Chad Abraham: Yes. I would honestly say it’s probably somewhere in between there. We made some — I made some comments just about the total overall fee pool across the Street. It was a good quarter for ECM. We definitely had a good quarter. We had some outsized biotech performance. I would say we have a really good backlog there, as I think obviously people can see our deal logic numbers. If I think about April, we’re probably still on that same kind of run rate for ECM. But this isn’t a business where we have visibility six months out. It depends on what happens with the equity markets and the mood of investors that particular week. But I think based on what we’re seeing now and the deals we’re doing, we feel pretty good. We feel pretty good about that environment.
And I would say, we’ve just started to see across some of the other industry teams, a little more activity in IPOs, a little more activity in energy. We were on an IPO in financials, so a little bit of discussion around broadening to some of the industries, but that’s going to be very tied to the overall market. So I mean, if we get some big negative correction, that’s never good for the mood of new issues.
Brendan O’Brien: That’s great color. Thank you for taking my questions.
Operator: And we’ll take the next question from James Yaro with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
James Yaro: Hey. Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. Chad, these were excellent advisory results and I think especially strong versus the publicly available data. Maybe you could just help us understand some of the moving parts here. I know you talked about higher fees, but maybe just on the other businesses within advisory, aside from M&A, such as restructuring and then I guess other advisory and perhaps the outlook for these. And then secondly, do you feel more or less comfortable about the cadence of the advisory build versus the beginning of the year when we had five or six rate cuts in expectations?
Chad Abraham: Yeah. So maybe just a few comments on Q1 advisory. We had a — one business we’re incredibly proud of right now is our energy business, that obviously we did the Simmons deal in 2015 and we’ve had various cycles, but I would say relative to peers, some people that really cut back in energy, we stayed pretty committed and we’ve really broadened that out. Obviously, we got a lot of history in oilfield services, but we’re doing a lot in E&P and development. We’re doing a lot in our midstream and that business and frankly, now in energy transition. So we got a great, great pipeline in energy, but also had pretty balanced, I think, healthcare and financials and industrials, they were all about the same size. So we’re just benefiting from that diversification.
As far as the cadence, like I said, while the results were good on a peer basis and versus last year, still relatively depressed levels. And that’s not getting a lot better anytime quick. It’s getting better and it’s improving, but it’s a pretty slow pace. Can I see a noticeable difference in the last few weeks with sort of the different inflection points on rates? Probably not, but it obviously can’t be great for the business. So I think our conclusion and based on our pipeline is private equity has definitely picked their head up. They’re definitely — we’re definitely seeing more pitches. We’re definitely starting more processes and we’ll definitely continue to see an improvement. But I think like we’ve been saying, it’ll be a slow improvement.
James Yaro: Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Maybe just on non-comps, you did demonstrate strong non-comps discipline again this quarter. Maybe just an update on the outlook for non-comp costs for the rest of the year.
Kate Clune: Good morning, James. This is Kate. So for non-comps, we kind of reiterate our guidance of that $62 million per quarter, excluding those reimbursed deal expenses. We remain really committed to a lot of discipline in that space and want to ensure we’re controlling the expenses that we’re able to control. That being said, we’ve seen a little bit of a pickup in terms of T&E expense, as expected, and there’s going to be continued pressure as it pertains to things like datacom services and occupancy. So again, maintaining that discipline around the areas we can control, consistent guidance with that $62 million a quarter, excluding those deal expenses, and really focused on maintaining that debt level.
James Yaro: Okay. Really appreciate it. Thank you.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] We’ll take our next question from Michael Grondahl with Northland Securities. Please go ahead.
Michael Grondahl: Hey, thank you. Hey, Chad. When you talked about, recruiting and kind of having five to seven banking MDs ready to go for 2Q and 3Q, could five to seven end up proving low? Is that something kind of coming out of your messaging there, that this could be sort of a higher level than that by the time we get to 2024?
Chad Abraham: Yeah. I mean, the reason we sort of said the five to seven is typically it’s sort of 90 to 100 days to onboard. There’s garden leave. There’s the various sectors. That’s sort of the group we have lined up today. Now we happen to be in sort of the heavy recruiting season. Could it be a couple higher than that? Maybe, but the chances of adding people the later we get into the year is less. But I would say compared to a normal year, particularly on the banking side, yeah, we’ve done a little bit more than we normally would by this time in May. So we feel pretty good about — we feel pretty good about where we’re going to be with those adds towards the end of the year.
