Greetings. Welcome to the FHI Q4 2025 Analyst Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Ray Hanley, President of Federated Investors Management Company. You may begin.

Thank you for joining us. Today, we'll have brief remarks followed by Q&A, and leading today's call will be Chris Donahue, CEO and President of Federated Hermes, and Tom Donahue, Chief Financial Officer. And joining us for the Q&A are Sakhar Nasebi, the CEO of Federated, Chief Investment Officer for Money Markets. We'll make forward-looking statements, and we want to note that Federated Hermes actual results may be materially different than the results implied by such statements. Please review the risk disclosures in our FTC filings. No assurance can be given as to future results, and Federated Hermes assumes no duty to update any of these forward-looking statements.

We review Federated Hermes business performance. Tom will comment on the financial results. We ended the year with a record assets under management of $903 billion, led by gains in money market and equity strategies. During Q4, equity assets increased by $3.2 billion, or 3%, from the prior quarter, and about half of that increased coming from net sales. 2025 saw record gross equity sales of $31 billion, including $9 billion in the fourth quarter. Fourth quarter net equity sales were $1.5 billion. Our full year 2025 net equity sales of $4.6 billion showed substantial improvement from net redemptions of $10.7 billion in 2004. Equity sales results were driven by MDT fundamental quant strategies. MBT equity and market-neutral strategies had a record $4 billion of gross sales and over $2 billion in net sales in the fourth quarter. For 2025, MBT gross sales of $19.1 billion and net sales of $13 billion were both record highs. For Q1 through January 23rd, these strategies had net sales in combined funds and SMAs, of just under $700 million. Looking at MDT fund performance rankings after December 31st, six of nine MDT strategies are in the top performance quartile of their Morningstar categories for the trailing three years. Four strategies are in the top decile of their Morningstar category for the trailing three years. We had 24 equity and SMA strategies, equity fund and SMA strategies during the fourth quarter, including a variety of the MDT offerings, the AsiaXJapan Fund, and the U.S. Strategic Value Dividend ETF. The MDT U.S. Equity Usage Fund, launched in June of 2025, has seen strong demand from clients outside the U.S. with over $500 million in net sales from inception through year end. Looking at our equity fund performance at the end of the year and using Morningstar data for the trailing three years, 49% of our equity funds were beating peers, 27% were in the top quartile of their category. For Q1 through January 23rd, combined equity funds and SMAs had net sales of $432 million. Turning now to fixed income, assets ended the year at $100 billion, down $1.7 billion from the prior quarter. Fixed income had Q4 net redemptions of $2.8 billion, including about $1.7 billion from two large public entities that have regular, sizable inflows and outflows. These fixed income net redemptions included the $1 billion high-yield fund net redemption included in Q3's pipeline numbers. We had 28 fixed income funds and SMAs with net sales in Q4, led by the ultra-short funds of $624 million, total return bond of about $200 million, short-term income of over $100 million, and core plus SMA of almost $100 million. Regarding performance at the end of 2025 and using Morningstar data for trailing three years, 42% of our fixed income funds were beating peers and 18% were in the top quartile of their category. For Q1 through January 23, combined fixed income and SMAs had net sales of $139 million. Turning to the Alternative and Private Markets category, assets increased slightly and net sales were positive. The MDT Market Neutral Fund and recently launched ETF combined for $149 million of net sales. Positive net sales were also achieved in our European Direct Lending Fund III, Private Equity Funds and the Project and Trade Finance Tender Fund, partially offset by net redemptions in real estate strategies. We held the final close of our European Direct Lending III, the third vintage of our European Direct Lending Fund, this month. We raised $780 million, EDL I raised $330 million, and EDL II raised about $700 million. We are currently in the market with Global Private Equity Co-Invest Fund, the sixth vintage of the PEC series. To date, we've closed on approximately $300 million. The PEC series, PEC 1 to 5, raised approximately $400 to $600 million in each fund, and PEC 5 raised about $500 million. We're also in the market with the European Real Estate Debt Fund, a new pooled European debt fund. We are progressing towards the FCP acquisition to closing the FCP acquisition during the first half of 26. The acquisition will add U.S. multifamily housing expertise to our longstanding U.K.-based real estate capabilities. The U.K. real estate team was recently selected as the exclusive developer on a significant mixed-use development opportunity in Manchester in the U.K. This week, at the Asia Financial Forum, we announced plans to open a Hong Kong office to capitalize on the region's rapidly growing wealth market. Subject to regulatory and other necessary approvals, the planned Hong Kong office represents a strategic expansion as we deepen relationships across the Asia-Pacific region. The planned office will complement our existing regional offices in Singapore, Tokyo, and Sydney. Long-term investment platform, we began 2026 with about $2.7 billion in net institutional mandates yet to fund into both funds and separate accounts. Approximately $1.2 billion on a net basis is expected to come into private market strategies, including direct lending, private equity, and trade finance. Equities expected additions total $1.4 billion with about $1.3 billion into MDT strategies and $100 million into international and global equities. Fixed income is expected to have net sales of about $100 million into a low-duration strategy to money markets. We reached another record high at the end of 2025 for total money market assets, which increased by $30 billion to reach $683 billion. Money market fund assets increased by $16 billion, or 3%, in Q4 to reach a record high of $508 billion. Money market separate accounts increased by $14 billion in the fourth quarter, reflecting seasonal patterns. Market conditions remain favorable for cash as an asset class. In addition to the appeal of relative safety in periods of volatility, money market strategies present opportunities to earn attractive yields compared to alternatives such as bank deposits and direct investments in T-bills and commercial paper. Our estimate of money market fund market share, including sub-advised funds, was about 7% at the end of Q3, down from 7.1 at the end of Q3. Regarding digital asset efforts, we are advancing a series of strategic initiatives that bring together the strength of money market investment and operational expertise with efficiency and transparency of blockchain technology. with Archex, the first FCA-regulated digital securities exchange to offer tokenized usage money market funds, marks its first major non-U.S. digital asset initiative. The platform enables professional investors to hold beneficial ownership tokens across multiple blockchains and access money market liquidity directly on-chain. The ARCHEX relationship complements our U.S. digital efforts, where we have the sub-advisor for the super-state short-duration U.S. government securities fund, a private tokenized fund. We are also participating in the launch of a collaborative initiative between BNY and Goldman Sachs that will utilize mirrored tokenization of money market fund shares to improve transferability and ownership tracking of money market fund shares. projects in the U.S. and abroad, including the development of efforts for a genius-compliant money market fund and ongoing integration discussions with several leading firms developing digital technology for fully on-chain trading and settlement of tokenized share classes. We believe these efforts position the firm well for the digital transition as we work collaboratively with service providers and stakeholders on developing new standards for combining liquidity, investor protections, and blockchain-enabled capabilities for modern financial markets. Looking now at recent asset totals as of a few days ago, managed assets were approximately $909 billion, including $684 billion in money markets, $101 billion in equities, $101 billion in fixed income, $19.5 billion in alternative private markets, $3 billion in multi-asset. Money market mutual fund assets were at $500 billion.

For Q4, compared to the prior quarter, total revenue increased $13.4 million, or 3%. Revenue from higher money market assets provided $8 million of this increase, while higher equity assets added $5.5 million. Q4 revenue included $8.2 million of real estate development fees for projects that did not advance into construction and is recorded in the other service the line item Q4 carried interest in performance fees were 1.6 million compared to 3.6 million in the prior quarter approximately 570,000 of the Q4 fees were offset by nearly the same amount of compensation expense Q4 operating expenses increased by $7.3 million or 2% from the prior quarter due mainly to higher distribution expense of $8.8 million from higher fund assets. Transaction costs from the FCP acquisition were about $1.3 million in Q4, nearly all in professional service fees. Additional transaction costs in 2026 are estimated to be approximately $9.2 million. The timing of most of these costs is based on the transaction closing date, which is expected to be in Q2 of this year. Most of these costs will be lending consent fees in the professional service fee line item. In the other expense line item, F decreased by $3.1 million in Q4 compared to the effective tax rate to be in the 25 to 28% range for 26. $24 million cash and investments excluding the portion attributable to non-controlling interests were $680 million. We use $215.8 million in cash and $23.2 million in FHI Class B stock for the initial purchase price of the FCP Controlling Interest Act. Looking ahead to Q1, certain seasonal factors will impact results based on Q4 average asset levels. The impact of fewer days is expected to result in about $10.2 million in lower revenues and and about $2.6 million in lower distribution expenses. In addition, based on an early assessment, compensation and related expense is expected to be higher than Q4, primarily due to about $8 million of seasonally higher expenses for stock compensation and of course these line items and others, including incentive comp based on multiple factors. Holly, we would like to open up the call for questions now.

Certainly. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Your first question for today is from Ken Worthington with J.P. Morgan.

Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. First on distribution costs, if we look at distribution costs in the fourth quarter of this year compared to the fourth quarter of last year, they've jumped almost 25%, and essentially all of that is coming from money market funds. But if we look at money market funds, the assets grew just 10%. So what's going on and to what extent is there any sort of offset to these higher costs on the revenue side?

Ken, it's Ray. We had last quarter a significant amount of assets share class where there are higher than average distribution expenses and so that jumped by about $10 million last quarter in terms of both the distribution revenue and the related distribution expense I think that's the majority of the attribution for the Delta that you're speaking about as you know we have share classes with different distribution fee arrangements and so those kind of changes in mix can as far as offsets we do the

intermediaries we manage that the best we can but there's there's no real direct thank you and then this year I believe there's five higher profile PMs that are scheduled to retire can you talk about the transition of those PMs to the new leadership of those funds and any impact you think it will have with with your clients the succession for many many years and in it's on average

it's like you take someone who's been here 35 to 40 years and replacing them with someone who's been here from 25 to 30 years and so we don't look for any disruption in the investment management techniques performance and we look for some great enthusiasm and opportunities by the new people coming in who get to call the shots now, whereas for a quarter of a century they've been learning how it's done. And this is part of the methodology that we have used to bring in people at the lower levels, train them, and it's part of the guts of our franchise for all seasons for keeping this SHIP estate moving along Soutney waters.

Great.

Your next question is from Bill Katz with TD Cowan.

Great. Thank you very much. I just want to sort of refocus on the tokenization opportunity. I'm just sort of wondering if you could talk a little about what you're hearing from end demand from clients, if you can maybe break down your commentary between more of the institutional kind of investor versus the retail. and what milestones would you anticipate either regulatory legislative that we need to see to sort see a faster uptake in the opportunity set a little bit bill and then Debbie will comment on the end demand from clients it's not as robust as what you might expect from all the media and in fact all the work we're doing on it.

It's getting ready for tomorrow. And we expect this will be the way things go down the road. But the end clients are perfectly sanguine about using the current products in the current way. And when you ask about milestones, you've got to get lots of money moving into these things in addition to lots of work being done on how they're structured. Almost every week, there's another new structure and a new idea that is very intriguing. And this is what we're keeping our eyes on. And basically, we're working on all of them. And a milestone would be when you start to see real money moving into them. There could also be some regulatory things. And that's really hard to predict because you don't know what structures are going to obtain. And this is true both in the U.S. and globally. Maybe Debbie can talk to this, but when I was in Singapore and Hong Kong last year for the same event Debbie was, both of those government entities, Singapore and Hong Kong, were most anxious to be the tokenized headquarters for trading money funds. And And they were well down the road of organizing their government entities. But how much is in it and how much money is actually flowing there is another question.

Thanks Chris. So what we've identified in the U.S. so far from a use case perspective is generally on a distribution basis, diversification, and on a use case basis for collateral purposes and for margining purposes. both of which like the instantaneous settlement that is provided from a tokenized product, and ultimately the ability to sort of impact flows pretty quickly on a real-time settlement basis. In the context of the geographic diversification that Chris was talking about, certainly when we look at what is more an institutional use case that we've seen so far in the U.S., when we are in other parts of the world from our ARCHACS partnership to the work that we've been doing from an Asian perspective, so much, much more interest from what I'd call sort of the multifamily offices, and so that's where the retail side of it comes in. You know, our product outlook has many additional use cases, many additional benefits that accrue to the end user, so we feel like this is just the tip of the iceberg and that it will serve more purposes and more ultimate end-user clients it's just as Chris said a lot of you know sort of work and you know dissection of markets and underlying you know sort of strengths and and and the everything that needs to be put into place to keep these you know sort of high quality products that we

have in money market funds liquid and you know serving the purpose of all the end users all right thank you just a follow-up MDT has done very well for you for quite a while now and seems like it's off to a good start into the new year as well so maybe it's a two-part question what is the underlying driver of the demand and then secondly are there any capacity constraints as you look across that portfolio let's deal with the second one first capacity implies a number and we don't look at it exactly like that is a very complex question as to how to look at what you've raised and as we've done in other cases this is

rigorously analyzed by PM, CIOs, and everybody on the basis that how can we continue to offer the product with the kind of alpha that it's being offered in the environment. We do not see any so-called capacity constraints at this time or in the foreseeable future. Now Now on the other question about the demand, the demand is across the board. So far our enlivened sales force has been able to consult with a lot of people showing how the MDT various offerings and their pure style box discipline has caught on very well in the intermediary space. And as you've heard in my comments about big institutions also coming into this, it's also on the big separate accounts as well, and so the demand in short terms is both retail and institutional.

Yeah, Bill, if you look at the Q4 net sales into NDT strategies, about two-thirds of it It would be into the mutual funds and the newer ETFs, and the rest of it is institutional or SMAs, separately managed accounts, and within that fund applications.

Your next question for today is from Patrick Davitt with Autonomous Research.

Hey, good morning, everyone. Maybe one for Debbie. We're much further along in the Fed cutting cycle now, so curious to get your updated thoughts on what you're seeing in terms of the potential rotation from institutions into money funds and to what extent you think there's still a lot of room to run on that theme with the curve potentially steepening here this year. Thank you.

Problem, Patrick. You know, our outlook firm standpoint for 2026 is one rate cut by 25 basis points, taking the rate to three and quarter to three and a half from a Fed funds target range. You know, we feel like if we're wrong, we're wrong by having maybe two cuts instead of zero, so wrong on that side of the equation. But in either case, you're looking at an end, you know, sort of terminal rate that is north of 3% with a positively sloped curve that, you know, probably allows you to generate something in the order of, you know, 20 to 30 basis points on a government product basis above where the bottom of that range is. So, you know, middle 3% type of numbers for money market funds. And, you know, when you look at the low risk products, the high quality, the instantaneous liquidity and settlement that you get, especially if you're looking at the tokenized product aspect of it, you find that it's still very compelling from a use case perspective by both institutions, whose general other comparison outside of the fund industry is direct market security, so repo, treasury bills, commercial paper, where the positively-slowed yield curve should give the fund the advantage. And then on the retail side of the equation, if you've got a Fed cutting cycle or even a pause cycle, generally speaking, their other common type of product to use for liquidity purposes is bank deposits, and those are well below where a fund can generate a yield, especially in a three plus percent environment. So, we saw a lot of retail growth driving the 2024 double-digit gains in the market from an AUM standpoint. The institutional side kicked in in 2025 to help generate those double-digit gains again. And maybe we only get single-digit gains from an AUM standpoint in 2026, but our expectation is it's still pretty positive from an environment standpoint.

Thank you. And then on the expense side, it looks like you're seeing a lot of positive operating leverage on the compensation ratio in particular, which I assume is a function of the large scale of money fund inflows. Do you kind of frame how you think that can track in 2026? Do you think that operating leverage can continue, assuming flat markets?

Yeah, Patrick. Yeah, if we get the same 26, the comp will go up, but I think it won't be as fast like you started.

Your next question is from Dan Fannin with Jefferies.

Thanks.

Given the success of MDT, I was hoping you could talk about the product development or proliferation as you think about new products you know into this year and beyond and of what we've done on MDT the first thing really is to expand that the buckets or the wrappers that it's used for they began as an SMA shop overwhelmingly and had a few hundred million back in the acquisition of funds so it grew from just SMA and now it has a lot of funds so then you saw us go into the ETF, then the CIT format, and then we brought out the market neutral which is as a fund and now as an ETF. So you will continue to see us, seeing if there's more buckets or wrappers that we can use for MDT. And, oh, one I did mention in the remarks is offering it where? Overseas through a usage format. And a usage is basically Irish registered for available for sale UK, Europe, and other places. And that is one where, you know, we raised $500 million over a short year last year. So it's new wrappers, it's new markets, and it's repeat-to-sounding joy of their investment expertise.

Understood. And then, Tom, just as a follow-up in terms of what you mentioned for the first quarter, so we've got from fewer days, 10.2 lower of management fees, and then given the real estate fees in the fourth quarter and other revenues, Other revenues, we should assume that's also not recurring, kind of going into the 26th.

Unusual items, a couple million in Q1.

Okay, thank you.

Your next question is from Brian Bedell with Deutsche Bank.

Great, thanks. Good morning, folks. Thanks for taking the question. I made two questions, both on money markets. Maybe just the first. Debbie, can you remind us just the seasonality trends that we might see for flows in money market funds in the first half? I think we started with outflows early, a little bit of outflows early in January, if I'm not mistaken. And then, of course, we've got like tax season coming up. So maybe if you can just remind us of what you're expecting for the cadence of money fund flows for the first half of this year, just on a seasonal basis. ...month of the year from an inflow basis, and it's usually actually an outflow.

First quarter, similarly, the corporate tax date in March and then individual tax date flowing into the second quarter in April are generally big hits from a money fund AUM standpoint. And then the second half of the year is generally where the growth really picks up with December, you know generally again being the highest quarter from a you know sort of a year-end a year-end you know window dressing to some degree that is then reversed in in January what's what's interesting from a fund standpoint versus an other type of product standpoint so you know generally our separate accounts are state pools are in fact gathering money starting in the first quarter and going strong into the beginning of the third quarter, and then they have large outflows that occur later in the third quarter and in the fourth quarter.

So the two kind of nicely offset each other from our own AUM standpoint, which is a good thing but but from a strictly money market fund standpoint it gets better as the year goes on yep perfect thanks for that and then the second one just to follow up on the tokenization of money market funds and thanks for all the comments on that a bit of a multi-part question here but can you just describe in a little more detail the collaboration with Bank of New York and Goldman in terms of that mirroring process of tokenized money funds how that's different from how you're talking with your other potential clients on tokenization opportunities and then also on this on you know on a being a stable coin reserve manager as opposed to a tokenized money fund manager how do you see the opportunity for that role versus tokenized funds and I guess over the long-term, do you see the tokenization opportunity as incrementally additive to your money fund franchise or might, you know, for the industry that cannibalized existing money market funds?

That sounded like three questions and a comment at the end. We will do our best to trade upon decades and we would look at this effort along with other efforts like zero interest rates and like all of the competition that has come in over the decades, that we will continue to have higher highs and higher lows because the fundamental business is people have cash or have money that they want daily liquidity at par. And so that is the engine. Now, on the first of your questions, which was BNY and Goldman, I'm reluctant to get too close into the details of it, but I will say this. The way that is structured is you have a regular good old-fashioned money fund, and BNY Mellon basically looks at that money fund as the TA and works with Goldman with their platform and buys and creates tokens, and they treat the money fund just like a good old-fashioned regular money market fund. So from our point of view, it's tokenizing the process. The client sees a tokenized vehicle, but from the point of view of the fund, it's almost like business as usual. And I'll let Debbie comment on some of the others because maybe she remembers them.

Well, what I would say in addition to what Chris just mentioned with the BNY-Goldman collaboration is BNY is not only keeping its traditional books and ledgers on its books and records on a standardized ledger, but they are dual processing on the digital ledger. So it's a way of tiptoeing in the market and having both belts and suspenders attached to give underlying clients comfort that this process is in fact, you know, airtight and working the way it should be. So that's kind of the unique aspect of the BNY-Goldman collaboration at this point. At some point there will be, you know, the belt or the suspender will go away and it would just be the digital ledger where the books and records are maintained, but for this particular product, it's being doubly addressed. The part that you asked about stable coins versus a tokenized money market fund, because of the Genius Act and some of the other regulatory changes that occurred or elaborations that occurred in 2025, we have learned that stablecoins have to be backed 100% by some form of what is a defined type of collateral. That's where our Genius Act funds come into play. And what stablecoins are not allowed to do from a competition standpoint with those funds is pay an interest rate or pay a dividend. The stablecoins for us represent an additional client base for which the tokenized money market funds that are managed under the rules and regs of the Genius Act can be the collateral that backs those stablecoins to get the 100%.

Right, right. Without them being a competitor. Without being clear on computer, yep, yep, okay. Any sense of the number of entities that you're talking with now on the tokenization effort? I don't know if you can disclose that or not. Is it in the dozens? I'll take a pass on that one. Okay, yep, no worries at all. Thanks so much for the color.

Question for today is a follow-up question from Patrick Davitt. Your line is live.

Hey, thanks for the follow-up. I just wanted to clarify, the AUM numbers you gave are all as of January 23rd? Is that correct?

The AUM numbers are actually as of the net that we gave.

And then so I guess that would suggest then that the money funds have net inflows through the 28, but against the fund data showing like $9 billion of outflows. So I guess it's fair to assume that there's a big amount of separate account inflow?

Yes. Yes, that's correct, and it really is bucking the trend. It did it last year, it did it this year, and I think a lot of that has been influenced because of where the Fed has been and where we think they will be in 2026.

And one quick one, the 10.2 million fee decline, that's just management fees, not including the real estate?

Distribution fee. Got it.

And you – go ahead.

Thank you.

So the fees are by our development company MEPC in the UK. MEPC in our view is the leader in the things we call place development. We basically develop four clients who invest with us, estates, manage the buildings, rent them out, and when the time is right, sell them for them. and we've got a successful long-term track record of that throughout the United Kingdom. The two states that we are talking about are in the north of England. One is called Noma, and the other one is called Wellington Place. One is in Manchester, the other one is in Leeds. One is 500,000 square feet, the other is 1.4 million. Now, the skill of MEPC comes in two sides. The first one is the preparation for the development, and that's with close cooperation with the local government. the community. That's partly why we have such strong development potential and why we managed to let it. And the second one is the way we develop them in a way that makes them attractive spaces. So far, these have been office-based spaces and they've seen great success, particularly with the move of companies who move their offices, including some major US companies from London up north, and the government actually, which has done the same. In these two developments, two of our very large clients, institutional clients, wanted to pause putting more money into these same developments. So, because we've incurred some costs in getting the development of particular buildings, so the estate still exists, but buildings within them, because we've expended so much effort getting everything ready for the phase of actually building, they paid us the fees. but we still have the option to carry on. Our clients, as far as they're concerned, have an option to come back and ask for these to be participants in this, or we can find other clients who want to be participants in it because it's ready to go, which is an important phase, and that's half the difficulty of developing. At the same time, as Chris mentioned, we won a very major bid to do a development project also in the north of England, And this one with much more mixed, but towards living, in fact. So it's not offices, it's much more mixed, but towards living. And that's very exciting because that's part of the pivot towards living space and developing living space. And again, there's a huge demand in that part of the world. And the same skills apply, the ability of every PCR developer to work with the local government, the ability to get the permits, and then the ability to develop something which is actually attractive to the market, both for people to come into it and, of course, for the investors to get very strong returns out of it. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. I just want to go back to the $10 million. I just want to make sure I heard what you said exactly correctly. It's based on average AUM in the fourth quarter?

Yes.

Okay, so if end of period is 3% higher, it's something lower than that if we use end of period. Thank you. Thank you.

Your next question is from John Dunn with Evercore.

I wanted to ask, just given where we are in the cycle, kind of your appetite and also the potential and outlook for money market roll-ups.

The owner-operator of those other money funds. Over time, with increased regulation and increased oligopolization of this business, we have shaken out a lot of those money fund rollouts. Where they occur is when people are deciding to move a family of funds and they happen to have some money markets in them. Then those are opportunities. But as we've said before, if you're running even a smaller size money fund operation and you control the right to redeem, then you're not as worried about what you need to do for the future even if they aren't as economic as they may otherwise be. We have also seen it occur where in some of our bank trust clients where over the years maybe a family of funds or a family of money funds in the trust world doesn't make a lot of sense even though they do control the right to redeem and then they have new leadership and then all of a sudden we're back being looked at as a warm and loving home. In many of the deals we started in the 80s and 90s, and sometimes it takes them that long to mature. But there's no direct pipeline. You can't just put chapter and verse on it, but periodically they show up.

Got it. And then just maybe on the outlook for the strategic value dividend fund, you know, where do you think it goes from here from a flow perspective?

Well, the flows in all, if you add the whole thing of strategic value dividend, they are positive flows, even though the fund is down. And notice that the ETF is up. And what you ought to learn from that is that people are actually understanding exactly what that fund is. It's a dividend-oriented fund with a four-and-four approach. You get 4% dividend growth, 4% dividend, and they've been doing it for 25 years, and this is a good situation. So even though its Morningstar category rating is one side or the other, it is a very good, steady, long-term product. I think we're up to $36 billion in it overall, and we expect it to continue to grow.

And it's off to a very solid start so far in January through yesterday. It's up about 5.3%.

Great. Thank you very much.

We have reached the end of the question and answer session, and I will now turn a call over to Ray for closing remarks.

Well, that concludes our call, and we thank you for joining us today.

This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your phone lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.