BrightSphere Investment Group Inc. (NYSE:BSIG) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Kenneth Lee: Got you. And one follow-up, if I may. Wonder if you could talk a little bit more about the key drivers for the performance fees you saw in the quarter. I think in the past, you mentioned that some products were above their high watermarks and then it could have been a favorable setup. Just wondering if that was a factor as well as from any other drivers there? Thanks.

Suren Rana: Yeah, I can. Yeah. Last year was definitely, as you alluded, it was a bit of a loaded base. And so that was unusual that things were set up correctly. And this year, also, the performance in many of the accounts was good and we ended up at, I think, at a decent place. What we got last year is that was clearly very high in record. Hopefully, we can get that again at some point, but it is up there. This year, we had good performance, and we got performance fee from the — from some of the accounts that were eligible. But clearly, the set of last year was favorable than this year. And we’re happy with what we got this year.

Kenneth Lee: Got you. Very helpful there. Thanks.

Operator: Our final question comes from Michael Cyprys with Morgan Stanley.

Michael Cyprys: Great. Thanks. Good morning. I was hoping you might be able to elaborate a bit more on the sales pipeline. How does that look today versus a year ago? And if you could maybe comment on some of the strategies you’re seeing strength as well as the customer channels as well, where you’re seeing more strength and maybe even from a geographic standpoint too? Thank you.

Suren Rana: Yeah. Thanks, Michael. We are seeing — generally, it’s a very healthy pipeline in terms of comparing historically — compared to historical levels, it’s at a healthy level. We’re seeing searches across a range of strategies, including our flagship strategies like global equity, emerging markets, even managed volatility, which we talked about maybe a year ago, who was out of favor. We’re seeing searches there and in our newer strategies like the multi-asset class, all country, non-U.S. as well. So that’s — it’s a pretty good broad — broadly diversified pipeline. And we’re seeing maybe about a fourth of the strategy have some kind of sustainability angle to them as well. So we’re seeing more and more ESG type of searches as well.

So that’s all encouraging to see. Geographically, is not much as far as you know, a lot of our — even currently is within the U.S. and non-U.S. clients represent a growth area for us, and we are trying to do more of that, but it is in line with our — the current search pipeline is in line with historical levels. Does that cover your question, Mike?

Michael Cyprys: Yes. Thank you. Maybe just a follow-up, if I could, just on expenses. Hoping you could maybe elaborate a bit around your expectations for expense growth next year, So you put out the guidance on the variable comp and the affiliate distributions and the operating expense guidance. So maybe you could just elaborate a bit on kind of what went into those ranges, how you thought about that? Kind of what’s sort of underpinning it around market performance expectations? Are you baking in a strong start to the year that’s already been playing out in equity markets or would that be sort of upside?