Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Beneficient Company's Third Quarter Fiscal 2024 Earnings Call. At this time all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your host today, Dan Callahan from Beneficent. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good afternoon everybody. Thank you for joining us for Beneficent's fiscal third quarter 2024 conference call. In addition to this call, we issued an earnings press release that was posted to the shareholders section of our website at shareholders.trustben.com. As the operator indicated today's webcast is being recorded and a replay will be available on the company's website shareholders.trustben.com. On today's call management's prepared remarks and answers to questions may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results and future events could materially differ from those discussed in these forward-looking statements, because of factors described in our earnings press release and the risk factors section of our Form 10-K and in subsequent filings we make with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Forward-looking statements represent management's current estimates and Beneficient assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements in the future. Today's call also contains certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our earnings press release which is available on our website for important disclosures regarding such measures including reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP financial measures. Hosting the call today are Brad Heppner, the CEO and Chairman of Beneficient; Greg Ezell, the Chief Financial Officer; and Jeff Welday, Global Head of Originations and Distribution. Following the prepared remarks we'll hold a question-and-answer session with institutional and research analyst participants. I'll now turn it over to our CEO and Chairman, Brad Heppner. Brad?

Thank you Dan. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us. Today, we will cover our fiscal third quarter and year-to-date results. More importantly, we will also share with you our vision, to accelerate Ben's growth. I'll start our remarks with an update on Ben's unique position in the alternative investment market, as a new source of liquidity and capital coupled with trustee, custody and administration services. And then Jeff will provide a deeper dive into our current sales strategies and addressable markets including plans to build our scale. And then Greg Ezell will provide comments on key metrics from our quarterly results. Afterwards we will take a few questions from institutional call participants. Since we are new to the market, and many of you are likely new to Ben. Let's start with a quick overview of exactly what we are. Ben was created, to simplify an otherwise complex task of providing fiduciary services and financings that, deliver increased liquidity and capital for holders and managers, of alternative assets, while simultaneously increasing our public shareholders exposure, to various alternative investment, asset classes comprising the collateral Ben's loan portfolio. While we can compress the crux of our business into that, one pretty simple sounding line, the mechanics of achieving this vision, rely on our state-of-the-art internally developed fintech platform AltAccess, which is subject to bank regulator examination and works hand-in-hand with our first of its kind proprietary financing and trust structure that we call the ExAlt plan, to deliver our products and our services to our customers. We believe these unique aspects which have taken years to develop differentiate our business from our competition. There have been organizations that have tried, to offer early exit, or liquidity solutions to our target market, but haven't been able to deliver, with certainty across,…

Thanks Brad. So the global alternative assets market, is estimated to be in excess of $12 trillion and has been growing at a rate in the mid to high-teens for the last 15 years. In response to this surge in demand, the market has dramatically increased access to alternative asset products, vehicles, and platforms for mid to high net worth individual investors and small to mid-sized institutions. The result of this trend is that these investors and institutions Ben's target market now hold over $2 trillion in alternative asset, net asset value just in the U.S. alone. At the same time, and to our knowledge no firms have brought to market scalable, tech enabled and regulated solutions that, would further the democratization of alternative assets, by delivering alternative asset investors of all sizes, the benefits of trustee, custody and trust administration services, more robust reporting and early exit solutions for their alternatives all from a single provider and platform. The secondary market has grown from over $35 billion to $130 billion in annual transactions, over the last decade, demonstrating the need and demand, for early exit solutions. However, unlike larger institutions, individual and smaller institutional investors, have not had the same access to, or benefit from the secondary market. We believe this is partly, because the current secondary market is inefficient, complex, costly, and generally not built, to serve mid to high net worth individual and small to mid-sized institutional investors, who don't have the time, or financial resources, to engage in prolonged and complicated transactions. As Brad mentioned earlier our fintech platform or AltAccess seeks to eliminate, or mitigate many of these cumbersome friction points, and paves the way for Ben to deliver our capabilities, at scale to the marketplace. To ensure that Ben can meet marketplace demand, we've…

Thank you, Jeff. Now let's turn to our quarterly results and our financial position as of December 31, 2023. For the purpose of my discussion, I will be focusing on the financial information for Ben Liquidity and Ben Custody business segments, as it's the operations of these business segments, along with corporate and other that accrues to Ben's equity holders. Ben generates revenues principally through two categories, interest revenue for supplying liquidity off its balance sheet, and fee revenue for the use of the platform and for trust services. In our Ben Liquidity segment, we generate income through a base interest rate approximately 10% annually of the total financing amount, and the potential for a one-time catch-up payment on the financing, at the end of the life of the limited partnership unit. This potential additional payment, is generally capped at a 23% IRR net of all fees and other obligations. In our Ben Custody segment, we generate transaction fees approximately 7% one-time fee based on the initial NAV and any remaining unfunded commitment, and recurring custody and trust service fees of approximately 2.8% annually, of the remaining NAV and remaining unfunded commitment. Total NAV in the trust is driven by new originations, liquidations of existing limited partnership interest, and the change in value of existing limited partnership interest. Ben Liquidity recognized $11.3 million in base interest revenue, during the three months ended December 31, 2023, down 13.4% from the prior quarter, due to lower carrying values of loans receivable, which is driven by higher allowances for credit losses. Operating income, was a loss of $606.4 million, due primarily to a non-cash charge, I'll discuss in a minute. This compares to losses of $272.1 million in the prior quarter and $19 million in the December quarter last year. Adjusted operating income,…

[Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from the line of [Will Turnland with NanoCap Pod]. Your line is now open.

Hi, it's Will Turnland with the NanoCap Pod. So, for your fintech platform, AltAccess, is that something you could license, or sell as a standalone, or is intended only for use with the other liquidity and custody tools?

Well, hi, this is Brad Heppner. I'll take this question. This AltAccess is foundational to delivering our liquidity and custodial capabilities, to our target markets at scale. The AltAccess, coupled with our proprietary trust structure called the ExAlt Plan, that eliminates many of the friction points, many of the delays, and expenses that prevent liquidity from alternative assets, from being achieved among individual investors. We specifically built AltAccess, with the functionality to operate under our brand, or to be white labeled and delivered through various API options, to any third-party platform, whether that third-party is a wealth management firm, a service provider, or general partners for their funds in particular. By offering our AltAccess to third-party providers, it would provide them with an additional avenue of potential platform service fee revenues. So, that's an additional revenue stream we could earn here. AltAccess has a number of key features, including the submission, the creation and delivery of liquidity requests and proposals, all through our Cybersecure SOC 2 Type 1 and 2 certified platform. And that is all subject to banking regulator testing and examination. Another important feature of that platform is that it allows for transactions to remain confidential. Most exchange platforms, are based on a process where the potential transaction and all the related information may be made available to many different parties. Here, it's kept confidential just with Beneficient. Lastly, by delivering AltAccess out as a private label online experience, it may become an efficient and effective way for Ben to serve as a preferred liquidity provider, delivering our white glove experience for advisors on behalf of their clients, or for general partners on behalf of their limited partners as well. I hope that was helpful in answering the question.

Thank you.

Our next question will come from the line of Robert Sassoon with Water Tower Research. Your line is now open, Robert.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you for taking my questions. You referenced that providing capital customers, and generating services revenue go hand-in-hand for your business model. So, can you actually add a little bit more color, as to why that matters, and what makes it unique? As an adjunct to that, are there others in the market, even if they're not providing a complete solution?

I'm going to answer the question again. This is Brad Heppner. We operate here at Ben under a very unique piece of Kansas legislation that created the technology enabled fiduciary financial institution. We call those TEFFIs. The TEFFI charter requires that we provide both our financing and our services in a fiduciary capacity. So, these go hand-in-hand. We believe that the stronger our balance sheet is, the stronger our position to expand our fiduciary services under this unique charter is an exciting opportunity for us. As the only entity right now, we're the only entity with a TEFFI charter, and we're uniquely able to conduct fiduciary financing transactions, where Ben can finance liquidity and capital transactions in a fiduciary capacity for our customers. Most customers cannot find fiduciaries, to provide that. Our TEFFI charter also allows Ben to serve as a trustee and custodian for the trusts that, need to be created, to complete the fiduciary financings. These are in addition, all in addition to traditional trust administration, and sub-custody functions that Ben could always, also provide to holders of these assets, on a third-party basis. But under our architecture, we can earn fees across a wider spectrum, as we deliver solutions to our main target markets. There are other commodity custodian providers in the market, but being just a custodian limits your scope, and the value you can provide when you look at the totality, of what the private asset investor truly needs. They need both the fiduciary services, and the fiduciary financing from a strong balance sheet.

Thank you for that. Just one more point of clarification. On the balance sheet, it seems you've endured a pretty heavy round of write-downs in the last quarters. Should we expect additional goodwill write-downs, and/or - are you largely done with that?

I'm going to ask Greg Ezell, CFO, to field this question, yes.

Thanks for the question. These are largely done. The write-downs we've taken thus far, are primarily driven by the decrease in our market capitalization, since our public listing. After this quarter's impairment, goodwill is only about $81.7 million. That's what remains. So that would be the outside limits of any future goodwill impairment that could be recorded. We will have to continue to test goodwill, for impairment at least annually, and more frequently if a triggering event occurs. I will say that without improvement in the current stock price, as will be noted in our forthcoming 10-Q that will be filed tomorrow. We would anticipate another goodwill impairment test, being necessary at March 31, 2024. Also, I'd mention that we do provide supplemental non-GAAP financial results, including adjusted operating income and loss that, would exclude certain items, including the non-cash goodwill impairment charges. We believe these supplemental financial results help investors, by providing a view of the operating results of the underlying core business, exclusive of these non-cash charges, such as the goodwill impairment.

Okay. Thank you for those answers. I'll jump back in the queue.

Our next question will come from the line of Jennifer Scutti with The Benchmark Company. Your line is now open.

Hi, good afternoon. And again, thank you for taking my question. In your press release and in your formal comments, you talked a bit about a marketing program, GP Solutions. I was hoping you could just go into a bit more detail on that program, specifically, who are you targeting and how much could this help in scaling your asset base? Thank you.

Hi, Jennifer, this is Jeff Welday. I'll go ahead and take that question. So, as you noted, and I mentioned in my earlier comments, we have multiple complementary channels of origination, where we have source deal flow and closed business. Those three channels, again, are General Partners solutions, our advisory platforms channel, and then our direct to investor channel. And GP Solutions is really the primary channel that, we've built the business on to-date. Ben's current balance sheet was built by successfully closing on liquidity financings, collateralized, but over $1 billion of NAV, for multiple fund sponsors through our GP Solutions channel since 2017. So, our GP Solutions offerings, which are really targeted at fund, General Partners and sponsors. Rather than limited partners, cover a variety of liquidity, capital, and custody and trust administration products and services that, may be offered to the approximately 2,000 General Partners that fall within Ben's target market. And as a result, we see GP Solutions continuing to be a significant potential contributor, to the growth of our balance sheet in addition, to our other channels of origination, the advisory platform channel and the direct to investor channel. And thanks for asking the question.

Yes, thank you. That was very helpful.

That concludes today's question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the call back to Dan Callahan for closing remarks.

Thank you to Brad, Jeff, and Greg, and to everyone who tuned into the webcast today. To keep up with news and events about Beneficient, we encourage everyone to go to our website, trustben.com, and our investor pages, shareholders.trustben.com. Again, thanks to all and have a great rest of your day.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.