P10, Inc.

Hello and welcome to the P10 third quarter 2024 conference call. My name is Lateef and I will be coordinating your call today. Currently, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded. I will now hand the call over to your host, Mark Hood, EVP and Chief Administrative Officer. Mark, please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and thank you all for joining us today. On today's call, we will be joined by Luke Sarsfield, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Amanda Cousins, EVP, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Compliance Officer. Additionally in the room with us today is RJ Jensen, EVP, Head of Strategy and AMA. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that this conference call, as well as the presentation slides, They constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws, including the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements reflect management's current plans, estimates, and expectations and are inherently uncertain. Actual results for future periods may differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements due to a number of risks and uncertainties. that are described in greater detail in our earnings release and in our periodic reports filed from time to time with the SEC. The forward-looking statements included are made only as of the date hereof. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements as a result of new information or future events, except as required by law. During the call, we will also discuss certain non-GAAP measures, which we believe can be useful in evaluating the company's performance. A reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable gap measure is available in our earnings release and our filings with the SEC. I will now turn the call over to Luke.

Thank you, Mark. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I am exceptionally pleased with our record third quarter and the year-to-date financial results, as well as the progress we've made on our five-point strategic growth plan. Before we discuss the quarter, I think it is important to recognize that we recently marked our three-year anniversary as an NYSE listed firm. Since our public debut in October of 2021, we have demonstrated that this business is durable, resilient, and extremely well positioned for continued growth. As we celebrated our three-year anniversary of being a public company, I also completed my first year as CEO. The past 12 months have been foundational in so many ways, and represent an inflection point for the business as we developed our strategic growth plan, delivered and executed across each imperative, including announcing a value-creating strategic transaction, proved our team's ability to raise and deploy capital across our attractive and compelling franchises, and enhanced our shareholder engagement and communication, culminating in our first investor day this past September. And all the while, we've generated durable alpha while expanding our product offerings and the ways we engage with our clients. Upon joining the company in October of 2023, I sought the perspectives of our stakeholders who I knew would be instrumental in propelling our business into the future, namely our employees, our strategies, our clients, and our shareholders. To do this, I embarked on a listening tour where I visited each of our strategies, met many P10 colleagues, and engaged with LPs and public shareholders, both existing and prospective. This deep dive provided a more complete understanding of the organization, along with valuable insights that confirm my core thesis that PTEN had the potential for significant profitable growth. Through listening and engaging with the team, we developed and launched our strategic growth plan last February, thus unveiling our North Star to direct our actions. In less than one year, we've made substantial progress against all the key objectives that I will cover in detail momentarily. First, I want to highlight a few key takeaways from our financial results. In the third quarter, we raised and deployed $1.4 billion in gross new fee-paying AUM with about $300 million of that amount coming from commitments that closed a quarter earlier than we expected. We delivered revenue of $74 million representing 26% year-over-year growth. Fee-related revenue, or FRR, was $73 million, a 26% increase compared to the prior year period, and we generated approximately $35 million of fee-related earnings, or FRE, a 19% increase from Q3 of 2023. This represents an FRE margin of 48%. In short, This performance represents record quarterly results across all our major KPIs, fundraising, revenue, and fee-related earnings. Throughout 2024, we have driven significant demand from our funds that are currently in the market, and I want to take a moment to highlight some of our momentum on the fundraising front during the quarter. Our private equity solutions raised $1.1 billion. We have three large funds currently in the market, RCP Direct 5, RCP Secondary 5, and Bonacourt 2. Additionally, our private credit solutions added $220 million to fee-paying assets under management, while our venture capital solutions sleeve raised $105 million in the third quarter. And while we saw brisk activity across our commingled funds, we also raised over $200 million in SMAs. As you will recall from our Investor Day, finding new ways to leverage our expertise on behalf of clients is critical to our future growth, and this highlights the early progress we're making on this front. As we think about 2025 and beyond, we will be focusing on additional ways for investors to interact with us outside of traditional commingled vehicles. Through the first three quarters of 2024, we've raised and deployed $2.9 billion, which handily beats our full year $2.5 billion guidance that we provided in February. Our momentum is a direct result of our team's unified efforts. Each of our strategies has been collaborative and constructive as we execute on the strategic growth plan that I shared at the beginning of the year. We have all bought in and we know that we are better together. And now I want to offer a little more color on the progress we've made year to date. First, we have now built a corporate level organizational structure that is positioned to accelerate growth with four experienced and talented leaders guiding key parts of the organization and reporting directly to me. I am proud to work alongside this exceptional team, and they are already delivering results. Second, we're focused on enhancing organic growth through deepening and expanding our relationships with clients. As you heard me say earlier, we have real fundraising momentum. As we continue to deepen and amplify our leading position in the middle and lower middle markets, We will create momentum for our strategies as they raise capital. Further, in September, Sarita Narsan-Jarath began her role as global head of client solutions. Sarita's appointment is a milestone for us as we now have a senior leader who is singularly focused on organic growth, and we are implementing operational protocols and processes to better serve our clients. P10 has real momentum. We're a category killer in the lower middle market. and Sarita is helping us accelerate that vision as we enter 2025. Third, we are laying the appropriate foundation for generating inorganic growth. In September, we announced our acquisition of Qualitas Funds, the first addition to our platform since 2022. Qualitas Funds is a leading European private equity fund-to-funds manager based in Madrid, managing approximately $1 billion in fee-paying assets under management. It provides fund-to-funds, direct co-investing, and NAS financing products in the European lower middle market to more than 1,300 limited partners across the ultra-high net worth, family office, and institutional channels. The founders and their talented team have built an incredible firm with strong performance and a deep and loyal investor base. Furthermore, the firm has a strong expected growth trajectory, and we are so excited to add them to our platform. This acquisition will establish a European presence and meaningfully grow PTEN's investor base, positioning us as a leading global multi-strategy private markets firm focused on the middle and lower middle markets. As we talked about at Investor Day, Qualitas Funds is extremely complimentary with RCP advisors. They share an existing relationship through a joint venture dating back to 2017. More recently, The Qualitas team has also been working with Hark on NAV lending opportunities in Europe. They share our client-centric culture and dedication to serving clients with elite, access-constrained investment opportunities in the middle and lower middle markets. We continue to expect to close the deal in the first quarter of 2025, and thereafter will provide more color on what we see as a terrific opportunity for us in Europe. Fourth, We are generating operational efficiencies through incentivizing collaboration and leveraging data insights. We're creating value through doubling down on focus areas that are performing, eliminating ancillary processes, and implementing world-class systems that are set to yield tangible results. To support our strategies, we curate top-tier technologies and manage vendor relationships so our strategies can focus on generating alpha for our LPs. We're also collaborating by rolling out shared software tools and by using our buying power to generate savings in areas like employee benefits. And finally, we're enhancing our transparency and shareholder dialogue. During the third quarter, we hosted our inaugural Investor Day, which provided a fantastic opportunity to showcase the attractive and compelling attributes of our business. You will also recall that earlier this year, in our commitment to enhance transparency, we began providing new KPIs that make it easier for our public investors to compare us to peers. Last month at investor day, we reported client re-up rates for the first time, and we also introduced long-term guidance in several key areas. First, we intend to more than double fee paying assets under management by 2029 with the vast majority coming from organic growth. Secondly, We're focused on value-creating M&A and believe we can become the acquirer of choice in our market space. Finally, we expect core organic FRE margins, excluding M&A, to expand from the mid-40% range in the near-to-intermediate term to near 50% in the out years. All Investor Day materials are available on our Investor Relations website, including a full replay of the event. We believe in telling the investment community our plans and then reporting back on our progress. We delivered that in my first year and will continue to abide by that principle moving forward. Our progress to date is only an indicator of what's to come. There are so many compelling and positively differentiated attributes of our business model, and we have multiple avenues for growth, both organically and inorganically. We are relentlessly focused on supporting our strategies, through our 1P10 culture that we have carefully cultivated and fostered. As we head toward the end of 2024, our outlook is positive, our future very bright, and we continue to believe our stock purchases are a reflection of our view that the current price represents an attractive entry point for investors. When we speak again on our fourth quarter earnings call in February, we plan to share our updated strategic initiatives for 2025 along with more granular 2025 financial guidance, including the impact of the Qualitas Fund's acquisition. With that, I'll hand the call over to Amanda.

Thank you, Luke. At the end of the third quarter, fee-paying assets under management were $24.9 billion, a 10% increase on a year-over-year basis. In the quarter, $1.4 billion of fundraising and capital deployment was offset by $285 million in step-downs and expirations. As anticipated, most of the third quarter's step-downs and expirations are attributable to repayments in our private credit solutions businesses. For the full year, we expect step-downs and expirations to total approximately $1.5 billion, which leaves roughly $200 million expected in Q4. Revenue in the third quarter was $74.2 million. a 26% increase over the third quarter of 2023. Average fee rate in the third quarter was 119 basis points, which was driven by direct strategies with higher fee rates becoming a larger part of our fee-paying AUM mix, as well as higher catch-up fees. In the third quarter, catch-up fees were $6 million, bringing the total for the year to about 20 million. Catch-up fees are driven by the timing of fund closings And in the third quarter, the fees were primarily attributable to closings related to Bon Accord II and RCP Multistrat II. Due to the timing of Bon Accord's closes, our year-to-date catch-up fees have exceeded our previously stated annual guidance of $16 million. It will be helpful for investors to think of our catch-up fees in two categories, normal course catch-up fees from our primary funds and more episodic catch-up fees from our direct and secondary strategies which tend to be larger in size and have longer fundraising periods. For the quarter, nearly all of the catch-up fees were from our direct and secondary strategies. In bifurcating our catch-up fees, investors will see a more normalized run rate of our revenue growth. Operating expenses in the third quarter were $65.4 million, a 12% increase over the same period a year ago. The increase was primarily driven by compensation expense placement fees, and professional fees from the Qualitas Funds transaction and our recent debt refinancing. Gap net income in the third quarter was $1.3 million, an increase compared to a gap net loss of $8.8 million in the prior year third quarter. Adjusted EBITDA in the third quarter of 2024 was $35.3 million, an increase of 19% from the third quarter of 2023. For the quarter, our adjusted EBITDA margin was 48%. Our margin came in a bit higher than expected due to catch-up fees and product mix. We still expect margins for the year to be in the mid-40s as we continue to make key investments that we believe will deliver clear ROI. FRR in the quarter was $72.9 million, representing a 26% annual increase and FRE was $35.1 million, representing a 19% increase. Our FRE margin was 48% in the third quarter. For the third quarter, adjusted net income, or ANI, was $30.8 million, a 26% increase over the third quarter of 2023. Fully diluted ANI EPS was 26 cents per share, an increase of 32% on a year-over-year basis. Cash and cash equivalents at the end of the third quarter were $61 million. At quarter end, we had an outstanding term loan balance of $325 million and no balance on the revolver. There is $175 million available on the revolver and an additional $125 million available on the accordion feature. In the third quarter, we repurchased 609,300 shares at an average price of $10.15 per share. That brings the number of shares repurchased since the beginning of 2024 to about 5.8 billion, representing about $48.7 million in aggregate value. Since the inception of our repurchase program in 2022, we have repurchased a total of 8.9 million shares at an average price of $8.80 per share. As of September 30th, 2024, we had approximately $13.9 million remaining on the program. You'll note we did not repurchase as many shares in the third quarter as we did in previous quarters. This is a reflection of having fewer days to repurchase shares as a result of our blackout imposed as we worked to announce the Qualitas funds transaction. As Luke mentioned, we continue to believe our stock presents a compelling entry point for investors who are looking for access to a diversified alternative platform focused on the lower and core middle market. We also continue to pay our quarterly dividend for Class A and Class B common stock. Today, we declared a quarterly cash dividend of 3.5 cents per share payable on December 20th, 2024 to stockholders of record as of the close of business on November 29th, 2024. Finally, as of September 30th, 2024, our Class A shares outstanding were 53,813,892 and Class B shares outstanding were 57,407,903. As I discussed at our investor day in September, our robust business model continues to strengthen with every dollar of new capital we deploy every new company added to our database, and every new fund that launches. Our FRE-centric financial model creates investor alignment by leaving the majority of carried interest with our investment teams, furthering investment performance, and leading to solid VPing AUM growth. I am thrilled with our third quarter results and our progress year-to-date. Thank you for your time today. We look forward to updating you on our continued progress in February as we execute against our growth initiatives. I'll now pass the call over to the operator to begin the Q&A session.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. One moment for questions. Our first question comes from Kenneth Worthington with J.P. Morgan. You may proceed.

Hi, this is Alex Bernstein, honor for Ken. Thanks so much for taking our questions and congratulations on the strong quarter. Just wanted to double click on fee rates. Appreciate the comments you made around the different allocations and what types of strategies are driving those higher. Page 24 is also helpful for us to visualize that. I believe you've previously guided to 105 as sort of a steady state. Now we've been above that, X retro fees. for two quarters in a row, which I think makes us wonder, how high do you think that fee rates can get in the future? And how does the asset raising mix expected to change over time?

Thank you, Alex. The vast majority of fee ping AUM at P10 today comes from traditional commingled funds. Our fee rates within our primary strategies have also remained stable over the last several years. And that's due to our funds often being oversubscribed. We are also giving our investors access to the attractive middle market and low middle market sectors and strong investment returns over decades. I think, you know, as we give additional guidance for 2025, we'll be able to comment a bit more on our average fee rate growth. But really, it comes from the mix of our traditional commingled funds and FMA relationships as we continue to build this out.

Great. Thanks. And to ask another one, fundraising, obviously, a really strong quarter, even if you're considering the pull forward from Q4. To what extent can you attribute any of that to some of the initiatives that were laid out on the investor day? cross-selling, things of that nature, having more dedicated folks. Is it still early for those items to be the driver here, or was there an impact in any anecdotes that you can provide for us? Thanks again.

Thanks, Alex. Look, I'd love to tell you that it was all due to all the strategic initiatives we're driving, but I think we have to be honest. Clients, particularly clients where we're engaging with them and we're trying to build and deepen and broaden relationships, Those can take quarters, if not years, many times, right? That's just the reality of how it is. And so I think we've built great infrastructure around it. I think we have outstanding teams who are already engaging in it in day-to-day activities with these clients. But obviously, over time, we think there's another kind of growth leg that we can push on. And we obviously are very focused on continuing to build that out. And so we will do that. I think this success that we saw in this quarter is really just a testament to a few things. One is you know, the compelling nature of our investment strategies and the outstanding alpha that we've generated for clients to the depth of the client relationships that we have and the appeal that I think our product offering has in the current market, which is really, really appealing. And then I would point at one other thing, as I mentioned, we are really focused on finding, you know, ways outside of traditional co-mable drawdown vehicles to engage with our clients. And as I noted, there's about $200 million of SMA, assets in there, which obviously, you know, while still a small number in the grand scheme of things, we think is a really kind of compelling sign of things we can do with clients to engage with them in ways beyond traditional drawdown commingled funds. And so that's something we're super excited about and we see real promise for. And like our cross-selling initiative, like many of our other initiatives to deepen and broaden our client base, product design and development is another important attribute of how we see ourselves growing that asset base that we have here at PTEN.

I appreciate the answers. Thank you so much.

Thanks.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Ben Rubin with UBS. You may proceed.

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. My first one is on the FRE margin. Amanda, you just reiterated your guidance for the mid 40 percent FRE margin for this year. But with year to date margins around 48 percent, I guess, number one, how should we think about the step down and what's driving that in the fourth quarter? And then secondly, at Investor Day, you guys spoke about getting back to that 50 percent margin. margin over the long term. So at a high level, how should we be thinking about the balance between expense discipline with the ongoing investments you're making in the platform? Thank you.

Thank you, Ben. So margin did come in a bit higher than expected due to the strength of our direct strategies and product mix. We still expect margins for the year to be in the mid-40s, as we said. as we continue to make our key investments that we do believe will deliver a clear ROI. As mentioned at investor days, we do expect margins to expand from the mid-40s in the near to intermediate term to near 50% longer term. We have ongoing mix shifts within our existing portfolio strategies. We have newer and faster-growing businesses, such as Bonacore Park and WTI, that have lower core adjusted EBITDA margins than other parts of our business. And then another influence on the margin is our foundational human capital investments, as you mentioned, which we expect to drive core growth and high ROI for investors.

Yeah, I'll just add a few things, Ben, just to put some context on it. I think one of the other things you heard Amanda say as part of her comments was that because of some of the catch-up fees, kind of excess catch-up fees relative to what we had guided at the beginning of the year, those come at a very high margin. And so they will have the natural impact of pulling margin up in a certain period of time. But obviously, they're not something that, you know, some will persist for an extended period of time, but not those direct and secondary, very lumpy ones that Amanda talked about. And so I think they had the net effect of kind of, you know, pulling margin up, obviously, in a very positive way. But that's going to be a transitory effect. I want to go back to the investor day guidance because I think that's really the key of what we're talking about. We expect margins to be in the mid forties X M and A in the near to intermediate term. And then we do think because of the nature of our business, because of the inherent operating leverage in our model, because of our product and strategy mix shift over time, that there will be some things that will accrue and that will enable us to move back closer to the 50% range. But again, The guidance, as we laid it out, near to intermediate, and remember, that was five-year guidance. I want to be clear on that, right? So near to intermediate term, we're talking about, you know, kind of the mid-40s margin guidance, XM&A, and then we think because of the favorable dynamics, particularly operating leverage dynamics, that it can expand from there as you get into the out years.

That's great. I appreciate the color. And then just for my follow-up, you mentioned you did $6 million of buybacks last quarter, but you also flagged that you were out of the market a little bit due to some other issues. And, Luke, as you mentioned, the stock still looks compelling at these levels. So I guess just kind of stepping back, what's the best way to think about the pace of buybacks going forward from here, given the stock still is attractive from a buyback perspective? Thank you.

So great question. I'd say a few things. One is we think the stock continues to look incredibly compelling. I think you heard me say that. I think you heard Amanda say that. I probably can't say that enough. So let me say it one more time. We think the stock is unbelievably compelling at these levels. Secondly, you heard exactly kind of what Amanda said, which is because of the fact that we were executing on the Qualitas transaction during the quarter, we made, we think, the very sound and prudent judgment that we had to suspend some of our buyback activity given we were getting close to something that we viewed as kind of a material event and a material disclosure we had to make and obviously didn't want to be doing anything inappropriate and we were very, very careful to be cautious and prudent in getting a lot of great legal advice and legal input around that. Having said that, as you note, we think it continues to present a very attractive opportunity. I would just go back to are kind of, you know, hierarchy of capital uses. Use one will always be to pay the dividend, right? And we continue to do that. You see us do that this quarter as we do every quarter. And then we'll have kind of two, I would say, co-equal uses. One will be for share or purchase, and the other will be for value enhancing M&A. And we'll continue to execute on both of those. And obviously, over any given period of time, if we're executing on an M&A deal, you might see a little less on share repurchase. If we're not doing an M&A deal, then the primary use for that quarter will be share repurchase. And then obviously, you know, if we have excess capital left over after embarking on those three in the hierarchy, we'd repay debt, but that's going to be the lowest priority. You know, look, we are very, very focused on being disciplined and prudent stewards of shareholder value and shareholder capital. And we want to find ways to return that capital and reward our longstanding shareholders.

Got it. That's very clear. Thank you for taking my questions.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Ben Bush with Barclays. You may proceed. All right.

Good evening, and thanks for taking the question. I wanted to just touch on M&A. I know we've talked quite a bit about this, but just could you remind us, you know, kind of going into the next year, you've announced a deal recently in Spain. Just curious how you see the next, say, like, you know, three or four quarters unfolding in terms of cross-sell. You know, you've talked about kind of changing how the organization will go to market. So how should we think about expectations specifically for, you know, how the new asset will function as part of P10 going into next year?

Well, look, great question. And We are, have been, and continue to be just unbelievably excited about Qualitas Funds, about Eric and Sergio, the incredible team they've built. And, you know, it's funny. You spend a lot of time with somebody announcing the M&A deal, but then you get the privilege of spending even more time with them after the M&A deal as you work through integration. We're very excited about where we stand vis-a-vis that. And I would say the more time we spend, the more excited we are. It is an incredible strategy. They have built an incredible team. And as you heard us talk about, it is just so strategically aligned with so many of our existing strategies, in particular RCP, longstanding relationship, longstanding partnership, tremendous amount of respect across those organizations and mutual touch points across those organizations. And now increasingly with HARC, you know, on their NAV lending strategy in Europe, the ability to kind of coordinate, collaborate, and work together has been extraordinary. And so we're really excited about it. We think they bring a lot to the table. We think there's a lot we can learn from each other. We think there are opportunities that they will open up for some of our legacy franchises in Europe. And I imagine there are concurrent opportunities that we will open up for them in the U.S. And so it's really early days. Again, reminder, we haven't closed the deal yet. We won't close the deal until the first quarter. But once we get it closed, and really embark on what we think is gonna be a super exciting journey together. We think the sky's the limit for what we can do in tandem.

Got it, helpful. Maybe another question, sort of thinking about next year, if you look at the market reaction to a lot of the asset manager stocks in the past couple days, clearly there's an expectation things are about to be a lot better. Your model's always kind of been one, especially thinking about franchises like RCP, where you're in the market more frequently, you're not asking for as big a check size, and so you've seen less of an impact the past couple years on your fundraising and so as activity picks up and you know in the you know kind of traditional private equity narrative it's going to get easier theoretically to raise as more capital is returned how do you see p10 as willing as positioned to benefit where do you see the biggest opportunity to say upsize fund sizes to sort of increase fundraising you know how do you think about that playing out over the next say 12 to 18 months well look it's

From your lips to God's ears on the macro environment, I certainly hope that's right. And if it were, we'd all be excited by it. You did kind of hit on an interesting point there. One of the things we've always prided ourselves on is that we think we have an all-weather mix of businesses. And we think we have strategies that work in virtually every market environment and, frankly, any market environment. Now, obviously, in different market environments, different strategies will come to the fore and different strategies may not be so relevant. But one of the beauties of the diversified portfolio is that it is inherently hedged against market volatility. The other thing I would just note, and of course you know this and we talk a lot about this, but there are some really attractive characteristics of our meaningful presence in the middle and lower middle market that also provides inoculation against some of this market volatility, I think to your point that maybe some others have seen. Obviously, to your point, if you're in the traditional buyout business, there's a huge focus on DPI. And I think there's probably increasing enthusiasm that maybe some things will break on the macro, whether it's borrowing costs, whether it's M&A activity that will allow for more DPI to be unleashed. And I think that will be a net positive for the industry. And clearly things that are positive for the industry can also be positives for us, right? And so I think to your point, we see a lot of opportunity. you know, in the traditional kind of buyout business. And we think, you know, obviously through RCP and then through Qualitas as well, we're really a leveraged proxy to be a beneficiary of a lot of that activity. Also, I think we're seeing some very heartening signs in the venture market environment in general. You know, there was probably a period of time where that market was in reset mode, and now it seems to have found a base and some stabilization and continue to move on the forward. And we think, you know, there's also some real opportunities for us, and we continue to see attractive opportunities for us across many of our credit businesses. And so we're really excited about the forward. We think we've got this great diversified all-weather portfolio in a protected part of the market where we are the category killer. But obviously, you know, a rising tide will lift all ships, and we hope to be a beneficiary of that should there be a rising tide.

Understood. Appreciate your thoughts. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Michael Cypress with Morgan Stanley. You may proceed.

Hey, this is Stephanie filling in for Mike. Just wanted to double-click into the SMA opportunities. You raised over $200 million this quarter. Hoping you could unpack that for us a bit in terms of pace versus last few quarters or maybe contributors from either RCP or TrueBridge. And then just going forward, how should we think about the growth trajectory opportunities for further SMAs? What steps are you taking to accelerate and capture what still seems like an early innings opportunity for you guys? Thanks.

Thanks, Stephanie. And great question. So you're right. This is still a very early innings opportunity for us. I think we showed a slide in Investor Day where we talked a little bit about our existing book of business, as you'll call it, in the SMA space, which represents, rough justice, 15% of our total assets at this point. So remember, the vast majority of our assets and the even vaster majority of our fees are still coming from the traditional commingled vehicles. But we see a real opportunity to engage with clients, to go deeper, to do more things with them. And we think engaging particularly with bigger and more sophisticated clients who want to do something a little bit more customized, a little bit more bespoke, maybe a little bit more off the run than what you would get in a traditional commingled format, it's a great way to do it. I think you know this, because of the nature of the dialogue, it's never going to be linear, right? So it's not like, you know, we're going to do X one quarter and then 1.2X the next quarter and 1.4X the following quarter. These are generally longer-tailed conversations. They generally are initiated by, you know, hey, let's get to know each other a little bit better, talk about what you, the client, want, talk about what we, P10, across our strategies can do. I think increasingly there's an opportunity to do it a across some of our P10 verticals. So they may just not be kind of single affiliate conversations. They may be multi-strategy, multi-affiliate conversations that we can have. And I think that's really exciting. I don't, at this point, Stephanie, want to get into the details of, you know, I think you can go down a rabbit hole pretty quick about, well, what client and what vertical. I would say stepping back, our focus is on doing this, on doing it more broadly, on doing it with a broader cross-section of clients and being able to lift our eyes and maybe do it with larger clients than we've traditionally had. There are some very, very exciting conversations I will tell you right now that we are having. The beauty of these is I think once you manage to work something out with the client, they are very durable, they are very sticky, and I think they tend to grow over time. And so the initiation is really important. And once you get it in place and working well, the opportunity to grow together is massive. And I think, again, it comes back to what we can provide that nobody else can provide, and that is this differentiated access in the lower middle market, and that is this differentiated ability to access specialized niche and fragmented markets and alternatives. And so I think increasingly, as clients are maybe getting more open to stepping out from just traditional large-cap buyout, traditional large-cap private credit, we're really a unique and differentiated partner, and we hope to capture that real estate.

Got it. I appreciate that, Collar. And as we think about this opportunity contributing more going forward, any implications to the mixed impact of fee rate or margins that we should be considering, especially if you're successful here?

Well, I would pull those two apart a little bit. I would say on the revenue mix, I presume, which is what you're asking, clearly, generally, I'm generalizing, but I think it is almost always true, these will come at lower fee rates than the traditional commingled business, right? And we showed that, you could see that in our investor day slides where the 85% of our business that was in commingled fund format was at a higher fee rate than the 15% of our business that was in SMA format. And that was why there was an even greater differentiation when you looked at it on a revenue basis. But what I would say is, I actually think that's only half of the story. And your margin question is a really interesting part of it. Generally speaking, because these are leveraging core areas of expertise that are already resident at P10, the incremental cost to setting up these kind of SMAs is generally quite low. In some cases, you know, virtually zero, or at least zero in that it can be done with the existing team. Presumably there was some, you know, time and resource and capability use that will be subsumed by that. But at least in the narrow, this should be very, very high margin business because it leverages existing embedded in-house expertise, capability, knowledge, et cetera. And so I think while it will have potential, you know, kind of if we were to do a lot of it, it would have pressure on revenue over time. I could actually see it being a margin contributor in the same way.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. I would now like to turn the call back over to Luke Sarsfield for any closing remarks.

Well, thank you, operator, and thanks to you all for joining us today. In addition to our earnings release, you may have seen an 8K today announcing the departure of co-founders Robert Alpert and Clark Webb from the P10 Board of Directors. We want to extend our sincere appreciation for their many contributions to the company over the last few years. We are so pleased with the board we have in place, with Tracy Benford as our lead independent director, and we believe we have the proper governance and oversight in place to guide the company to higher heights in 2025 and beyond. Finally, as we made clear during our investor day and on this call, it's an exciting time at PTED, and we are gaining momentum every day. As I close today, I would like to remind you all of the key factors that summarize how we are thinking about the opportunity in front of us. First, there are powerful and favorable secular trends supporting the growth of private markets. Second, we're specialists with over two decades in what we believe to be the most attractive parts of the market, and that is the middle and lower middle market. Our reputation, our focus, and our longevity produce an information advantage that results in asymmetric investment opportunities. Third, we have significant white space as we focus on deepening and expanding our large and diverse global LP base. The Qualitas Fund's acquisition demonstrates the disciplined and process-driven M&A engine we are building. And finally, our team is aligned and dedicated to collaboration across our platform. We're driving operational efficiencies and building scale in meaningful ways. Thank you again for your time. We so appreciate your ongoing support, and we all look very much forward to speaking with you again in February.

Thank you. This concludes the conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.