Federated Hermes, Inc. (NYSE:FHI) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Michael Brown: Great. Thank you. Tom, I just wanted to dive into the expenses a little bit. I appreciate the commentary about the quarter. But given some of the puts and takes you mentioned, I just was looking to maybe clarify some forward thoughts on the non-comp side, particularly on the G&A side is what you saw in the third quarter a reasonable run rate for the fourth quarter? Should we expect that to kind of step down? And then when I look out to 2024 based on your growth and investment expectations and view on what the expense growth rate could be for that G&A line, in particular, just given that might be a bit better or easier to predict. And could that come back to like a mid-single-digit growth range?

Tom Donahue: Okay, Mike. So we mentioned that the comp line had the comp related to the carried interest of about $10 million. So unless we get more carried interest in Q4 and into the future, that number, all else being equal, would go down. And remember, I stopped predicting the compensation line because I can’t predict the compensation line. On the distribution, I think we talked about a little bit that the run rate is good. And if assets go up, we would expect that to go up. Advertising and promotion, it’s in a band and maybe that goes up a little bit in the fourth quarter as we do a little more advertising and promotion. All the other line items, I think, look like they’re in good order for run rate. The other line has FX in it.

So what’s going to happen to the pound? Remember, we hedge because we earn our fees in dollars and have to pay the people in London in pounds. So if the pound goes down, then we have excess expense. But of course, then we are covered when we go to pay the cost there. We went through the infrastructure restructuring. And so those costs should come down a little bit. So that’s basically — in terms of ’24, I don’t really have a whole lot to add to that. We’re getting into our budget season, and I’m not too excited about making predictions on ’24.

Michael Brown: Okay. And maybe just one follow-up on the M&A comment earlier. It sounds like you’re having some active dialogue looking at interesting opportunities out there. Could you just give us a flavor of what would be kind of some interesting additions to the Federated Hermes platform? What types of assets could be a good fit for your company? And then in terms of maybe size, would you think a deal would be kind of closer to a CW Henderson, so maybe more of a bolt-on? Or do you think that there’s potential for something more transformative?

Tom Donahue: So we’re — Mike, we’re really excited about the Henderson. We’re coming up on — we passed our 1-year anniversary there. And we are expecting actually some exciting things there into the future because that part of the budget process has started. So we’re looking forward to some growth there. The — and so doing that size transaction works pretty well with us. We can integrate it, make it part of Federated, take the expertise that the teams bring and utilize it and have our distribution have the opportunity to sell it. So we will look for more things like that. If you remember what we talked about last quarter, and it feels like it’s just talk, but the alternative markets and what we try to do there is take our expertise over in London and expand it here in the U.S. is continual to look at things and try to do it.