Burford Capital Limited (NYSE:BUR) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Jon Molot : Yes. I was just going to say the line between settlement and adjudication can be a scenario where as Chris said, settlements in the most conventional U.S. commercial litigation sets are what precedes the trial in order to avoid the trial, the party strike a settlement for an amount that eliminates the risk. But there could be pieces of litigation and you might win some. The defendant can read the writing on the wall and know it’s going to have to pay up. It still has a chance for some sort of appeal or collateral attack, and you could, therefore, have a resolution through what’s called the settlement, but there’s already a judgment potentially saying you owe that amount. And so that’s why it’s hard to draw the distinction between what ends if you win a trial, and there’s an appeal pending and there’s a settlement at a very slight discount based on how at risk and timing.

Do you call that a settlement, I guess, technically, you do, but there has been an adjudication as well?

Julian Roberts : Understood, thank you, very much.

Christopher Bogart: So, a webcast question, and then we’ll go to the next question on the phone. The webcast question is when do we anticipate a full New York Stock Exchange listing? So, we have today were what’s called a form private issuer because more than 50% of our shares are held by non-U.S. investors. We test that 50% number every June 30. So, we’ll test it for the next time in 17 days. If the number of U.S. shareholders has increased to above 50%, that will represent the final leg of the process to become a sort of a full U.S. 10-K filer. Although nothing will actually change on New York Stock Exchange. This is an SEC dynamic, not a New York Stock Exchange dynamic. So, nothing would change on the New York Stock Exchange, but it would cause us to begin to file 10-Ks instead of these 20-Fs. Frankly, you won’t notice very much difference when that happens, especially now that we have gone voluntarily to quarterly reporting because the — previously, the principal difference between those two regimes would have been that foreign private issuers are not required to do quarterly reporting.

But because we’ve now opted in the quarterly reporting anyway, you’re not going to notice a big difference when that happens. We don’t know if it will happen this year or not. We won’t know until we do the testing for it. I think we’re in the 40s in terms of U.S. holders the last time we looked. So, we’re certainly getting close if we don’t cross the line today. And then I think we have something more on the phone operator.

Operator: Our next question comes from Matthew Howlett of B. Riley Securities. Matthew your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Matthew Howlett : Can you hear me now?

Christopher Bogart: Yes.

Matthew Howlett : Yes. Apologies. The question is regarding return on equity. And your return on equity, tangible equity, I look at somewhere in the high teens normalizing for YPF and some expenses. When you look at that, I mean, historically, pre-COVID, you’ve been in that range, how do you look at the return profile, the return on tangible book value this quarter versus what you think is normalized? What do you think is fully deployed? Just in that context, you talked a lot about IRRs and things of that I want to kind of move it towards return on equity.

Jordan Licht: So, look, I think it is difficult to look quarter-by-quarter at ROTCE. But we definitely — we had stated, I think, in the Investor Day that we target a 20-plus return on equity. I think we continue to see that. It will be episodic or a little bit bumpy, but I think you need to look at that on an annualized — kind of a rolling average basis as opposed to just one spot in time. I think we said that back then, we still believe it.