Moelis & Co at Goldman Sachs U.S. Financial Services Conference Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: James Yaro - Goldman Sachs Group Inc - Analyst : Okay. So now I think this is your second conference since taking over the CEO role. Have there been any surprises? And what excites you most about the future? Navid Mahmoodzadegan - Moelis & Co - Co-President, Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder So thanks for inviting me. It's great to be here. No real surprises. As you pointed out, I've had the privilege of being a Founder of the company and have been part of the senior team helping to lead the company since day one. So I knew what our firm is about. I think that's one of the real benefits of me taking over this role is well known to our population. And I think there's just a ton of excitement within the firm about doing a seamless transition from within. A lot of what we do as a firm is about talent development. We talk about that a lot. It's been one of the foundational pillars of the company, taking bankers out of schools, developing them on our platform, having them well established within our culture and seeing them succeed as managing directors is something we're really good at and being able to do succession that way too, I think, really reinforces that. So it's been great so far. The mood around the firm is incredible. The excitement in the future is incredible. Our business outlook is really strong. And so I'm excited to be in this role. LSEG STREETEVENTS | www.lseg.com | Contact Us consent of LSEG. 'LSEG' and the LSEG logo are registered trademarks of LSEG and its affiliated companies. DECEMBER 09, 2025 / 6:00PM, MC.N - Moelis & Co at Goldman Sachs U.S. Financial Services Conference

Question: James Yaro - Goldman Sachs Group Inc - Analyst : Great. So I want to touch on a couple of those products or the growth initiatives, but maybe just one more big picture one here. So you've entered at the beginning, but at the past five years have been a pretty big step-up. And in growth, in terms of talent, so maybe you could just talk about the talent you've added in recent years and maybe how the talent has evolved over the history. Navid Mahmoodzadegan - Moelis & Co - Co-President, Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder Yeas. Sure. So again, we -- what we're trying to do is really look at what are big market opportunities, what are the big TAMs where we think we have licensed to win and where we think there's big opportunities for client impact. And it became obvious to us. I want to go through each of those. Capital markets was an area we were in since the beginning. But when you looked at the evolution of the capital markets, growth of private credit, all of the different capital providers that were out there providing all different slices of capital structure, so many of those providers out there and companies trying to navigate all of those different providers, it lend itself to a much more advanced advisory opportunity there, helping companies and sponsors navigate private credit. Second, you had an explosion of new technologies and opportunities to finance growth companies. And so making sure we had an A-plus capital markets team integrated across debt and equity to attack all of those opportunities has proven to be a spectacular success. Our Capital Markets group will have its best year ever this year. We're continuing to invest behind that and grow behind that. LSEG STREETEVENTS | www.lseg.com | Contact Us consent of LSEG. 'LSEG' and the LSEG logo are registered trademarks of LSEG and its affiliated companies. DECEMBER 09, 2025 / 6:00PM, MC.N - Moelis & Co at Goldman Sachs U.S. Financial Services Conference Similarly, technology. We've been in the technology business since the early days of the firm, but we were subscale in technology. And when we looked at that marketplace, we saw the biggest sector by fees. We saw a very vibrant and active sector, and we saw one where financial sponsors a space where we historically played a lot in doing more and more tech deals, but we had a subscale tech team. And so being able to go in there and hire a group of people that we spent years developing a relationship with, bringing them onto the platform has been a really big success and done the same thing in oil and gas. And PCA is a product that's very strategic for us. So being able to be to provide financial sponsors with a GP-led secondary continuation vehicle product is, in and of itself, a big revenue opportunity for us, but it's also protective of our M&A franchise because lots of time sponsors are looking at portfolio companies and saying, I could CV this company, I could sell this company. I'm not really sure what I want to do, and they really want one adviser to come in and be a thought partner with them to help navigate that. And if you didn't have an A-plus effort in EVs, it was a lost revenue opportunity, but it actually also threatened part of your M&A business, too.

Question: James Yaro - Goldman Sachs Group Inc - Analyst : Okay. So you talked about the four areas of hiring. It sounds like three of them are -- you feel you've completed a lot of the growth there. One we just talked about. So how do you think about hiring talent from here? How much hiring do you think you can get done in this backdrop? Navid Mahmoodzadegan - Moelis & Co - Co-President, Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder Look, we look at -- when we look at industries in the sector, we're in every major sector group with great teams. But within those big sectors, there's many subverticals where we just don't have coverage. And so the big opportunity for us is to fill in those white spaces within these sectors, especially the ones with the biggest fee opportunities. LSEG STREETEVENTS | www.lseg.com | Contact Us consent of LSEG. 'LSEG' and the LSEG logo are registered trademarks of LSEG and its affiliated companies. DECEMBER 09, 2025 / 6:00PM, MC.N - Moelis & Co at Goldman Sachs U.S. Financial Services Conference And so when I look at -- just to pick out a few health care and industrials, within health care and industrials, we have spectacular teams in parts of those ecosystems, but there's many other parts of those ecosystems where we're subscale or we're completely absent. And so hiring difference makers to bring into those businesses to establish and develop and grow those franchises, I think, is a major opportunity for us as we look to scale the company. As we do that, we'll continue to add product capabilities, M&A, capital markets and when we talk about PCA. But the big white space opportunity right now is to grow out verticals within our big teams.

Question: James Yaro - Goldman Sachs Group Inc - Analyst : You brought up data. I think that's really interesting. One of your competitors has talked about how their view is that data allows you to show up when someone is about to do something like selling a family business, for example, and helps with that. And look, you've had a lot of transactions in the past what, 18 years now. So maybe you can talk a little bit about the data. LSEG STREETEVENTS | www.lseg.com | Contact Us consent of LSEG. 'LSEG' and the LSEG logo are registered trademarks of LSEG and its affiliated companies. DECEMBER 09, 2025 / 6:00PM, MC.N - Moelis & Co at Goldman Sachs U.S. Financial Services Conference Navid Mahmoodzadegan - Moelis & Co - Co-President, Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder Well, look, I do think we have a lot of information sitting within the experience base of our bankers within the four walls of our company. And how do we use that data to win business, to give better advice and to make transactions happen is really the key question. And I do think that's something we're focused on. And I do think AI and the promise of AI and integrating our data will help with that. I think there's clearly an opportunity in the future for the banking industry, our industry, our firm to be able to be much more productive at all levels of the organization. And that doesn't necessarily mean less people or a change of pyramid. It just means a much more productive business. And I think if we can harness data and harness AI the right way, that will be an important part of that.

Question: James Yaro - Goldman Sachs Group Inc - Analyst : So on the mid-market and the sponsors, what's the catalyst there? I mean rates are slowly creeping lower. Is that enough? Are there other factors that we should be thinking about that gives you that confidence? LSEG STREETEVENTS | www.lseg.com | Contact Us consent of LSEG. 'LSEG' and the LSEG logo are registered trademarks of LSEG and its affiliated companies. DECEMBER 09, 2025 / 6:00PM, MC.N - Moelis & Co at Goldman Sachs U.S. Financial Services Conference Navid Mahmoodzadegan - Moelis & Co - Co-President, Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder Well, so I think this is another year or two of a lot of these companies seasoning into valuations that are going to be acceptable for sponsors to trade. I think it's another more seasoning in terms of sponsors hearing from their LPs of a desire for liquidity and monetization and DPI. I think the fact that strategics are leaning more into corporate transactions helps because sometimes sponsors sell to other sponsors, but a lot of times they're selling the strategics. And when you have a regulatory environment that's more welcoming of strategic transactions, I think that bodes well for some of those assets trading as well. So I think -- I don't think there's a step function in any of those things happening, but I think the cumulative effect of all of those things becoming a forcing function for the inevitable churn of a lot of those businesses that need to trade.

Question: James Yaro - Goldman Sachs Group Inc - Analyst : Okay. So maybe just quickly on some of the sector-wise trends. Maybe firstly, the outlook for tech. I think that's the biggest sector so very important what's going on there. And then I think you've talked about strength in health care, industrials, other parts of TMT. So what areas do you think are -- two to three areas, let's say, are most durable in your view or likely to improve next year? Navid Mahmoodzadegan - Moelis & Co - Co-President, Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder And transactional activity?

Question: James Yaro - Goldman Sachs Group Inc - Analyst : Interesting. Okay. So you've added some European talent recently. So maybe you could just give us your thoughts on Europe. And is there a structural growth driver there? Or is it really just that you're moving into the market in a big way? Navid Mahmoodzadegan - Moelis & Co - Co-President, Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder So Europe is definitely lagging in terms of the health of the M&A market and the vibrancy of the M&A market. There are some structural reasons for that, that we could talk about. But if you look at the trajectory of the US M&A market versus the European M&A market, it's on a different slope. Having said that, it's a really important market. It's a really important market for us. It's important for us to be global and to have a great team and an active team there. And it's especially important for us to match our sector capabilities in Europe with great teams in the United States. So we do best in Europe, where our bankers are part of a global coverage team with our industry bankers in the United States. So that's what we're really focused on. We're really focused on in some of our sectors where we have real strength in the United States to make sure we have equally great strength in Europe and having those teams work together. So as I said, the European market is more difficult, but we're continuing to invest there, but we're doing it prudently.

Question: James Yaro - Goldman Sachs Group Inc - Analyst : Okay. Well, let's see if there's any questions in the room, there's a microphone. Is there a microphone? Okay. Well, I guess if anyone wants to speak up, I can repeat the question. So maybe I'll repeat the question. So just expand the definition of tech, including media and commentary on Paramount. LSEG STREETEVENTS | www.lseg.com | Contact Us consent of LSEG. 'LSEG' and the LSEG logo are registered trademarks of LSEG and its affiliated companies. DECEMBER 09, 2025 / 6:00PM, MC.N - Moelis & Co at Goldman Sachs U.S. Financial Services Conference Navid Mahmoodzadegan - Moelis & Co - Co-President, Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder I'm not going to comment. We are involved. I'm not going to comment on that particular transaction. So -- and the first question on -- Unidentified Participant (inaudible - microphone inaccessible) Navid Mahmoodzadegan - Moelis & Co - Co-President, Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder I'm not going to comment on that whole situation. Look, I think you're maybe taking a step back, I think you're definitely seeing more of a convergence of companies that have historically been thought of as technology companies and companies that you would have thought of as content companies. You're seeing that across numerous companies in the ecosystem. I think that trend of convergence is going to continue. At the end of the day, what really matters is what's best for consumers and consumers consume content and they do it increasingly through advanced technology platforms. And so inevitably, those worlds are going to converge. And I think you're seeing that play out in the transactional environment and the operating environment, I think you're going to continue to see that.

Question: James Yaro - Goldman Sachs Group Inc - Analyst : Perfect. Okay. So let's turn to restructuring. I think you've guided to somewhat we heard 2025 in restructuring. Maybe just help us think through some of the drivers this year and then maybe just the longer-term outlook for the business. I think within that answer, if you're willing to break down a little bit between the traditional bankruptcy versus liability management as well. LSEG STREETEVENTS | www.lseg.com | Contact Us consent of LSEG. 'LSEG' and the LSEG logo are registered trademarks of LSEG and its affiliated companies. DECEMBER 09, 2025 / 6:00PM, MC.N - Moelis & Co at Goldman Sachs U.S. Financial Services Conference Navid Mahmoodzadegan - Moelis & Co - Co-President, Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder So look, we have one of the leading restructuring franchises on Wall Street. We call that business CSA because it's really much more than just traditional bankruptcies. It's the liability management, out-of-court restructuring, so on and so forth, balance sheet management. It's a great team that's been very important to the success of the firm for a long period of time as both a deep pool of revenues for the firm, but also it feeds into M&A opportunities, et cetera, for the firm. We've grown that business over time. Last year, we hired and really focused on the creditor side of the business, which historically, we had just focused on company side, and we made two senior hires over the last couple of years on the creditor side of the business to enhance those capabilities, and that's gone well. In terms of the actual revenues this year, down a little bit from last year. Last year was a particularly good year for that franchise. I think they probably punched above their weight due to some unique the situation last year. And so I think when you look at the overall health of the economy, lower rates, all of those things that are giving us optimism on the M&A side, they're also creating less new opportunities on the restructuring and liability management side. And we've definitely seen over the last bunch of years, a trend away from traditional restructurings in court restructurings. And part of that is because of the heavy costs associated with restructuring as much as possible companies, creditors, et cetera, are trying to keep companies outside of bankruptcy as opposed to in bankruptcy given the tremendous transactional cost and friction costs there.

Question: James Yaro - Goldman Sachs Group Inc - Analyst : So maybe let's just turn to margins. Maybe you could just update us with your outlook on the comp ratio. And I'm not talking about the next quarter, unless you want to give the first part, but maybe just the longer-term outlook? And what does normalized comp ratio look like for you? Navid Mahmoodzadegan - Moelis & Co - Co-President, Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder So, look, we are very appreciative that our shareholders have been understanding around the investments we've made over the last couple of years in a market that was more challenging on the top line. That caused our ratios to go to levels that were not normalized. And we're very cognizant and have been working really hard to bring those numbers down as you've seen this year. And we're going to continue to bring those -- bring that comp ratio down. I think, especially given the payoff from these past investments and what we're seeing, the overall macro environment and health of the M&A market, I think we can both continue to make investments in growth and bring that ratio down as we roll forward here over the next many quarters and years, and we're committed to doing that. Where that settles in, I could tell you where I'd like it to settle in. I think I'd like it to settle in, probably in the low 60s. But whether that happens will depend a little on the competitive environment. Again, we -- we're in the market for talent and we're -- we've got to protect our own talent. And so some of that's within our control and some of that's not within our control. And I'd like to see it get to that place. I think that's a fair balance between investing in growth, investing in our people, and our relationship to our shareholders to make sure that that's balanced. But whether we can ultimately achieve that will depend a little bit upon the macro environment and the hiring environment.

Question: James Yaro - Goldman Sachs Group Inc - Analyst : Okay. So maybe one last one for you. As we look at 2026 your first full year as CEO, any last words, anything we should be thinking about for next year? LSEG STREETEVENTS | www.lseg.com | Contact Us consent of LSEG. 'LSEG' and the LSEG logo are registered trademarks of LSEG and its affiliated companies. DECEMBER 09, 2025 / 6:00PM, MC.N - Moelis & Co at Goldman Sachs U.S. Financial Services Conference Navid Mahmoodzadegan - Moelis & Co - Co-President, Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder Firm is in great shape, lots of excitement about the momentum of the firm, our hiring, the quality of the culture of the firm, lots of great conversations to continue to grow the firm smartly and a macro and deal outlook that looks really positive. So I'm excited about attacking '26.

Question: James Yaro - Goldman Sachs Group Inc - Analyst : Do it again next year. Navid Mahmoodzadegan - Moelis & Co - Co-President, Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder Sounds great.