Moelis & Company

Good afternoon and welcome to the Molison Company earnings conference call for the fourth quarter of 2021. All participants will be in 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 telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. To begin, I'll turn the call over to Mr. Chet Mandel, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you for joining us for Mollis & Company's full year and fourth quarter 2021 financial results conference call. On the phone today are Ken Mollis, Chairman and CEO, and Joe Simon, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to note that the remarks made on this call may contain certain forward-looking statements, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties, including those identified from time to time in the risk factor section of Mollis & Company's filings with the SEC. Actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated. The firm undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Our comments today include references to certain adjusted financial measures. We believe these measures, when presented together with comparable gap measures, are useful to investors to compare our results across several periods and to better understand our operating results. The reconciliation of these adjusted financial measures with the relevant GAAP financial information and other information required by Reg G is provided in the firm's earnings release, which can be found on our investor relations website at investors.molus.com. I will now turn the call over to Ken to discuss our results. Ken?

Thanks, Chet, and good afternoon. 2021 was an outstanding year for Molus & Company, and I'm proud of how we executed this past year and the relentless efforts of our people. Our adjusted full-year 2021 revenues exceeded $1.5 billion, and we're up 65 percent from the prior year's record performance. We grew year over year across all of our products and all regions. Our M&A activity on its own exceeded last year's full total revenues, and we also produced record levels of capital markets and restructuring activity. We achieved a full-year pre-tax margin of 34 percent, which is our highest in history. allowing us to return a significant amount of capital to shareholders. And we now have 16 managing director banker promotes, the largest class in the firm's history. In fact, nearly 50% of our current managing directors have been internally promoted, and we expect this to continue to be a fundamental part of our growth strategy. By being laser focused on internal talent development and differentiating our advisory offering through an integrated one firm approach, we've been able to organically grow our revenues by 20% and earnings per share by 25% on a five-year compounded annual growth rate, while also paying out a total of $21.79 per share in dividends over that same period. I'll now turn the call over to Joe, who will take you through our financial highlights, and then I'll come back and discuss our growth strategy some more. Joe?