Virtus Investment Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRTS) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Michael Cyprys : Great. And just maybe you could update us on how you’re thinking about capital allocation here and M&A on the capital allocation side. I hear you on paying down the $40 million revolver, it sounds like by the end of the year. Just how are you thinking about buybacks as well into the end of the year as well as M&A? How much time are you spending on that these days? And maybe you can give us an update on what sort of properties you’re seeing out there and where you might have interest from here?

George Aylward : Sure. So in terms of the capital priority, so in the comments kind of indicated, we do believe that it’s appropriate to pay down what we drew on the credit facility. So our goal, and I think we commented on last quarter as well as in our comments earlier today, by the end of the year, bringing that down. And again, given our current low level of leverage and our cash flow generation, we can certainly do that, and we continue to believe that repurchasing our shares in view of the current valuation is a great use of our capital. So we purchased — we used $10 million last year, and we continue to see that as an opportunity. In terms of M&A, continue to be as active as we’ve always been, which really refers to the amount of activity and work that we’re doing sometimes which turn into transactions and sometimes don’t.

We continue to see that to be an area of opportunity for us. Again, we always do try to prioritize our organic growth, but we continue to consider inorganic opportunities. So I do think there continues to be a lot of activity going on in the M&A market in our sector. We continue to evaluate things that we think would be strategically additive to the business in terms of further diversification, particularly as it relates to clients and geographies as well as, as you’ve seen in our last two transactions, we’re also kind of focused towards less correlated investment strategies from the traditional long-only equity and fixed where we always had a pretty good array of that. So we’ll continue to evaluate that. But again, we’ll continue to take the cash that we generate and make sure that we have a comfortable level of leverage as well as returning capital to shareholders through both our repurchases as well as our dividend.

And as you know, we’ve increased our dividend annually over the last few years. Mike, anything else you’d add to that?

Michael Angerthal : Yes. I think, George, the other thing I’d reiterate on what you indicated in part of the prepared remarks on capital, we do continue to invest in the business. George alluded to the fact that we’re seeing CLO opportunities, and we would use capital to support the teams on CLO issuance, which is something that the current market environment seems that may be conducive. So we’re balancing all the priorities George alluded to as well as continuing to support our affiliates growth.

Michael Cyprys : Great. And just a final question for me. You guys have done a number of acquisitions over the past couple of years and a number of them have also had these contingent payments or earn-outs. So I was hoping you might be able to remind us on what’s still to come through from a cash standpoint over the next couple of years that could be paid out?