Good day ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Westwood Holdings Group Fourth Quarter 2016 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 be given at that time. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference over to Julie Gerron, Senior Vice President and General Counsel. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good afternoon. 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, 2016, 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 SEC rules concerning non-GAAP financial measures, the reconciliation of our economic earnings and economic earnings per shares to the most comparable GAAP measures is included at the end of today's press release. On the 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 CEO.

Thanks Julie, and thanks to all of you for taking the time to listen to our earnings call today. I will begin with comments from our three distinct investment teams, discuss our sales and service efforts, our notable business results and update you on some of the strategic initiatives we've accomplished last year. It was a year of dramatic outperformance of value over growth and small caps over large caps. Our small cap product rose nearly 30% and remains a top-rated strategy over multi-year periods. Large cap kept pace with the S&P 500, but lagged the Russell 1000 as our quality value focus was less preferred over deep value names. We were excited to reach a three-year anniversary of our large Cap concentrated product, which outperformed the Russell 1000 value over the three-year period by over 250 basis point and solidly in the top quartile versus our peers. Our SMidCap performance improved during the fourth quarter, but we realized there's more work to do there. While active versus passive, continues to be a focal point for the industry, the current environment appears even more favorable for active management as we note the correlations decline in the year-end. Our multi-asset strategy, income opportunity, generated output from both stock selection and asset allocation in 2016, while posting positive low volatility returns each quarter. Our worldwide income opportunity strategy a non-dollar-based version of the same process and designed to generate the same return profile, celebrated its second anniversary and we remain excited about its prospects. Finally, our MLP strategy saw strong absolute gains in the commodity complex including oil recovered from the lows put in place during the first quarter of 2016. Looking forward in 2017, Westwood strategies remain well-positioned in the areas of the market where active management can deliver excess return…

Thanks Brian and good afternoon, everyone. Today we reported total revenues of $31.1 million for the fourth quarter of 2016, compared to $31.6 million in the prior year's fourth quarter. The decrease is primarily related to lower quarter-over-quarter performance advisories of $0.5 million. Net income was $7.6 million or $0.92 per share, compared to $4.7 million or $0.58 per share in the prior year fourth quarter, which included a $1 million net noncash charge for acceleration and stock-based compensation expense for a particular graph and $0.8 million tax charge for uncertain tax acquisitions related to prior years. Economic earnings and non-GAAP metrics was $12 million or $1.45 per share compared to $10.4 million or $1.28 per share in the prior year fourth quarter. For fiscal 2016, total revenues, total revenues were $123 million compared to $130.9 million for 2015. The decrease primarily related to a $7.8 million decrease in assed-based advisory fees requesting lower average AUM, coupled with a $2.1 million decrease in performance-based advisory fees. These decreases were partially offset by a $1.5 million increase in trust fees due to a full year revenue reported by Woodway Net income was $22.6 million or $2.77 per share compared to $27.1 million or $3.33 per share for 2015. The decrease was primarily driven by the decrease in total revenues and economic earnings was $41.1 million or $5.03 per share compared to $46.5 million or $5.71 per share for 2015. Firm-wide assets under management totaled $21.2 billion at year end and consisted of institutional assets of $11.9 billion or 56% of the total, private wealth assets of $5.5 billion or 26% of the total and mutual fund assets of $3.8 billion or 18% of the total. We experienced net outflows of $289 million for the quarter, partially offset by market appreciation of $257 million. For fiscal 2016, we experienced appreciation of $2 billion, partially offset by net outflows of $1.5 billion. Our financial position continues to be very solid with cash and investments at yearend totaling $90.2 million and a debt-free balance sheet. We are pleased to announce that our Board of Directors approved a quarterly cash dividend of $0.62 per share. The dividend will be payable on April 3, 2017, to stockholders of record on March 10, 2017. This represents an annualized dividend yield of 4.5% at yesterday's closing price. That brings our prepared comments to a close. We encourage you to review our Investor Presentation we posted on our website reflecting fourth quarter and fiscal year 2016 highlights as well as the discussion of our business, product development, and longer term trends in revenues, earnings and dividends. We thank you for your interest in our company and we'll open the line for questions now.

[Operator instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Mac Sykes with Gabelli. Your line is now open.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. Can you just remind us how much AUM in your products currently and how that compares year-over-year?

I am sorry, your question was how much AUM?

EM products is about $4 million -- $4 billion sorry altogether.

I am sorry.

The EM products altogether at about $4 billion.

And so, can you expand on your comments about the EM products to start the year in terms of -- just given your strong '16 performance and maybe the remarkable returns already in January. Just curious as to whether we should expect the sort of an uptick you think going into the first half of the year?

Yeah, well I would say that as I noted in the call, that we've had a number of positive meetings with consultants. We've had a number of consultant upgrades and I don't think the story has changed at all that EM remained an asset class, but is in demand and the consultant thank a lot of our team. So, I'm very optimistic about our ability to generate loads the EM complex and look forward to see what happens for the rest of the year.

And then one for Tiffany, on tax sensitivity, we've been focusing on corporate tax rates and potential changes with the Trump administration, if your tax rate or the corporate tax rate would drop to 20%, how much would that affect WHG in terms of impact to EPS?

My best guess on impact EPS would probably be somewhere between $0.30 and $0.40 and that would really be looking at the run rate, that's not knowing a whole lot of specifics, but you also have to think about the deferred tax assets that would reverse out. So, there would be some adjustments to happen at the beginning.

Great. Thank you very much.

Thanks for your question Mac.

Thank you. [Operator instructions] I am not showing any further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back to Brian Casey, CEO for any closing remarks.

Thank you and we appreciate you taking the time to listen to our call today. If you have any further questions please feel free to call myself or call Tiffany or visit our website @westwoodgroup.com and look under the Investor Relations tab for all of our filings including our updated IR Presentation, which we just posted today. Thanks again.

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.