Greenhill's CEO Discusses Q1 2012 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

The trend of our growing advisory revenue faster than the 9 big banks, which are our primary competition has been in place for some time. Coming into 2012, we had grown our advisory revenue 39% over the preceding 33 years. While the aggregate advisory revenue of the big banks group actually fell 17%. We are pleased that this trend towards significantly increased market share remain very much in place in the first quarter.

In terms of the diversity of our revenue base, we focus on breadth of industry coverage, geographic diversity and offering many types of advice outside of traditional M&A advisory including financing and restructuring advisory and capital advisory or fund placement. It's the breadth of our revenue sources that it's allowed us to outperform expectations each of the past four quarters.

In the first quarter, we again earned almost half our revenue outside North America. Australia made a smaller contribution than in recent quarters, although the strength of our franchise there is highlighted by our firm recently receiving the award of Australia Independent Bank of the year from ACQ Finance Magazine. But Europe showed significant improvement, despite what are still very difficult market conditions there.

By industry, we also showed good breadth. As listed in our press release, we completed 10 transactions in the first quarter across the range of industries and this industry breadth is similar to the range of industries that are active in our pipeline of ongoing advisory assignments.

Lastly, in addition to solid M&A advisory revenue, we had increased contribution from financing and restructuring advisory during the quarter and a moderate contribution from capital advisory, which we expect will continue to grow as a contributor over the course of the year or beyond. While it is too early in the year to predict how these trends will play out over the course of 2012, based on what we're seeing today, we expect the diversity of our revenue to continue across geographies, industries and types of advice.

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