Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. And welcome to the Hamilton Lane Fiscal Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press 0 for the operator. This call is being recorded on Tuesday, February 3, 2026. I would now like to turn the conference over to John Oh, Head of Shareholder Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Natasha. Good morning, and welcome to the Hamilton Lane Q3 Fiscal 2026 Earnings Call. Today, I will be joined by Erik Hirsch, Co-Chief Executive Officer, and Jeff Armbrister, Chief Financial Officer. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release and a slide presentation, which are available on our website. Before we discuss the quarter's results, we want to remind you that we will be making forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements discuss our current expectations and projections, relating to our financial position, results of operations, plans, objectives, future performance, and business. These forward-looking statements do not guarantee future events or performance and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those projected. For a discussion of these risks, please review the cautionary statements and risk factors included in the Hamilton Lane fiscal 2025 10-Ks and subsequent reports we file with the SEC. These forward-looking statements are made only as of today and except as required, we undertake no obligation to update or revise any of them. We will also be referring to non-GAAP measures that we view as important in assessing the performance of our business. Reconciliation of those non-GAAP measures to GAAP can be found in the earnings presentation materials made available on the Shareholders section of the Hamilton Lane website. Our full financial statements will be made available when our 10-Q is filed. Please note that nothing on this call represents an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to purchase interest in any of Hamilton Lane's products. Let's begin with the highlights and I'll start with our total asset. At quarter end, total asset footprint stood at over $1 trillion and represents a 6% increase to our footprint year over year. AUM stood at $146 billion and grew $11 billion or 8% compared to the prior year period. The growth came from both our specialized funds and our customized separate accounts. AUA came in at $871 billion and grew $50 billion or 6% relative to the prior year period. This stemmed primarily from market value growth of the portfolio and the addition of a variety of technology solutions and back-office mandates. Total management and advisory fees for the year-to-date period were up 11% year over year. Total fee-related revenue for the period, which is the sum of management fees and fee-related performance revenues, was $57 million and represents 31% growth year over year. Fee-related earnings were $254.6 million year to date, and represent 37% growth year over year. We generated fiscal year-to-date GAAP EPS of $4.35 based on $183 million of GAAP net income, and non-GAAP EPS of $4.41 based on $240.1 million of adjusted net income. We have also declared a dividend of $0.54 per share this quarter, which keeps us on track for the 10% increase over last fiscal year, equating to the targeted $2.16 per share for fiscal year 2026. With that, I will now turn the call over to Erik.

Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. As we look back on calendar 2025, Juan and I are very proud of all that has been accomplished. And we are enthusiastic about the significant opportunity that lies ahead. Our team successfully navigated changing markets and high client expectations. We delivered strong growth and outstanding results and we exited calendar year 2025 with real momentum. We have a larger, more global reach, a more diversified platform, expanded and deeper client relationships, and new product lines that are gaining traction and growing. While Juan and I have the privilege of witnessing what this team does every day, it is also rewarding to be recognized by those outside of Hamilton Lane. So I am honored to say that Hamilton Lane was once again recognized by pension and investments as one of the best places to work in money management. We have now earned this recognition for the fourteenth consecutive year and are one of only five companies that has been recognized every single year since the award's inception in 2012. Our people are our asset. And we have worked hard to create an environment that is collaborative and growth-oriented where we all focus on what matters. Doing the very best we can for our customers. Let me move now to a quick update on the strategic partnership with Guardian that I highlighted on our last call. I'm proud to announce that the partnership has officially closed, and we are already hard at work. As a reminder, Hamilton Lane will oversee nearly $5 billion of Guardian's existing private equity portfolio, and these assets will be reflected in our total asset footprint beginning next quarter. Also, we expect to receive additional annual commitments of approximately $500 million for at least ten years, enabling Guardian to access…

Thank you, Erik, and good morning, everyone. Year to date for fiscal 2026 management and advisory fees were up 11% from the prior year period. However, this includes the impact of nearly $21 million of retro fees from specialized funds. Namely the final close for our sixth secondary fund in the prior year period, versus $2 million in the current year-to-date period. Stemming primarily from our latest direct equity fund. Total fee-related revenue was up 31% largely driven by fee-related performance revenues recognized year-to-date fiscal 2026 versus a minimal amount during the same period in fiscal 2025. Year to date, specialized funds revenue increased by $35 million or 15% compared to the prior year period. Growth in specialized fund revenue was driven by continued growth in our Evergreen platform, which continues to be a key driver of specialized fund fee-earning AUM. Again, the year-over-year growth here was impacted by the retro fee element that I just alluded to. Moving on to customized separate accounts, revenue increased $4 million or 4% compared to the prior year period due to the addition of new accounts, re-ups from existing clients, and continued investment activity. Revenue from our reporting, monitoring, data, and analytics offerings increased by over $5 million or 24% compared to the prior year period as we continue to produce strong growth in our technology solutions offering. Lastly, the final component of our revenue is incentive fees, which totaled $136 million for the period. This amount includes fee-related performance revenues stemming primarily from the quarterly crystallization of performance fees from our US private assets Evergreen Fund with additional contributions coming from our more recently launched Evergreen Funds. Let's turn now to our unrealized carry balance. The balance is up 15% from the prior year period even while having recognized $77 million of…

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press the star followed by the one on your touch-tone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star followed by the two. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question. If you have additional questions, you may press star one again. One moment, for your first question. Your first question comes from Ken Worthington with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning, and thanks for taking the question. Erik, can you talk about the product roadmap for wealth in calendar 2026? You opened a handful plus of new wealth-focused specialized fund products in '25, including the registration of existing funds into different regions. How should we see 2025 for new product launches really geared to this wealth customer?

Thanks, Ken. A couple of things. I think I had mentioned this on a prior call. I think the part that's been noteworthy for us is how these products are actually resonating with the institutional customer. So today, we're still seeing about 15 to 20% of our flows coming from the institutional. And I think we believe that as folks get more acclimated and more educated, that that number will continue to go up. So you mentioned that in calendar 2025, we launched a lot of products. I don't think 2026 will see nearly that volume coming from us. We've now built out strategies in a lot of our core areas. So while we will add some additional products, that won't be nearly at the rate as we saw a year prior, and our focus right now is really getting the products that we have in market to scale.

Great. Thank you. Your next question comes from Alex Blostein with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hey. Good morning. This is Anthony on for Alex. I wanted to ask about software exposure in the business, given recent events. You know, there's been a growing number of concerns around software exposure for a lot of your peers. So could you expand on what that looks like at Hamilton Lane and how you see those businesses performing given potential AI risk?

Thank you. Sure. Anthony, it's Erik. I'll take that. So I think than a lot of the other large publicly traded managers, our portfolios are much more diversified because we're not taking ownership directly of single assets. So that co-investment secondary and fund model for us results in our customer exposure being very, very diversified across sector, geography, size, etcetera. So one, we don't have any kind of concentration across portfolios in software. And so that's not a topic for us that right now we're that we see as an at all of an issue for us nor for the customers.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Michael Cyprys with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead, Michael.

Oh, hey. Thanks for taking the question. Just wanted to ask about exit activity. Just curious how you're seeing exit pathways evolve across your platform and the broader industry. And what would you say is maybe the one or two gating items that you're watching could make distributions accelerate sharply across the industry?

Sure, Michael. It's Erik. So we are seeing distribution activity pick up. I think this has been more of buyers and sellers reaching more of a kind of an equilibrium in how they're each viewing the market. The IPO market better, but as you know and as we've discussed in the past, that's not a huge exit activity for our business and not a what moves the needle more huge exit activity for our portfolios. So, generally, I think is simply having buyers and sellers agreeing where the markets aren't agreeing on price. So we see that happening. We see a rationalization occurring there. It's also driven by just the maturing of the assets and the fact that they're a lot of them are now reaching kind of their fourth or fifth or sixth year of ownership. The work has been done. The growth has been achieved, and now they're ready to go and harness the profit. So, I see 2026 as a stronger exit environment than we saw certainly in calendar 2025.

Great. Thanks. And if I could ask a question on the Evergreen platform that's quickly becoming multi-asset, multi-strategy and with a number of scaled products over a billion in size. Just how are you thinking about opportunities that can open up now as a result of that evolution, whether it's model portfolios, maybe even obtaining placement within target date or other liquid fund strategies in partnership with others, Curious how you're thinking about that.

Yeah. I think we're thinking about all of those pieces, Michael. I think what you're seeing is wave number one was sort of the introduction of these products to the market. Wave number two has really been focused on education around some of the benefits of these products. To both institutional and individual investors. And wave number three becomes more around kind of the structuring and partnership where you start using these products as tools in a variety of different ways, a number of which you mentioned. So we're kind of through wave one. We're getting towards wave, you know, finishing up wave two on the education piece, which still continues, and now we're heading into wave three. And so we're involved in dialogue across all of those aspects.

Great. Thank you.

Your next question comes from Alex Bond with KBW. Please go ahead.

Hey. Good morning, everyone. I actually have a follow-up on the Evergreen side and specifically the increasing institutional base there. So you've highlighted previously that one of the reasons these products are attractive for institutional is their more liquid nature relative to a traditional drawdown fund. But maybe it would be helpful if you can help us think about maybe what the dispersion has been in terms of redemption requests between institutional and retail clients within the Evergreen suite to date, and maybe to what extent institutional clients have taken advantage of this feature to date?

Yeah. Alex, Erik. So I actually don't think the liquidity provision is one of the top two most attractive pieces to them. I think the top two most attractive pieces are much more around ease of use dealing with capital calls, distributions, and sort of severely lagging reporting schedules, not optimal. Benefit number two is the ability to actually tack manage your portfolio in a more thoughtful way. If you're a CIO today of an institution and you want to apply some sort of a credit overweight or an infrastructure overweight or a venture overweight, doing that through draw funds is really impractical. You have to go have us find the funds for you, subscribe to the funds, It takes years for those funds to get capital to put to work to see the net asset value grow. And so trying to do a tactical overweight using drawdown funds means that you need to sort of have a three to five plus year view outwards that that overweight is gonna sort of still be a good thing in that timetable. In Evergreen, they can simply put on an overweight instantaneously because the capital is obviously fully invested. So we're not seeing the institutional investor behave with a higher redemption rate or moving in and out. We're seeing them use this as a portfolio construction tool and ease of use. Third piece I'd mention is actually small institutional investors. Back in the day, they would be a fund to funds customer. And as you know, Hamilton Lane hasn't even offered a fund to funds product in years. That market segment altered that investor base, in some cases, left the class altogether. Or they got convinced that going into a secondaries or co fund was an okay solution. Today, that small institutional investor is much more embraced ever way reenter the private markets. So we see all those as thoughtful, good, and those are gonna be long-term sustaining trends.

Got it. That's helpful. Thanks, Erik.

Your next question comes from Brennan Hawken with BMO. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I was hoping you could speak a little bit to what you're seeing on the ground in the wealth channel. I hear about a little bit of a sitting on hands with the headlines around private credit that we saw in the year-end. So curious what you're seeing there. And when we also have heard that there's the potential for a greater shift or a greater preference for model portfolios, you know, sort of centralizing the allocations. Are you seeing any early signs of that? And what are your thoughts about how to deal with such a shift?

Sure, it's Erik. I'll take those. So look, we kind of laid out our flows. We're not seeing the sitting on hands that you're sort of referencing. I think part of this is we're positioned as a differentiated product. That managed manager of managers is simply different than single manager strategy. And I think the market has obviously been very receptive to our positioning there. And our flows continue to be good. Model portfolio is certainly a topic of conversation. You're seeing early moves there. But to say today that you're seeing some massive sort of sea change, I would say just the data is not bearing that out. As I mentioned on the prior question, we're engaged in dialogue around that. We have some model portfolio exposure already. And I think this is gonna come down to investor preference. I don't see a world where all investors are gonna simply want the model portfolio. Investors generally, whether we're talking about buying private market assets, we're talking about buying food or clothing, investors want choice and they tend to want control. And so for some, that model portfolio will be ease of use, and that will be the most attractive aspect to it, and that will be sort of the guarding item. And for others, they're gonna want to make much more tailored individualized selection. So I think it's a world where you're gonna see both pieces exist. And we're all gonna have to make sure that our products and our lineup is meeting the customer where the customer is. Not trying to force the customer to kind of adhere to whatever game or structure that we want them to be playing.

Right. Thanks for that color, and thanks for taking my question.

As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press 1. The next question comes from Mike Brown with UBS. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks for taking my question. Wanted to ask on the secondary side. So it's clearly a hot asset class, maybe the hottest asset class in the space at the moment. And the industry saw record capital raising for the industry last year. One of the funds that closed was over $30 billion. Expecting a $30 billion fund for Hamilton Lane yet, but when you think about fund seven, we look at fund six. That closed at $5.6 billion. That was up over 40% versus the prior vintage. So when you're thinking about fund seven, and the tailwinds for the space, any view on relative size versus the prior vintage? And maybe just touch on how investor sentiment and interest is in secondaries currently?

Sure. It's Erik. I'll take that. So as you noted, the space has grown. I frankly think if you step back and just look at that at a macro level, it's healthy. Liquidity investors is a good thing. It gives people more choices. And so invest more liquid options whether it's through traditional secondaries or whether it's through our recent partnership with Pluto. We think all that's good. Second point, it's still one of the most undercapitalized parts of our asset class. If you look at capital raised relative to the size of deals brought to market, huge capital mismatch. There's not nearly enough capital in the market to deal with sort of the demand and interest of transactions looking to get financed. So massively undercapitalized. The scale, third point, has also changed. So the industry is getting a lot bigger, funds are getting bigger as a result of that. And so what it means to be a big secondary player today is very different than what it meant to be that sort of big player ten years ago. I think for us, we've tended to be more of a mid-market oriented player. And so that has sort of caused us to still grow substantially, as you noted, from funds to fund to fund. Our goal is to continue to be one of those leading players, and so that means there's a whole lot of runway ahead of us. So as I said very clear on the call, we are not one of the top handful of largest players in the space. We have aspirations to continue to move up market we think we've got a lot of room to do that. And we are based on investor sentiment, management meetings, feedback, etcetera, all that feels encouraging.

Great. Thanks. Thanks, Erik.

Thank you. And as one more reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by the one. As there are no further questions oh, sorry. Mike Brown has one more question. Please go ahead, Mike.

Great. Thank you for taking the follow-up here. Erik, I just wanted to follow-up on the software question earlier in the call. Just given your unique visibility into funds and the underlying portfolio companies, and I'm sure you're active dialogues with the managers, you just maybe expand on your view on how AI disruption could really kind of flow through this software landscape and how certain parts of the market could be more impacted than others in certain areas that perhaps have better insulation from these AI disruption-related risks.

Sure. I think it's I think this is sort of the danger of painting with an overly broad brush. I think it's frankly not a lot different than what we're seeing in credit. You've got a handful of managers who have credit portfolio problems due to their own investment selection. And then we want to sort of turn that into kind of a broad industry issue. There's no question that there are some software businesses that were bought sort of pre-COVID. High prices were paid. AI was far away when those transactions were done. The impact was not sort of priced in. And there will be certainly some companies that are going to struggle and are gonna struggle to result in good performance or any performance for their investors. That said, the notion that every software business is going to suffer hugely negative consequences due to AI, I think is not true. And frankly, we're sort of seeing that we've got a number of companies in the software space that are continuing to grow, continuing to rack up customers. I think there's another way to look at this, which is in some cases, the AI solution is in need of the client and the traditional old-school software companies have the customer. I actually think you could see some mergers and acquisitions that are coming from kind of what we'll think of as new tech versus old tech and that that might be a completely fine outcome. So I think what we're saying to our clients today, whether it's around software, whether it's around credit, or whether it's around any sub-strategy, we need to have a much more granular conversation about companies, fund managers, individual funds rather than having big macro strategies, and that's one of the macro discussions, and that's one of the benefits of where we sit. We get to go in due diligence on every fund manager looking through every asset that they hold, and if we're looking at a secondary deal, we're getting to price through every company in that underlying portfolio. And so we're not making big investment decisions kind of thematically. We're making them kind of a bottoms-up asset by asset look through to figure out whether there's high-quality assets and making sure we're getting those at the right price with the right partner.

Thank you.

And this concludes the question and answer session for today. I will now turn the call over to Erik Hirsch, Co-Chief Executive Officer, for closing remarks. Please continue.

Just wanted to say proud of the quarter. Juan and I are very proud of the team for the hard work. This doesn't happen by accident. It takes real effort, particularly in this kind of market environment. We appreciate your time, support, and the questions. And for those of you on the East Coast, stay warm. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.