PJT Partners Inc. (NYSE:PJT) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Jim Mitchell: Okay. That’s helpful. And maybe for Helen, just to make sure I heard correctly, it seemed like you guys had a few large transactions closed in early January, but I think your pull forward comment was $8 million, is that correct?

Helen Meates: That is correct. Yeah. That’s correct.

Jim Mitchell: Okay. And Paul, do you have any — you commented on the Restructuring business sort of a second quarter event. You talked about Park Hill being starting off week and getting better. But how do we think about any visibility on the Strategic Advisory into the beginning of the year and how is the case

Paul Taubman: It’s — honestly, it’s hard — it’s really hard to tell. I mean that’s just the one where I have the least confidence, particularly trying to talk about how it’s going to be quarter-to-quarter other than sort of state the obvious, which is, if you think about last year, last year started down, but respectively down and then inflected further. My gut is that this will look sort of as the mirror image of that, which is soft but building and I think that probably is a good read across to how I would expect our business to be. I just don’t have the same precision, because the world is more unsettled for M&A than it’s been. And when we are in a recovery phase, trying to pick the exact recovery, when you were at a stasis, when you are in like a regular cadence of activity, it’s easy to sort of see it.

But when you are either seeing it turn down or turn up, trying to see how that matches to revenue recognition is a little bit more challenging. But I had to say, all of the

Jim Mitchell: Got it.

Paul Taubman: It should be, if you ask me to go to Las Vegas and put a bet, I’d say second half is a lot stronger than the first half.

Jim Mitchell: Right. Right. Okay. I appreciate the help. Thanks.

Paul Taubman: Okay.

Operator: We will take our next question from Matt Moon with KBW. Please go ahead.

Matt Moon: Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions.

Paul Taubman: Absolutely.

Helen Meates: Hi.

Matt Moon: So just one on Park Hill. I am just curious on the environment there. Very clear on the fourth quarter impacts. But you did say 2022 was a record year for the overall Park Hill business, which given the place for GP performance, I think, it would suggest a strong level of secondaries activity. So with this in mind, I am just kind of curious on the environment as we start 2023 on this front kind of the impact specific to a New Year on the side of the businesses, GPs and LPs kind of reset? And then kind of just secondarily on the other side on placement revenues, I didn’t hear your comment on placement revenues to be down $30 million to $40 million or is that to come in at $40 million in the first quarter?

Helen Meates: So, first of all, I’d just get back to placement. We did highlight the fact that corporate placements were down significantly in Q4. So you can attribute that decline to Pack Hill. So when we say Park Hill was up year-over-year, it was up in both secondary and in the primary business. So that would be the first thing. And then, secondly, just looking at Q1, given the timing of what we see coming in Park Hill, we see it being down significantly year-over-year, last year was a record Q1 for Park Hill. So that would be down $30 million to $40 million year-over-year.

Paul Taubman: But just for the first quarter, with recovery for the rest of the year.

Matt Moon: Understood. Understood. And then one of your competitors also cited kind of a strong year in 2022 as it relates to shareholder activism that persisted from the 2021 level. So just kind of curious on what you are seeing with respect to Camberview, what you saw in the year and kind of how we should kind of consider the environment for that business as we enter 2023 as well?

Paul Taubman: Yeah. I think as I was mentioning in my remarks, turbulent environments play well for shareholder engagement, right? You have companies with dislocated share prices who may look for help on strategic IR to better position their story with investors to try and figure out how to get the right investors in. They may be vulnerable to an activist taking a position or creating a distraction for the company. So all of that creates a more productive environment for shareholder engagement. When times are good, it’s probably less top of mind than when you are dealing with the dislocated equity market. So I think just as our Restructuring business benefits from a more challenging environment. I think it also has a read across to our shareholder engagement initiatives.