Earnings Labs

SEI Investments Company (SEIC)

Q2 2008 Earnings Call· Wed, Jul 23, 2008

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the SEI Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today July 23rd, 2008. I would now like to turn the conference over to you, our host, Al West, Chairman and CEO. Please go ahead sir.

Alfred P. West - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Analyst

Good afternoon and welcome. All of our segment leaders here are with me on the call as well as Dennis McGonigle, SEI CFO and Kathy Heilig, SEI's Controller. And I’ll start by recapping the second quarter. I’ll then turn it over to Dennis first to expand on a few financial matters, including our SIV exposure and to cover LSV and the investment in new business segment. After that each of the business segment leaders will comment on the results of their segments and then finally Kathy Heilig will provide you with some important company-wide statistics. And as usual, we will field questions at the end of each report. So let me start with the second quarter. Second quarter earnings fell 34% from a year ago on a revenue decline of 4%. Diluted EPS for the second quarter of $0.24 represents a 29% drop from the $0.34 reported for the second quarter of 2007. Our earnings for the quarter were adversely affected by a second quarter charge to earnings of $27.3 million or approximately $0.09 per share. This was due to a further drop in the market price of the commercial paper of certain structured investment vehicles held in three of our money funds. This is a SIV situation we addressed in a number of calls early this year… this year and last year. And Dennis will update you on the SIV situation in a few minutes. Now, our 4% drop in revenue from the quarter was a result of the impact of the declining capital markets on our assets under management. Now while we experienced solid gains in new business during the quarter, these gains were more than offset by weakness in capital markets since a good portion of our revenues are tied directly to asset balances under management and…

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · KBW Asset Management

Thanks, Al. I will provide an update on the capital support agreements that we have discussed at length in our 10-K and 10-Q filings and on our prior two calls and their impact on our earnings. I will then briefly cover the second quarter results for the investments in new business and LSV segments. As you are aware from our first quarter call and 10-K and 10-Q filings, SEI entered into capital support agreements with three money market mutual funds back in the fourth quarter of 2007. Among other money market instruments, the funds hold senior notes issued by structured investment vehicles or SIVs, some of which cease making payments on our outstanding notes on the scheduled maturity dates. Under these capital support agreements, as of June 30th, 2008, we are committed to provide up to an aggregate of $165.5 million of capital into the funds if a fund realizes a loss on its covered SIV holdings, so that the net asset value per share of the fund would be less than .995, or in the case of one fund, .9975. We provided detail about this arrangement in our prior filings and we encourage you review that disclosure for more detail on the SIV issue and the capital support agreements. Under these capital support agreements, SEI is obligated to recognize a noncash expense for its obligations to the funds for an additional 27.3 million during the second quarter 2008. We recorded this charge to earnings in the net gain/loss [ph] from investments line of our income statement. When combined with the charge to earnings that was previously recorded in the fourth quarter of 2007 and the first quarter of 2008, total losses recorded as a result of this support as of June 30th are $78.2 million. This total amount is…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. And we have a question from Murali Gopal from KBW Asset Management. Murali Gopal - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Hi, Dennis, how are you?

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · KBW Asset Management

Good Murali, how are you? Murali Gopal - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: A couple of very big questions. The total capital support agreement, 165.5 million, could you tell us how that breaks out between what’s the support towards Cheyne versus… and to Victoria.

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · KBW Asset Management

Well, the way we structured the capital support agreements, they are structured in aggregate for all SIV holdings. So there is… we’ve talked mostly about Cheyne and Stanfield Victoria. We have a couple other smaller SIV holdings, mostly less than… there's a couple less than $20 million in face value. The support agreements are really structured to encompass all of that. Murali Gopal - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Okay. And is it possible to say, what's the SIV holdings percentage as percentage of the total fund assets as of… end of June?

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · KBW Asset Management

It would be [inaudible]… I just gave you the total face value of the SIV holdings. Murali Gopal - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Right.

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · KBW Asset Management

So if you go and look at that report I talked about this on our website of portfolios and you’ll be able to calculate that. Murali Gopal - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Okay. That's all I have. Thanks.

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · KBW Asset Management

Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Jeff Hopson with Stifel Nicolaus. Please go ahead. Jeffrey Hopson - Stifel Nicolaus & Co.: Hi, Dennis.

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Stifel Nicolaus

Hi, Jeff. Jeffrey Hopson - Stifel Nicolaus & Co.: On the LSV, you did say there is outflows… final [ph] outflows?

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Stifel Nicolaus

Yes. Jeffrey Hopson - Stifel Nicolaus & Co.: Okay. Is that material or…?

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Stifel Nicolaus

Not in this context of the overall assets, no. Jeffrey Hopson - Stifel Nicolaus & Co.: Okay. And there's no change in, they are just taking money on a selected basis, then.

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Stifel Nicolaus

Correct. Jeffrey Hopson - Stifel Nicolaus & Co.: Okay, thanks.

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Stifel Nicolaus

You are welcome.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Your next question is from John Britton from Select Equity. Please go ahead.

John Britton - Select Equity

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

Hi Dennis. Just following up on the SIV issue, can you help me understand a little bit better, if you got $165 million of capital support agreement how does that relate to the $427 million face value now in SIVs?

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

The support agreement is real there to cover any realized losses that would be incurred if the SIVs are sold.

John Britton - Select Equity

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

So the 430 million is the par value.

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

To the extent they are sold at an amount below that par value that results in the NAVs of the funds to drop below that .995.

John Britton - Select Equity

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

Yeah.

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

NAV, I talked about that's why the support agreements are there to fill the gap on.

John Britton - Select Equity

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

Okay. So I am just trying to get a sense of what the total… the maximum loss that SEI could sustain and it would be the $165 million?

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

That's how much we have committed today. I mean, you could certainly make the argument that our maximum risk would be the $430 million to the extent all of the SIVs went for zero.

John Britton - Select Equity

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

Okay.

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

And we stood there and said, we'll back all of it. So that's kind of the absolute extreme.

John Britton - Select Equity

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

Right. Do we know from the fire sale from Cheyne assets what the percentage… what percent of par those were being liquidated at?

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

Actually what's going to happen today is all those trades will settle and so there will be better market pricing information on all the underlying collateral that will be available today.

John Britton - Select Equity

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

Okay.

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

We haven't seen it. The price that they offered… again as it was characterized as a fire sale did pretty much reflect that.

John Britton - Select Equity

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

So it's meaningfully less than $0.50 on the dollar?

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

No, I wouldn't say that. I didn't say that.

John Britton - Select Equity

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

Okay. So basically at this point I guess from a more qualitative standpoint do you feel comfortable… I guess I was under the impression as of the March period that most of the exposure on SIVs was… had been recorded and if anything there was an opportunity to write some of these things up. That's clearly not the case now. In fact, if we took the value according to the Cheyne fire sale value it would be materially less, quite a bit less, $44 million less than it was at June 30. So how do you feel... how do you make us in the investment community feel comfortable about the ongoing exposure that SEIC is going to be faced with… in terms of the support agreements for SIVs?

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

Right. I think the challenges for us and for anyone else dealing with this is that the underlying… the markets themselves are certainly having a lot to say about the valuation here. And if you looked at the end of March and then you looked on our earnings call in April, April itself there was a pretty solid stabilization within the mortgage market and the fixed income markets. And I think we weren't alone in feeling that we were reaching a point of stabilization and then as the second quarter concluded we all felt and saw that that wasn't the case at all and that there was some additional deterioration to occur. I'd like to sit here and say that we've hit the bottom and we are going to improve from here but I can't say that.

John Britton - Select Equity

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

Will there be any further disclosure in your second quarter Q related to the Cheyne offer?

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

I guess there might be some additional disclosure. I don't know how granular… Like I said all the keys [ph] from settlements are going to occur today and that market data will be available. As I also mentioned in my comments, Columbia Asset Management, which is really doing the fair value process, they will take that data and factor into their fair value pricing model and we’ll see how they adjust pricing going forward based on that.

John Britton - Select Equity

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

Okay.

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

One other…certainly by the time the Q is filed we will provide… at the point in time that the Q is filed what our third quarter loss would be at that point in time.

John Britton - Select Equity

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

Okay.

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

You’ll have up to the date data if you will.

John Britton - Select Equity

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

One other quick one. If there were minor net outflows to say LSV, can you characterize the pipeline or the interest level of people. I know they had been close and there was some residual interest from going in there? Is there still a pipeline or number of clients who are interested in joining them today?

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

Yeah, I mean, in our conversation with LSV we are pretty encouraged by the asset opportunities they have going forward.

John Britton - Select Equity

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

Okay. Thank you.

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

You're welcome.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Your next question is from Tom McCrohan from Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Hey, Dennis, another SIV related question; two of them. The first, when would SEI have to realize… when would SEI be in a position where they actually have to liquidate one of these SIV securities?

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Did you ask when would we have?

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Yes. I mean obviously you don't want to… you didn’t take the price Goldman offered for obvious reasons, probably pretty darn unattractive, so you are going to hold on to the securities. So under conditions would you actually have to sell these things at a loss and potentially trigger the capital support contribution?

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Technically it would be if the board of the money market funds themselves made a decision to sell the securities, that technically would trigger the support agreements. The second would be if the capital support agreements, which do have a one-year term that we are certainly hoping to renew but if that one-year term were to expire and were not renewed, that would trigger the funds to sell. Now an additional option we have is that we ourselves could buy the securities from the funds and therefore avoid a market sale. So if the funds were to say we would like to sell Cheyne tomorrow, we could step in and buy Cheyne at par from the funds and carry that ourselves. Though it wouldn't trigger additional losses, it would just transfer the principal value of that asset from the funds books to SEI's books.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Do you have visibility into the… all the granular securities held by these funds to know if there are other securities outside the SIV exposure, particularly Cheyne that are under water based on current market valuations?

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Within our own money market funds?

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Yeah, within the SEI Daily Income Trust and...

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Sure, I mean, we do the… we are doing all the book keeping and accounting for those funds.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Okay. So is it…

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

All these market value calculations actually are market value calculations of all the securities within the funds.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

And the NAV for those funds are not based on fair value, they are based on something else?

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Well, the NAVs of the money market funds are based on a accounting rule called Rule 2a-7, which is an amortized cost rule.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Got it.

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

And when you have an illiquid security, then you move to fair value of that particular illiquid security. So in the case of the SIVs and in particular Cheyne and Stanfield Victoria and the other smaller ones I mentioned that we had and that we hold, since they are in default they are illiquid. So we use fair value to price just those securities.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Got it. And so in the likely scenario that will lead to having to liquidate these assets even though it's not your decision and although you have options to step in, the only scenario that would probably lead to, having to sell these things, the fund management pulling the trigger if there is mass redemptions?

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Well, again, naturally if there is redemptions of such an extreme that the… I mean these are pretty big funds so the redemptions would have to be quite large and in fact the asset balances in these funds has held up pretty well.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

So when you kind of study this and then try to figure it out what are you concerned about then as far as, if anything, about… the outcome you don't want to have is have to sell these securities at a loss, right? So what's your confidence level that that will in fact not need to happen?

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Well, I'm pretty confident we will not have to… we are not in a position where we would ever have to have a fire sale of these securities, number one. Number two, the only scenario that we have to put some work into is renewing the capital support agreements and that… to extend the life of that. If that's not possible, then the option of us just buying them from the funds, carrying them on our side is probably a likely scenario. And then the question really would speak to the market, how is the market responding, how is pricing in the market responding and at what point do we just make a decision to move on from this issue, take whatever capital loss we need to take but move beyond it.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Yes.

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

And it's fair to say that… I think it's fair to say that 100% of recovery is pretty highly unlikely across all of these different types of securities given where the market is.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Yes. Then having Goldman step in I think you said as the replacement agent if that's the right term, what's the benefit of now having Goldman running this versus it being in receivership?

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

I wouldn't say there's any particular benefit to Goldman. I mean they are really just, what they did was ram [ph] the bidding process and the auction process but also set the structure that now the collateral sits within almost as a collateral agent. So going forward there's really not much benefit to Goldman versus anyone else, I don't see.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Got it. Thanks.

Dennis J. McGonigle - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

You're welcome. I mean this is the first one that has restructured, so we'll see on the next one.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. And at this time there are no questions in the queue.

Prepared Text

Analyst

Alfred P. West - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Analyst

Thanks Dennis. Now I am going to turn it over to Joe Ujobai to discuss our Private Banking segment.

Joseph Paul Ujobai - Executive Vice President of Global

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Great. Thank you, Al. Today I would like to review our financials and give you an update on our market activity. As a financial update, revenue of just over $103.6 million grew by 3.5% from the year-ago quarter but declined by 3.2% from the first quarter of 2008. Revenue growth versus the year-ago quarter was due to an increase in our recurring wealth processing revenue both in the U.S. and in the U. K. The revenue decline from the first quarter of 2008 was due to both market depreciation as well as some end [ph] client redemptions in our investor management programs. We also had lower one-time revenues this quarter in our wealth processing business. Average assets under management for the quarter were $19.1 billion, a decline of 2.4% from the year-ago quarter, and a decline of approximately $500 million from the first quarter of 2008. The decline in assets represents approximately 60% in market depreciation and 40% in net client redemptions. Profit decreased from the year-ago quarter by approximately 5.3% to $18.2 million. Profit declined by approximately 12.7% from the first quarter of 2008 due to the decline in investment management revenue and the small increase in expenses. Margins for the quarter was 17.6%. As I mentioned during the June Investor conference, we expect to see continued pressure on margins as we launch Global Wealth Services in Europe and in the U.K…and U.S. Longer term, we expect strong margins as we are making significant investments to grow and scale our Private Banking business. I would now like to update you on market activity. On the global wealth processing side of Global Wealth Services we continue to build up the solution as well as the client pipeline focusing on the U.K. and the U.S. Both markets have closely watched our…

Operator

Operator

At this time we have a question…follow-up question actually from Tom McCrohan with Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Hi Joe. Have two questions for you, first on the margins and then I have a question on the sales pipeline. You talked about in the press release that the margins this quarter were adversely impacted, I guess, from increased costs associated with putting the Global Wealth platform into production. Could you kind of quantify what those costs might have been this quarter either in terms of what the margins would have been if you hadn't incurred those kind of implementation costs?

Joseph Paul Ujobai - Executive Vice President of Global

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

It's probably a couple million dollars of expense.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

And how many more quarters do you expect you'll incur these couple of million dollars worth of expenses as, kind of, start-up operations on this new platform?

Joseph Paul Ujobai - Executive Vice President of Global

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

We'll have additional expense as we ramp up our infrastructures, we talked about Towry Law coming on in early next year. So I would expect that as we get closer to bringing Towry Law up, we’ll have to build out additional infrastructure and we'll see some pressure there.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Was there… you had implementation costs last quarter as well in Q1 to get HSBC on, then your margins were 19.5. This quarter they went down about 200 basis points. So was that $2 million incremental, and was there something incremental going on this quarter or is that $2 million, kind of, run rate every quarter?

Joseph Paul Ujobai - Executive Vice President of Global

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

It's about every quarter.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

About every quarter. So outside… so if the implementation costs didn't go up this quarter what led to the margin decline?

Joseph Paul Ujobai - Executive Vice President of Global

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Some of our revenue went down. It probably went down because of asset management decline. So that's helped a lot to fund some of the increasing costs when asset management grew. So some profitability went down because of Asset Management decline but we continue to invest in the build-out of the infrastructure to support the platform.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Okay. And lastly on the sales pipeline you obviously invested a lot of resources in this new platform and with this recent signing of Towry Law, it was a great sign of this demands amongst the U.K-based non-bank wealth managers to kind of upgrade their platforms but outside of Towry Law, the periodic qualitative and [inaudible] comments you provide us in the pipeline you really have like zero visibility into… but the sales pipeline was arguably the [inaudible] best… to kind of bet the company thing on this investment. So I guess what I'm leading to, are you opposed to giving some sort of backlog metric each quarter for us that pertains solely to this Global Wealth platform so we all can have improved visibility into the sales pipeline?

Joseph Paul Ujobai - Executive Vice President of Global

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

I think we are still in early stages of sales of this new solution and as I mentioned at the Investor conference, we've… in Europe put together four teams going against four sort of different market segments, the global banks, larger U.K. banks, and then some of these non-bank wealth managers. And so we are, as I mentioned we are pretty actively involved with talking to a lot of players in the market. I think we are probably in too early of a stage to be too specific about the pipeline at this point.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is a follow-up question from Jeff Hobson with Stifel Nicolaus. Please go ahead. Jeffrey Hopson - Stifel Nicolaus & Co.: Okay, thanks. Joe, I missed the first sentence or two. Did you say that the pipeline continues to build up potential prospects or exactly what did you say about the pipeline?

Joseph Paul Ujobai - Executive Vice President of Global

Analyst · Stifel Nicolaus

We are actively engaged with a number of firms in the market. As I mentioned we have four sales teams based in the U.K. actively talking to different segments of the market. We have redeployed some of those efforts towards these non-bank wealth managers because we believe that they may have an ability to make decisions sooner and the functionality of building a platform today lines up to their needs. And so we are actively engaged with a number of prospects and obviously are hoping to close additional accounts. Jeffrey Hopson - Stifel Nicolaus & Co.: And the client outflow activity similar to last quarter just seems to be in response to the market environment as opposed to anything else.

Joseph Paul Ujobai - Executive Vice President of Global

Analyst · Stifel Nicolaus

Yeah, I think in the first quarter as far as… we were down about $2 billion of assets and in the second quarter we were down about $500 million. So we are not… we obviously saw additional market depreciation and we have, and we saw less net outflows in the second quarter than we saw in the first quarter.

Jeffrey Hopson - Stifel Nicolaus

Analyst · Stifel Nicolaus

Okay. And in the U.S., things are active on the community bank side but larger banks, I guess, are still for the most part have their own issues to deal with?

Joseph Paul Ujobai - Executive Vice President of Global

Analyst · Stifel Nicolaus

Yeah, larger banks have their own issues and, I mean, our strategy was always to launch the new platform in Europe first and then bring that back to the U.S. So obviously important for us, I believe, to get some of our clients in the U.S. converted to the new platform, which we think will then open the opportunity… the market opportunity up to new banks in the U.S. Jeffrey Hopson - Stifel Nicolaus & Co.: Okay. And not to dwell on this too much but the signing of Towry Law, has that had any influence on the discussions or potential opportunities? I know it's not very, it's very soon after but can you describe any effect there on additional prospects?

Joseph Paul Ujobai - Executive Vice President of Global

Analyst · Stifel Nicolaus

It certainly helps having a second client purchase the platform and so the marketplace looks at that very, very closely, so it absolutely helps to have somebody of Towry Law’s stature in the marketplace make a commitment to us. Jeffrey Hopson - Stifel Nicolaus & Co.: Okay, great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is a follow-up question from John Britton from Select Equity. Please go ahead.

John Britton - Select Equity

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

Joe, just a couple of quick ones on Towry Law. You mentioned that as you scale up your own investment to bring them live that will put some margin pressure on there. Are there implementation revenues that you'll book related to getting Towry Law implemented?

Joseph Paul Ujobai - Executive Vice President of Global

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

Yes, we'll start to book some implementation revenues this year associated with the conversion of their business to our platform as well as some of the other transformational work we'll do with them.

John Britton - Select Equity

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

Okay. And just… so I have a sense of this, when you do sign a client of this scale, I think it's what, 650 advisors, something like that?

Joseph Paul Ujobai - Executive Vice President of Global

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

Yes.

John Britton - Select Equity

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

What is the expected first-year economics of that kind of transaction for SEI? Is this a couple million dollars loss for private banking and trust? Is it break-even overall?

Joseph Paul Ujobai - Executive Vice President of Global

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

We are obviously spending a lot of money to build out the platform as well as the infrastructure.

John Britton - Select Equity

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

Right.

Joseph Paul Ujobai - Executive Vice President of Global

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

And so… but we are not selling this at a loss.

John Britton - Select Equity

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

Even in the first year? I mean, I guess I understand that eventually it's going to be presumably terrific economics in part because as I understood it there's not going to be extensive customization beyond what the service scope is you offer HSBC. Is that right?

Joseph Paul Ujobai - Executive Vice President of Global

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

We obviously have more functionality to build. We talked at the investors conferences about three sort of general types of wealth managers out there, those who have an advisory business, those who have discretion over their clients accounts and sort of a newer model of discretion around sort of models based for strategies. And so the more we can get our clients and ultimately our wealth management clients to get their clients into those strategies the more efficient it is for everybody. And so, there are clearly lots of infrastructure costs that we will have to cover as we build out the platform but we believe that we can be profitable on these accounts very, very quickly.

John Britton - Select Equity

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

Okay. And in 2009 what is the revenue opportunity from Towry Law?

Joseph Paul Ujobai - Executive Vice President of Global

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

We don't disclose individual client revenue opportunities.

John Britton - Select Equity

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

Okay. Will you… is it expected to be a profitable relationship in 2009 or is it still in the investment phase?

Joseph Paul Ujobai - Executive Vice President of Global

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

Yes, absolutely.

John Britton - Select Equity

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

Okay. Very good. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We have a question from Glenn Greene with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Glenn Greene - Oppenheimer

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Please go ahead

Thanks. Good afternoon, Joe. The first question has to do with just sort of getting deals in your pipeline closed and getting over the goal line, I was wondering if this was more of an issue of continuing that sort of build out the proof of concept or how much the bank environment is playing in here and people are just sort of cautious and sort of moving to sort of a new mode of doing business given the current environment. I was wondering if you could sort of just give some color around your thinking around that, what you are hearing from your clients in terms of the prospects.

Joseph Paul Ujobai - Executive Vice President of Global

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Please go ahead

I think proof of concept is still pretty important and so we've been through now over a year with HSBC. We have a second client now so the market believes that this is a solution that's oriented for the market, not necessarily oriented towards any one client. These are big decisions because we are asking these clients to essentially outsource all of their infrastructure to us. So it's not just buying… they are not just buying our software or buying our software in a service bureau. There's a lot of effort around transformation of the client away from a traditional advisory or trading like business to a more discretionary models orientation. And so these are big, strategic decisions for these organizations to make. It doesn't necessarily help that the market conditions aren't great. I mean, these clients, these wealth managers are busy servicing their clients everyday and the banks obviously have a lot of other considerations given the market conditions. And so we are actively engaged with a number of conversations and we will continue to build a pipeline and continue to close clients over the coming months and years.

Glenn Greene - Oppenheimer

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Please go ahead

What's your sort of optimism level of signing meaningful new clients over the next six to 12 months, if there's any way to frame that?

Joseph Paul Ujobai - Executive Vice President of Global

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Please go ahead

The timing is always the hard part. I feel good about the conversation we are having. I feel good about the progress on the development of the platform. And the timing is difficult to predict. But obviously we are in this, we maintain a lot of enthusiasm around our long-term opportunity.

Glenn Greene - Oppenheimer

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Please go ahead

Okay. And then just finally, and I know you won't quantify the second client in terms of revenue opportunities but any way to sort of think about it in terms of asset levels or anything like that?

Joseph Paul Ujobai - Executive Vice President of Global

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Please go ahead

It's a …their asset levels are publicly disclosed, so you can easily find that information by doing a little bit of research. We have agreements with our clients not to disclose things but you can find that.

Glenn Greene - Oppenheimer

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Please go ahead

But also if I find those assets you are going to be providing outsourcing for that full range of assets?

Joseph Paul Ujobai - Executive Vice President of Global

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Please go ahead

That's correct.

Glenn Greene - Oppenheimer

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Please go ahead

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. At this time there are no questions in the queue.

Prepared Text

Analyst

Alfred P. West - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Analyst

Thank you, Jeff [ph]. Our next segment is Investment Advisors, Wayne Withrow will cover this segment. Wayne?

Wayne M. Withrow - Executive Vice President of Investment Advisors

Analyst · Stifel Nicolaus

Thanks, Al. Revenues for the second quarter decreased $3.6 million or 5.5% from the year-ago period while our average assets under management during the quarter were down $2 million for the same period. Second quarter net cash flow was a negative $312 million reflecting disbursements of slightly over $2 billion and receipts of $1.7 billion. The $2 billion in disbursements weighed heavily on our total net flows and were $200 million worse than the first quarter of 2008. Receipts on the other hand, while worse than our quarterly totals in 2007, represented an almost $100 million improvement from the first quarter of 2008. Continued uncertainty in the financial markets was evident in both receipts and disbursements. Profits for the quarter decreased 12% for the year-ago period. Lower profits as compared to the second quarter of 2007 were primarily due to a decline in our average assets under management, and increases in expenses associated with the Global Wealth platform. Sequentially, profits improved from the first quarter of 2008 as our average basis points earned on asset improved slightly and expense management allowed us to drop most of this improvement to the bottom line. As was the case in the first quarter, investor uncertainty and declining markets continued to have a negative impact on our AUM and the AUM of our existing advisors. We remain confident, however, in our underlying value proposition and continue to have this confidence reinforced by our pipeline of new advisors. As a point of reference, we have signed 108 new advisors in the first half of 2008, which represents over a 15% improvement from the corresponding period of last year. Our pipeline of new advisors activity continues to grow and we expect this will be reflected in our bottom line when we see some stability in market conditions. In summary, the declining market valuations and investor uncertainty have had a negative impact on our second quarter financial results but we remain confident in the value of our adviser solution. I will now take any of your questions. Question and Answer

Operator

Operator

And we have a follow-up question from Jeff Hopson with Stifel Nicolaus. Please go ahead. Jeffrey Hopson - Stifel Nicolaus & Co.: Okay. Thanks. Hey, Wayne. In terms of the new advisors any way you can describe size, quality of these advisors relative to history? And then there's the presumption out in the market that some of the wire houses are losing advisors at a more rapid pace to the independent channel. Any sense if that is true and any effect on you guys?

Wayne M. Withrow - Executive Vice President of Investment Advisors

Analyst · Stifel Nicolaus

Okay. So two different questions. The first question is if you look at the type of advisor we are recruiting we are being somewhat more selective than we have been and we are targeting bigger and when we consider a better advisors and we are also targeting younger advisors. That's intentional, we've seen some success, if you look at the 108 I would say that it fits the profile of being larger and younger than historically. Jeffrey Hopson - Stifel Nicolaus & Co.: Okay. And what was the percentage increase you said? I didn't hear that.

Wayne M. Withrow - Executive Vice President of Investment Advisors

Analyst · Stifel Nicolaus

It's a 15% improvement over the corresponding period of last year. Jeffrey Hopson - Stifel Nicolaus & Co.: Okay. Great.

Wayne M. Withrow - Executive Vice President of Investment Advisors

Analyst · Stifel Nicolaus

Okay. In terms of the brake-away broker or the wire house broker going independent, I would say that's a very sexy thing to talk about in the press. It is clearly a trend that is out there but in the overall world of wire house brokers it's just a ripple in the pond. It's increased but it's still not significant. Jeffrey Hopson - Stifel Nicolaus & Co.: All right. Okay. Great. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. And we have a follow-up question from Tom McCrohan. Please go ahead.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Hey, Wayne, I guess you have not getting the 108, you are not getting them from break-away wire house brokers, where are you winning the business from?

Wayne M. Withrow - Executive Vice President of Investment Advisors

Analyst · Stifel Nicolaus

We see the advisors that we target primarily as advisors that are accepting a new business model. Sort of taking our turnkey business model as opposed to what I call a more do it yourself model. We are being somewhat successful in take-away business from people that have perhaps previously accepted the model with the competitor. But most of our new business are people who are moving toward a new model. And I think that's consistent with the market environment. In this market environment while it's challenging with some of our existing advisors as they defend their existing book of business, it's also looking… it’s making advisors question what's best for their long-term viability and we are trying to take advantage of that and capitalize on it in signing new advisors in these markets.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

And we have a follow-up question from John Britton, please go ahead, sir,

John Britton - Select Equity

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

Wayne, I'm sorry, I missed the net flows number. Can you repeat that?

Wayne M. Withrow - Executive Vice President of Investment Advisors

Analyst · Stifel Nicolaus

Negative $312 million.

John Britton - Select Equity

Analyst · Select Equity. Please go ahead

Thank you.

Wayne M. Withrow - Executive Vice President of Investment Advisors

Analyst · Stifel Nicolaus

Don't ask me again, please.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. And at this time we have no questions in the queue.

Prepared Text

Analyst

Alfred P. West - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Analyst

Thank you, Wayne. Our next segment is the Institutional Investors segment and I am going to turn it over to Ed Loughlin to discuss this segment. Ed?

Edward D. Loughlin - Executive Vice President of Global Institutional

Analyst

Thanks, Al. Good afternoon, everyone. As usual I will speak to the financial results for the second quarter of 2008 compared to the year-ago period. And I will also touch on the worldwide institutional sales activity and results. Financial results for the quarter showed continued growth compared to the year-ago period. Revenues for the quarter increased 5%, while profits for the quarter approaching $22 million increased 17% compared to the second quarter of 2007. Negative capital markets during the period dampened the impact of new client funding while reduced sales and incentive compensation positively impacted expenses. Margins for the segment of 43% compare favorably to the year-ago period of 38%. The impact of negative capital markets on the revenue base will cause quarterly margins to fluctuate. Quarter-end asset balances were $48 billion, reflecting a $2.7 billion increase compared to the second quarter of 2007. Continued client funding has helped to offset the impact of negative capital markets during the period. Net new client funding during second quarter was $900 million. The backlog of committed but unfunded sales was $2.7 billion at the end of the quarter. The new large client announced last quarter is scheduled to fund in September. Client signings for the second quarter were $1.4 billion, and totaled $4.7 billion year-to-date through June. The pipeline continues to grow through new prospective clients accepting appointments. However, client decision making has clearly slowed down. The uncertain market conditions though have not altered global plans sponsor’s desire to manage the volatility that pension funding can cause to quarter business results. SEI's pension solution enables clients to successfully manage their entire pension program. We continue to be optimistic that as the market conditions improve prospective clients will again return to a more normal decision-making process and time frame. This pretty much concludes my prepared remarks and I'm happy to entertain any questions you have. Question and Answer

Operator

Operator

And we have a follow-up question from Murali Gopal. Please go ahead. Murali Gopal - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Yes. Hi. Good afternoon. Just a quick question. The institutional segment, it's a [inaudible], in the last conference call I guess the new assets that you are expecting to be funded was something of $2.8 billion, and I guess $900 million actually funded in the quarter. Is that just a timing difference or am I comparing… not comparing apples-to-apples?

Edward D. Loughlin - Executive Vice President of Global Institutional

Analyst

On the last call I think I announced this new sale that we had insofar as the Netherlands was a fairly significant large sales, $1.6 billion. Our backlog at that point, I believe, was $2.8 billion. We were expecting that to potentially fund sooner than this September, which is delayed a little bit. So there's a quarter delay, if you will. So, I guess the good news is we have funded another $900 million during this quarter and we continue to have a backlog of $2.7 billion, $2.8 billion that needs to be funded and much of that. I guess, I don't want to commit now to exactly all of it but much of that should be committed within this particular quarter. Murali Gopal - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Okay. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. You have a follow-up question from Jeff Hopson. Please go ahead. Jeffrey Hopson - Stifel Nicolaus & Co.: Okay. Thanks. Any change in kind of the nature of clients or graphic regions etcetera?

Edward D. Loughlin - Executive Vice President of Global Institutional

Analyst

No, it’s pretty well diversified on a global type of a basis and also on a market basis. I mean, hospitals, retirements plans and assets continues to be the source of the new business. Jeffrey Hopson - Stifel Nicolaus & Co.: Okay. Great. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And there are no questions in the queue at this time.

Prepared Text

Analyst

Alfred P. West - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Analyst

Thank you, Ed. Our final segment today is Investment Manager. I am going to turn it over to Steve Meyer to discuss this segment. Steve?

Stephen P. Meyer - Executive Vice President

Analyst

Thank you, Al. Good afternoon, everyone. For the second quarter of 2008 the Investment Manager segment continue to improve both revenue and profit from the same quarter a year ago as well as the first quarter of 2008. Additionally, we have a strong new business event quarter. Specifically for the second quarter of 2008, revenues for the segment totaled $37.3 million, or 5.7% increase, compared with the same quarter a year ago. This growth was due to net new client fundings and existing client growth. Our quarterly profit of $12.3 million was up 11.9% from the same quarter a year ago and was also up approximately 16.8% from the first quarter of 2008. This increase was primarily attributable to both business growth as well as the timing of certain expenses. So, while our margin expanded in the second quarter I would say that it's higher than usual, I would expect to it normalize in the near term. The best way to gauge margin for our segment is on an annualized basis and not quarter over quarter as we will have some fluctuations due to timing of investments and other expenses in the short term. Our third party asset balances at the end of the second quarter of 2008 were $228.7 billion or $3.7 billion higher than at March 31st, 2008. Approximately $5.3 billion of this increase is attributable to net client fundings and additional cash flows from existing clients which was offset by negative $1.6 billion in market depreciation. The segment had another strong new business development quarter with new business sales events totaling approximately $8.5 million in annualized revenue. This is our second highest quarter to date per events and all of our solutions were represented in these events. Additionally, our largest event for the quarter was from a…

Operator

Operator

And we have a follow-up question from Tom McCrohan. Please go ahead.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Hi, Steve.

Stephen P. Meyer - Executive Vice President

Analyst

Hi, Tom.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

The $5.8 million that you recontracted, was that a quarterly number or is that a full-year number?

Stephen P. Meyer - Executive Vice President

Analyst

That's an annualized number that we recontracted in the quarter.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

So less than 5% of your run rate revenues you recontracted, is that fair?

Stephen P. Meyer - Executive Vice President

Analyst

Yes.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

So, is that a significant amount of recontracting in one quarter or are you just calling it out this quarter for other reasons?

Stephen P. Meyer - Executive Vice President

Analyst

No, I think the reason we are pointing that out is I think more significant is that during these recontracts we are as we discussed I think at the investor conference one of our focuses for the year was to expand our relationship and if will you our share of wallet with existing clients and I think that was more prevalent in our recontracts and probably more significant why I brought it up.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Okay. Got it. Are there any material recontracting events this year that we should be aware of in the second half?

Stephen P. Meyer - Executive Vice President

Analyst

As I said before, we recontract kind of a normal part of the business now, none that will be material to the business this year.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Are any of your clients that represent 10% or more of your business segment revenues?

Stephen P. Meyer - Executive Vice President

Analyst

No. If they did I believe we'd have to disclose them.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Disclose that, yes. All right. Thanks, Steve.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. At this time we have no questions in the queue.

Prepared Text

Analyst

Alfred P. West - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Analyst

Thank you, Steve. And I would now like Kathy Heilig to give you a few company-wide statistics. Kathy?

Kathy C. Heilig - Chief Accounting Officer, Controller

Analyst

Thanks, Al. Good afternoon, everyone. I have some additional corporate information about this quarter. Second quarter cash flow from operations was $44.4 million, or $0.23 per share. Year-to-date, cash flow from operations, $112.7 million or $0.57 per share. And the second quarter free cash flow was $21.5 million or $0.11 per share. In the second quarter capital expenditures were $3.4 million. Year-to-date, June capital expenditures are $9 million, which does include some expenditures for our new facility. For the remainder of 2008, excluding capitalized software, capital expenditures will be between $15 million to $20 million, which does include the new facility expansion, which we expect to be completed early in the first quarter next year. The tax rate for the second quarter was the same as the first quarter, 37.1%, however, we expect our tax rate in 2008 to be between 37% and 38%, and it will vary by quarter. Now, the table balance at June 30th was $11.2 million. We also would like to remind you that many of our comments are forward-looking statements and are based upon assumptions that involve risks and that the financial information presented in our release and on this call is unaudited. Future revenues and income could differ from expected results. We have no obligation to publicly update or correct any statements herein as a result of future developments. Please refer to our periodic SEC filings for a description of various risks and uncertainties that could affect our future financial results. Now please feel free to ask any other questions that you may have.

Alfred P. West - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Analyst

Thank you, Kathy. So ladies and gentlemen, despite some of the external short-term uncertainties we face, our transformation has been steady. And while we have a lot yet to accomplish, we are continuing to make important strides and are very excited about what we are building. So I'm going to give you one last chance to ask any questions and then I'll say good afternoon. Question and Answer

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. And we have a follow-up question from Tom McCrohan. Please go ahead.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Hi. Just a general question on cash flows. Is there any reason why your cash flow growth year-over-year should not keep pace with revenue growth?

Alfred P. West - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Analyst

No, Tom, there is no particular reason why it shouldn’t.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead

Okay. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. And at this time we have no questions in the queue.

Alfred P. West - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Analyst

Thank you very much for joining us and have a good afternoon. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this conference will be available for replay after 4 PM Eastern Standard Time today through October 23rd, 2008 at midnight. You may access the AT&T Executive Replay System by dialing 1-800-475-6701 and entering the access code, 953975. International participants may dial 320-365-3844. Those numbers again are 1-800-475-6701 and access code, 953975. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for your participation and for using AT&T Executive Teleconferencing. You may now disconnect.