Q1 2024 Artisan Partners Asset Management Inc Earnings Call

Participants

Eric Colson; Chief Executive Officer, Director; Artisan Partners Asset Management Inc

Jason Gottlieb; President; Artisan Partners Asset Management Inc

Charles Daley; Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President, Treasurer; Artisan Partners Asset Management Inc

Bill Katz; Analyst; TD Cowen

Alexander Blostein; Analyst; Goldman Sachs

John Dunn; Analyst; Evercore ISI.

Kenneth Lee; Analyst; RBC Capital Markets

Presentation

Operator

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Artisan Partners First Quarter 2020 for conference call, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star by pressing star and zero on your telephone keypads. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Ask a question. You may press star and one using a telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, you may press star and two. We do also ask that you please limit yourself to two questions to two. In order to in order to allow time for other questions. Please note this event is being recorded.
I'd now like to turn the floor over to Artisan Partners, Asset Management. You may begin.

500 for Artisan Partners, Asset Management Business Update and Earnings Call. Today's call will include remarks from Eric Colson, CGL., Jason Conley, President, C.J. Daley, CFO. Following these remarks, we will open the line for questions. Our latest results and investor presentation are available on the Investor Relations section of our website.
So before we begin today, I would like to remind you that comments made during today's call, including responses to questions may include forward-looking statements. These are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to the factors set forth in our earnings release and detailed in our SEC filings. These risks and uncertainties may cause actual results to differ materially from those disclosed in these statements, and we assume no obligation to update or revise any of these statements following the presentation.
In addition, some of our remarks today will include references to non-GAAP financial measures. You can find reconciliations of those measures to the most comparable GAAP measures in the earnings release and the supplemental materials, which can be found on our Investor Relations web. Also, please note that nothing on this call constitutes an offer or solicitation to purchase or sell an interest in any artist and investment product or recommendation for any investment. And we'll now turn it over to Eric Colson.

Eric Colson

The Thank you and thank you, everyone, for joining the call or reading the transcript. We constantly come back to who we are. We are a high value-added investment firm designed for talent to thrive in a thoughtful growth environment. This is who we have always been is our DNA and our competitive edge. We steer clear of narrow label, a firm like traditional manager that never accurately describes who we are and what we do. We have always taken a broader view. Our focus has always been on high value added investments, managed by exceptional talent in our earliest years with great talent. We entered the marketplace in non-core, high dispersion areas like small-cap and mid-cap equities, international growth and value investing. These were and remain areas where exceptional talent can generate differentiated results. When we entered fixed income in 2014, we started with high yield, another inefficient space where talented portfolio management can add value and manage risks. We have expanded our fixed income capabilities with additional high value added strategies, including long short credit, emerging market debt and global macro. We have demonstrated time and again, our ability to deliver across different talent generations, asset classes, geographies and client sites by building and maintaining a home designed specifically for investment talent. We are able to generate alpha for clients develop durable investment franchises and produce quality outcomes for shareholders.
Turning to slide 2, in late 2023 annual letter, I described the characteristics that we believe define an ideal home for investment talent.
It all starts with our investment first culture.
This culture originates from the belief system of our investment talent. We mapped out a passionate condition in their investment philosophy enabling us to execute through thick and thin over long periods of time. This waterfall of passion, philosophy, process execution and alignment flows into business operation and distribution, which we build and manage for our investment talent and investment capabilities, not the other way around at Artisan Partners. Every single person prioritizes investments from the Board of Directors to our new associates and across all functional areas of the firm. Everything is focused on inflows from investments we attract and retain great talent that talent generates results for clients, revenues grow over time. We generate successful outcomes for our associates and shareholders and artists and each investment team operate autonomously with respect to its investment philosophy, process people, research and decision-making. We complement investment team, a company with extensive resources and support customized to fit each team. We believe that the artists and the combination of investment, autonomy, resources and support is unique in the industry and a competitive advantage it attracted. Brian improved joined Artisan Partners in 2013 and partner with us to establish the artist and credit team on April first, the credit team's high income strategy had its 10th anniversary, joining 10 other artists and strategies with track records of more than 10 years.
I'd ask Jason to spend a few minutes on the credit team platform and most importantly, the team's future.

Jason Gottlieb

Thank you, Eric. For the development of the Ares credit team over the last 10 years is a testament to two things. First, Brian Kruger as an investor leader and entrepreneur, and second, the quality and relevance of the Artisan Partners operating and business model across asset classes. It bears repeating that when Brian joined Ares in 2013, that firm had no prior experience in supporting industry with a fixed income investment strategy. Brian joined Artisan Partners because he believed in the power of the autonomous investment team model and our investments first culture prior to joining artists and bragging was already a successful investor in the year, but he was willing to step away from what you had already achieved for the freedom to build an investment franchise designed specifically for Henry. Do you want to control over investment capacity and one that his ideas implemented and strategies that he managed over the last decade we have partnered with Brian to methodically build a team, a track record and a franchise since inception. The high-income strategy has generated average annual returns of 6.18% after fees, which is nearly 42% more return on average per year for 10 years compared to the passive index over that period. The Artisan high income fund is ranked number two out of 135 funds in the Morningstar high-yield bond category, starting from scratch without any preexisting fixed income business, we have raised a cumulative $9.2 billion of net inflows into the high income strategy, including $1.5 billion in 2023 and $856 million in the first quarter of 2024 from its inception. The Artisan high income fund ranks number two in net flows out of 138 funds in the Morningstar high-yield category. Critically though Brian and the credit team has expanded beyond Viacom, they've been building out an array of capabilities, strategies and vectors for future growth. In 2017, the credit team launched one of Artisan's first alternative strategies, credit opportunities using a broad array of securities long and short positions and greater flexibility across the credit and liquidity spectrum. Credit Opportunities has generated an average annual return of 10.24% after fees since inception, we believe the credit opportunity strategy has generated comparable to better return and private lending with greater liquidity and transparency in January 2022, the credit team launched the floating rate strategy, which provides clients with access to the team's long demonstrated skill in the leveraged loan market, along with a portfolio consisting largely of floating-rate loans resulting in minimal duration risk. And just last year, we closed $130 million of commitments to the Artesyn dislocation opportunities fund the Dislocation Fund will allow the credit team to put new capital to work quickly and efficiently in both public and private securities if and when the credit markets dislocate. The team has a successful record navigating periods of market stress for the COVID drawdown and recovery period from March 31st, 2020, through March 31st, 2021, credit opportunities generated a 50.16 return net of fees. We congratulate Brian and the credit team for establishing a credit platform with broad degrees of freedom and capabilities. As Eric said, in our earnings release. We believe that great talent Transcend narrow categories.
Looking ahead, we believe the credit team is just getting started. We are diversifying the High Income Strategies business with institutional and non-US capital of the nearly $2.4 billion in AUM we have raised in the strategy over the last five quarters, 20% is from institutional separately managed accounts and 17% is from non-US investors. We are particularly focused on growing the credit teams, alternative capabilities, strategies and businesses. Credit Opportunity has an impressive nearly seven year track record, taking advantage of broad opportunity set the ability to short the COVID dislocation and the ability to hold less liquid positions. Market dispersion in the Triple T space is right for credit selection and the structure of credit opportunities gives Brian more flexibility to invest in smaller and less liquid issuances.
Another area where more potential for absolute return and Alpha, as Eric has previously discussed, we have picked up the pace and volume of marketing, credit opportunities and certain other alternative strategies. We are seeing progress in terms of more and higher quality engagements with prospects and clients. We still have a lot of work to do in order to better market alternative strategies, but we are seeing signs that our investments are paying off. We are extremely excited to continue to develop the credit franchise over the next decade.
Turning to Slide 4.
As Eric mentioned earlier on April first, the High Income Strategy became our 11 strategy with a track record of 10 years or more. We have five strategies with track records over 20 years. The average tenure of the portfolio managers on these 11 strategies is 21 years seven of these strategies continue to be managed by their founding portfolio mix. These facts point to the effectiveness of our business model, our talent focus and our investments. First culture there is a wide spectrum of individuals, team strategy, asset classes and time periods represented on this slide. There are, though common themes outstanding and stable leadership over long periods, compelling absolute return that we believe have generally met or exceeded client return expectations, significant alpha generation, differentiated investment philosophies and processes. These KPIs over long periods are the metrics we care about the most they indicate that we are attracting and retaining great talent, maintaining and evolving our investment platform and compounding well for clients over long periods, including our first fixed income strategy. And this was launched from scratch 10 years ago gives us tremendous confidence that our platform can deliver across even broader ranges of asset classes and geographies going forward.

Eric Colson

Thank you, Jason.
Congratulations to Brian crew and the credit team. Credit team is reminiscent of other successful outcomes we have had at harvest and partners. Our growth team founded in 1997 with a single strategy focused on U.S. Mid-Cap Growth Equities now invest globally and across market caps through four strategies launched over a span of 22 years that collectively manage over $41 billion Our International Value and Global Value team manage over $70 billion in the aggregate and were born out of a team founded in 2002 with a strategy focused on non-US value assets. Our global equity team manages over $14 billion and served as the launching pad for our lead of the autonomous investment team. The International Small Mid team, which manages over $7 billion building enduring investment franchises take time did a multi-decade process that requires a solid foundation of people, process culture and results. With those characteristics that come together, we have established durable, long-term, highly profitable businesses because our model and philosophy are geared towards talent and high value added investing in general as opposed to any one type of individual or investment strategy, we have been able to methodically add investment talent teams, asset classes and strategies over time, having added fixed income 10 years ago and our first alternative strategy, seven years ago, in many respects, Artisan Partners as a firm is just getting started. We continue to align our distribution model with the progress we are making in broadening degrees of freedom for our investment talent and adding alternative strategies. While our business model has endured the test of time across asset classes, the evolving industry landscape has required us to evolve from being thought to selling a broader array of investment capacity, patience and determination has served us well versus cutting corners and forcing outcomes.
As Jason said today, we have tremendous conviction in our ability to apply our model and philosophy to an even broader set of opportunities. We look forward to executing on those opportunities and continuing to perform for our clients. Our talent and our shareholders.
I will now turn it over to C.J. to discuss our recent financial results.

Charles Daley

Thanks, Eric. An overview of financial results begins on Slide 7. Assets under management ended the March quarter at $160 billion of 7% from the last quarter and up 16% from the March 2023 quarter. Investment returns contributed $10.8 billion to our AUM in the quarter. Approximately $1.4 billion of those returns were in excess of benchmark returns, which net client cash outflows during the quarter were just over $500 million. Net outflows in our equity strategies were partially offset by net inflows in our fixed income and alternative strategies. For the quarter, the annualized organic outflow rate was 1%, an improvement from 3% in 2023. Average AUM for the quarter was up 10% sequentially and up 14% compared to the March 2023 quarter. Our complete GAAP and adjusted results are presented in our earnings release. Revenues in the quarter increased 6% compared to last quarter. The increase was less than the increase in average AUM due to a decrease in performance fees recognized relative to the fourth quarter of 2023 and one less day in the March quarter compared to the March 2023 quarter revenues were up 13% on higher average AUM. Our average recurring fee rate for the quarter was 69 basis points. Consistent with last quarter, the fee rate is down slightly from the March 2023 quarter, largely due to strategy mix and the tiered billing structure within many of our investment management agreements with clients wherein the fee rate declined as assets under management grow. We expect the recurring three rate to remain consistent for the last few quarters at 69 basis points.
Adjusted operating expenses for the quarter increased 8% sequentially, primarily due to a $7 million increase in expenses that are front-loaded in the first quarter of each year does include four oh one K matching contributions health care costs, employer payroll taxes and director compensation and short-term incentive compensation also increased in the quarter in line with higher revenues.
During the quarter, we continued to invest in talent through our annual long-term incentive awards. Over 85% of the awards were granted to investment professionals to align our key talent with clients and shareholders to 2024 award consisted of $38 million of cash based Franchise Capital awards and $21 million of restricted stock awards. Generally 50% of new awards vest pro rata over five years and the remaining 50% less online or 18 months after qualified retirement. Majority of the 2024 awards includes in the traditional retirement acceleration feature. This new provision eliminates the five year time vesting requirements from certain or excipients of a qualified retirement. After having met an age plus years of service threshold of seven call under vesting conditions, including career vesting service and notice periods and clawback provisions remain from a financial statement perspective, new feature results and front-loaded expense for awards granted to employees who are honoring the age plus years of service requirement. The cumulative amount of expense recorded over the entire vesting period remains the same feature added $2 million to long-term incentive compensation expense for the quarter, including the impact of this acceleration feature long-term incentive compensation expense, excluding the mark-to-market impact, will be approximately $17 million to $18 million for each of the remaining quarters this year, adjusted operating income increased 2% sequentially and 17% compared to last year's March quarter. Adjusted net income per adjusted share declined 3% compared to last quarter and increased 19% compared to the March 2023 quarter. In calculating our non-GAAP measures, nonoperating income includes only interest expense and interest income. Although the income generated on our seed investments adds to shareholder economics, we fully excluded these investment gains from our adjusted results.
In order to provide transparency through our core business operations, our balance sheet remains strong. We currently have about $155 billion of seed capital invested in our investment products with significant amounts of realizable capacity. As those products begin to scale, we will redeem the seed capital deployed in our new products otherwise reinvested in the business or return it to shareholders. In addition, our $100 million revolving credit facility remains unused. We continue to return capital to shareholders on a consistent and predictable basis through quarterly cash dividend payments and a year end special dividend. Consistent with our dividend policy, our Board of Directors declared a quarterly dividend of $0.61 per share with respect to the March 2024 quarter, which represents approximately 80% of the cash generated in the quarter. Cash generated in the quarter was reduced by $6.8 million to net settle vesting of employees. Restricted stock awards during the quarter to repurchase shares were retired and reduced the number of shares outstanding.
That concludes my prepared remarks. I will now turn the call back to the operator.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we'll begin the question and answer session. Once again to ask a question, you may press star and then one using a touchtone telephone. To withdraw your questions, you may press star and two. Once again, we do ask that you please limit your questions to two in order to allow time for all questions. Once again, that is star and then one to join the question queue.
And our first question today comes from Bill Katz from Citi Cowen.
Please go ahead with your question.

Bill Katz

Thank you very much, and thank you for your prepared comments. Eric, just as you continue to sort of migrate your platform, he talked about some of the success of our platforms and growth of the teams respectively. How are you thinking about that against some of the bigger opportunities in the space? I guess fixed income replacement largely investment grade non-investment grade as it sort of fits with Bryan's team for maybe things like real assets, getting into infrastructure or real estate where or maybe even retail democratization as a distribution channel for you guys or update your thinking with us on sort of how you sort of see that mapping going forward?

Eric Colson

Yes. Certainly, I'm yes, as you know, Bill, we spent a lot of time just looking at long-term asset allocation and where the markets are going on. You've seen a big pickup in the alternative space, and we've seen quite a bit of activity in the fixed income. And we're very happy with how we've built out the credit team with Bryan Krug. As we've made comments on the call, we think that insights team on balancing the non-traditional fixed income and even with the global macro gives a nice balance, again with high value added long-term allocations for emerging markets debt, which we think look very, very strong in the next couple of years here, especially coming off of the big outflows the last couple of years, which I think helps us enormously as we build towards our three-year track record. And as we look at other alternative allocations to real assets, infrastructure, real estate, we'd see the allocations are very steady. When you look at the real estate market where there's a a good allocation to core and core plus, and then you look into the value added and the opportunistic segments. It's very similar to how we entered other asset classes on. So we continue to look at hard assets, real assets, real estate and other alternative strategies. And with that, we're aligning some of our distribution to marry with that. And we think that the proved case of the fixed income teams just demonstrates that we can broaden the firm more and more into different asset classes. As we've said over the years. We just have two really good proof statements now the fixed income teams.

Bill Katz

Great. And just a follow-up, just want to sustain the same theme around flow opportunity. You spend a lot of time with us on credit and EM sites, which makes a ton of sense. Your performance in equities get a little bit bigger, a little bit better. All else being equal quarter to quarter, but it's a big part of your are your platform today. Any sense of allocations in equities picking up from here? Or is it still sort of a source of funds for other sectors are just everything that we're talking about is real estate infrastructure, et cetera.

Eric Colson

Thank you. Couple of tipping points and the Equity One is I think high on a lot of people's allocations is emerging markets. In aggregate, it's created some a low relative return and absolute return to other equity categories. And there seems to be quite a bit of disruption in the allocation there, which we think brings money in motion. We like money in motion because when new opportunities arise, whether people will get their emerging market allocation from direct exposure as we've seen in the past or to broader strategies or incorporating that more and more into the global equity allocations and allowing teams to have higher emerging market exposures and all case that disruption, it creates of money in motion, an opportunity for us to compete at our with our high-quality products. And we clearly are seeing also beyond the emerging markets into the value space, there's been quite a bit of movement into value equities, both global international and domestic across the board. And so I would say the emerging markets pipeline to the value equity is it's showing some interesting inflection points.

Bill Katz

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Alex Blostein from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead with your question.

Alexander Blostein

Hey, good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for the question as well. Maybe just to continue building on the fixed income discussion. Obviously very nice progress in this business for you guys over the years and appreciate you highlighting that again on. Can you talk about what sort of the next five years in this business looks like, you know, since launch and you guys gather $11 billion in the US over the last decade. How should we think about the path going forward and sort of speed of inflows and maybe provide some details around what distribution platforms. Are you guys getting on now and how you are able to sort of build on this momentum?
Thanks.

Eric Colson

And on the fixed income side, it's leveraging the success and brand of Bryan Krug and taking the high income strategy over the last 10 years has created an incredible proof statement out too, the institutional marketplace and the consultants. I think that really gives us two vectors of that one, allowing us to go deeper into the alternative space, what you're seeing with credit opportunities. And as Jason mentioned, the dislocation fund, we see the future growth of that strategy or that that franchise balancing heavily into alternatives when you look at it from a revenue standpoint.
And then secondly, the floating rate funds into the wealth space. So after establishing that franchise and now there's really an ability to leverage into the high-net-worth wealth space with alternatives as well as into on some of the broader broker-dealer platforms with a floating rate. So we think we have very strong flow opportunities with the credit franchise. And if you look at that credit franchise and translate it to the insights team and we see a bit more capacity in the emerging market debt. And given the breadth of securities, both the emerging market debt opportunities and the emerging market local opportunities provide more capacity in those strategies than what we see in the high yield or high income strategy as well as it gives us a very strong growth into the alternative space with the global unconstrained and in the global macro space for alternatives. And that franchise will help us heavily in nonU.S. with higher allocations of emerging market debt, mainly out of Europe in the Middle East and in the US that provides us a really good opportunity again into the alternative space in the wealth space with the global unconstrained. So and really amplified growth opportunity with both fixed income teams.

Alexander Blostein

Got it. Thank you. That's helpful.
On CG. one, just kind of cleanup question for you. You provided a little bit of guidance on part of the expense base, but maybe talk about expenses holistically as you sort of think about the rest of the year on both the comp and more importantly, non-comp side of things yes, this quarter, we obviously had our seasonal expenses as we do every year or so.

Eric Colson

So expenses were a bit elevated because of that as well as the addition of the retirement clause. So combined, we had about $8 million more than we did the previous quarter in comp and non-comp had some seasonal expenses of about $1 million. It related to our annual fees for our directors. So moving forward, our comp rate was a little elevated this quarter. We think we think that that should normalize to around 53% you know, depending on what our variable expenses do, it'll go down as revenues go up and it'll increase slightly the revenues, it will go down because of the variable nature of most of our expenses. There's no real change from the guidance that we provided last quarter, other than, you know, the seasonal expenses and the addition of the retirement costs.

Alexander Blostein

Great. Thank you.

Operator

And our next question comes from John Dunn from Evercore ISI. Please go ahead with your question. Thank you.

John Dunn

And Nick, maybe could you just take us through some of the puts and takes in the institutional channel and 1Q and then maybe over the next two quarters?

Eric Colson

Yes, Jonathan, Eric, the from the institutional channel was fairly strong in this in the first quarter, we see that in the funding of the fixed income allocations and in the alternative space, we have good fundings in global unconstrained. So I believe the institutional channel and so both US and non-US are picking up for us. We're having quite a bit of dialogue. And as I mentioned in the fixed income as well as there is some disruption occurring in the emerging markets equity space as well. So but both have been positive. And I think the look forward as they have quite a bit of dialogue and with institutional buyers.

John Dunn

Got it. And then now maybe just to go back to the kind of shift in distribution strategy from product being bought to sold and the wealth management channel. Could maybe could just talk about some of the that first of all, how you think your progress is coming along and maybe some of the proof points we should watch to see and maybe just some specific things that you're doing to kind of bring it to life as early.

Eric Colson

Generally, we have a hybrid distribution model, which means that we have dedicated distribution people inside of each of the autonomous investment teams as well as our distribution teams inside the central part of the firm that focus on the wealth channel, broker-dealer channel and non-US and these teams work together. And over the last couple of years, we've been pushing more emphasis of sales inside the central teams and a bit more of the servicing aspect into the autonomous investment teams, the dedicated distribution people in those teams, the activity is has created more meetings and more opportunities. So we see a higher volume and meeting rate across the organization. And we think that this adjustment will bear fruit going forward. And really the logic behind the change was the number of strategies that we offer today versus a few years ago, as well as the complexity of the strategies required us to make this adjustment and some we're tracking the progress and we still feel we're in the early to mid innings of the transition, and I think it will be solidified in the next the year.

John Dunn

Thanks very much.

Operator

And the final question today comes from Kenneth Lee from RBC Capital Markets.

Kenneth Lee

Please go ahead with your question, but hey, thanks for taking my question. In terms of the new alternative credit strategies that you're introducing and have recently introduced, wondering in terms of the demand and traction with new clients. Is it going to be dependent upon the macro environment, the rate environment or is that not really a consideration at this point? Just wanted to get your thoughts around that?

Jason Gottlieb

Thanks.
I'd say it's Jason. I don't think it requires much on the macro side. I think people always have a an allocation that they're thinking about to unique and differentiated strategies when it comes to their halts allocation. And so for us, it's more about just getting out and talking about the opportunities that we think presents itself several of our strategies or are actually a little bit more in the all-weather category, thinking about go on global unconstrained, where you tend to get a and uncorrelated return to broader benchmarks, you tend to get a low beta profile. So I think that's really resonating. It's more about getting out and talking to clients about where it fits in a portfolio and how we think about it. And so we're we're pretty excited about the engagement on that front, but it goes back to some of the comments that Eric had made. It's it is about getting out telling the story a little bit more and it has been resonating with clients. There are some strategies that have a little bit more seasoning to occur before we think we'll see that big inflection thinking again about global unconstrained, where we just passed our type believe it's our two year anniversary. And as you know, as you know, people tend to look for three years. So that's a that's a big one. We're very, very excited about the dislocation strategy and the raise that we have there. I think that's a testament to Brian, his brand and the uptake was quite strong and the credit opportunity strategy speaks for itself. I think people in general are very excited about credit more broadly with where rates are today and it appears to be in the future at a higher level. And Brian being able to capture those dislocations on a more of a in industrial or sectorial basis in something like credit opportunities is also quite compelling. So we feel like we're pretty well-positioned across all three when it comes to the credit line.

Kenneth Lee

Sorry, great. Very helpful there. That's all I had. Thanks again.

Operator

Yes, and ladies and gentlemen, with that, we'll be concluding today's question-and-answer session as well as today's presentation. We thank everyone for joining and you may now disconnect your lines.