Hamilton Lane Incorporated (NASDAQ:HLNE) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Not all clients are equally attractive. And I think a lot of that is reflected in the margin of our business. We’ve got a better mix shift and that is kind of causing those margins and that operating leverage to be noticeable. And so I think it’s — the trend is not surprising. The fee pressure aspect that is existing is not surprising. I think it’s just been a question of what kind of a business have you built, what kind of an operating platform are you capable of running and can you pursue growth while at the same time maintaining attractive margin and profitability.

Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Mike Brown of KBW. Please go ahead.

Michael Brown: Great. Thank you. I just wanted to follow up on — maybe on that discussion there, maybe a little more specifically on the fee rate. So you called out how the blended fee rate has been improving over time, but it looks like this quarter, it did take a step back for both separate accounts and specialized funds. And I understand last quarter had more catch up fee dynamic. But is there anything else to call out there? And what are — any thoughts on how to think about next quarter or the go-forward beyond that?

Erik Hirsch: Sure, Mike, Eric. I think you’re going to just wash through the retro fee impact. And once you do that, if you sort of look at the fees in kind of three big components, so component one would be customized separate account fee. I think their fee rates have been relatively steady. It’s probably the part of the business that you do see more fee pressure. Bucket two, specialized funds. Those fee rates are incredibly steady. Our products are well established. They’re market leaders. And as a result, we’re sort of receiving at or above level kind of market fee rates. And then really, what’s driving the fees, frankly, if you look at a longer trend, kind of up into the right, is the Evergreen product. So it’s a higher fee rate than our other specialized funds and higher than the SMAs. And so when you look at just the growth of that Evergreen business, coupled with an increasing mix shift towards more specialized funds than Evergreen, that’s resulting in that longer-term trend of total fee rates moving up into the right.

Michael Brown: Okay. Great. Glad to hear that. And then just to change gears to the Evergreen platforms here. It’s obviously great to hear that you’ve been added to more wirehouses. What’s your expectation for maybe the balance of the year? Is there still a lot of dialogues happening where you could see more wins come through? And then based on either what you’ve seen historically or based on your expectations, how does it kind of ramp from there? How does the AUM growth ramp with a wirehouse addition? I imagine it’s still quite competitive in terms of shelf space, but just interested to hear your thoughts on that.

Erik Hirsch: Sure, Mike, Erik. I’ll stick with that. I think getting on those platforms is incredibly competitive. So getting on a top-tier, market-leading wirehouse is very different than simply getting access to an individual wealth management platform. And so accomplishing two of the leading wirehouses, I think, is a significant accomplishment for our platform. I think it’s sort of showing both the quality of the product, the quality of the performance and the fact that we have achieved kind of necessary scale for those wirehouses to feel confident that we’re able to continue to grow substantially from here. What the flows look like, I think, is to be determined. We’ll obviously be reporting on it quarterly. I think we’re very optimistic about the nature of the relationships.