Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Westwood Holdings Group Incorporated’s Fourth Quarter 2020 [ph] Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker’s presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder today's program is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's program, Julie Gerron, General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you and welcome to our fourth quarter 2021 earnings conference call. The following discussion will include forward-looking statements that are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause actual results to be materially different from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning the factors that could cause such a difference is included in our press release issued earlier today, as well as in our Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2021 that is filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. You're cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. In addition in accordance with SEC rules concerning non-GAAP financial measures, the reconciliation of our economic earnings and economic earnings per share to the most comparable GAAP measures is included at the end of our press release issued earlier today. On the call today we have Brian Casey, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Terry Forbes, our Chief Financial Officer. I will now turn the call over to Brian Casey.

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the time to listen to our quarterly earnings call. Last October, I highlighted the progress we were making including new mandates one and funded in the first half of last year, performance improvements, the launch of new mutual funds, and an improving new business pipeline for Westwood Wealth. Throughout the last couple of years, Westwood has taken decisive steps to strengthen our foundation and position ourselves to capitalize on future opportunities. In 2021, we finished the year ahead of their benchmarks in most of our multi-asset and retained their strong multiyear rankings in several US value and multi-asset strategies. We delivered sales results, posting the best new business quarter in five years in the second quarter and overall net flows came in at approximately $1 billion for the full year, excluding the transition of the global convertible securities assets back to Aviva. Our new mandates one primarily in SmallCap have now funded and the team has delivered good results for our new clients since they came on board. We experienced positive fund flows in nearly all of our key products. It took several actions to optimize our range of investment strategies by opening three mutual funds SmallCap Growth, Quality AllCap and Quality MidCap and we initiated a soft close in our SmallCap strategy as it neared capacity. We expanded our Wealth Management business by adding new accounts and introduced our new client portal to enhance our high net worth investor experience. On the financial front, I'm very pleased to report that we have returned to profitability, we've reduced expenses we bought back stock and we reinstated our dividend. Let's turn to our investment and asset flow performance for the last quarter of 2021. Markets proved resilient despite the emergence of Omicron, which led to increased…

Thanks, Brian, and good afternoon, everyone. Today, we reported total revenues of $19.4 million for the fourth quarter of 2021 compared to $17.1 million in the prior year's fourth quarter, and $17.9 million in the third quarter of 2021. The increase from the prior year was principally due to higher average assets under management. The increase from the prior quarter was the result of higher average assets under management and higher performance-based fees. Fourth quarter net income of $2.8 million exceeded the third quarter's net income of $1.9 million, due to higher revenues and unrealized depreciation on private investments, partially offset by one-time expenses related to administrative, reorganization of our mutual funds. Economic earnings and non-GAAP metric were $4.7 million, and $0.59 per share compared to the third quarter's economic earnings of $3.7 million and $0.47 per share. Fourth quarter net income of $2.8 million or $0.36 per share was consistent with the prior year's fourth quarter net income of $2.8 million or $0.36 per share, as revenues and expenses increased at the same pace. Economic earnings were $4.7 million for the current quarter or $0.59 per share, up from $4.6 million or $0.58 per share in the fourth quarter of 2020. For fiscal 2021, total revenues of $73.1 million compared to $65.1 million in 2020. The increase was attributable to an increase in asset-based advisory fees and interest fees both primarily due to higher average assets under management and an increase in performance-based advisory fees, primarily due to higher realization of performance fees in 2021. 2021 net income of $9.8 million compared to 2020's net loss of $8.9 million on higher revenues, higher realized gains on private investments, and the impact of non-recurring items during 2020, partially offset by higher income taxes and mutual fund expenses. Diluted earnings per…

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Mac Sykes from GAMCO. Your question, please.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. So I'll ask both of them associated with cost. The first one, I'll just ask both together. But you had achieved some nice progress in margins last year, how are you thinking about more progress in 2022 and beyond? And against the backdrop of what we're seeing is a little bit higher volatility in the markets? And then secondly, maybe you could talk a little bit about as we come out of the pandemic and supporting kind of this accelerated sales productivity that you're that you've achieved in terms of higher spend travel et cetera. So just a little more color on how you see the sales process evolving as we get to a more personal world? Thanks.

Thanks Mac. I appreciate your question. So we've done a lot to improve our margins. You do that two ways. One you have higher revenues and two you have lower expenses and we've done both of those. So we really feel good about where we're headed in 2022 and we still think there's a few things that we can do on the expense side to reduce our expenses. As far as the pandemic goes, and the accelerated sales and the productivity we've had I think, it's particularly acute on the retail side where most of the wire houses are still closed. You still can't go in to see advisers. So that creates a challenge. Our guys have – just to give you some stats pre-COVID our guys were doing about 1,000 meetings a month, and after COVID hit that went to about 200 meetings a month. We're back up to over 600 a month. And I think that will steadily rise as the world begins to open up and that creates opportunities for us. We have a lot of highly rated funds. We have 10 funds now that are available. Several of them have been around for a long time and are four and five-star rated. So we feel really good about those two things coming together more availability of meetings and good funds to get out there and sell. Do you have any further questions?

No. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Subhash Kithany from SK Group Inc. Your question please.

Yes, I was wondering about that takeover offer you got earlier and the price was about 25. And are you guys doing anything to bring the price up to close to that takeover price? Somebody must have seen the value at $25.

I'm not sure what your question is, but clearly what we're trying to do is enhance shareholder value every day that we come to work. And I think we've done a really good job of improving our profile over the last year.

Are you doing anything about the stock buyback or something or special dividend?

We've done both of those things. We paid a special dividend last year and we bought the stock back last year.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. And this does conclude the question-and-answer session of today's program. I'd like to hand the program back to Brian Casey for any further remarks.

Thank you Jonathan, and thanks everybody for taking time to listen to our call today. If you have any further questions, please reach out to myself or to Terry or visit our website at westwoodgroup.com. Have a great afternoon.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Good day.