Patria Investments Ltd Q3 FY2024 Earnings Call

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Patria Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Rob Lee, Head of Shareholder Relations. Rob please go ahead. Thank you. Good morning everyone and welcome to Patria's third quarter 2024 earnings call. Speaking today on the call are our Chief Executive Officer, Alex Saigh; our Chief Financial Officer, Ana Russo; and our Chief Economist, Luis Fernando Lopes for the Q&A session. This morning, we issued a press release and earnings presentation detailing our results for the quarter, which you can find posted on the Investor Relations section of our website or on Form 6-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This call is being webcast and a replay will be available. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that today's call may include forward-looking statements which are uncertain, do not guarantee future performance, and undue reliance should not be placed on them. Patria assumes no obligation and does not intend to update any such forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on current management expectations and involve risks including those discussed in the Risk Factors section of our latest Form 20-F annual report. Also note that no statements on this call constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to purchase an interest in any Patria fund. As a foreign private issuer, Patria reports financial results using International Financial Reporting Standards or IFRS as opposed to U.S. GAAP. Additionally, we would like to remind everyone that we will refer to certain non-IFRS measures, which we believe are relevant in assessing the financial performance of the business, but which should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for measures prepared in accordance with IFRS. Reconciliations of these measures to the most comparable IFRS measures are included in our earnings presentation. Now, I will turn the call over to Alex. Alex?

Thank you, Rob and good morning everyone. The third quarter of 2024 was an exciting quarter for Patria as robust organic fundraising of over $2 billion in the quarter and more than $4.2 billion year-to-date through the end of the third quarter put us on track to meet or exceed our $5 billion fundraising target for 2024. Additionally, over the last 12 months, through the end of the third quarter, we raised over $5.6 billion, all organically. This highlights how the increased diversification of our platform and the investments we are making in distribution and new product development are translating into stronger and more diverse growth for the firm, leaving us very excited about what lies ahead. Now, let me quickly summarize our third quarter results before we move on to some of the fundraising and other highlights for the quarter. Management fees reached approximately $78 million for the quarter, up 26% year-over-year, while fee-related earnings reached almost $41 million, representing year-over-year growth of close to 13%. Fee-related earnings per share in the quarter was $0.26, up more than 65% since 2021. We delivered close to $35 million of distributable earnings in the quarter or $0.23 per share. Next, while we did not realize any performance fees in the quarter, we continue to generate attractive long-term investment returns for our clients, and we feel good about our potential to generate performance fees over the coming quarters. The net accrued performance fee balance of $455 million or $2.97 per share increased slightly sequentially due to both performance and foreign exchange movements. As a reminder, our Infrastructure Fund III with about $96 million of net accrued performance fees is already in its catch-up phase, and we have returned close to $2 billion to investors in our infrastructure funds since the start of 2023. Fee-earning AUM of almost $34 billion rose 9% sequentially and 58% year-over-year. And we believe we have a line of sight into solid organic growth into the fourth quarter and 2025. The sequential increase was driven by strong fundraising plus the addition of $2.2 billion, mainly from the final transition of Credit Suisse real estate assets, the closing of the Nexus transaction in Colombia, and the positive investment performance and foreign exchange. These inflows were partially offset by our continued robust pace of returning and recycling capital back to investors through realizations and distributions, an important positive attribute of our business in an industry that has struggled to return capital back to limited partners. Also, our redemption rate on fee-earning AUM continues to moderate as most of our assets are in long-dated locked up capital structures. And as the proportion of our fee-earning AUM in permanent capital vehicles continues to increase and now accounts for more than 20% of assets, up from practically 0 at the time of the IPO. Our growing and increasingly diversified base of fee-earning AUM of almost $34 billion, coupled with solid fundraising and tight expense controls give us confidence that we remain firmly on track to deliver our fee-related earning targets of $170 million in 2024 and $200 million to $225 million in 2025. On a per share basis, this is $1.10 to $1.12 in 2024 and $1.26 to $1.41 in 2025, and reflects year-over-year growth at the midpoint of 12% and 20% for 2024 and 2025, respectively. In keeping with our updated capital management strategy announced last quarter, we declared a $0.15 per share dividend for the quarter. As a reminder, we will pay $0.15 per share of dividends through the fourth quarter of 2024. We also finished the quarter with a 12-month rolling debt to FRE ratio of approximately 1x. We look forward to updating everyone on our capital management strategy at our December 9 Investor Day in New York. Overall, our financial results and strong fundraising is evidence that our strategy to diversify and grow our business both organically and inorganically is paying off. It's been less than four years since our IPO, but in that time we have greatly expanded our regional and global investor base and distribution capabilities and have significantly diversified our investment and product platforms. Evidence of our progress against our strategic initiatives can be seen in the fact that over $4 billion of our fundraising year-to-date has come in strategies and/or product structures that we did not offer at the time of our IPO. Also, one of our key initiatives since our IPO has been to become the premier gateway for local investors to invest in locally managed alternatives to take advantage of financial deepening, consolidation into the industry, and to better serve the many regional institutional investors who are limited in their ability to invest outside the region. Our early success with this initiative is reflected in the fact that about 40% of our fundraising year-to-date has come from local investors within Latin America investing in local products that we manage compared to virtually zero at the time of our IPO. As a result of our diversification strategy, we are now better positioned than we have ever been to be the go-to provider of alternative products within Latin America for both local and global investors and grow our business as Limited Partners look to consolidate the number of managers they do business with. Now let's have a closer look into our investment verticals. First, our Real Estate platform is generating strong growth and greatly enhances the resiliency of our business. Even before we completed the third quarter, our acquisitions of the Brazilian Real Estate Investment Trust business of Credit Suisse and the Nexus Real Estate business in Colombia, our Real Estate Fee-Earning AUM had grown almost threefold from $1.3 billion in the second quarter of 2022 or since our initial investment in VBI to $3.9 billion at the end of the second quarter of 2024. In just over two years, the combination of acquisitions and organic growth has driven our Real Estate Fee-Earning AUM to over $6 billion, approximately 90% of which is permanent capital. Patria is now the largest independent Real Estate Investment Trust manager in Brazil, a market that we believe remains right for consolidation and affords meaningful growth opportunities through new product launches, as well as secondary offerings. In addition, there is the opportunity for additional long-term growth in fee-earning AUM through investment performance. Credit is another positive story that exemplifies the progress we are making on our strategic priorities. Credit fee-earning AUM have reached $6.5 billion, up 43% since the end of 2022 on the back of strong organic net inflows of over $760 million and market appreciation and foreign exchange of approximately $1.2 billion, as these strategies also earn fees on net asset value. The approximately $450 million of credit assets raised in the quarter was led by $190 million that flowed into our leading High Yield Latin America strategy. As highlighted in the earnings presentation, this strategy has outperformed its benchmarks across virtually all time periods, and we see a long runway for growth in our credit business given the combination of our strong investment performance and a large addressable market in which there is very low investor penetration. We are also excited about the successful launch of several new private credit strategies, such as our Infrastructure Private Credit Fund in Brazil launched with the support of development banks such as the IFC and the BNDEs as anchor investors and our US dollar-denominated Latin America Private Credit Fund. Even though it remains early days, our GPMS solutions business with over $10.3 billion of fee-earning AUM is off to a great start, having raised over $1.8 billion in the second quarter and the third quarter since we closed on the acquisition of the Abrdn Solutions Business with momentum continuing into the fourth quarter. Fundraising high points in the third quarter for GPMS include a Private Equity SMA of over $900 million and an initial closing of $100 million for our next vintage commingled fund. Including additional closings early in the fourth quarter, fundraising for our next vintage commingled fund has reached over $190 million. Our early success in these new vertical highlights our ability to bring new solutions to our clients, grow in the very attractive high-growth secondaries and solutions market, and reach a global investor base. With regard to our infrastructure strategies, we have returned to investors close to $2 billion of capital from our funds since the start of 2023, and Infrastructure Fund III, which is in its catch-up phase, is expected to generate performance fees over the coming quarters, depending on the pace of realizations. In addition, within Infrastructure, we see significant deployment opportunities across Latin America and global interest in infrastructure within the region, possibly best exemplified by the MOU we signed with the Saudi's Ministry of Infrastructure last quarter to be one of their infrastructure investment partners in Latin America. Within Private Equity, realization activity remains constrained, as it does across the industry, but we are very pleased with the underlying performance of our portfolio companies, which in the aggregate grew EBITDA 20% over the past year organically. We also continue to focus on our platform strategy and the ample deployment opportunities we see in front of us. In particular, however, we are very excited about the signing of a $500 million MOU for an SMA with an Asian sovereign wealth fund to invest directly in both our Private Equity and Infrastructure funds, as well as co-investment opportunities in both strategies. This new long-term relationship also highlights our premier positioning as a gateway into Latin America for sophisticated global investors. We are very proud that our strong fundraising highlights our enhanced product geographic and investor diversification allowing us to raise capital and perform across different macroeconomic environments. This makes us less dependent upon shifting fundraising cycles in individual asset classes or markets and enhances the resiliency of our business and long-term growth. Relative to the time of the IPO, there is clear evidence that Patria today has materially improved its revenue visibility and predictability, significantly strengthening our business. Overall, we are very excited about our outlook and the progress we have made on our various strategic initiatives in the short time since our IPO. We look forward to providing you with a deeper look into our platform and strategy and updating investors on our new three-year plans at our December 9 Investor Day in New York. Now, let me turn the call over to Ana to review the financials.

Thank you Alex, and good morning everyone. As Alex mentioned, the highlight of the quarter was our robust fundraising led by our new platforms. We believe our diversified fundraising momentum is sustainable, helping us build and strengthen our base of fee-earning AUM and management fee growth supporting our confidence in our 2024 and 2025 guidance. Let's review our third quarter results and the building blocks to reaching our FRE guidance for the remainder of the year. Net fee revenue in the third quarter reached $75.9 million and $207.6 million year-to-date, up 28% and 19% respectively. The main drivers were the multiple acquisitions we concluded over the past year of which two of the most impactful were the acquisition of the Global Private Market Solutions business from abrdn and the Brazilian REIT business of Credit Suisse. We also generated strong growth in our credit fee-earning AUM as a result of solid inflows and investment performance. As Alex mentioned earlier, our robust fundraising was partially offset by our success in returning capital to our investors through realizations and distributions. Private Equity Fund IV also had its planned step down in fee-earning AUM in the quarter. We do not expect any additional notable fund step downs in 2025. As we diversify our business and onboard new platforms and investment strategies, our management fee rate continues to evolve. For example, our fee rate in 2023 was about 1.21%, compared to an average fee rate of 0.96% year-to-date and 0.94% in the third quarter. In the earnings presentation, you can see that we fine-tune our disclosure of the average management fee by platform to help you understand the development of our effective fee rate, which can move around noticeably quarter to quarter depending on mix. It is important to mention that our fee rate is being driven by the growth in our newer platforms vis-à-vis private equity and infrastructure. As highlighted by our year-to-date fundraising, we believe these platforms have significant growth prospects, and many of our newer strategies are permanent capital and/or earn fees on market values or NAV. This provides the long-term opportunity to compound our fee-earning AUM and related management fee revenues with investment performance, as evidenced by the robust investment returns generated by credit that positively impacted fee-earning AUM in the quarter and year-to-date. Moving on operating expenses which includes Personnel and G&A expenses totaled $34.7 million in the quarter, up $11.8 million versus Q3 2023. More than 70% of the quarter-over-quarter increase was driven by acquisitions, with the remainder attributable to increased personnel expenses reflecting salary increases continued investment in our business in addition to the impact of inflation. Also, impacting the year-over-year comparison is the fact that Q3 2023 was the first time our new equity compensation program was accounted for in the P&L. Overall, our year-to-date operating expenses of $90.5 million rose $18 million or 25% with almost 65% of the variance related to our M&A activity and the balance coming from increased personnel costs, investments in infrastructure, marketing and distribution, and the impact of inflation. Putting it together, Patria delivered fee-related earnings of $40.6 million in the quarter, up 13% versus the prior year and $115.2 million year-to-date, representing an increase of 14%. As we noted in the past, acquisitions generally have an adverse short-term impact on margins as the new business being onboarded generally have lower margins and before we have an opportunity to capture operating efficiencies, which happens overtime. Also, since we continue to invest in our growth, realized operating efficiencies are substantially reinvested back into the business, but we expect margins to improve with the emergence of top line growth. So as a result, our FRE margin in the third quarter was 53.4% while our year-to-date margin was 55.5%. As a reminder, we previously guided to a full year FRE margin of 56% to 58% inclusive of fourth quarter, which typically includes incentive fees. In 2025, we continue to expect the FRE margin to trend towards the 58% to 60% range by year-end, driven by a combination of revenue growth and the realization of incremental expense efficiencies. We will update our 2025 and long-term margin guidance at our December 9 Investor Day. We believe we are on track to generating $170 million of FRE for 2024, as we expect continued growth in fee-earning AUM and fee revenues helped by strong fundraising and improvement in the FRE margin in the fourth quarter. As a reminder, most of our incentive fees are recognized in the fourth quarter and incentive fees tend to be high margin and driven by our Credit, Real Estate, and Public Equity businesses. For perspective, we generated $6 million of incentive fees in Q4 2022, $4 million in the Q4 2023, and so far in 2024, performance has remained strong. Thanks, in large part, to our previous acquisitions we have a larger number of strategies eligible to generate incentive fees. As a result, we think we are currently on track to generate incentive fees in the high-single digit range. Next, our net financial and other income & expenses in Q3 2024 totaled a negative $1.5 million and a negative $5.5 million year-to-date. This line item mainly reflects interest expenses on our credit facilities partially offset by gains generated in our new energy trading platform, Tria of $2 million in Q3 and $2.6 million year-to-date. Regarding distributable earnings, we generated $34.9 million in the quarter, up 5% versus the prior year and year-to-date DE of $100 million, up more than 5% when we exclude performance fees crystallized last year. The growth in the DE came despite the higher financial expenses noted above. On a per share basis, Q3 DE of $0.23 was essentially flat sequentially and year-over-year due to financial expenses, higher taxes, and higher share count. As we will review shortly, we expect the DE per share growth to improve in 2025, as we move past the short-term headwinds. While we have not crystallized any performance fees so far this year, we still expect to generate performance fees over the coming quarters, driven by Infrastructure Fund III. It remains our intention to use realized PRE to pay down our M&A incurred debt. Our effective tax rate of 10.6% in Q3 2024 was higher than previous quarters and reflected our business and geography mix in the quarter. Year-to-date, the effective tax rate was 8.8%, and we still expect the full-year tax rate in 2024 to be between 6% and 8% and trend towards 10% over the next few years. Regarding the shares outstanding, we continue to expect the share count to finish 2024 around 153 million and 2025 between 158 million and 160 million, which includes all shares expected to be issued because of regular stock-based compensation as well as shares to be issued related to the contingent and deferred M&A payments. Our share count guidance does not incorporate any benefit from prospective share repurchases. Shifting to the balance sheet. We finished Q3 with approximately $165 million of debt outstanding, down from $177 million at the end of the second quarter. We expect our debt to reach a peak of approximately $190 million at the end of the year as we fund M&A and other year-end payments. The actual level of debt, of course, will depend on the timing of our obligations versus our cash generation in a particular month. Heading into 2025, we expect debt levels to decrease as the year progresses, as we generate cash and fund M&A-related deferred and contingent payments, which we expect to total around $100 million, of which about 60% we expect to be settled in cash or debt and the balance through the issuance of shares as reflected in our FRE per share targets. We note that we expect our debt to FRE ratio, as we move through 2025, to be below our target of one-time FRE. We would also note that the interest rate on our debt is based on SOFR, so reductions in the short-term interest rate have a beneficial impact on our borrowing costs. Finally, while we believe FRE and DE are the best financial metrics with which to gauge our results and ongoing earnings power and are the metrics that are most comparable with our alternative manager peers, we would like to comment on some items in our DE to net income reconciliation. You will notice that transaction costs, our M&A-related expenses declined to half of what we had last quarter to $6.5 million as M&A activities have moderated. We would expect this trend to continue as we have no current M&A plan for the next couple of quarters. Our equity and long-term compensation was $15 million in 2023 and $13 million year-to-date, and consistent with our prior guidance, we expect to have a 20% increase versus last year as our new program evolves to its second year. Overall, we believe we are on track to meet our FRE targets for 2024 and 2025, and we expect DE per share excluding performance fees to accelerate into 2025 as we continue to grow revenues and FRE, realize some expense synergies over the coming year, all before the factor in the potential benefit from any debt reduction, reduced interest expenses, and incremental share repurchases. Our robust fundraising momentum makes us even more excited regarding the growth opportunity that lies ahead. We look forward to presenting a more detailed update on our business and expected financial targets at our December 9 Investor Day, which we hope you all can attend. I'll now turn back to Alex for closing remarks.

Thank you, Ana. So to sum it up, there are several key takeaways from the quarter. First, we believe our fundraising highlights the success we are having in leveraging our acquisitions and investments in our platform. We remain very comfortable with our fundraising fee-related earnings and fee-related earnings per share targets for 2024 and into 2025, and expect to see accelerating distributable earnings growth into the next year as the full weight of our fee-earning AUM growth flows through and we move past the short-term fee-related earnings and distributable earnings headwinds resulting from M&A costs. We believe we have a long runway to grow fundraising, generate organic growth, and grow fee-related earnings and distributable earnings, as it remains early days in executing on the platforms we have added through our M&A strategy, and the investments we have made in new products and distribution resources. Lastly, we are focused on maximizing returns to shareholders and we are excited to provide further color on our updated capital management strategy, we introduced in the second quarter. Overall, we remain very excited about our future growth prospects and look forward to providing a more complete update at our next Investor Day scheduled for December 9. We thank you for your time, and we are happy to take your questions.

Thank you. At this time we will conduct a question-and-answer session. The first question comes from the line of Craig Siegenthaler of Bank of America. Craig, please go ahead.

Good morning, Alex. Hope everyone's doing well. My question is on fundraising. So, with $4.2 billion raised year-to-date, you're now in striking distance of the $5 billion target for the full year. And GPMS is driving more than half the inflows, just in this past quarter. So I wanted your perspective on how GPMS has altered your organic growth trajectory? And do you expect it to continue generating an outsourced contribution to fundraising, relative to its size going forward?

Hi, Craig. I hope you and your family are doing well. Thank you for your question and for being part of this important day. With the US election happening today, I'm glad you chose to focus on our earnings call. We're very excited about the initial data points we've gathered on the GPMS organic fundraising, which aligns with our strategy of expanding our platform geographically in Latin America and beyond, focusing on what investors are eager to buy. We aim to sell what we prefer, but ultimately, we offer what investors want. We are experiencing strong fundraising momentum with GPMS, currently reaching $4.3 billion in organic fundraising by the end of the third quarter, and I believe this momentum will persist. As we look to the fourth quarter, which is typically our strongest, the $5 billion target seems achievable. This positions us well as we head into 2025, especially with GPMS, credit, real estate, infrastructure, and private equity. However, I should note that our private equity has been underperforming relative to US private equity, while other asset classes are performing better, particularly in the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America. With GPMS, we are starting to outperform in Europe, driven by investor interest from that region. We're pleased with our initial experience in this asset class, where secondaries and GP-led transactions are in high demand. LPs are finding liquidity in the secondary market, selling older funds, and committing to new ones. Everything seems to be converging positively in this asset class. By the end of 2024, I expect very strong fundraising numbers for us, particularly given the $5 billion target compared to our starting point of around $26 billion in fee-paying AUM. If we exceed the $5 billion target, it will indicate we are meeting our KPIs. We have two fundraising structures through GPMS: separately managed accounts (SMAs) with many renewals from existing clients, which indicates their trust in our team; and the blind fund structure, specifically Secondary Opportunities Fund number five, which has already had its first close. Credit is performing exceptionally well, outperforming benchmarks across various timeframes and products, and real estate fundraising has also been robust, particularly in Brazil and Colombia, with a large portion of our fee-earning AUM in permanent capital structures listed funds. Overall, I believe the strategy is effective, and I’m pleased with the results. Thank you, Craig.

Thank you, Alexandre. Very comprehensive. Just for my follow-up also on fundraising specifically on Private Equity VII and Infrastructure V, should we expect final closes for large closes for both in 4Q? And then Alexandre, we heard your commentary on a $500 million SMA within Asian sovereign wealth fund. And I think that will invest directly in Private Equity VII, Infrastructure V. Can you help us with the timing and size of that one? Does that also flow in, in the fourth quarter?

Private Equity VII is still holding at the $2 billion mark for Infrastructure V. The SMA we signed isn't included in these figures. The numbers on slide 16 in the presentation do not reflect this $500 million SMA, which consists of $250 million for each fund. A significant portion will be through the traditional fund structure, while some will involve fee-paying co-investments. This particular sovereign wealth fund wants both a stake in the fund and overexposure to certain companies within Fund VII or Infrastructure Fund V, and these are fee-paying, thus not counted in the current data. We are also pursuing other similar SMAs. I’m pleased to share that this Asian sovereign wealth fund is in addition to our previous mention, along with a memorandum of understanding with the Saudi Ministry of Infrastructure, aiming to invest through the fund and SMAs. Large global institutional clients are looking for this type of arrangement. They want to support sizable funds while maintaining the option to select specific investments, which is what we refer to as SMAs. There is also an additional Middle Eastern sovereign wealth fund involved. We're presently in a good fundraising phase in other Latin American countries outside Brazil. We’ve recently started fundraising in Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico, and we expect to see substantial fundraising completed this year and the start of next year. We can fundraise for Infrastructure Fund V until mid-next year, while for Private Equity Fund VII's international segment outside Latin America, we aim to complete fundraising by the end of this year, although a few exceptions may extend this timeline. For Latin America, we can continue until mid-next year, having started fundraising at different times, giving us seven to eight months remaining. I hope that answers your question.

Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for the call and for taking my questions. I have two questions; one on FRE margin. If you could please repeat your expectations for FRE margin for next year. I didn't quite catch that. But I wanted to know if you expect some expansion to happen in FRE margins in 2025 due to synergies that you may be able to capture from the recent acquisitions. And also, I understand that margins should maybe go up in 4Q as revenues are usually higher because of incentive fees. But should we expect that margin to go back to 53% 54% levels in 1Q next year and perhaps increasing throughout the year? It would be great to get some color on that. And for my second question on the tax rate. You mentioned that you still expect a 6% to 8% tax rate this year and that would imply a lower effective tax rate in 4Q. Maybe you could give more color on what would be the reasons behind that expectation. And if we should expect the effective tax rate to increase towards the 10% already in the next year? Thank you.

Thank you for your participation in our call. This is Alex speaking. I'll address your first question, and Ana will respond to your second question about tax. Regarding margins, as you may have noticed, margins for this quarter were somewhat lower than in previous quarters due to the full absorption of the abrdn GPMS business and the real estate businesses, including the Credit Suisse Real Estate Investment Trust and VBI. These three entities had lower margins compared to what we typically operate. I mentioned earlier that the GPMS abrdn carve-out was running a 30% FRE margin, while our usual FRE margin is in the upper 50s. We fully integrated these businesses in the third quarter, unlike in the second quarter when we only partially absorbed them. As a result, margins have decreased. I anticipate margins will rise to the high upper 50s by 2025 as we integrate these businesses. Historically, when we acquired the Moneda asset management business in late 2021, it was running at a 40% FRE margin, which declined to the mid to lower 50s during 2022 but was pushed back up to 60% by the end of 2022. We experienced similar effects with other acquisitions, and I am confident we will improve margins to the upper 50s again. For the first quarter of 2025, I expect margins to be in the mid-50s, likely around 53% as a conservative estimate, but we should achieve upper 50s for the full year. Now, I'll turn it over to Ana for your second question.

Hi Beatriz. Good morning. As mentioned this quarter, our effective tax rate reached 10.6% and the year-to-date is 8.8%. This is due to the different mix of jurisdictions where we have our income, reflecting our diversification and the onboarding of new companies and M&As. We anticipate that by the end of the year, the tax rate could be between 6% to 8%, which again is influenced by the income we have in each jurisdiction and the different expenses affecting our fourth quarter. This aligns with what I mentioned during the IPO regarding our evolution and diversification potentially leading to a tax rate closer to 10% throughout the year. That's what we are targeting for the 2025 tax rate.

Yes. To revisit the margin question with examples, as you mentioned, Beatriz, our margins in the fourth quarter were higher due to incentive fees. For instance, in the fourth quarter of 2023, our FRE margins were 70% to 71%, which is an increase of 10 percentage points from the 60s in the third quarter of 2023. We expect this trend to continue in 2024. As we aim for $170 million in FRE and are currently at $115 million, we need to bridge the remaining $55 million. If we achieve a similar quarter with $40 million to $41 million in FRE, that brings us to $155 million. Adding around $10 million in incentive fees puts us at $165 million, leaving a $5 million gap for the $170 million target. Since we’ve already integrated the businesses from the third quarter and are seeing improvements in margins, closing that $5 million gap between the fourth and third quarters seems achievable. That’s why we're confirming our $170 million FRE for 2024, and we anticipate this trend will also continue into 2025 and beyond. I hope this addresses your questions, Beatriz.

Hi, everyone, and thank you for the opportunity of making questions. I have just one from my side. Can you please comment if the environment assets in the infrastructure fund hit the hurdle rate given the deterioration in the market conditions is always in any way affect or this particular segment very much impacted by the environment we see in Brazil with higher rates and effects? Thank you.

Thank you, Ricardo, for joining our call. There's a lot happening in Brazil, and unfortunately, not all of it is positive due to the volatility created by our President's unclear stance on fiscal issues and their economic impact. On a brighter note, the infrastructure sector is experiencing a mini-boom. Recent federal and state auctions have been successful across various sectors and states, including the federal level. For instance, in water and sewage, several auctions in the Northeastern states, which are not the largest or most attractive, went well, and although we lost a bid, competition was fierce, with many bidders. In the toll road sector, we recently lost a bid for a toll road, but there were strategic players involved, and all participants are maintaining discipline in their bids. We have upcoming auctions for schools in the state of São Paulo, and I can highlight other sectors as well. The infrastructure sector has a long-term nature, which suits our investment strategy, especially since these contracts often have inflation adjustments. Our firm is well-positioned because of foreign interest in Brazilian infrastructure. While competing for toll roads, we have partnered with global financial institutions and sovereign funds, attracted by the significant investment opportunities available. Additionally, we have launched a new fund with a target of $2 billion, allowing us to consider projects up to $8 billion by leveraging equity. We also have an experienced team that has successfully executed divestments to global strategic players, and there's demand from local investors as well, evidenced by local strategic players participating in recent auctions for toll roads and water and sewage projects. This blend of factors makes our market environment very promising. While we have Brookfield as a notable co-sponsor, we’re somewhat unique as many larger infrastructure funds are not currently active in Brazil. Our longstanding track record, built over more than 20 years, reinforces our strong position. We are in an exciting phase regarding fundraising, not just for our fund but also for co-investors, enabling us to bid on larger projects. Our management has created substantial value, reflected in our recent performance in the infrastructure funds, leading to significant performance fees. Our sector expertise definitely sets us apart and positions us well for ongoing growth in Brazilian infrastructure. I hope that addresses your question.

Very clear. Thank you. And just a follow-up on one thing you mentioned. You said that incentive fees could be in the 10-ish level. Is that correct? We just wanted to confirm if that makes sense for Q4?

Yes. Incentive fees in the fourth quarter around $10-ish million, right.

Good morning, Alex, Ana, and team. Thank you for the call and opening for questions. Just two on my side. The first one is actually pretty quick. I think Ana mentioned among the incentive fees that part of it comes from real estate. I just want to confirm which products inside real estate generated performance fees just to be sure, we have it here. I think the ballpark – the bulk of it is going to come from private credit, right? But just to confirm the real estate products which one generates performance? And the second one it's more on the product strategy, Alex. You talked a lot about infrastructure and GPMS but I wanted to get your view on private credit. You touched a little bit during the call but has been a booming, I think, industry in Brazil and globally. I think most of your strategy today it's still Chilean legacy, right, Moneda business. I just want to get your thoughts, if you feel that there is an opportunity in Brazil or in the rest of LatAm to develop the business I think was part of the deal as well. But just want to get the kind of milestones on what you're thinking about this strategy in Brazil and the business outside Chile? Thank you.

Hi, Guilherme. Yes, you're right. What I said is incentive fee comes mostly from the strategy of credit, public equities, and real estate. However, most of our incentive fees are generated by credit if I look into the size, it's really like 95%, 97% is the credit and there is just a small proportion coming from Real Estate. We are actually coming from some of the funds that we acquired from Credit Suisse.

Yes. In response to your second question, both credit and real estate are performing exceptionally well this year. Let me discuss credit first and then briefly address real estate. On the credit front, I'm very pleased with our performance. We regularly publish our fund returns, which you can see in our presentation. We're consistently surpassing benchmarks. Regarding private credit, 15% of our public equity funds involve private credit transactions. Given our overall management of $6.5 billion, approximately $750 million is purely dedicated to private credit. This means that the main strategy consists of $5.75 billion, of which around $800 million is private credit. This significant amount positions us as one of the largest private credit alternative asset managers in the region. In total, we manage over $1.5 billion in private credit, with around $750 million in pure private credit, including infrastructure private credit and various products in Brazil. The current market conditions are favorable for private credit transactions as many companies are under stress due to high interest rates in Brazil, allowing us to secure excellent returns that enhance the overall performance of our public credit funds. Looking ahead, particularly in Brazil, interest rates are expected to remain higher than previously anticipated through 2025, providing ongoing refinancing opportunities for companies. In other Latin American regions, while there are some positive trends, Brazil still faces challenges with rising inflation. On the real estate side, we have seen significant growth in assets under management over the past two years. When we collaborated with VBI, they managed BRL5 billion in mid-2022, which grew to BRL10 billion by mid-2024, alongside an acquisition from Credit Suisse of around BRL12 billion. This has made us one of the largest independent managers in the sector. In the first half of 2024, we focused on traditional real estate investments, while the second half will emphasize credit-related real estate funds. We’ve captured a substantial market share across different segments of the Brazilian real estate investment trust market, including logistics and retail. As interest rates rise in the latter half of the year, investor interest is shifting towards credit-related funds rather than traditional investments. Our diverse platform encompasses various strategies in credit funds and real estate, among others, across five main Latin American countries. This allows us to effectively raise capital globally while exceeding our fundraising targets. I hope that answers your question, Guilherme.

Thank you, Alex. And thanks for the time. So my question here is also on the topic of product expansion, but here more broadly. So I would like to understand if you still think there is any product or region that is not already included in your portfolio, but you would like to expand there in a medium term? So like I understand you're already in the process of digesting recent acquisitions, but if there's any upside for the next year, maybe two years to go to another region, other products, and complementing it if in order to expand on those fronts if you see it necessarily through M&As or inorganic movements or if you believe organic movements would suffice here?

Thank you for the question, William. We are continuing to execute the strategy we established before the IPO and shared during the IPO roadshow, which involves expanding our product offerings and geographical presence in Latin America. Some strategies, like the PMS, require expansion beyond Latin America, as the PMS market here is limited on the product side and focuses more on fundraising for local investors seeking global products. We remain committed to this strategy as we are now in the third year of what I believe will be a ten-year journey, aiming to effectively cover various geographies and product types, having achieved about 30% to 40% of that goal. You will hear more from us on December 19 in New York, and I encourage your team to participate in discussions about our performance and guidance for the next three years. We have significantly increased our strategies from seven at the time of the IPO to 38 today, and we intend to keep expanding. Within Latin America, we see significant opportunities primarily in Colombia, Brazil, and Chile, particularly through the launch of complementary products. We've successfully launched some local products in Chile, including some Fiji's and Fiagros. In Colombia, since partnering with Bancolombia last October, we are introducing several products, such as a local credit fund, a private active fund, an infrastructure fund, and a real estate bad debt credit fund, all designed for local investors using Colombian pesos. This focus aligns with the desires of many institutional clients in Colombia who need to invest domestically due to restrictions. We are currently managing $44 billion, providing local products tailored to individual markets in Brazilian reais, Chilean pesos, and Colombian pesos. Larger global alternative asset managers like Blackstone and Carlyle do not offer local products in these markets, and the smaller local firms lack the scale and resources we possess. Our partnership with Bancolombia has started strong, and we intend to leverage their network to launch products in Central American countries like Panama, Guatemala, and Costa Rica. We are approaching Mexico cautiously, recognizing it as the second-largest economy in the region with promising real estate opportunities. However, we prefer to wait and see how the new political climate develops under President Claudia. Currently, there are no significant factors negatively impacting the real estate market. We do have two strategies poised for potential expansion beyond Latin America. Our GPMS operations are already two-thirds in Europe and one-third in the US, and we are looking for growth opportunities in the US, possibly through acquisitions. Additionally, our infrastructure business has strong capabilities that we would like to take to other countries outside of Latin America, also potentially through acquisitions. However, we will not pursue acquisitions in the next four quarters as we focus on integrating our existing businesses and demonstrating our ability to enhance margins. By 2025, I expect to see margins approaching the high 50s. We aim to establish credibility with our investors on our capacity to efficiently acquire and integrate businesses without compromising our balance sheet. While we strive to grow locally in Colombia through our partnership with Bancolombia and proceed with caution in Mexico, we will focus on organic growth for 2025. We currently do not have any memorandums of understanding signed, and it typically takes about four quarters to move from an MoU to finalized agreements. In 2025, our focus will be on integrating businesses and improving margins, allowing us to demonstrate our capabilities before considering further expansion in 2026. I hope this answers your question.

Thank you. This concludes the question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn it back over to the CEO and Founder. Please go ahead.

All right. Thank you very much for a very thorough earnings call. I really appreciate your questions and the more interactive and the better. Thank you. Thanks again. I know that it's a busy day for all of us here with US Elections. Reiterating then our guidance of $170 million of FRE for this year, $5 billion of organic fundraising. Next year, $225 million of FRE for next year. We're going to have our PAX Day on December 9, and we are preparing great content for you and the team. So I hope that you guys can participate. It's going to be in New York in the NASDAQ venue, the NASDAQ building, the same place that actually did our last one late 2022 for whoever participated. And hopefully, we're going to see each other in person in a month's time. Today it's the 5th of November. So thank you very much again. All the best and see you soon. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.