Greetings and welcome to AlTi Tiedemann Global Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Lily Arteaga, Head of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Good afternoon to everyone on the call today. Joining me this afternoon are Michael Tiedemann, our CEO, and Reid Parmelee, our Interim CFO and Global Controller. We invite you to visit the Investor Relations section of our website at www.Alti-global.com to view our earnings materials, including our updated Investor Presentation. At this time I would like to remind everyone that certain statements made during the call are not based on historical facts, including any statements relating to financial guidance, and may be deemed forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Because these forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, there are important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. AlTi assumes no obligation or responsibility to update any forward-looking statements. During this call, some comments may include references to non-GAAP financial measures. Full GAAP reconciliations can be found in our earnings presentation and related SEC filings. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Mike.

Thank you, Lily. Good afternoon, everyone and thank you for joining us today for our second quarter 2023 earnings call. In the second quarter, AlTi advanced the strategic priorities we laid out on our last call, and our performance is beginning to reflect these initiatives. As we discussed on our first quarter call, we are focused on the primary goals of streamlining our operations and growing our base of recurring revenues. As we move forward, we are confident that this approach and strategy will drive higher and sustainable margins. Another important goal in 2023 was to increase our public float and simplify our capital structure, both of which we accomplished in the first-half of the year. All together, these steps position the firm for long-term growth in the broader financials sector. For a brief summary of our Q2 performance, on a consolidated basis, AlTi generated revenues of $52 million, of which 95% represent recurring revenues, adjusted EBITDA of $11 million, and ended the second quarter with $69 billion in assets under management and advisement. Our net income for the quarter was $29 million and adjusted net income normalized for one-off items was $2 million. We are confident that our diversified platform is well positioned to capitalize on opportunities in any economic environment. This is evidenced by the sequential growth we reported across key operating and financial metrics. We delivered steady asset growth in the second quarter. On a trailing 12-month basis, we have increased total assets by 15%. Our second quarter performance was led by 7% sequential asset growth in wealth management, the majority of which is organic. In parallel, we have successfully maintained asset levels across our alternatives platform, despite strategy-specific headwinds in the short-term. However, the hallmark of our asset management strategies is resilience. We pride ourselves on…

Thank you, Mike. I want to note that our results are again presented as a comparison between predecessor and successor company as required by the accounting guidelines. In our case, Tiedemann Wealth Management Holdings is the predecessor company and AlTi is the successor. As such, the year-over-year results are not directly comparable. As Mike mentioned, we are pleased with the performance in the quarter, as the results reflect the successful execution of our growth strategy and are beginning to show the benefits of our cost savings initiatives. In the second quarter, AlTi’s AUM and AUA increased 3% sequentially to $69 billion, reflecting continued strong performance in the Wealth Management business. Wealth Management experienced a 7% quarter-over-quarter increase to $49 billion driven by our acquisition of AL Wealth Partners, solid market performance and robust new business wins. Net new client flows were $430 million, largely driven by significant wins across our international businesses, as well as growth in the U.S. In Asset Management, AUM and AUA declined 4% sequentially to approximately $20 billion, reflecting primarily redemptions in our alternatives platform and a decline in market capitalization of our public real estate strategy, both stemming from the market headwinds. In total, AlTi generated revenues of $52 million in the second quarter. Revenues in our Wealth Management segment, which entirely consist of management and advisory fees in the second quarter, were $34 million. This represents a robust increase of 8% compared to the first quarter. In Asset Management, revenue was $18 million; 87% was recurring from management and advisory fees, as well as the management fee component from our affiliated managers included in distributions from investments. Sequentially, Asset Management revenues reflected a lower asset level from pressure on the real estate sector and headwinds facing event-driven strategy in the second quarter. The sequential…

Thank you, Reid. We believe AlTi is well positioned to grow its global platform to achieve operating scale. Our strategic review has enabled AlTi to further lean into its strengths, continue to organically grow recurring revenues, prioritize accretive growth opportunities, increase profitability and position the platform for continued success. I'm pleased with the team’s progress against our strategic initiatives, which speak to AlTi’s commitment to driving profitable growth and maintaining high standards of financial performance. We remain confident we have the right talent, suite of solutions, and plan to capitalize in the years to come. With that, we'd like to now open up for questions. Operator?

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Wilma Burdis with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, good evening. Got a few questions so I’ll just keep going until you guys stop me. But anyway first, transaction expenses improved pretty significantly - I think $11.9 million, so down quite a bit from $17.8 million quarter-over-quarter. Could you talk a little bit about the trajectory for these rolling off?

Yes. Hi Wilma, thank you. I’m going to let Reid answer specifically, but the transaction expenses from the de-SPAC and warrant exchange are largely behind us, but there will continue to be other transaction expenses.

Hi Wilma. Those costs are largely behind us, so we would expect to trend toward zero in Q3. What Mike mentioned related to future deals, we expect to incur transaction expenses in the coming quarters, in particular related to Lugano which we purchased in August. Those will be of a much smaller scale than those we incurred from the de-SPAC.

Got it. Is there any way to break out how much was related to the warrant exchange?

Sure. The warrant exchange was roughly $2 million.

Thank you. EBITDA margin improved quite a bit quarter-over-quarter, 21%. We understand you’re trying to get it up to a higher level, can you talk a little bit about how that compares to your expectations and the trajectory over the next few quarters.

Clearly, as we described, the core business itself is doing well on a lot of levels, even despite some of the headwinds that we’ll talk about within asset management. The streamlining of the business is really critical, and so the combination of the two will lead to inflection of the business and that’s what we’re anticipating in these coming two, three, four quarters that lay ahead of us.

Got it. The wealth management net flow looked pretty strong. Last quarter I think it was extremely strong, maybe a little bit outsized in a good way, but is this a good run rate for wealth management net flows?

Wilma, a key point to highlight between Q1 and Q2 is really the diversity. Q1 was largely U.S. and Q2 was more driven from international, and so we see that as obviously an important dynamic that the company can offer. Predicting quarter-to-quarter is very challenging to do, but we have a great pipeline, both in the U.S. and non-U.S. with both traditional wealth and impact prospects, so we’re excited about the future. But the real differentiation between the two quarters, aside from size, was the domicile of where the growth came from.

Got it. Thank you. The AL Wealth deal appears to be performing very well. Can you talk about the pipeline for similar deals?

Lugano would be a similar deal, so what we just executed, and obviously we’ll have more information on that in our next call. There are firms of similar and larger size that we do come in contact with. There are some excellent firms both in jurisdictions in which we already operate, as well as others that we would consider strategically operating from. But, it’s hard to find great operators, who fit culturally, have the client profile that we have and have the identical operating ethos -- both Lugano and Singapore are two great examples of that.

Sounds good. Then for the merger arbitrage fund, you noted that in 3Q the conditions appear to have improved a little bit. Maybe you could go into a little bit more color there?

Yes, it’s a substantial improvement in two important ways, both of which are out of their specific control. So, interest rate environment and the inflation environment that has been driving the interest rate environment is levelling off. That enables M&A activity, let’s call it rolling forward the next 12-18 months. The calculation of debt costs will be easier for firms to model, so just in terms of deal activity, we expect an improvement. You’re beginning to see that already. The most important thing in the last really six to nine months is the regulatory environment. We had never seen before regulators coordinating -- the regulators were pursuing all types of deals, not just ones that were monopolistic in nature. So, the courts have been very favorable against the regulators, and that has really changed the backdrop for anyone considering doing a deal, and certainly those investing into merger arb deals, so spreads are getting normalized, which is a very good thing.

Thank you. And then maybe I misheard you, but I thought there was a quick statement in there about the potential to sell non-core assets to reposition more core investments. If I understood you right, maybe you could give a few examples of some things you could reposition out of and into?

Yes. Inevitably, we’re going to evaluate all pieces of our business, and as part of streamlining to some degree you can say simplifying, but streamlining either jurisdictions that we operate in or regulatory entities that we have. One of the goals for this year is to have a very clear direction as we enter 2024, to have less regulated entities and to be oriented towards ones that we are growing and ones that are clearly tied to our core. As we look at it, we have some attractive assets that are more strategically in-line with other businesses that our businesses would like to own, and so we are entertaining bids for a few of those to generate capital, then reinvest back into our core.

Got it, thank you very much. Then last question, could you give a little bit of color similar to what you mentioned on the merger arbitrage fund on the outlook for the other core investment strategies?

Yes. I just want to make sure I understand exactly.

For performance, can you just talk a little bit about how they are performing in 3Q and what you expect going forward?

Q2 for the Asia Credit strategy was a challenging environment for their marketplace, worse than the index would indicate because they have a range of credit which does expand in the distress. So they did a very good job of preserving capital and retaining liquidity to buy into that weakness. There hasn’t necessarily been a quick recovery in Q3, but the profile and the earnings profile of their investments is quite robust, so as you roll the clock forward the next 12 months, we’re actually very encouraged by that strategy and the team’s ability to survive challenging markets and retain earnings power going forward. Our long-short equity fund is really non-directional and, as an example, made 20-some-odd percent in a down year last year, so they are a non-correlating strategy. Their opportunity set is really week-to-week in terms of how they move and maneuver themselves to take advantage of it. And arbitrage, as I mentioned, did very well relative and has recovered quite nicely in Q3, as I mentioned earlier. Bridge lending strategy, it’s an unbelievable backdrop, particularly as you look at the regional banks and their capital challenges. So being a private lender into real estate or just generally in private credit as a strategy, there’s a lot of tailwinds and obviously a lot of investor interest. So, that’s a strategy that we’re really focused on and making sure that we’re able to grow over the coming 12 to 24 months.

Okay. Thank you guys very much.

Thank you, Wilma.

There are no further questions in the queue. I’d like to hand the call back to management for closing remarks.

Thank you, Operator. We invite you to contact us with any questions or if you have any need for a scheduled follow-up call, we’d be happy to have one. I want to thank the AlTi team members around the world who are fellow shareholders for their hard work and dedication as we advance this strategy that we’ve laid out today. I’m confident that our diversified platform is built to perform well in any economic cycle and our progress this quarter illustrates that fact. We look forward to connecting with you this fall and wish everyone a healthy and happy rest of the summer. Take care.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today’s teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day.