Earnings Labs

Westwood Holdings Group, Inc. (WHG)

Q3 2008 Earnings Call· Tue, Oct 28, 2008

$17.24

+3.67%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Thank you all for holding, and welcome to the Westwood Holdings Group's third quarter 2008 earnings conference call. Today's call will begin with a presentation, followed by question-and-answer session. Instructions on that feature will be given later in the program. I would now like to turn the call over to your host for today's call, Sylvia Fry, Vice President and Chief Compliance Officer. Ms. Fry, your line is now open.

Sylvia Fry

Management

Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome to our third quarter conference call. I would like to start by reading our forward-looking statements disclaimer. The following discussion will include forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, which may cause actual results to be materially different from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning the factors that could cause such a difference is included in our press release issued earlier today as well as in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2007, filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. In addition, in accordance with SEC rules concerning non-GAAP financial measures, the reconciliation of our cash earnings, cash earnings per share, and cash expenses to the most comparable GAAP measures is included at the end of our press release issued earlier today. On our call today we have Brian Casey, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Bill Hardcastle, our Chief Financial Officer. I will now turn the call over to Brian.

Brian Casey

Management

Thanks Sylvia, and thanks all of you for taking time again to listen to our call today. I'll start with some general observations about our business, our performance in marketing activity, and then I will turn it back over to Bill Hardcastle, who will review our quarterly financial results that were just released after the market close today. At the conclusion of Bill's formal comments, we will be happy to take your questions. As all of you know, we witnessed unprecedented events in our financial market during the third quarter and throughout this year. While no one could have predicted this financial hurricane, we have always been mindful that it was a remote possibility. In order to protect our clients and employee shareholders, we have always run the business in a very conservative manner. For example, we have no debt, and we have no plans to incur any debt. We maintain a cash cushion on our balance sheet sufficient to pay all of our operating expenses and employee salaries for multiple years, and we invent this cash in treasury bills. We pay a healthy dividend and we still generate excess cash and thus have no need to access the capital markets to fund our future growth. We are fully transparent. We have no off balance sheet activities or unknown liabilities. We are all shareholders, and as employee shareholders and directors, we own over 35% of the company and have an unwavering commitment to serve our clients as best as we can every single day. In summary, we try to run our company similar to those that we admire and wound consider owning in our client portfolio. Westwood is held up well during this crisis, and we are well positioned, as we can be to weather whatever comes at us in…

Bill Hardcastle

Management

Thanks Brian. Good afternoon everyone. As you may have seen, we filed our earnings release and 10-Q this afternoon right after the market closed. If you have any questions after reading the 10-Q, feel free to give me a call to the phone number listed on our website. After I review our financials for this quarter, I will review some slides with you that we have posted on the Investor Relations section of our website at westwoodgroup.com under the events and webcast link. For the third quarter of 2008, our total revenues were $10.1 million, a 15% increase compared to $8.7 million in the third quarter of 2007. Comparing third quarter revenue in 2008 versus 2007, Westwood Management posted a 28% increase in advisory fees as a result of increased average assets under management due to net inflows from new and existing clients over the past 12 months, as well as higher average fee realization. This was partially offset by market depreciation and the withdrawal of assets by certain clients. Westwood Trust posted a 7% increase in trust fees as a result of higher average fee realization. Average assets under management by Westwood Trust declined slightly as market depreciation of assets offset inflows from new and existing clients. GAAP operating income for the third quarter of 2008 was $2.8 million, a 5% increase compared to $2.6 million for the third quarter of 2007. GAAP net income for the third quarter of 2008 was $1.74 million, a 3% increase compared to $1.68 million for the third quarter of 2007. GAAP-earnings per share was $0.27 per diluted share for the third quarter of 2008 as well as for the third quarter of 2007. Cash earnings, which we define as net income plus non-cash equity based compensation expense, for the third quarter of…

Brian Casey

Management

Thanks Bill. Great job as usual. If anybody has any questions, we would be happy to entertain those now.

Operator

Operator

(Operator instructions) Our first question comes from Bob Mitchell from Conestoga Capital. Your line is open.

Bob Mitchell - Conestoga Capital

Analyst

Good afternoon guys. How are you doing?

Brian Casey

Management

Hi Bob, how are you?

Bob Mitchell - Conestoga Capital

Analyst

I was just -- a few followup questions in terms of where – in terms of the WHG Funds, you guys had – I think I heard positive inflows for the third quarter as well.

Brian Casey

Management

Correct.

Bob Mitchell - Conestoga Capital

Analyst

And if you do kind of correlate on a year-to-date basis, could you kind of give us a sense of where you had the most success, in terms of, from an institutional consulting perspective (inaudible) platforms? Where are you seeing the most growth?

Brian Casey

Management

Well, part of the game in the first few years was getting on to those platforms, so it took a long time to get our plans on the various platforms and we all may have more color in terms of this, the number of platforms that we have, but it has grown a lot and so the fact that you are there is important, the fact that our performance has been good and has been picked up not only by Morningstar, but other services have been very helpful. Do you want to add anything to that Bill?

Bill Hardcastle

Management

I would just say that it has been a mix of platforms, and as Brian mentioned, we are on probably about 30 different platforms, some are smaller platforms, but we are on, you know, a lot of the larger (inaudible). Most of the platform flows will come from Schwab and Fidelity which of course is where most of the mutual fund flows in the retail world come, but we have also had fixed up with consultant driven mutual fund mandate.

Bob Mitchell - Conestoga Capital

Analyst

And then, you obviously have increased your head count, it sounds up to 63 or so, could you talk about where those increased resources have been allocated towards in terms of research or marketing or client service or --?

Brian Casey

Management

Sure, it has been primarily in the marketing and client service area, although we have added a couple of folks to the research area. We have brought in a lot of accounts over the last couple of years and what we try to do is staff ahead of what we expect to be continued through. The worst thing that you can do is to be hired by new clients and then not be able to service him appropriately.

Bob Mitchell - Conestoga Capital

Analyst

Do you expect, in terms of going forward, to increase your head count or do you think you have reached a point at least for the time being?

Brian Casey

Management

Certainly not to the magnitude that we have had this year where we have had to net out of 11 people, you know, but what I would want to say is that in this environment, the number of resumes that we are receiving and the amount of talents that we are having an opportunity to talk to is unprecedented, so we will continue to talk to those people. We do not have any positions that we are trying to fill, but over the years, we have always hired selectively when we find somebody who is really talented and can help us drive our business.

Bob Mitchell - Conestoga Capital

Analyst

I have not – I did not have a chance to look through the “Q”, and maybe it is in there, but in terms of the net new assets that you have brought in board this quarter, could you kind of give a sense as to where they came, such as, asset class, large cap, small cap, et cetera?

Brian Casey

Management

Sure. The bulk of it would be in large cap and some in Smid, but we have had – firmly we talked about this on the last quarterly call, a couple of wonderful new sub-advisory opportunities with Principal and State Farm.

Bob Mitchell - Conestoga Capital

Analyst

.:

Brian Casey

Management

Both of those in the large cap area, and that has funded some in the third quarter and some in the fourth quarter.

Bob Mitchell - Conestoga Capital

Analyst

Okay. In terms of search activities, it sounds from your prepared comments, it sounds like you continue to see strong search activity, as the market disruption does not seem to have impacted that yet?

Brian Casey

Management

No, it has not impacted as strong as it has ever been.

Bob Mitchell - Conestoga Capital

Analyst

Okay. Thank you very much.

Brian Casey

Management

Thanks Bob.

Operator

Operator

(Operator instructions) Next question from Patrick Walsh from Oak Street Capital, your line is open.

Patrick Walsh - Oak Street Capital

Analyst

Hi guys.

Brian Casey

Management

Good afternoon.

Patrick Walsh - Oak Street Capital

Analyst

What should we expect for performance based fees this year, and could you kind of just give us some color on, you know, how we should think about how those have – those are earned in terms of your performance regarding the benchmarks?

Brian Casey

Management

The question is do we in fact receive a performance-based fee, the answer is yes, and we disclosed that last quarter. In terms of the size of that fees, it is difficult to quantify other than saying that it would be similar to last year.

Patrick Walsh - Oak Street Capital

Analyst

Okay, so in line with last year. And then, in terms of the growth in AUM, should we expect the similar – where do you fit the trend to look like in the fourth quarter of this year?

Brian Casey

Management

All I can say to you is that, our business is hitting on all cylinders at the moment. Search activity has dropped. We cannot control the direction of the market on terms of where AUM would be at the end of the year, I would not even guess.

Patrick Walsh - Oak Street Capital

Analyst

All right. Okay, thank you.

Brian Casey

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator instructions)

Brian Casey

Management

Any further questions.

Operator

Operator

We have no other questions in queue at this time.

Brian Casey

Management

All right, we thank everybody for listening today. If you have any followup questions, please call Bill or myself. You can also visit westwoodgroup.com where we have all of our financials and additional information that you may find valuable. Thanks again.

Operator

Operator

That concludes today’s conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.