Fiera Capital Corporation

Good morning and welcome to the Sierra Capital's earnings call to discuss financial results for the second quarter of 2025. I will now turn the conference over to Natalie Medak, Director, Investor Relations. You may begin your conference.

Thank you and good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Sierra Capital conference call to discuss our financial results for the second quarter of 2025. A copy of today's presentation can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website. Comments made on today's call, including replies to certain questions, may deal with forward-looking statements which are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ from expectations. Please refer to the forward-looking statements on page 2 of the presentation. Our speakers today are Maxime Menard, Global President and CEO, and Lucas Pontillo, Executive Director, Global CFO, and Head of Corporate Strategies. Also available to answer questions will be John Valentini, President and CEO, Private Markets. With that, I will now turn the call over to Maxime.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today as we report our results for second quarter 2025. The second quarter began with a challenging macro environment and a sharp decline in global equity markets. While markets quickly rebounded, ending a quarter higher, a weaker U.S. dollar tempered returns for non-U.S. investors. Our assets under management ended the quarter at $160.5 billion, flat from the end of the prior quarter, excluding the previously announced wind-down of our Canadian equity small and micro-cap strategies. Robust new mandates of $1.7 billion in market gains, which included an unfavorable foreign exchange impact from the weaker U.S. dollar, were upset by negative net contribution in the quarter. Assets under management in our public market platforms were $139.6 billion, down slightly from the prior quarter, reflecting the wind-down of the previously mentioned strategies. Strong new mandate activity primarily into our equity strategies and market gains were largely upset by negative net contribution mostly out of the lower-fee fixed-income strategies. Assets in our private market platform ended the second quarter at $20.9 billion, down slightly from $21.1 billion at the end of the prior quarter, reflecting return of capital to investors and income distribution. I will now turn to highlights of our commercial and investment platform across our asset classes, starting with our public market platform. We were pleased to secure total new mandates of $1.4 billion during the quarter, of which close to $1 billion went into our equity strategies. This marks the highest level of new mandate activity in more than two years and reflects growing momentum in our sales channel. We had several notable wins during the quarter. First, We launched the Qatar Equity Strategy in partnership with and initially funded by QIA. The strategy, which has an initial investment of $200 million U.S., invests in equity listed on the Qatar Stock Exchange and will be available to international and local institutions desiring actively managed exposure to Qatar equity markets. Tierra was also selected by ATB Investment Management to manage their U.S. large-cap equity fund, which will be available to their advisor base and will be building blocks for the global equity pool. These are the first new funds ATB has launched in many years. Lastly, our Canadian large-cap equity team was selected by Wellington Altus to manage their Canadian high-conviction equity strategy. Both the ATV and Wellington Altus mandates will fund over time and carry significant growth aspiration. Excluding subadvised assets under management, net outflows were $450 million for the quarter, largely out of lower fixed income strategies, lower fee fixed income strategies. We were pleased with the demand for our equity strategies in the quarter and which experienced net inflows of close to $400 million. With respect to our subadvised assets under management, total net outflows were $1.1 billion, of which approximately $700 million were withdrawn by clients, with which we continue to have ongoing relationship. Turning to the investment performance in public markets, the quarter began with a sharp drop in the global markets. triggered by tariff announcements in early April, with the S&P 500 falling over 12% within a few days. Although markets rebounded, the initial shock created a challenging environment for equities outperformance, with much of the rebound driven by speculative interest in tech and AI-related stocks. While all of our flagship equity strategies delivered positive absolute returns in the quarter, value add was mixed. Our Canadian equity strategy had top quartile performance year-to-date, beating its benchmark by 250 basis points. and our Atlas global strategy outperformed its benchmark, adding close to 180 basis points of value year-to-date, helped by overweight exposure to the technology sector. Our emerging market strategy, select strategy, remains top-ranked and outperformed benchmark by 380 basis points year-to-date, and close to 10% since its inception in 2021. Our frontier market strategy also had a first quartile ranking year-to-date, but underperformed its benchmark for the quarter, impacted by selection in Vietnam and overweight to the Saudi Arabia market. Despite some short-term softness, the strategy has outperformed by more than 14% over the five-year period. Our fixed income strategies continue to outperform for the quarter and year-to-date, with our active strategic and integrated core strategies all adding value in both the short and long term. Within our foreign fixed income strategies, our global multi-sector income strategies added over 80 basis points of alpha for the quarter and outperformed by close to 5% for the five-year period. Now turning to our private market platform, new subscriptions exceeded $200 million for the quarter, primarily into our real estate and private debt strategies, and with return capital of more than $200 million. During the quarter, we deployed approximately $600 million of capital and have deployed $1.1 billion year-to-date. Our pipeline remains robust. with $1.3 billion of committed, undeployed capital for future opportunities. With respect to performance, our private market strategies continue to perform well, with our key strategy generating positive returns in the second quarter and absolute returns of 5% to 12% over the one-year period. Within private credit, our infrastructure debt fund returned more than 2% in the quarter and closed to 12% over the one-year period. The strategy remains well-positioned to deploy capital through the second half of the year. In real estate, our Canadian and UK strategies produce steady returns supported by high occupancy and durable income streams. Our portfolios remain concentrated in logistic and housing, which are well positioned to benefit from improving liquidity and central bank easing. And our global private equity strategy returned 2.4% in the second quarter, with a gross IRR of close to 15% since inception. The strategy continues to prioritize businesses with resilient cash flow, scalable models, and defensive market position. Turning now to private wealth. Private wealth assets under management of $13.7 billion were down 3% during the second quarter. While we captured close to $100 million in new mandates, the quarter was impacted by negative net contribution mainly out of subadvised assets and fixed income mandates. We view the private wealth business as highly complementary to our public and private market platforms and continue to work to strengthen clients' relationship and drive sales growth through that channel. To that end, we appointed Paul Delarache to head of Private Wealth Canada earlier this year. Paul brings 20 years of industry experience, the role, and has been instrumental in delivering discretionary investment management services to affluent Canadians and their families. With that, I will turn it over to Lucas to review our financial performance.