Good day, ladies and gentlemen. And welcome to the Westwood Holdings Group Incorporated Third Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. 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 conference call is being recorded. I would like now to introduce your host for today's conference, Sylvia Fry, Senior Vice President and Chief Compliance Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon. And welcome to our third 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 will 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 Chief Executive Officer.

Thanks, Sylvia, and good afternoon. And thanks to all of you for taking time to listen to our third quarter earnings call. The third quarter was volatility and challenging for all asset managers with indiscriminate selling across all market segments. As we sit here today with markets at much higher levels it appears that the sell-off was part of a normal correction and so far has merely represented a good buying opportunity. Before we discussed performance and distribution trends across our business, I'm pleased to announce the dividend increase of 14%. Our dividend now stands at an annual rate of $2.28, representing a dividend yield of 4% at yesterday's closing price. Our balance sheet remained solid with over $80 million in cash and liquid investments, and no debt. Consistent with our stated goal 13 years ago of becoming a superior dividend grower, we have raised our dividend every year since we have been public. In fact, nearly 50% of the total return in Westwood has come from dividends. Our compound annual growth rate of our quarterly dividend since inception has been nearly 29% and we’ve paid out over $127 million to shareholders as a public company. Turning now to our investment teams, I will start with the Dallas-based U.S. value team. As I discussed in my opening remarks, the third quarter was a challenging period for investors and asset managers like, both U.S. and international equity markets posted their worst quarterly performance since the third quarter of 2011, with the S&P 500 Index declining nearly 7%. Most of the weakness came in August, as an unexpected devaluation in China's currency and concerns over global growth continued or contributed to the sell-off and risk assets and a sharp spike in market volatility. Commodities remained under pressure as crude oil prices declined…

Thanks, Brian, and good afternoon, everyone. For the third quarter of 2015, we are reporting total revenues of $32.5 million, up 15% or $4.4 million from the same period in 2014. Asset-based advisory fees are up 9% or $2.1 million and trust fees are up 51% or $2.7 million. Our trust fees include revenue generated by Woodway which we acquired on April 1 of the current year. Net income of $7 million was relatively flat with the third quarter of 2014, while diluted earnings per share of $0.87 decreased slightly from $0.92 per share in the same period of 2014. Shares issued are contingently attributable in relation to the Woodway acquisition contributed $0.02 of the decreased diluted EPS. Economic earnings and non-GAAP metric of $12.4 million increased 14% as compared to $10.9 million in the third quarter of 2014. Economic earnings per share increased to $1.55 per share or $0.41 per share in the same period of 2014. Firm wide assets under management decreased to $20.4 billion primarily due to the overall decline in global markets during the third quarter. At quarter end, our assets under management consisted of institutional assets of $11.3 billion or 55% of the total, private wealth assets of $5.3 billion or 26% of the total, mutual fund assets of $3.8 billion or 19% of the total. Our balance sheet continues to be very strong. We currently have cash and investments of $80 million and no debt. Our Board of Directors approved a quarterly cash dividend of $0.57 per common share, an increase of 14% from the previous quarterly dividend rate payable on January 4, 2016, the stockholders on record on December 15, 2015. This represents an annualized dividend yield of 4% at yesterday’s closing price. We encourage you to review the presentation we posted on our website reflecting third quarter highlight as well as longer-term trends and the growth of our assets under management, revenues, earnings and dividend. I will now turn the call back over to Brian to conclude.

Thanks, Tiffany. If anybody has any questions, you can ask them now. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Mac Sykes of Gabelli. Your line is now open.

That’s Mac Sykes from Gabelli. But thank you for taking my questions and congratulations on the October today at AUM. I have just two questions. First, on the AUA move to AUM, can I assume the revenue and margin impact will change accordingly?

No. As I said, maybe not clearly with that, there will be no revenue impact. It simply moving the assets under advisement to assets under management. I will say though that the performance of the fund has been really, really good. And the sales team at Aviva has spend a lot of time with our guys and they were in fact -- they were there as recent as last week, outselling the fund and having some good success.

And then what sort of distribution channels are you targeting for the concentrated value product at this point?

I think it will still be home based for us which is the institutional consulting community. They know as well and they have said for years now that they have a preference for high active share managers. And in our case, if you look across our spectrum of equity products, we have a very high active share in access of 75% most cases. So we think this will be well received. We got to get our three year record behind us. We’re nearly two years into it and the numbers have been spectacular. And just to elaborate a little bit further on that, this is not a different product from the standpoint of having a completely different set of stocks. This is a subset of our traditional large cap value product, which would have historically 45 names. In this product, we have 25 names. And this 25 are simply higher conviction weightings of the 45 names that we have in the traditional product.

Great. Thank you. And congrats on the dividend. I’m sure the investors will appreciate that.

Great. Thanks, Mac. Appreciate your question.

Our next question comes from Larry Carlin of Conestoga Capital. Your line is now open.

Good afternoon, Brian, Tiffany. And this is another investor that very much appreciates that dividend. So thank you very much.

All right. Terrific.

And you commented that you have 95% client retention year-to-date if I understood that correctly, have you looked at our metric the one previous periods of market volatility or is there any industry benchmark? It seems like very impressive number?

Yeah. So let me be clear on the difference between client retention rate and a redemption rate. A client retention rate means that you have retained the client and we have retained in excess of 95% of the clients we had at the beginning of the year, we still have them. And I would say that in industry rate is closer to 90% or less. So we have enjoyed over a long period of time a very high client retention rate. As far as redemption rate goes, that’s the amount of money that leaves the complex and you have a natural rate of redemption in any one of your categories. So, for example, in the trust area, you have people who have saved money and eventually they have to leave of to that money, so you are going to see a natural rate of redemption there. Pension funds that you manage money for have to pay their benefits to their pensioners, so you’ll see a natural amount of money leave there. And endowments and foundations typically have a 5% spend rate, so you see some money go after door there. We did a study of industry-wide redemption rates over the last three years and that number is an excess of 23% and our number is well below 20%. So redemption and client retention are two different things, but I appreciate your question, hopefully that clarifies it.

That clarifies us very well. Certainly impressive numbers and Brian, could you just maybe comment a little more on the Woodway acquisition? How did it turnout in terms of personnel and client retention and what are your strategies for growth there?

Sure. Well, I think, we’re still all very much in the honeymoon stage. We’re so happy to have them as part of Westwood and the clients have embraced the greater depth of resource that we may bring to the table and the fact that we’re not going to come in and try to change things right away. So those two things are going well for us. As far as growth goes, we are actively looking for at least one probably two folks to join Woodway in a trust officer position or new business development position. The market is quite hot right now and it’s important to us that we find somebody that is really good fit culturally. But that is fine, it is in the hands of the recruiters right now and they’re actively looking for some people.

Okay. Great. Well, thank you very much. And we appreciate the great results and thanks again for the dividend.

Okay. Larry, thanks for your call. I appreciate your question.

Great. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] And I’m showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference over back to Brian Casey for any further remark.

Great. Well, thank you very much. We appreciate everyone support of Westwood. Many of you over a long period of time and we’re always here and available to answer the questions, so please give us call or go to out website westwoodgroup.com. Thanks again for your time.

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