Ryan Hicke: Yeah. I hope you’re doing well. So I think when you think about 2024, as I mentioned, part of it is, as I said, is some of the same, but if you jump off of Ryan’s question that he just had, we’ve really kind of turned our attention really in the middle of last year around our asset management businesses. If you kind of go through the last couple of years and you think about the businesses individually, what filled us on with IMS to continue to drive growth with existing and new clients, but also start to lay some groundwork for a larger business globally. Sanjay, I think has done a terrific job, as we’ve talked about, really executing a great play, both around solidifying that client base, rightsizing the expenses and now he is in growth mode, and that team is in growth mode.
And when you look at the asset management businesses, we made a couple of tough decisions around kind of the structure around rightsizing some of those businesses. But 2024 is really all about getting those businesses back to growth. We feel pretty strongly and we’re enthusiastic about the suite of capabilities that we have to go compete across a broader set of intermediaries than maybe we have in the past and across a broader set of institutional segments. And then another area you’re going to see us lean into is around new business. Around getting new organic businesses launched, doing some different things to incubate some ideas because we feel really positive about where we stand right now to kind of lean into some of those other areas and getting asset management back on track to really provide a tremendous amount of momentum.
Owen Lau: Got it. And then in terms of the margin direction comment and also investment for this year, you talked about margin expansion. Just — is this something that we should expect in 2024? Is there any — maybe the potential investment like AI that you could potentially reinvest if you kind of capture some of the upside in the business? Would you invest that upside? Or we should expect if AUM stay flat or go up a little bit, then we should expect margin expansion this year? Thanks.
Ryan Hicke: So I think we think about that in three different ways, if you take kind of your question, Owen, we have things going on with automation and AI in our technology stack, and our operational stack and in our asset management stack. So we are definitely doing things there. I don’t know if I would predict the outcomes of all of them. But to your point around expectations around margin expansion, we believe we can drive more operational leverage across this company through a couple of areas. One is about looking at our workforce and thinking about ways that we can actually leverage that talent across different areas I think as we’ve spoken about before, if you look at enterprise sales as a microcosm of things that we believe we can do across the company and position the company more horizontally, that manifests itself in other functions across SEI.
And I’ll be honest, there’s going to be a continued level of discipline around how we spend money, where we spend money, and we’re going to make sure that we continue to invest in our future, but run the business in a way where we believe that we can expand those margins on an ongoing basis. And I think the reason that the executive team and myself are excited about that is we like what we see with the sales activity. We like what we see with our ability to continue to install clients. So we feel like if we continue to drive the right sales momentum, and we have the courage and discipline to maximize the operating model as those sales come on to SEI for actual revenue, we think that will fall further to the bottom line.
Owen Lau: Sounds great. Thanks a lot.
Ryan Hicke: You’re welcome.
Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Next we’re going to the line for Mike Brown, KBW. Please go ahead.
Mike Brown: Hi, good evening. Thanks for taking my question. I guess I wanted to just touch on the investment managers business. This quarter, a good result there. It looks like there were some good client installs that helped quarter-over-quarter growth. Net sales activity is looking healthy as well. Can you just maybe touch on some of the growth potential for that business as we think about 2024 here, it seems like it’s got some great tailwinds, but just love to hear a little bit more about how to think about that business in 2024.
Ryan Hicke: Yeah, Mike, that’s a great question. Phil is in the room, so I’ll just let Phil answer that directly.
Phil McCabe: That sounds great. Hi, Mike. So quickly, as you said, sales were great this quarter, $17.2 million net. More importantly, year-over-year, they were up about 16%. So we’re seeing good traction there. Margins were 34.1%, but I think if you look at — without the write-down, they are closer to 37%. We’re investing heavily in the business and our technology. But as Ryan said, we’re also looking at automation and operational scale. So we’re trying to balance what we’re spending, and we’re trying to just build the platform out for our clients. As far as the overall pipeline, I don’t think cross-sales have ever been stronger. I mean, I think we’re in a great place with our clients. We’re in a great place with our solutions.
