this quarter, and we are also pleased with our progress in our strategic initiatives. Our goal is to both increase our total revenue and to reduce our quarterly revenue volatility, and we aim to do that by expanding our client base to serve more financial sponsors and expanding our service offering to include more financing roles and more private capital advisory transactions. If we succeed, our reduced cost, declining debt and interest expense, and much reduced share count should together result in significantly greater earnings and shareholder value creation. And with that, I'll be pleased to take any questions.