Moelis & Company (NYSE:MC) Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call April 24, 2024 5:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Matt Tsukroff - Investor Relations
Kenneth Moelis - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Joseph W. Simon - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Alex Jenkins - JMP Securities
Ken Worthington - JP Morgan
James Yaro - Goldman Sachs
Brendan O'Brien - Wolfe Research
Connell Schmitz - Morgan Stanley
Brennan Hawken - UBS

Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Moelis & Company Earnings Conference Call for the First Quarter of 2024.

To begin, I’ll turn the call over to Mr. Matt Tsukroff.

Matt Tsukroff

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for Moelis & Company’s first quarter 2024 financial results conference call. On the phone today are Ken Moelis, Chairman and CEO; and Joe Simon, Chief Financial Officer.

Before we begin, I would like to note that the remarks made on this call may contain certain forward-looking statements, 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 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, to discuss our results.

Joseph W. Simon

Thanks, Matt, and good afternoon, everyone. On today’s call, I’ll go through our financial results, and then Ken will comment further on the business. We achieved revenues of $217 million in the first quarter, representing an increase of 17% over the prior year period. The revenue increase is primarily attributable to growth in restructuring. The M&A pipeline continues to build, but conversion to revenue remains challenging. There is early evidence that this trend is pivoting more constructively.

Moving to expenses. Our first quarter comp ratio was 75%. We expect the ratio to be similar in quarter two until we have better visibility on the full-year, which is likely to be in the third quarter. Our first quarter non-comp ratio was 21.7%. The underlying quarterly run rate continues to be approximately $46 million per quarter, excluding transaction related expenses.