Welcome to the Piper Jaffray Companies' Conference Call to discuss the Financial Results for the First Quarter of 2017. During the question-and-answer session, securities industry professionals may ask questions of management. The company has asked that I remind you that the statements on this call are not historical or current events, including statements about beliefs and expectations are forward-looking statements that involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated are identified in the company's earnings release and reports on the file with the SEC, which are available on the company's website at www.piperjaffray.com and on the SEC website at www.sec.gov. This call will also include statements regarding certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the company's earnings release issued today for reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measure. The earnings release is available on the Investor Relations page of the company's website or at the SEC website. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Mr. Andrew Duff. Mr. Duff, you may begin your call.

Good morning. We are off to a strong start in 2017, driven by the ongoing momentum in our advisory business, which began the year with our second highest quarter ever. Healthier equity capital markets plus our relatively strong results in fixed income brokerage both helped to kick off the year on a very positive note. Let me provide some more color on the markets and our performance, then I will turn the call over to Deb to discuss our financial results in greater detail. Advisory markets remain constructive, and we continued to outperform the market with record first quarter advisory revenues, while the pace of deal activity in the U.S. slowed compared to the prior year and sequential quarters. Contributions from our industry groups essentially tracked the market as we were led by the energy team followed by healthcare and consumer teams. Our expansion into the energy sector last year through the acquisition of Simmons continues to generate good returns. The combination of a talented team of bankers, relatively stable market conditions, our broader product suite resulted in the energy team registering another strong quarter. While we have enjoyed steady gains in the advisory business, we recognize that results can be lumpy depending on the timing of deals closing. However, we believe that the combination of high confidence levels expressed by CEOs and small business owners, economic stability and relatively available capital will result in conditions continuing to be constructive for the business. Our equity capital raising results improved significantly both sequentially and year-over-year. The year-over-year rebound has been dramatic, coming off a trough in the market cycle in Q1 of 2016. We continue to experience steady improvements in capital raising. And while we achieved a dramatic improvement in results year-over-year, on a sequential basis, our performance was in line…

Thanks, Andrew. My remarks will be addressing our adjusted financial results. We reported adjusted net revenue of almost $197 million for the quarter, down 10% sequentially and up about 30% year-over-year. Last year's first quarter did not include meaningful contribution from Simmons, but excluding Simmons, revenue would still have increased year-over-year. Our business mix while still weighted toward advisory, was much more balanced during the quarter compared to a year ago. Overall, It's been our strategy to weight our business mix more toward advisory, public finance and asset management and these areas represented over 62% of our revenue for the quarter. As Andrew reviewed in his comments, advisory put up a strong quarter. Capital raising was up in equity and also in public finance. Equity brokerage was weaker and fixed income brokerage stronger. It should be noted that we continue to manage our fixed income business with less capital. Market conditions in Asset Management remain challenging. Our strategy for this business is to manage costs carefully and reorient our product mix to those strategies that can be scaled and will generate higher margins over time. Overall, we produced an operating margin of 16% for the quarter, which improved significantly compared to 10.6% in the first quarter of 2016. A much more balanced business mix and increased revenue in this quarter drove a 200 basis point improvement in the comp ratio. An operating leverage on non-compensation expenses from the incremental scale in the business produced 340 basis points of improvement. The comp ratio for the quarter was a little over 64%, this is slightly over our target range and reflects both revenue mix and ongoing investments in the business. We believe that the trade-offs between an elevated comp ratio and investing for growth favors growth at this point as we continue…

Operator, we will now open up the call for questions.

Thank you, Operator. Thank you all for joining us today. Have a good day.