PJT Partners Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
October 29, 2024

Key Takeaways

  • Record Q3 results: Revenues reached $326 million (up 17% year-on-year) and 9-month revenues totaled $1.016 billion (+23%), with adjusted pretax income +16% and adjusted EPS +19%.
  • Park Hill performance: Primary and secondary fundraising volumes more than doubled year-to-date versus 2023, significantly outperforming an industry-wide decline in alternative allocations.
  • Restructuring strength: Nine-month restructuring revenues hit record levels, and the firm expects a sustained multi-year cycle driven by high interest rates, refinancing walls and liability management needs.
  • Strategic Advisory build-out: Q3 advisory revenues rose slightly and 9-month revenues grew solidly, backed by 35% more advisory partners than in 2021 and a growing announced-pending backlog that positions the firm for 2025.
  • Growth investments: The firm remains committed to enhancing its capabilities and global footprint, highlighted by the October 1 acquisition of De Novo Partners and continued organic hiring across all businesses.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
PJT Partners Q3 2024
00:00 / 00:00

Transcript Sections

Skip to Participants
Operator

Good day, and welcome to the PJT Partners' third quarter 2024 earnings call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Sharon Pearson, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Sharon Pearson
Sharon Pearson
Head of Investor Relations at PJT Partners

Good morning. Thanks very much, Leo, and welcome to the PJT Partners' third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Joining me today is Paul Taubman, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Helen Meates, our Chief Financial Officer. Before I turn the call over to Paul, I want to point out that during the course of this conference call, we may make a number of forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties, and there are important factors that could cause actual outcomes to differ materially from those indicated in these statements. We believe that these factors are described in the risk factor section contained in PJT Partners' 2023 Form 10-K, which is available on our website at pjtpartners.com.

Sharon Pearson
Sharon Pearson
Head of Investor Relations at PJT Partners

I want to remind you that the company assumes no duty to update any forward-looking statements and that the presentation we make today contains non-GAAP financial measures which we believe are meaningful in evaluating the company's performance. For detailed disclosures on these non-GAAP metrics and their GAAP reconciliations, you should refer to the financial data contained within the press release we issued this morning, also available on our website. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Paul.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

Thank you, Sharon. Good morning, everyone. Thank you all for joining today's earnings call. We reported strong results with record third quarter revenues of $326 million, up 17% year on year. Adjusted Pre-Tax Income up 16%, and Adjusted EPS up 19% from year-ago levels. Our nine-month revenues were also a record at $1.016 billion, up 23% year on year, reflecting increased contributions from all of our businesses. Our nine-month Adjusted Pre-Tax Income was up 32%, while our nine-month Adjusted EPS increased 35% from year-ago levels. The benefits of our sustained investment in the business are beginning to shine through in our financial results. We remain committed to continued investment as we seek to enhance our capabilities, deepen our industry expertise, and broaden our geographic footprint. Consistent with this commitment to invest, we closed our deNovo Partners acquisition on the 1st of October.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

While our firm's growth has largely been driven by organic investment, we have been acquisitive when we see unique opportunities to strengthen our firm. That was why we acquired Camberview Partners, and that is why we acquired deNovo Partners. Our firms were culturally aligned with a similar focus on collaboration and teamwork and a shared set of values. We had the benefit of working alongside deNovo's founder for many years, as well as insights gained from our strategic alliance with deNovo, which dated back to 2020. This highly successful partnership gave us the confidence that for all our successes together, we could be even more powerful, combining deNovo's presence in the Gulf with PJT's broad advisory capabilities, extensive global network, and strong sector expertise. After Helen takes you through our results, I will review our business performance and outlook in greater detail. Helen.

Helen Meates
Helen Meates
CFO at PJT Partners

Thank you, Paul. Good morning. Beginning with revenues. Total revenues for the third quarter were $326 million, up 17% year-over-year. PJT Park Hill revenues were significantly higher than year-ago levels, while strategic advisory revenues increased slightly and restructuring revenues decreased slightly. For the nine months ended September 30, total revenues were $1.16 billion, an increase of 23% year-over-year and a record first nine months. Each of our businesses produced record revenues for the first nine months of the year. Turning to expenses, consistent with prior quarters, we've presented the expenses with certain non-GAAP adjustments, which are more fully described in our 8-K. First, compensation expense, we have continued to accrue a compensation expense at 69.5% of revenues for the first nine months of the year. This ratio represents our current expectation for the full year 2024.

Helen Meates
Helen Meates
CFO at PJT Partners

Turning to adjusted non-compensation expense, total adjusted non-compensation expense was $49 million for the third quarter, up 19% year-over-year, and $138 million for the first nine months, up 14% year-over-year. As a percentage of revenues, 15% for the third quarter and 13.6% for the first nine months. For the third quarter, the main drivers of the year-over-year increase were higher occupancy costs, travel and related, and our other expenses line. In the third quarter, we recognized some non-recurring expenses, including expenses related to the acquisition of deNovo Partners. We expect that our full year 2024 non-comp expense growth rate will be in line with our nine-month rate of 14%, which is slightly higher than our previous guidance. Turning to adjusted pre-tax income, we reported adjusted pre-tax income of $51 million for the third quarter and $172 million for the first nine months.

Helen Meates
Helen Meates
CFO at PJT Partners

The provision for taxes, as with prior quarters, we have presented our results as if all partnership units had been converted to shares and that all of our income was taxed at a corporate tax rate. Our effective tax rate for the first nine months of 2024 was 21%. This rate is slightly below our previous full year 2024 estimate of 22%, primarily due to the tax benefit from the delivery of vested performance units. As a result, the effective tax rate for the third quarter was 18.6%. The 21% rate represents our current expectation for the full year. Earnings per share are adjusted if converted earnings were $0.93 for the third quarter and $3.10 per share for the first nine months. On the share count for the third quarter, our weighted average share count was 44.5 million shares, up from 43 million in the second quarter of 2024.

Helen Meates
Helen Meates
CFO at PJT Partners

Given we used the Treasury Stock Method to calculate our share count, the increase in the third quarter was principally due to the impact of a higher share price. In addition, some of the share count increase was a result of achieving further price hurdles on the performance units. By the end of the third quarter, virtually all of the price hurdles from these performance units had been achieved. As we look to share count growth in the fourth quarter, ignoring any price movement in our stock or any additional share buybacks, we expect the fourth quarter weighted average share count to increase by approximately 400,000 shares, primarily reflecting the remaining weighting of the performance awards.

Helen Meates
Helen Meates
CFO at PJT Partners

We continue to be mindful of offsetting this dilution over time, and for the nine-month period, our repurchases total approximately 2.6 million shares, up from 2 million for the same period last year, with record open market repurchases of 1.9 million shares in the year-to-date period. And finally, we plan to exchange 125,000 partnership units for cash on November 5, 2024. On the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with a record $477 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments, and $491 million in net working capital, and we have no funded debt outstanding. The board has approved a dividend of $0.25 per share. The dividend will be paid on December 18 to Class A common shareholders of record as of December 4, 2024. And finally, as Paul mentioned, we close the acquisition of deNovo Partners on October 1. Thanks, Paul.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

Thank you, Helen. Beginning with PJT Park Hill. PJT Park Hill's revenues have rebounded faster than our most optimistic predictions, fueled by significant growth in both our primary and secondary businesses. PJT Park Hill's 2024 results will be up significantly relative to 2023 and in line with 2022's record performance. Even though LPs continue to be highly selective in their allocations to alternatives, our differentiated approach to origination and distribution has enabled us to significantly outperform the broader primary fundraising marketplace. Our year-to-date fundraising volumes are more than double year-ago levels, while industry-wide fundraising volumes are down year-to-date. The macroeconomic headwinds, which continue to dampen the primary fundraising marketplace, have been a boon to our private capital solutions business. New fundraisers continue to be constrained by limited fund distributions, which have helped create overallocations to the alternative space.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

While these dynamics have challenged the primary market, they have also fueled secondary activity as GPs pursue alternative liquidity options for LP capital return. With secondary industry volumes now at record levels, our private capital solutions business and its best-in-class capabilities have capitalized on this increased demand, driving strong year-to-date revenue growth. Turning to restructuring, our leading restructuring business continues to benefit from a multi-year cycle of elevated restructuring levels and liability management activity. Our team has maintained its global leadership rankings in both announced and completed restructuring transactions and remains extremely active in providing proactive liability management advice to clients. For the nine months, our restructuring revenues are at record levels, and 2024 is shaping up to be another record year.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

Even with the expectation of additional rate cuts beyond the 50 basis points move by the Fed and rate cuts from other central banks, we have high conviction that this restructuring cycle will continue for some time to come. Corporates and sponsors continue to work their way through high interest rates, challenged business models, technological disruption, and changing consumer preferences. Turning to strategic advisory, while year-to-date global M&A volumes are up for the first time since 2021, they're only up 8% relative to last year. We have always expected 2024 to be a transitional year, sandwiched between two successive down years for global M&A activity and what should be a far more constructive 2025 market environment. Against this backdrop, our nine-month revenues for strategic advisory were up solidly year-on-year, while third-quarter strategic advisory revenues were up slightly.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

The M&A market is slowly recovering, with many elements now in place for a more active M&A environment in 2025. Central banks are cutting rates. Capital markets are more open and receptive than at any point in the past three years. The velocity of both private equity monetizations and dry powder deployment has begun to increase. We will soon turn the page on a year of consequential elections around the world, and all the while, companies' strategic appetite for M&A continues to grow. Today, we are better positioned to capitalize on an active M&A marketplace than we were in 2021. We have 35% more strategic advisory partners who have been with the firm for more than two years than we did in 2021. We're seeing the benefits of this more built-out platform translate into greater traction with clients, higher win rates, and a growing backlog of announced transactions.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

We are quite constructive on our strategic advisory prospects, given this building-announced pending-close backlog, a near-record mandate count, and an increasingly favorable M&A backdrop. In closing, 2024 is proving to be an important milestone in the firm's evolution. We continue to attract a significant number of highly talented professionals to our platform. We continue to expand our global reach, most recently with our deNovo Partners acquisition. We continue to see the network benefits of our collaborative business model as we increasingly deliver the full capabilities of our integrated advisory and capital-raising businesses to clients around the world, and as we showcase our unique capabilities and value proposition, our brand, both in terms of recognition and reputation, continues to grow. 2024 will undoubtedly be another year of differentiated performance for our firm, and as before, we remain confident in our near-intermediate and long-term growth prospects.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

With that, we will now take your questions.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, the floor is open for your questions. To ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. To get out of the queue, press star two. We'll take our first question from Devin Ryan of Citizens JMP Securities.

Devin Ryan
Director of Financial Technology Research at Citizens JMP Securities

Hey, good morning, Paul and Helen. How are you?

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

We're well. Good morning, Devin.

Devin Ryan
Director of Financial Technology Research at Citizens JMP Securities

Great. First question, in the M&A advisory practice in strategic advisory, obviously, Paul, you highlighted the material level of headcount growth there, and you're seeing significant seasoning of bankers on the platform. And so, given the level of change we've seen in your business specifically over the past handful of years, I think people are having a hard time just trying to understand the capacity of the strategic advisory business today and kind of how that's evolved relative to maybe the prior upcycle that you've referenced. So just love to just get a sense of whether there's any type of range of productivity expectations that you guys expect when you hire a partner or any other frameworks you would suggest to think about that from the outside, just given that degree of change in the business over the past few years. Thanks.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

Look, we don't manage to a metric because it's very hard to say a partner should deliver X in revenue because it's a function of what's your time horizon, number one. Number two, what's the macroeconomic backdrop? Number three, what else is built or unbuilt around that banker? And number four, what is the strength of the franchise and how much what I like to call walk-up business or walk-in business does one benefit from? But the firm that we are building is designed to be best in class on all dimensions, and ultimately, that reflects itself in very high revenue per partner for that moment in time relative to any other firm. As I've talked about repeatedly, we started this firm nine years ago with virtually everything unbuilt. The progress that we have made in nine years is extraordinary.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

We have far better built-out industry groups, geographic areas, we're a far better understood and sought-after firm, and all of that plays to our long-term advantages. In the last cycle in 2021, we did not have nearly the market presence that we have for 2025 and beyond, and therefore, I certainly see the direction of travel to be meaningfully more productive going forward, and I think the first time you'll see that will be in 2025.

Devin Ryan
Director of Financial Technology Research at Citizens JMP Securities

Got it. Thanks, Paul. And then just to follow up here on the restructuring commentary and kind of the contribution that you're seeing there, good to hear the outlook. Just to go a layer deeper, it'd be great to just get a sense of kind of the pace of new restructuring mandates coming in because I know you're executing on a lot of deals that were announced last year and early this year, but just how that pace of mandate has evolved just over the past couple of quarters and whether you're seeing a stronger effort to maybe kick the can as rates are coming down and capital markets reopen or just any other kind of nuance within the business that you're seeing. Thanks.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

Yeah. Look, I mean, there's so many different dynamics there. What I have said repeatedly, and I think I might have been a minority of one, was that this was a long-tailed restructuring cycle, that this restructuring cycle bears no resemblance to what we saw 2020 to 2021. I think when I said that, I was out by myself. I think now that's become much more conventional wisdom. We stand by that. This is a multi-year cycle, and even though central banks have moved to the short term, if you look at what's happened in the long term, rates have been stubbornly high, and the long end of the curve has moved higher. The refinancing walls in the very near term have been addressed, but if you look out two, three, four years, there's yet another wall of maturities that will need to be addressed.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

You have a world that speeds up, more technological innovation, more disruption, more creation. But when you have more creation, somewhere in the world, you have more destruction. And that's how you end up with more companies needing to rethink the balance sheet that they have because oftentimes the balance sheet that they have was not designed for the competitive environment that they are in. We don't see an answer to your specific question. We don't see any material change in the onboarding of new clients. And we've been quite pleased that as the year has gone on, we've been more constructive about 2024, and we are constructive on 2025 and beyond as well.

Devin Ryan
Director of Financial Technology Research at Citizens JMP Securities

Okay. That's great. Thanks so much, Paul. Appreciate it.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

Thank you, Dev.

Operator

We'll take our next question from James Yaro of Goldman Sachs.

James Yaro
James Yaro
Managing Director, Equity Research at Goldman Sachs

Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. Paul, maybe just on strategic advisory, I do appreciate your comments on why 2025 looks so much stronger, but maybe you could just comment on what exactly gives you that confidence? Is it that we're past the U.S. election, economic factors, geopolitical, or something else?

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

Okay. Well, there's a micro and the macro. Let's talk about the macro first. At the beginning of the year, I said that notwithstanding all of the hype about runaway M&A activity, 2024 was going to be a relatively sober year. And I think I was out there, maybe not a minority of one, but there were relatively few who had that sober perspective. I think as the year has played out, that's pretty much what we've seen. And we're sitting here today, 10 months into the year with an annualized run rate of volume up all of 8% from a year ago. And I've repeatedly talked about us needing to start to see rate cuts, and not just one, but when we start to see the direction of travel as we continue, I think that that will ignite more sponsor activity.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

I also believe that we need to get past the elections. And I also believe that there is a building demand on the part of corporates to transform their businesses, and their desire to use M&A as a tool has never abated. And I suspect that once we get past the election, regardless of where it ends up in both the U.S. Congress and in the White House, that the approach to regulation, to antitrust, and the like will be more constructive than it has been. It may manifest itself in different ways and to different degrees, but I believe that either direction will result in somewhat freeing up of strategic transactions.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

And when you take that plus continued easing of monetary policy, I suspect you're going to start to see the private equity imbalance, which has occurred, become more imbalanced as capital markets continue to open up, and there's more opportunities to tap the equity markets. As you start to see dividend recapitalization transactions like, as you get the ecosystem into a better balance, you will see a more active environment. It's just that it's a slow rebuild, and you see some of it in 2024. I'm reasonably confident you're going to see more of it in 2025. Now, as to what makes us confident beyond the macro environment about our firm, as I said at the beginning of the year, we started with a record or near-record number of mandates.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

We had an enormous pre-announcement pipeline, but the coverage was bare by historic standards in terms of announced pending close transactions. If you look at what has transpired over the 10 months, our mandate count continues to grow. It stands at or near record levels. Our announced pending close backlog has improved dramatically, which sets us up very well for 2025. We have more completed mandates, whether it's by industry group or by geography. We have more maturation of the bankers on the platform. We have the benefit of some significant increase in understanding of our firm. We have far more companies who appreciate what we do and how differentiated we are. And all of that, both from a micro and macro perspective, sets us up very well for 2025 relative to either 2024 or relative to the last time we saw an active M&A market, which would be 2021.

James Yaro
James Yaro
Managing Director, Equity Research at Goldman Sachs

Excellent. That's extremely helpful. Just one follow-up here on sponsors, which have comprised nearly 40% of the M&A market in 2021 and 2022, but less than 30% in 2023 and this year so far. So I guess the question is, is it conceivable that sponsors could return to comprising this much of the M&A market, or is that more of a function of the near zero percent interest rate backdrop?

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

I've always believed it was more the latter, which is that things have a way of returning to balance. And I think it's dangerous when you have historic norms that are punctured, and all of a sudden you're dealing with aberrational weightings to just conclude that that's the way the world is going to be going forward. And I think with each passing day, it becomes clear that the quantum of capital that was raised in the alternative space, the quantum of capital that was deployed, the near-zero interest rate cost, the fact that as assets melted up, having all of that low-cost money created very attractive returns, that is not sustainable for the long term.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

And that's, as we've now returned to a more normal direction of travel for interest rates, that has put a lot of pressure into the system, and it takes a while to get back to a new equilibrium. So I suspect it's going to be meaningfully better than it has been, but our view of the world is not predicated on it going back to what we saw coming out of COVID.

James Yaro
James Yaro
Managing Director, Equity Research at Goldman Sachs

Excellent. Thank you.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

Thank you, James.

Operator

We'll take our next question from Jim Mitchell of Seaport Global Securities.

Jim Mitchell
Jim Mitchell
Senior Equity Analyst at Seaport Global Securities

Hey, good morning.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

Good morning.

Jim Mitchell
Jim Mitchell
Senior Equity Analyst at Seaport Global Securities

Hey, Paul. Paul, maybe you can talk since you're talking about sponsors there, can you talk about how you're sort of leveraging Park Hill's Touchpoints with sponsors to kind of improve the win rate in sponsor M&A, where you are in that sort of evolution?

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

Yeah. Well, we can talk about it across the board. So we've always maintained that if you're going to have a best-in-class sponsor practice, the best way to do it is to have a best-in-class strategic practice. Because if you have a best-in-class strategic practice and you have all of that corporate access and you have an increasingly important number of sell-side mandates, and what you can talk to your sponsors about is highly relevant to what they do, which is to buy and sell businesses, then over time you build a world-class sponsor practice. So it's very hard to just start and say, "We're going to cover sponsors." We don't have the corporate side figured out. You need to get the corporate side figured out, and then you need to translate it to sponsors. So that's the first point. And with every passing day, that mission is further advanced.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

The second thing is, if you think about sponsors, they typically buy companies with relatively high degrees of leverage. Most of those investments work out. Not all of them do, so not surprisingly, they become a disproportionately important part of the liability management or restructuring ecosystem as far as important clients, and if you look at some of the success that we've had in our liability management and restructuring endeavors, it has been to continue to expand the number of sponsors that we represent, and one of the wonderful things about sponsors is they're highly sophisticated, and they understand who's best in class, and when you have a best-in-class franchise, that franchise is increasingly in demand as you continue to expand the footprint, then you get to the next place, which is Park Hill.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

When you look at what's going on with the deployment of fund continuation vehicles and the like, that increasingly is the domain of the largest GPs who don't necessarily look for outside help in terms of fundraising because they've taken a lot of their fundraising capabilities and brought them in-house. As you have an ever-growing demand on the part of large GPs for fund continuation services, being able to leverage our best-in-class capabilities with our sponsor relationships has helped to spark growth in that business.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

When you get to the next level, having mid-market sponsors who are quite desirous to work with Park Hill, being able to now pair that relationship with deep domain expertise and knowledge of many of the assets in the portfolio, which might not have been the case five years ago or seven years ago or even three years ago, increasingly creates lots of opportunities for us to present holistic relationship, holistic coverage, and a holistic approach to serving clients and being rewarded in terms of business. It all kind of is progressing apace, and it's all highly interrelated.

Jim Mitchell
Jim Mitchell
Senior Equity Analyst at Seaport Global Securities

Yeah. Makes sense. A great color. Maybe just a follow-up on just sort of the comp leverage. I think you've said today that every business line has had record revenues year to date, including M&A. I know that's been the fulcrum of getting comp ratio improvement. As we look to next year, the pipeline's good. M&A does seem likely to be improving pretty materially. So is that sort of the key to getting the comp leverage out of the franchise? And any thoughts on it would be helpful.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

I'll give you the one-word answer first. Yes. Now, to give it a little bit of context, we have said repeatedly that comp leverage for us, because we're making such heavy investments in strategic advisory, is when strategic advisory revenues increase at a rate faster than headcount growth. That's typically when you see comp leverage. Almost every year in the early years, we were growing the revenues faster than the headcount. You saw comp leverage. You saw it in 2020. You saw it in 2021. Not surprisingly, when we continued to add heads in 2022 and 2023 and the market retreated and our advisory revenues retreated, even though they retreated less than virtually anyone else's, you had that mismatch, and that's why you saw negative comp leverage in 2022 and 2023. In 2024, I suspect you're going to see headcount growth and growth in strategic advisory revenues reasonably matched.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

So it's not getting worse. It's not getting better. Having said that, when you turn the page to 2025, I'm highly confident that our Strategic Advisory revenues will grow meaningfully in excess of our headcount. And that's when you'll begin to see meaningful comp leverage in the system.

Operator

Okay. Thank you. We'll take our next question from Brennan Hawken of UBS.

Brennan Hawken
Brennan Hawken
Senior Analyst, Equity Research at UBS

Morning. Thanks for taking my question.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

Of course.

Brennan Hawken
Brennan Hawken
Senior Analyst, Equity Research at UBS

So Paul, I'd love to start on that last point. So it looks like partner headcount year over year is up about 4%. If we look at total headcount, it's up a little more, 10%. But your total revenue is up nearly 21%. So can you maybe help us understand what's missing with the lack of comp leverage coming through this year? Because it looks like at this point, you're basically saying 69 and a half's right, which would mean 30 basis points of comp leverage versus what was reported in 2023. So is there some movement going on under the surface? What's causing the comp leverage to not show up this year, and why would that be different next year?

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

I think, as I said, you've got to look at the headcount growth in Strategic Advisory, and you have to look at the revenue growth in Strategic Advisory. What I'm telling you is, if you look at those two this year, they're going to be roughly in line with one another. We've made all of this investment in headcount for a number of years, and we had two years of revenue contraction, albeit much less than anyone else. We now have an inflection point. The revenue has grown this year, but it's not grown at a rate that's in excess or meaningfully in excess of what our Strategic Advisory headcount growth will be. When you look at headcount growth, you need to look at total headcount growth in Strategic Advisory. Partners are an important part of that, managing directors, the full stack up and down.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

When we get to next year, if you just look at our announced pending close backlog and the like, as I said, I'm highly confident that those two will diverge to the positive, meaning meaningfully higher strategic advisory growth than headcount, and that's when you'll see it, and investment is a multi-year process. You need to think about it over multi-years. It doesn't just move quarter to quarter or even year to year. It develops over time, and we've been very clear on how our investors should think about the cadence of that, and we've been quite consistent that they should look to that green light, which I've been pretty clear is positioned for 2025 to start to see the benefits of what we've been building, and we've had a couple of years of higher comp than we would like, but that's in the short term.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

We have no doubt that if you just take the lens and make it a little broader, that the return on that investment is going to be quite significant.

Brennan Hawken
Brennan Hawken
Senior Analyst, Equity Research at UBS

Okay. Great. Well, we'll be looking forward to that meaningful leverage then next year. You also had some interesting comments on Park Hill. It sounds like things are really picking up nicely in that business. When we think about the market currently, and as I'm trying to think about what should happen in that market, it feels like we're going to have probably a handoff from the continuation funds, a lot of secondary activity into more of a regular way fundraising market as things pick back up here in the beginning of next year. Do you think that that's a fair expectation? And then can you talk about that handoff and what that would mean for economics and the revenue in the business and how it should translate into effectively growth for Park Hill?

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

Yeah. I'm not sure that I would agree with that. I think, I'm not sure that, to me, the fund continuation concept is here to stay. The biggest issue has been a mismatch between desire on the part of GPs to avail themselves of these opportunities and the dedicated capital that is available to invest in these situations. And if you just pick up the papers, you'll see an ever-increasing stream of funds that are gearing up to put billions of dollars against this opportunity. And as you get a buildout in dedicated capital for this asset class and the ability to underwrite larger transactions, more transactions, I think this business grows meaningfully from where it is today. And as far as the macro fundraising environment, I think we're increasingly getting to a bifurcated market where not everyone can go out and raise their next fund.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

And you're starting to see a tearing where the successful funds can accumulate larger and larger dollars. And those that don't have the performance and the scale are increasingly finding it more difficult. And in that environment, which is challenging, our Park Hill business has had differentiated performance because we have a differentiated approach to distribution and to origination. And in a more difficult environment, there is a flight to quality, and that benefits our team.

Brennan Hawken
Brennan Hawken
Senior Analyst, Equity Research at UBS

Got it. Okay. Thanks for the color.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

Absolutely. Thank you.

Operator

We'll take our next question from Brendan O'Brien of Wolfe Research.

Brendan O'Brien
Brendan O'Brien
SVP at Wolfe Research

Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. I guess just wanted to follow up on the comp ratio commentary. And specifically, a few of your peers have cited that comp ratios are going to be structurally higher going forward given the level of inflation seen specifically at the junior level. Could you speak to your confidence and your ability to get back to that 64% comp ratio that you were running to previously and whether you're seeing any of the similar dynamics playing out within your own business?

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

I don't see any reason sitting here today that we can't do that.

Brendan O'Brien
Brendan O'Brien
SVP at Wolfe Research

Great, and I guess for my follow-up, I wanted to touch on capital allocation and specifically whether you're more inclined to do an acquisition today versus returning capital to shareholders. I know you recently did the deal for deNovo Partners, but given where you and your peers are trained today, it feels like there could be a lot of interesting opportunities out there to leverage your multiple and do a creative acquisition, so it would be great to get a sense as to how your thinking has evolved here, if at all.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

Look, we're building a best-in-class firm. I don't think you build the best-in-class firm by leveraging your multiple. So it's not like we have a currency that we don't believe in that we want to go use someplace. If anything, we still think it's an incredibly undervalued currency. We want to continue to buy it back, and we'll use it if there is a highly, highly attractive combination. But as I've said repeatedly, those are few and far between. And that's why in our nine-year history, we've done it twice, and they've been of reasonably modest scale. They've been of a scale that's big enough to move the needle, but not so big as to overwhelm the firm. And it all starts with, is there a compelling opportunity? And the reality is investment banking mergers, if you look at the history of them, they haven't gone particularly well.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

I think we have the benefit if you look at what we did with Blackstone, if you look at what we did with Camberview, if you look at what we were able to do with our strategic alliance. We're quite confident that if we do it, we can execute on it. That doesn't mean there are that many things out there that we have the confidence that we can execute on.

Brendan O'Brien
Brendan O'Brien
SVP at Wolfe Research

Great. Well, thank you for taking my questions.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

Of course. Thank you very much.

Operator

We'll go next to Aidan Hall of KBW.

Aidan Hall
Aidan Hall
Vice President, Equity Research at KBW

Great. Thanks for taking my question. Most have been asked, but maybe just one on deNovo. Obviously, relatively small, few partners, but strategically, it sounds like it made a lot of sense to extend beyond the initial partnership. So I wonder if you could just expand on where you see the immediate impact. Is it really in making introductions on the strategic advisory side, maybe some benefit within Park Hill with primary fundraising? And then over a longer-term period, call it three-plus years, what are your aspirations and what would success really look like for PJT in the Middle East?

Helen Meates
Helen Meates
CFO at PJT Partners

I'll tell him here. Maybe I'll answer just more in the short term. As Paul mentioned, we have had a historical relationship. We've had a JV for four years. deNovo brings two partners, two managing directors, and some senior advisors, as well as licenses to operate in the region. So we're very committed to the region, and where it will have immediate impact, I think it's across the board. It's all the businesses where we operate: advisory, restructuring, Park Hill, and so that's where we focus. We've already had a lot of people flying down to the region to continue to meet with clients in that area, and that will be our focus. Three years down the track, I presume that we will be well ingrained and have a lot of success.

Aidan Hall
Aidan Hall
Vice President, Equity Research at KBW

I will leave it there. Thanks for taking my question.

Operator

Thank you. That concludes our question and answer period. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Taubman for closing remarks.

Paul Taubman
Paul Taubman
Chairman and CEO at PJT Partners

Again, I want to extend our appreciation for everyone's interest in our company. We look forward to speaking with you when we report full year 2024 results in early 2025. Until then, we wish you all well. Thank you.

Executives
    • Sharon Pearson
      Sharon Pearson
      Head of Investor Relations
    • Paul Taubman
      Paul Taubman
      Chairman and CEO
    • Helen Meates
      Helen Meates
      CFO
Analysts
    • Devin Ryan
      Director of Financial Technology Research at Citizens JMP Securities
    • James Yaro
      Managing Director, Equity Research at Goldman Sachs
    • Jim Mitchell
      Senior Equity Analyst at Seaport Global Securities
    • Brennan Hawken
      Senior Analyst, Equity Research at UBS
    • Brendan O'Brien
      SVP at Wolfe Research
    • Aidan Hall
      Vice President, Equity Research at KBW
Powered by Quartr