Surinder Thind, the analyst for the Technology and Information Services vertical. And with us this morning, we have Josh Warren, who's the Chief Financial Officer of Envestnet. Envestnet obviously needs no introduction, but I think I would give him 30 seconds to just introduce himself and the company for anybody that might be new to the name. Sure. By the way, Surinder, how do you mind if I ask, how many companies do you cover? Because you know Envestnet extremely well. So I really appreciate that, the opportunity to give an introduction. I mean, if you wanna give it, by all means. No, I mean, please go ahead. I mean, from my perspective, obviously, I do cover 30 companies, and I appreciate your vote of confidence here. Very cool. So Envestnet, the leading wealth management platform in the United States. So think of us as our focus is on financial advisors. We deliver software and tools that powers financial advice. The perspective of Envestnet is simply bringing together the pieces of people's complicated financial lives into a single place, a single, you know, mixing bowl, if you will. Provides for better financial advice, it provides for better outcomes, it provides for better advisor-client relationships. And we believe that we've developed the platform to do just that. It's been assembled over the years. We believe that's very difficult to replicate. And maybe just a bit of context on kind of the industry that we serve. So company founded 25 years ago. In the U.S., there are approximately 290,000 financial advisors. Today, there are about 40,000 at the wirehouses. The wirehouses, you know, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Smith Barney, UBS, Wells Fargo. Then there are, like, the other 250,000 financial advisors, which are independent financial advisors, whether they're in broker-dealers, RIAs, some hybrid format between the two. That is who Envestnet serves. So today we have 109,000 clients, over $6 trillion of assets, approaching 20 million of accounts. And, you know, I believe joined the company last year. I believe this is a super exciting foundation to grow from. Thank you. Where I'd like to start this conversation is with the partnerships. I think that's an important part of the strategy here. So maybe let's start with last week's announcement. Sure. You unveiled what was a deepening of relationships with BlackRock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, and State Street. So these are kind of four key partners that you've strengthened your relationship. Can you talk about the genesis of that and maybe what you're hoping to accomplish? Sure. So we've been working with each of these firms in a variety of ways over the years, and I think this helps bring it all together and really amplify things and kind of kick things into a new gear. So, you know, BlackRock and Envestnet formed a strategic relationship in 2018. BlackRock is Envestnet's largest shareholder. Fidelity and Envestnet are longstanding partners, providing sort of a technology layer, and in 2022, Fidelity expanded their model portfolio lineup through Envestnet. So Envestnet's been working with each of these partners over the years, but now we're taking the next step. So we're working with these firms, you know, which, as you mentioned, Surinder, really the largest asset managers in the world, to build investment strategies that are customized, that can be used by advisors to meet specific financial goals, specific risk tolerances, some of the personal circumstances of individual investors, and deliver that at scale through the 109,000 financial advisors on our platforms. So I think like, what this is all about, this offering really speaks to the convergence point, where personalization, integrated technology solutions meets just sort of the opportunity to invest. There's more personalization is clearly the demand in, in, investment management and wealth management, needing to go from, like, one to one to one to many, having to construct portfolios in a tax-aware, in an after-tax mindset. Most people are sort of trained in kind of pre-tax, and tax is something that, like, you know, other people did over there, but in reality, people live and kind of view their returns in an after-tax construct. So think of this as really speaking to the fact that the industry has really moved beyond products, right? I was just saying to the man with the hammer, every problem is a nail, to models, to portfolios, to taking a whole portfolio view. Envestnet, kind of to where we started the conversation about bringing everything together, is really a true believer in taking a whole portfolio approach. But that portfolio needs to be placed in the context of an individual's particular circumstances, which include objectives, constraints, liquidity needs, and the like. So, this is all about using our technology with our partners to deliver better outcomes for our financial advisors to deliver to our clients. So it's, it's an exciting thing. I know we spent some time with the head of U.S. Wealth at BlackRock, kind of going through the ecosystem impacts of it, but we're excited to really help connect the ecosystem and deliver the bundle for our advisors. ... And then digging just a little bit deeper on that, if I'm a financial advisor on the platform- Mm-hmm. What do these relationships mean to me? It's pretty simple. It's think of it as easier and more convenience to the high, convenient access to the highest quality products that are offered by the biggest asset managers in the world, right? That facilitates portfolio construction, that delivers, maybe to use an analogy, the Lego pieces to you. Our advisors are constantly talking to their clients, and their clients are asking them for more personalization, but having to deliver that in a way that is scalable, not customizable. And providing a set of platform options that leverage, you know, our Unified Managed Account capabilities, we believe that it helps an advisor at the point of portfolio construction, deliver a set of tools and outcomes that will ultimately be in their client's best interest. So think of it as just making an advisor's life easier, more integrated, more connected, and connecting the highest quality products, for them. Moving on to another partnership, the FNZ partnership- Mm-hmm ... which was announced a while back. Where are we in that process in terms of rolling out some of the products and services, that were highlighted when the partnership was first announced? Yeah. So just an update on that. It was announced in 2022, indeed a while back, I guess. It's been coming together certainly slower than Envestnet, and I'm sure FNZ would like. We're not in the market yet. Our intention is to be in the market this year, 2024. So far, the technology development has been great. The technology development's been focused on making an easy button-like experience for advisors, and, you know, not just designing, but actually standing it up. You know, FNZ's been a terrific firm to collaborate with, but, you know, these things take time. I think the opportunity itself will take time. You know, custody isn't a move fast and break things kinda part of the sort of wealth management ecosystem. But once the offering is live, you know, we think there are real opportunities both with bank trust departments, with RIAs, you know, folks who wanna bring this solution to market. And maybe, Srini, just kind of put it together. So if you think about Envestnet, I think we have two real significant opportunities. You know, the first is, which you've been asking about, right? Connecting the ecosystem, delivering the bundle to our partners to provide asset management, custody. You know, we also announced a partnership with Salesforce for CRM connectivity. We can do that because of our unique place in the ecosystem to kinda deliver the ecosystem to our advisors in as integrated, as connected, as technology-enabled a way as possible. In the day-to-day, in the kinda almost like in the kinda short term, we believe there's almost a bigger opportunity, which is simply from a financial perspective, simply focused on delivering the firm, right? Now that the investment cycle, the period of replatforming has been completed at Envestnet, which occurred over the last couple of years, bringing together all that Envestnet has to offer to the clients that we serve, the cross-sell opportunity, we believe, is substantial. The opportunity to power productivity for our advisors who just wanna go deeper with fewer, more trusted partners, we believe is substantial. I'd say those two growth opportunities, connecting the ecosystem and delivering the firm, are really gonna be at the heart of what the growth strategy is going forward. Thank you. And then the third part of this, I'd like to touch base on the exchanges- Mm ... or that partnership. A number of years ago, there was a strategy to kind of move beyond financial advice to financial wellness. As part of that strategy was the introduction of these exchanges, where you can think about insurance and credit and estate planning and health and alternatives. Can you maybe provide an update on the state of those- Sure ... marketplaces? So, it's a lot to unpack 'cause there's a couple of them. So first, we don't own, we don't operate, we don't really control what today are these independent firms. What's different from, say, Salesforce, though, that would be amazing if we owned some equity in Salesforce. You know, Envestnet owns equity. These are some of these firms sit on our balance sheet. These are minority investments, and we have employees who sit on their board and, you know, things of that kind of consistent with Equity Method ownership. But just to rewind the clock a couple years, you know, these exchanges that Envestnet set up a couple years ago really served a need in the market that didn't exist. Envestnet needed to seed them, to get them off the ground, to incubate them over the last couple years. But, you know, fast-forward to where we are today, think of these equity investments, you know, these are corporate assets, right? I think I'm pretty pleased that near the end of the first quarter, FIDx, which is a annuities exchange, raised a round of third-party capital that we didn't participate in. We're still the largest shareholder. We own 38% of that, but it's a, it's an independent company. But one with a very you know, clear strategic rationale that I think is consistent with providing a comprehensive platform, right? So over the last several decades, there's been, as everyone knows, a bit of a shift away from defined benefit to defined contribution plan. The burden for retirement savings is now on individual households. Annuities and insurance starts to play a role in that. And again, as an advisor is thinking through what they can deliver for an individual, that broad set of capabilities, including things like credit, including things like insurance, including things like Medicare, you know, that helps connected through the Envestnet platform and advisor to serve the needs of a client holistically and as completely and comprehensively as possible, versus just a portfolio that's a bit of a point solution over here, whereas much of an individual's financial life is over there. That, we believe, leads to suboptimal outcomes for everyone, and bringing all that together has been what we've been focused on. Then switching topics, maybe focusing a bit more on innovation, industry trends. Obviously, the AI is the topic du jour here. So given the advances that we've seen in the past 18 months, arguably, I think there's been a reset of the technology cycle here. Hmm. And so everybody's kind of scrambling, I would argue, to kind of understand the implications of all of this. So what is Envestnet's view on the technology, its potential impact on financial advisory services, and just what it generally means? Sure ... for your company? I mean, maybe before I answer that question, let me be so bold as give, like, the bear case for Envestnet, which is if you believe AI is going to take the number of financial advisors from 290,000 to 0 because we're all gonna be, you know, using an app with a chat interface to, you know, with an LLM or whatever, sitting behind it, to manage our money and live our financial lives, almost nothing I can tell you about Envestnet will be, like, remotely exciting. I happen to believe that's not a thing. I think financial advisors play a unique and powerful role in the lives of millions of people. And that role is intimate and important, and in some respects, very difficult to reduce to a set of rules, no matter how awesome, you know, Claude and Gemini and, you know, OAI actually is. To your question, though, without ambiguity, the use of AI like has to be one of the most exciting developments of our time. Didn't happen overnight, right? I think maybe we have trouble getting our heads around compounding. But some of the like step function advances, you know, really are just a confluence of data, of compute, of methods, stuff that's existed for a long time coming together. And, you know, maybe what's unique is people are used to interacting with a computer through like a mouse or a keyboard. Now they interact in English. You talk to the interface, and it sort of talks back. I think of it... Just to get to it, I think of it as a, you know, tremendous efficiency enabler. I think of how many, like, work patterns are gonna change, how much productivity is gonna be gained, how we do our jobs within our jobs. Think of all the content that financial firms, technology firms, you know, generating code, financial firms generating prospectuses, you know, that can be very quickly generated by a supervised model. And you can think about what a technology-enabled financial advisor can do, how they can serve their clients, and I think that speaks to really the opportunity. So, like, it's such a dynamic space. We're trying to, I would say, experiment with it responsibly, like us and everyone else. But I think it speaks to, you know, you have to figure out how to use it, how to experiment with it in a responsible way that can really help unlock sort of this next level of personalized, at-scale financial advice. So I think it's all of the trends are sort of there. I think all the trends sort of remain. I think AI pours a lot of kerosene on the fire, if you will. From the perspective of an investment, how should I think about... You guys went through a big replatforming process. You've got through that. Is there the potential to hear that I should be worried about another investment cycle for you guys? Yeah. Or how should we think about that? I mean, my instinct, and this is, like, such a dynamic space, so, you know, this message will self-destruct, as innovations continue to evolve. But my instinct is actually the opposite, right? You know, imagine engineering in a world of AI, where you talk to the computer in English, you get a first draft of what you want, and now you can spin up an application. You can generate and even check code. The QA is, you know, powered by AI. You can review the different interfaces. I think this, like, democratizing technology, in some respects, enables and maybe reduces costs, rather than the need to invest in, you know, kind of dramatic teams and, and, like, maybe to-... to use a Python term, maybe to, like, MapReduce it into P&L terms. Like, I don't think of this as a big CapEx outlay. I think of it really more as a productivity unlock. That's helpful. And then, another industry trend that's, I think, worth hitting upon is just when I think about RIAs, they continue to scale up. There's a lot of consolidation going on. Mm. That seems to be accelerating. So maybe what are the implications of that for Envestnet? So I think that's an excellent question, and in some respects, this is activity among our clients. So historically, you know, this has been a real tailwind for Envestnet, right? Our firms typically are the largest enterprises. They're typically had been the ones doing the consolidating. And maybe just to give you some color on, like, where we are now, I would say, look, like every other technology company, when one of our clients acquires a firm that isn't one of our clients, you know, that's great. You know, we have new wins. That's a good thing for Envestnet, and typically, because Envestnet is the platform of choice, acquirers consolidate around Envestnet. The opposite, of course, is also true. Whenever you know, whenever we lose clients, whenever we see churn, it's typically a result of M&A. It's typically the result of a client getting acquired by a third-party firm. But, like, in other news, the sky is blue. But in, what's unique, I think, to Envestnet, and given the scale of our market leadership position, is when two Envestnet firms combine, which tends to happen, you know, quite a bit, we have sort of the following dynamic. It's a bit of, you know, short-term hit for potentially long-term opportunity. Basically, when two clients combine, you know, immediately you go on the acquiring firm's contract, you hit a breakpoint typically in a contract. There's a bit of a short-term revenue headwind, but I believe there's a real long-term revenue opportunity to realize the synergies of that transaction, to realize the opportunity of that transaction. The new combined firm is going to do more with a more limited set of partners, and Envestnet is naturally positioned to be the net beneficiary of that. I think that's gonna take some time to sort of rip through things, but in the mix, I would describe it as, on balance, a bit of a short-term headwind, just because we have two clients combining in kind of the quarter-over-quarter sort of, you know, run here. But I think in general, powering more long-term, more enterprise relationships that improve productivity, if we believe as we do, that's our opportunity, consolidation will ultimately be a great thing for us. And then, I guess following up on that, as consolidation occurs, as the RIAs get bigger, does that change the mindset of how they view technology and solutions? Because it seems like right now, with the smaller players, there's a bit more of an SMB mentality- Right ... to where they're really tightly managing expenses. But when you think about large RIAs, it's a more enterprise mentality. So it sounds like there's tailwinds coming down the pipeline for Envestnet- Right ... especially with advisors, more and more of them retiring, right? So I assume- Sure. I would think so. I mean, we again, we just need, we need to sort of see it play through. I mean, remember, an enterprise sale, which is a natural sale for Envestnet in the largest kind of firms, almost it's a compliance department heavy sale, right? It is like, "Your features are nice, your functions are nice, but, like, talk to me about your business continuity planning, your disaster recovery, your show..." Like, "Thank you. Like, nice to meet you. Show me your SOC 2 audits." Like, the, the type of thing. I think that is very different from, you know, a call, like a startup application that maybe just was assembled quickly, and that's a space that we're very comfortable operating in. We've been through the compliance departments of some of the largest banks in the country. So as things kind of shift toward more of an enterprise mindset, that's just a space we're very comfortable dealing with RFPs, dealing with vendor due diligence types of questions. So we're very comfortable if that is indeed the sort of direction of travel. Then I see we have 1, maybe 2 minutes left. Last question. Mm. Maybe just what are your top priority or your one, two, or three priorities? So let me, let me go with maybe. You asked for three. Let me, let me go with, like, two, two what's and how, right? So I mentioned a couple of them before. Top priorities for revenue growth: number one, delivering the firm. Number two, connecting the ecosystem. The strategy is about serving an advisor's needs completely. That, we believe, is how we will take our point of competitive differentiation to the next level. In terms of how, as Envestnet enters into this new period, you know, post the replatforming, Surinder, that you mentioned, you know, we're gonna try to operate with greater efficiency, with greater excellence, you know, for investors, right? You can expect a simpler presentation, simpler delivery. After all, I mean, we, we've spoken about it before. I think Envestnet, the company, is a fairly simple business. The wealth industry is complex. Meeting the needs of individual preferences, that's complex. But the financial statements of Envestnet should not be, right? And I think we've taken a lot of strides over the last few quarters to continue to simplify and enhance the transparency that we provide, so you know, current and potential investors can get a full look through to visibility. And in just terms of the fundamentals of the business, we're just continuing to be excited about the progress that we're making toward those objectives. Excellent. Thank you. That does it for time. Cool. Thanks, Surinder.