Moelis & Company

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Mollis & Company earnings conference call for the third quarter of 2022. To begin, I'll turn the call over to Mr. Matt Zucrow.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for Mollis & Company's third quarter 2022 financial results conference call. On the phone today are Ken Mollis, Chairman and CEO, and Joe Simon, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would 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 moles and companies 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.molis.com. I will now turn the call over to Joe to discuss our results.

Thanks, Matt, and good afternoon, everyone. On today's call, I'll go through our financial results, and then Ken will comment further on the business. We achieved $232 million of adjusted revenues in the third quarter. a decrease of 55% from the record prior year third quarter. The decrease during the quarter is primarily attributable to lower levels of transaction completions driven by the volatile markets. Our nine-month total revenues of 768 million were down 33% from the record prior year period. Moving to expenses, our year-to-date compensation expense was accrued at 62%. Given the dislocation in the transaction environment, our investment in new MD hires and non-MD compensation inflation across the industry, the 62% comp ratio is our best full-year estimate. Our third quarter non-comp expenses were $38 million, resulting in a year-to-date non-comp ratio of 15%. T&E is still tracking at 75% of pre-pandemic levels consistent with expectations. Our year-to-date pre-tax margin is 24%. Moving to taxes, our underlying corporate tax rate of 27.1% for the third quarter is consistent with prior quarters. We continue to maintain a fortress balance sheet with no funded debt. Our board declared a regular dividend of $0.60 per share, and during the quarter we repurchased approximately 330,000 shares, which together with the first and second quarters has resulted in a year-to-date buyback of approximately 3.2 million shares. As always, we remain committed to returning 100% of our excess capital. And I'll now turn the call over to Ken.