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Operator
Good day, and welcome to the GCM Grosvenor 2024 fourth quarter and full year results call. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this call will be recorded.
I would now like to hand the call over to Stacie Selinger, Head of Investor Relations. You may begin.
Stacie Selinger - Managing Director, Head of Investor Relations
Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to GCM Grosvenor's fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings call. Today, I'm joined by GCM Grosvenor's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Michael Sacks; President, Jon Levin; and Chief Financial Officer, Pam Bentley.
Before we discuss this quarter's results, a reminder that all statements made on this call that do not relate to matters of historical fact, should be considered forward-looking statements. This includes statements regarding our current expectations for the business, our financial performance and projections. These statements are neither promises nor guarantees. They involve known, unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements on this call.
Please refer to the factors in the Risk Factors section of our 10-K, our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and our earnings release, all of which are available on the Public Shareholders section of our website.
We'll also refer to non-GAAP measures that we view as important in assessing the performance of our business. A reconciliation of non-GAAP metrics to the nearest GAAP metric can be found in our earnings presentation and earnings supplement, both of which are available on our website.
Thank you again for joining us. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Michael to discuss our results.
Michael Sacks - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Stacie. Good morning, everyone. We are pleased to report a very strong fourth quarter and full year 2024. Importantly, we report not only good financial results that exceed expectations, but progress with regard to a number of our key strategic priorities that will contribute to our growth over the coming years.
With regard to our financial performance, we had a strong finish to a good year that saw solid results for our clients and significant growth in both fundraising and profit. In the fourth quarter, our fee-related earnings increased 22%, and our adjusted net income increased 63% as compared to the fourth quarter of 2023. For the full year 2024, fee-related earnings increased 19% and adjusted net income increased 36% over the prior year. These results represent a good start toward our goal of doubling 2023 fee-related earnings by 2028. While our path to that goal will not be linear, we remain confident in our ability to achieve that target.
In 2024, we also continue to realize the operating leverage we have long seen in our business. Our fee-related earnings margin was 42% for the year, compared to 38% in 2023 and 31% at the end of 2020. We believe we continue to have operating leverage in our business and see opportunity for continued FRE margin expansion going forward.
During 2024, we achieved $7.1 billion of total fundraising, a 40% increase compared to 2023. We are pleased with that growth and pleased that, as expected, our fundraising in the second half of the year, exceeded that of the first half. Our fourth quarter fundraising of $2.3 billion was our highest fundraising quarter in more than two years. And importantly, our late-stage pipeline remains robust. Looking at that pipeline today, our re-ups, and based upon a bottoms-up build created with our investment and business development teams, we expect 2025 total fundraising to exceed the $7.1 billion we raised in 2024.
We were particularly successful last year, with regard to fundraising for our specialized funds. Closing on $1.9 billion of commitments to private market specialized funds. That is our second highest year on record. The fourth quarter saw the final close of our Elevate Fund, a first-time fund for a private equity seeding strategy. Elevate closed at nearly $800 million, which is respectable in a difficult market for a first-time fund, particularly for a strategy that is not yet mainstream. We've made some investments from the Elevate Fund that we're excited about, and we expect that strategy to grow over the next five years.
This quarter, we'll see the final close of our third private equity co-invest fund, GCF III, and the final close of our second Infrastructure Advantage Fund, IAF II. We expect both of those funds will be larger than their predecessor funds, and we look forward to reporting on those results next quarter. Later in 2025, we plan to hold first closings for the next vintage of our private equity secondaries fund, GSF IV and our direct oriented infrastructure fund, CIS IV.
Beyond our financial and fundraising success, we made meaningful progress in 2024 with regard to a number of key business priorities. During the year, we deepened our credit investment talent with a number of important hires who brought complementary expertise to our team. Clients are recognizing the value of our credit platform, where we raised $1.8 billion or over 25% of total funds raised last year. As investors grow and evolve their private credit allocations, we believe we are well-positioned to be a value-added partner serving as a single point of entry, for diversified portfolio of credit primary fund investments, co-investments, and credit secondaries.
We also saw improvement in our Absolute Return Strategies platform with 2024 ARS management fees stabilizing year-over-year. The flows picture is improving in ARS. The business performance last year was enabled by excellent investment performance. Our multi-strategy composite generated a 4.5% gross return in the fourth quarter and a 14.3% gross return for the full year outperforming indices and peers.
Those returns generated $55 million in annual performance fee revenue, marking the third time in the last five years ARS performance fees exceeded $50 million. As we have discussed previously, with $401 million in firm share of unrealized carry at net asset value and significant carry at work that is not yet in the money, our incentive fee earnings power remains strong and should support growth in adjusted net income over time.
Finally, as we discussed at length last quarter, one of our priorities for 2024 was to expand our product offerings and distribution in the individual investor channel. Just two weeks ago, we announced that our infrastructure interval fund is open for investment with a seeded portfolio of $240 million across 43 infrastructure assets and $82 million of dry powder. While it will take some time for sales from this product to build, and we are not assuming significant 2025 revenue from the fund, we do believe its potential over time is meaningful. We anticipate investing further in our individual investor capabilities and look forward to sharing news of that in the future.
The tailwinds created by our financial and strategic success in 2024 give us confidence looking out. Our growth targets remain achievable and as we've always said and as Jon will discuss next, our diversified platform gives us a number of ways to win.
And with that, I'll turn it over to Jon.
Jonathan Levin - President, Director
Thank you, Michael. The hallmarks of our platform are our breadth, depth and flexibility across asset classes, the ways in which we can implement investments and most importantly, how we work with our clients. The diversification of our platform is a key strategic advantage in positioning us to win with clients of all sizes and types.
Our capabilities and positioning in this attractive alternative investment industry provide a unique combination of stability, embedded growth and optionality for the platform in the future. I spent a significant amount of time with our clients around the world, regardless of where in the world I find myself or whether the client is big or small, a public pension, a sovereign wealth fund or a firm representing individual investors. We hear two common themes. Alts continue to grow as a percentage of investor portfolios, and clients are generally under resourced to attack the opportunity set.
They need trusted partners to assist and to help build out alternative programs. Now where they need help varies by client. It could be a very specific area like credit secondaries, as Michael mentioned, or an exposure to a certain geography or incorporating co-investments into their portfolio across the different alternative asset classes.
The good news is that we can help clients with any variation of their alternative needs given the positioning of our platform. This flexibility means that we can compete for nearly all mandates of all sizes and with all client types. Our breadth across asset classes, which uniquely includes both private and public markets also means that we can win in nearly every environment as clients shift their allocations between various alternative strategies.
This flexibility and breadth of coverage, in combination with the deep involved nature of our partnerships with our clients, provide us with the distinct privilege of being able to evolve with our clients as they evolve their portfolios and expand into new areas. For example, as we've discussed on past calls, many investors have been prioritizing their allocations to infrastructure and private credit in recent years. We've been a beneficiary of this focus and trend in the market.
Infrastructure has been our fastest-growing asset class since we went public, and credit was a massive contributor to our 2024 fundraising. We see persistence behind the significant investor demand for both of these strategies. In particular, we believe our full coverage of credit strategies, combined with our significant unlocked origination ability across credit strategies, positions us ideally to capture greater market share as investors grow and diversify their credit exposures.
While absolute return strategies contributed less significantly to our '22 and '23 fundraising, it was a meaningful contributor to our growth in 2024. We raised $1.3 billion for the strategy in 2024, higher than the prior two years combined. The improvement in investor sentiment has occurred on the heels of strong performance and strong alpha generation.
Our ability to meet the demands of clients in a wide range of market environments provide important diversification and business stability, but also numerous paths for growth and upside. Said another way, our confidence in doubling our fee-related earnings by 2028 comes from the fact that we have so many ways to win and therefore, aren't dependent on a single strategy, client or backdrop.
We also continue to expand our offerings and therefore, create new ways to win. And as Michael said, last year was an important year in driving those initiatives, and we expect more momentum in 2025.
With that, I'll turn the call over to Pam.
Pamela Bentley - Managing Director, Chief Financial Officer
Thanks, Jon. Our strong results in the fourth quarter and 2024 exemplify the broader momentum that we are enjoying as a business. Assets under management ended the year at $80 billion, and fee-paying AUM ended the year at $65 billion. Our strong fundraising drove a 12% year-over-year increase in our contracted, not yet fee-paying AUM, ending 2024 at a record level of $8.2 billion. Our contracted not yet fee-paying AUM provides a foundation for organic growth, and we expect it to convert to fee-paying AUM over the next few years.
Private markets, again, was a key driver of our '24 growth. We enjoyed very strong fourth quarter private market management fees, which increased 20% over the fourth quarter of '23, inclusive of over $7 million of catch-up fees from IAF II and Elevate. We expect lower catch-up fees of $2 million to $3 million in the first quarter of '25, primarily from IAF II, which will have its final close at the end of Q1. We are expecting private markets management fee growth, ex catch-up fees of around 10% year-over-year. After IAF II's final close, our funds in market will be earlier in their fundraising periods, and therefore, we expect minimal catch-up fees in Q2 to Q4 of '25.
At the beginning of the year, we spoke about our expectation that absolute return strategies management fees would stabilize in '24, which they did, increasing 1% year-over-year. We entered this year with a solid pipeline of activity on the heels of our excellent '24 investment performance. In the first quarter of '25, we expect ARS management fees to increase by 4% to 5% from the first quarter of '24.
Turning to our expenses. Our compensation philosophy is to align and motivate our greatest asset, our talent through a combination of annual and long-term awards, including FRE-related compensation, incentive fee-related compensation, and equity awards. We remain disciplined in managing compensation expenses while also investing in talent and incentivizing our employees.
Fourth quarter fee-related earnings compensation declined sequentially to $35 million. Looking to the first quarter of '25, we expect FRE-related compensation and benefits to be in line with or slightly higher than our '24 quarterly average. Non-GAAP general and administrative and other expenses were $20 million in the fourth quarter, down slightly on a sequential basis, and we expect those levels to remain stable in Q1. Pulling together these factors, our fourth quarter and full year fee-related earnings grew 22% and 19%, respectively. As Michael noted, we continue to have confidence in our long-term goal to double our '23 FRE by 2028.
Turning to incentive fees. We realized $57 million in the quarter, comprised of $42 million of annual performance fees and $15 million of carried interest. These results brought our annual performance fees to $55 million, the third time we have exceeded $50 million over the last five years. Run rate annual performance fees entering 2025 stand at $30 million. Carry realizations have been muted, but the environment is starting to improve. Our gross unrealized carried interest stood at $836 million as of quarter end, more than double what it was at the end of 2020, and we believe that provides significant upside.
Our balance sheet is strong, and we are maintaining a healthy quarterly dividend of $0.11 per share. As of Friday, we had a 3.2% dividend yield, and there is room for future dividend growth as we enjoy positive momentum in our earnings. We also continue to repurchase shares under our repurchase authorization plan, and our Board recently approved a $50 million increase in our share repurchase program. As a reminder, we intend to use the $82 million now remaining in our program to largely manage dilution.
To close, we enjoy significant industry and business tailwinds heading into '25, giving us confidence in our long-term financial objectives. We look forward to the opportunities ahead to deliver value to our clients and shareholders.
Thank you again for joining us, and we're now happy to take your questions.
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Crispin Love, Piper Sandler.
Crispin Love - Analyst
My first question is on FRE margins. You've had several years of steady growth in margins. But curious if you could discuss your margin outlook. Do you believe you can continue driving margins higher to the mid-40% range on an annual basis and beyond? And as you look out further, is there a cap on margins over the long term?
Michael Sacks - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer
Thank you. Thanks for the question. We did note that we've -- to your point, we've had very strong operating leverage and significant FRE margin improvement over the last several years. We also wanted to be clear that we do think we have continued operating leverage. We do think we have continued FRE margin expansion ahead of us. And I think that, as far as a cap goes, that we're just sort of looking out one year or two years' time and seeing that our FRE margins can continue to grow. I suppose at some point, there's a cap, but we think from current levels, we have room to grow those margins over the next several years while we're doubling our FRE from '23.
Crispin Love - Analyst
Perfect. I appreciate that. That was helpful. And then secondly, on fundraising, curious about the cadence for 2025. You had a very strong quarter in the fourth quarter. And I heard your 2025 guide expected to be higher than 2024. You mentioned some funds closing in the first quarter, but as you look at 2025 as a whole, can you talk about the expected cadence of fundraising? And is there anything else worth calling out on a quarter-to-quarter basis?
Michael Sacks - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer
Sure. Jon, you want to take that?
Jonathan Levin - President, Director
Sure. I think, Crispin, one thing to just back up and contextualize around our fundraising before answering your specific question is kind of how it works for us, right? So we and some of the historical commentary we made, I think we had felt that '23 was a tough fundraising environment for the sector for us. We thought '24 was going to be better than '23 and it was. The environment we think, continues to improve, which gives us some macro commentary that feels like '25 better than '24. But for us, kind of specifically, we have a lot of insights into what happens in a given year just because of the separate account business and the re-up profile.
So we know going into a particular year, which clients are scheduled to have a separate account re-up, we know which activities, as you said, of specialized funds are meant to go to market and have their closings. And so we can kind of over a year period of time, look at the year and say, yes, based on all that bottoms-up buildup, there'll be some kind of go get in that number, but we have a pretty good baseline to feel like '25 is going to be better than '24.
When it comes to like when -- what specific quarter something will happen, that's where it gets a little bit tougher, right? You can literally have situations where someone's meant to sign a contract on a particular day and they get sick, and it slips to the next quarter and those can be big chunky moves. So I don't know that we'd give you a specific quarter-by-quarter analysis, but what we would tell you is that the pipeline is strong. The re-up calendar inside of the year is strong and therefore, kind of feel good about that '25 looking better than '24 type of guidance over the course of the year.
Operator
Ken Worthington, JPMorgan.
Ken Worthington - Analyst
Maybe first, you've got a nice pipeline building in the private markets business. The pace of the pipeline build was quite a bit faster than the pace of conversion from pipeline to fee-paying AUM. How should we see this conversion from pipeline to fee-paying AUM look in 2025? Do we see a nice pickup given the better market conditions, and maybe the seasoning of the pipeline? Or is it -- should it, for some reason, continue to sort of lag the strong sales growth that you're generating?
Michael Sacks - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Ken. This is something we've actually talked about before. So obviously, the most important thing is that the macro environment and the attractiveness of the strategies remain very strong. The pipeline to your point, is building and there's a lot of demand.
And then specifically, how that pipeline converts to fee-paying AUM is a function of whether the funds raised are essentially ramp-in funds, which turn the fees on over specific time period, a specific amount of fee at specific dates, whether they are pay on committed funds, which start fees right away. Pay on committed funds with catch-up fees, start fees paying fees right away and there's a catch-up from prior periods or they're pay as invested funds where you make an assumption about how the capital is invested and when the fees turn on.
We've had since we first met you going back to 2020, a significant amount of what we published and called contracted, not yet fee-paying AUM, which is where those fees either turn on a fixed schedule for those fees turn on as invested. Every year, we raise capital where the fees turn on immediately upon closing. And it's -- that -- it's very hard to give specifics there, just as Jon talked about, sort of pace of fundraising.
Every year, every quarter, it's sort of all of the above. We're winning new business that is every type of fee that we -- that I described. And it is -- and so I don't think much has changed from the first time we met you, and I think we've had that mix of type of fee. I think we've said to you in the past when we price business, we're trying to price it on effective fee, so that different types or structures of fee result in similar levels of actual fee to us and similar cash collections and margins over time. But I don't know that there's been a change there.
Jonathan Levin - President, Director
And Ken, this is John, I would just add one thing. I'm not sure exactly which metric you're looking at, but if you look at contract, not yet fee-paying AUM at the beginning of the year, it was $7.3 billion. We ended the year at $8.2 billion, so that was up 12%. But if you look at the contributions in the fee-paying AUM walk from CNYFPAUM is about $2.8 billion, which is not -- about one third or so of the capital that we started the year with on a CNYFPAUM basis, which is not -- which makes sense to us. If you think about an investment period of a program being about three years, the way that would work, whether it's time-based or invested base, being about one third of that beginning year number is kind of a number that's generally in line.
Ken Worthington - Analyst
Okay. Great. As we think about the absolute return business, had one of its better years. Are you seeing a change in the reception or the nature of the dialogue you're having with your customers? Like, are we starting to see the alpha generation? I don't know, maybe market valuation levels. Again, I guess, just change the dialogue that you're having.
Michael Sacks - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer
Yes. The performance was good. And so whenever performance is good, there is a change in the dialogue. It may be -- it may vary in terms of how significant a change. But whenever you have good performance which we've had for a while now, the dialogue changes. And I think in general, the pipeline is solid there. The outlook for that business is as good at this time of the year as it has been in quite a long time. And so while our sort of base case budgeting doesn't -- hasn't changed and we certainly are more optimistic with regard to the prospects for ARS than we have been in a while in the pipeline, and the fundraising profile is decent.
Operator
Chris Kotowski, Oppenheimer.
Chris Kotowski - Analyst
Yes. First, I just wanted to make sure we got Pam's guidance on the private markets fee outlook correct. So you mentioned $7.1 million catch-up fees in the quarter and first quarter, though would be $2 million or $3 million. So all things being equal. First quarter would be down $3 million, $4 million, $5 million sequentially. Then you gave the guidance of private markets ex fees up, I think you said 10% to 12%. But there, we're only looking at the prior year catch-up fees, which is $6.8 million or less than there was in the fourth quarter. Do I have that correct? Are those the base lines --
Michael Sacks - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer
I think that -- let me just -- Chris, it's Michael. Thank you for joining and for the question. Let me just kind of reiterate what Pam said, just to make sure it's clear. We wanted to make sure we were providing apples-to-apples numbers. And so in the past, we had talked about private market management fee growth, ex catch-up, with catch-up and we wanted to just lay it all out.
So specifically, what Pam said was for the first quarter, we expect catch-up fees of $2 million to $3 million, which is lower than Q4, okay? Lower than first quarter of '25, and we expect ex catch-up fees. So excluding that $2 million to $3 million, private markets management fee growth 10% year-over-year. So Q1 '24 versus Q1 '25, '25 is up 10% excluding catch-up fees, add $2 million to $3 million to that, and that was our walk on the private market management fees for Q1.
Chris Kotowski - Analyst
Okay. Great. And then I wonder if you could talk a little bit -- give a bit more color on the retail vehicles that you've launched. And I guess specifically, I'm wondering, is there a potential on the private equity side also to have an anchor tenant like you did on the infrastructure side? And then also, if you can give any color on what should the marketing effort look like? And what would success look like in '24 and '25? Is the effort to get -- is the goal to get listed on wirehouses? Or is there a different distribution channel? What's important to you in the next 12 to 24 months?
Michael Sacks - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer
Sure. So you got a bunch of really good stuff in there. So first, I would say that we were clear, and we tried to be very clear in our comments, prepared remarks that we are not expecting significant revenue contribution from that infrastructure fund in '25. And because we launched it and frankly launched it in such a terrific way, which is with around $300 million of anchor, as you called it, capital, a bunch of currently invested specified portfolio that people can look at some dry powder. We feel very good about the way we launched it.
And to your private equity question, I think you'd always want to launch with real anchor capital like that, if you can. It just is a leg up. That said, we were clear. And don't bake in a ton of revenue, don't you know, at all for '25. This is going to build. It will build over time. We're not telling you what that's going to mean for '26 or '27. But by the end of '28, we expect there's going to be real capital there, in real revenue. And we think it has the potential to be a really terrific vehicle for us as a firm, obviously, for the investors. But for us as a firm, there's -- that infrastructure space is not crowded in the individual investor channel.
And having a high-quality option is a terrific thing and we are optimistic that over time, this can build to be a real significant product and real significant revenue generator for us. But it's not going to be in '25, and it's probably not going to be a ton of it in '26. We would hope that this will find a home eventually in the wirehouse world, in the RIA world and maybe the independent, the IBD world, but the -- but initially, the focus of the marketing effort here is in the RIA space, and that is where the initial focus is.
As you know, historically, our relationship set for the portion of our AUM that is represented by -- it comes from individual investors has been wirehouse. So one of the nice things about this is we are going into the RIA space with our capabilities and our brand and our name.
We do hope over time that we'll have more to talk about in terms of the individual investor space, both how we're pursuing marketing there and eventually, ultimately, more choice for investors there. And we just -- we look forward to talking about that over time and continuing to update people as there are substantive things to update you on.
Operator
Bill Katz, TD Cowen.
Bill Katz - Analyst
Maybe just focusing on the opportunity in the realized carry opportunity for the carry portfolio. Just sort of wondering, it looks like the comp ratio to GCMG after sort of the contractual payments was rather low this quarter, both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year. How do we think about to the extent that the revenue backdrop and the monetization activity were to pick up the payout ratio associated with those realizations?
Michael Sacks - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer
When you're talking about the gross carry revenue, the percentage of that, that belong -- that is owned by the firm -- that was owned by the firm last year.
Bill Katz - Analyst
Right. So if I look at -- if I strip out the -- sorry, for such a complex question. So if I look at the carry and I back out the contractual payment that you have, the NCI, et cetera, and then the payment that you have for performance fees, and I look at the rest, which you then pay out to the GCMG employees. I think, if I did that math correctly from your disclosure, that ratio is around 45% this quarter, and I think it's been sort of averaging sort of 55% plus. So I was wondering as the -- is it just a quantum opportunity here, or how to think about that payout ratio. So I guess the broader question is, how should we think about variable payout on realizations?
Michael Sacks - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer
I think that the -- it's a great question to ask. I think the main way that you should think about it is that we have a ton of upside there. And the way that we look at it is there's a gross amount of carry. We separate the carry from the performance fees on the ARS side. We had a lot of performance fees from the -- on the ARS side, this past year, $50 million. It's the third time in five years, it's been at $50 million. We've shown that the run rate on base case kind of budgeting is about $30 million. We've generated over $50 million for the last few years, at three of the last five years.
If you look at the carry, when you look at how much of the carry comes to the firm, that number has been significantly below the percentage of the carry in the ground that we own. So we own over half of the carry in the ground. The firm owns right around half, $401 million of the carry in the ground is owned by the firm. And yet the firm's share of revenues, gross coming in from the carry has been well below that, and that's because older carry comes in first than the firm owned a less of the carry. Historically that it's owned over the last 10 years.
So we think the percentage of carry dollars over the next 10 years that the firm owns is much higher than it was over the last 10 years, including last year. And the amount of carry in the ground is higher than it's ever been. So the picture there is very good because you've got more carry in the ground to be realized. You've got the firm owning more of that. And frankly, you've got a ton of dry powder carry or whatever you want to call it, carry that's not yet at asset value, but is behind the carry at NAV. So that carried NAV should replenish over time as we're enjoying the higher percentage of it. So we think that's a very -- we got a lot of earnings power looking out from that line.
Jonathan Levin - President, Director
I agree with everything Michael said there, Bill. And I think there's one further element which you might have been also inquiring about, which is the cash-based incentive fee-related compensation, which was being paid out at a higher ratio in the earlier quarters of the year and then was a lower percentage in the fourth quarter, which brought the full year to the 50% that you're referring to. Is that part of what your question was as well?
Bill Katz - Analyst
Exactly, Jon.
Jonathan Levin - President, Director
And so, yes, that is true. So we had always guided, I think, historically that, that number would be 40% to 50%. And so the quarters can bounce around a little bit, but the full year came in at the high end of that range. Part of that is because, as I think you know, not the carry, but the hedge fund performance fees get crystallized for the most part in the fourth quarter. So that happening in the fourth quarter allowed the margin effectively in the fourth quarter to be higher, to bring the full year in line with the top end of that range that we've given historically.
Bill Katz - Analyst
Okay. And then just coming back to retail for a moment. I appreciate this is a couple of years out in terms of bottom line contribution. Can you talk a little bit about maybe just state of the union of how many folks you have, and how many distribution channels you might be on, and sort of what the road map might be in terms of headcount additions and maybe geographically or by subsection of the distribution of where you see the greatest sort of opportunity over the next couple of years just to drive that more meaningful growth?
Jonathan Levin - President, Director
Happy to address that one, and Michael can add on to Bill. But as Michael just noted in the response to the question from Chris, a lot of our success historically has been in the wirehouse channels, where we have a handful of people who are so focused on that channel.
As I think you know, for the infrastructure product that was recently launched, we've also extended our distribution capability through a partnership with a group called CION, that's going to help from a distribution resources standpoint. And we've got kind of a two-pronged approach, we're going to and they're not mutually exclusive. And I think you've seen this model work successfully for many others in our space where there are some areas where you have partners that help leverage your distribution while you're building your own distribution capabilities internally. And those things can coexist together nicely.
I think you've seen a lot of partnerships with raise a lot of capital and have a lot of success using that type of model. But I think it is absolutely the case that we're always investing in the business. We're always investing in distribution. The marginal dollar of investment today is going into distribution within distribution. It is going into the individual investor distribution. And I think you'll see us invest more in that space and have news to share in that space over the coming weeks, months, and quarters.
Operator
(Operator Instructions) And it appears there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to Stacie for any closing remarks.
Stacie Selinger - Managing Director, Head of Investor Relations
Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We appreciate the engagement and the questions. If there are follow-ups, feel free to reach out. If not, we look forward to speaking with you again next quarter. Have a good day.
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This concludes today's program. We hope everyone has a great day. You may all disconnect.