Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Cohen & Steers first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. At that time, if you have a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If at any time during the conference you need to reach an operator, please press star zero. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded Thursday, April 20th, 2023. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brian Heller, Senior Vice President and Corporate Counsel of Cohen & Steers. Please go ahead. Thank you. Welcome to the Cohen & Steers first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Joining me are our Chief Executive Officer, Joe Harvey, our Chief Financial Officer, Matt Stadler, and our Chief Investment Officer, Jon Cheigh. 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, our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and our other SEC filings. We assume no duty to update any forward-looking statement. None of our statements constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy the securities of any fund or other investment vehicle. Our presentation also contains non-GAAP financial measures referred to as as adjusted 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. With that, I'll turn the call over to Matt. Thank you, Brian, and good morning. Consistent with previous quarters, my remarks this morning will focus on our as adjusted results. Note that effective January 1st, such results included interest and dividends earned on our corporate seed investments. A reconciliation of GAAP to as adjusted results can be found on pages 13 through 15 of the earnings release and on slides 16 through 20 of the earnings presentation. Yesterday, we reported earnings of $0.76 per share, compared with $1.04 in the prior year's quarter, and $0.79 sequentially. Revenue was $126.3 million in the quarter, compared with $154.3 million in the prior year's quarter, and $125.5 million sequentially. The increase in revenue from the fourth quarter was primarily due to higher average assets under management across all three types of investment vehicles, partially offset by two fewer days in the quarter. Our effective fee rate was 57.6 basis points in the first quarter, compared with 57.8 basis points in the fourth quarter. Operating income was $48 million in the quarter, compared with $68.9 million in the prior year's quarter, and $50.9 million sequentially. Our operating margins decreased to 38% from 40.5% last quarter. Expenses increased 4.8% from the fourth quarter, primarily due to higher compensation and benefits and higher G&A. The compensation to revenue ratio for the first quarter was 38.5%, consistent with the guidance provided on our last call. The increase in G&A was primarily due to a full quarter of rent expense for our new corporate headquarters, where the lease commenced on December first. We expect to occupy our new space by year-end. Our effective tax rate was 25.25% for the quarter, slightly lower than the guidance provided on our last call. Page 15 of the earnings presentation sets forth our cash and cash equivalents, corporate investments in U.S. Treasury securities. Firm liquidity as of March thirty-first reflected the payment of employee bonuses, as well as the firm's customary repurchase of common stock to satisfy withholding tax was due to net outflows of $497 million and distributions of $694 million, partially offset by market appreciation of $671 million. Joe Harvey will provide an update on our flows and institutional pipeline of awarded unfunded mandates. Let me briefly discuss a few items to consider for the second quarter and remainder of the year. First, with respect to compensation and benefits, we are taking a deliberate and measured approach to both new and replacement hires, which is intended to balance talent growth, our opportunities, and the environment, so that all things being equal, we would expect to maintain a compensation to revenue ratio of 38.5%. We expect G&A to increase 12%-14% from the $52.6 million we recorded in 2022. The majority of which relates to costs associated with our new corporate headquarters, and to a lesser extent, certain other strategic infrastructure initiatives such as establishing a new data center, opening a Singapore office, relocating our London office, and upgrading our trading and order management system. Excluding these costs, we would expect G&A to increase 4%-6%. In light of the environment, we have undertaken a comprehensive review of all of our non-client related expenses. Finally, we expect that our effective tax rate will remain at 25.25%. I'd like to turn it over to our Chief Investment Officer, Jon Cheigh, who will discuss our investment performance. Thank you, Matt, and good morning. Today, I'd like to first cover our performance scorecard and how our major asset classes performed. Share our views on two topics. First, the health of both the European and U.S. banking systems and our forward outlook for preferred securities. Second, market conditions for commercial real estate debt, the impact on private CRE values, and our investment outlook for REITs. Turning to our performance scorecard, for the quarter, 68% of our AUM outperformed their benchmark. For the last 12 months, 66% of our AUM outperformed versus 74% as of the end of Q4. For the last three, five, and 10 years, our performance track record remains extremely strong at 98%, 97%, and 100% respectively. From a competitive perspective, 90% of our open-end fund AUM is rated 4-star or 5-star by Morningstar, which is down from 98% last quarter. In summary, while our performance batting average for the longer term remains nearly perfect, over the last 12 months, we have seen it dip below our standards. The majority of our underperforming AUM relates to our preferred security strategies, where we were impacted our regional banking exposure. While disappointed with those short-term results, we and our clients don't manage the quarter-to-quarter results. I want to highlight that this year, the senior PMs of our award-winning preferred team, Bill Scapell and Elaine Zaharis-Nikas, are celebrating their 20-year anniversaries at Cohen & Steers. Over those 20 years, we have outperformed in 19 of them. While this quarter was a performance setback, we are extremely confident in the long-term future of the asset class, its importance in allocations in generating tax-advantaged income, and in our team's ability to generate consistent and meaningful outperformance. For the quarter, risk assets continued their recovery, with global equities up 7.4%, the Barclays Global Aggregate up 3%, notably, commodities down 5.4%. Equity index performance was heavily dominated by large cap technology stocks, as evidenced by the median S&P 500 stock being up only 1.5%. In contrast to last year, our asset classes generally underperformed headline indices, with U.S. and global REITs up 1.7% and 0.8% respectively. Listed infrastructure up 0.5%, preferred securities down 1%. Listed infrastructure following material outperformance in 2022 posted positive returns but lagged equities. Passenger transportation subsectors such as airports and toll roads led the way up 16% and 7% respectively, with improving passenger volumes and better-than-expected economic activity in Europe. The more industrial economy-sensitive freight, railway, and marine port subsectors lagged, though both in part due to idiosyncratic issues. In the context of persistent, albeit falling inflation and below-trend economic growth, we continue to expect infrastructure to perform relatively well. Investor interest in both listed and private infrastructure continues to grow given those attributes. Our two largest asset classes of U.S. REITs and preferred securities were both impacted by volatility in the banking sector and the possible negative feedback loop between real estate and banks. First, let's discuss preferred securities, where approximately 50% of the universe is made up of banks, with about half in Europe and half in the U.S. In our view, the banking system in Europe is well-capitalized, with good liquidity, and with lower duration assets that should benefit as interest rates rise. Post GFC, regulators permanently tightened capital and liquidity requirements without exception, including smaller banks. These moves made the banks safer and more credit-friendly. European regulators, unlike the U.S., have been consistently vigilant about interest rate risk. To us, all of this argues for a healthy and possibly improving credit picture for European bank preferreds. For the U.S., the systemically important banks have strong capital and liquidity. The U.S. has a very long tail of smaller regional banks, approximately 4,700. Regulators did become more relaxed over the last five years. This increased credit risk at the margin. We expect pockets of weakness within that long tail and have repositioned our portfolio's credit quality. As I referenced about Europe, we think it's critical that investors understand that certain shifts can be negative for earnings and common shareholders while being positive for bank-preferred investors. This is precisely what we saw from much of the global banking space post-GFC. Like that period, we would expect today more common equity being raised, loan growth slowing to boost liquidity, regulations increasing, and common share buybacks being reduced or suspended. These moves are clear positives for U.S. bank preferreds. Cyclically, we also believe interest rates are near their peak, and this will support fixed income, including preferreds. With valuation support and regulation creating more conservative banks and credit tailwinds, we believe preferreds have reset for a strong new investment cycle. Turning to REITs, any regular reader of the financial press would have heard the question, "Is CRE debt the next shoe to drop?" REITs underperformed the broader indices for the quarter. That was entirely because of the market reaction to that question, with REITs underperforming by 8% over the two weeks following the SVB events. Recently, we published a research report entitled The Commercial Real Estate Debt Market: Separating Fact from Fiction. The most important facts to address some common misconceptions included, first, the four and a half trillion dollar commercial mortgage market is highly fragmented, and regional and community banks represent less than 1/3 of the market, with the balance comprised of other lenders, such as the GSEs, life insurance companies, large banks, and securitized markets. Second, while office gets much of the media focus, it represents only about 17% of loans outstanding and 3% of the REIT market. Third, while we believe property values may come down 20%-25% from the peak on average, one needs to keep in mind the significant price appreciation over the last 5-10 years. Because of this, average rate leverage ratios are closer to 30%-35% versus the 50% or so where refinancings can occur. Last, about 2/3 of mortgages are long-term fixed rate with the balance floating. In those cases, many, but certainly not all, borrowers have hedged to protect against interest rate increases. What does that all mean? Credit losses will likely rise, as they often do in recession, but we see little basis to believe this cycle will deviate from historical patterns. If anything, the improvement in loan underwriting post-GFC implies credit losses may be lower than average. In the private market, we are seeing deal flow beginning to emerge and observing prices down, in some cases, 15%-20%. Note, private real estate indices, as reported, and certain private vehicles still are generally only down 5%-10% from the peak, so likely still more to go. Credit tightening from regional banks will have the most acute impact on construction loans and smaller private developers. The pullback will impact construction activity, small businesses, and local GDP. Over a full cycle, this means less supply, less overbuilding, and more discipline, which should be a positive for rental growth and asset values on a 3-5-year horizon. What does this all mean for REITs? Our picture for 2023 and 2024 remain consistent with our views shared in January. Recession, which should transition to recovery later this year or early next. REIT share prices that have generally discounted meaningful property declines already. REIT balance sheets are generally healthy and in many cases will allow REITs to go on offense while local private players and private equity are either dealing with little access to new debt capital or legacy leverage problems. For Cohen & Steers, we made a lot of money for clients in the REIT recap cycle of 2009, and we will take the same approach, but likely in different ways, to capitalize on both listed and private opportunities. Last, we believe 2023 will prove to be a good vintage year for listed real estate, and we believe savvy forward-thinking investors should be using the recession to do one of two things. Either rebalance out of private vehicles that haven't repriced enough into listed REITs or allocate new capital over the course of the year as the transition from recession to early recovery plays out. With that, let me turn the call over to Joe. Thank you, Jon. Good morning. Today, I'd like to begin with a review of our first quarter business fundamentals, then turn to our outlook. In prior calls, we talked about our forecast for an average type of recession. Those views didn't include the failure of some prominent banks. As we all now know, in mid-March, a banking liquidity event emerged, which appears to be contained for now.yet will manifest in tighter credit. The Federal Reserve has found a breaking point for the more meaningful weak links in our financial system as we adjust from zero interest rates to more normalized interest rates. At the margin, we shifted our outlook from an average recession to something more protracted. If it wasn't a perfect storm for our asset classes in the quarter, it was a thorough storm, with banks being the largest issuers in our preferred security strategy and among the largest sources of credit for the commercial real estate sector. Bank sector headwinds, together with contracting money supply, raise the odds that the inflation cycle is breaking down, potentially affecting at the margin our inflation-sensitive real asset strategies. Our equity-oriented strategies underperformed stocks in the quarter, while our preferred strategies underperformed bonds. Listed REIT stocks outperformed the private real estate market as measured by appraisals, which do not adjust for the lead-lag timing dynamic of listed versus private real estate performance. Private real estate prices have begun to be marked down, beginning the process to catch up with listed real estate price declines of last year. In the first quarter, we had firm-wide outflows of $497 million. This was our fourth consecutive quarter of outflows and reflects the fundamental shift in the macroeconomic environment, including declines in financial asset values, higher interest rates, the peaking of inflation, and the specter of recession. Both the wealth and institutional channels contributed to outflows, primarily in preferred stock strategies after the bank situation in March. In total, preferreds had outflows of $872 million, which were partially offset by U.S. REIT strategy inflows of $434 million. Our global listed infrastructure and multi-strategy real assets portfolios also experienced modest inflows. Open-end funds had net outflows of $305 million, led by U.S. open-end funds with $508 million out, partially offset by inflows into our offshore CSPF funds, the 11th straight quarter of inflows, and inflows into model-based portfolios. Reflecting regime change in volatility, open-end fund subscriptions in the quarter were 23% lower than the pace of for all of 2022. Likewise, redemptions were also 23% lower. Of preferred open-end fund outflows, 42% were from model programs related to preferred strategies at a wirehouse and a prefer, and a private bank. Institutional advisory net outflows were $399 million, led by three clients trimming U.S. and global real estate portfolios. Sub-advisory ex-Japan had armament plans. The other three were in multi-strategy real assets portfolios and global real estate. Both the first quarter bank failures and the macro regime change normal scheduled finals reflect that the mandate and search process inevitably slows down in volatile environments. That said, we have a healthy opportunity set of searches in process as measured by the number of prospects, number of strategies, and their geographic diversity. For several quarters, we have been talking about how the regime change in the macroeconomy may affect asset allocations. We have now seen meaningful examples of how a 4%-5% treasury yield can drive money flows. We expect that the combination of a more normal range of fixed-income yields and the need to compensate for higher volatility will drive portfolios to increase their fixed-income weightings. At the same time, the lag in private equity value markdowns may push allocations to illiquid investments above portfolio target weightings. Allocators will need to balance the secular momentum private investments have versus the markdowns and illiquidity that will be factors in the intermediate term. As these shifts occur and as return cycles turn to the positive, liquidity will be valued at a premium. While all asset classes, including ours, will be affected by these trends, we believe that secular tailwinds remain for allocations to our core strategies. Combined with our strong long-term investment performance, and we will be relentless in steering our one-year batting averages back to the levels to which we are accustomed. We believe we are well-positioned to resume organic growth. REITs should attract marginal flows as their prices have already corrected meaningfully and investors pause for price discovery in the private market. All investors should ask the question, why should you buy in the private market if you can get meaningfully better values in the listed market? It's a healthy discipline that more investors are using to guide capital. In infrastructure, demand is growing and investors are below target weights. Just as in real estate and private equity, we believe listed infrastructure complements private infrastructure. For multi-strategy real assets, inflation has been significant. What had been just a theory became reality. For those that believe inflation will be sticky or resurgent, the insurance premium in an allocation is valuable, and we see more investors evaluating the strategy. Our most underappreciated and underowned strategy is resource equities, which includes energy, agriculture, and metals and mining. These are all sectors with finite resources and supply constraints, which may serve as drivers of both intrinsic value as well as price appreciation. To emphasize Jon's comments on the macro environment, we believe that the banking system is fundamentally sound, notwithstanding the recent turmoil, and as a result, the preferred market will stabilize and ultimately participate in the new return cycle for bonds that likely has begun. As it relates to headlines about the looming risk of a commercial real estate debt crisis, we believe that, with some exceptions, property owners maintain adequate equity, reflecting appreciation over the past cycle, even with the 20%-25% price correction we've been calling for. The exceptions are urban office markets and properties developed or acquired and financed with debt over the past several years at the peaks of the most recent price and interest rate cycles. While equity needs for these properties are not insignificant, they appear to be manageable in light of current levels of dry powder and private equity, the size and development of private credit markets, and the expected capital flows into REITs once investment opportunities ripen. We continue to build our private real estate initiative. For our institutional private equity fund, we had a second closing. For our non-traded REIT, Cohen & Steers Income Opportunities REIT, we have been declared effective by the SEC, are nearly through the state registration process, and conversations with distributors are progressing. We continue to evaluate the commercial real estate price correction and believe that the cyclical downturn will present attractive investment opportunities. We are therefore being especially disciplined and patient in deploying capital. On the client engagement front, we have developed tools to help investors optimize portfolios in terms of weightings and allocations between listed and private real estate markets within a financial asset portfolio. Our recently published annual report was entitled Change Creates Opportunity. The regime change in the macroeconomy is significant and will take time to unfold. It will present a new menu of cyclical and secular trends and asset class valuations, all of which will lead to money in motion. Our job is to manage prudently as the shifts play out, balancing investments in the business with prudent cost controls, and be prepared to capitalize on opportunities for our clients. We look forward to reporting to you on our progress. Thank you for listening. Operator, please open the lines for questions. At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset in order to ensure optimal audio quality. Your first question is from the line of John Dunn with Evercore ISI. Your line is open. Thank you. Maybe we could start off with the biggest drag on flows right now. You know, You talked about a performance reset for preferreds, but can you talk about what's gonna drive demand for preferreds and maybe where we are in the demand cycle? Also, any early post-quarter shifts? Sure. John, let me start and maybe Jon Cheigh can add to my response. Well, the primary attraction of preferred securities is their current yields and potential for, you know, capital appreciation, particularly at times like this when you've had some dislocation. And I talked a little bit about how asset allocations are shifting now that, you know, there are more fixed income choices to have, you know, something better than a 0% yield. And what we've experienced over the past couple years is that preferreds have stood out through that period of low rates. Now with the banking situation and the price declines, yields are even better. It appears that the banking system is, you know, stabilized for now. As Jon articulated, you know, our view on the system overall, with certain exceptions, is positive. As it relates to, you know, recent activity, you know, the outflows have abated. So I'd say we're at a neutral level at this point. If the banking system continues to, you know, heal, you know, I would expect that the flows, you know, will ultimately resume for preferreds. Great. Yeah, on real estate, I'm a believer real estate's a secular allocation. How do you think flow demand for REITs will continue to play out over 2023, maybe by the different sales channels? I'll start and then, you know, Jon could add some color 'cause we're in conversations with a lot of different types of investors. You know, REITs have a great history now, so you can look at how they perform throughout recessions and credit cycles. We put out the research that said that, you know, you wanna tend to start to average into REITs as recession takes hold, and some of the best returns can come by way of that. you know, looking past that and, you know, thinking about our comments on the challenges in real estate financing, ultimately, REITs, as they have been at many points in time and major turning points in the real estate markets, they'll be providers of capital to take advantage of the opportunities and help sort out the, you know, any of the debt refinancing issues that come up in the sector. I would say on the wealth side, there's just much better education than there has ever been on how to use REITs in a portfolio. We have been developing, particularly in light of our private real estate initiatives and our non-traded REIT, have developed tools for investors to help them allocate between, you know, how much, you know, they should have in a of real estate in a financial asset portfolio, but then how to allocate that between private and listed. I think, you know, we're in a great position to help advise financial advisors on how to navigate, you know, with some pretty exciting turning points in the commercial real estate market. Institutionally, there's a lot of activity. As I said in my comments, it's not manifested yet in official finals, but we're in a lot of searches, and there's a lot of interesting dynamics as we're seeing around the world, things like institutions who have invested in enlisted real estate, using passive strategies, wanting to convert those strategies to active strategies, to coming up with what we call completion portfolios. You might have an institution who has, you know, a lot of capital in a core private real estate strategy, but they'd like to complement that with some of the sectors and exposures you can get in the listed market. We've also just seen recently this more interest on this whole topic of, okay, the private or the listed markets have already corrected. That's where the values are presenting themselves. We can't put capital work in the private market because there's price discovery and that's happening, and it's an illiquid market. Nothing's trading. I'd say, and this is not just with the institutions themselves, but the asset consultants who have, I'd say, been laggards on this whole concept, just more interested in being dynamic along the cycle as to where the marginal dollar goes. I guess the only thing I'd add is, you know, despite the media, you know, is CRE the next shoe to drop, et cetera, et cetera, I think the vast majority of investors agree with you, John, and us, that, you know, they have strong faith in real estate as an asset class, and wanna continue to get more exposure to it. We're seeing a limited amount of people moving from existing private vehicles into the listed market. There's definitely some of that, but of course, there's limits on that. We are definitely also seeing some investors that are trying to calibrate and time how they get exposure over the course of 2023. I think people recognize on a buy and hold basis, if they buy today, they'll be very happy, 3-5 years from now. Of course, they wanna find the quote, unquote bottom. That's why, you know, our advice to them is that, you know, as we normally transition from these recessionary kind of periods to early recovery periods, no one ever really times the bottom perfectly. There are certainly some milestones, but that's why we'd expect people to so-called leg in, if you will, to these allocations, over the course of 2023, rather than just try to make one bold call at a certain point in time. Gotcha. Then maybe a level down. I mean, if you look at your guys, at the fund level, your top real estate exposure or some version of industrials, healthcare, infrastructure, data centers, does positioning matter? Does everything get dinged if sentiment turns against real estate writ large, you know, particularly what we're seeing on the CRE side? Look, I think there's always short-term things that happen. you know, CNBC says, you know, CRE debt, and then everyone talks about office. people say, "Okay, I think REITs are bad." That's why we always try to reiterate to people, office is 3% of the REIT index. Our exposure to office might be something like 1% or 1.2%, something like that. We can say that 100 times, and certainly it'll still educate someone because of their understanding of what REITs are. I think when those overreactions happen, I mean, look, that's the opportunity. I mean, that really is the opportunity. I don't think these misconceptions are so strong that they're gonna persist for quarters and years. Those reflexes usually create an opportunity on, you know, like I said, something happened with SVB, and REITs underperformed by 8% versus the broader equity market. These tend to be more shorter-term reactions than durable trends that longer-term investors should worry about. I just add that, you know, today, the range in property sectors and underlying businesses is probably as diverse as it's ever been. 20 years ago, you know, there's just much more representation by the core property sectors that we all know, office, industrial, apartments, et cetera. Today, with cell towers and data centers, you have, you know, some sectors that are a little bit less connected to the, you know, economics that drive the property sector and, you know, the financing markets in the case of cell towers. We've actually had, you know, with our recompletion, you know, strategy or next-generation state-of-the-art working environment, you know, it's performing extremely well this year, you know, a little bit more consistent with what Jon talked about on, you know, concentration of performance in the equity market from some tech names. Right. Makes sense. Okay. Now, we haven't talked a lot about, non-U.S. real estate. Like, what are the kind of dynamics going on overseas, and, what's the differences, for sourcing flows for that strategy or that part of the menu? That's a good question. I guess, obviously the two big drivers when you think about whether it's Europe or Asia, it's the economic trajectory, which was somewhat driven by at some point, so-called COVID reopening. Sorry, we are further behind in that, in places like Japan, Hong Kong, China, and Singapore. There are places that are seeing more accelerating economic growth, as opposed to Europe and Asia. I would say, Asia is a place generally that we have favored at the margin over the U.S. and Europe because it is further behind, and frankly, valuations are generally more attractive. The other thing with Asia is, generally balance sheets, for the most part, are healthier than the U.S. and Europe. Again, I think the U.S. balance sheets are very, very healthy from the REIT side. Asia, we feel both from a reopening perspective and from a balance sheet perspective, very good. I would say in Europe, you certainly have that reopening dynamic, which is a positive, and we're seeing it, you know, in places like retail. I would say at the margin, European REIT balance sheets are a little bit worse than here in the U.S. While we feel very good about European bank balance sheets, we feel more cautious on the European REIT balance sheets. Again, this is all at the margin. When we talk to investors, I would say our large institutions, particularly global institutions, you know, pension funds, sovereigns, the conversations are almost always about global real estate. They're occasionally about U.S., but it's primarily about having a global allocation. You know, whether it's sovereigns in Asia, the Middle East or Europe, I'd say that's the dominant conversation. I think we're definitely, you know, seeing all those opportunities for all the things we've talked about. You know, valuations have improved. A lot of those entities have capital that they still want to deploy, albeit maybe deployments are less than what they were making three years ago. They're still making new capital commitments. REITs are a place where, number one, we're educating them on. In some cases, they've never invested in REITs, or they've only done it passively. Secondly, we're educating them on, how can it be that private real estate's going down and public REITs are gonna do well? When we tell them it always happens this way, they're learning something new, and it gives them confidence to, you know, become a more active investor in REITs at this point in the cycle. Gotcha. You know, it's early days for private real estate, but it sounds like stuff is happening. Maybe just talk a little more about the timing of things that could happen over the rest of this year and the demand you're seeing, and then you talked about potentially good return environment. Yeah. We're, you know, in the capital-raising mode for both the institutional vehicle, as well as the CNS REIT vehicle. But we're not deploying capital at this point. We're waiting for the prices to correct and, we're waiting for our shots to get the type of returns that we want. We're gonna be, as I said, very patient, very diligent. I can't tell you when that's gonna be, but it's probably sometime in the second half of this year. You know, the two topics, capital raising and deployment, you know, at some point are connected, right? Investors wanna know that what you're gonna be doing. To the extent there's no activity in the transaction market, there's, you know, investors, you know, sometimes wanna sit on their hands. The we're in contact with some investors who really understand what, you know, what we are doing. You know, I think some time, you know, toward the end of this year, you know, you'll the acquisition markets will start to open up as the whole debt situation starts to, you know, get resolved, and for the types of situations that Jon and I talked about. We'll stay tuned. Advisory has been sliding for a bit, and you talked about some slowdown in searches. Can you talk a little more, give us a little more flavor of the advisory conversations going on? Do you think we get a normal, you know, the stuff that's already in the pipeline, normal fundings over the year or, you know, does some get delayed? Maybe regionally, overall, how can you get that channel back to positive? Well, I think, a lot of, you know, the slowdown, and you can, you know, see that in our one unfunded pipeline and in our bridge. If you followed my comments, you saw there's not a lot of funding activity in the quarter. It's not a matter of, you know, interest and demand changing. It's just a matter of in the environment that things have just slowed down. You know, in terms of the search activity, I think it's been as active as I've seen it. It's just taking it longer for them to get through the process. You know, the asset owners are dealing with a lot of things. Dealing with volatility in the markets, you know, shifting opportunity sets, and I tried to convey that in my comments. It just results in the process taking a longer period of time. As it relates to the number of prospects that we're in conversations with, it's still very active, and, you know, it's across real estate, both U.S. and global. It's across infrastructure, as well as multi-strategy real assets, you know, notwithstanding the fact that inflation's coming down. Right. maybe just to check in on Japan. You know, when we're now a year into the positive part of the distribution cycle, normally lasts multiple years. Any, any concerns for people, you know, that you can see? Japan is very difficult to predict. You know, it's been our strongest inflow channel. The drivers behind that include, you know, going back a little ways, just the strength of the dollar. Also in the wealth channel, you know, there can be, at points in time, a lot of faddish type investing and chasing of things like tech. The fact that, you know, tech, you know, it went into a downturn has, you know, helped investors go back to you know, more value and income-oriented allocations. You know, that's hard to predict. I'd say the other dynamic that as it relates to the sub-advisory business there is, you know, as is the case in Japan, you know, managements change every couple of years. I would say the current management at Daiwa Asset Management is very interested in our strategies and, you know, very interested in doing things to promote those vehicles. That makes me optimistic. Institutionally, because of the fact that the market has been closed due to COVID, but now reopening, it's been slow. You know, we would expect that to get better as that country overall tends to get back to more to normal in terms of business activity. Good to hear. Maybe just on closed-end funds, you know, what do you think the window looks like for the rest of the year? Will it open? Because there's probably some good returns out there for new money. I think the window is closed for the foreseeable future. You know, one of the reasons is that, with the cost of debt financing today, there are not many strategies for which you can create a positive spread on the cost of your financing. You can't enhance the yield of the closed-end fund, using leverage. At the same time. Makes sense. ... the, there are discounts in the market to asset value that are very attractive. You know, those things are gonna make it hard for the window to reopen. I will say, though, that, you know, once the interest rate cycle turns, those things can change pretty quickly, meaning discounts can narrow. If, if, you know, yields settle out, you know, at certain levels, there are a couple of strategies you could do a closed-end fund for. But right now with... You know, I mean, our outlook is that, you know, yields and will be more normal. If that's the case, it's gonna be tougher to use leverage in closed-end funds. One more real estate one. You know, how do you guys think about real estate debt lending, in addition to your private, you know, private vehicles? Well, we don't currently have a capability in that. We invest in certain types of real estate company debt, in preferred stock as well as REIT debt. It's a capability that would be a natural one for us and, you know, based on, you know, our view of, you know, the fact that some regional banks will pull back as lenders and, you know, there's gonna be an opportunity and, you know, some asset managers are talking about it already, but it's something that, you know, we're gonna spend time on and see if we can find a, you know, a capability that would complement everything that we've built in real estate. Gotcha. Maybe just a thumbnail for people. In January 2024, what do you think we'll look back and say these were the areas that drove positive flows in 2023? Well, I think that if the interest rate cycle does in fact peak as, you know, Jon articulated and the markets respond to that, it will create flows in REITs. It will, you know, create flows in preferred securities. You know, I'd say that, you know, one precondition would be that the banking system has to continue to, you know, show that it's stabilized. To answer your ex-precise question like that to me would be, you know, if the environment starts to normalize, we have a lot of interest that's, you know, kind of waiting on the sidelines for those conditions to get better. Thanks very much, guys. Thanks, John. There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to the CEO, Mr. Joseph Harvey. Great. Well, thank you for your time this morning, and we look forward to speaking to you in July as we report our second quarter earnings. Have a great day. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating. This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.