Earnings Call Transcript - SEIC Q3 2023

Operator, Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the SEI Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Instructions will be given at that time. As a reminder, today’s call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to your host, Director of Investor Relations, Alex Whitelam. Please go ahead, sir.

Alex Whitelam, Director of Investor Relations

Thank you, and welcome, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today for our third quarter 2023 earnings call. On the call, we have Ryan Hicke, SEI’s Chief Executive Officer; Dennis McGonigle, Chief Financial Officer; and leaders of our business segments: Wayne Withrow, Paul Klauder, Jay Cipriano, Phil McCabe, Sanjay Sharma, and Sneha Shah. Before we begin, I’d like to point out that our earnings press release can be found under the Investor Relations section of our website at seic.com. This call is being webcast live, and a replay will be available on the Events and Webcast page of our website. We would like to remind you that during today’s presentation and in our responses to your questions, we have and will make certain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially. Please refer to our notices regarding forward-looking statements that appear in today’s earnings press release and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We do not undertake to update any of our forward-looking statements. With that, I’ll turn the call over to CEO, Ryan Hicke. Ryan?

Ryan Hicke, CEO

Thanks, Alex. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Despite a challenging market environment, we delivered solid results for the third quarter with quality top-line and earnings growth. As I laid out at last year’s Investor Day, we are surgically focused on the following areas: growing our sales results in segments and markets where we believe we can consistently win. We are seeing that play out with investment managers, regional and community banks, UK private client investment managers, and larger RIAs, adding talent and capital to enhance internal insight with outside perspective and launching more organic and acquired businesses for future revenue generation and growth. We’re focused on investing in automation, AI, and alternatives to drive scale and service excellence, continuing to deliver long-term earnings growth, driven by revenue and enhanced with smart expense management. We are proud of our momentum as we execute our long-term growth strategy while managing our company for profitability. I’m excited about what we see ahead, knowing we are not satisfied or complacent; we will keep executing and innovating. Turning to Q3 results. Revenues in the third quarter were $477 million, up 1% from a year ago. Net income for the quarter was $116 million, and EPS was $0.87. Keep in mind that our third quarter results for 2022 were impacted by a one-time expense related to our voluntary separation program. Absent this expense, this year’s third quarter EPS increased by $0.10 or 13% year-over-year on a comparable basis. Dennis will provide more details on our results. In the quarter, we repurchased 1.4 million shares of SEI stock at an average price of $61.43 per share. That translates into $86 million of stock purchases. The sales success we’ve had throughout the year in our technology and operational outsourcing businesses continued in the third quarter. We remain focused on generating more higher-quality touch points with clients, building out our pipeline, and broadening our client relationships through cross-sales. We also launched our enterprise sales group this quarter to increase activity across larger wealth management firms. We believe these efforts are positioning us well to capitalize on future growth opportunities and increase sales. Net sales events in the quarter totaled $14.5 million, with $11.1 million of which were net recurring. This was a combination of technology and operational outsourcing sales of $22.3 million, offset by negative activity in our asset management businesses. With that, let me turn to our business lines. Our Investment Managers business had another good quarter, delivering strong revenue and earnings growth. The team implemented and converted new clients and funds while managing expenses well, and growth continues for this segment. Our constant focus on our strategic clients resulted in a number of cross-sell events and client re-contracts in the quarter. We are excited to see that we are winning across alternatives, traditional and global segments. In alternatives, our largest clients continue to expand in the private credit, private equity, real estate, and infrastructure markets. During the quarter, we onboarded two firms through competitive takeaways and won a highly competitive new bid. Globally, we also continue to see strong flows from existing relationships and have expanded our sales leadership and client service functions on the ground to enhance our pipeline development. In the traditional business, we are seeing a trend with our larger clients who are beginning to launch alternative funds. This provides significant opportunity for SEI. We are also seeing continued increased interest in our CIT platform. Next, Private Banking drove another solid quarter, signing three deals and re-contracting five clients. The team also successfully delivered on their backlog, implementing five clients on the SEI Wealth Platform, representing more than $15 million in recurring revenue from the backlog. During the quarter, we migrated more than 115,000 accounts and approximately $360 billion in assets, including a substantial book from U.S. Bank moving from TRUST 3000 to SWP and CIBC’s conversion to SWP from competitive platforms. We also went live with our multicustody solution, which is generating broad interest with both our existing and prospective client base. The Private Banking business continues to move forward by capitalizing on our expanding pipeline and prudently managing expenses. While we still have some previously announced events to absorb in the coming quarters, we are confident in our margin growth strategy for the business, which we have discussed on previous calls. Moving to our Global Asset Management business. Investment advisors had net positive cash flows of approximately $612 million, primarily driven by our separately managed accounts, strategist partner solutions, and open architecture technology and custody that supports advisor-driven investment flexibility. The team is executing on our growth plans for the business, and we are focused on driving more revenue growth to capitalize on the robust opportunity set that we see within the intermediary space. We’ve also continued to enhance our solutions for this business, including SEI Connect to provide a front office digital collaborative wealth management experience for advisors and their end clients. All new advisors benefit from the enhanced investor portal, and we’re seeing solid adoption across the entire client base. We’re also advancing our efforts to build out custody capabilities for alternative assets. Finally, we launched our liquid alternative strategy in our U.S. fund complex. We expect to sell this fund standalone for the time being and will include it in models offered to advisors early next year. All of this is another step in our initiative to offer models with private asset classes to intermediaries. We believe these enhanced solutions are poised to attract more advisors, especially in the RIA space, which we’ve highlighted as a particular area of growth for us in the future. In the Institutional Investors segment, we experienced a more challenging environment, but we’re working to drive greater revenue and profitability for that business. Corporate defined benefit curtailments and annuitizations continue to be headwinds in the UK and the U.S. Given expectations that these headwinds will persist in 2024, we proactively took some steps during the quarter to strategically align our resources and position the business for long-term success. We remain focused on managing expenses appropriately, but also improving engagement with our clients and utilizing our enterprise-wide approach to meet our clients where they want to be met. We are confident that our upcoming acquisition of an additional master trust structure in the UK will advance our competitive footing across all institutional segments in that market. As a market leader, we are committed to competing and winning across the institutional landscape. Turning to our Investments in New Business segment. We continue to assess our market offerings and the best path forward to enhance growth. We are pleased with the progress and expect future success. And finally, our partnership with LSV remains strong. On the talent and culture front, we’ve made strategic investments throughout the year that continue to enhance SEI’s brand awareness and drive employee engagement. This concludes my prepared remarks. I will now turn it over to Dennis to discuss our financial results for the quarter.

Dennis McGonigle, CFO

Thanks, Ryan. As Ryan mentioned, EPS for the quarter was $0.87. This compares to $0.45 during the third quarter of 2022 and $0.89 for the second quarter of 2023. Revenue for the quarter was $477 million, compared to $471 million in 2022 and $489 million in the second quarter. Total expenses for the quarter were $368 million, which compares to $420 million last year and $376 million in the second quarter. On the sales front, in our technology and investment processing businesses of Private Banking and Investment Managers, net sales events totaled $22.3 million and are expected to generate $19 million in recurring revenue. In our asset management-related businesses, net sales were approximately negative $7.6 million, primarily due to losses and repricing in our institutional business. Total net sales were $14.7 million, of which $11.4 million is recurring. Private banking sales were $3.3 million, of which $2.1 million is recurring. This reflects three new SWP sales, a new client to SEI, a previously lost client deciding to stay with SEI, and an added book of business due to a client acquisition. We re-contracted five clients during the quarter, representing $7 million in annual recurring revenue. The Private Banking segment’s focus on regional community banks, along with the PCIM segment in the UK, is paying off. During the quarter, we were active with client implementations and conversions, as Ryan mentioned. This includes a large book of business with CIBC, First Financial, and a significant business migration for U.S. Bank from TRUST 3000 to SWP, helping solidify our SWP SaaS solution as market-ready. The current backlog of sold but expected to be installed revenue in the next 18 months is $21.5 million. Asset management revenues in Private Banking were up slightly from the second quarter. Expenses in the quarter were down from the second quarter of 2023, reflecting the efforts by Sanjay and the team to bring Private Banking back to higher levels of profitability. On the Investment Managers front, net sales for the quarter were $19 million, $16.8 million of which is recurring. During the quarter, we re-contracted five clients totaling $9 million in annual recurring revenue. Revenue for the quarter was up compared to the second quarter, reflecting the impact of client installs. Expenses were essentially flat. Our backlog of sold but expected to install in the next 18 months recurring revenue is $30.4 million. For Investment Advisors, net cash flow onto our platform was a positive $612 million. We experienced increased flows into our newer strategic asset management solutions and platform-only programs, and negative flows from our more mature mutual fund products. Our comprehensive offering is key to us moving the business forward. Revenues for the quarter were up from the second quarter due to improved capital markets during the second quarter, offset by third quarter capital markets and the product mix of flows. Expenses were flat. We recruited 57 new advisors during the quarter, 8 of which are in the newer RIA channel. In the Institutional Investors segment, net sales events for the quarter were negative $5.8 million, reflecting positive client signings offset by losses and repricing in client retention activities. Revenues for the quarter were down $4.7 million due to net client asset losses. Expenses were also down $5.5 million, reflecting general expense management and a one-time item in the second quarter of $4.5 million. In the Investments in New Business segment, revenues and expenses were up slightly compared to the second quarter and will remain in this range. In addition to the segments, the company also incurred a $2.2 million expense item related to severance as a result of organizational changes, principally in our institutional business. We made adjustments to the workforce to align our talent and resources to the opportunities in the segments we serve. While this will result in run-rate savings, we expect to redeploy these savings by expanding our sales resources in growing institutional markets and increasing our distribution efforts around alternative assets. This expense is reflected in overhead on our press release. LSV produced $29.9 million in profit during the quarter. This compares to $32.7 million during the second quarter. Revenues for LSV were $102.2 million compared to $108.8 million in the second quarter. Third quarter revenues included $9 million of performance fees. LSV recorded performance fees of $12.7 million during the second quarter. Performance fees are a reflection of continued positive relative performance. One final item: As we mentioned in July, we entered into an agreement to acquire the National Pensions Trust. The transaction is expected to close before year-end, subject to applicable regulatory approval. I point you to our 10-Q for more information. Our tax rate for the quarter was 22.5%. We expect a slight step down in the tax rate in the fourth quarter. That concludes my remarks. All of our unit heads are on the call, and we’re happy to take any questions.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. We’ll go to the first line, Owen Lau, Oppenheimer.

Owen Lau, Analyst

I think you highlighted the strength of Investment Managers a little bit, but can you please dig a little bit deeper because it grew nicely year-over-year, margin has been expanding. I’m just wondering if you can talk more about the driver of the strength, the healthiness of the arts firms and traditional asset managers. And is there any pocket that you are targeting or seeing growth in your end market? Thank you.

Ryan Hicke, CEO

Yes. That’s a great question. I hope you’re doing well. I’ll take the first half, and then I’ll turn it over to Phil to maybe provide some more color. So, if you think about the overall market opportunity we have today and why I think we continue to drive growth. One is we are really focused on premium levels of service to our client base, and that has really paid dividends for us as clients are launching new funds. We are winning the lion’s share of these funds, and we stay very, very focused on the level of quality of service to those clients. We’ve continued to deploy more talent and capital in the technology space to enhance our offering there. I think Phil can talk in a little bit on your point about future growth. Inside the U.S., I think there’s just a continued trend and appetite for outsourcing. That positions us well as firms really think about where they should be deploying their capital for growth. They see more of that really in product creation, alpha generation, and distribution, and are really looking to SEI as a strategic partner for technology and operational delivery. And we’re really starting to increase our footprint, as I mentioned, in global. But Phil, do you want to provide a little bit more color either on certain spots or areas? We’re really enthusiastic about not just the existing pipeline, but the future runway in this business.

Phil McCabe, Business Leader

Thanks, Ryan. And this is Phil McCabe. Just real quick. The margins came in a little higher this time at 36.2%. If you look year-to-date, they averaged about 35%, which is right about where we said we would be over the course of the year or so. So, I expect that number to continue for a little while. And I think we spent a lot of time managing expenses. At the same time, we’re investing in the future. On the sales front, $19 million in net sales. If you look at that year over year for three quarters, we’re up about 16%. We have a net number of $61.5 million so far. And as Ryan said, the pipeline is strong, and we’re all over our clients, getting a lot of traction globally, a lot of traction in the U.S. We talked about private credit, real estate, and infrastructure before, but I think we’re in a really, really good spot for the future. I think, the runway is fairly long for what we see out there, and I think we’re in a really good spot.

Ryan Hicke, CEO

And the only other thing I would say, Owen, which we touched on a little bit on the call early, but there’s a big intersection right now, growth between kind of the private asset market and the intermediary space. And as Phil mentioned, I think a lot of the traditional investment managers are also looking at how they can create and distribute some alternative products, and that’s a good spot for us as well to really give them the infrastructure to get those things up and running and out in the market quickly.

Phil McCabe, Business Leader

Yes. To add to that. Right now, the percentage of alternatives within our traditional market is really, really small, but we have a major campaign going on now to try to push those products by way of interval funds and auction funds into that market. So I think we have a lot of traction, and we expect to see some good results in the future.

Owen Lau, Analyst

Got it. That’s super helpful. And then on the press release, you mentioned that some of the revenue growth was driven by new products and additional services. Could you please maybe highlight some of these new products? Are you taking shares from competitors? But any more color would be helpful on these new products. Thank you.

Phil McCabe, Business Leader

Yes. From a competition standpoint, we have a couple of competitors in the field, but our clients tend to be quite large and sophisticated, and their purchasing decisions are not primarily based on securing better deals or margins. As a result, we are capturing nearly all new funds launched with our clients. When we're involved in deals, we typically make it to the final one or two stages, and we've been successful in closing those business opportunities. So far this quarter, we have three new clients on the alternative side, with one notable deal being particularly significant this year. We are well-positioned in the market, our clients are very satisfied with our services and are eager to recommend us, which puts us in a favorable situation. I believe we are excelling in several areas, and while I can't point to one specific competitor, I feel confident about our current standing.

Dennis McGonigle, CFO

Phil’s team has done an excellent job of establishing strong relationships with our clients, especially those who continue to grow and expand. When these clients come to market with a new product, we are involved in the design process. This refers to our clients introducing new products and relying on us for support.

Phil McCabe, Business Leader

That’s a great point. Thank you.

Owen Lau, Analyst

Got it. If I can add one more quick one, which is on the cost side. I noticed that there’s an increase in personnel costs and investments. I think you mentioned related to compliance infrastructure to meet new regulatory requirements. Could you please talk about what these new requirements are? And are they recurring expenses, or is it more like one-time expenses?

Dennis McGonigle, CFO

On the personnel side, we typically see adjustments in salaries and compensation changes from the second quarter to the third quarter. This has led to some cost growth in personnel. Additionally, we operate in multiple highly regulated jurisdictions where regulations are constantly changing. This has increased the workload for our operations. We also expanded into a new jurisdiction in Luxembourg, which required us to enhance our capabilities and hire new talent. The combination of our full-time hires and engaging outside professionals to navigate regulatory changes has contributed to our costs. Moreover, many jurisdictions now mandate that talent be local, which has further increased our personnel needs and costs. I refer to this as the regulatory employment program.

Operator, Operator

And we’ll go over to the line of Ryan Kenny of Morgan Stanley.

Ryan Kenny, Analyst

A couple of questions. First, you mentioned migrating a large chunk of the private bank's book to SWP this quarter. Any update on where that leaves TRUST 3000? And should we expect any change in strategy on how long you plan to keep that asset up and running or how you plan to manage the TRUST 3000 system?

Ryan Hicke, CEO

Yes, I’ll take that first and then kick to Sanjay. Ryan, hope you’re doing well. So right now, that does not change our kind of strategic plan because we have clients that are happy on TRUST 3000. What I would say is two things. One, we’re probably more proactively engaged right now with those clients, trying to understand what that timeline looks like, what those operating models would be, and what books of business they will be bringing over to SWP. So Sanjay and his team have done a terrific job there kind of really increasing the engagement. But the other more important thing with the U.S. Bank conversion, and I think Dennis had this in his script, is to have that size of an organization operating with the software-as-a-service model really opens up a different level of conversation in the market for Sanjay and the team around either existing or prospective SEI clients that don’t want to outsource the back office and are looking for technology-as-a-service. So this is a really important proof statement. And they are really happy where they are right now with this conversion, with a successful weekend. It’s a big book of business, and it’s one that the market’s been watching. Sanjay, I don’t know what you would add to this.

Sanjay Sharma, Business Leader

I would echo the same as well. Hey, Ryan. In terms of strategy for TRUST 3000, as Ryan mentioned, we would stay aligned with our client strategy. So you can look at the overall TRUST 3000 business in two different segments: our larger clients who are in a software-as-a-service model. They’re closely watching how we are implementing U.S. Bank, and that is going very successfully. And the second segment, you can look at the clients we are running in an outsourced operations model. And that’s where we are actively engaging with our clients. And as and when they are coming up for renewal, we are working with them to move them to SWP, but it’s not a push match.

Ryan Kenny, Analyst

And then just as a follow-up, definitely appreciate the efforts to get the private banking margins towards higher profitability. It looks like you’ve started to make some progress there with margins moving from low single digits to it looks like now high single digits. Is that the right range going forward? And as you put together all the piece parts of the SWP migration and expense management, is there any update on what margin level you’d be happy with in that business?

Ryan Hicke, CEO

So I think, Ryan, we’ve been really consistent. The team continues to execute on a plan to grow those margins incrementally quarter-over-quarter through a combination of increased revenue, installation, and effective expense management. We are highly focused on this and do not plan to deviate from our strategy to enhance those margins moving forward. This is what I mentioned in our initial call 18 months ago, and the team has done an outstanding job. As I noted, we have had some losses over the past couple of years that we’ve needed to address, and Sanjay and his team have effectively handled this through new sales and increased revenue to maintain our growth trajectory and elevate our margins. We remain committed to our previous statement that this business will return to historical margins over the next few years.

Dennis McGonigle, CFO

And Ryan, just to close the loop, one of those losses that we had talked about for probably close to a year has still not materialized at all. And I think on the last call, we talked about potentially by the end of the third quarter. And now, we’re in the kind of range of sometime in the fourth quarter, but they haven’t left us. So, we’ll see how that plays out. But that’s one of the things that the private banking business will have to absorb when it happens. The good news is it hasn’t happened yet, and that’s always a positive. The other comment that Sanjay didn’t make, but he can give color if you’re interested. We just finished two days or three days with a large group of our both TRUST 3000 and SWP clients here on campus. And we can only think that getting them in the room together and hearing the stories and the positive stories about being on SWP, both technologically and operationally, will just help encourage more TRUST 3000 clients like the one that made the decision to convert in the third quarter make that decision. So it’s really successful, 2.5 days of sessions with our broad banking client base.

Operator, Operator

And we’ll go over to Crispin Love, Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Crispin Love, Analyst

First, are you able to give a little more color on the client losses in the quarter in the Investment Advisors and Institutional Investors segments? Any key reasons there? Anything out of the ordinary or anything that you can provide or would call out there?

Dennis McGonigle, CFO

On the Institutional Investor side, I’ll provide a brief comment before handing it over to Jay Cipriano to discuss that business segment. For the Investment Advisor segment, Paul will share his insights. Regarding the Institutional Investors segment, as Ryan mentioned, it remains focused on the corporate defined benefit space, which involves plant closures or annuitizations, and we are becoming more proactive in the market regarding retention. We recognize that the industry as a whole is facing fee pressure, and the competitive environment is primarily influenced by fees among various competitors. Jay and his team, along with Paul—who is still actively involved—are working together to ensure we meet our clients' economic needs while also making sound, long-term relationship choices. Jay, would you like to add anything, given that it’s still early days?

Paul Klauder, Business Leader

Sure. Thank you, Dennis. Well, it’s certainly not a new phenomenon that the primary objective of these pension plan sponsors is ultimately to obtain full funding. What is relatively new, the past few years, you’ve had a historic bull market, and now you have a run on rising rates which means there’s a greater opportunity for plans to annuitize. We believe around 30% of firms in the industry right now are exploring a risk transfer strategy. So that’s removing the liability and risk from the pension via either the purchase of a group annuity or offering a lump sum window. We’re aware of these market realities, and some of the recent organizational changes that we’ve made are going to better position us to aggressively compete in OCIO growth markets going forward. The OCIO market, in general, is growing, and we’ve seen more and more large plans exploring the virtues of outsourcing Chief Investment Officer. So SEI standing as a market leader in that space, our seamless integration of technology, operational, and investment expertise, I think, will enable us to win moving forward.

Crispin Love, Analyst

I appreciate all the color there. And then there’s definitely been plenty of volatility recently, especially with rates and fixed income. Can you just talk a little bit about how that’s impacted you in the Institutional Investors segment or any others? At times like this, does it drive the end clients and potential clients to be more inwardly focused, which can dampen activity over the near term or elongate discussions, or does it actually spur new conversations with current clients and new potential ones?

Dennis McGonigle, CFO

You mean in the context of the calculation of their future liability streams and their funded status?

Crispin Love, Analyst

Yes. Yes, exactly.

Jay Cipriano, Business Leader

Yes. I think part of that goes into the fact that many of them are exploring the opportunity now in that rising rate environment to purchase group annuity or offer a lump sum. I think overall, though, when you look at this marketplace, I think this is a market that really creates specialization. So whether it’s health care, higher education, corporate DB union plans, I think our prospects really demand domain expertise and our advice and service around this. So any time there’s a change like that in the marketplace, I believe it does open the opportunity for us to sit down and have those advisory conversations about how the market realities are affecting their goals and objectives and the allocation that we’ve put out there. We see those opportunities not only as the ability to strengthen our relationship but also to potentially move them into other products that are better for them and better for us long term.

Paul Klauder, Business Leader

Yes. I would just add on the advisor side, we haven’t seen really a big position of cash. We’ve seen a little bit of a spike in cash balances. That’s kind of normal when you see this level of volatility, but there has been no movement away from the strategic portfolio. Someone has some excess cash, they might be holding it in a money market fund. We offer very competitive yields there. On our flows, we’ve had very strong growth on the AUA side, the custody platform, very strong growth on the SMA, the ETF, the strategist program, and we’ve seen a little bit of continued outflow of the SEI higher fee funds. And we knew that. So, that’s part of our business strategy is to kind of sell through that in this environment. We just also had a conference of 270 advisors a few weeks ago, unbelievable commentary and receptivity, especially around our applications and our investor portal, our dashboards, and our mobile app that we rolled out. So, we are getting really, really good feedback. And we think that that puts us in a well position for growth as we move forward into the fourth quarter.

Operator, Operator

We’ll go over to Mike Brown with KBW.

Mike Brown, Analyst

I wanted to start with just maybe a follow-up comment on the margin. It looks like year-to-date, you’re running just below 23%, and that’s just kind of below your historical mid- to high-20% range. So I know that you guys really focus on R&D spending and you’re kind of managing for the longer term here. But, if I have to think about an environment that could get even more challenging from here, like where does your margin really bottom out? And what are the levers at your disposal here to protect the margin? And of course, I appreciate that there was some rightsizing actions in the quarter, so you’re not standing by idly, but just trying to think through what’s at your disposal if things stay or get worse from here.

Dennis McGonigle, CFO

Sure. I can draw on historical references from the last challenging market cycle we experienced. During that time, our most profitable segments were the Advisor and Institutional businesses. We managed these without making drastic cuts to headcount or costs, allowing the business to operate as usual. The Advisor business saw its margins decline from the high-40s to the high-20s, while the Institutional business also dropped from the high-40s to around the high-30s or 40% margin. Our more direct asset management operations maintained their margins relatively well despite some compression. On the banking and IMS sides, which are more operational, pricing was less affected overall. While there was some variability due to market fluctuations, IMS benefits from a diverse business mix, making it less sensitive to market conditions. Although we witnessed some margin pressure in IMS, it wasn't drastic, and with breakpoint pricing, the first assets lost in down markets tended to be lower-priced, providing some cushion against losses. Similarly, in banking, we have revenue streams that are not directly tied to assets but rather to accounts or transactions. In times of market volatility, activity often increases, which offers some protection. However, we did experience some margin compression in banking, primarily because we used this period to renegotiate client contracts and strengthen relationships, offering clients some temporary relief in exchange for a more robust long-term partnership. We do have some variable costs, particularly advisor expenses, which directly impact our profit and loss statements; thus, we made adjustments there. Despite the challenges, we are among the few financial services firms that paid incentive compensation during this cycle, though not at full capacity, except for the executive team, which chose not to take variable compensation during that time. We seized the opportunity to address some overdue business clean-up. We also invested in client-facing activities and maintained our focus on research and development. In fact, we spent more on R&D during the 2008-2009 period than in 2006-2007. We believe we have a solid financial foundation and effective business models, ensuring that we remain focused on long-term growth and value rather than yielding to short-term pressures. I expect we will continue to operate similarly moving forward.

Mike Brown, Analyst

Okay, great. Thanks for all the historical perspectives there, Dennis. And then maybe just kind of quickly lining up some of your sales and pipeline commentary, and it just looks like some of those metrics are just down quarter-over-quarter. And so I know that’s just one data point at one point in time. And you certainly talked about a number of key investments, and you sound upbeat about a lot of your initiatives here. So I guess, if we just take a step back, can you just help me synthesize those two trends? And what that ultimately can mean for some of the more near-term trends, including activity into year-end here?

Ryan Hicke, CEO

So I think, Mike, it’s Ryan. If you look at Q3, it was somewhat down compared to Q2 in sales. However, Q1 and Q2 were strong quarters for us. Q3 was significantly affected on the asset management side. We had another solid quarter, and we expect that trend to continue. When considering the pipeline for Q4 and Q1 of next year, as Phil, Sanjay, Paul, and Jay have pointed out, we feel confident about our pipeline position. Q3 can sometimes be slow due to the summer period, which can lead to delays that push into Q4, but I believe Q3 was mainly impacted by the factors we discussed and those Jay outlined. Phil mentioned that we had a $19 million quarter, and Sanjay is consistently delivering positive results. We expect that to persist. Additionally, one thing that is challenging to forecast, but which we are focusing on more now than before, is client activity. As Dennis stated, there are 92 clients across 53 banks. Recently, in St. Paul and Arizona with Wayne, we had 275 clients involved. We are actively engaged with our clients in the market, and the new enterprise sales team will assist in this effort. We understand the landscape and the metrics, and we are taking the right actions.

Operator, Operator

At this time, no further questions in queue, back over to CEO, Ryan Hicke. Please go ahead.

Ryan Hicke, CEO

Thank you. As I mentioned, our momentum continued through the third quarter, and we made good progress on our strategic initiatives. We’re doing the right things. We’re focused on the right areas. I’m personally getting more focused with Wayne and the team on the Investment Management and Asset Management side. We’re very excited about what we see in the future there. We’re enhancing our market presence through increased engagement with our clients. We’re expanding our reach across markets globally. We need to relentlessly challenge ourselves to improve our execution and drive growth. But we’re going to build upon the foundation we have in place to drive that growth. Thank you for joining today’s call.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude your conference. We do thank you for joining. You may now disconnect. Have a good day.