NASDAQ:GCMG GCM Grosvenor Q1 2024 Earnings Report $12.74 -0.08 (-0.62%) Closing price 05/30/2025 04:00 PM EasternExtended Trading$12.60 -0.14 (-1.06%) As of 05/30/2025 05:38 PM Eastern Extended trading is trading that happens on electronic markets outside of regular trading hours. This is a fair market value extended hours price provided by Polygon.io. Learn more. ProfileEarnings HistoryForecast GCM Grosvenor EPS ResultsActual EPS$0.04Consensus EPS $0.09Beat/MissMissed by -$0.05One Year Ago EPSN/AGCM Grosvenor Revenue ResultsActual Revenue$108.87 millionExpected Revenue$114.23 millionBeat/MissMissed by -$5.36 millionYoY Revenue GrowthN/AGCM Grosvenor Announcement DetailsQuarterQ1 2024Date5/7/2024TimeN/AConference Call DateTuesday, May 7, 2024Conference Call Time10:00AM ETUpcoming EarningsGCM Grosvenor's Q2 2025 earnings is scheduled for Thursday, August 7, 2025, with a conference call scheduled at 11:00 AM ET. Check back for transcripts, audio, and key financial metrics as they become available.Conference Call ResourcesConference Call AudioConference Call TranscriptSlide DeckPress Release (8-K)Quarterly Report (10-Q)Earnings HistoryCompany ProfileSlide DeckFull Screen Slide DeckPowered by GCM Grosvenor Q1 2024 Earnings Call TranscriptProvided by QuartrMay 7, 2024 ShareLink copied to clipboard.There are 10 speakers on the call. Operator00:00:00Good day, and welcome to the DCM Grosvenor First Quarter 20 24 Results Webcast. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. As a reminder, this call will be recorded. I would now like to hand the call over to Stacey Selinger, Head of Investor Relations. You may begin. Speaker 100:00:38Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to GCM Grosvenor's Q1 2024 Earnings Call. Today, I'm joined by GCM Growner's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Michael Sachs President, John Levin and Chief Financial Officer, Pam Bentley. Before we discuss this quarter's results, a reminder is that all statements made on this call that do not relate to matters of historical fact should be considered forward looking statements. This includes statements regarding our current expectations for the business, our financial performance and projections. Speaker 100:01:11These statements are neither promises nor guarantees. They involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward looking statements on this call. Please refer to the factors in the Risk Factors section of our 10 ks, our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our earnings release, all of which are available on the Public Shareholders section of our website. We'll also refer to non GAAP measures, which we view as important in assessing the performance of our business. A reconciliation of non GAAP metrics to the nearest GAAP metric can be found in our earnings presentation and earnings supplement, both of which are available on our website. Speaker 100:01:55Our goal is to continually improve how we communicate with and engage with our shareholders. And in that spirit, we look forward to your feedback. Thank you again for joining us. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Michael. Speaker 200:02:09Thanks, Stacey. The Q1 of 2024 was strong from the perspective of both our investment performance for clients and our business performance. Our funds performed well on an absolute basis and relative to peers. With regard to business performance, the Q1 of 2024 was one of the strongest we have reported with regard to year over year over year increases in fundraising, adjusted net income and fee related earnings growth as well as FRE margin. Year over year Q1 fundraising was up 74%, adjusted net income grew 39% and fee related earnings grew 26%. Speaker 200:02:51Our first quarter fee related earnings margin surpassed 40% for the 2nd consecutive quarter. The quarter was a pleasant change from the 1st quarters of the last 4 years, which were marked by COVID, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the meme stock debacle and just a year ago bank failures. While we are always conscious and prepared for the type of volatility and disruption we have seen recently and we are focused on the possibility of continued global geopolitical volatility, particularly in an election year in the U. S, it feels great to have gotten off to a good start this year. We are broadly above high water in absolute return strategies and therefore enjoy increased performance fee prospects. Speaker 200:03:39However, the Q1 remained depressed in terms of carry revenue. Announced private transaction volume is up and we look forward to an increase in closed transactions and attendant carry distributions in the future. Generally, our prospects are good and we continue to believe in our ability to double 2023 fee related earnings by the end of 2028. We look forward to moving toward that goal throughout the year. The $1,600,000,000 of capital raised in the quarter was the 2nd largest quarter of fundraising in the last six and the 2nd highest first quarter total since we started reporting earnings. Speaker 200:04:22During the quarter, Absolute Return Strategies was the highest contributor to fundraising at nearly $500,000,000 resulting in modestly positive net ARS flows. Recent performance has been solid in absolute return strategies with the GCM Grosvenor multi strategy composite achieving gross performance of 4.8% in Q1 and 12.3% over the last 12 months. Despite the good news, we are not changing our general expectation of flat net flows over time with growth primarily from compounding in the ARS vertical. Consequently, we do expect we will have some negative outflow periods this year while we enjoy revenue growth from performance. In addition to absolute return strategies, private equity and credit were the other significant contributors to 1st quarter fundraising. Speaker 200:05:22In the case of private equity where we raised almost $500,000,000 re ups were a key driver. We've spoken in the past about our high re up rates and Page 10 of our earnings presentation, which John will cover, makes it clear that this is a powerful feature of our business that will continue to aid growth going forward. On last quarter's call, we discussed the general market momentum around private credit and our solution for clients in that vertical. We raised nearly $400,000,000 in credit this quarter across customized separate accounts and specialized funds, including an additional $128,000,000 of commitments to SCF II, our credit co investment fund. During the Q1, we hired 2 additional team members to bolster our direct credit investment capabilities. Speaker 200:06:14We believe our value as a solutions provider and our unique origination position enable us to grow private credit meaningfully from these levels. We are always looking for both investment opportunities to help us deliver performance and the opportunity to grow our relationships with existing investors while adding new investors. The breadth of our platform has proven to be a real asset in the pursuit of those goals. We have and will continue to identify and pursue growth in adjacent investment strategies such as our elevate and impact strategies and in broader distribution channels including individual investor channels. Looking across the platform, I'm excited for the numerous ways we have to add value to clients, win and grow the business for shareholders. Speaker 200:07:06Thanks for joining us today. And with that, I'll turn the call over to John. Speaker 300:07:11Thank you, Michael. Each quarter, we drill down on a particular area of our business in my section of the prepared remarks. Today, we're going to cover our customized separate account capabilities in a bit more detail. Our market leading customized delivery model has been a cornerstone of our historical success, provides stability and predictability to our financial results as well as significant opportunities for growth. Customized separate accounts represent 73% of our AUM as of Q1 and a similar amount of our fundraising in any given quarter. Speaker 300:07:47We intentionally focused on building the separate account capabilities at our firm almost 30 years ago, long before it was a normal market practice, because we believe that offering a flexible solution was in the best interest of investors. Frankly, we probably didn't usually the result of a fairly long, intense and often competitive process. But the reward and victory are relationships that are often perpetual like in their long term nature. We do not take this privilege for granted. We work hard each and every day to collaborate with our partners to drive value in these relationships. Speaker 300:08:28We have been rewarded with long standing and growing partnerships as evidenced by relationships that are almost 30 year long and a 15 year average relationship length of our largest customized clients. To put some financial metrics around this topic, I point you to Page 10 in our earnings presentation. This page depicts an illustrative program that starts out with $100,000,000 commitment with a 3 year investment period. Our experience is that at the end of the 3 year investment period, 90% of clients will re up their program at nearly 30% larger size than the original commitment. That new program is layered onto the 1st generation program and that layering continues on a 3 year cycle. Speaker 300:09:10Hence, what was initially a $100,000,000 commitment easily becomes $500,000,000 of fee paying AUM in a dozen years, creating this built in growth dynamic that we've discussed frequently with our shareholders. We have dozens of these programs across our business in different strategies and sizes representing $58,000,000,000 of capital. Each relationship that underlies a separate account also embeds attractive growth opportunities. Over the last 2 years, 25% of our capital raised has been from existing clients, but into new incremental programs. Such relationship extensions are a natural feature of the customized separate account business and the nature of those relationships. Speaker 300:09:51More than 50% of our top clients work with us in more than one strategy. Our customized separate accounts have also been a driving factor in our meaningful shift towards direct oriented investment strategies over recent years. The majority of our clients have made a meaningful shift towards including co investments, secondaries and direct investments into their programs. We need to earn every re up and every new client win by delivering strong investment performance and exceptional client service. But assuming we continue to deliver, our customized separate accounts will provide both stability and a meaningful tailwind to our growth. Speaker 300:10:26Looking forward to the remainder of 2024, we have more than $4,000,000,000 of separate account re ups in our pipeline, providing key support for what we expect will be a stronger fundraising outcome in 2024 as compared to 2023. We're truly proud of the culture and platform built over many years that enables us to offer these highly value added specific solutions to our clients. With that, I'll turn the call over to Pam. Speaker 400:10:52Thanks, John. Our results for the quarter were consistent with our expectations and reflect a strong start to the year. Assets under management were $79,000,000,000 as of quarterend, a 5% increase from a year ago and fee paying AUM increased 6% year over year. Private markets continues to be a key growth driver with private markets fee paying AUM growing 7% year over year. As of quarter end, our private markets business represents 70% of total AUM and 65% of our fee paying AUM. Speaker 400:11:25Private markets management fees excluding catch up fees in the quarter grew 7% year over year in line with our guidance of mid to high single digit growth. We expect a similar year over year growth rate in private markets management fees excluding catch up fees in the Q2. For the full year 2024, we reaffirm our expectation of double digit private markets management fee growth excluding catch up fees. Absolute return strategies management fees were stable in Q1 as compared to last quarter and we expect 2nd quarter ARS management fees to rise slightly on a sequential basis. Most importantly, we are pleased with our ARS investment performance for the quarter, which builds on our strong performance last year. Speaker 400:12:11Administration fees and other operating income was $2,900,000 in the quarter. The increase from the prior quarter was due to a $1,800,000 contractual fee related to an end of a particular client program. We expect administration and other operating income in the Q2 to return to 2023 quarterly level. We realized $10,000,000 of incentive fees in the quarter, including $6,000,000 of ARS performance fees, the majority of which are from programs that crystallize fees annually on March 31. We believe our incentive fees provide significant embedded earnings potential, which we look forward to being unlocked as the capital markets and M and A environment improves. Speaker 400:12:56While it's difficult to predict the timing of carry realizations, the high diversification of our carry makes it especially valuable given its limited single asset exposure. As of quarter end, we have $779,000,000 in growth unrealized carried interest diversified across 140 programs. On top of that, our run rate annual performance fees, which are tied to ARS investment return and typically crystallize in the Q4 each year are $29,000,000 assuming normalized annual returns of 8% for multi strategy and 10% for opportunistic investments. Turning to our expenses. Our compensation strategy is rooted in fostering alignment between our employees, clients and shareholders. Speaker 400:13:43As expected, Q1 FRE compensation of $37,000,000 was consistent with our 23 quarterly average. We do expect a modest uptick in FRE compensation expense in the 2nd quarter. In Q1, we had a 40% margin on the firm's share of incentive fees and we expect that to increase over time as our total incentive fee revenue and the firm's share of that revenue increases. Separately, our stock based compensation was higher in the Q1 consistent with the same period of last year. We expect stock compensation expense to decrease significantly in the second quarter to levels just above Q2 of last year. Speaker 400:14:24We remain disciplined in managing expenses and non GAAP general and administrative and other expenses were $19,700,000 in the quarter. We expect similar levels next quarter with the potential for a slight uptick from increased travel. Pulling together these factors, on a year over year basis, fee related earnings grew a healthy 26% in the quarter and adjusted net income grew 39 percent in the quarter. Our fee related earnings margin grew from 34% in the Q1 of 2023 to 40% in the Q1 of 2024. We expect our Q2 FRE margin level to be closer to that of the full year of 2023. Speaker 400:15:06That said, we enjoy significant operating leverage and our overall FRE margin trajectory for the full year is expected to move upward despite any quarterly fluctuations. Our balance sheet is strong and we are very comfortable with our capital structure. We launched a transaction this morning to extend the tenure of our term loan 2 years from 2028 to 2,030. For almost 20 years, we have run our business with a modest amount of leverage to enjoy the attractive cost of capital and we have always been vigilant about managing duration. The current market provides an attractive maturity extension opportunity. Speaker 400:15:46If completed, subject to market conditions, the transaction will result in a modest $50,000,000 upsize to our term loan. The incremental cash will be used for general corporate purposes, continued investments in the business and opportunistic stock repurchases. We are maintaining a healthy quarterly dividend of $0.11 per share or an annual yield of 4.6 percent as of last Friday. There is room for future dividend growth as we enjoy positive momentum in our fee related earnings. We also continue to repurchase shares under our repurchase authorization plan. Speaker 400:16:21Year to date through April, we have repurchased $28,000,000 of stock through cash settlements of stock based compensation issued to employees, leaving $37,000,000 in our share repurchase program as of the end of April. We continue to have confidence in our 24 financial objectives, including double digit growth in private markets management fees, excluding catch up fees, stabilization of ARS management fees, expanded FRE margin and significant growth potential in our incentive fee revenues. Looking further into the future, we are focused on doubling our fee related earnings in the next 5 years with further fee related earnings margin expansion. We look forward to the opportunities ahead to deliver value to our clients and shareholders. Thank you again for joining us and we're now happy to take your questions. Operator00:17:13Thank Our first question comes from Bill Katz with TD Cowen. Speaker 500:17:33Hey, thank you very much and good morning everybody. Maybe two questions. First one, Michael for you, you'd mentioned that your origination capabilities continue to expand. I was just sort of wondering if you could maybe click into that a little bit and talk about some of the areas of expansion and opportunity from here? Speaker 200:17:50Sure. Thanks for the question. If you think about our business and you think about all of the relationships we have from our primary fund investment activities and you look at our co investment activity in infrastructure and in private equity as two examples, think the same holds in the real estate space. We are we're sort of proven that we have great origination capability and great flow with regard to equity co investment. We think we have that same capability and probably, but probably kind of multiples of volume, in with regard to debt origination in the infrastructure space, in the private equity space and in the real estate space. Speaker 200:18:43We're using some of our origination capability now for our credit funds now. But I think the origination capability that we have outstrips the capital that we have at this time in credit. And so we are our view, we are long origination and we have lots of ability to be a very valuable partner to investors providing unique credit investment opportunities on a co investment basis either in co mingled fund or separately managed account. And I think there's a lot of origination upside there that we can provide to investors. Speaker 500:19:35Okay. Thank you. And John, maybe one for you, you sort of highlighted the opportunity here in terms of re ups and encumbered opportunity set. The $4,000,000,000 they said in terms of the pipeline, can you provide some perspective on that? How big was that maybe a quarter or a year ago? Speaker 500:19:51And then how quickly do such sort of pipelines tend to fund through AUM and or fee paying AUM? Thank you. Speaker 300:19:59Sure. Well, look, I think, Bill, if you think about it, which is implied in the numbers, we raised $1,600,000,000 of capital in the Q1 and we're saying we have $4,000,000,000 of re up pipeline that we feel good about for the balance of this year. The combination of those two numbers alone would take us north of total fundraising for last year. And so just to perspective on the environment relative to last year, it's clearly a more productive environment for capital formation. I don't think we're back at kind of 2021 levels. Speaker 300:20:35But in terms of the ability to have constructive conversations with investors, there's a lot more activity right now than you would have seen kind of a year ago, and you see that across all the metrics of the business, whether that's RFPs we're filling out or marketing books we're preparing or frankly even travel and things of that nature. And so I think that's definitely indicative of the environment. When you look into that $4,000,000,000 of pipeline, you're going to see all the different verticals represented, and you're going to obviously see all the different activities represented too in terms of fund investing, co investing, secondary investing, direct investing, etcetera. So hopefully that answers your question. If there's anything else you want to drill down in there, fire away again. Speaker 500:21:28That's good for now. Thank you very much. Operator00:21:33We'll now take our next question from Ken Worthington with JPMorgan. Speaker 600:21:38Hi, good morning and thanks for taking the questions. When we look at fundraising in private markets and contributions to fee paying AUM, less of the quarterly flows today are being generated by current fundraising and more is coming from CNY, FPALM. Can you talk about how fundraising is evolving here and changes to preferences in terms of fund structure that you're seeing from your investors and private markets? Speaker 200:22:08Sure. It's Michael. Thanks. So I think that what you're highlighting is really more of a function of like what happened last quarter as opposed a trend or anything. John just talked about $4,000,000,000 of re ups, we think it's done by the end of the year. Speaker 200:22:38And obviously that doesn't include any of the specialized fund fundraising and that doesn't include any new client activity or new programs for existing clients. So generally robust environment there. We've said before on these calls that there has been a shift in the industry. I think we talked about this early, like literally as we were coming to market back in 2020 and that there and it's why we published and continue to publish CNYFPOM because in the separate account space for some co mingled funds in the industry, certain strategies, capital comes in on either a fee on time ramping basis or a fee on an as invested basis as opposed to a fee on committed capital basis. And we have accounts, we have co mingled funds that have both. Speaker 200:23:40When we price our funds, we're always looking at effective fee and trying to price. I think John once talked about this in our quarterly call, we're trying to price to neutrality on effective fee as opposed to because the way these structures work are different, but I don't think there's any change that has occurred. Frankly, I think by the time we were coming public in 2020 and we were talking about it, CMYF pump is part of our initial offering, there had been a significant change in the industry and certainly nothing reversing that trend over the last 4 years, effective fee rates on fee paying AUM have stayed stable. And obviously the individual investor market offers opportunity for improved fee to some extent. And so I think the fee the effective fee rates are good, but the structure of that changed a while ago and that's continuing, but it's nothing short term. Speaker 200:24:48It's something that is a part of the industry today. It's something we've talked about we talked about literally years ago and I think go into perhaps I think we may dug into it a little bit deeply in one of the calls. Speaker 600:25:01Okay, great. Thank you. And then can you just give us an update on your insurance build out? You sort of announced a program. How is that progressing and how is it building? Speaker 200:25:13It is progressing well and we have continued fundraising there. We have continued strong pipeline there and we continue to try to tailor our investment manufacturing capability to make the most sense for that market and really unlock that market. And so we remain we believe that was a very good investment for us. We're seeing others target the space and we believe that channel has a lot of promise for us over the next 5 years as we seek to double our FRE. Speaker 600:26:04Okay, great. Thank you. Operator00:26:14We'll now take a question from Adam Betti with UBS. Speaker 700:26:20Thank you and good morning. Just wanted to touch on the outlook for ARS. Obviously, a bit of a milestone here with net flows turning positive. And it still seems you're guiding sort of stable fees, a little bit cautious, which is fair given 1Q was still down from prior periods. But just want to get a sense of the level of interest, the level of dialogue with clients and how you're seeing flows possibly improving either this year or over the long term in ARS? Speaker 700:26:52Thanks very much. Speaker 200:26:55Yes. Thank you, Adam. You heard us in our prepared remarks and you're correct with regard to what you heard. But it's not so much it's just like our realistic view. So we're not changing our budgeting convention. Speaker 200:27:13If you then extrapolate that based on what happened in the Q1, you'd expect some outflows between now and the end of the year. We did take say that we think not only fee rates have stabilized, but are stable, but we think revenues are stable. We think revenues are going to grow going forward through compounding. And that is sort of what our how we've budgeted for the rest of the year. And your question on pipeline is a good one. Speaker 200:27:48The pipeline is up. The pipeline in ARS is definitely up. The interest level is up. It is not really a surprise in light of the very good recent performance. But we're not believe me, when we see a real change, we'll call it, we're not afraid to say we see it. Speaker 200:28:08We just think it's a little early. And it's and so we're maintaining our convention, but we're the pipeline's up and we're certainly going to try to win every single piece of business that is in that pipeline. Speaker 700:28:24Appreciate it. Thanks, Michael. And then maybe for John on the pipeline, definitely got our attention with the 4,000,000,000 dollars figure out there. Just wanted more qualitatively to drill into kind of how you go about thinking about that. Is it are the re up rates and the increased contribution rates similar to historical averages, maybe a bit less right now given the environment or what have you? Speaker 700:28:52And how much of that is based on sort of specific pre commitments or other dialogue with certain clients? Speaker 800:28:59Thank you. Speaker 300:29:01Yes. So just to be clear on that, when the $4,000,000,000 of and Michael clarified this, but I think it's an important point, the $4,000,000,000 of re up pipeline we mentioned in the prepared remarks is just about our separate account re up. So it doesn't include, fundraising activity for ARS. It doesn't include fundraising activity for new client acquisition. It doesn't pick up our specialized funds. Speaker 300:29:26And so A, that's just important to understand in terms of how we think about the balance of the year from a fundraising perspective, but it's also important to understand because it ties in pretty directly to the comments that I was drilling down in my section, which was the nature of these separate account relationships. And the nature of them is these are predominantly institutional investors that we are talking to every day, every week, every month. And that means you're talking to them about how much dry powder is remaining in the program. That means you're talking to them about their own calendar in terms of when they are scheduled to go through various processes on their end internally, whether those be investment committees or legal document review, whatever it is, and you actually are working as partners to look at what date or weeks within what period of time you're trying to sign the REO. So you have very, very good visibility into that. Speaker 300:30:24And that's the nature of those collaborative close relationships that you understand when those re ups are happening. So it's kind of just a calendar, right? And it's a calendar that you have exceptional transparency into. Our re up rates remain very strong at 90% plus. The fact that oftentimes the re up are occurring at a higher level than the previous program. Speaker 300:30:53We talked about the average of being close to 30% on that front. And so it's a part of your pipeline that you feel highly, highly, highly confident in. Now do you have time sometimes where you thought something might happen on one day, but it happens a couple of weeks later? Sure. But you feel very confident that that re up calendar is going to occur and that's one of the reasons, obviously, beyond delivering the strong value proposition to clients. Speaker 300:31:20One of the reasons we love that business is because of the predictability and the stability and the transparency and the opportunities for growth that it offers. Speaker 700:31:30Super. Thanks again for the extra detail on the slide. Appreciate it. Operator00:31:36We'll now take our next question from Tyler Mueller with William Blair. Speaker 200:31:42Hi, good morning. It's Tyler on for Adam and Jeff. Speaker 500:31:45I know you Speaker 800:31:45just covered the net flow outlook pretty well, but Speaker 200:31:47it was a particularly strong quarter for ARS in terms of performance. I'll give you some key color, some of Speaker 900:31:53the key drivers there. Thank you. Speaker 200:31:57Yes. I think that, in general, the environment over the last 6 quarters or whatever, 5 quarters has been a better environment for absolute return strategies. There has been ample volatility. There's been more dispersion than we've seen in the past. Higher rates are constructive. Speaker 200:32:27And so all of those sort of macro factors are constructive for ARS returns in particular dispersion among equity returns and the ability to have a better return set from credit investments, better yield on short credit rebate, things like that. So it's just been a it's just been a good environment for a hedged approach and for ARS strategies. Speaker 800:33:09Congrats to the team. Thank you. Operator00:33:14We'll now take a follow-up from Bill Katz with TD Cowen. Speaker 500:33:18Hi, excellent. Thank you. Just a couple of cleanup ones. Just in terms of the buyback, how much that actually reduces the actual share count versus maybe offsetting stock issuance given the Q1 elevated stock based comp? Speaker 200:33:35Most of the buyback it was substantially, if not all that was managing the dilution from stock based comp, which as you know is a goal of ours. Speaker 500:33:53Okay. And then just another one on comp. Speaker 200:33:55So Speaker 500:33:55if I did my math right, the cash comp component of variable incentive on your share of the incentive fees, I think that ratio this quarter was 60%, which is up I think quarter on quarter, year on year pretty substantially. And I think you talked about this a little bit last quarter, I just want to get your updated thoughts. As the to the extent that the incentive pool rises and you start to monetize more of the incentive revenues and your share of that goes up, is there an opportunity to continue to lift that ratio? And by doing so, does that give you a little more control over the FRE comp underneath that? Thank you. Speaker 200:34:32Yes. So that's actually a great question and very glad that you asked that. And as you know, we believe that we have a lot of earnings power in that I think I said in my comments, the only thing that wasn't like a bright spot in the Q1 was we didn't see the carry revenue grow and we need to see good that we've got announced transactions up, we need to see them closed and we need to see distributions And we know it will come, we will continue, we're waiting for it. As the carry revenue grows and as our percentage of the gross carry revenue grows because the firm's ownership percentage of carry 2014 forward is much higher than it was prior 2014 and you can see that in the presentation. As that grows, we do think we have real margin opportunity in that line. Speaker 200:35:40Obviously, when we have sort of very low levels of revenue, we will have a lower margin there. And as we get to more normal levels of revenue and we get some of the growth that we believe is a question of when not if we would hope to have higher margin there in the future and have the ability to be smart about that. So I appreciate the question and I think your suspicions in effect are correct and hope that the answer was clear. Speaker 500:36:20Thanks for taking the extra questions and very helpful. Thank you. Operator00:36:26And it appears there are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the conference back to our presenters for any additional or closing comments. Speaker 100:36:35Thank you for joining us today. We appreciate the interest and we look forward to speaking with you next quarter if not beforehand. Have a great day. Operator00:36:44And ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participatingRead morePowered by Key Takeaways GCM Grosvenor delivered a 74% year-over-year increase in Q1 fundraising, a 39% rise in adjusted net income and 26% growth in fee‐related earnings, with FRE margin topping 40% for the second consecutive quarter. Investment performance remained strong, with the ARS multi-strategy composite returning 4.8% in Q1 (12.3% over 12 months) and modestly positive net ARS flows, while private equity raised $500 million (90% re-up rate at ~30% larger size) and private credit secured $400 million with two new hires to expand origination. Customized separate accounts now represent 73% of AUM, achieving a 90% re-up rate at nearly 30% larger commitments over three-year cycles and supporting $58 billion of capital plus a $4 billion re-up pipeline for 2024. The firm has $779 million of unrealized carried interest across 140 programs and realized $10 million of incentive fees in Q1, underpinning significant embedded earnings potential as markets improve, with a $29 million run-rate of performance fees. With $79 billion AUM (+5% YoY) and 70% in private markets, GCM Grosvenor reaffirmed 2024 targets for double-digit private markets fee growth, stable ARS fees, expanding FRE margin and growing incentive fee revenues, while extending its term loan, maintaining a $0.11 quarterly dividend and ongoing share repurchases. AI Generated. May Contain Errors.Conference Call Audio Live Call not available Earnings Conference CallGCM Grosvenor Q1 202400:00 / 00:00Speed:1x1.25x1.5x2x Earnings DocumentsSlide DeckPress Release(8-K)Quarterly report(10-Q) GCM Grosvenor Earnings HeadlinesGCM Grosvenor to Present at the Morgan Stanley 2025 U.S. Financials, Payments & CRE Conference on June 10, 2025May 27, 2025 | globenewswire.comGCM Grosvenor to Present at the William Blair 45th Annual Growth Stock Conference on June 4, 2025May 21, 2025 | globenewswire.comThe Social Security Changes No One’s Talking AboutWhile most Americans worry about their next Social Security check... something far bigger is happening behind the scenes. An AI plan — authorized by Executive Order — is about to rewrite how the SSA operates.June 1, 2025 | Altimetry (Ad)Grosvenor Capital Management, L.P. (NASDAQ:GCMG) Q1 2025 Earnings Call TranscriptMay 14, 2025 | msn.comGCM Grosvenor Inc. (GCMG) Q1 2025 Earnings Call TranscriptMay 10, 2025 | seekingalpha.comGCM Grosvenor Inc. 2025 Q1 - Results - Earnings Call PresentationMay 10, 2025 | seekingalpha.comSee More GCM Grosvenor Headlines Get Earnings Announcements in your inboxWant to stay updated on the latest earnings announcements and upcoming reports for companies like GCM Grosvenor? Sign up for Earnings360's daily newsletter to receive timely earnings updates on GCM Grosvenor and other key companies, straight to your email. Email Address About GCM GrosvenorGCM Grosvenor (NASDAQ:GCMG) is global alternative asset management solutions provider. The firm primarily provides its services to pooled investment vehicles. It also provides its services to investment companies, high net worth individuals, pension and profit sharing plans and state or municipal government entities. The firm invests in equity and alternative investment markets of the United States and internationally. The firm invests in multi-strategy, credit-focused, equity-focused, macro-focused, commodity-focused, and other specialty portfolios. It focuses in hedge fund asset classes, private equity, real estate, and/or infrastructure, credit and absolute return strategies. It also focuses in primary fund investments, secondary fund investments, and co-investments with a focus on buyout, distressed debt, mezzanine, venture capital/growth equity investments. The firm seeks to do seed investments in small, emerging, and diverse private equity firms. The firm seeks to make regionally-focused investments in middle-market buyout. It prefers to invest in aerospace and defense, advanced electronics, information technology, biosciences, and advanced materials. It focuses on Ohio and the Midwest region. The firm employs fundamental and quantitative analysis. GCM Grosvenor Inc. was founded in 1971 and is based in Chicago, Illinois with additional offices in North America, Asia, Australia and Europe.View GCM Grosvenor ProfileRead more More Earnings Resources from MarketBeat Earnings Tools Today's Earnings Tomorrow's Earnings Next Week's Earnings Upcoming Earnings Calls Earnings Newsletter Earnings Call Transcripts Earnings Beats & Misses Corporate Guidance Earnings Screener Earnings By Country U.S. Earnings Reports Canadian Earnings Reports U.K. Earnings Reports Latest Articles e.l.f. 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There are 10 speakers on the call. Operator00:00:00Good day, and welcome to the DCM Grosvenor First Quarter 20 24 Results Webcast. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. As a reminder, this call will be recorded. I would now like to hand the call over to Stacey Selinger, Head of Investor Relations. You may begin. Speaker 100:00:38Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to GCM Grosvenor's Q1 2024 Earnings Call. Today, I'm joined by GCM Growner's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Michael Sachs President, John Levin and Chief Financial Officer, Pam Bentley. Before we discuss this quarter's results, a reminder is that all statements made on this call that do not relate to matters of historical fact should be considered forward looking statements. This includes statements regarding our current expectations for the business, our financial performance and projections. Speaker 100:01:11These statements are neither promises nor guarantees. They involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward looking statements on this call. Please refer to the factors in the Risk Factors section of our 10 ks, our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our earnings release, all of which are available on the Public Shareholders section of our website. We'll also refer to non GAAP measures, which we view as important in assessing the performance of our business. A reconciliation of non GAAP metrics to the nearest GAAP metric can be found in our earnings presentation and earnings supplement, both of which are available on our website. Speaker 100:01:55Our goal is to continually improve how we communicate with and engage with our shareholders. And in that spirit, we look forward to your feedback. Thank you again for joining us. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Michael. Speaker 200:02:09Thanks, Stacey. The Q1 of 2024 was strong from the perspective of both our investment performance for clients and our business performance. Our funds performed well on an absolute basis and relative to peers. With regard to business performance, the Q1 of 2024 was one of the strongest we have reported with regard to year over year over year increases in fundraising, adjusted net income and fee related earnings growth as well as FRE margin. Year over year Q1 fundraising was up 74%, adjusted net income grew 39% and fee related earnings grew 26%. Speaker 200:02:51Our first quarter fee related earnings margin surpassed 40% for the 2nd consecutive quarter. The quarter was a pleasant change from the 1st quarters of the last 4 years, which were marked by COVID, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the meme stock debacle and just a year ago bank failures. While we are always conscious and prepared for the type of volatility and disruption we have seen recently and we are focused on the possibility of continued global geopolitical volatility, particularly in an election year in the U. S, it feels great to have gotten off to a good start this year. We are broadly above high water in absolute return strategies and therefore enjoy increased performance fee prospects. Speaker 200:03:39However, the Q1 remained depressed in terms of carry revenue. Announced private transaction volume is up and we look forward to an increase in closed transactions and attendant carry distributions in the future. Generally, our prospects are good and we continue to believe in our ability to double 2023 fee related earnings by the end of 2028. We look forward to moving toward that goal throughout the year. The $1,600,000,000 of capital raised in the quarter was the 2nd largest quarter of fundraising in the last six and the 2nd highest first quarter total since we started reporting earnings. Speaker 200:04:22During the quarter, Absolute Return Strategies was the highest contributor to fundraising at nearly $500,000,000 resulting in modestly positive net ARS flows. Recent performance has been solid in absolute return strategies with the GCM Grosvenor multi strategy composite achieving gross performance of 4.8% in Q1 and 12.3% over the last 12 months. Despite the good news, we are not changing our general expectation of flat net flows over time with growth primarily from compounding in the ARS vertical. Consequently, we do expect we will have some negative outflow periods this year while we enjoy revenue growth from performance. In addition to absolute return strategies, private equity and credit were the other significant contributors to 1st quarter fundraising. Speaker 200:05:22In the case of private equity where we raised almost $500,000,000 re ups were a key driver. We've spoken in the past about our high re up rates and Page 10 of our earnings presentation, which John will cover, makes it clear that this is a powerful feature of our business that will continue to aid growth going forward. On last quarter's call, we discussed the general market momentum around private credit and our solution for clients in that vertical. We raised nearly $400,000,000 in credit this quarter across customized separate accounts and specialized funds, including an additional $128,000,000 of commitments to SCF II, our credit co investment fund. During the Q1, we hired 2 additional team members to bolster our direct credit investment capabilities. Speaker 200:06:14We believe our value as a solutions provider and our unique origination position enable us to grow private credit meaningfully from these levels. We are always looking for both investment opportunities to help us deliver performance and the opportunity to grow our relationships with existing investors while adding new investors. The breadth of our platform has proven to be a real asset in the pursuit of those goals. We have and will continue to identify and pursue growth in adjacent investment strategies such as our elevate and impact strategies and in broader distribution channels including individual investor channels. Looking across the platform, I'm excited for the numerous ways we have to add value to clients, win and grow the business for shareholders. Speaker 200:07:06Thanks for joining us today. And with that, I'll turn the call over to John. Speaker 300:07:11Thank you, Michael. Each quarter, we drill down on a particular area of our business in my section of the prepared remarks. Today, we're going to cover our customized separate account capabilities in a bit more detail. Our market leading customized delivery model has been a cornerstone of our historical success, provides stability and predictability to our financial results as well as significant opportunities for growth. Customized separate accounts represent 73% of our AUM as of Q1 and a similar amount of our fundraising in any given quarter. Speaker 300:07:47We intentionally focused on building the separate account capabilities at our firm almost 30 years ago, long before it was a normal market practice, because we believe that offering a flexible solution was in the best interest of investors. Frankly, we probably didn't usually the result of a fairly long, intense and often competitive process. But the reward and victory are relationships that are often perpetual like in their long term nature. We do not take this privilege for granted. We work hard each and every day to collaborate with our partners to drive value in these relationships. Speaker 300:08:28We have been rewarded with long standing and growing partnerships as evidenced by relationships that are almost 30 year long and a 15 year average relationship length of our largest customized clients. To put some financial metrics around this topic, I point you to Page 10 in our earnings presentation. This page depicts an illustrative program that starts out with $100,000,000 commitment with a 3 year investment period. Our experience is that at the end of the 3 year investment period, 90% of clients will re up their program at nearly 30% larger size than the original commitment. That new program is layered onto the 1st generation program and that layering continues on a 3 year cycle. Speaker 300:09:10Hence, what was initially a $100,000,000 commitment easily becomes $500,000,000 of fee paying AUM in a dozen years, creating this built in growth dynamic that we've discussed frequently with our shareholders. We have dozens of these programs across our business in different strategies and sizes representing $58,000,000,000 of capital. Each relationship that underlies a separate account also embeds attractive growth opportunities. Over the last 2 years, 25% of our capital raised has been from existing clients, but into new incremental programs. Such relationship extensions are a natural feature of the customized separate account business and the nature of those relationships. Speaker 300:09:51More than 50% of our top clients work with us in more than one strategy. Our customized separate accounts have also been a driving factor in our meaningful shift towards direct oriented investment strategies over recent years. The majority of our clients have made a meaningful shift towards including co investments, secondaries and direct investments into their programs. We need to earn every re up and every new client win by delivering strong investment performance and exceptional client service. But assuming we continue to deliver, our customized separate accounts will provide both stability and a meaningful tailwind to our growth. Speaker 300:10:26Looking forward to the remainder of 2024, we have more than $4,000,000,000 of separate account re ups in our pipeline, providing key support for what we expect will be a stronger fundraising outcome in 2024 as compared to 2023. We're truly proud of the culture and platform built over many years that enables us to offer these highly value added specific solutions to our clients. With that, I'll turn the call over to Pam. Speaker 400:10:52Thanks, John. Our results for the quarter were consistent with our expectations and reflect a strong start to the year. Assets under management were $79,000,000,000 as of quarterend, a 5% increase from a year ago and fee paying AUM increased 6% year over year. Private markets continues to be a key growth driver with private markets fee paying AUM growing 7% year over year. As of quarter end, our private markets business represents 70% of total AUM and 65% of our fee paying AUM. Speaker 400:11:25Private markets management fees excluding catch up fees in the quarter grew 7% year over year in line with our guidance of mid to high single digit growth. We expect a similar year over year growth rate in private markets management fees excluding catch up fees in the Q2. For the full year 2024, we reaffirm our expectation of double digit private markets management fee growth excluding catch up fees. Absolute return strategies management fees were stable in Q1 as compared to last quarter and we expect 2nd quarter ARS management fees to rise slightly on a sequential basis. Most importantly, we are pleased with our ARS investment performance for the quarter, which builds on our strong performance last year. Speaker 400:12:11Administration fees and other operating income was $2,900,000 in the quarter. The increase from the prior quarter was due to a $1,800,000 contractual fee related to an end of a particular client program. We expect administration and other operating income in the Q2 to return to 2023 quarterly level. We realized $10,000,000 of incentive fees in the quarter, including $6,000,000 of ARS performance fees, the majority of which are from programs that crystallize fees annually on March 31. We believe our incentive fees provide significant embedded earnings potential, which we look forward to being unlocked as the capital markets and M and A environment improves. Speaker 400:12:56While it's difficult to predict the timing of carry realizations, the high diversification of our carry makes it especially valuable given its limited single asset exposure. As of quarter end, we have $779,000,000 in growth unrealized carried interest diversified across 140 programs. On top of that, our run rate annual performance fees, which are tied to ARS investment return and typically crystallize in the Q4 each year are $29,000,000 assuming normalized annual returns of 8% for multi strategy and 10% for opportunistic investments. Turning to our expenses. Our compensation strategy is rooted in fostering alignment between our employees, clients and shareholders. Speaker 400:13:43As expected, Q1 FRE compensation of $37,000,000 was consistent with our 23 quarterly average. We do expect a modest uptick in FRE compensation expense in the 2nd quarter. In Q1, we had a 40% margin on the firm's share of incentive fees and we expect that to increase over time as our total incentive fee revenue and the firm's share of that revenue increases. Separately, our stock based compensation was higher in the Q1 consistent with the same period of last year. We expect stock compensation expense to decrease significantly in the second quarter to levels just above Q2 of last year. Speaker 400:14:24We remain disciplined in managing expenses and non GAAP general and administrative and other expenses were $19,700,000 in the quarter. We expect similar levels next quarter with the potential for a slight uptick from increased travel. Pulling together these factors, on a year over year basis, fee related earnings grew a healthy 26% in the quarter and adjusted net income grew 39 percent in the quarter. Our fee related earnings margin grew from 34% in the Q1 of 2023 to 40% in the Q1 of 2024. We expect our Q2 FRE margin level to be closer to that of the full year of 2023. Speaker 400:15:06That said, we enjoy significant operating leverage and our overall FRE margin trajectory for the full year is expected to move upward despite any quarterly fluctuations. Our balance sheet is strong and we are very comfortable with our capital structure. We launched a transaction this morning to extend the tenure of our term loan 2 years from 2028 to 2,030. For almost 20 years, we have run our business with a modest amount of leverage to enjoy the attractive cost of capital and we have always been vigilant about managing duration. The current market provides an attractive maturity extension opportunity. Speaker 400:15:46If completed, subject to market conditions, the transaction will result in a modest $50,000,000 upsize to our term loan. The incremental cash will be used for general corporate purposes, continued investments in the business and opportunistic stock repurchases. We are maintaining a healthy quarterly dividend of $0.11 per share or an annual yield of 4.6 percent as of last Friday. There is room for future dividend growth as we enjoy positive momentum in our fee related earnings. We also continue to repurchase shares under our repurchase authorization plan. Speaker 400:16:21Year to date through April, we have repurchased $28,000,000 of stock through cash settlements of stock based compensation issued to employees, leaving $37,000,000 in our share repurchase program as of the end of April. We continue to have confidence in our 24 financial objectives, including double digit growth in private markets management fees, excluding catch up fees, stabilization of ARS management fees, expanded FRE margin and significant growth potential in our incentive fee revenues. Looking further into the future, we are focused on doubling our fee related earnings in the next 5 years with further fee related earnings margin expansion. We look forward to the opportunities ahead to deliver value to our clients and shareholders. Thank you again for joining us and we're now happy to take your questions. Operator00:17:13Thank Our first question comes from Bill Katz with TD Cowen. Speaker 500:17:33Hey, thank you very much and good morning everybody. Maybe two questions. First one, Michael for you, you'd mentioned that your origination capabilities continue to expand. I was just sort of wondering if you could maybe click into that a little bit and talk about some of the areas of expansion and opportunity from here? Speaker 200:17:50Sure. Thanks for the question. If you think about our business and you think about all of the relationships we have from our primary fund investment activities and you look at our co investment activity in infrastructure and in private equity as two examples, think the same holds in the real estate space. We are we're sort of proven that we have great origination capability and great flow with regard to equity co investment. We think we have that same capability and probably, but probably kind of multiples of volume, in with regard to debt origination in the infrastructure space, in the private equity space and in the real estate space. Speaker 200:18:43We're using some of our origination capability now for our credit funds now. But I think the origination capability that we have outstrips the capital that we have at this time in credit. And so we are our view, we are long origination and we have lots of ability to be a very valuable partner to investors providing unique credit investment opportunities on a co investment basis either in co mingled fund or separately managed account. And I think there's a lot of origination upside there that we can provide to investors. Speaker 500:19:35Okay. Thank you. And John, maybe one for you, you sort of highlighted the opportunity here in terms of re ups and encumbered opportunity set. The $4,000,000,000 they said in terms of the pipeline, can you provide some perspective on that? How big was that maybe a quarter or a year ago? Speaker 500:19:51And then how quickly do such sort of pipelines tend to fund through AUM and or fee paying AUM? Thank you. Speaker 300:19:59Sure. Well, look, I think, Bill, if you think about it, which is implied in the numbers, we raised $1,600,000,000 of capital in the Q1 and we're saying we have $4,000,000,000 of re up pipeline that we feel good about for the balance of this year. The combination of those two numbers alone would take us north of total fundraising for last year. And so just to perspective on the environment relative to last year, it's clearly a more productive environment for capital formation. I don't think we're back at kind of 2021 levels. Speaker 300:20:35But in terms of the ability to have constructive conversations with investors, there's a lot more activity right now than you would have seen kind of a year ago, and you see that across all the metrics of the business, whether that's RFPs we're filling out or marketing books we're preparing or frankly even travel and things of that nature. And so I think that's definitely indicative of the environment. When you look into that $4,000,000,000 of pipeline, you're going to see all the different verticals represented, and you're going to obviously see all the different activities represented too in terms of fund investing, co investing, secondary investing, direct investing, etcetera. So hopefully that answers your question. If there's anything else you want to drill down in there, fire away again. Speaker 500:21:28That's good for now. Thank you very much. Operator00:21:33We'll now take our next question from Ken Worthington with JPMorgan. Speaker 600:21:38Hi, good morning and thanks for taking the questions. When we look at fundraising in private markets and contributions to fee paying AUM, less of the quarterly flows today are being generated by current fundraising and more is coming from CNY, FPALM. Can you talk about how fundraising is evolving here and changes to preferences in terms of fund structure that you're seeing from your investors and private markets? Speaker 200:22:08Sure. It's Michael. Thanks. So I think that what you're highlighting is really more of a function of like what happened last quarter as opposed a trend or anything. John just talked about $4,000,000,000 of re ups, we think it's done by the end of the year. Speaker 200:22:38And obviously that doesn't include any of the specialized fund fundraising and that doesn't include any new client activity or new programs for existing clients. So generally robust environment there. We've said before on these calls that there has been a shift in the industry. I think we talked about this early, like literally as we were coming to market back in 2020 and that there and it's why we published and continue to publish CNYFPOM because in the separate account space for some co mingled funds in the industry, certain strategies, capital comes in on either a fee on time ramping basis or a fee on an as invested basis as opposed to a fee on committed capital basis. And we have accounts, we have co mingled funds that have both. Speaker 200:23:40When we price our funds, we're always looking at effective fee and trying to price. I think John once talked about this in our quarterly call, we're trying to price to neutrality on effective fee as opposed to because the way these structures work are different, but I don't think there's any change that has occurred. Frankly, I think by the time we were coming public in 2020 and we were talking about it, CMYF pump is part of our initial offering, there had been a significant change in the industry and certainly nothing reversing that trend over the last 4 years, effective fee rates on fee paying AUM have stayed stable. And obviously the individual investor market offers opportunity for improved fee to some extent. And so I think the fee the effective fee rates are good, but the structure of that changed a while ago and that's continuing, but it's nothing short term. Speaker 200:24:48It's something that is a part of the industry today. It's something we've talked about we talked about literally years ago and I think go into perhaps I think we may dug into it a little bit deeply in one of the calls. Speaker 600:25:01Okay, great. Thank you. And then can you just give us an update on your insurance build out? You sort of announced a program. How is that progressing and how is it building? Speaker 200:25:13It is progressing well and we have continued fundraising there. We have continued strong pipeline there and we continue to try to tailor our investment manufacturing capability to make the most sense for that market and really unlock that market. And so we remain we believe that was a very good investment for us. We're seeing others target the space and we believe that channel has a lot of promise for us over the next 5 years as we seek to double our FRE. Speaker 600:26:04Okay, great. Thank you. Operator00:26:14We'll now take a question from Adam Betti with UBS. Speaker 700:26:20Thank you and good morning. Just wanted to touch on the outlook for ARS. Obviously, a bit of a milestone here with net flows turning positive. And it still seems you're guiding sort of stable fees, a little bit cautious, which is fair given 1Q was still down from prior periods. But just want to get a sense of the level of interest, the level of dialogue with clients and how you're seeing flows possibly improving either this year or over the long term in ARS? Speaker 700:26:52Thanks very much. Speaker 200:26:55Yes. Thank you, Adam. You heard us in our prepared remarks and you're correct with regard to what you heard. But it's not so much it's just like our realistic view. So we're not changing our budgeting convention. Speaker 200:27:13If you then extrapolate that based on what happened in the Q1, you'd expect some outflows between now and the end of the year. We did take say that we think not only fee rates have stabilized, but are stable, but we think revenues are stable. We think revenues are going to grow going forward through compounding. And that is sort of what our how we've budgeted for the rest of the year. And your question on pipeline is a good one. Speaker 200:27:48The pipeline is up. The pipeline in ARS is definitely up. The interest level is up. It is not really a surprise in light of the very good recent performance. But we're not believe me, when we see a real change, we'll call it, we're not afraid to say we see it. Speaker 200:28:08We just think it's a little early. And it's and so we're maintaining our convention, but we're the pipeline's up and we're certainly going to try to win every single piece of business that is in that pipeline. Speaker 700:28:24Appreciate it. Thanks, Michael. And then maybe for John on the pipeline, definitely got our attention with the 4,000,000,000 dollars figure out there. Just wanted more qualitatively to drill into kind of how you go about thinking about that. Is it are the re up rates and the increased contribution rates similar to historical averages, maybe a bit less right now given the environment or what have you? Speaker 700:28:52And how much of that is based on sort of specific pre commitments or other dialogue with certain clients? Speaker 800:28:59Thank you. Speaker 300:29:01Yes. So just to be clear on that, when the $4,000,000,000 of and Michael clarified this, but I think it's an important point, the $4,000,000,000 of re up pipeline we mentioned in the prepared remarks is just about our separate account re up. So it doesn't include, fundraising activity for ARS. It doesn't include fundraising activity for new client acquisition. It doesn't pick up our specialized funds. Speaker 300:29:26And so A, that's just important to understand in terms of how we think about the balance of the year from a fundraising perspective, but it's also important to understand because it ties in pretty directly to the comments that I was drilling down in my section, which was the nature of these separate account relationships. And the nature of them is these are predominantly institutional investors that we are talking to every day, every week, every month. And that means you're talking to them about how much dry powder is remaining in the program. That means you're talking to them about their own calendar in terms of when they are scheduled to go through various processes on their end internally, whether those be investment committees or legal document review, whatever it is, and you actually are working as partners to look at what date or weeks within what period of time you're trying to sign the REO. So you have very, very good visibility into that. Speaker 300:30:24And that's the nature of those collaborative close relationships that you understand when those re ups are happening. So it's kind of just a calendar, right? And it's a calendar that you have exceptional transparency into. Our re up rates remain very strong at 90% plus. The fact that oftentimes the re up are occurring at a higher level than the previous program. Speaker 300:30:53We talked about the average of being close to 30% on that front. And so it's a part of your pipeline that you feel highly, highly, highly confident in. Now do you have time sometimes where you thought something might happen on one day, but it happens a couple of weeks later? Sure. But you feel very confident that that re up calendar is going to occur and that's one of the reasons, obviously, beyond delivering the strong value proposition to clients. Speaker 300:31:20One of the reasons we love that business is because of the predictability and the stability and the transparency and the opportunities for growth that it offers. Speaker 700:31:30Super. Thanks again for the extra detail on the slide. Appreciate it. Operator00:31:36We'll now take our next question from Tyler Mueller with William Blair. Speaker 200:31:42Hi, good morning. It's Tyler on for Adam and Jeff. Speaker 500:31:45I know you Speaker 800:31:45just covered the net flow outlook pretty well, but Speaker 200:31:47it was a particularly strong quarter for ARS in terms of performance. I'll give you some key color, some of Speaker 900:31:53the key drivers there. Thank you. Speaker 200:31:57Yes. I think that, in general, the environment over the last 6 quarters or whatever, 5 quarters has been a better environment for absolute return strategies. There has been ample volatility. There's been more dispersion than we've seen in the past. Higher rates are constructive. Speaker 200:32:27And so all of those sort of macro factors are constructive for ARS returns in particular dispersion among equity returns and the ability to have a better return set from credit investments, better yield on short credit rebate, things like that. So it's just been a it's just been a good environment for a hedged approach and for ARS strategies. Speaker 800:33:09Congrats to the team. Thank you. Operator00:33:14We'll now take a follow-up from Bill Katz with TD Cowen. Speaker 500:33:18Hi, excellent. Thank you. Just a couple of cleanup ones. Just in terms of the buyback, how much that actually reduces the actual share count versus maybe offsetting stock issuance given the Q1 elevated stock based comp? Speaker 200:33:35Most of the buyback it was substantially, if not all that was managing the dilution from stock based comp, which as you know is a goal of ours. Speaker 500:33:53Okay. And then just another one on comp. Speaker 200:33:55So Speaker 500:33:55if I did my math right, the cash comp component of variable incentive on your share of the incentive fees, I think that ratio this quarter was 60%, which is up I think quarter on quarter, year on year pretty substantially. And I think you talked about this a little bit last quarter, I just want to get your updated thoughts. As the to the extent that the incentive pool rises and you start to monetize more of the incentive revenues and your share of that goes up, is there an opportunity to continue to lift that ratio? And by doing so, does that give you a little more control over the FRE comp underneath that? Thank you. Speaker 200:34:32Yes. So that's actually a great question and very glad that you asked that. And as you know, we believe that we have a lot of earnings power in that I think I said in my comments, the only thing that wasn't like a bright spot in the Q1 was we didn't see the carry revenue grow and we need to see good that we've got announced transactions up, we need to see them closed and we need to see distributions And we know it will come, we will continue, we're waiting for it. As the carry revenue grows and as our percentage of the gross carry revenue grows because the firm's ownership percentage of carry 2014 forward is much higher than it was prior 2014 and you can see that in the presentation. As that grows, we do think we have real margin opportunity in that line. Speaker 200:35:40Obviously, when we have sort of very low levels of revenue, we will have a lower margin there. And as we get to more normal levels of revenue and we get some of the growth that we believe is a question of when not if we would hope to have higher margin there in the future and have the ability to be smart about that. So I appreciate the question and I think your suspicions in effect are correct and hope that the answer was clear. Speaker 500:36:20Thanks for taking the extra questions and very helpful. Thank you. Operator00:36:26And it appears there are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the conference back to our presenters for any additional or closing comments. Speaker 100:36:35Thank you for joining us today. We appreciate the interest and we look forward to speaking with you next quarter if not beforehand. Have a great day. Operator00:36:44And ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participatingRead morePowered by