Affiliated Managers Group, Inc. (NYSE:AMG) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Tom Wojcik: And I’ll maybe, Dan, just add one statistic to that just to give you a sense, and this incorporates not just sort of quant, but our overall absolute return performance fee eligible book, just to give you a sense of kind of the evolution we’ve seen over the last couple of years. AUM today that we have in eligible absolute return strategies that are above high watermarks has increased by more than 50% since the beginning of 2020. So, when we think about not only the performance fee earnings growth opportunity, but also the organic growth opportunity, just a more and more sizable portion of our overall book is in a position to deliver those types of characteristics over time. And you really do get that network effect where excellent performance is driving performance fee earnings, excellent performance is driving new conversations with clients and flows, and we really do think that that’s a real positive for us overall.

Jay Horgen: And as you know and I know you know this, Dan, is that as you get new clients, you start the new clock with performance and performance fees. And so, there is kind of a positive upward cycle that you have with the idea that above high watermark new clients, (ph) the opportunity for even more performance fee opportunity, which is what we’re seeing in our business today.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brian Bedell with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.

Brian Bedell: Hey, good morning, folks. Apologies, I’m going to give you a multi-part question, if that’s okay. Just linking a few things together. So, first of all, obviously, really strong 2022 relative to the asset manager peers with positive EPS growth. So, if you can talk about maybe what’s your confidence level in repeating that? You’re probably going to have headwinds for the asset manager industry overall. It’s going to make positive EPS challenging for the industry. Maybe just talk about sort of what your confidences in having another year of positive EPS growth? And if we think about maybe the headwinds, obviously, being on the guidance on the performance fee side being a little lower, is that mostly driven by private capital monetizations being down? And then, as you think about new investments, are you more geared towards illiquid alternatives or liquid alternatives?

Jay Horgen: Yes, thanks, Brian. Actually, we might be able to wrap a lot of that into letting Tom give you some more specifics around the guidance that we gave on the call. So, I’m going to let Tom do that here in one second. Just expressing confidence, I mean, we do have a level of conservatism in the guidance that we described, even around performance fees. The way we come up with that is we look at the amount that’s above high watermark, we look at the types of businesses that we have, and we took kind of the performance assumption way down. And of course, in 2022, the performance was excellent. And in 2021, it was excellent. So, candidly, the level of conservatism just in our performance fee estimate is there. In fact, over the last two years, you could argue that we’ve actually reduced the amount of performance that we need to generate this level that Tom has given you guidance.

So, it’s probably more conservative than last year or the year before. So, there’s upside there. There’s also upside in capital, which Tom will describe, but we can’t prescribe exactly when that capital will go out and that’s why we haven’t sort of put it into our guidance. Those two things really are the two positive drivers. How that plays out this year as well as things like market beta will really determine our growth in 2023 over 2022, but we’re still very optimistic sitting here in February that we’ll be able to do that. And then, Tom, maybe you can give more specifics.