Welcome to Franklin Resources Earnings Conference Call for the quarter ended September 30th, 2023. Hello, my name is Julie, and I will be your call operator today. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded, and at this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Selene Oh, Head of Investor Relations for Franklin Resources. You may begin. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today to discuss our quarterly and fiscal year results. Please note that the financial results to be presented in this commentary are preliminary. Statements made on this conference call regarding Franklin Resources, Inc., which are not historical facts, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements involve a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These and other risk uncertainties and other important factors are described in more detail in Franklin's recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including in the Risk Factors and the MD&A sections of Franklin's most recent Form 10-K and 10-Q filings. With that, I'll turn the call over to Jenny Johnson, our President and Chief Executive Officer. Thank you, Selene. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to discuss Franklin Templeton's fourth quarter and fiscal year 2023 results. As usual, Matt Nicholls, our CFO and COO, and Adam Spector, our Head of Global Distribution, are joining me on the call. Over the past several years, we've made great strides in transforming our business, all in an effort to meet the needs of our clients and shareholders around the globe, no matter the market environment. We've done this by creating a diversified company that offers a broad range of investment expertise and capabilities across asset classes, investment vehicles, and geographies. Today, we're able to offer our partners and investors the ability to fulfill their comprehensive investment needs across public and private markets and in the vehicle of their choice as one firm with specialist investment managers operating around the globe. In addition, we have made important investments in value-added services, including technology, digital wealth, and customization, in order to be on the forefront of innovation in areas increasingly important to our clients. As we look back over our fiscal year, challenging global financial markets and geopolitical uncertainty weighed heavily on investor sentiment. The so-called Magnificent Seven, seven large U.S. tech companies, have primarily driven all of the gains in global stocks this year. In our fourth quarter, we saw heightened volatility lead to increasing pressures and declines across equity and fixed income markets. We believe markets like the one we're in reinforce the value of active management with a long-term investment horizon. It's often in these times of uncertainty, where the best opportunities to capture value are identified. In this complex and volatile market environment, it's no surprise that there's a tremendous amount of cash sitting in bank accounts and in money market funds, capturing one of the most attractive short-term yields in more than 15 years. Global money market assets stood at $7.4 trillion as of September 30, the highest asset level since Morningstar started collecting the data in 2007. We have been actively engaging with our clients to understand their needs and address their strategic goals. Many clients continue to look for additional access to private markets, alternative credit in particular. As yields have become more attractive, clients have had a renewed interest in fixed income. We continue to provide insights and thought leadership to help them navigate the latest conditions, including drawing upon the resources of our various specialist investment managers and the Franklin Templeton Institute. Against this backdrop, we continue to manage our global business with a focus on areas of organic growth, expense discipline, and strategic transactions. As such, this year, we are pleased with the progress made executing on our long-term corporate priorities by expanding our investment capabilities across vehicles and deepening our presence in key markets and channels. For the fiscal year, notwithstanding 20% lower inflows, long-term net outflows improved 23% from the prior year. Long-term net flows were positive in several key areas, including alternatives, multi-asset, ETFs, Canvas, and the high net worth channel. In addition, our Asia Pacific region generated positive long-term net flows for the fiscal year. Our EMEA region turned positive in the second half of fiscal 2023, and our non-US regions posted positive net flows in the fourth quarter. One of our strategic priorities has been to increase our scale in key segments of the industry, reflecting long-term client demand. In this pursuit to offer more choice to more clients, we closed the acquisition of Alcentra, a leading European credit manager, doubling our alternative credit AUM. Firm-wide alternative AUM increased by over 13% to $255 billion from the prior year, making Franklin Templeton one of the largest managers of alternative assets. Alternative AUM represents approximately 19% of our long-term AUM and approximately 25% of adjusted revenues, excluding performance fees in fiscal 2023. Alternative assets management fee revenues increased 36% year-over-year. Furthermore, we were pleased to announce the pending acquisition of Putnam Investments with $136 billion of AUM and our relationship with Power Corporation and Great-West Lifeco, strengthening our presence in the retirement and insurance segments. The transaction will enable us to further bolster our presence in these key market segments to better serve all our clients and remains on track to close in the fourth quarter of calendar 2023. Industry-wide, we continue to see consolidation of asset management relationships. In this context, there are increased expectations for value-added services, and we believe we are well-positioned as a strategic partner due to the breadth and depth of our investment capabilities, technology, content, and capital resources. As we look ahead in 2024 and beyond with better clarity on interest rates and markets in general, there will be an increased likelihood of investors moving money from the sidelines. We believe we are well-positioned to capture money in motion as clients benefit from the expertise of each of our specialist investment managers, particularly in areas where there is strong client demand, such as alternatives, income, fixed income, solutions, and custom indexing. Turning now to our specific numbers for the fiscal year, starting first with assets under management and flows. Ending AUM was $1.37 trillion, an increase of 6% from the prior year, primarily due to market appreciation and the acquisition of Alcentra. Investment performance continues to be strong and resulted in 61%, 48%, 47%, and 61% of our strategy composite AUM outperforming their respective benchmarks on a 1-, 3-, 5-, and 10-year basis. Compared to the prior year, AUM outperforming benchmarks stayed the same in the 3-year period and declined in the 5- and 10-year periods. One-year performance improved significantly due to several equity strategies, including non-U.S. strategies and select U.S. taxable fixed income composites. Long-term net outflows were $21 billion and improved by 23% from net outflows of $28 billion in the prior year. Reinvested distributions were $21 billion compared to $32 billion in the prior year. Our long-term net flows, while challenged for the year, continued to benefit from a diversified mix of assets and strong presence in key areas. Multi-asset saw a 66% increase in net flows from the prior year and were positive for all four quarters, including nearly $8 billion, driven by Franklin Income Fund, Franklin Templeton Investment Solutions, and Canvas, our custom indexing solution platform. In fact, our flagship Franklin Income Fund celebrated its 75th anniversary in August. The strategy follows a flexible, value-oriented investment philosophy seeking income and long-term capital appreciation by investing in dividend-paying stocks, bonds, and convertible securities. The fund has successfully delivered uninterrupted dividends across all market cycles ever since its launch in 1948. It's also a great example of how we're giving investors greater choice in how they access the strategy, including through SMAs, sub-advised strategies, and in an actively managed ETF vehicle around the globe. For the fiscal year, alternative net inflows were approximately $6 billion, driven by growth in private market strategies, which were partially offset by outflows in liquid alternative strategies. Benefit Street Partners, Clarion Partners, and Lexington Partners together generated net inflows of nearly $11 billion. We continue to make strides in alternative assets, unlocking new opportunities for investors in our firm. Retail and high net worth investors remain underallocated in alternatives relative to institutions. Client interest was strong for alternative strategies on wealth management platforms under the Alternatives by Franklin Templeton brand in the U.S., which was launched earlier this year. For example, we anticipate over 20% of the total capital raised in our current secondary private equity fund to come from the wealth management channel. We continue to focus on client education initiatives through our alternative-focused podcasts and webinars, partnering with the Franklin Templeton Academy. Fixed income net outflows decreased by approximately 50% to $16 billion this fiscal year, with net flows significantly improving starting in the second quarter of the fiscal year. In a year when all eyes were on the bond markets and interest rates, we continued to benefit from having a broad range of fixed income strategies with non-correlated investment philosophies. Brandywine Global saw positive net flows for the year. Franklin Templeton Fixed Income saw positive net flows in the second half, and Western Asset had positive net flows in its core and muni products for the year. Fixed income strategies also saw net flows in ETFs and, starting in the second half of the year, in SMAs. With the addition of Putnam, we will further strengthen our fixed income offering, particularly with ultra-short-... stable value, and longer duration strategies with strong long-term investment performance. Equity net outflows were nearly $19 billion. The risk-off environment continued to impact investor sentiment on select equity growth strategies, which were partially offset by net inflows into large cap core, international, smart beta, quantitative, and emerging market strategies. We believe that emerging markets equities could be a potential bright spot in equities as investors look across broad markets for opportunities. Turning to ETFs, since launching our ETF business in 2016, we have provided our clients with a broad range of investment strategies and have achieved significant growth milestones. ETFs generated net inflows of nearly $4 billion in the fiscal year, representing four consecutive quarters with net flows of approximately $1 billion, and AUM ended the quarter at over $16 billion. We continue to launch new and innovative ETFs based on client interest. During the fourth quarter, both Western Asset and Brandywine Global launched active fixed income ETFs, and we expect to see strong client interest in both strategies. We are a leading franchise in SMAs with $113 billion in AUM, an increase of 13% from the prior year. We saw momentum in our SMA platform with $1.3 billion of long-term net flows in the second half of the fiscal year. This year, we continued to expand our SMA capabilities with launches focused on customization, such as tax-managed overlay and SMA products of key flagship strategies, including the Franklin Income Fund. Through new technologies, we're continuing to enable personalized portfolio solutions that seek to improve bespoke outcomes for investors. A good example is Canvas, which has achieved net inflows each quarter since the platform launched in September 2019, and AUM has more than doubled to $4.8 billion since the acquisition closed. This year, Canvas generated net inflows of approximately $1.5 billion and had 20 new partnerships. In addition, it continues to have a robust pipeline. Private wealth management AUM ended the quarter at $34 billion, with Fiduciary Trust International generating its 12th consecutive quarter of long-term net inflows. Fiduciary Trust provides personalized solutions to high-net-worth individuals and multifamily offices with an average client relationship of 16 years. It is a growing client base and a platform well-positioned for long-term growth. Since 2010, Franklin Templeton has been the investment manager and sole administrator of Fondul. In July, Fondul's largest holding, Hidroelectrica, Romania's leading energy producer, broke a record as being Romania's largest initial public offering on the Bucharest Stock Exchange. The listing reflects our ability to provide partnerships with public and private institutions in emerging markets to deliver long-term value for all stakeholders and our enduring commitment to developing the country's local capital market, promoting corporate governance and transparency. Looking forward to 2024, we will continue to further expand our business and invest in key areas of growth that extend our ability to offer more choice to more clients in more places, including alternative asset management, insurance and retirement channels, customization and solutions for clients, technology-related distribution, and private wealth management, specifically Fiduciary Trust International. We are proud of the work that we have done over the past several years to further grow and diversify our business. It makes us a more resilient organization over the long run and reflects our focus on positioning Franklin Templeton as a premier partner. Finally, I'd like to thank our dedicated employees around the world for all their efforts in this past year to grow our business by always putting our clients first in a continuously evolving industry. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to our CFO and COO, Matt Nicholls, who will review our financial results from the fiscal quarter and year, as well as provide an update on the Putnam acquisition. Matt? Thanks, Jenny. Fourth quarter ending AUM was $1.37 trillion, reflecting a decline of 4% from the prior quarter, and average AUM was $1.42 trillion, flat from the prior quarter. Adjusted operating revenues increased by 1% to $1.6 billion from the prior quarter and included adjusted performance fees of $98 million, compared to $116 million in the prior quarter. This quarter's investment management fees benefited from $36 million in connection with Fondul and were partially offset by lower catch-up fees of $17 million in secondary private equity. This quarter's adjusted effective fee rate, which excludes performance fees, was 40.2 basis points, an increase of 1 basis point due to transaction-related management fees earned from Fondul. Adjusted operating income increased 7% from the prior quarter to $512 million, and adjusted operating margin increased to 32.4% from 30.5%. The increase from the prior quarter is primarily due to higher investment management fees, the aforementioned management fees earned from Fondul, and lower compensation and benefits expense, partially offset by lower performance fees. The specific operating income from Fondul and secondary private equity catch-up fees was $35 million for the quarter. Fourth quarter adjusted net income and adjusted diluted earnings per share increased by 31% and 33% from the prior quarter to $427 million and $0.84, respectively. The increase in adjusted net income and adjusted diluted EPS is primarily due to higher other income, higher adjusted operating income for the reasons mentioned, and lower taxes. Adjusted EPS increased by $0.05 due to Fondul and secondary private equity catch-up fees in the quarter. Turning to fiscal year 2023 results, ending AUM increased by 6% from the prior year, while average AUM declined by 5%. Adjusted operating revenues of $6.1 billion decreased by 6% from the prior year and included an additional 6 months of Lexington and 11 months of Alcentra. Adjusted performance fees of $383 million decreased from $515 million in the prior year. The adjusted effective fee rate, which excludes performance fees, was 39.5 basis points, compared to 38.9 basis points in the prior year, primarily due to a full year of Lexington and 11 months of Alcentra. While continuing to invest in long-term growth initiatives, we also continue to strengthen the foundation of our business through disciplined expense management and operational efficiencies. Our adjusted operating expenses were $4.3 billion, an increase of 3% from the prior year, again, including a full year of Lexington and 11 months of Alcentra. Excluding performance fee-related compensation and the full year impact of Lexington and Alcentra, adjusted operating expenses were down slightly from the prior year. This led to fiscal year adjusted operating income of $1.8 billion, a decrease of 22% from the prior year, primarily due to lower average AUM, driven by market declines and, to a lesser degree, net outflows. Adjusted operating margin was 29.9%, compared to 35.9% in the prior year. Compared to the prior year, fiscal year adjusted net income declined 28% to $1.3 billion, and adjusted diluted earnings per share was $2.60, a decline of 28%. From a capital management perspective, after returning $870 million to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases and funding the acquisition of Alcentra and other acquisition-related payments, we ended the year with $6.9 billion of cash and investments. We will continue to prioritize our dividend, which has increased every year since 1982, purchase shares to hedge our employee share grants, and, where applicable, review targeted acquisitions to reach our objectives at an accelerated pace. In addition, as we began in the fourth quarter, we plan to opportunistically repurchase shares above the employee-related equity issuances during fiscal year 2024. Turning to the Putnam transaction, which, as Jenny mentioned, remains on track to close in the fourth quarter of calendar 2023. Among other factors, the transaction is structured to maintain Franklin Templeton's financial flexibility and promote our continuing investments in the business. It also protects our strong financial position in the context of challenging market conditions. At current market levels, the acquisition of Putnam is expected to add total run rate adjusted operating income of approximately $150 million after the first year post-closing, consistent with an approximate 30% operating margin, inclusive of cost synergies. And we are ahead of schedule in terms of when we are likely to realize operating income post-close. Assuming this operating income contribution, the transaction is expected to be modestly accretive to adjusted EPS by the end of the first quarter after closing. Now, we would like to open the call up to your questions. Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. The confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. If anyone should require operator assistance during the call, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. We ask that you limit yourself to one initial question and one follow-up. One moment, please, for your first question. Your first question comes from Michael Cypris from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Great. Thank you. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe you could just start off on the private market space. You guys continue to raise capital there. Maybe you could just update us on some of the progress across some of the key flagship funds, which strategies you think might be entering the market as you look out over the next 12 months. And just on the private wealth channel, I think you mentioned 20%, in terms of what you're looking, expecting to raise, or maybe you could just talk about some of the traction that you're seeing in the private wealth channel in terms of fund placements and new products you might be able to bring on the channel. Great. Adam, Adam's gonna take this one. All right. Thank you, Jenny. We're seeing strength really across the board. I would say that the folks, the place where we're seeing a lot of interest is, like others, is in the private debt area. They're particularly in the real estate-related debt, we're seeing good growth. We've had a good year in our CLO business. We're out with Special Situations, a new BSP flagship fund. That's all really good. Alcentra is beginning to be integrated more into our distribution force. We're feeling really positive about that as well. Lexington is continuing their fundraise for Fund Ten, and we're beginning to do some other things there. You mentioned, Michael, the 20% raise that will come from wealth management for Lexington. We're starting to see- ... greater traction for wealth management alternatives across the board. We spent the year really building out our capabilities for U.S. wealth management alternatives, and we're now taking that model and using it in Europe. In general, one of the things we're seeing that's quite positive in wealth management alts is the fact that we're now getting onto calendars six months, a year in advance. And once you're in that flow, we think the fundraising really will continue. That's the quick overview. Great. Thank you. And just a follow-up question, maybe for Matt. I think in the release you mentioned, transfer agency functions globally have now been outsourced. You did that in the U.S., now you took that around the world. I think also you've outsourced fund administration in the U.S.. So maybe you could just talk to, you know, what's next as you think about simplifying the business, enhancing efficiencies. What steps might be able to take over the next year or two? How meaningful might they be? And just curious, any sort of benefits or lessons learned and takeaways that you could speak to on the transfer agency outsourcing? Yeah. So you mentioned three key things there. One is the steps we've taken to outsource fund administration, transfer agency, and aspects of our technology. What we've been working hard on over the last year or so is what next in terms of our investment management platform, in terms of technology. That includes both middle office and back office functions. And I'd say that we're pretty deep into it, and you can expect more updates from us throughout 2024. Well, and I would just add, Mike, as you know, we've done a lot of acquisitions, and I think one of the reasons they work well is we take our time on some of the integration. And so, there's opportunity. Obviously, we'll be integrating Putnam into our environment, and even some of the, like, Legg Mason SIMs, you know, have an opportunity to integrate, which we think will simplify the environment. Yeah. And in terms of the financial impact, Mike, I would just caution you on that. It, these things take time. As Jenny mentioned, there won't be any additional change in 2024 that's a step change in terms of our expense, in terms of our expenses around the operation. But I think going into 2025, so longer term, not only do we have the opportunity to be more efficient across the organization, bringing things closer together in an effective way, but also it's an opportunity to modernize, to reduce CapEx, to make sure that longer term, we're in a position where we can scale at lower expenses with the right partners. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from Craig Siegenthaler from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Morning. So my question is on the SMA business, and I think you said ask one question, but maybe I could tuck another one in on the SMA within here. But what I'm looking for is more details around the components and the growth trajectory. So, you know, now that the Franklin Income Fund, which is one of your flagships, is in the SMA wrapper, I'm just wondering, are there other flagships at Franklin and its affiliates that would make sense also launching into an SMA wrapper? And then kind of my two-parter was, you're generating about $700 million of flows per quarter in the SMA wrapper. Do you think this is a level that could increase significantly from here? Yeah. So, I mean, you got to remember, SMAs exist, and the reason they're taking off so much is that in the retail channel, where the world went fee-based, it is difficult for a financial advisor whose client sees they're being charged every month for advice to buy and hold a mutual fund, right? So if you can deliver the same kind of product in an SMA with the holdings, basically on the statement, it looks like the advisor is being much more active on that. And so, we view ourselves as being vehicle agnostic to how we deliver what is our expertise, which is our investment capability. And so, you know, you take, for example, the Franklin Income Fund. The Franklin Income Fund now is got... We have an ETF version, an SMA version, and we're seeing growth in both of those. So any of our products can be delivered in SMA. Today, we have munis. Munis actually have a good growth area in the SMA muni ladders. And so the way we are thinking about our business is, I always say it's like a three-legged stool. It's product capability, global distribution, and vehicles. And the vehicles can be, you know, mutual funds, communal trusts, ETFs, SMAs, things like Canvas, direct indexing. And we should be flexible about how we deliver those in whatever market, you know, we whatever market we're operating in. And I think that nobody has, one, the breadth of product capability that we have, two, the breadth of geographic distribution, both on the retail and institutional side. While we may have been late to things like passive ETFs, we were early actually in the active ETF space, and so being vehicle agnostic is very important. Now, the challenge on SMAs is that you have to get approval at the gatekeeper level, and then you have to go out and train individual advisors. So it's a bit like alts in the complexity, but once you do that, then you just get consistent flows coming in. So the long answer is basically we see any of our flagship funds as being able to be delivered through the SMA platform. ... And I just might add that emerging markets is another area where we're seeing significant SMA growth in addition to the munis that Jenny answered. And while a lot of the growth is in SMA, having a product available like the income fund in an SMA, an ETF, a mutual fund, a cross-border fund, being vehicle agnostic, really lets us take broader access to different platforms. Thank you very much. Your next question comes from Brennan Hawken from UBS. Please go ahead. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Curious about the expectations for expense growth into next year. Matthew, maybe if you could give us an update there. Sure. Thank you, Brennan. Good morning. So I'll split it into three components, if you'll bear with me. One is we'll discuss the first quarter guide, our fiscal first quarter guide. Second, I'll give a very preliminary, recognizing how early we are for fiscal year 2024. And then thirdly, I will provide an update on Putnam, because obviously Putnam, we expect to become an important part of our consolidated guide, if you will. But I want to do that separately because we don't know exactly when it's going to close, so it's speculative at this point, but I'll give you that information. And I'll—and I'm going to go through the individual components of the expense, the issues that you focus on from a modeling perspective. So firstly, EFR. We expect our EFR to remain in a 39 basis point area, excluding performance fees. Compensation and benefits, we expect, again, this is first quarter 2024 fiscal. We expect compensation and benefits to be at $750 million, but please note that this includes $35 million of accelerated deferred comp charges. This also assumes $50 million of performance fees. IS&T, we guide to $125 million, flat to the quarter we just had. Occupancy, we expect that to increase to $65 million from high 50s, and the reason for this is that in New York City, we are transitioning to a more efficient and unified space. We have nine offices currently in New York City, and we're consolidating into one major office space in New York. For a period of about a year, we're going to have the equivalent of double rent on that office. So that means for the first quarter, this, this implies 2 months of this, by the way. It's about an $8 million increase, and that $8 million will increase to $12 million increase for your occupancy for about a year. After the year is up, that will be, that will go away, and it will normalize back down into the mid-fifties again. G&A, we expect to be in the $140 million area, and this includes slightly higher T&E and flat placement fees. In terms of our tax rate, we expect that to be 24%-26% for the fiscal year 2024. In terms of full year 2024, overall expenses, I'll first of all note that, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, that, between full year 2023 and full year 2022, we were about 1% lower, excluding performance fees and the various acquisitions that weren't included in the previous year. Full year 2024, excluding Putnam performance fees and the New York City real estate transition that I just walked through, we expect our expenses to be approximately flat, perhaps slightly down, but I would model flat at this point. In terms of Putnam. So Putnam, again, as Jenny and I mentioned that in our prepared remarks, we expect Putnam to close in the calendar fourth quarter and in our fiscal first quarter. We're hoping for December one, and so the guide that I'm about to provide to you does assume December one, but that could end up slipping into January one, for example. But let's hope for December one. If we close on December one, from a revenue perspective, we expect to add about $50 million to revenue. Around $42 million of that is expected to be in investment management fees, and about $8 million of that is expected to be in services. And you can run rate that by timesing it by 12 to come up with the annual number for modeling purposes. We expect operating income addition, so the addition to operating income in the first quarter, in other words, for the one month, to be between $8 million and $10 million for Putnam. In the second fiscal quarter, we expect to add an incremental $25 million operating income, and in both the third and fourth quarters for Putnam, we expect to add an incremental, for both quarters, $25 million-$30 million in operating income, assuming, of course, that revenue remains approximately stable and markets remains stable to where they are. At current levels, we're still guiding, as I mentioned when we announced the transaction, to add a total operating income of around $150 million run rate by the time our fiscal year ends in 2024, in other words, by 9/30. This is 10 months, obviously, assuming we close December 1, versus the 12 months that we guided when we announced the transaction. So the change here is not necessarily the one fifty that we talked about, although we would put that at a minimum at this point, based on current markets. But the change is, is when we expect to actually realize the operating income. When we announced the transaction, I described a scenario where we would expect to achieve 25% on a run rate basis at the time of close. And as you can see from the guide of $8 million-$10 million for the first month, coming in operating income, this is now indicative of achieving over 50%, let's say between 50% and 60% of targeted operating income on a run rate basis by the end of month one. In the actual year, just to be as clear as we can be, and to help with the modeling, in terms of the actual year, we expect to realize between $85 million and $100 million of operating income, and to have reached at least $150 million run rate by 9/30/2024, all else remaining equal. A lot to chew on that. The final comment. Sorry, Brennan. I want to make sure this is complete as possible, so everybody gets their models right. At the end, so what this means in terms of accretion dilution, because we talked about that, too. At the current time, again, recognizing how volatile the markets are and so on, but the current time, all else remaining equal, this would mean the transaction becomes accretive by the second quarter. So in our full quarter versus at the end of the first year that we talked about initially. So we're pretty much becoming accretive in this transaction, almost right after we close. It's like a couple of months afterwards. Let's say, just to be conservative, at the end of the first full quarter after we close, so that would be the end of our second fiscal quarter. Got it. I got my money's worth on that question. Thank you, Matthew. Let's be thorough. Just one clarifying question. So you gave us—I think you kind of gave us that $150 million incremental run rate by 9/30, which kind of is a guiding, is sort of a North Star. But I believe the walk was, it's like $8 million-$10 million in the first quarter, assuming ending December- First month. Months. That's just one month, right? Yeah. Yeah. Just one month. And then next quarter, that means we're adding 25 onto that 8-10. So getting to 35- Right. you know, and then... Yeah. Okay, and are those? Okay, got it. And those are quarterly, not run rate. Correct. They're actual adds. So by the end of that period, we would have added $25 million. At the end of the third and fourth quarters, we would have added another $25-$30 million. So at the end of the fiscal year, we would have added up to about $100 million. So it's real actually, you know, operating income additions, not just run rated. Yeah. The reason why I add the $150 run rate is that, that could be achieved sort of in an accelerated fashion right at the end of the last fiscal quarter. Okay, perfect. That's really, really helpful. Yeah, the only other thing I'd add is that... Because this is obviously a very important factor in the model as well, as you think about overall AUM and EFR, the Putnam acquisition is expected to reduce our EFR by 0.2 basis points, because they have a slightly lower EFR than us. Got it. When would the impact of the EFR? Would that happen just pretty much right away? It's over the year. But yeah, I'd pretty much do it. It graduates, comes in, because it but it should be right away in December. Yeah. The run rate impact right away- Yeah. it'll be adjusted for the timing. Yeah. Because as you know, we average the AUM gets averaged over the period it comes in, so it's going to be a bit wonky in the first year, the first quarter, sorry, but, Right ... you'll soon see the full impact of 0.2. Got it. But the point 2 is the way we can think about it, and then we can adjust for timing accordingly. Exactly. That's a good way of putting it. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you very much. Thank you. Your next question comes from Alex Blostein, from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Great. Well, thanks for that. I think we could probably end the call right there. So I did want to ask you guys about fixed income, obviously. And look, Western had some nice stabilization in investment performance early in the year, but you know, the latest moves in interest rates put incremental pressure on core and core plus, both absolute and relative to the benchmark. So how are the conversations with clients, I guess, evolving, as you highlighted the opportunity to maybe rotate some of the cash on the sidelines to longer duration products? How big of a headwind do you think that is? If more capital ultimately chooses to go back to passive vehicles within fixed income like we've seen this year, how is Franklin, as a whole, positioned to maybe take advantage of that opportunity in some of the fixed income wrappers on the passive side? So interesting. So first of all, core is in positive flows and has remained in positive flows. It's core plus that's been more challenged. You know, we just came from-- we had our international institutional client conference last week, and the bulk of the discussion is around: Is it time to move cash and go longer duration? So, you know, we're all sort of waiting for that moment, but we're certainly getting close to it. I think everybody agrees maybe there, there's one more increase of the Fed, maybe not, but we're definitely near the end. And then the question goes, is it higher for longer? Or, you know, do things degrade quickly and rates get dropped? So, you know, I think we're fortunate in that we have four independent fixed income teams that all actually have slightly different views, and clients align with one of those views. And, you know, that's the way we look at, you know, managing the business and kind of the insurance policy around it, which is to have comfort that we know that we can align something, and the key has been training our sales force to understand those nuances so that they can be out there and deliver the appropriate product consistent with that client's view. And so, yes, there are, I mean, I think Western is probably our top flowing SIM as far as gross sales, because there are a lot of clients that align with Western's view. So, we think we're well-positioned when they're... Sure, there's gonna be X percentage that do passive, but there's plenty of them that believe in active fixed income. I'm always one of those that's skeptical when you the concept of doing capital allocation based on who's got more debt in the fixed income. So passive fixed income is always a question in my mind, but there are clients who prefer that, but there are plenty of clients who prefer active fixed income. And, you know, with our diverse SIMs, I think we're well-positioned to capture that as money moves out of cash into longer duration. Adam, do you want to add anything, or? Yeah, I think you hit a lot of the key points, Jenny. You know, Western is having very good conversations with its clients. It continues to be Franklin Templeton's top-selling SIM in terms of our gross flows. And if you look at their performance, 88% of their marketed composites have outperformed over the one-year period, and I think that number, the 10-year period is something like 97%. So yes, in Core Plus and some other strategies, they've had a tough go of it recently, but we see that turning around, and we see, you know, client interest still being very strong in Western products. Great, thanks. It's helpful. And then, Matt, just one for you. Share repurchase is pretty strong in the quarter. I think in your prepared remarks, you alluded to the idea that you might be a little bit more opportunistic. So I was hoping you could maybe flush that out a little bit more as we're thinking about capital return priorities for next year. Right. Sure. Thank you, Alex. So I think the point we're trying to make on this is that obviously the market's complicated, it's fraught with uncertainty, so we wanna be careful how we describe this. But obviously, we've been very active in acquiring companies to make sure we have the right set of investment management capabilities to be as relevant as we possibly can to the most important clients around the world in every asset class and every vehicle that Jenny mentioned. We feel like we're pretty much done in that regard. There's one or two areas that we've referenced, you know, infrastructure, for example, in the private market area of alternative assets, and then maybe there's a few distribution things, a couple of technology things. But in terms of large-scale, you know, transactions involving, you know, $hundreds of millions, in certain cases, $billions, we feel like we're done in that regard, for the foreseeable future. Never say never, but we certainly feel like we're done in terms of strategic planning, and therefore, I think you can expect us to move into more of a capital return mode, opportunistically. So what that means is we're gonna absolutely protect our dividends, as we've always described. And you can expect the same sort of pattern that you've seen since 1990, you know, 1980s. We're gonna be very disciplined in buying back our and hedging our employee grants. But as you know, we're left over with a fair amount of cash after that, both in terms of earnings from earnings, but also in terms of our balance sheet. And look, with our shares trading where they are, it's a very good opportunity for us, and as you know, we've funded, you know, 90% of Putnam transaction with shares, and we'd like to repurchase those shares as soon as we can. So we're gonna be quite focused on that. We don't want to give a schedule because the market's too uncertain, in our opinion, and we need to make sure that we are conservative and careful and methodical, and all the rest of it that you expect from us. But, the pattern of share repurchases that you saw in this last quarter, you know, again, I'm not saying it's gonna be the same number, but you can expect us to really focus on, opportunistic share repurchases in addition to the share employee grants for the reasons that I just outlined. All right, awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from Glenn Schorr from Evercore. Please go ahead. Hi, thanks very much. Not sure if it's for Adam, for anybody, but, so the new DOL rule proposal just came out. I think this is a long time coming. The focus is updating the definition of what is a fiduciary and investment advice, and given your distribution efforts and prowess in the channels, just curious how you think it may or may not impact Franklin, into various products, various channels? Thanks. You know, you know this, Glenn, this has been discussed for quite a while and back and forth, and, you know, we've all, and through the ICI, have had opinions on it. And, you know, our view is it's about education, it's about suitability of products, and making sure that advisors are, you know, deploying the appropriate product for that client. And, you know, we've always had the view that it's our job to make sure that we well inform our distribution partners and provide, you know, transparency around that. And so I think our view is that this is not gonna have a tremendous impact. ... Good news. Maybe one follow-up. I appreciate that we're not quite at the finish line yet on Putnam, but as you get to know each other, you know, from my look, I think performance looks good and improving in their products. But as you've gotten closer together, I'm curious what things you're learning, what can you work on for their distribution, reach, and insurance and retirement? Well, I think, I'll start, and then Adam, you could jump in. I mean, you know, to be honest, like, one of the things that we were really excited about this Putnam deal is that, you know, if you're a traditional asset manager, who has a big book of mutual funds, you know, the area from where mutual funds tax disadvantage isn't an issue is in the retirement channel. And so, and that's a way in which we, you know, have always underpunched our weight. And so as we got into this, we're couldn't be more excited about combining what we've been putting an emphasis internally on retirement with their distribution capability. We've learned a lot because as you can imagine, Empower was built out of Putnam, and so really understanding that retirement channel, bringing these teams together, and we think that's just gonna make us a much, much better distribution partner, not just with Empower, but with firms like platforms like Principal, Nationwide, Fidelity, and being able to have an entry with our stable value in the target date funds. So, you know, we look at this and couldn't be more excited about what we think is a great growth opportunity for us, in a channel that just even when markets are volatile, people still continue to contribute to their 401(k) through their paycheck. Adam, you want to add anything to that and- Yeah. Yeah, I would say that in some ways, it reminds me of the Legg Mason transaction, when the two distribution forces were just so complementary. And if you look at the way that Franklin is built out in the non-U.S. market, as an example, I think that scale there really helps Putnam. If you look at what Franklin Templeton has in terms of SMA capability, ETF capability, that, along with the core Putnam strategies, is a real advantage. And finally, I would note that, subject to all of the financial comments that Matthew made within those strictures, we will be able to add significantly to the sales force. So we'll have a bigger sales force, a more effective sales force, by bringing the two firms together. That bigger sales force will obviously have more product, great Putnam product, and so we're feeling that the transaction is really going to help propel us. I'll just add, on the insurance side, I actually think we gained insurance expertise at the acquisition of Western, who has tremendous penetration in the insurance channel. But what's exciting is now with the alternatives capabilities that we're adding, we can take that expertise and just be a much more relevant partner. And so, you know, as Great-West looked at our capabilities and, you know, basically committed $25 billion, it was because it was a detailed, bottoms-up analysis of our various SIMs to determine, you know, what made sense for them. And that's... We wouldn't have been able to respond to that as well had we not had the expertise at Western, and we were building it, you know, within Franklin. And then, of course, the Venerable announcement that we, the press release we had, I think, last week or the week before, again, comes out of that combined Franklin and Western insurance ideas. So we think there's, you know, more to come there as well. Your next question comes from Dan Fannon from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Thanks. Good morning. Another clarification on expenses here. Just, Matt, your comment on fiscal 2024 being flat ex performance fees, is that versus the reported number in fiscal 2023, or is that ex performance fee comp and other things in it as well? It's ex performance fees and other comp. So you have to look at the two adjusted numbers in that regard. So it's 23- What is the number for 23? So 2023 would be, like, $4.4070, something like that, $4.075. And then, you know, again, if the full year 2024 is really right on that number. Again, ex- Got it ... excluding the performance fees and the real estate transition I mentioned in New York, which is about $50 million or something like that. Okay. And then as a follow-up, just on alternatives, it looks like gross sales were their lowest level since, you know, like eight, eight or so quarters, and curious if that's just more the environment timing around what's in the market with you guys. And then also, just specifically, what did Clarion do in the quarter, as well as if Lexington it appears, it hasn't had its final close, and when you think that might happen? So Lexington's final close will be in December, so they're scheduled on that. Clarion has had improving redemption queues, but they're still... I don't know, Adam, if you want to—if you have the details on it. But we've had all three strategies were positive for the quarter. Yeah, and I think, Jenny, in there, there's a difference between the, what we see in alternatives versus private market alternatives, because the private markets generally were a little stronger than alternatives overall, as we saw some outflows in the liquid alt strategy. ... And your next question comes from Ken Worthington from JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. So I guess beating the drum on expenses. So just from looking at adjusted comp for the quarter, was better than the guidance when accounting for the bigger than expected performance fees. What drove this? Was there a lower payout on performance fees this quarter, or was the core compensation number lower than your prior guidance? And what sort of drove that? Yeah. So obviously, you've seen the state of, you know, the current markets, Ken, it you know resulted in just lower variable compensation, number one. So that's a combination of AUM revenue, less performance. Performance actually improved a little bit, so but just generally speaking, that lowered the compensation. Then we had the transaction-related fee that we mentioned on Putnam, that has a higher margin associated with it. So that also helped in that regard. So that probably lower than than you would expect. So I'd say just, you know, a combination of just expense discipline around how we manage our compensation going into... Because remember, this is our year-end, so we made final adjustments based on where the current market is and expect the next quarter to be. Okay, fair enough. I'm going to take a flyer on Precidian. Your ETF business is doing well. You have additional fund launches. We're seeing more active ETFs industry-wide. Can you talk about Precidian? To what extent is active ETF proliferation utilizing the Precidian structure? Look, I think the market has kind of spoken on this topic, which is they want transparent, active ETFs, and so that's been our area of focus. And so we haven't really pursued anything there, and I don't think there's a lot of growth there. Fair enough. Thank you. Thanks, Ken. Hey, your next question comes from Patrick Davitt, from Autonomous Research. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for the question. Most one I've been asked. One quick follow-up on Putnam. Could you give us an update on... Obviously, we can see the mutual funds, but could you give us an update on how the flows have tracked in the September quarter versus the last quarter and maybe last year in this quarter? Thanks. Yeah, Patrick, don't mean to be difficult in any way, but obviously we don't own Putnam today, so we can't really report their flows to you. I would just say, though, that their AUM is roughly where we announced the transaction. So I think when we announced the transaction, we were around $136 billion, and during that period of time, they've, you know, their performance has remained very strong. And, you know, you know what's happened with the market between then, which was late May, and now, the market went up for a month or so or a couple of months, then it came down quite hard, and they're roughly where they are. The flow expectations we had from them was to be, you know, based on their strong performance, to be, you know, in the flatish area, let's say, and I'd say that their results are in line with what we expected. Sorry, I can't give more specificity around it, but we don't know them yet. One quick follow-up. I know it's early days, but could you frame the opportunity with the Venerable partnership you just announced? Any kind of details you can give and give around, you know, the pool of AUM, you'll be open to the timeline for transitioning that AUM to the Venerable branded funds, et cetera? Yeah. I think we're not going to give, again, sorry, to not give too much detail on that, but it's a multi-stage project with them where we're going to be managing assets that we take on over a period of quarters. There's something that we've announced that came out quite recently, and I think it's indicative of the way that we are able to work with insurance companies in general to build things where they are able to more actively and efficiently hedge what's in their portfolio. So it was a customized solution that we built with them, and it's the type of approach we're talking to some other insurance companies about right now. Your next question comes from Brian Bedell, from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Great. Great, thanks. Thanks very much. Good morning. Just one clarification on the Putnam operating income guidance. Does that include the $25 million investment from Great-West in that guidance? I guess, does that investment happen? Brian, is that so? You cut out there. The answer is no. Sorry, you cut out. The answer is no. The $25 billion is incremental. I think we guided the $25 billion in terms of the fee rate being mid-teens, because a large portion of that is insurance and account related, anywhere from Great-West Lifeco. We expect that to be implemented by around 50% by within our first quarter. Sorry, our second quarter. Within our second fiscal quarter. First calendar quarter. ... So could you get the network? And then I can follow up afterwards. Can you hear me better now? Yeah, it may be our audio that's having an issue. Did you, Brian, did you hear the response? No, it kind of got garbled up. Yeah, why don't you try again? Okay, let's try again. Is this better? We- Yes, much better. Yep. Okay, great. So, no, the guidance did not include the fees associated with the $25 billion allocation. That's largely from Great-West Lifeco, so the fee rate is around the mid-teens on the $25 billion, if you calculate the revenue on that. In terms of implementation timeline, we expect about $12.5 billion of that to come in in the first calendar quarter next year. Well, let's set—let's call it the first quarter after we close, and then the second $12.5 billion to come in over a period of a year, one year. Perfect. We'll obviously keep you- Perfect. We'll obviously keep you updated on that, Brian. Yep, that's great. And then just the last question, just on, you know, private credit versus public credit. So you've got a ton of different solutions across your specialist managers, including alternatives. Maybe just to zero in on the wealth channel, what are your thoughts about the timing of you know this you know reallocation toward fixed income, when that picks up? And then maybe just thinking about it with your private credit offerings versus the public side, do you think one will sort of win out over the other... Not win out over the other, but one will be larger than the other? And is that cadence, if you have to think about it over the next, you know, two or three quarters, is that sort of an equal cadence, do you think? Or, do you think, you know, there'll be a more, you know, much larger swing into the public fixed income funds given just your scale there? You know, I think this is a... Well, first of all, we know in talking to our large distribution partners, that there's just a massive amount. One of them commented that their most profitable area right now is their basically their money market fund, because of the massive amount of money sitting in cash on the sidelines. So, you know, the wealth channel is no different than the institutional channel, in that the institutional channel is likely to move first, and then the wealth channel. The challenge, I think, between traditional fixed income and private credit is that banks just aren't lending like they used to, and so you're not even generating as much of the traditional fixed income as you used to. And so in order to have the investable universe, you're gonna probably see the wealth channel starting to move more into private credit anyway. But the reality is, it is illiquid. And I think this is where we are on the product development side, thinking through creative solutions, where you actually have products that combine private credit and traditional fixed income. So you have a component of liquidity with the excess returns that are, you know, generated in the private markets because of their illiquidity premium. So it's just as any alternatives is in the wealth channel, it's complicated because you have this suitability, and the DOL rule that was asked is, you know, is gonna mean that the bar is even higher, you can't make mistakes. But from a, you know, responsible asset manager trying to figure out how to provide these excess returns in that channel, it's, it's an area of great focus for us. So again, I, you know, the banks aren't going to lend the way they used to lend. The capital requirements have made it tougher and tougher. You see it in the numbers, and we think that private credit is, you know, gonna continue to grow. This concludes today's Q&A session. I would now like to turn the call back over to Jenny Johnson, Franklin's President and CEO, for final comments. Well, I just wanna, you know, thank everybody for participating in today's call. Once again, you know, we'd like to thank our employees for their hard work and dedication. I'd also like to add that, you know, we look forward to welcoming the impressive team at Putnam to Franklin Templeton when the transaction closes, and we look forward to speaking with you all again next quarter. Thank you. Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.