Devin Ryan: Got it. Okay. Terrific color. Thanks, Ken. Just a quick follow-up on just the M&A market more broadly and just want to get a little more texture around on how you guys are feeling, maybe today relative to three months ago, one hand, I think October was a better month than we’ve seen in some time for announcements and some larger deals within that. But the tone has been a bit better at the same time. There’s still kind of a fair amount of macro, uncertainty. So, love to just get a little defensive, whether you’re seeing kind of maybe more activity your sponsors engaging more than they were a few months ago, and just what the general tone is appreciating that, it’s still pretty complex and dynamic backdrop. Thanks.
Ken Moelis: Yeah, so you’re going to ask me how I felt today versus two days ago? Let me say there’s our backlog. Our pipelines are extremely strong. And let me — about a year ago, I think we talked about having a decent pipeline, but I described it as fragile. And I think I felt it was fragile, because it was a pipeline gathered during a better interest rate environment that was then facing a bad financing market. And so that you just knew you were fragile, whether it involved SPACs or all the kinds of things that were going to be eliminated. At this point, I feel like the pipeline is actually very strong. There is an enormous amount of deal backlog that wants to hit the market. And I’ve been saying my new analogy for the market is I’ve stopped, I don’t like the green shoots analogy, because I said the FED has a big weed killer.
And so I don’t know how you manage your green shoots when somebody could just destroy your crop at any moment. But especially as of yesterday, I feel like this market is more in the yield forgive me, I fell in love with drive to survive during COVID. I’m not a real Formula One fan. But it feels more like that market where as of yesterday, my favorite part of the show is when the red lights go down. There five red lights if you haven’t watched it, and then the race starts. But the noise and the amount of energy that’s pent up as the lights click is always very exciting. The cars are on the track, the engines are revving everybody is waiting to go but you can’t move till the fifth light goes down. And it feels to me that yesterday. That was the fourth light clicking off meaning that the FED felt like they’re getting to the end, there was a real signal yesterday that we are extremely close to the end.
And I do think the pipeline will take off. As soon as that last red light goes off. And it’ll be quick. And it’ll be fast. And there will be a lot of activity.
Devin Ryan: Okay great. Got to get back and watch that. But [multiple speakers]
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Ken Worthington with JP Morgan. Ken your line is open.
Ken Worthington: Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. You’re losing money year-to-date; do you expect to lose money for the year? Unless there’s a meaningful improvement in deal activity? And does this matter?
Ken Moelis: I think we probably lose money. Because even if the deal activity starts tomorrow, you’re not going to see the closings till the first quarter or the second quarter. We have what we have, plus or minus a very little bit from here to the year end. And doesn’t matter. Sure, it matters. I mean, I’m not — but what we decided to do was recreate, a firm that faces I mean, a half of the 27 Managing Directors were in the technology hire at a Silicon Valley Bank. It’s a fee pool that will be extremely large and relevant for years to come. And look, we didn’t — we don’t get to capitalize it. We might have bought talent that equals 20% of our firm. And there’s no capitalization of that cost and runs right through our income statement.
