Ridgepost Capital, Inc. Class A

Hello and welcome to Ridge Post Capital's first quarter 2026 conference call. My name is Lateef and I will be coordinating your call today. Currently, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded. I will now pass the call to your host. Mark Hood, EVP and Chief Administrative Officer. Mark, please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and thank you all for joining us. On today's call, we will be joined by Luke Sarsfield, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Amanda Cousins, EVP and Chief Financial Officer, and RJ Jensen, EVP out of M&A and Strategy. After our prepared remarks, Sarita Jareth, EVP, Global Head of Client Solutions, will also join our Q&A session. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that this conference call, as well as the presentation slides, may include 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 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 information or future events, except as otherwise required by law. During the call, we will also discuss certain non-GAAP measures that we believe can be useful in evaluating the company's performance. A reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure is included in the presentation slides posted on our website and our filings with the SEC. I will now turn the call over to Luke.

Thank you, Mark. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'll first recap Ridge Post Capital's first quarter 2026 financial and operational highlights, and then spend a few minutes reflecting on the attractive and durable nature of our LP base. RJ will provide an update on our acquisition of Stellis Capital Management. Amanda will dive deeper into our financial performance, and then I will provide some closing thoughts. Ridge Post Capital had an extremely strong start to the year, hitting several key milestones. Importantly, our fee-paying assets under management crossed $30 billion for the first time, and we experienced a record quarter in terms of fundraising and deployment. Additionally, we continue to observe strong investment performance across our strategies. In particular, this quarter I would highlight increases to the already strong results for the flagship funds at TrueBridge, our venture capital strategy, most of which have achieved three to nearly six times net ROIC as of December 31st, 2025. Our fee-paying assets under management increased to approximately $31 billion, representing 18% year-over-year growth. Since June of 2024, The as of date we used at our investor day, fee paying AUM has grown at a 16% compound annual growth rate, keeping us on track to achieve our long-term target of $50 billion by the end of 2029. Turning to our fundraising activity, we delivered a record quarter with gross fundraising and deployment totaling approximately $2 billion. This level of fundraising was in line with our expectations and included in our two-year guidance discussed on the fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. We had a total of 19 funds in the market this quarter. We are extremely proud of this fundraising performance, which we think reflects the growing LP demand for the solutions we offer our clients. It also reflects a number of favorable elements coming together at once in the quarter, in particular at our venture capital strategy, TrueBridge, which Amanda will cover in greater detail. I would also point out that fundraising will not always follow a linear path, and we, of course, expect some variability between quarters. Turning now to a few points I wanted to make about our business, which I think are important to highlight. The first few months of this year were eventful for the firm. On our fourth quarter earnings call, we covered our 2025 year-end results, our announced acquisition of Stellis Capital Management, and our rebranding as Ridge Post Capital. There has also been a good deal of news flow regarding the alternative asset management space, including around software and AI disruption concerns around private credit, driving a general focus on credit quality and related high levels of redemption requests. This has directly and negatively impacted public market valuations. Importantly, Ridge Post has very little exposure to these trends, and we wanted to take the opportunity to double-click on a few areas In particular, aspects of our business that we believe are truly differentiating and demonstrate that the franchise is progressing on both the organic and inorganic initiatives we outlined at our investor day in 2024. Next, I want to touch on the durability of our LP investor base. Our products and vehicles are predominantly structured as commingled funds or SMAs with a long dated locked up capital. the majority of our fee paying assets under management use committed capital as the fee base, providing a stable locked in source of revenue that typically lasts for 10 plus years. This product and investor profile provides us with highly durable future revenue reflected in a weighted average remaining duration of approximately seven years across all of our strategies and vehicles. The corollary to this, is that semi-liquid products for retail investors have not been at all meaningful to our historical growth. As a consequence, we have not been directly impacted by the news around redemption requests and debate around the merits of alternatives for retail investors. Now, this may seem counterintuitive, considering that over a third of our LP investor base has been sourced through the wealth management channel. However, our high net worth investor base more of an institutional orientation with several high net worth aggregators making up the majority of this channel for us providing a drastically different LP profile compared to the typical retail oriented products that have been the subject of many of the recent headlines so I've touched on the durability of our LP base as well as how our high net worth channel differs from others I would also point out that nearly three-quarters of our LP base is falls under our three largest categories one wealth and high net worth two pensions and three endowments and foundations we're particularly proud of this breakdown and are continuously working to expand the level of investor overlap across our strategies and we are clearly seeing that work pay off we flagged on our fourth quarter call that over 10% of our capital raised since Investor Day stems from successful cross-marketing efforts. To put a finer point on that, approximately $1.2 billion of the capital we've raised since our Investor Day reference date of June 2024 is a result of clients investing in strategy beyond their initial Ridge Post capital investment. This progress represents roughly 300 basis points of our 15% fee-paying AUM compound annual growth rate through the end of 2025. And this is just the beginning as we continue to accelerate capital formation, collaborate on new business development opportunities, and leverage our proprietary data capabilities across the broader platform. Finally, I would also like to remind you that our differentiated investment strategies are focused on the middle and lower middle markets, where we see considerable advantages. We believe this space presents far more opportunities than the larger sponsor segment with lower valuations, less competition for assets, and more disciplined use of leverage. When you combine these dynamics with our team, culture, and data advantage, we think it uniquely positions us to generate strong returns for clients as we grow our franchise. I'll now turn it to RJ to provide an update on Stellis.