Virtus Investment Partners, Inc.

to the Virtus Investment Partners quarterly conference call. The slide presentation for this call is available in the investor relations section of the Virtus website, www.virtus.com. This call is being recorded and will be available for replay on the Virtus website. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer period. and instructions will follow at that time. I will now turn the conference to your host, Sean Rourke.

Thanks, DeeDee, and good morning, everyone. On behalf of Virtus Investment Partners, I'd like to welcome you to the discussion of our operating and financial results for the first quarter of 2025. Our speakers today are George Elward, President and CEO, and Mike Angerthal, Chief Financial Officer. Following their prepared remarks, we'll have a Q&A period. Before we begin, please note the disclosures on page two of the slide presentation. Certain matters discussed on this call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and as such are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, including but not limited to those factors set forth in today's news release and discussed in our SEC filings. These risks and uncertainties may cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in the statements. In addition to results presented on a GAAP basis, we use certain non-GAAP measures to evaluate our financial results. Our non-GAAP financial measures are not substitutes for GAAP financial results and should be read in conjunction with the GAAP results. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the applicable GAAP measures are included in today's news release and financial supplement, which are available on our website. Now I'd like to turn the call over to George. George?

Thank you, Sean, and good morning, everyone. I'll start today with an overview with the results reported this morning, and then give it over to Mike for more detail. Market performance volatility were challenging in the first quarter, leading to lower assets under management. And while we had net outflows, we continued to deliver solid financial and operating results. Key highlights included higher earnings per share over the prior year period, increased sales and fixed income strategies across products, positive net flows in ETFs, very strong relative investment performance, especially through the recent volatility, a higher level of share repurchases, and a solid balance sheet at quarter end providing ongoing flexibility to invest in the business and return capital. The markets we've been experiencing, which continue in the second quarter with a heightened level of uncertainty and volatility, is a type of environment in which active managers can demonstrate their value. In our equity offering, several of our managers employ high conviction or high quality orientations, that seeks to deliver strong investment performance and provide a level of downside protection in difficult markets. On the fixed income side, we offer multiple strategies across the spectrum of credit quality and duration with products that are attractive in a variety of rate environments. We are pleased with the investment performance our managers have generated. In the first quarter, over 70% of our equity strategies beat their benchmarks, reflecting the benefit of quality active management in challenging markets. Our strategies have also consistently outperformed over market cycles, with 74% of equity assets meeting benchmarks over the 10-year period. We were pleased that our long-term performance was recognized again by Barron's, which identified us as the number two top fund family for the 10-year period. They also ranked us as the third top fund family in the taxable bond category for 2024. In terms of product development, we remain very active in expanding offerings in our key focus areas, including ETFs, global funds, and retail separate accounts. For ETFs and global funds, we have several strategies under development and products and filing that we expect to launch over the next few quarters, including our first interval fund. Retail separate accounts, we completed structural steps to facilitate an increase in our fixed income offerings of retail separate accounts. We've also continued to expand the asset raising efforts of our $8.5 billion wealth management business and are expanding resources to support that effort. Turning now to a review of the results, total assets under management were $167.5 billion at March 31st, down sequentially due to market performance and net outflows. Total sales were $6.2 billion compared with $6.4 billion in the fourth quarter and were generally stable across products despite the market disruption in March. Subtle net outflows of $3 billion improved from $4.8 billion as the prior quarter included a large partial redemption. Reviewing by product, for institutional, net outflows of $1.2 billion were primarily due to domestic and global large-cap equity strategies, partially offset by positive net flows in small and mid-cap equities, as well as emerging market debt. We continue to see interest in our institutional offerings from investors seeking differentiated active managers with strong investment performance, and there continues to be broad representation of sales across our managers' geographies and investment strategies. Retail separate accounts were in net outflows in the quarter, largely reflecting the soft closing of the SmithCat Core equity model offering late last year. Assets in that strategy had grown significantly, and it was soft closed to limit ongoing asset growth in order to protect future returns. We continue to offer other mid-cap strategies as well as mid-cap in which we have significant capacity. Open-end fund net outflows of $1.1 billion were essentially unchanged sequentially. Consistent with market trends, U.S. retail fund net outflows were driven by equity strategies partially offset by positive net flows in fixed income. ETF assets reached $3.4 billion on continued strong positive net flows of $0.3 billion. Over the past year, ETS generated an organic growth rate of 73%. In terms of what we're seeing in April, investors continue to take stock of ongoing market volatility and uncertainty and remain cautious with their investment decisions. Trends in retail remain relatively consistent with the latter part of the first quarter. For institutional, known redemptions do slightly exceed known wins, but institutional flows are hard to predict. Known wins are broad-based, representing six managers, eight strategies, and include both U.S. and non-U.S. clients. Our first quarter financial results reflected the impact of seasonally higher employment expenses. Excluding those items, the operating margin was 32.7%. Earnings per share is adjusted of $5.73, declined from the fourth quarter due in part to $1.01 per share of seasonal employment expenses. On the more comparable year-over-year basis, earnings per share as adjusted increased 6%. Turning now to capital, we continue to take a balanced approach to our capital management by investing in our growth, returning capital to shareholders, and maintaining appropriate levels of leverage. During the quarter, we used $26 million to repurchase or net settle approximately 146,000 shares. Over the past year, our repurchases have reduced shares outstanding by 3% on a net basis. In addition, we made a $23 million revenue participation payment, which reduced our contingent liability to $40 million. The bulk of the remaining revenue participation obligation will be paid in the first quarter of next year. Similarly, our final staged equity purchase of our majority-owned affiliate will be made in the third quarter of this year. We ended the quarter in a modest net debt position as the first quarter represents our highest quarter of cash utilization given the timing of annual incentives and a revenue participation payment. Our low-level leverage and significant cash flow generation provide ongoing opportunities to invest in the growth of the business and return capital to shareholders. So with that, I'll turn the call over to Mike. Mike?