StepStone Group Inc. (NASDAQ:STEP) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Michael Cyprys: And if I could just follow-up there just on that point, if you were to look out longer term, I don’t know, maybe 5 years or 10 years, I guess where could that margin be longer term for your business? What’s appropriate? If we look at some peers out there seem to be meaningfully higher. So, I guess maybe you could help remind us what’s different in terms of your business profile relative to peers that results in a little bit of a different lower margin profile? But at the same time, as you continue to scale and grow the retail business, I imagine that has pretty high incremental margins. So, maybe you could kind of help to flesh that out. Thank you.

Mike McCabe: Sure. I think our outlook remains unchanged there in terms of what our guidance has been. But you are right, I think the opportunities are there, and we continue to see our margins improve. But I don’t think we have a specific target or an outlook on any timeframe.

Scott Hart: And I think it just comes back to the comment, Mike, you made earlier about the balance between growth and profitability. And you touched on it, Mike, in terms of the private wealth business and how we have built out that team, even in advance of the fundraises and the growth that we are now benefiting from. But that’s a sort of tried and true approach that we have taken, when you look at the size and the seniority of the teams that we have built across each of the infrastructure, real estate, private debt asset classes. And again, have benefited from the growth that we are seeing in those areas as well. So, I think it does come down to sizable investments in our team to drive what we think the future growth opportunities will be.

Michael Cyprys: Great. Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Alex Blostein with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.

Alex Blostein: Hi. Good afternoon everybody. Thanks for taking the question. Scott, I was hoping we could build a little bit on your discussion around secondaries and appreciate we talked quite a bit about it already, but the supply side of the equation makes kind of sense, both on the LP side and the GP side. I was hoping you could comment on the demand side of the equation and why wouldn’t the same sort of denominator effects that are plugging in a way some of the primary allocations impact the secondary ones as well, right, or do people carve it out, do people think of that as sort of part of their private equity allocation and therefore, fundraising might be a little bit more challenging there despite the fact that the opportunity set clearly seems to be growing?

Scott Hart: Yes. So, look, it’s a fair question. I think that’s why as I have made the comments earlier about our time, both as an LP, but also the GP out there fundraising. We €“ as we talked about our in market with our secondaries fund, I think there is a tremendous amount of interest in the strategy and have an established traffic or in practice there, but the denominator effect is real. And in some cases, that has led to things just taking longer than you might have otherwise expected. But the other thing is, again, I made the comments about, we have been working with our clients late last year and early this year in terms of setting their new allocations for the year ahead. Obviously, rolling into a New Year doesn’t do anything to the denominator effect, but it tends to be the time when LPs reset their budgets.