Virtus Investment Partners, Inc.

Good morning. My name is Deedee, and I will be your conference operator today. I would like to welcome everyone 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. Welcome to Virtus Investment Partners' discussion of our fourth quarter 2025 financial and operating results. Joining me today are George Elward, our President and CEO, and Mike Engerthal, our Chief Financial Officer. After their prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. Before we begin, I'll refer you to the disclosures on slide two. Today's comments may include forward-looking statements, which involve risks and uncertainties described in our news release and SEC filings. Actual results may differ materially. We will also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are available in today's news release and financial supplement 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 with an overview of the results we reported this morning, and then Mike will provide more detail. The fourth quarter reflected a challenging environment for us, given that quality-oriented equity strategies, which represent half of our AUM, remained out of favor, resulting in an increased level of net outflows. As we have previously noted, our quality-oriented equity strategies have delivered strong long-term performance across cycles and have previously been our largest drivers of growth went in favor. However, the market backdrop continued to favor more momentum-driven stocks, resulting in near-term underperformance. Importantly, the impact from our quality equity strategies has overshadowed areas of strength across the business, which in the quarter include positive net flows and strategies from several managers, including in growth equity, emerging markets debt, listed real assets, and event-driven, continued positive net flows in ETFs, product introductions of differentiated actively managed ETFs, expansion into private markets with two strategic investments, solid long-term investment performance with fixed income and alternatives also having strong near-term performance, continued return of capital with $10 million of share buybacks in the quarter, and a solid balance sheet, meaningful liquidity, and a minimus net leverage at year-end. We continue to execute our strategic priorities in the quarter, including broadening our product offerings with several ETF introductions and expansion into the private markets. For ETFs, we launched three new actively managed funds in the quarter, including a growth opportunities ETF from Silvent and U.S. and international dividend strategies from our systematic team. We expect several additional active ETF launches over the next two quarters across managers including Stone Harbor, Duff & Phelps, and Sylvan. We now have 25 ETFs spanning a range of strategies and continue to focus on broadening access to them in distribution channels. In addition, we have several other new offerings in process or filing, including interval funds and additional retail separate account strategies. And, as mentioned, we also have expanded into private markets, with the previously announced pending acquisition of a majority interest in Keystone National Group, an asset-centric private credit manager, and a minority investment in Crescent Cove, a venture growth manager. I will discuss both in more detail shortly. Looking at our fourth quarter results, asset center management were $159 billion at 1231, down from $169 billion due to net outflows and the impact of market performance. Total sales of 5.3 billion compared with 6.3 billion in the third quarter, which included a $4 billion CLO issuance. Total net outflows were 8.1 billion, and across products, the outflows were almost entirely driven by equities. Looking at flows across asset classes, the equity net outflows largely reflected the continued style headwind for quality-oriented strategies. We had several meaningful institutional partial redemptions in such strategies, as well as some seasonal tax loss harvesting infinite funds. Fixed income net flows were modestly negative at $0.1 billion for the quarter, and we saw positive net flows in certain fixed income strategies, including multi-sector and emerging market debt. Alternative strategies were essentially break-even for the quarter and positive for the trailing 12 months. In terms of what we're seeing early in the first quarter, our U.S. retail funds continue to face headwinds, though there have been encouraging signs in the market of broadening investor sentiment, and January sales were at the highest level since June and net flows at the best level since September, and fixed income net flows were positive. For ETF, sales and net flows continue to be strong. Within retail separate accounts, while for the month we have seen an increase in sales, there was a large redemption from a client that rebalanced a lower fee, model-only mandate to a passive strategy. On the institutional side, trends are similar to the fourth quarter with known redemptions exceeding known wins. Turning now to our financial results, earnings in the operating margin declined modestly, reflecting lower average AUM, partially offset by lower operating expenses. The operating margin was 32.4%, which compared with 33% last quarter. Earnings per share suggested of $6.50 compared with $6.69 in the third quarter. Turning to investment performance, recent performance reflects our overweight to quality equity, while long-term performance demonstrates we've generated solid performance over market cycles. For the three-year period, while 39% of AUM outperformed benchmark due to challenging equity performance, fixed income and alternative strategies performed very well, with 76% and 60% of AUM respectively outperforming benchmarks. Over the 10-year period, 62% of our equity assets, 77% of our fixed income assets, and 71% of alternative assets beat their benchmarks. For just mutual funds, 65% of equity funds and 87% of fixed income funds outperformed their peer median for the 10-year period. I would also note that 84% of our rated retail fund assets were in three-, four-, and five-star funds, and 23% of our retail funds are rated four- and five-stars. As it relates to equities, despite the style headwind, our quality-focused managers continue to invest with high-conviction businesses with durable fundamentals and long-term potential. Their disciplined approach has delivered excellent returns over cycles, and we remain confident that as companies with quality characteristics come back in favor, these strategies are well-positioned. With the environment year to date, we are pleased that although it's a short period Several of these strategies have generated very compelling performance. In terms of our balance sheet and capital, we continue to have financial flexibility to balance our capital priorities of investing in the business, returning capital, shareholders, and the appropriate leverage. During the quarter, we repurchased approximately 60,000 shares for $10 million. The full year, we used $60 million to repurchase over 347,000 shares, representing 5% of beginning shares. We ended the quarter with significant liquidity, including $386 million of cash and equivalents and an under one $250 million revolver, positioning us for the upcoming first quarter obligations, including the closing payment for Keystone National. Before turning the call over to Mike to review our financial results in more detail, I would like to provide some highlights on the Keystone National and Crescent Cove transactions, which will allow us to provide private market offerings and differentiated strategies with strong track records. We will acquire a 56% majority interest in Keystone, a boutique private credit manager specializing in asset-based lending with approximately $2.5 billion in assets across a tender offer fund and two private REITs. Keystone's approach differs from traditional direct lending. Its financing is secured by a specific collateral, our self-advertising with regular payments of principal and interest, has shorter durations, and are structured with robust covenants and triggers. This collateral-backed, covenant-rich design provides meaningful downside protection for investors who are underexposed to private markets and serves as a differentiated complement for those already invested in traditional private credit. We see significant growth opportunities for Keystone across both retail and institutional channels. Their strategies are already available in an at-scale tender offer fund used by an established base of wealth management firms, and we believe we can expand that meaningfully. In addition, over time, we also expect to introduce their capabilities to U.S. and non-U.S. institutional clients. We're excited to welcome Keystone's Salt Lake City-based team to Virtus and expect to close the transaction during the first quarter. With regard to Crescent Cove, a private investment firm that focuses on providing flexible capital solutions to high-growth middle-market technology companies, We completed a 35% minority investment. Crescent Cove has built a strong track record, growing to over $1 billion in AUM across multiple private funds with a diversified client base. Their venture debt strategy offers a compelling, risk-managed way for investors to gain exposure to private technology companies. We see long-term growth potential for Crescent Cove, including extensions into other products for broader client usage, and we're excited to be partnering with their team. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mike to provide some more details on the financials. Mike?