Hamilton Lane Incorporated Price & Performance (HLNE)

Forward looking statements are made only as of today and except as required, we undertake no obligation to update or revise any of them. We will also be referring to non GAAP measures that we view as important in assessing the Reconciliation of those non GAAP measures to GAAP can be found in the earnings presentation materials made available on the Shareholders section of the Hamilton Lane website. Our detailed financial results will be made available when our 10 Q is filed. Please note that nothing on this call represents an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to purchase interest in any of Hamilton Lane's products. Let's start with the highlights. Year to date through the Q3 of fiscal 2025, our management and advisory fee revenue grew by 18% while our fee related earnings grew by 21% versus the prior year period. This translated into GAAP EPS of $4.15 based on $160,000,000 excuse me, $167,000,000 of GAAP net income and non GAAP EPS of $3.82 based on $208,000,000 of adjusted net income. We have also declared a dividend of $0.49 per share this quarter. Which keeps us on track for the 10% increase over last fiscal year equating to the targeted $1.96 per share for fiscal year 2025.

With that, now turn the call over to Eric. Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. Another very strong quarter for us. But before I cover the results, I'm going to spend a moment on culture. At Hamilton Lane, we talk a lot about culture. Why? Because we believe having a culture is essential to creating a successful firm. Find firms that never talk about culture either don't have one.

Or have one that isn't worth talking about. To be clear, we don't believe culture to be singular, nor do we believe there is a set recipe for success. But we do believe that creating a culture and maintaining it takes real work and focus at every level of the firm. So it is affirming when that culture is honored. I am pleased to share that once again Hamilton Lane has been recognized as a best place to work in money management by Pension and Investments, for the 13th consecutive year. The firm has been recognized every year since the awards creation in 2012. Notably, only 1 of 5 firms to receive the special honor and the only firm in all of private markets to achieve this distinction. So you ask as a shareholder why do I care? Two reasons. 1, our clients care. They want to associate with an organization they can be proud to call their partner. And to work with people who love what they do. 2, our assets are our people. Attracting and retaining talent is essential to our business.

Our culture, and awards like this help us attract top talent and continue to expand our geographic footprint around the globe. Juan and I are extremely proud and thankful for all the Hamilton laners who come to work every day serving our clients and continuing to build a tremendous firm. Let's move on now to the results from the quarter and I'll start with our total asset footprint. This stood at $956,000,000,000 and represents a 6 percent increase to our footprint year over year. AUM stood at $135,000,000,000 at quarter end and grew $15,000,000,000 or 12 percent compared to prior year period.

The growth came from both our specialized funds and customized separate accounts. AUA was up $38,000,000,000 or 5% year over year, primarily the result of market value growth and the addition of a variety of technology solutions and back office mandates. Turning now to fee earning AUM. We produced another strong quarter of growth, largely driven by our specialized fund platform where we are adding new product lines and expanding existing ones. Our total fee earning AUM stood at approximately $71,000,000,000 and grew $7,900,000,000 or 13% relative to the prior year period. Taken separately, $2,900,000,000 of net free earning AUM came from our and over the same period, dollars 5,000,000,000 came from our specialized funds. Our blended fee continues to benefit from the shift of fee earning AUM towards higher fee rate specialized funds. Most notably our evergreen products, where growth remains impressive. When we went public in 2017, our blended fee rate was 57 basis points. Today, it stands at over 60 basis points ex excluding the impact from retro fees. Considering the size of the installed base, we believe this movement to be very significant. Turning to customized separate accounts. Fee earning AUM here stood at $39,800,000,000 and grew 8% year over year.

We continue to see growth coming from clients across type, [indiscernible] size and geographic location. And as we mentioned last quarter, our clients are in increasingly including transaction exposure namely secondaries and co investments, in their separate accounts. But that exposure in several instances is obtained via our specialized funds and therefore the AUM is captured there. For example, in our most recent secondary fund, 17% of the LPs were separate account clients and those clients represented 29% of the capital raised. Again, with all of that capital captured within specialized funds, not within SMAs. Let's move now to our specialized funds where momentum continues to be strong. At quarter end, fee earning AUM here stood at $31,200,000,000 Over the past 12 months, we achieved positive net inflows of 5 $1,000,000,000 representing an increase of 19% relative to the prior year period. This growth stemmed from additional closes for funds in market robust investment activity and continued expansion of our Evergreen platform. Starting with our institutional fundraising activity during the quarter and post quarter end, and I'll begin with our 6th Equity Opportunities Fund, which is our closed end fund that co invest alongside fund managers in equity transactions. As a quick reminder, our 5th Equity Opportunities Fund closed in December of 2022 at approximately 21 $2,100,000,000 Since our last update, we've held additional closes for the 6th fund that have totaled nearly $578,000,000 of LP commitments, which brought the total raise for this fund to over 1 $100,000,000 which is already half the amount raised in the prior fund and again in less than 1 year of being in market.

Similar to its prior fund, this fund has 2 economic arrangements for investors, where management fees are based on either committed capital with a lower carried interest rate of 10% or net invested capital with a higher carried interest rate of 12.5%. From an overall fee standpoint, the difference in management fee paid is more than offset from the higher carried interest, we expect to generate over the life of the Fund assuming a similar track record for this strategy. For more context, the prior funds mix resulted in 49% of the dollars raised based on committed capital, and 51% on net invested capital. Of the $578,000,000 raised since the first close, 13% came in on committed capital, and 87% on net invested. This brings the total $1,100,000,000 raised to date at approximately 30% uncommitted and 70% on net invested. Given that it is still relatively early days for this fund, we expect that management fees from this fund will increase as we continue to invest the fund, We've closed on a few deals so far. And the pipeline of opportunities is robust. Moving now to our second infrastructure product. And generates management fees on a net invested basis. Our inaugural fund raised nearly $575,000,000 of investor commitments in and alongside the Fund.

Through January 2025, we've now raised nearly $480,000,000 in and alongside the fund to date and we will look to wrap up fundraising in calendar year 2025. Moving now to our retail evergreen funds. As of December 31, 2024, Total AUM across our 5 existing offerings, including our newest infrastructure offerings, stood at nearly $9,500,000,000 with the platform having grown nearly 66% calendar 2024. Monthly net flows remained strong as we averaged nearly $294,000,000 for the 4th calendar quarter of 2024.

For calendar year 2024, when you exclude the impact from the infrastructure products, we achieved nearly 2 $64,000,000 of monthly net inflows versus nearly $161,000,000 of monthly net inflows for calendar 2023. This represents nearly 65% growth in average monthly net flows for our existing three products in market and demonstrates our ability to continue growing these platforms through strong performance, and continued expansion of our distribution efforts. As this platform and the overall sector continues to mature, I think we should all expect that this won't be a simple linear growth model. Market forces calendar seasonality, portfolio rebalancing are all in play here causing growth to be varied month to month. This is no different than our institutional business. Where you've heard us say over and over, that management focuses on year over year growth and pays little attention to monthly or quarterly variability. For retail, while management is clearly watching net flows each month, our focus remains on creating a platform that is capable of creating substantial annualized growth. And that is exactly what we are doing. Again, from 2022 to 2023, total evergreen AUM grew 76%. From 2023 to 2024, despite a substantially larger base, we grew 66% all stemming from the combination of net new flows, and performance.

Now a quick update on our technology partnerships. We continue to seek out partnerships with leading technology companies who are aligned with our mission of providing individual investors with greater access to private markets. On January 14 this year, we announced a new partnership with Republic, a leading global investment platform for private market assets. Through the partnership, we intend to launch digital blockchain solutions for retail investors featuring low investment minimums and the potential for increased liquidity compared to traditional private market funds. Republic's leading digital solution and expertise in serving this market will enable us to offer individual investors the opportunity to tap into Hamilton Lane's longstanding private markets expertise scale and platform and the first offering is And with that, I'll now pass the call to Jeff who will cover the financials.

Year to date for fiscal 2025, we've achieved strong growth in our business with management and advisory fees up 18% versus the prior year period. Our specialized fund revenue increased by $50,900,000 or 28% compared to the prior year period. This was driven primarily by a $3,800,000,000 increase to fee earning AUM in our Evergreen platform and $2,000,000,000 raised in our latest secondary fund over the last 12 months. Retro fees for the fiscal year were $20,700,000 primarily stemming from the final close of our most recent secondary fund versus $12,800,000 from that same fund that held closes in the prior year period.

As a reminder, investors that come into later closes during a fundraise pay retroactive fees dating back to the fund's first close. For the remainder of fiscal year 2025, our current direct equity fund in market will be the primary driver of quarterly retro fees now that our secondary fund has finished fundraising. Our latest secondary fund represented our largest institutional fund raise and thus generated the largest amount of retro fees in our history during fiscal year 2024 and the Q1 of fiscal 2025.

This is expected to have some impact on the year over year specialized funds revenue growth comparison going forward. Moving on to customized separate accounts, we revenue increased $5,400,000 or 6 percent compared to the prior year period due to the addition of new accounts, re ups from existing clients and continued investment activity. Revenue from our reporting, monitoring data and analytics offerings increased by $2,900,000 compared to the prior year period. Lastly, the final component of our revenue is incentive fees. Year to date incentive fees totaled $129,000,000 and are up 100 63% During the quarter, we generated strong incentive fees related to our secondary funds that was the result of our portfolio management and monetizing a portion of the portfolio in the secondary market as we are both an active participant on the buy and sell side. Let's turn now to our unrealized carry balance.

The balance is up 15% from the prior year period. Having recognized $181,900,000 of The unrealized carryout balance now stands at approximately 1.3 $1,000,000,000 Moving to expenses. Total expenses year to date increased 67 $200,000 compared with the prior year period. Total compensation and benefits increased by $55,700,000 relative to the prior year period driven primarily by higher compensation associated with increased headcount, incentive fee related compensation and equity based compensation.

G and A increased $11,600,000 driven primarily by revenue related expenses including the 3rd party commissions related to our U. S. Evergreen product being offered on wirehouses that we've discussed on prior calls. And while we are seeing overall G and A expense increase with revenue related expenses, which is a good thing and can be an indicator of growth to come We continue to successfully offset this with cost savings and expense discipline in our other parts of the business where we have discretion. Fee related earnings or FRE were up $28,500,000 related relative to the prior year period as a result of the management fee and fee earning AUM growth discussed earlier. FRE margin for the quarter came in at 43%, Fiscal 2025 year to date FRE margin also came in at 43%. As we've mentioned on our last call, we expect an incremental increase in our equity based compensation expense that is associated with Grand The full quarterly impact of that expense is flowing through this quarter's results and we expect that to continue through the next 5 years. Our philosophy of growth and profitability remains unchanged. We manage our expenses in line with overall firm growth and aim to continue investing and supporting growth initiatives while also maintaining healthy management fee profitability.

I'll wrap up now with some commentary on our balance sheet. Our largest asset continues to be our investments alongside our clients in our customized separate accounts in specialized funds. Over the long term, view these investments as an important component of our continued growth and will continue to invest our balance sheet capital alongside our clients. Regard to our liabilities, continue to be modestly levered and we'll continue to evaluate utilizing our strong balance sheet in support of continued growth for the firm.

With that, we will now open up the call for questions.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. The first question comes from Ken Worthington at JPMorgan.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to dig further into the greater adoption of fund in Evergreen product by your SMA customers. So maybe first, what is driving this, Mike?

Is it as simple as product breadth or features or is there something else that's migrating from one structure to the other? And given the fees are generally higher on the funds and the Evergreen side, Are clients willing to pay the higher price for these funds? Or are they getting sort of SMA pricing when they transition from one structure to the other. Thanks, Ken. It's Eric. Let me take that in pieces. I think to the first part of what's driving SMAs wanting to have some specialized fund exposure. I think that's as simple as an increased awareness of the benefits of secondaries and co investing done well. You can see just from the fee selection on our current co investment fund that investors are willing to pay more fee longer term in exchange for less fee early so that they have a more positive early IRR experience.

And the secondary market is showing you that it's a great J curve mitigator, it's a great diverse [indiscernible] Again, a huge portion of the co investing volume that we do is coming to us fee free because we're providing a capital solution to the lead GP who's leading that transaction. So again, also a cost benefit to the customer and a diversification benefit to the customer. That's the driver. In terms of institutional adoption on Evergreen, it's early. But I think we should fully expect that we're going to see that as a tool that institutional investors will utilize over time. Some people will value The more frequent valuation date, some people will value the type of investing that's occurring in those vehicles. And so today, they are paying a higher rate but I think we're all rational here and we understand that over time, it's not likely that we're going to see no fee compression in the evergreen space. We will. We've seen that certainly in the public equity markets, and I think ours will be no different. How quickly that occurs and what's the impact is all sort of to be determined But the volume and simplest ale of that business that's sort of that's sitting out there is massive.

And so I think certainly from our end, we're thinking about very large scale, even if that comes over time, at a slightly reduced fee rate But I think offering more choice to both the retail customer and the institutional customer is the key here. That's what's happening. And I think we'll sort of watch as this whole sector [indiscernible] Great. Thank you very much.

Thank you. The next question comes from Alex Blostein at Goldman Sachs.

Hi, good morning. Thanks you for taking the time again. I was hoping we can dig into the wealth dynamics and the update you guys provided on Evergreen Funds were really helpful. Is it possible to break down the trends that you guys have seen over the last couple of months between gross sales and gross redemptions And then more importantly, I guess, when you think about the gross sales dynamic, in the channels and in the products where you guys competing in most aggressively, How do you envision the competitive dynamic evolving?

We've seen a number of other firms coming out with secondary products and then private equity dedicated product as well. So it feels like it's getting a little more crowded. I definitely Sure, Alex. Eric, so happy to take that.

I think there's no question that this is the area of focus for a whole multitude of firms and franchises that are all [indiscernible] eager to launch products, are launching products. And so there's absolutely more choice on the shelf today. So what does that mean? I think for us, not unexpected. I don't think it means that everyone is going to be uniformly successful. I think scale brand, [indiscernible] technology all matter immensely. We feel good about where we are And frankly, as we look at some of the dynamics we see going forward, we feel even better about how we're positioned for some of the inevitable changes that we see coming. I think the amount of time and effort we've spent talking about tokenization and different strategic partnerships I think should be a sort of a foreshadowing of where we see some of the retail movement beginning [indiscernible] Our view is that retail investors are going to want sort of simple, faster cheaper, easier, etcetera. And we think the token world blockchain really offers that And so again, we're playing a long race here and so there's a lot of education to be done, but we think establishing those partnerships today locking in strategic relationships the fact that we're already sort of nipping at a $10,000,000,000 platform puts us ahead of a whole lot of people.

But it's going to be competitive. We fully expect that.

We're prepared to compete. We expect to compete. But I don't think you're hearing from us or frankly others that are sober that this is going to be easy and that we're not we're all going to have to just sort of work harder. So that's what I would sort of say about that. In terms of the first part of the question, I will tell you that for myself and management, we solely focus on net inflows. All the numbers that we reported today are net. We are we have seen some minor redemptions across the totality of the platform. I think that's totally to be expected. I sort of alluded to it in the call. 1, you can be a victim of your own success. So you've had really strong performance like we have for the last sort of 5 plus years, clients who entered that vehicle a long time ago have now seen that value swell significantly and might want to harvest some gain, trim back exposure, rebalance, I think part of the beauty of these vehicles is that it allows clients to do that, And so my point of trying to focus in on any 1 month or look at any single month of flow relative to performance and try to extrapolate out some big trend line I think that's a mistake.

I think people need to sort of look at this at a much wider aperture and to sort of think about what happening at a trend line, not what's happening on month to month. And that's certainly how we're looking at the business and how we're managing the business.

Great. Thank you very much.

Thank you. The next question is from Michael Cyprys at Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. So you guys continue to put strong growth across the Evergreen Fund Complex. Yet you've also been able to navigate the 3rd party commission expenses nicely with notable margin expansion year on year. So maybe you could talk a little bit about some of the steps that you're taking from an expense efficiency standpoint to be able to drive the margin expansion, absorbing the 3rd party commission costs there. How should we think about as well more broadly incremental margins on the Evergreen products? And as we think about the FRE margin profile for Hamilton Lane, how should we expect that to trend as we look out over the next year or 2? Is it more continued expansion from here? Or is it should we think more stability?

Mike, it's Eric. Thanks for the question. I think it's more stability. I think you sort of alluded to it. I think given the growth that we're seeing with a lot of that growth coming from the wires, and the fact that in that 1st year, fund flows to us are definitely not margin accretive The fact that we're holding margin, I think, is noteworthy Team here has done a very, very good job on that.

I think we're seeing 2 cost benefits. [indiscernible] we've invested a lot of partnerships and we're really reaping the benefit of that So whether that's data ingestion or data management, or analytic systems tasks that would have historically been done by people we are increasingly benefiting from those tasks being done faster, more efficiently by technology. The second thing is as the business continues to scale and mature, we're also just re examining insurance, vendor relationships, all things that you would expect a maturing business to look at as ways to gain some cost efficiency. And again, kudos to the team for doing that and showing good financial management. And so I think the combo of that is being able and has been able to kind of offset what we've been seeing on sort of the rising commission fees.

Great. Thank you.

Next question comes from Mike Brown at Wells Fargo.

Great. Thank you.

Wanted to just clarify your comments on the equity based comp Can you just maybe circle back on that and unpack a little bit? What should we expect maybe for the back half of this year and then into next year in terms of growth year over year And also when we think about the shares outstanding, Any view on how that could project from here on a year over year basis as well? Thank you.

Yes. Mike, this is Jeff. Just on the equity [indiscernible] we've mentioned on prior calls, we expect that to be at a run rate of about $30,000,000 per year. This quarter is the 1st quarter that you had that fully impacting the expense and that's about a $7,000,000 [indiscernible] percent, that's where we're coming up with the about $30,000,000 per year impact on the equity based comp.

And just Mike, it's Eric, as a reminder. So you've got 2 pieces of equity comp. You had an award to a variety of of employees that was done in 2022. And then you had a more recent award done to the 2 coast [indiscernible] in sort of taking over the new role Our Board set what we think is very aggressive stock targets If you think about where the stock was for at the time of both of those awards, it was sort of in the sub-eight dollars a share range. And there were 3 target triggers 1 was at $1.50 1 was at $190 a a share and then the last target was $230 a share. So think significant alignment with shareholders, a big go get for management and the team on increasing shareholder value and aligning incentives with that So to Jeff's point, we crossed over the $150,000,000 $190,000,000 mark This year, Again, both needed to be a kind of a 20 day volume weighted average price, they both were and so that's there. The shares are not in employees' hands because there was also a clause that has sort of number of years of service, which has not been met.

So we continue to have a good retention tool there. And I think sort of owners of that are continuing to be very focused on that last part of the target, which was the $2.30 a share.

Eric, and can you just maybe clarify on the [indiscernible] incremental equity based comp, is that an incremental 30 kind of where you were running at or is that kind of a all in number?

Well, I think what Jeff said was you've seen the full amount in 1 quarter And so that the amount that you saw in this current quarter will be similar to what you will see in future quarters for the next 5 years. Yes, next 5 years.

Okay.

Okay. Thank you for that.

Is there ever any discussion internally about perhaps changing the way that you show your equity based comp in your adjusted financials? A number of your peers would actually kind of exclude that.

In that. Analysts, investors, of course, can kind of add it back.

Or kind of look at it under both lenses. But is that something that you guys ever talk about internally and something you might consider?

I think we're certainly open to it. This is again new for us having just kind of crossed over this quarter and are beginning to deal with that. So we would certainly welcome feedback on what we think analysts and shareholders find to be most beneficial and helpful.

Okay. Great. Thank you. The next question comes from Aiden Hall at KBW.

Great.

Thanks for taking my question. Maybe just on the [indiscernible] comp and kind of the incentive fee related compensation, did see a step down there and nice defending the margin with the ramp in the equity based comp and I heard your comments about just like utilizing technology to kind of change some of the historically manual tasks at the firm, but is this level of like that base comp the right way to think about kind of run rate from here there like changes that you guys have implemented more recently to kind of see those changes? Or is that not a fair extrapolation quarter over quarter?

Sure. It's Eric. I think there's a couple of pieces here. I think we have been certainly focused on margin protection. We had the benefit this year of obviously from an employee standpoint There's been more incentive comp flowing through the business. Obviously, the equity incentive piece of sort of reaching those targets. So I think as management, we're thinking about comp in a multi lever perspective and looking at sort of pulling different levers at different times to make sure we're achieving the end result, which is having happy and retained employees And so it's we have the luxury of having multiple levers in our hands that we can adjust to sort of achieve that ultimate goal. So I wouldn't necessarily extrapolate all of this out with the exception of the the carried interest portion of the comp. That sort of flow through of basically seeing about 48 percent or so of that flowing to employees, that ratio has stayed static for years years years. So That part you can extrapolate. Our decision around what we do with the bonus pool can vary year to year. And so that one is not one that I would say, well, now I have some sort of a formula I think what you can look at is the total comp ratio that has remained very, very steady.

Frankly, since we've been public and if you had looked back years prior to that as well.

Appreciate the thoughts.

Thank you. The next question is a follow-up from Alex Blostein at Goldman Sachs.

Hi, thanks for taking the follow-up. Eric, you actually kind of answered the second part of my question, but I guess what I'm trying to get to is compensation is ultimately fungible across all of the firms you guys included and people play around with geography however they do it. But when I think about what you're ultimately trying to manage the business to, is it fair to think about like kind of total operating income margin as opposed to FRE margin especially given this dynamic with equity based comp and in quarters years where you're going to have a lot of incentive compensation that could sort of sub end of the day, the total operating income margin that we should be thinking about And if that's the case, should we be thinking about stability in that margin as well is there room for total operating income margin to improve?

Thanks for the follow-up Alex. It's Derek still. I think that is the right way to think about it in terms of also sort of stability in the operating [indiscernible] But I think if I sort of think about margin whether it's FRE or operating margin over a longer time period, I certainly see levers for us to pull to continue to have some amount of margin expansion. I mean, we have had that since going public And I don't think that big picture longer term macro dynamic is changing. I think today, we're kind of in the eye of a bit of a storm here where meaning certainly meaningful for us increase in equity based comp and expense around the commissions And so the business sort of I'll use kind of air quotes and say kind of weathering that with a stable margin I think goes back to good job by management to continue to sort of push through all of that. But that dynamic will change over time. The amount of flows that are coming from the wire relative to the install base will not be as dramatic as it is here in the earlier years of being on those platforms.

So the commission impact for the totality of the business will reduce over time. We're still in kind of the very early innings of this. Now, by the way, if it didn't reduce over time, that would be a great thing as well. But I think as we just get bigger, bigger, bigger, I think that's probably unrealistic. But again, that's a first class problem. And equity comp impact is not a forever issue. And so again, we're sort of sitting here with a moment in time of dealing with both of those simultaneously.

That's perfect.

Thank you.

Thank you. There are no further questions. I will turn the call back over to Eric Hersch for closing comments.

I'll reiterate. We thought terrific quarter, Juan and I are extremely proud of the firm for the hard work, the effort, and I go back to where I started, culture matters. We think what we're building here is special. When I look at the number of people applying for open positions, it's never been higher than it is today. People want to be part of this team. We're thrilled with that. We think what we have in front of us is exciting, a lot of growth opportunity. We appreciate your time. We appreciate the support and thanks for the call today.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference for We thank you for participating and we ask that you please disconnect your lines. Goodbye.