On Friday, Cohen & Steers (NYSE:CNS) discussed first-quarter financial results during its earnings call. The full transcript is provided below.

Benzinga APIs provide real-time access to earnings call transcripts and financial data. Visit https://www.benzinga.com/apis/ to learn more.

View the webcast at https://events.q4inc.com/attendee/600972986

Summary

Cohen & Steers reported Q1 earnings of $0.79 per share, a slight decrease from $0.81 sequentially, with revenue increasing 0.3% to $144.3 million driven by higher average AUM.

Ending AUM in Q1 was $93.1 billion, up from $90.5 billion in Q4, due to net inflows and market appreciation.

The company's operating income was $50.7 million with an operating margin of 35.1%, both slightly down sequentially.

Cohen & Steers maintained a compensation ratio of 40% and expects it to remain at this level for 2026.

The firm experienced net inflows of $497 million, marking positive organic growth for 6 of the past 7 quarters, with notable contributions from multi-strategy real assets and preferred securities.

Strategic initiatives include expanding into active ETFs, with plans to launch more ETF versions of their core strategies, and continued investment in distribution capabilities.

The company maintains a strong performance record, with 86% of AUM outperforming its benchmark on a one-year basis, and higher rates on a 3 and 5-year basis.

Cohen & Steers anticipates continued broadening economic growth for 2026, despite geopolitical tensions, and expects continued interest in real assets as a hedge against inflation and market volatility.

Management highlighted the importance of diversification, especially in hard assets, given the structural transitions in the global economy, including deglobalization, AI disruption, and inflation uncertainties.

Full Transcript

Brian Heller (Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel)

Thank you and welcome to the Cohen & Steers first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Joining me are Joe Harvey, our Chief Executive Officer, Mike Donahue, our Interim Chief Financial Officer, and John Shea, our President and Chief Investment Officer. 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 10K and our other SEC filings. We assume no duty to update any forward looking statement. Further, none of our statements constitute an offer to sell but 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 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 [email protected]. with that, I'll turn the call over to Mike.

Mike Donahue (Interim Chief Financial Officer)

Thank you, Brian and good morning everyone. My remarks today will focus on our as adjusted results. A reconciliation of GAAP to as adjusted results can be found in the earnings release and presentation. Yesterday we reported earnings of $0.79 per share as compared to $0.81 sequentially. Revenue for Q1 increased from the prior quarter by 0.3% to 144.3 million. The change in revenue from the prior quarter was driven by higher average assets under management (AUM) partially offset by two less days in the quarter. In addition, and as we noted in last quarter's earnings call, there were 1.7 million of performance fees recognized in Q4 related to certain institutional accounts. We typically don't recognize such fees early in the year and we have few performance fee accounts. Our effective tax rate during the quarter was 58.2 basis points. Excluding non recurring items, our fee rate was 58.4 basis points which is slightly lower than the prior quarter. Operating income was 50.7 million during the quarter compared to 52.4 million sequentially and our operating margin was 35.1% compared to 36.4% in the prior quarter. Ending assets under management (AUM) in Q1 was 93.1 billion which was up from 90.5 billion at the end of Q4. This end of period change in assets under management (AUM) was driven by positive net inflows during Q1 primarily related to open end funds. In addition, end of period assets under management (AUM) was positively impacted by market appreciation of 2.7 billion during the quarter. As a result, average aum increased during Q1 to 94.4 billion as compared to 90.8 billion in the prior quarter. Joe Harvey will provide additional insights regarding our flows and pipeline shortly. Total expenses were higher compared to the prior quarter primarily due to increased comp and benefits and distribution and service fees. Expense, compensation and benefits was higher compared to prior quarter as a result of the year to date compensation accrual True up to actual that reduced compensation expense in Q4. The compensation ratio for the quarter was 40% which was in line with the guidance we provided. Distribution and service fees expense was up due to the increase in average assets under management (AUM) and G and A expense remained consistent with the prior quarter. Regarding taxes, our effective rate was 25.5% for the quarter on an as adjusted basis, our earnings material presents liquidity at the end of Q1 and prior quarters. Our liquidity totaled 343 million at quarter end which represents a decrease of 60 million versus the prior period. This quarterly change in liquidity is in line with prior years and driven by the annual incentive compensation cycle for the firm which occurs in Q1. Let me now touch on a few items regarding guidance for the remainder of 2026 with respect to compensation and benefits, we would expect our compensation ratio to remain at 40% as we experienced in Q1, we expect G and A to increase in the mid single digits for the year as compared to the prior year. Lastly, regarding 2026 guidance, we expect our effective tax rate to remain consistent at 25.5% on an as adjusted basis. I will now turn it over to John Jay who will lead discussion of our business performance.

John Shea (President and Chief Investment Officer)

Thank you Mike and good morning. Today I'd like to cover three our performance scorecard, our 2026 outlook given recent geopolitical events and last our long term structural view of the economy, the market regime and some asset allocation implications for investors. Beginning with our Performance Scorecard, we continue to build on our record of consistent long term outperformance. On a one year basis. Each 86% of our AUM has outperformed its benchmark while our 3 and 5 year outperformance rates are both above 97%. 95% of our open end fund AUM is rated 4 or 5 star by Morningstar which is up from 90% last quarter. In short, we continue to meet our primary objective of providing outstanding long term performance for our investors. Turning to the investment environment coming into 2026 we expected both an acceleration and a rebalancing of global growth with a corresponding broadening of market leadership. While that outlook was spot on early in the year, the current Middle East conflict may have brought that market leadership shift into question. US and global Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) were both up about 10% through February, well ahead of flattish equity markets as we saw market rotation into the relative laggards of the last several years. While events in March erased some of those gains, Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) still posted positive absolute performance for the quarter with US and global Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) up about 4 and 1% respectively. Listed infrastructure performance was resilient up 8% for the quarter. Businesses such as utilities and midstream energy continue to demonstrate their criticality in a world of short term energy scarcity and the continued power buildout needed to serve increasing industrialization and AI related demand. Diversified real assets rose 12% for the quarter with strong gains in commodities and natural resource equities. As we saw in 2022, real assets have been a clear winner and diversifier for 6040 stock bond portfolio. The asset allocation case for real assets continues to be made. Preferred securities and fixed income classes broadly declined slightly in the quarter as renewed inflation concerns indicate that monetary policy could be tighter for longer. So as we update our economic and market outlook for the rest of 2026, our expectation is that the Middle East military de escalation that began several weeks ago and will continue, including just this morning, over the course of the coming weeks and months, we know it will have its starts and stops. But as long term investors, our focus is on the trajectory of where we are headed. As a result, our initial 2026 view of broadening economic growth and financial markets remains intact. Now, thinking beyond 2026, we believe investors must see recent developments not as a one off or a surprise, but instead as Another chapter in a book which will continue to shape markets for the next ten years or more. For some time we have stated that the global economy is undergoing a structural transition, one that looks meaningfully different than the prior 30 years. And there are four major themes that we expect will serve as important drivers of asset allocation shifts. First, deglobalization, or what we would call geopolitical fracturing. For 20 years the global economy enjoyed friendly trading relationships and uninhibited delivery of just in time resources. In the 2000s this drove a buildup of global supply chains, primarily in Asia, but a de industrialization for much of the developed world. For nearly 10 years now, we've seen repeated reminders that this system, while leading to lower consumer goods prices and higher profit margins, was fragile and exposed the global economy to tail risks. In the last six years we've seen four consecutive supply shocks. The pandemic followed by the war in Ukraine, then tariffs and now the conflict in the Middle East. These are not one off events, but again an outcome of shifts in global power dynamics and alliances. This geopolitical fracturing will drive significant fixed asset investment boom greater than what the 2000s saw from China, driven by re industrialization and remilitarization. The second major theme is AI and technological disruption. Artificial intelligence is a transformational force on its own, but importantly it is not a software, but rather a hardware story. AI leadership will ultimately be about compute capacity and the marginal cost will likely be about the cost and availability of power. The third theme is inflation uncertainty. In the last decade, inflation consistently undershot expectations. In contrast, inflation in recent years has consistently surprised to the upside confounding forecasts that expected a quick return to the old normal of low and stable prices. Even as headline inflation has moderated from recent peaks, underlying pressures remain. As you will read in our forthcoming Capital markets assumptions, Cohen and Steers forecast consumer inflation to average 3% annual in the US over the next 10 years. Below recent peaks, but well above the 1.6% experienced in the last cycle and significantly higher than the Federal Reserve's long term 2% target. While AI may produce a productivity boom which could prove highly deflationary, the investment needed to produce that deflationary boom is highly inflationary. The job of any central banker over the next 10 years will be challenging. Our conclusion is that while inflation is likely to be higher than markets expect, the precise path and pace of inflation represents a major market uncertainty and risk factor. The final important trend is the end of low interest rates. Some of this is about inflation and some is about persistent fiscal deficits. Importantly, we also believe that the market continues to underestimate that we will live in a more capital intensive world which will keep interest rates and credit spreads wider. Hyperscalers shifting from being highly cash flow positive to becoming significant incremental issuers of debt is a microcosm of this shift. Given these four major themes in the next phase, some of last cycle's winners may remain winners, but errors of structural change tend to disrupt market leadership. New faces emerge, incumbents decline, and entirely different parts of the economy take the lead. To us, the clear beneficiaries of these shifts are natural resources and the picks and shovels of the global economy, notably energy infrastructure and the plumbing that supports construction, transportation and power delivery. This represents a tremendous investment opportunity, but also one that comes with challenges of higher and more volatile inflation, as I mentioned earlier. So for our clients, our advice is simple. First, diversification not just in terms of asset classes or listed versus private, but instead diversification of investment exposure to different economic drivers, inflation regimes and factors. Second, hard assets, including real assets, must be a meaningful allocation sourced from equity and fixed income as a diversifier and as a total return opportunity. Third, investors should use a broader toolkit with some private exposure when it provides unique exposure or an illiquidity premium. But in a highly uncertain world where the old models may not work, the cost of illiquidity is very high and should be used thoughtfully rather than just for quarterly statement diversification. We believe the first quarter is the continuation of the market's recognition of this major turn in leadership which will unfold with the remaining chapters of this book. And with that, let me turn it over to Joe.

Joe Harvey (Chief Executive Officer)

Thanks John, and good morning. You ma fire alarm in the background.y be a fire alarm in the background.ble to hea fire alarm in the background.r a fire alarm in the background. fire alarm in the background. Everything is okay. We're going to proceed today. I will review our key business trends in the first quarter and provide an update on our growth initiatives. While we started the year with accelerating fundamentals on February 28, the world changed, with US military operations in Iran. As is typical in these situations, business activity slowed for a period as investors attempted to calibrate how long the conflict will last and what the short and long term ramifications could be for economies, geopolitics and asset allocation. If the US economy pre Iran was reflationary with an upward bias in growth consensus post war is for stagflation with the key unknowables being how much and for how long. Not to be forgotten. Pre war investors were very focused on the existential risk of AI on certain industry groups in addition to credit and liquidity risk and private credit. We believe our liquid real asset strategies fit the so called halo trade very well, that is Heavy or hard assets low obsolescence with liquidity becoming a more valued investment characteristic. The first quarter's fundamental highlights include net inflows of 497 million, a strong 1 unfunded pipeline of 1.7 billion characterized by good velocity with continued fundings and new mandates, stable fee rates, strong absolute performance and neutral relative performance while 1, 3 and 5 year relative performance continues to be excellent. We made good progress with our growth initiatives including active ETFs, offshore CCAV, open end funds, our non traded Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) and our recently launched listed private real estate LP for institutions. Flow highlights by investment strategy include multi strategy Real Asset inflows totaled 142 million, the best quarter since third quarter of 2022, Preferred securities generated 133 million of net inflows for its strongest quarter since 4Q21 and Global Listed Infrastructure recorded its fifth straight quarter of net inflows totaling 96 million after a record year in 2025. The firm wide net inflows of 497 million represent positive organic growth for six out of the past seven quarters. We recorded our seventh straight quarter of net inflows into open end funds with US Open End Fund inflows of over 300 million and broad based contributions of over 100 million into each of our US Real Estate Preferred securities and our multi strategy Real Asset strategies. Our active ETFs continued their momentum with 224 million of third party net flows in the quarter. Our international CCABs continued their streak of net inflows in 25 of the past 27 quarters. The CCAVs recorded 62 million this quarter across a range of countries most notably in the UK and South Africa. The most popular CCAV allocations were to our multi strategy Real Assets and global listed infrastructure strategies. Looking at institutional trends, our advisory channel had its second consecutive quarter of net inflows with 210 million in the quarter comprised of five new mandates totaling 287 million partially offset by 1. 76 million termination. Sub Advisory experienced 269 million of net outflows in the quarter with 164 million in outflows from Japan. While we experienced net outflows in Japan sub advisory for the past two quarters as real estate flows have been challenged industry wide amidst flows into local bond funds and equity funds, we have slightly improved our industry leading market share in Japan. The other sub advisory outflows were due to normal rebalancings by existing clients, partially offset by two new mandates funding 83 million looking through the Iran conflict, I like our core strategies as it relates to inflation, globalization, AI rotation to hard assets, among other trends. As we continue to experience inflation, we believe our multi strategy Real assets portfolio is a great solution which investors are increasingly recognizing. With the long term criticality of energy back in focus, our Future of Energy strategy which invests in both conventional and renewable energy could be upgraded to more than just a tactical allocation. Resource equities probably have the best supply demand future of any strategy I can think of and the Iran conflict has clearly demonstrated the strategic importance of of these businesses. Due to the profound impact that resource scarcity can have on resource pricing and markets, real estate returns could be tempered by stagflation. But remember, valuations have reset versus normalized interest rates, the fundamental cycle has turned positive and investors are rotating into tangible assets. Our Global Listed Infrastructure strategy has sown both strong absolute and relative performance and is a beneficiary of the capital investment cycle underway. In addition, we have all been watching the growing concerns in the private wealth channel about liquidity strengths and private vehicles and private infrastructure is probably the most illiquid private strategy being brought to wealth. We therefore see global listed infrastructure as a winner in wealth either as a standalone allocation or as a complement to private with proper liquidity protection. Our corporate strategy for active ETFs is going very well. Total AUM for our first five ETFs is currently 675 million, flows are strong, investment performance is good and we are gaining traction and scale. Our platforming efforts for ETFs are accelerating and in the first quarter we received our first placement on a major broker dealer platform. We announced the conversion of our Future of Energy Open End Fund to an ETF which should occur sometime mid year. We intend to launch a version of our multi strategy Real Assets portfolio later this year and we filed for ETS as a share class as many other managers have done. We want full optionality to deliver all of our core strategies in the ETF structure. Our non traded Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) Conus Income Opportunities Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) has established a portfolio 11 properties owned or under contract totaling 650 million in assets and continues to provide investment performance at the top of the real estate peer group with 10.6% annualized returns since inception against a 4.3% peer average. Our focus on open air shopping centers has helped drive performance as occupancies of 97% on average translate into very strong pricing power for landlords. A key question for CNS Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) short term is how redemption constraints and private wealth vehicles will affect investor appetite for evergreen vehicles generally. As an industry, we must position these allocations as private strategies with liquidity provisioning as available and emphasize the importance of liquidity frameworks to protect investors and effectively deploy a long term investment strategy. In the case of real estate, it is possible that since the return cycle is returned positive has turned positive the category to garner allocations that previously were taken by private credit. The early data in March show increased redemption activity in private credit and an uptick in sales and real estate and infrastructure. Time will tell. We remain constructive on the long term benefits of blending listed and private real estate and wealth portfolios and believe we offer compelling solutions across the liquidity spectrum for investors. We previously discussed the launch late last year of an LP vehicle that invests in core private property funds and listed Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT)s together. The goal is to deliver a better core allocation to institutional investors using an indexed approach to core funds combined with listed Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT)s to enhance returns without adding too much volatility and implying an asset allocation overlay. We now have 250 million of fundings or commitments and the strategy is earning the support of a growing list of asset consultants. I wanted to also comment on our short duration preferred strategy. We now have three open end vehicles with the launch of a CCAV and an active ETF over the past year to complement our 1.9 billion open end mutual fund and our 1 billion closed end fund. Our open end vehicles have yields just shy of 6% durations of 2.5 years and investment grade credit profiles of triple B minus. Taxable investors in the US realize an additional 100 basis points of tax equivalent yield relative to corporate bonds of similar duration. Short duration preferreds provide nearly 300 basis points of additional tax equivalent yield to compensate for just three notches of credit quality, moving from A minus to triple B minus. As yields on cash and other fixed income allocations have declined, these strategies are starting to see more investor interest related in our core preferred strategies we saw a return to positive flows in the quarter, perhaps as a substitute for private credit. I wouldn't be surprised to see investors accept a lower headline yield with tax benefits for a portfolio of strong transparent credits dominated by banks, insurance companies and utilities. In the midst of greater uncertainty and less transparency around credit credit quality within private credit, I'll close with a brief update on distribution which we've highlighted as a priority for 2026 and 2027. We've made great Strides on our plan to invest in distribution, including increased coverage of RIAs and expanded international coverage. All key hires have been made, including a new head of Japan, a newly created chief operating officer for distribution, and additional RIA sales roles. We also promoted Brad Ispass to lead wealth and brought in a wealth sales leader on Brad's team. Our approach to expanding the sales team from here will be success based, meaning additions will be tied to organic growth. That concludes our prepared remarks. Julianne, please open the lines for questions.

OPERATOR

Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, please press Star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw any questions, press star one again. Our first question comes from John Dunn from Evercore isi. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

John Dunn

Thank you. First, on the advisory channel you mentioned it's been two straight inflow quarters. Do you think you've moved to kind of a more sustainable place? And is it coming from more existing clients or new ones? And are you seeing potential for clients looking at multiple strategies?

Joe Harvey (Chief Executive Officer)

Thanks, John. Good morning. As we've been talking about for the past three or four quarters, we've seen a improvement in our institutional advisory business as broad conditions have become more favorable, more flexible in investor portfolios, an end toward upping allocations to fixed income, and clients continuing to deal with illiquidity in their private parts of their portfolio. But we now have a very strong pipeline, I think for the third straight quarter at 1.7 billion. I talk about the velocity, meaning in the quarter we were awarded 574 million of new mandates. There was another 45 million that was won and funded in the quarter. And then we also had another 490 million fund in the quarter. So that's good, you know, good velocity and demonstrates that, you know, things have been loosening up in the institutional channel. We also just see more from an intangible perspective, increased activity by clients. It's not a RFP business anymore, but we've seen a couple of large RFPs recently. So combined with the outlook that John laid out for our investment strategies, we're optimistic that the institutional advisory channel will continue to perform better and better.

John Dunn

Got it. Maybe a little more on ETFs. I mean, you know, just could you give a flavor of how you're finding clients, acceptance of the vehicle and are you seeing any cannibalization? And then maybe just could you describe kind of the demand of the different buckets in wealth management and, you know, any potential for any activity from the institutional down the road?

Joe Harvey (Chief Executive Officer)

The tone in active ETFs is very good. You can see that as our flows ramp. And most importantly, it starts with delivering strong performance, which we have done. And the Design of these ETFs are to present our core strategies for distribution considerations. Some of them have some slight differences versus our core strategies, but our performance has been very good. The so called use cases make us very bullish on these vehicles. You know, it starts with the RIAs, many of whom are converting their businesses to use exclusively ETFs compared with open end funds, we're gaining scale. So that allows us to be placed into models. And as I mentioned in my remarks with our real estate vehicle, which is now the largest and what we're best known for, we've achieved platform placement on a major broker dealer provider. So I would say I'm very bullish on this vehicle. Everything that we're seeing validates the decision to invest in this. And as I said, we're going to continue to get all of our core strategies in these vehicles as it relates to institutional interest. They're going to need to scale up. We can see. We've had discussions with different asset consultants about using the vehicles. So I think there are some use cases, but large institutions generally want to have a separate account.

John Dunn

Right, okay. And then you went through the component pieces of private real estate effort. Are you seeing rising demand? And since you know you don't have a lot of legacy assets and you're entering or ramping up in a good part of the cycle, is that a big part of the pitch? And maybe where do you expect demand to come from?

Joe Harvey (Chief Executive Officer)

I'm not sure I understand the question. John, but as it relates to the private real estate business, you know, when you look at private allocations and wealth, real estate has been the laggard. Private credit has been the leader. As I mentioned that inflected in March, we'll see if that continues to play out, infrastructure continues to have good growth. But we believe that based on our views and others views on the real estate cycle, that you could see a rotation into the real estate strategies. We're seeing a little bit of that, but it's still early. Our approach to the wealth channel is that we believe that investors should have an allocation to both listed and private. And we're trying to coach our clients on how to do that and how to optimize those portfolios. With our non traded reit, as I mentioned, we're at the top of the leaderboard in terms of performance and as we gain scale, we believe we'll have the ability to get platformed on more RIA as well as wirehouse platforms in the future.

John Dunn

Yeah, that's what I was driving at. And then maybe just one more, you know, thinking about the theme of rotation of some money moving to non US strategies, You know, global real estate was positive this quarter. Are you seeing any like, interest in diversifying and is that, could that drive positive flows for global real estate this year and next?

Joe Harvey (Chief Executive Officer)

We have been seeing more of that go back a year, year and a half. There weren't a lot of flows into global strategies except for global infrastructure. So I'm talking primarily about global real estate that was primarily related to U.S. exceptionalism and related stock market performance. But as the world has turned, geopolitics have turned and we've started to see better performance in international markets. Broadly, we've seen more interest and flows into our global real estate strategies. So I would expect that to continue and you know, its magnitude, you know, I can't say, but I definitely would expect to see our global portfolios have more interest.

John Dunn

Thank you.

OPERATOR

As a reminder to ask a question, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from Mac Sykes from Gabelli Funds. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Mac Sykes

Oh, great. Good morning everyone. Joe, I wish I wanted to ask a question about sort of historical context of shifts to real estate strategies. And I guess as we think about some of the items you mentioned this morning, when you're looking at educating capital allocators at some of these bigger platforms that do shifts in these models, what are some of the catalysts for that? Is it sort of advisor interest? Is it returns that have just happened? So outperformance of the asset class interest rates? I guess if you could just dig into some of the things we can watch for in anticipation of more sizable allocations to real estate.

John Shea (President and Chief Investment Officer)

Hey Mac, this is John Shea. Well, first of all, of course we're talking with all the intermediaries about real estate, but of course all of our asset classes, you know, including infrastructure preferred and natural resources. But you know, specifically to real estate, it's look, it's a, it's a combination of investors thinking about the interest rate cycle as well as the fundamental or supply and demand cycle. And so I've said a few times that, you know, when you look over the last three or four years, you know, sometimes people would say, oh well, you know, real estate's done poorly because, you know, interest rates are higher. And that's really only half the story. The other reality is that we had too much new supply that got built, so fundamentals weakened. So over the last several years, REIT earnings have probably grown 2, 3, 4% while the S&P was growing 10, 11, 12%. So yes, it's an interest rate story, but it's also a fundamental story. So when they revisit the story today, what they're looking at is the S and P is a lot more expensive from a valuation standpoint than it was three, four years ago. It seems like the earnings growth is beginning to decelerate. And we all know about the market concentration within the S and P and in some cases concerns about, you know, the significant amount of CapEx that's occurring, you know, so there's, you know, how is the S and P looking on a price to earnings basis versus on a free cash flow basis because you know, you know just as well how capital intensive The S&P 500 is is becoming at the top end. So, so some of it is as far as real estate versus broader equities is, valuations look better. The interest rate adjustment has happened. So being in this four to five, four to four and a half percent range is the new normal as I talked about. But what we're also talking to them about is the re acceleration of earnings or fundamentals. So that 2 to 3% growth of REITs will probably be more like 5 or 6 this year, 7 or 8 next year. So I'd say that's, I'd say the fundamental inflection is probably the bigger thing that our investors are focused on. And this kind of goes back to one of the earlier questions on shifts we're seeing on the advisory channel. We've had a lot of conversations with investors for the last few years and I think they understood the valuation story, but they were focused on is today the right day? Why 2024, why 2025, why 2026? And real estate fundamentals are slow moving. They're not going to go from being below average to above average in one quarter. And so it's taken a couple of years. We've digested some of that excess supply and that's why I think the story for 2026 and 2027 is about improving fundamentals and stable interest rates and attractive valuations. And that's why we're seeing some of those shifts, whether it's in the public markets but also within the non traded REIT side. Again, a lot of money went into private credit. But as Joe talked about, as that money is looking for the next opportunity, you're beginning to see it in the Flow data, but we're certainly starting to hear it of a. Wow. Real estate's lagged. Other things have gone up. This seems like a place to pivot back to. So I think we're early in that pivoting process.

Mac Sykes

Thank you. Just one other question on the private credit side, as you compete, I think a lot of the sales channel advisor driven component has been some of the fee structures. With some of these products, you know, coming with pretty large fee structures and incentives to the advisor and with your products actually, you know, much more rationally priced and compelling, I believe. But how do you sort of, you know, compete with that where the advisor incentives maybe a more compelling yield perspective from you and liquidity and all that stuff, but yet they come with, you know, lower advisor incentives in terms of the sales component?

Joe Harvey (Chief Executive Officer)

Well, I'm not too familiar with the advisor incentives that you're talking about, but what we think about every morning when we get up is delivering investment performance and managing risk. So we, as it relates to the private real estate strategy, need to deliver a good total return with a balance between current income and capital appreciation and not take undue risk. So as it relates to the, to the fee structure for that vehicle, we made it very investor friendly compared with the peer group.

Mac Sykes

Thank you. Great quarter, guys.

OPERATOR

We have no further questions. I would like to turn the call back over to Joe Harvey for any closing remarks.

Joe Harvey (Chief Executive Officer)

Well, thank you, Julianne. We look forward to reporting our second quarter results in July. Meantime, if you have any questions, please reach out to Brian Mita and we'll talk to you soon. Thank you.

Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company's SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants' and analysts' statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.