Gary Barancik: Hi, James, it’s Gary. I’ll take those questions. We don’t comment on the cadence forward-looking repurchases. What we’ve kind of said in the past, and it’s really true, as we do look at a number of factors. You saw — if you look at last year, for example, if you saw the cadence from the time the announcement, it was heaviest in the second quarter, which is when our stock price was kind of at a much lower place. So obviously, that is one factor. We look at our overall cash needs, cash balances, other needs for investment. And we’re mindful of liquidity in our stock as well. We want to make sure that we have sufficient liquidity that we can attract new investors into the name. So those are all things that we think about when we consider the cadence of it.
In terms of cash balances, again, we haven’t provided an explicit target on what that minimum is. You can kind of look at — if you look at historically quarter-by-quarter where we’ve been, and you look at cash net of accrued comp liability, which is the biggest seasonal factor that we have, you can kind of get some sense of where that number has hovered around it. At year end, for example, we have $312 million of cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities, and net of those accrued comp liability, that number was about 100 million at that time. And so obviously, we have working capital needs, we have — want to keep some dry powder for just both changes in the market condition opportunities and so forth. But that’s kind of where we end of the year.
James Yaro: Okay. Thank you both for taking my question.
Gary Barancik: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question will come from Steven Chubak with Wolfe Research. Your line is open.
Steven Chubak: Hi, good morning. So, Andrew, I was hoping that you might provide as a follow-up to Devin’s earlier question, just some additional color on some of the assumptions underpinning that $1 billion revenue target. It didn’t sound like you provided any explicit timetable for when you could get there. I was hoping you could just speak to your expectation around industry see full growth that would support that target, and your partner growth and productivity per partner, just trying to get sense as to like the same store versus new store dynamics that are underpinning that target?
Andrew Bednar: Yes, sure. So as I mentioned, it’s not a time based target. It is something that we are working on. And usually when we set an objective, it’s post based around here. So, our expectation and hope is that we drive to those targets as quickly as possible. But we have not set a specific time requirement against it. I think it’s just important as we evolved from private partnerships, now, public enterprise, and we have a broad group of stakeholders, even though the partnership and employees own 51% of the firm, it’s important to have these cuts and metrics for our public stakeholders. So that was a key reason why we wanted to set that objective. I think in terms of how we get there? We will continue to drive partner productivity, but also our MD productivity, which has been significantly improving over the years as we’ve made — select hires.
And we’ve also I think, done a better job at developing our non-partner talent. We also have six major industry groups, and if you think about contribution from each of those groups that 150 million plus we can see getting to our $1 billion target. And with respect to adding additional client coverage, as I said, upfront, our plan on hiring is about increasing our client footprint. We view ourselves as a small firm with a big brand, and we have a tremendous opportunity to acquire talent and add talent to our platform that does consistent with our values and can help us drive our business and achieve those revenue metrics that I on.
Steven Chubak: Really helpful color, Andrew. And for my follow-up, maybe for Gary, just trying to understand some of the comps dynamics a bit better and how we should think about the outlook for comp from here? And I wanted to frame in the context of the original SPAC presentation that you provided. It had three year management forecasts. And interestingly, the 2022 revenue bogey that you outlined at that time, maybe it wasn’t a guide or objective, but at least an indication as to what that revenue trajectory might look like was actually similar to what materialize this year, at around 630 some odd million or so. And you indicated in that environment, you could sustain a 64% comp ratio, and moderate the pace of non-comp growth.
So recognizing that it is a tougher inflationary backdrop, it’s just not clear to us what factors have limited your ability to manage both the comps. And based on the outlook you just provided, some of the non-comps a bit better versus what was contemplated in some of those original targets. So I was hoping for some additional context there.
Gary Barancik: Yeah, see, I guess one — just one point to clarify it at the time. This is like 2021 when we were prior to this SPAC transaction we were providing some estimates for sections. We were very clear that our comp ratio targets for the mid-term was mid-60s. We had to pick point estimates just to illustrate something in the projections. And that was kind of the best view that we had at the time. So we’re today in a market environment that we can actually see what environment we’re in today. We know kind of where we are in partners, how many new partners around the platform, and kind of where they are. We know, it’s competitive environment, it’s like to attract and retain people. And so, that we made that judgment for this past year.
On a prospective basis, as I think Andrew made a comment earlier, we’re not deviating from that mid-60s guidance, but where we land exactly is going to — it’s going to reflect the environment and kind of where we see things. And obviously, when we report our first quarter results, we’ll need to put a stake in the ground on our best view at the time on where will we be going for the full year. We don’t have that today. But obviously will on our next earnings call.
Steven Chubak: Helpful color guys. Thanks so much for taking my questions.
Andrew Bednar: Thank you.
Gary Barancik: Thanks, Steve.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question will come from Matt Moon with KBW. Your line is open.
Unidentified analyst: Good morning, guys.
Andrew Bednar: Good morning.
Gary Barancik: Good morning.
