Houlihan Lokey, Inc.

Good day ladies and gentlemen thank you for standing by and welcome to Houlihan Loki's fourth quarter and fiscal year 2024 earnings conference call at this time all participants are in a listen-only mode a question and answer session will follow the formal presentation and please note that this conference call is being recorded today May 8th 2024 I will now turn the call over to the company please go ahead thank you operator and hello everyone by now

Everyone should have access to our fourth quarter and fiscal year 2024 earnings release, which can be found on the Houlihan-Loki website at www.hl.com in the investor relations section. Before we begin our formal remarks, we need to remind everyone that the discussion today will include forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements, which are usually identified by use of words such as will, expect, anticipate, should, or other similar phrases, are not guarantees of future performance. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from what we expect. And therefore, you should exercise caution when interpreting and relying on them. We refer all of you to our recent SEC filings for a more detailed discussion of the risks that could impact our future operating results and financial condition. We encourage investors to review our regulatory filings, including the Form 10-K for the year ended March 31st, 2024, when it is filed with the SEC. During today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe can be useful in evaluating the company's financial performance. These measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for our financial results prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is available in our earnings release and our investor presentation on the HL.com website. Hosting the call today, we have Scott Beiser, Houlihan Loki's Chief Executive Officer, Scott Adelson, Co-President and Co-Head of Corporate Finance, and Lindsay Alley, Chief Financial Officer of the company. They will provide some opening remarks, and then we will open the call to questions. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Scott.

Thank you, Christopher. Welcome, everyone, to our fourth quarter fiscal 2024 earnings call. First of all, let me say how enjoyable it has been for the last 21 years to have had the pleasure of leading Houlihan Loki on its journey to become a world-class investment banking firm. I'm incredibly thankful to the thousands of employees, clients, and shareholders who helped make this firm the success it is today. A special thanks to my co-executive officers, Scott Adelson, Lindsay Alley, Christopher Crane, Erwin Gold, and David Pryser, as well as our entire global leadership team. The partnership we have developed over the decade has been extraordinary. I'm incredibly pleased to be handing over the CEO title to my long-term partner, Scott Adelson. and a growing team of outstanding managers to lead the firm in the years ahead. I intend to remain involved with Houlihan Loki, but in a different capacity, to assist Scott and others in our continuing effort to build the best investment banking firm in the world. Now on to the business update. We ended the quarter with revenues of $520 million and adjusted earnings per share of $1.27. Revenues were up 17%, and adjusted earnings per share were up 14%. compared to the same quarter last year. We also ended our fiscal year with revenues up 6% versus last year, a good result in a challenging market. One of our firm's strengths is our diversified business model. Over the past year, in an otherwise sluggish M&A market, our corporate finance and financial and valuation advisory businesses were relatively stable while our financial restructuring business grew. We begin the new fiscal year with momentum in all three of our business lines, and remain optimistic that improving market conditions will continue throughout the year. As previously described, after reaching what we believe was the trough in the M&A markets in the spring of 2023, our corporate finance business has been steadily improving ever since. Some of the highlights in our last quarter include $288 million in corporate finance revenues, representing our highest fourth quarter corporate finance revenues in three years. $155 million in financial restructuring revenues, representing our second highest quarterly revenues ever in restructuring, and $77 million in financial and valuation advisory revenues, also representing our second highest quarterly revenues ever in FVA. Overall, the market for our corporate finance and FVA businesses is steadily improving. Financing continues to be available in the marketplace, albeit at higher rates than in the last few years. Financial sponsors are gradually re-entering the market and we have seen an uptick in opportunities to sell private equity portfolio companies. Our pipeline of opportunities and backlog in corporate finance continues to grow as does the size of our transactions. When the timeframe to complete transactions returns to historical norms, it will have a further positive impact on performance. Our financial restructuring business remains at elevated levels and we reiterate our expectations that these elevated levels will continue through fiscal 2025, albeit with some level of quarterly volatility. In the quarter, we hired 11 new managing directors, a recent high watermark. Those hires were partially offset by mostly planned departures. In our current quarter, we are pleased to announce the promotion of 14 directors to managing director and the closing of the Triago acquisition which added seven managing directors to our capital markets business. I would like to close my comments today by introducing you to Scott Adelson. Many of you know that Scott has been a partner of mine in the leadership of the firm for the last 20 years. I've asked Scott to join this call and participate in the Q&A, and starting next quarter, you will hear from Scott as Houlihan Maloki's new CEO. With that, I will hand it over to Scott for a few additional comments. Thank you, Scott.