Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Cohen & Steers First Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today, Thursday, April 23, 2020. It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Brian Heller, Senior Vice President and Corporate Counsel of Cohen & Steers. Please go ahead.

Thank you and welcome to the Cohen & Steers first quarter 2020 earnings conference call. Joining me are our Chief Executive Officer, Bob Steers; our President, Joe Harvey; and our Chief Financial Officer, Matt Stadler. I want to remind you that some of our comments and answers to your questions may include forward-looking statements. We believe these statements are reasonable based on information currently available to us, but actual outcomes could differ materially due to a number of factors, including those described in our accompanying first quarter earnings release and presentation on most recent annual report on Form 10-K and our other SEC filings. We assume no duty to update any forward-looking statement. Our presentation also contains non-GAAP financial measures that we believe are meaningful in evaluating our performance. These non-GAAP financial measures should be read in conjunction with our GAAP results. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures is included in the earnings release and presentation to the extent reasonably available. The earnings release and presentation as well as links to our SEC filings are available in the Investor Relations section of our website at www.cohenandsteers.com. Finally, I'd like to note that in accordance with our firm's work-from-home protocol currently in effect, each of our speakers are participating on today's call remotely. With that, I'll turn the call over to Matt.

Thank you, Brian. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. Before I discuss our first quarter results, I'd like to take a few minutes to report on our business continuity planning and capabilities in the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This week marks the sixth consecutive week that our U.S. employees have been in a work-from-home environment, longer in the case of some of our non-U.S. personnel. Like most firms, we experience an adjustment period at the outset, which is to be expected, but we quickly transitioned relying on our remote access capabilities to establish reliable lines of communication and an organizational routine. During this time working from home, we have been able to maintain both our work and control environments. Communication throughout the firm, which is critical, has been effective and without disruption. And while our departments and operations are functioning well, our executive and management teams have been in regular communication throughout the crisis both with each other and with employees. We continue to assess the chain of command for our executive team and portfolio managers so that we are prepared for various contingency scenarios, including should someone become temporarily unable to perform their responsibilities. This quarter included $8.9 million of items that were excluded from our as-adjusted results. These items included $11.9 million of costs incurred in connection with the rights offering of our closed-end fund, the Cohen & Steers Quality Income Realty Fund, and $9.4 million attributable to our portion of unrealized losses on seed investments. The tax benefit associated with these two adjustments of $4.8 million as well as $5.8 million benefit related to certain discrete tax items have also been excluded. My remaining remarks this morning will focus on our as-adjusted results. A reconciliation of GAAP to as-adjusted results can be…

Thank you, Matt, and good morning. This morning, I will review our relative investment performance, then share how our investment teams are operating in this environment and offer some perspectives about our major asset classes. The macro environment in the first quarter was turned upside down in dramatic fashion spinning from goldilocks with positive conditions for our asset classes to a crisis, humanitarian as well as economic, including a bear market and recession. Virtually no asset class was spared from the cessation of economic activity and concerns about the price and availability of credit and emerging balance sheet stress. Turning to our scorecard. In the first quarter, seven of our nine core strategies outperformed their benchmarks. For the last 12 months, six of nine core strategies outperformed. Measured by AUM, 64% of our portfolios are outperforming on a one-year basis, 77% are outperforming over three years, and 99% are outperforming over five years. The decline in our batting averages from last quarter was primarily attributable to our preferred strategies, which have consistently outperformed long-term but underperformed during the market decline in March. 95% of our open-end fund AUM is rated 4 or 5 star by Morningstar. Our investment teams are functioning at a high level, thanks in large part to our IT infrastructure and operations teams who have facilitated a successful and complete transition to a work-from-home environment. In addition to our normal investment routines, we have implemented special research task forces focused on topics such as the virus, its trajectory and our country's and the world's ability to track and treat it and how this crisis will change longer term behaviors and business trends. Each team is continually reunderwriting base and bear case forecast as our views evolve in order to synthesize our top down macro roadmap with valuation…

Thank you, Joe. Good morning. I hope everyone listening today is healthy and managing well wherever you are. As we all know by now, we're facing a healthcare and economic crisis that's unprecedented and for which there's no playbook to draw from. Fortunately, having managed through multiple crisis over our almost 35 years, we've built a platform and culture that's resilient and well-positioned to weather almost any storm and emerge stronger and better. As always, we've been committed to keeping in place and supporting all of our teams just as we did during the financial crisis. This is essential in order to promote trust and a productive team oriented culture and to deliver for our clients even while coping with unexpected personal and professional challenges. Equally important is the unique platform that we've developed to support our team. Maintaining our focus on listed real assets and alternative income strategies has positioned us to be a category killer in these unique asset classes. In addition, high insider ownership, in combination with a debt-free and highly liquid balance sheet, allows us to make the best short-term decisions to promote long-term success. Under the circumstances, I couldn't be more pleased with our results in the quarter. As you know, due primarily to market depreciation, assets under management declined by 21% or almost $15 billion in the quarter. By contrast, and despite these massive market headwind, we achieved record sales in our institutional advisory channel. These inflows were broad-based and included existing clients opportunistically adding to their current mandates, along with multiple new relationships looking to capitalize on the market downdraft. In addition, record gross sales in our wealth channel helped to largely offset the flight to cash that characterized retail investor behavior in the latter half of the quarter. The bottom line is…

Thank you, Mr. Steers. [Operator Instructions] Our first question from the line of John Dunn with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Kind of, just an overarching question. You talked about how you were able to recap the REIT industry in '09, but there will be difference in time around, maybe you could just talk about some of the areas where you are, this time around, you're going to be able to take advantage of the big market drop where you just went through?

Joe, would you take that?

Sure. Hey, John, good morning. So, as we talked about already, our existing clients are looking at the drawdowns that have happened and noting that valuations for global real estate and global listed infrastructure are discounted versus private markets. And of course, environments like these have become questions about what private market values are. So, I guess, the first level of opportunity is for our clients to take advantage of the discounts that have been presented in the public market. But as this evolves and the economic effects ripple through, different companies will see holes in cash flows, and that could create for some companies some needs for equity capital and there's another opportunity to step in and like we did in the global financial crisis to provide equity, so that companies can make it to the other side of the situation. But it's always different. And I think this time our companies are in much better shape than they were in the GFC. And as we did earlier this week, we think that there's an opportunity to provide equity to companies that take advantage of opportunities. And in that situation the company already had a very good balance sheet but operates in retail net lease area and is going to see a lot of acquisition opportunities. So we provide them with more capital to have a war chest to take advantage of the opportunities. So, I think there'll be a couple different buckets, and it's really going to fall out along the lines of which -- in the real estate area, which property sectors are more affected and what's the affected. So the ones that are least affected will have access to capital and will take advantage of opportunities. The ones that are more affected might need to have some balance sheet repair. And we're organized and positioned to take advantage of opportunities in all of those areas.

Got you. And then, it's great to see the closed-end fund market window back opened after many years. It's a IT locked up capital. Maybe you could just talk about the -- the outlook for demand. They are not just for the rest of this year but maybe over the next few years?

Sure, John. That's an interesting question. As you know, the closed-end fund market did open up last year and very early this year. And we were able to get our rights offering off in February. We had been scheduled to do an IPO in April, and about a month or more ago we agreed to reschedule that for later this year in the September-October timeframe. The underwriters who are committed to that transaction are as or more excited now about the investment merit of that IPO, mainly for a lot of the reasons you heard from Joe about the valuation opportunity and preferred securities in the yield-starved world. So, our understanding is some other firms maybe attempting to reopen the market in June or July we'll see how that goes. But we think that the new structure, the new economics of the close down market are extremely favorable to investors. And as a result, as market conditions normalize, there'll be opportunities for both IPOs and rights issues and secondary offerings. And so, we continue to be very enthusiastic about the prospects there.

[Operator Instructions] And our next question is from the line of Mike Carrier with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Maybe first, just given the pandemic and realize it's tough to predict, but how are you and the team just thinking about you investing particularly in real estate. I know you mentioned the comments on the strong balance sheet that makes a ton of sense. But just in terms of the subsectors, what could potentially change in sectors that you have more confidence in this backdrop?

Sure. The way I think about it, there are going to be cyclical impacts that affect each sector differently. And then there, which I think is the essence of the question, there are going to be secular impacts. The most obvious secular issue relates to e-commerce and the effects that it's having on in a negative way on retail real estate. And I think that this situation will kind of accelerate some of the decline in the bricks-and-mortar retail real estate. On the other end of the spectrum, you've got e-commerce related property sectors like cell towers and data centers, and they're thriving in a period of increased demand. Then you have some sectors like office that maybe have some impacts of both the cyclical and the secular. So on the cyclical front obviously with the recession that's going to impact demand as it normally would, and we'll have to sort through bankruptcies and non-payment of rent. In this cycle, the office sector will have to contend with co-working, which is really going to be tested as a business model, we work overhang, in a model that where you wanted to pack people more tightly and do so with, in many cases, non-credit tenants. So that'll be an overhang for the market. But to your question looking a little bit further out, there is going to be negative effects on office demand and positive effects. The negative effects are with the work-from-home experience. I think we're going to see more companies encourage work-from-home. On the other hand, we're going to see less square footage per person and you might have companies dispersed people to greater locations which can have a positive effect, I think it's pretty safe to say in the case of office for the near and intermediate term that the situation is going to be negative. And you can go sector by sector and each one has its cyclical and secular factors.

And then, Bob, maybe just a follow-up on the institutional business, both the flows and then the pipeline that you announced really robust. And this is before a lot of the investments that you guys, you discussed last year you know they you were looking to put in place over the next few years. So, I guess, the question is just a little surprised on like how quick may be some of this stuff has come about and maybe which change. I mean, obviously the valuations have changed, so obviously that drives some of that. But you're seeing more traction with some of the institutional clients, have any investments like started to pay off or is that just more to come over the next couple of years?

I think it's really both. I think it dates back to the financial crisis when institutional investors saw the incredibly unique transactions resulting massive alpha, that was generated out of that drawdown. We, over the last several years, have been working with clients on very unique opportunistic strategies in some cases even draw down distress and investing strategy and that sort of thing. So, I think it's a combination of our brand and reputation having delivered in the last bear market. Two, working for years now with some of the most sophisticated investors in the world on narrow thematic opportunistic strategy and our performance obviously had a big impact as well. And so, yeah, a lot of the assets coming in are being derived from large sovereign funds. But at the same time, our current pipeline of $1.6 billion is derived from 11 different mandates. And so, the interest is broad. It's both from existing clients and new clients. And again, I think they see an opportunity. They also see that active management today, whether it's public or private real estate and the real estate asset class is clearly the way to go. ETFs can't get out of the way of retail in those secular losers in the real estate market, whereas we can and we have and we can also repositioned in those property types that are cyclically depressed but have a bright outlook from a secular standpoint. And so, some of the assets that we see flowing to us are coming out of passive real estate strategies. So it's all of those things. We're still staffing up in both our US and non-US institutional teams, and we're going to continue to make those investments.

Our next question from the line of Robert Lee with KBW. Please proceed.

Hi. Good morning. This is actually Jeff Drezner on for Rob Lee.

Good morning.

Hope everyone is doing well.

Thank you.

Hi. How are you guys? I just said apologize I missed the commentary around the April flows, just curious if you can just cover that one more time? Thanks.

Sure. As I mentioned in my comments, the outflows were roughly a three-week phenomenon. And since that time, it's been a reversal. And although the circumstances are dramatically different versus the fourth quarter of '18 into the first quarter of '19 where we saw substantial outflows from preferreds in the fourth quarter only to see a complete reversal in the following quarter. And we're seeing a similar phenomenon here. April to-date flows are positive. And in fact we have experienced positive inflows in all four sectors, open-end funds, advisory, subadvisory and even in Japan. And as you might expect, the inflows -- the greatest inflows are into our preferred security strategy. So, you never know whether that will continue or not. But given the fact that there seems to be some stabilization in the markets and markets are operating and functioning even in the current environment that flows back into preferred securities, especially Joe and his comments did discuss the fundamentals of preferreds are still solid. So, it's entirely logical. And so, thus far, April has been broad-based positive for us.

Great. Thanks. I actually had a quick follow-up on something, so the Japan subadvisory inflows is strong in the last couple of quarters picking up from the beginning of 2019 and obviously the back end of 2018, beginning there too. I was wondering if you can maybe help understand and maybe quantify what's been propelling the stronger sales overall for the Japan subadvisory right now?

Well, it's a few things. Good performance in Cohen & Steers. Again, this has been recognized as a top fleet manager in Japan. Two, a continued demand for yield in that marketplace. Three, some of the regulatory pressures, which forced distributions to decline across the full range of Japanese refunds has abated. And so, that has been a factor. You missed on the call that we launched a new -- totally new next-gen REIT strategy with MUKAM and SMBC Nikko, which raised the $100 million and then -- from mid-February to the end of March a very difficult time period. So, we continue to diversify there. And we are also continuing to invest in and see very nice results in the Japanese institutional market as well.

Got it. Okay. Thanks. And then, one last quick thing. I don't know if I missed this, it's part of the call, but did you quantify the unfunded backlog? Apologies.

Yes. Glad you asked. It's a record by a lot of $1.6 billion.

Okay, great. Thank you very much.

Yeah.

Our next question is a follow-up question from John Dunn with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Thanks, guys. Could you maybe give a little more color on global real estate infrastructure outside of maybe midstream energy and like demand and conversations there? And then looking further down the road eventually, do you think we'll ever see some retail demand for those declines?

Joe, you want to tackle the fundamentals?

Well, yeah. Sure. So, in my comments, John, I identified the sub-segments of infrastructure being directly affected, some of them are pretty obvious airports, for example, and then the pipeline segment, which has obviously been hit by the crash in energy prices. But then you have, on the other end of the spectrum, sectors that are beneficiaries like cell towers and we invest in data centers as well and infrastructure. So, same as with real estate, our teams are assessing all of the intermediate term trends and changes in behavior. With infrastructure compared with real estate, you've got one interesting nuance, which is regulation and that can be more in favor of public interest compared with private sector interests. So that's a unique aspect that our teams have to contend with. But, so while you would have expected infrastructure to defend better in a generic bear market scenario because of those transportation-related sectors, it kind of was in line with the market decline this time. As an asset class, we continue to see more and more interest institutionally, and we've had some existing clients add to their accounts have steady activity with new allocations. On the wealth side of it, it has not really taken hold, and it's partly because investors, wealth investors don't really know where to put it in their portfolios. I will say that one trend that we are seeing is, there was a lot of allocations made to the midstream energy subsegment of infrastructure because it's been uniquely affected by the oversupply in energy around the world. We're seeing some of those investors broaden out just their midstream only allocations to convert it to a broader global-listed infrastructure allocation. So that's one positive trend on the wealth side.

And Mr. Steers, it appears there are no further questions at this time. I'll turn the call back to you. You may continue with your presentation or closing remarks.

Great. Thanks everyone for joining us this morning, and we hope everyone remains safe. And we will certainly stay in touch and look forward to speaking to you at the end of the second quarter. Thank you very much.

That does conclude the conference call for today. We thank you for your participation and ask that you please disconnect your lines.