Michael Angerthal: Yeah. And I would just add that to reiterate, the small and the SMID-cap has been a consistent area of growth. And on private client, we’ve really expanded. That had some good traction on that part of the business from Kayne Anderson Rudnick, as well as some fixed income flows that we saw from our team at Sykes. So you’re seeing it across affiliates, and it’s been a consistent area of growth for us, and it’s an area we’ve invested in and selectively added resources and has expanded its contribution to our AUM and is an important part of the growth that we see going forward.
Michael Cyprys: Great. And just in terms of capital allocation, how should we be thinking about, as we’re updating our models, buybacks, debt pay down? How are you guys thinking about this — about that? And maybe you could just remind us of any potential earn-out payments that will be a use of cash flow in the coming years.
George Aylward: Yeah. So in terms of the capital, again, currently at low levels of leverage, we generate significant cash flows. And as we look at in the quarter, we sort of do evaluate all the categories. One thing to highlight, as Mike had noted earlier, first quarter is one of our biggest cash utilization quarters. So if you look historically in terms of how we’ve deployed cash in the first quarter, you will generally kind of see that, because so much cash is used for the annual incentives which is our largest expense, that will then have an impact then on how much we might avail ourselves in other things. But we do view share buybacks as a great use of our capital and continue to have that as a priority. So I can’t give you any specifics, but it will be in the context of where we are in terms of our cash needs.
Michael Angerthal: Yeah. And just specifically, Michael, as you recall, the first quarter also does include a revenue participation payment annually. It’s been around the $25 million mark in the last several first quarters, so I’d expect it to be somewhere in that level. So in addition to annual incentive and other cash needs in the first quarter, we will be expecting to make that payment. And then I would note, in addition to the buybacks, we’ve obviously raised the dividend six consecutive years and have had a nice growth rate of the dividend of close to 30% in that period of time. And while we’ve done that, we’ve also reduced the share count, probably close to about 12% or 13% over that six-year period. So that balanced approach to capital management, you’re seeing it growing the dividend consistently and reducing the share count consistently over time. And we think all of that is ways to create value to shareholders.
Q – Michael Cyprys: Great. Just final question for me on M&A. I was hoping maybe you could elaborate a bit on the M&A pipeline and conversations that you’re having with prospective candidates in the marketplace. How would you sort of characterize those conversations today versus maybe six or 12 months ago? What are some of the properties that are coming across your desk, and where do you see some of the biggest opportunities for M&A at this point for Virtus?
George Aylward: Yeah. I think in terms of the conversations, again, the number of conversations and the frequency remains pretty consistent. I mean, there are a lot of conversations going on and — but I do think they’ve really become much more in terms of conversations and strategic fit and alignment of interest, and much less in terms of just auction processes. So we continue to be interested in many of the conversations that we’re having. But again, I think they are more in terms of trying to make sure it’s a good strategic fit. Specific areas where I think we’ve kind of alluded to, where we and others have interest in, is in some of those areas that are less of the traditional and more of the alternative types of strategies.
Our last two transactions were on the liquid alt side in terms of the AlphaSimplex, as well as the Event-Driven at Westchester. We continue to see that as an area to expand our offerings because we’re — I believe we’re very well represented on the equity and fixed income spectrum. So that is an area that we’re interested in. But we consider different alternatives and different opportunities as they arise. As I said before, for us, it’s always important that our long term growth strategies does not require M&A to be successful. So we do focus on the organic side, but we’re very excited about the number of opportunities that we do think could ultimately be out there, but only if they make sense for us and only if they are the right use of our capital at a point in time.
Michael Cyprys: Great. Thanks so much.
George Aylward: Thank you.
Michael Angerthal: Thank you.
Operator: This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Aylward.
George Aylward: Great. Thank you. So I want to just thank everyone for joining us today. And as always, we certainly encourage you to give us a call if you have any other further questions or need information. Thank you all. Have a great day.
Operator: That concludes today’s call. Thank you for participating and you may now disconnect.
