Conference Transcript - STEP 2026-06-09

Mike Cypress, Analyst — Morgan Salient Research

All right, we're all set to get started. Thanks for staying with us here on day one of the Morgan Salient Financials Conference. I'm Mike Cypress, equity analyst covering brokers, asset managers, and exchanges from Morgan Salient Research. And for our next session, we're thrilled to have with us Scott Hart, the CEO of StepStone Group, and Mike McCabe, the head of strategy. Scott, Mike, thank you. Welcome.

Scott Hart, CEO

Thanks for having us.

Mike Cypress, Analyst — Morgan Salient Research

As many of you know, StepStone is a global asset manager with over $220 billion of assets under management, over $800 billion of assets of total capital responsibility, and StepStone is one of the world's largest alternative investment solution providers. So thanks for making it out here today. I thought we'd start big picture on the business model. Today, your business spans separate accounts, SMAs, commingled funds, wealth, data, advisory, and then all the different asset classes from private debt to infrastructure and so on. And unlike some of the peers, your business model is a bit more capital-light, open architecture, data-driven. So how would you define the core differentiator of StepStone today, and where do you think the market still underappreciates the breadth and the durability of your platform?

Scott Hart, CEO

Yeah, well, first of all, Mike, thanks for having us again this year. Always good to be here. Look, I've probably increasingly been answering questions like that by starting with our mission at StepStone, which is to be the trusted partner of choice for private market solutions globally. I think a lot of ways it captures not only what we do, but some of the key differentiators. If you just kind of break down the mission, you know, a trusted partner to both our clients, given the client-centric model, and to our GPs, given the scale of capital that we bring to the table. You mentioned over $800 billion of total capital responsibility. We and our clients are deploying $75 billion per year into the private markets asset classes private markets you know diversified across private equity venture infrastructure private credit and real estate so for those that know our history having started in private equity you don't look at the firm today and see a private equity firm that just dabbles in these other asset classes we think we built true market leading businesses across each of the asset classes and really one of the most comprehensive private markets platforms in the business. We're global. 31 offices around the world. We've often talked in the past about the fact that about two-thirds of our revenue are coming from clients outside of the U.S. That percentage has come down slightly in more recent years as the wealth business, which is more concentrated in the U.S., has grown, but still an incredibly global business diversified across a number of different end markets. And then lastly, solutions. And I think that's probably the part of the business that has evolved the most from the early days. In the early days, we didn't talk about being a solutions provider. We talked about customized portfolios, either in the form of advisory accounts or separate accounts. Over time, came to realize that a commingled fund could certainly represent an attractive part of an overall solution. Over the last five, six years, came to recognize that there was really an opportunity for us to develop funds that met the needs of an entire class of investors, like the private wealth space where we operate today with close to $20 billion of AUM. And you see it in some of the more recent hires that we've made, a new head of insurance solutions, head of retirement solutions. You see it in the partnerships that we've entered into on the data side with our data solutions. And so in a lot of ways, we've seen that solutions model really evolve over time. And I think will continue to evolve as we look forward. So I think that captures a lot of the differentiation, again, the scale, the comprehensive nature of the platform, the diversification of the business. You know, I think that's probably also the piece that may be under, you know, appreciated in the market. And it's certainly easy to, you know, focus on the growth of the wealth business or, you know, the trend, you know, behind secondaries investing today. But if you look at, you know, every quarter, every year since we've gone public, it was really a different asset class, a different strategy, a different fund that was driving some of the success of the business. And it's one of the things that gives us comfort in our ability to continue to grow going forward.

Mike Cypress, Analyst — Morgan Salient Research

Why don't we move on to growth? Fiscal 26 was a record year for capital formation, record strength in your undeployed fee earning capital that provides visibility on growth. So as you think about the next several years, which areas would you say you're most convicted in the growth outlook?

Michael McCabe, Analyst — Other

Yeah, thanks, Mike. You're right. We had our record year, best year ever in the history of the company with a $38 billion number for the year. And that $38 billion was broken down. It's $22 billion came from managed accounts and $17 billion came from commingled funds. When we think about the year ahead, as Scott pointed out a minute ago, there isn't one or two commercial structure that we're focused on or expecting or anticipating some success. It's really a success across an incredibly diversified platform where we think on the managed account front, commingled front, as well as private wealth, undeployed capital, and margins are all topics for maybe a minute or two of conversation here. In the managed account world, StepStone's success has really been client stickiness, and we've enjoyed a 90% re-up rate with all of our managed accounts, and when they do re-up, they tend to expand the account by as much as 30%. And so when you think about the $22 billion that we raised last year in managed accounts, Eight of that came from new relationships or existing relationships that expanded into another asset class or strategy. And that just creates a future pipeline of re-ups. So you can see the virtuous cycle of how the managed account growth algorithm works. We understand it's tough for you guys to model it because there are over 300 of them in our platform. But that 90% re-up rate and expanded data point, I think, serves us well. On the commingled fund side, all of Stepstone's flagship funds are currently in the market across all of our asset classes, private equity, infrastructure, real estate, credit, and venture capital. That adds up to roughly $20 billion of potential new capital formation just in commingled funds. And we're pleased to have said in our prepared remarks last quarter that we're off to a pretty strong start in our PE Secondary Fund and a few other commingled funds that are our flagships. So we're excited about the re-up cycle with flagships. And then pivoting to private wealth, again, we had another record quarter with $2.3 billion of private wealth flows. We're enjoying a strong quarter so far. The $2 billion plus per quarter run rate in private wealth feels sustainable. And we couldn't be more excited about how we've built out such a diversified distribution platform across RIAs, wires, and IBDs. And then we add on top of those three commercial structures, the fact that we're now sitting on $40 billion of undeployed fee earning capital, that provides us and you with a lot of insight and visibility into the growth algorithm going forward. And as Scott's mentioned over the years, we take a very disciplined approach to deploying that capital. Roughly six of the 40 is going to be activated just by virtue of the fact that it's sitting in commingled funds that have yet to be activated. But the balance will continue to be deployed over, call it, a four- to five-year investment period. We're not going to rush to put that capital to work for the sake of putting it to work. That will just affect performance. So to have that kind of visibility of $40 billion of dry powder sitting ready to be deployed is pretty exciting. And then that leads us to the final part of our growth algorithm here, and that's operating leverage. And Mike, you were one of the first analysts in day one of our IPO and consistently diligent about asking StepStone about margin expansion. because when we went public, our margins were around 24%, and compared to the peers, there was some room for growth there. And you were right in focusing in on that question. We're sitting at 38% today, so 1,400 basis points of margin expansion since we went public in 2020. And we think as we continue to grow our commingled funds, we continue to grow our wealth management and other fiat-creative products and the operating leverage that comes with that, we feel there is more margin expansion to enjoy going forward.

Mike Cypress, Analyst — Morgan Salient Research

Great. Why don't we dig in on private wealth, major theme for investors, for the industry, and for StepStone. Recent flow trends suggest demand is broadening across a wider set of products, not just one vehicle for you guys. What is the bigger opportunity from here? Would you say it's adding new products? Is it expanding platform access amongst your existing products? Is it getting funds embedded into home office models? Like, if you had a rank order, like, what do you see is the bigger opportunity from here for private wealth?

Scott Hart, CEO

Yeah, I think you're right to highlight that the flows have broadened across what's now a suite of five different fund families. Very different from where we started when we launched our wealth business. You know, we tried to take the same listen-first solutions-oriented approach. that led us to launch s prime which was our single ticket solution to the private markets and at the time it wasn't clear if that might be our only fund but over time as we expanded our capabilities as the market evolved came to realize that there was a real opportunity for more asset class focused funds which led to the launch of spring focus on venture capital uh strux focused on infrastructure credex focused on private credit and stepex focused on on private equity so given that suite of five different fund families that really kind of cross all of our asset classes with the exception of real estate, I would say the big opportunity is probably not further product launches. I mean, we'll always, you know, keep our ears open and are heavily engaged with our partners in the channel to the extent that there are opportunities for new products where we are positioned to win, but that's probably not the bigger driver going forward. I think it's the continued expansion of the number of different platforms that we work with you know today over 700 different uh partners in the channel of which almost 500 we've been working with for over a year you know those groups that we've been working with for over a year 54 percent of them have more than one of our funds on on the platform and i think that tells me two things one there's obviously a great opportunity to to cross sell but two there's also further room to to run there And so we often track where are some of the newer funds like StepX and CredX and Strux at relative to where S-Prime or Spring were at in a similar point in their life. And I think that's where probably the big opportunity lies is the continued expansion of our relationships with new and existing channel partners there. But I think beyond that, I think taking some of the technology and the strategies that we've developed and applying them to, like you said, models, eventually think there will be applications in and around retirement over time. I mentioned earlier that our wealth business today more heavily focused on the U.S. Well, I think there's international opportunity for us as well. So those are some of the different levers that we'll continue to pull as we think about growing the wealth business.

Mike Cypress, Analyst — Morgan Salient Research

Now, as compared to the institutional channel, private wealth introduces a different set of operational questions as you think about monthly flows, deployment cadence, liquidity optics, education. So how are you approaching the balance there? And as the evergreen funds become a bigger part of the business, how do you maintain institutional-level underwriting discipline while also serving a more retail-oriented channel?

Scott Hart, CEO

Well, I think you're right. I think you summarized it well in terms of some of the differences relative to the institutional business. You know, the comment I've often made from the early days is that, you know, the wealth business has required that we develop certain new muscles. And you touched on the key points around monthly flows, around liquidity and diversification, around education. Fortunately, I think those were all things that we were well-suited to deliver on. And if you think about, even in our institutional business, I've always been focused on, as a partner to our clients, on education and training and knowledge transfer. So that's something that came very naturally to us. I think building portfolios that have sufficient liquidity requires diversification. And so our multi-manager approach, we think, is particularly well-suited to deliver there. And so I think there were a number of different reasons that we felt we were positioned to succeed in this part of the market. And it's interesting. I mean, some things actually grow easier as you scale. You talked about how do you continue the institutional quality decision-making as you get larger. I'd actually argue that certain things will get easier for us as we get larger. In the early days, as there's more uncertainty and more variability in terms of the monthly flows, it creates some real challenges in terms of lining up a pipeline of opportunities that you're ready to execute on. As these funds have scaled, I think they've actually grown more predictable in terms of some of the cash inflows as well as the distributions coming off the portfolio. And as you've got increased visibility in terms of the distributions coming off the portfolio, we think certain of these funds will be well-positioned to start to deploy strategies like primary commitments. Whereas, you know, in the early days, we focused much more heavily on secondaries and to some extent co-investments. The ability to work primaries into certain of these portfolios over time is actually the most scalable of our strategies. And so, you know, think that in some ways, certain elements of managing larger funds will make things easier on our platform.

Mike Cypress, Analyst — Morgan Salient Research

And to what extent do you see the business moving from more of a product-by-product sale to more of a B2B CIO-driven allocation sale? And how might that change flow durability, client acquisition costs, and ultimately margins?

Scott Hart, CEO

Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know if we see it as moving from one to the other or if it's sort of more of a both-and. I mean, I think we're certainly seeing with things like model portfolios that, you're right, It does shift from more of a B2C to a B2B type of sale, and that's a welcome conversation in a lot of ways. And I think, to your point around durability of flows, we would anticipate that you probably see less volatility in terms of redemptions because you're dealing with a professional investor and decision-maker and more of a CIO type. And so that is something that we are very much preparing for. It's early days. We have funds of ours that are on seven or eight different models today, but the net asset value there is probably measured more in the tens of millions than the hundreds of millions of dollars today. So I do think it's early days in terms of the trend towards models. But you've also seen us take certain steps to position us well for this opportunity. We often thought about S-Prime as really a private markets model portfolio in and of itself, but I think as we've seen the trend start to pick up with models, felt the need to have more of a pure-play asset class strategy, which ultimately led to the launch of StepEx, a pure-play private equity vehicle, recognizing somebody else may turn the dials in terms of allocations there. We wanted to be set up to have pure-play strategies across private equity venture, private credit, and infrastructure that could play meaningfully in model portfolios.

Mike Cypress, Analyst — Morgan Salient Research

And just given the focus on private wealth in the marketplace, um maybe you could talk a little bit about how flows are shaping up so far in the june quarter um i'm sure you probably would anticipate me asking that question here um and also talk a bit that in that answer how you're envisioning sort of expanding the platform presence across uh the product set over the next six 12 months as well as you think about this potential for that flow profile to evolve from here yeah yeah so i mean look we we continue to see strength

Scott Hart, CEO

across the platform in the current quarter. If I step back to the first calendar quarter we mentioned during our earnings call just a few weeks ago that we had a record $2.3 billion of organic inflows into our private wealth vehicles. I can say that through April and May, we're sitting about $1.8 billion with good visibility to give us the comfort that we will see another quarter in and around that range of $2.3 billion or higher. and so continue to see strength across the platform in terms of new flows. It's driven by a few different things. I mean, you touched earlier on the success we were really seeing across the suite of different funds. So you've seen continued solid performance of S-Prime and StepX. Spring, our venture fund, has continued to be a standout performer there as investors look to get high-quality access to the innovation economy. Strux has recently gotten on its first wire, And so it'll obviously take time, as we've seen with both S-Prime and Spring before it, but I think that will be additive to flows over time. And Credex coming off of $140 million in a month in May, driven by some rotation from other products into our vehicle, where really the multi-manager platform that we operate is resonating with certain investors. And so that may not be the new run rate, but certainly I think it's a good sign, particularly given some of the noise in the market around us. So, you know, that's what we're seeing in terms of the real-time, you know, flows here. I think in terms of, you know, what will continue to expand, you know, the platform and the platform relationships. Look, we continue to add, you know, members of our private wealth team and create, you know, new territories in the U.S., which has proven helpful in the past when we've made similar types of moves and decisions, also expanding our team internationally. And so internationally had our first $100 million month and has been a continued area of focus, not only in areas like Europe, but Asia, Australia, Latin America as well. And so those are some of the different ways that we'll look to continue to expand going forward.

Mike Cypress, Analyst — Morgan Salient Research

The first $100 million month internationally was in May? Correct. Okay. And today you own about 50% of your private wealth business, with the other 50% owned by the leadership team of the private wealth organizations. A little bit different from some of the others, which has created a little bit of noise on the P&L, given the NCI dynamics. So talk about how that might change as we cast forward into 27, where you have a call option on that business. How much might it cost to buy in the rest, and how creative could this be to adjusted earnings per share?

Scott Hart, CEO

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, maybe a little different than what other managers have done in a lot of ways, very similar to what we've done in the past in terms of really bringing on large senior experience teams the way that we have across our different asset class businesses, giving them an interest in the business they were building to align our interests and really motivate the type of behavior we wanted to see, but also recognizing that we'll reach a point in time where, you know, buying in that interest on an accretive basis would make sense. And so, look, there's still variability in terms of what that purchase price might look like if we were to exercise the call option next September. That has been the case since we announced the agreement where both the trailing performance of the wealth business as well as the then prevailing stepstone multiple will determine the ultimate purchase price there. But that multiple will be at a discount to our then prevailing multiple. if it were at today's share price would be something like a 30% discount to our multiple, therefore ensuring that it will be an accretive transaction for our shareholders. And so we really think about not only the wealth buy-in, but also the asset class buy-in that we're executing over time as the lowest risk form of accretive M&A that we could possibly do and that there's very little execution risk. These are partners we've been working with for the last, in some cases, decade.

Mike Cypress, Analyst — Morgan Salient Research

Why don't we talk about the DC and the retirement opportunity, which appears to be coming into greater focus for the industry today with the DOL's pending proposal. You recently hired a dedicated head of defined contributions. So talk about your expectations for this new dedicated team and more broadly how you envision going after the opportunity set in D.C. and what might differentiate DevStone's approach.

Scott Hart, CEO

Well, I think our new head of retirement solutions will really work very closely with our private wealth team and with others within the organization who have been very focused on the retirement opportunity for many years now. Given our involvement with organizations like Decalta and others, this has been a focus area for us for many years and will continue to be going forward. I think what's difficult to do is put an exact time frame on when the opportunity will really materialize. As you said, we were pleased to see the DLL guidance come out recently. we're pleased to see that it was very much focused on process and a prudent process and laid out a number of key characteristics that I think fit well with the way that we think about the opportunity. A focus on performance and fees and really net of fee performance as one of the main drivers. A focus on valuations and liquidity. A focus on benchmarking and complexity. I think those are all things that when we think about StepStone's fee structures across some of our different wealth vehicles, when we think about the performance of our funds, when we think about some of the partnerships we've entered into on the data and the benchmarking side, you know, I think we are very well positioned for the same reasons that we're positioned well on the wealth side. You know, our anticipation here is that it'll be more of a target date fund opportunity as opposed to being an individual, StepStone being an individual line item on a 1-401-K. And I think that's probably the way that many are thinking about it today. But again, I think the biggest uncertainty is the exact time frame. We are encouraged, like I said, not only by the DOL guidance, but also some of the conversations that we are having, which have really picked up since Taylor joined us as head of Retirement Solutions.

Mike Cypress, Analyst — Morgan Salient Research

Maybe shifting gears to data and monetization there, StepSones Data Opportunity is becoming more tangible through a number of partnerships you have with Fitzy Russell, Kroll, Pitchbuck, and so forth. What milestones would you see you have for that part of the business over the next 12, 24 months, and how might you envision these contributing over the next several years?

Michael McCabe, Analyst — Other

Yeah, so data and technology is probably one of the most exciting parts of what we do here at StepZone. In fact, everything that we do is pretty much data-driven. And over the last year, you've heard us announce three partnerships, all of which do something unique and a little bit different. So maybe we start with Footsie Russell. It had been a fascinating evolution to watch how data is being used from a benchmarking standpoint, given how the markets have been calibrated to marking their books on a quarterly basis. And typically when valuations come in, the limited partner is marking their books with a lag of almost a full quarter. And then there may be some cash adjustment to that mark. What Stepstone and FTSE Russell have created is a daily benchmark suite of indices within the private markets, starting with a global private markets index, and within it there is all the asset classes. and then we've broken some asset classes and created a global infrastructure benchmarking index and we've created a global private equity benchmarking index which have daily marks based on the data feeds that we're getting in from thousands and thousands of funds. Now, I'll share an anecdotal story with you. I was at the World Investment Forum this past weekend hosted by the London Stock Exchange Group and the CIO of one of our more prominent university endowments is now subscribing to the FTSE, StepStone suite of indices. And I asked him, what motivated you to become a user of these indices? And he said, for the first time in his 30-year career as an investor in the private markets, he's able to show his board of trustees a unified total return of their portfolio of both private and public investments. typically it's been apples and oranges you have a lag that's cash adjusted in the privates but you have a real-time daily mark in the publics now that you have a daily mark in the privates with the footsie stepstones partnership it's opened up a new way for investors to really look at their total portfolio return and he finished the conversation by saying and i can do it on a one-year basis for the first time in my career so we we think we're we're unlocking something that's new it will take time and education and the adoption rate will be i think will be it'll take time but we are the only ones in the market with us available and being in partnership with a leader like footsie russell we think positions us to win in in that space the second exciting partnership we announced was with crawl and given all the the information noise and headlines about private credit over last year it's great that stepstone has this private credit suite of benchmarks with crawl that's pulling from over 15 000 unique loans not from funds so we're able to really slice and dice the credit quality and the risk factors associated within private credit in partnership with crawl and we think that that that suite of you know private credit indices and benchmarking tools will also see a lot of adoption over the coming years and then just this past month we announced a partnership with PitchBook and what's really unique about PitchBook is for the first time StepStone is making its deal level data available for analytical purposes and specifically the TAM or the market that the PitchBook StepStone partnership is addressing which has been otherwise unaddressed is the general partner universe so most of the footsie russell and some crawl but mostly the footsie russell are lp subscribed users here we're going to have gp subscribed users looking to figure out how they can differentiate their track record at the deal level how they can pitch their story as they're out fundraising and use these analytical tools that stepstone is going to enable them to use at the deal level. So we now have three partnerships that address all the private markets as well as the entire ecosystem of LPs, service providers, and GPs. Great. Why don't we shift gears and talk

Mike Cypress, Analyst — Morgan Salient Research

about secondaries? There's been a fair amount of attention by the media, the investor community around day one markups in secondaries. So what do investors, in your view, continue to misunderstand about the discount capture versus actual value creation and why is this practice appropriate in

Michael McCabe, Analyst — Other

retail vehicles in your view? Thanks Mike. As probably many of you heard on not just our prepared remarks in our last earnings call but also in the Q&A section, I think the biggest misunderstanding is that there are two numbers that are causing some confusion. The first number is when a secondary buyer acquires an asset, the value that they report is the value that the general partner is holding on their books as a fair market value. And that fair market value is done in accordance with GAAP. The second number is the price that they paid for that. it's really it's a fractional interest sometimes sub one percent interest in a much larger pool of assets and so there's a difference between the purchase price that's paid for a fractional interest and the fair market value that the general partner is holding on their books those are two different numbers they answer two different questions and oftentimes the purchase price can be less than the fair market value and so it's a discount and so there's a gain between the price that's paid and the value that's been reported and that creates this day one markup and and that has that's been how the the secondary market has been working since inception and the seller who's selling the asset is motivated either because of liquidity needs they're just actively managing their portfolio it could be a competitive situation there could be friction in terms of price. There's a number of different reasons why the price is going to differ from the value. So we're hoping that some of this confusion gets cleared up. I don't think the secondary industry is saying we've created some magical value on day one. They're saying, no, we have a negotiated price based on a seller situation that's different than the value the GP is reporting. I think the real concern here is in the evergreen structures out there, just because it's an unrealized gain doesn't make it unreal. And in some cases, there's a performance fee that's coming from this unrealized gain. And I think that's a fair concern in some cases. But I think as we look at StepStone's products, in all but one, there is no performance fee and the only performance fee that's associated with an unrealized gain is our venture product called spring and that's what led us to disclose and be very transparent about what the sources of value are coming from so when we unpack the 33 return or 38 return that spring created over the last year 33 percentage points of those 38 percentage gains came from growth in the asset and a small fraction came from the buy in the form of a discount that same analysis was disclosed on our s prime evergreen vehicle where we posted an 11 percent return of which nine percentage points came from growth and just a couple percentage points came from the buys as the discount so our strategy our philosophy as a firm and a secondary investor is we buy great assets at a fair price. We're not looking to buy fair assets at a great price. I've been in this industry my entire career, and you get what you pay for in the secondary market. There is no free lunch. But the difference between value and price is, I think, what's causing some of the confusion,

Mike Cypress, Analyst — Morgan Salient Research

Mike. Great. Why don't we talk about venture, which has become a more visible differentiator for Stepstone, particularly through spring. Stepstone's been very active in venture secondaries where lack of generally IPOs over recent years and strategic exits have created a large liquidity overhang on the industry. So how do you underrate the market today? What have you learned about separating forced sellers with maybe good assets from forced sellers with structurally impaired assets? And how has the opportunity set evolved here with AI?

Scott Hart, CEO

yeah i mean look i think one that source of differentiation on the venture side and with venture secondaries really started with the green spring acquisition that we did back in 2021 and one of the comments that i have been making really since that acquisition is that one of the things our venture team does such a good job of is developing a view on which venture-backed assets they want to own and then finding creative ways to acquire access to those companies at the most attractive price and valuation possible and so to your question around how do you differentiate between four sellers with high quality assets and four sellers with impaired assets well i think showing up with a prepared mind and knowing the assets you want to own as opposed to being reactive and trying to figure out each time an opportunity comes to market whether it's a high quality or an impaired asset i think that's a big part of our our advantage and the proactive nature with which our team operates, I think, is a big part of our success. The other part is, and I think this is true of each of our asset classes, I mean, one of the reasons that rather than, you know, simply tap a private equity professional internally to go have them build out the infrastructure business or the venture business over time was we recognize there are differences across asset classes and in terms of how you make money in each asset class. And in venture, you know, the power law is real, where, you know, we've seen over the last decade something like 50% of the value creation has come from about 100 different companies. And so even more important that you are focused on trying to get access to the right companies and making sure you've got high-quality exposure to those assets in a way that's going to drive your performance over time. And so when we think about our venture secondary strategy, the mix looks quite a bit different to other asset classes. It's less of an LP secondary market. We've done much more in terms of direct secondaries, whether it's been company-led tenders or buying interest from, you know, early management teams or, you know, doing strip sales alongside of managers that we are close with. And, again, it has been much more about the post-closing growth and value creation as opposed to discount, as Mike just described a moment ago.

Mike Cypress, Analyst — Morgan Salient Research

And we're just about up on time. So final question, if we look out over the next few years, what do you think becomes the next biggest incremental growth driver for StepStone? Where do you think the white space is greatest today?

Scott Hart, CEO

The thing that gives me the most comfort is not one thing, right? We talked about the diversification of the business. I made the comment earlier that in any given quarter, it's been a different asset class or strategy or product that's been driving that growth. But that said, when we look back over our close to 20-year history now, there have been a number of key strategic decisions that we have made that have positioned us well for growth internationally, growth across the non-private equity asset classes, growth in separate accounts and with customized solutions, most recently growth in the private wealth space. And so when you ask that question, it's hard not to point to the retirement opportunity as one that is very large, under-allocated and under-penetrated today, where difficult to put an exact timeline on it, but certainly an opportunity that we're excited about. And as you referenced in your question earlier, one that we're starting to put real resources behind here.

Mike Cypress, Analyst — Morgan Salient Research

Great. Well, I'm afraid we're out of time. Please join me in thanking Scott and Mike.

Scott Hart, CEO

Thank you.