Moelis & Co

NYSE:MC

Earnings Call Transcript 2018-Q3

[Operator]

Good day everyone, and welcome to the Moelis & Company Third Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] And please note that today's event is being recorded.

I'd now like to turn the conference over to Michele Miyakawa. Please go ahead.

[Michele Miyakawa, MD]

Great, thank you and thank you everyone for joining us for our third quarter 2018 financial results conference call. On the phone today are Navid Mahmoodzadegan, Co-Founder and Co-President, and Joe Simon, Chief Financial Officer.

Before we begin, I'd like to note that the remarks made on this call may contain certain forward-looking statements, including regarding future performance, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties, including those identified from time-to-time in the Risk Factors section of Moelis & Company's filings with the SEC. Actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated. The firm undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.

Our comments today include references to certain adjusted or non-GAAP financial measures. We believe these measures, when presented together with comparable GAAP measures, are useful to investors to compare our results across several periods and to better understand our operating results.

The reconciliation of these adjusted financial measures with the relevant GAAP financial information and other information required by Reg G is provided in the firm's earnings release, which can be found on our Investor Relations website at investors.moelis.com.

I'll now turn the call over to Joe.

[Joseph Simon, CFO]

Thanks, Michele, and good afternoon, everyone. On today's call, I'll go through our financial results, and then Navid will provide additional commentary on our results and the business. I'm pleased to report a record third quarter in which we achieved $208 million of revenues, representing a 22% increase over the prior year period. Our performance compares favorably to the overall M&A market in which the number of global M&A completions greater than $100 million was down 16% from a prior year quarter.

Our revenue strength was driven primarily by continued growth in M&A and our restructuring business continues to benefit from strong positioning and market share with both sequential and year-over-year growth. For the first nine months of 2018, our revenues are $648 million, up 26% over the prior year period.

Moving to expenses adjusted compensation expense continues to be accrued at 57.5% consistent with prior periods. Our non-comp ratio was 16.4% in the third quarter and 16.7% year-to-date. For the third quarter, we reported $34.1 million of non-comp expenses. The year-over-year dollar increase was largely attributable to headcount increases and to the new accounting, under which client reimbursements no longer provide an accounting offset to the related non-comp expense categories.

Our corporate effective tax rate was 24.1% for the third quarter and 13.2% for the first nine months. The timing of our vesting events are concentrated in the first half of the year. So this quarter’s rate is a better approximation of the 25% underlying run rate corporate tax rate. As a reminder, our adjusted net income presentation reflects all of the firm’s income tax that are calculated effective corporate tax rate.

Finally, our Board declared a quarterly dividend of $0.47 per share to be paid on November 14th to stockholders of record as of November 1st. We ended the quarter with a strong financial position with no debt and $232 million of cash and liquid investments.

And I’ll now turn the call over to Navid.

[Navid Mahmoodzadegan, Co-Founder and Co-President]

Thank you, Joe and good afternoon, everyone. Q3 was another outstanding quarter for our firm, continuing our strong momentum from the first half of the year. Year-to-date, our revenues are up 26% over the same period last year. All achieved organically without any acquisitions. Our exceptional people, integrated culture and collaborative network continue to drive new business wins across sectors and across the regions.

Our third quarter was strong by any measure with all key indicators pointing up. We advised a greater number of clients overall, a greater number of clients who paid fees over $1 million and completed a larger number of transactions compared with the prior year period. In addition, we earned higher average fees and completed transactions and saw a meaningful increase in the size and complexity of the transactions that we advised on. With all products contributing including restructuring, which continues to be a steady contributor, we achieved record third quarter revenues.

Our strong growth, client momentum and collaborative culture are why Moelis continues to be a very attractive destination for top talent. Since our last earnings call, we announced that Matt Chlystek will be joining the firm next month as a Managing Director to provide financial and strategic advice to food and agro business clients.

We are also very excited to welcome Jane Sadowsky as a Senior Advisor focused on diversity and inclusion. We are very committed to recruiting, developing and retaining more women and other underrepresented groups. We've had the privilege of working with Jane previously and know that she will add tremendous value to accelerating and improving our diversity initiatives.

Before we turn to questions, let me make a few comments on what we're seeing in the overall deal environment. Overall the key drivers of the deal activity, which we have discussed with you all previously, remained very much intact in our view.

These include; one, technological disruption, which requires companies of all sizes to assess their strategic positioning and asset mix in a rapidly changing competitive landscape. Two, shareholder activism where M&A is often a key element for real or potential activist campaigns. Three, record amounts of capital that have been raised and are being actively deployed at private equity firms, sovereign wealth funds and other institutions. And four, positive economic growth and equity market performance especially in the United States, both of which have historically been positively correlated to overall deal activity.

I do think it's fair to point out though that there are some countervailing factors that are impacting the pace of deal making in the near-term. Risk around global trade, certain geopolitical events and regulatory uncertainties are impacting some deals on the margin, especially with respect to the larger cross-border transactions. But as I said before, we don't see these risks threatening the fundamental strength of the overall M&A market at this point in time.

Turning back to Moelis, we have never felt better about our business, the quality of our people, our culture and our competitive positioning. Activity levels remain strong and our dialogue with clients remains robust.

With that, I welcome any questions you might have.

[Operator]

And we will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] And our first questioner today will be Ken Worthington with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

[Kenneth Worthington, JPMorgan]

Hi, good afternoon and thank you for taking my questions. So maybe first where kind of going into this season where I’d expect you to be having more meaningful conversations with senior people who might be considering moving to Moelis. So maybe how is the pipeline of candidates of experienced hires you're talking to looking today versus maybe this time last year? And as we approach the season to promote, how does your latest class looks there?

[Navid Mahmoodzadegan, Co-Founder and Co-President]

Thanks for the questions, Ken. Look, recruiting for us -- lateral recruiting is really a year around endeavor. Look, we're constantly meeting people, we're constantly keeping dialogues and relationships up and obviously we tend to do most of our hiring when we actually bring people onboard laterally kind of from the spring to late summer, typically that's the overall progression. But generally the types of dialogues we're having, the types of people that we're getting to know are really terrific.

With respect to the internal promotes as we've always talked about, internal promotes is a really key element of our business plan. It's been a really key element of our historical success and it's fundamental to the future of the firm. We're in the process of going through our annual promotion process. So it's too early to say what the final numbers will be, but I suspect they will be in the same ballpark in terms of number of internal promotes as we have been seeing over the last few years.

[Kenneth Worthington, JPMorgan]

Okay, fair enough. Maybe second, you have a number of strategic alliances, to what extent are you seeing deal flow or activity with the Japanese and Mexican partners? And have these alliances -- to what extent have they been impactful over say the last either 9 or 12 months?

[Navid Mahmoodzadegan, Co-Founder and Co-President]

Sure. Great question, Ken, thanks. So we have two important alliances, one in Japan and one in Mexico. The Japanese alliance is longer standing and the Mexican alliance, strategic alliance is more recent. Look I think they are both positive contributors to our firm, sitting here today, we maintain that those relationships and those alliances are by far the best way for us at this point in time to be in those marketplaces.

We do have good transactional activity, kind of -- and dialogues kind of taking place, with respect to both of those alliances. It’s hard to kind of put numbers on them, it’s hard to be very predictive in terms of how impactful they are in any one quarter, any one set of quarters. But I will tell you we are in business with great people in both of those markets and we do believe that those are very value added to our company.

[Kenneth Worthington, JPMorgan]

Okay, great. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

And our next questioner today will be Michael Needham with Bank of America, Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead.

[Michael Needham, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch]

Hey, thanks for taking the questions. My first question is kind of just the M&A environment, I think, Navid, you touched on this a bit. A lot of the time when equity market volatility spikes announcements kind of slowdown for a period of time, is that having an impact? I know it’s fairly recent, but is that having an impact on CEO and Board level, how confident they are and the level of transaction discussions?

[Navid Mahmoodzadegan, Co-Founder and Co-President]

Hi, Mike. Look not yet as you point out, it has been a more recent phenomena and here the volatility that we have seen over the last few weeks. So I think it’s just too early to kind of make any generalizations about, the impact of the volatility on deal making.

Look, you’re 100% right, if we have a prolong period of volatility that will have some impact. When you’re having relative value conversations or companies are using their equities, if there’s just a lot of movement kind of in those values it does kind of impact how people are thinking about deals. And then volatility generally impacts CEO and Board level confidence, which has its own set of impacts on deal making.

But I think it’s still a more recent phenomenon, A; but B, the more important point is the macro drivers that I mentioned before are still very much intact. The technological disruption that’s kind of ripping through every industry isn’t going to stop. The need for scale, the need for companies to be as well positioned as they can possibly be to deal with this disruption or to take advantage of the disruption isn’t going away. And so near-term volatility could have some modest impact, but we still see those fundamental drivers still very much of kind of carrying the M&A market for a period of time.

[Michael Needham, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch]

Okay, thanks for that. And last quarter you called out some deals that got pull forward, was there anything meaningful this quarter?

[Navid Mahmoodzadegan, Co-Founder and Co-President]

Joe, you want to take that one?

[Joseph Simon, CFO]

Sure. So, yes, last quarter we highlighted the matter really to draw attention to it, so you could update your model and your thinking. We really don’t plan to discuss revenues for any two day period. I think I’ll disclose what we did last -- this quarter just to keep it in context, but going forward I would just -- it’s not a question that I plan on answering. So, basically it was about $16 million this quarter.

[Michael Needham, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch]

Okay, great. Thank you.

[Joseph Simon, CFO]

Sure.

[Operator]

And our next questioner today will be Devin Ryan with JMP Securities. Please go ahead.

[Devin Ryan, JMP Securities]

Thanks, good afternoon, Navid, Joe. How are you guys?

[Navid Mahmoodzadegan, Co-Founder and Co-President]

Hi, Devin how you are doing?

[Devin Ryan, JMP Securities]

Doing well. Maybe just first one here on the restructuring business and then weather there has been any change in tone there just with the pickup in the uplift in rates, I know it hasn’t been dramatic, but not sure if that’s driving any activity? And then whether just beyond that, if you are seeing any pockets of stress out there that seem new?

[Navid Mahmoodzadegan, Co-Founder and Co-President]

Good question, Devin. Look, I think as you point out, default rates are still low, it would be interesting to see what happens with the default rates as interest rates tick up, but we haven't seen kind of a flurry of new restructuring activity recently in terms of really moving the numbers on the default rates. I do think what's significant though is our restructuring team continues to really knock it out of the park in terms of their rankings.

I think whatever set of rankings you look at in terms of completed restructurings or announcements are U.S. or worldwide we tend to be a number one or number two ranked firm in pretty much all of the statistics I've seen here recently.

So from a market share perspective, they're doing a terrific job, I think it's a function of the strength of the team. And more broadly, this integrated model that we keep talking about over and over again which has major impact in terms of our ability to bring sector expertise and restructuring expertise on a global basis to clients everywhere, both on the company side and the creditor side. So I think the overall market is relatively stable on the restructuring side, but our team continues to take share, which I think is contributing to the really good results.

[Devin Ryan, JMP Securities]

Great, thanks for the color. And then maybe here just on the M&A environment and just to keep going on some of your comments. So if I hear you, it sounds like the environment remains pretty consistent or maybe consistently good. But a lot of conversation in the market right now is around just cyclical peaks, whether that be in this business or just the business environment more broadly.

But typically the peaks we tend to see pretty frothy activity, people are pretty far out the curve on risk. And so I'm just curious you've been through some cycles and whether you're seeing kind of those normal signs that we see at cyclical peaks or anything else you can kind of shed light on there?

[Navid Mahmoodzadegan, Co-Founder and Co-President]

Yes. Look, Devin, it's always hard to kind of call cyclical peaks, right. You know that there will be a peak at some point and a cycle will happen, you just -- it's just notoriously hard to predict when that will be and it's especially hard to predict it kind of once you're in the middle of -- while you're in the middle of all the activity, right?

Look just anecdotally and again I don't know how much this sheds light on your question, but look you are starting to hear about private equity firms and prognosticators start to model in recessions in their base cases on deals, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I think there's an acknowledgement that at some point the economy will slow down.

Hopefully we won't have anywhere near the kind of pull back that we saw the last time around and the overall global economy could certainly handle a normal recession or normal pullback.

I do think one of the things you're likely to see though and again, I'm not predicting that deal making won't be impacted by it, it certainly will. Because deal-making is impacted by where the stock market is and what the overall economy looks like. But these trends that I keep talking about aren't going away. The pools of money that are sitting at the PE shops are going to get spent.

I think activism is here to stay on a global basis and the technological disruption that I keep talking about, that everybody's talking about is not -- is going to accelerate if anything. So again, you could have some impact on deal making here and there on the margin. But I do think some of these fundamental drivers are going to persist, even if we start to see the economy look a little different than what we've seen over the last 24 or 36 months.

[Devin Ryan, JMP Securities]

Got it, very helpful. I know that's a tough one to answer, but appreciate the perspective. And then just last one here, just on -- maybe for, Joe, just on share repurchases, I know kind of how you guys have been thinking about it, but do we get to maybe a point where the share price is attractive enough, where you would want to get more aggressive there or just even to offset some of the dilution that we've been seeing at the expense of a smaller float?

[Joseph Simon, CFO]

Yes, I think it’s something that we're constantly having conversations about each quarter with our Board. I'm not going -- I think at this point, what we've been doing is likely to continue to persist. But I wouldn't rule out the possibility of a share buyback at some point.

[Navid Mahmoodzadegan, Co-Founder and Co-President]

Hey, Devin, just to add some color on that. Look I think for -- we've been saying for many years now that since we went public that doing repurchases, when you had no float out there didn't make a lot of sense. That liquidity and maintaining liquidity in the stock was important. Obviously there is more liquidity today in the stock that there has been certainly first few years we were public.

But one of the things we noticed is our shareholders really seem to like the fact that we've been very disciplined about returning excess cash to shareholders very regularly through these dividends. People tend to like it. And so I do think our mindset is still generally to continue to do that. As Joe said, we're always evaluating this and we'll continue to evaluate that and have discussions about whether amping up share repurchases make sense. But we've just been hearing pretty clearly from most of our shareholders they tend to like the consistency and the regularity of getting cash back.

[Devin Ryan, JMP Securities]

Got it, thank you very much.

[Operator]

And the next questioner today will be Brennan Hawken with UBS. Please go ahead.

[Brennan Hawken, UBS]

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. You Navid in your comments about the M&A market earlier, you spoke to PE firms starting to include recessions in their forecast for some of them. Can you speak a little bit to trends that you're seeing amongst financial sponsors recently? I know how this is a big sort of practice and focus for you all. So interested in any adjustments and trends that you see emerging there.

[Navid Mahmoodzadegan, Co-Founder and Co-President]

Sure, good question, Brennan. Thanks for that. Look, PE is certainly a big part of what we do. I forget the exact numbers, but PE tends to be either on one side or the other side of roughly half of our overall business, at least our M&A business. And so we're very much in tune with what’s happening in that community.

Look, PE market, PE activity is really active. Continues to be active, a lot of that is the record amounts of capital that's been raised. PE has become an even more important part of the deal making environment. And so it's not the amount of capital -- it's not just the amount of capital it's also the different types of capital. These large PE firms are now sitting with not just one control buyout fund, but many of them are sitting with many different pools and layers of money to facilitate transactions from core funds to mez funds to credit funds to opportunity funds.

And so that facilitation that private equity is so good at and lubricating transactions is now more present in the M&A market than it's ever been. And again I don't see that changing, because as we all know in private equity firms look to raise money and they're successful of raising money they tend to invest it. So that money will get invested very confident of that and will help to continue to be a driver of M&A activity.

Look on the margin are some of the firms in particular auctions sensing that there could be recession in the next two or three years and being slightly less aggressive on particular transactions. Yes, there could be some of that, but we're not seeing that impact deal making activities we're not seeing it ultimately impact.

The ability of sellers to really get prices for assets and we're in one of those markets right now where there tends to be both strategic and financial bids for many, many different asset types, because both strategic and financial buyers have a desire to conduct M&A.

So we're not seeing it impact deal levels right now. You might ask about rates, sometimes people ask about rates, while rates are ticking up, the leverage alone in high yield markets continue to be very liquid. And so we haven't yet seen a tick up in rates have a real impact to deal making at all at this point. So we're obviously paying close mind to rates, but so far not really impacting overall levels of activity as far as we can see.

[Brennan Hawken, UBS]

That's great. Navid, thank you for that thorough color there. You had also spoken a little bit on hiring earlier, but just curious about how we should think about and how you are thinking about it as you begin to plan for next year. Obviously there are risks in the marketplace and curious we haven't seen Moelis go through a full period like this where there might be some potential need for caution and concern.

Obviously it wouldn’t impact if you really -- if there was a candidate that you really wanted to hire. But generally when you think about next year and your planning, do factors like where we are come into play, or would you all just continue to move forward as ordinary course and not really adjust your plans as far as the number of folks that you’d be looking to hire next year?

[Navid Mahmoodzadegan, Co-Founder and Co-President]

So, Brennan, look our approach to hiring laterally is really straight forward, right. We still despite the fact that we have 125 or so managing directors globally, still have lots of wide space within pretty much all of our sector groups.

When we start to dig down into the subsectors and subspaces, there are still many, many areas where we could definitely take on world class talent to reach more clients, more consistently. And so, hiring and internal development both are critical for us to continuing to build out our footprint and have the very, very best bankers in the world covering as many clients as we can.

So we’re going to continue to do that and for us it’s all about finding the right person, finding the right person who is really, really good at covering those spaces, finding the right person who fits with our culture, critical, critical, and doing that in a way that works within our economic and model philosophy, which we have talked about intensively.

So if we could do that and sometimes ironically as you know from the last crisis, it’s actually easier to do that when -- if there should be a market slowdown at some point, sometimes it’s actually easier to find great talent on those -- in those moments and we won’t hesitate to continue to grow the firm, continue to have the pedal to the metal in terms of finding the very best people to continue to build out the global footprint. And again the criteria will remain the same in a good market or a not good market and we’ll be doing that as I said 365 days a year through all market cycles as we continue to build the firm.

[Brennan Hawken, UBS]

Yes. Totally appreciate that Navid and you touched on something that’s really interesting in there where you talked about how sometimes in a downturn it might be even a better more opportune time and that was kind what I was trying to get at. So let me rephrase, would you guys think about maybe holding back as you plan out so that if the market would get more difficult than you can get more aggressive and potentially be able to pull in great talent when others might be on their heels, competitors might be on their heels, right?

[Navid Mahmoodzadegan, Co-Founder and Co-President]

It’s a good question, Brennan. Look it’s hard, when the right person shows up, or the right internal candidate is up for promotion and you’re trying to plot out their carrier, it’s hard to pull back on that person, if they satisfy all the criteria I talked about, and we can do it in a way that make sense for us within our model.

It’s hard to say, look we’re going to hold off on person X or person Y and wait for a downturn that may not come for a while. So, I don’t think we’re doing that in any kind of conscious way. I would say -- I would normally say, hey, maybe we will be more disciplined, but we’re generally pretty disciplined. So, I think discipline is generally part of the equation, when we’re thinking about hiring.

So, I don’t think we think about it that way, if the right person is here, and we think that’ll be a great fit, we can bring them on board and plug them into the system, into the platform and they could be off to the races, that’s a great outcome for us. And if the person is not here and a different market environment will make those people available, we’ll be there and we’ll continue to kind of put people through the process that we have talked about in terms of evaluating whether they could be successful here.

And look, now that we have been in business now for 11 years, I think we’ve a pretty good sense now, better than we have ever had of the types of people, the types of backgrounds, we hire people now from all different types of firms, we hired people from big firms, we hired people from the top of the bulge, we have hired people from boutiques, we have hired people from international firms, and we have done talent development. And the amount of data and information and just generally the muscles that we've developed here internally to evaluate people are better than they’ve ever been.

And so and we feel really good about where we are in terms of recruiting and continue to feel good about as I said the dialogues we're having and our ability to continue to attract people in great markets and then not so great markets.

[Brennan Hawken, UBS]

Thanks for all that thorough color, Navid. Really appreciate it.

[Navid Mahmoodzadegan, Co-Founder and Co-President]

Thanks, Brennan.

[Operator]

The next questioner today will be Betsy Graseck with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

[Betsy Graseck, Morgan Stanley]

Hey, good evening.

[Navid Mahmoodzadegan, Co-Founder and Co-President]

Hi, Betsy.

[Betsy Graseck, Morgan Stanley]

Hi. Couple of questions, one, we talked a little bit earlier on the call about the appetite for buybacks. But I guess as I’m noticing the cash and short-term investment line creep up again, I'm wondering how you weigh that against special dividends? I know you've done those several times in the past.

[Navid Mahmoodzadegan, Co-Founder and Co-President]

Betsy, look and Joe can chime in here too, but let me start. The record kind of speaks for itself right in terms of what we've been in terms of regular dividends, special dividends over the last few years since we've been public. The philosophy has not changed at all, excess capital gets returned to shareholders pretty consistently, very consistently.

You might ask about M&A, we haven't done any meaningful M&A. We've been able to sustain really high revenue growth without M&A kind of doing what we've been doing and while we continue to evaluate everything interesting that comes in the door on the M&A side. We haven't found anything that's kind of meets the criteria that's better than kind of what we've been doing in terms of building the firm.

And on share buybacks. Look as I said, the liquidity has been a big part of the hang up historically, while it's less of an issue today. Again the feedback we keep getting back from people is, they like the consistency of returning the money. And we're all shareholders too major shareholders. And we find that as shareholders it's not a bad thing to have cash returned to you on a pretty consistent basis.

So we're always -- we always have this discussion. We’ll continue to have this discussion internally and with our board. But right now I think we're pretty much kind of sticking to what we've been doing here over the last number of quarters.

[Joseph Simon, CFO]

And I would just add one thing which is it's easy to -- so we have quite a bit of cash, but you also have to understand that we have been year marking amounts for bonuses as well as taxes. And that ultimately accumulates through the year and then is ultimately released at the beginning of the following year. So those balances are building, but they're largely year marked. As you know we distributed a special I think in early September. So we regularly look at this, at excess cash.

[Betsy Graseck, Morgan Stanley]

Yes. Okay. And I just wanted to change dialogue a little bit to the restructuring side and Navid, wanted to get your thoughts on a question that I get from investors regarding the restructuring potential of the bonds that are -- that have been getting issued recently. And specifically around things like trap doors that are becoming, I don't know if one that we're prevalent.

But we see them idiosyncratically in the deal structures. And wanted to understand how you think about the restructuring wave that we get next time it kind of shows up. Is it going to look and feel like prior cycles or is there something different as to how the terms and structures are being done in today's issuance environment that might lead us to a different type of outcome on the restructuring revenue side when that wave hits.

[Navid Mahmoodzadegan, Co-Founder and Co-President]

So, Betsy, let me try to unpack some of that, good question. Look yes, I do think that it's possible that the restructuring -- the types of restructuring transactions that happen the next cycle could look a little different. We obviously had lots of kind of covenant light issues, et cetera, et cetera. We have been in a really frothy environment here now for a bunch of years in terms of how yield and leverage loan issuances.

And so issuers have definitely taken advantage of really attractive terms, not just on pricing but also on structure. And so that that could potentially elongate or kind of create different kinds of restructurings for overlevered companies if we have a turn in the cycle going forward.

But, it's hard to answer the question completely, because we don't know when and if the cycle comes and why the cycle happens, what's the trigger and how deep it looks like, and across which spaces and geographies it hits first, and ripple through. It's really hard to predict, what that will mean for restructuring revenues globally and therefore, for our business.

Here's what I do know, with a high degree of certainty, we've kept our senior team and non-senior team, quite frankly the whole team pretty much together through this whole low level, relatively low level of restructuring activity for the last couple years. Through that period of time, our team continues to elevate their presence, elevate their market share, and as of the top of the rankings. And I think somebody mentioned to me today that we were involved in the five biggest restructurings year-to-date this year something like that.

So we feel great about the overall level of productivity in this environment and feel really great about where that business can go if you do see a big pickup in terms of default rates and activities across a bunch of different spaces.

And again, I keep coming back to this because I do think it's critical it was one of the reasons why our team was successful when they joined, and it continue to be successful, and will be through the next cycle. This bringing together of the global platform, the bringing together of sector expertise, the bringing together of things like risk advisory and capital markets, and all these different elements that gives you an edge when you're sitting there with a company talking to them about their balance sheet it gives you an edge when you're sitting there pitching its other firms for creditor assignments, on large bankruptcies. It's -- the team is critical, you have to have the team of experts, and they’ve become extremely well known in the space.

And then when you lay around these other elements in an integrated firm and have the track record we do, it really is powerful. And I do know that no matter how big that wave looks like, and what it looks like, it was a very, very strong chance we’ll be as successful as anybody else when it happens.

[Betsy Graseck, Morgan Stanley]

Okay, no, thanks for that color. Just one follow-up there is let’s say the covenant lights end up having some challenges from a restructuring perspective. Does that end up meaning that it's more complicated, and therefore, maybe a higher fee rate. Is there any correlation there that we can think about?

[Navid Mahmoodzadegan, Co-Founder and Co-President]

I'm not sure, I would draw that, Betsy, I find and this is just sort of in my experience and if our restructuring guys were on the phone, they might have a different view. But if a company is over levered, it's over levered, right? And there'll be a day of reckoning at some point, when maturities come up and those kinds of things happen.

So you may not have a covenant issue, which causes a problem immediately. But at some point along the way, you'll either won't be able to pay interest or you won't be able to pay back the maturities. And sometimes what covenant light means is just the process takes longer. Sometimes the process taking longer could mean more overall fees. Sometimes it might mean more fees, but a lot more time.

So, it's hard to know whether that's good or bad for restructuring advisors. But what I know, is when companies are over levered, if they're truly over levered, and at some point generally there's a day of reckoning at some point. And not always, sometimes, you’ve cyclical businesses that can kind of get through a cycle and then kind of get back on their feet.

But I would hesitate to sort of say lots of covenant light, and therefore the restructuring wave will be much greater or not as great in terms of overall fee activity. I think it's just too hard there are so many other factors that play into what that's going to look like to draw any kind of direct line so if you know what I mean, I think it's very hard to predict that.

[Betsy Graseck, Morgan Stanley]

No, I hear you. And then just lastly, why do you think we haven't seen any material wave in restructuring? I get this question constantly. Why hasn't this shoe fallen yet, there must be some good reasons for that?

[Navid Mahmoodzadegan, Co-Founder and Co-President]

Well, we have a very strong global economy. We have very strong financing environments. And when you have both of those things happening, when you have -- again not all sectors of the economy are strong. We obviously saw a wave of activity in oil and gas few years ago, we've seen some activity in retail. So there is definitely pockets of activity and there's certainly specific companies that have legacy issues dating back to the financial crisis and the pre-financial crisis.

But, you haven’t seen this widespread pickup in default rates and widespread restructuring activity, because the economy has been really good and because there seems to be a form of financing somewhere for a lot of companies to kind of buy them some more time and you tend to see that when rates have been relatively low, when there’s lot of forms of alternative capital and lots of problem solvers in terms of funds and credit funds and folks, we’re prepared to lend money, hedge funds to give the company some more time.

But, as I said when the economic cycle turns, some of those elements will no longer be there and you’ll see an inevitable pickup in default rates.

[Betsy Graseck, Morgan Stanley]

Thank you.

[Operator]

And the next questioner today will be Jim Mitchell with Buckingham Research. Please go ahead.

[Jim Mitchell, Buckingham Research]

Hey, good morning, afternoon, sorry.

[Navid Mahmoodzadegan, Co-Founder and Co-President]

Hey, Jim.

[Jim Mitchell, Buckingham Research]

Just a quick question, we did see a slowdown in industry activity levels globally in the third quarter, I think that’s what’s got investors nervous, Navid, you kind of mentioned that you have never felt better about your business and activity remains strong for you guys. So, where are you seeing the momentum in the context of sort of the overall environment slowing and what do you think is driving that? Is it just the network effect, is it sort of maturation of new hires and new promotes. How do we think about I guess going forward, if we have this kind of slower environment, because I think that’s what a lot of people are worried about.

[Navid Mahmoodzadegan, Co-Founder and Co-President]

Sure, thanks for the question, Jim. Look I think yes I think it’s a lot of these things that we have been talking about on our calls and in our dialogues with you all. So we’re still a maturing firm, we’re still a growing firm, there has been the major investment over many years now in the people and in the brand and in the culture and in the systems and in the global platform that I do think is paying off right now and so even when you see good growth in the M&A market we have tended to have even better growth in that and when you see not so good growth for a quarter or two, we tend to still grow.

Can’t predict that’ll happen every single quarter, we have also said don’t look into any one or two quarters too closely, because there is always luck and other things that are involved and deal timing and deal closings. But I think it’s fair to say that we have been taking share and have been growing through a bunch of different types of market environments.

We plan on that continuing, we do think we still have a lot a runway left, in terms of growing the firm and growing the people the base of high quality talent that we have. And as you pointed out there’s still lots of people who are early in their development as bankers and also people who are relatively new to the platform.

And as that maturation happens as the brand continues to mature, not just in United States, but we’re still relatively new in Europe and other parts of the world as those things continue to -- as our name continues to get more well-known as we continue to work on more transactions and more important transactions, you tend to have a -- it tends to have a positive compounding effect on your ability to do other transactions.

And so, I do think the culture is continuing to bind everybody together, we’re hiring good people and all of those things are leading to I think the kind of performance you have been seeing.

[Jim Mitchell, Buckingham Research]

Right. And then maybe among products anything, one thing we haven’t really talked about today is sort of some of the non-M&A spaces like capital markets advisory has been I think a growth engine for you guys. How has that been developing, do you still feel very good about the opportunity set in that space, just would be helpful?

[Navid Mahmoodzadegan, Co-Founder and Co-President]

Sure. So look, we have made a major investment in private equity fund raising, that lamp has continued nicely and it’s progressing and we’ve been -- we hired a good team and have been building and adding on to that team on a global basis, and it’s been a good fund raising environment and as that group continues to get mandates and successfully execute mandates they get more mandates and that business is growing nicely and ramping the way we hoped it would ramp.

Capital markets, both on equity and debt is an important business for us to be in, not just for what it does in terms of incremental transactions, but capital markets and that knowledge base and that expertise really helps and contributes enormously to our M&A business and to our restructuring business and again bringing back kind of full suite of capabilities to clients so that they feel like they're getting the best of the firm.

And so that continues to be an important part of the business for us and risk advisory continues to be a really good business for us working with financial institutions on complex transactions that's what the risk advisory business is. We have a unique team there and have a unique capability that continues to be a very positive contributor to the company. So all of those things are as you point out important to our continued growth.

[Jim Mitchell, Buckingham Research]

Okay, great. Thanks.

[Operator]

And that will conclude our question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Navid for any closing remarks.

[Navid Mahmoodzadegan, Co-Founder and Co-President]

Great. Thank you all for your time afternoon. Appreciate you joining and look forward to speaking and meeting with you all in the not too distant future. Thanks so much.

[Operator]

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. And you may now disconnect your lines.