SEI Investments Company (SEIC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the 2020 Annual Meeting for SEI Investments Company. Our host for today's call is Al West, Chairman and CEO. [Operator Instructions] I will now turn the call over to your host. Mr. West, you may begin, sir.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Annual Meeting of Shareholders of SEI Investments Company. Thank you for joining us today. In light of the current worldwide health crisis, we are hosting our first Virtual Meeting of Shareholders. Joining me on the call are the members of our Board of Directors: Sarah Blumenstein, Kathryn McCarthy, Bill Doran, Carl Guarino and Carmen Romeo. And also with us are 2 of our Executive officers, Dennis McGonigle, our Chief Financial Officer; and Mike Peterson, our General Counsel. Finally, we have 2 partners from KPMG and are registered public accountants, Robert Capriotti here and Katie D'Angelo. I would now like to officially call the meeting to order. I'll reside as Chairman of the meeting. Bill Doran, one of the directors and our Corporate Secretary, will act as Secretary of the meeting. Bill and Mike Peterson will take us through the formal items for the meeting. Bill, please get us started.

Thank you, Al. The agenda for today's meeting will be as follows: I will go over certain procedural items, and Mike will preside over the voting on the 4 proposals set forth in our proxy statement. Al will then give his annual report to shareholders. After his annual the report, Al and the representers from KPMG will take questions. The meeting will be conducted in accordance of the code of conduct posted on the web portal. Shareholders, may ask questions in the designated field on the web portal, subject to the parameters set forth in the meetings code of conduct. Please note that this meeting is being recorded. However, no one attending via the webcast is permitted to use any audio recording device. An affidavit, has been delivered attesting to the fact that notice of the meeting and accompanying materials were mailed on or about April 23, 2020, to all registered shareholders as of March 27, 2020, the record date for the meeting. The judge of elections, Tracy Oats has previously taken the oath as judge of election. The judge has informed me to make sure of the total issued and outstanding shares of the company's stock are represented at the meeting via the web portal or by proxy. Therefore a quorum is present for the purposes of conducting business. I will now ask Mike to take us through the items on which we are voting today. Mike?

Thank you, Bill. Good morning, everyone. We will now turn to the items of business, which are described in detail in the proxy statement furnished to shareholders of record. Proxy statement is available through the web portal. It can also be accessed via the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. We have 4 proposals to be voted on by the shareholders at today's meeting. Proxies have been received and tabulated. They have been voted by written ballot in accordance with the terms of each proxy received. Any shareholder who has not yet voted or would like to change their vote may do so on the web portal by clicking on the voting button following the instructions. Please do that now. We will close the voting once I have read the 4 questions to be voted on. These are: first, election of Kathryn McCarthy and Sarah Blumenstein as directors for a 3-year term ending in 2023; second, to approve an advisory base -- on an advisory basis, the compensation of our named executive officers; third, to ratify the appointment of KPMG LLP as independent registered public accountants to examine our consolidated financial statements for 2020; and fourth, to approve the SEI Investments Company Employee Stock Purchase Plan as amended and restated in the form set forth in our proxy statement. The polls are now closed. The preliminary voting results from the judge of election are that each of the 4 proposals as set forth in our proxy statement has been approved. We will report the final vote results on Form 8-K that will be filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission within 4 business days. Before Al delivers his remarks, I would like everyone to note that some of the discussion may include forward-looking statements. Our forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those that are predicted. We urge you to read and carefully consider our cautionary statement posted on the meeting site. There being no further business to come before this meeting, I will turn things back to Al. Al?

Yes. Thank you, Bill, and Mike. The meeting is adjourned. I'm sorry. Here are my remarks. My intention is to focus my remarks on 2019, but considering what the first few months of 2020 have brought, some of my remarks will stray into 2020. SEI's financial report -- results for 2019 were solid. The EPS for 2019 of $3.24 is a 3% increase over the $3.14 reported in 2018. Also during 2019, our noncash assets under management increased by $33 billion. In 2019, SEI's shareholders were highly rewarded, we repurchased 6.2 million shares of SEI stock representing $348 million of capital and grew dividends to $102 million. The first amount of capital we returned to the shareholders in 2019 amounted to $450 million. Now turning to sales events, we were pleased with 2019 results. In 2019, net sales events totaled $87.5 million and are expected to generate recurring revenues of 30 -- $62.5 million. Since the first of 2020, we have been dealing with the devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic. So far, we have fared as well as could be possible. Fighting the corona crisis, the health of our employees and their families is our top priority. By the end of the first quarter 2020, we had 99% of our 4,000 employees working at home, all accepted skeleton crew of less than 100 employees. We are extremely proud of how productive our workforce has been during the crisis and handling record-breaking transaction volumes. Our new business strategy of One SEI is beginning to drive results. The goal of One SEI is to leverage existing and new SEI platforms, making them accessible to all types of clients, markets and other platforms. So as we look back at the last 16 months, we have a lot -- we have many to thank. We thank our employees and business partners for their accomplishments, our shareholders for their confidence in us and our clients for their trust. After all, our client success is the true measure of our success. Finally, thank you for your time and attention this morning. While the road ahead in 2020 and beyond will be challenging for us, it's also full of opportunities. We believe that we're better suited today to capture the opportunities with our One SEI strategy. That concludes my remarks. And Mike, are there any questions?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have no questions.

If there are no further questions, thank you all for joining us at our first Virtual Annual Meeting. Good day.

This now concludes the meeting. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day.