Good day, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Westwood Holdings Group Inc. Second Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder this call is being recorded. I would like now to introduce your host for today's conference, Senior Vice President and Chief Compliance Officer Sylvia Fry. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome to our second quarter earnings 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 31, 2014 filed with the Securities and 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 the SEC rules concerning non-GAAP financial measures, the reconciliation of our economic earnings and economic earnings per share 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 Tiffany Kice, our Chief Financial Officer. I will now turn the call over to Brian Casey, our CEO.

Good afternoon everyone. Thanks for taking the time today to join Westwood’s second quarter of 2015 earnings call. Similar to previous conference calls I'll discuss the current environment for our business, how our investments teams are performing as well as the trends our sales and clients service team are seeing within their market segment. But before we delve into those areas I'm pleased to report that we successfully closed the acquisition of Woodway Financial Advisors and their results are included in our financials for the first time. It's been a long held strategic objective for Westwood Trust to expand into the vibrant Houston market and we really feel like we're partnering with the premier firm in Houston. We are in the process of integrating Woodway within the broader Westwood organization and we are pleased to say that it's been business as usual with Westwood clients so far. Now turning it over to investments I will start with some broad commentary on the macro-environment that our three distinct investment teams have faced in the recent months. Uncertainty over possible default by Greece and the countries exit from the euro along with macro concerns in China created high levels of market volatility resulting in flat to negative returns for most equity markets. Yield oriented assets were also negatively impacted by an increase in interest rates and anticipation of the federal reserve raising the fed funds rates later this year. Given this backdrop as was the case in the first quarter the importance of individual securities selection and investors placing greater focus on companies fundamentally bode well for our active style of management. This was particularly true for the investment strategies managed by the U.S value team during the most recent quarter. On a relative basis our value strategy is continuing to perform…

Thanks Brian and good afternoon everyone. As Brian mentioned earlier we completed the acquisition of Woodway on April 1 and Woodway's financial result have been consolidated in our financial statements for the second quarter of 2015. For the second quarter 2015 we are reporting total revenue of 37.3 million up 21% or 6.4 million from the same period in 2014. With asset base advisory fees up 24% or 5.4 million and trust fees up 54% or 2.8 million. We reported performance based advisory fees of 1.9 million during the quarter compared to 3.4 million in the second quarter of 2014. Net income of 9.8 million increased 14% from the second quarter of 2014 and diluted earnings per share of $1.23 increased 10% from $1.12 in the same period of 2014. Economic earnings a non-GAAP metric of 14.4 million increase 23% as compared to 11.7% in the second quarter of 2014. Economic earnings per share increased $1.80 per share from a $1.52 per share in the same period of 2014. Firm related assets under management increased to a record 23.1 billion primarily due to the Woodway acquisition which contributed 1.6 billion in assets under management. At quarter end our assets under management consisted of institutional assets of 13.2 billion or 57% of the total private wealth assets of 5.6 billion or 24% of the total and mutual fund assets to 4.3 billion or 19% of total. Our balance sheet continues to be very solid with cash and investment with 69 million in note debt. Our Board of Directors approved a quarterly cash dividend of $0.50 per share payable on October 1st, 2015 to stockholders of record on September 11, 2015. This represents an annualize dividend yield of 3.4% at yesterday's closing price. We encourage you to review the presentation we posted on the website reflecting second quarter highlights as well as longer term trends in the growth of our assets under management, revenue earnings and dividend. I'll now turn the call back over to Brian to conclude.

Thanks Tiffany great job. If anybody has a question, please let the operator know.

[Operator Instruction] Our first question comes from the line of Mac Sykes with Gabelli. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

My first is, do you think that the volatility in the energy space has dampened investor longer term investment appetite for both the MLP and income opportunity strategies?

I don’t I believe in fact one of our larger clients just put some additional funds with us in the last couple of weeks in frankly at our trust company just heard a presentation on opportunistic investing and in the energy area so I do think there is a lot of discussion there is obviously a lot of uncertainty but uncertainty creates opportunities so I think you will see continued investment in that area.

And congratulations on the new hire in the CIO role do you think you will ramp-up technologies spending from here or do you just expect and the points of efficiencies for you?

Well. I think there will be a technology spend as a firm has been pretty consistent over the years and launched up with our growth I think they will find it efficiencies and I think they will find ways to make us better as a firm we've just our business has become more complex and more variables in the last several years and it was time to make a higher with them.

Our next question comes from the line of Bob Mitchell with Conestoga Capital. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hello, Brain and Tiffany. This is Larry Carlen sitting here with Bob Mitchell.

Hi Larry, hi Bob.

Just a question on the institutional business you talked about the pipeline being strong what products are you seeing that strengthen and is there any way to give us the general sense of how much that pipeline has increased year-over-year?

I'll answer the first part. That the interest level often times performance to search activity and we've had terrific performance in our Small Cap and AllCap strategies and the search activity has picked up there we've had continued ongoing interest in our EM strategies so we've had a lot of interest there. It was great to see our LargeCap performance do so well over the last 12 months we've actually moved into the closer to top cortile for the last 12 months. And we have a 31 year record in LargeCap that when you look at it, it doesn’t take where many quarters of good performance to make that long-term record look really attractive so those are really the areas our global converts team has off to a fantastic start that's a niche product but it's also one where there is an appetite specially from Europeans for that asset class and the fund is up to a terrific performance start. So those of the just in terms on a relative basis year-over-year we've had pretty strong search activity has been pretty consistent I can re tell whether it's higher today than it was a year ago I can just tell you that's it's positive and there is no shortage of opportunities.

And on the Woodway acquisition, can you talk about what's involved in integrating that and what type of synergies do you think you can get from Woodway?

Yes. Well there is. The Woodway as I said in prior calls they didn’t need us to be successful they are already a successful business and so varies where I think we can add some efficiencies obviously there is efficiencies with respect to crooked of areas in the finance and accounting areas and the HR areas those are the kind of the low hanging fruit and then we have some things that we've learned operationally over the years that maybe helpful those are really the from a financial perspective the most help we can do financially but there is also things that as a firm we can do we certainly has a pretty broad based research department, we have a lot of things that are available but we wanted to be really careful and how we introduce those to clients we want them to be value add as opposed to this is how we do it their clients are already happy so they don’t again need us so there is lots of opportunities we had our trust board meeting this afternoon and we have the leaders of our Dallas business our Oklahoma business and our Houston business it's all together and it's a great opportunity to learn from each other and for all of us to get better.

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions. I would now like to turn the call back to President and CEO Brain Casey for any further remarks.

I don’t have anything further I just reiterate again to thank all of our long-term shareholders including Bob and Larry and the Gabelli organization for their support over what is now 13 years it's been a terrific run and we really think this is just the beginning. So thank you if you have any further questions feel free to call us or visit our Web site at westwoodgroup.com. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This does conclude the program and you may all disconnect. Everyone have a great day.