Houlihan Lokey, Inc. (NYSE:HLI) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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But I’d say that, that’s why you have got this — going back to Brennan’s question, you have got this difference between half of the clients are probably optimistic about the next several months and half of them are a bit more pessimistic.

Jim Mitchell: Right. Okay. No. That’s helpful. And then just maybe circling back on the Restructuring, we have seen a pretty big pickup in debt issuance at least in the investment grade and even high yields in the public markets. Do you have to worry, I mean, you seem very confident in the Restructuring outlook. But if that continue — that spigot continues to open up, does that start to dampen things or are you pretty agnostic that, hey, there’s a lot of at least liability management that has to happen given the change in rates and we are not so concerned about whether they go to bankruptcy or not?

Scott Beiser: Yeah. In Restructuring when you get hired, the probability of getting to a closed conclusion is very, very, very high, much, much higher than the classical M&A. So we are obviously looking at the amount of business that we have signed up and even if interest rate environment improves, even if the economy improves, even if certain things happen, these are usually companies with a variety of issues. Part of it is their capital structure, part of it is their business model itself and so we have, I’d say, a reasonably good confidence level that a lot of that work will end up in a closed transaction in some normal time period and you typically do get paid along the way as well as a transaction fee. So I think the things you are talking about once again are on the margin and don’t appear to be altering the opportunity in the Financial Restructuring marketplace for ourselves and our competitors.

Jim Mitchell: All right. Great. Thanks. Thanks for the help.

Operator: And we will go to a follow-up question from Brennan Hawken with UBS.

Brennan Hawken: Hey. Thanks for taking my follow-up. Just maybe a little — similar to my initial question, but a bit more tactical approach. In your prepared remarks, you spoke to the typical December quarter seasonality not really being there. So how should we think about your fiscal fourth, time lines are stretching, which is a bit similar to your — the prior setup, but the financing has loosened marginally a little. So how are you thinking that, that could play out and should we count on some seasonality here in the March quarter?

Scott Beiser: So I will give you the positives and negatives, and then the positive, in theory, any of the deals, as I mentioned, where some lenders potentially just didn’t want to have something on their books by December 31st might be inclined to get something done in this March quarter. Houlihan Lokey, which is a March fiscal year-end, so we tend to have an internal push different than some of our other peers for December 31st. So all that’s a positive fact pattern. The negative fact pattern is, unfortunately, I think, for most of calendar 2022, our expectations starting in the beginning of the month. We are always a bit optimistic relative to where we ended up at the end of the month and in contrast, just the opposite happened in calendar 2021.

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