Operator: Your next question comes from Dan Fannon from Jefferies.
Daniel Fannon: Another clarification on expenses here. Just — Matt, your comments on fiscal ’24 being flat ex performance fees. I just — is that versus the reported number in fiscal ’23? Or is that ex performance fee comp and other things in it as well?
Matt Nicholls: It’s ex-performance fees and other comps. So you have to look at the 2 adjusted numbers in that regard. So it’s ’23…
Daniel Fannon: So what is the number for ’23?
Matt Nicholls: So ’23 would be like 4.07 [ph] — something like that, 4.075 [ph]. And then again, if you — the full year ’24 is really right on that number. Again, excluding the performance fees and the real estate issue that — the transition I mentioned in New York which is about — that overall transition is about $50 million or something like that.
Daniel Fannon: Okay. And then as a follow-up, just on alternatives. It looks like gross sales were their lowest levels since, like 8 or so quarters. I’m curious if that’s just more the environment, timing around what’s in the market with you guys? And then also, just specifically, what did Clarion do in the quarter as well as, if Lexington — the peers that you are looking — that hasn’t had its final close and when you think that might happen?
Jennifer Johnson: So Lexington’s final close will be in December. So they’re scheduled on that. Clarion has had improving redemption queues but they’re still — I don’t know, Adam, if you want to — if you have the details on it. But we’ve had all 3 strategies were positive for the quarter.
Adam Spector: Yes. And I think, Jenny, in there, there’s a difference between the — what we see in alternatives versus private market alternatives because the private markets generally were a little stronger than alternatives overall as we saw some outflows in the liquid alts strategy.
Operator: And your next question comes from Ken Worthington from JPMorgan.
Kenneth Worthington: So I guess, beating the drum on expenses. So just when looking at adjusted comp for the quarter was better than guidance when accounting for the bigger-than-expected performance fees. What drove this? Was there a lower payout on performance fees this quarter? Or was the core compensation number lower than your prior guidance? And what sort of drove that?
Matt Nicholls: Yes. So obviously, you’ve seen the state of the current markets, Ken, resulted in just lower variable compensation, number one. So that’s a combination of AUM revenue, less performance, our performance actually improved a little bit. So — but just generally speaking, that lowered the compensation. Then we had the transaction-related fee that we mentioned on Fondul that has a higher margin associated with it. So that also helped in that regard. So that’s probably lower than you would expect. So I’d say just a combination of just expense discipline around how we manage our compensation going in because remember, this is our year-end. So we’ve made final adjustments based on where the current market is and expect the next quarter to be.
Kenneth Worthington: Okay, fair enough. I’m going to take a flyer in Precidian. Your ETF business is doing well. You have additional fund launches. We’re seeing more active ETFs industry-wide. Can you talk about Precidian, to what extent is active ETF proliferation utilizing the Precidian structure?
Jennifer Johnson: Look, I think the market has kind of spoken on this topic which is they want transparent active ETFs. And so that’s been our area of focus. And so we haven’t really pursued anything there and I don’t think there’s a lot of growth there.
Operator: Your next question comes from Patrick Davitt from Autonomous Research.
Patrick Davitt: Just one, I’ve been asked. One quick follow-up on Putnam. Could you give us an update on, obviously, we can see the mutual funds but could you give us an update on how the flows have tracked in the September quarter versus the last quarter and maybe last year in this quarter.
Matt Nicholls: Yes. Patrick, I don’t mean to be difficult in any way but obviously, we don’t own Putnam today. So we’re not — we can’t really report their flows to you. I would just say though, their AUM is roughly where we announced the transaction. So I think when we announced the transaction, we were around $136 billion. And during that period of time, their performance has remained very strong. And you know what’s happened with the market between now and between then which was late May and now, the market went up for a month or so or a couple of months, then it came down quite hard. And they’re roughly where they are and the flow expectations we had from them was to be, based on their strong performance, to be in the flattish area, let’s say and I’d say that the results are in line with what we expected. Sorry, I can’t give more specificity around it but yes.
Patrick Davitt: And one quick follow-up. I know it’s early days but could you frame the opportunity with the Venerable partnership you just announced. Any kind of details you can give around the pool of AUM you’ll be open to the time line for transitioning that AAM to the Venerable branded funds, et cetera?
