派樂威伯 (PWP) 2026 年第三季法說會：營收大增 53%，在手訂單擴增

重點摘要

• Perella Weinberg Partners (PWP) 公布 2026 年第三季營收為 2.51 億美元，年增 53%、季增 61%。今年以來累計營收達 5.57 億美元，年增 5%。
• 在消費、工業、能源及金融機構等領域活動帶動下，併購 (M&A) 營收較 2025 年第三季近乎翻倍，且今年以來累計成長超過 40%。
• 截至本季末，已宣佈及待審核的積壓案件量近乎去年同期的 3 倍。截至法說會舉行時，已入帳加上已宣佈及待審核的積壓總額增加約 30%。
• 第三季營收包含 5,500 萬美元 與第四季頭幾天完成的交易相關金額，依據適用會計準則已於第三季認列。
• 今年以來累計調整後薪酬費用率為 67%，符合管理層的全年目標。前九個月調整後非薪酬費用下降 14% 至 1.06 億美元。
• PWP 在本季結束時擁有 1.5 億美元現金且無債務。該公司宣佈發放季配息每股 0.07 美元。

核心財務數據

業務與營運表現

併購 (M&A) 為主要成長動力。該業務營收較去年同期近乎翻倍，且今年以來累計成長超過 40%。管理層特別強調消費、工業、能源及金融機構等領域表現強勁。

與創紀錄的 2025 年基期相比，債務重組與負債管理營收有所下滑。然而，公司表示仍積極參與大型且複雜的案件，且儲備案源持續累積。

營運廣度亦有所提升。付費客戶數量年增 50%，而費用超過 500 萬美元 的案件近乎成長 80%。今年以來累計公佈的交易案量超過去年同期水準，且委任書下的毛積壓案量成長 40%。

PWP 於 9 月 1 日完成對 Gleacher Shacklock 的收購。整合後的英國業務在交易完成後記錄了 6 筆已宣佈的交易案，管理層並指出與客戶對話加速，為此戰略併購的合理解性提供了初步支持。

該公司在 2026 年期間新增了 14 位合夥人與 13 位董事總經理，其中包括 Gleacher Shacklock 團隊。超過 30% 的合夥人在過去三年內加入，管理層表示新進銀行家的生產力持續提升，為業務動能帶來貢獻。

管理層營運展望

管理層維持其 67% 的全年調整後薪酬費用率目標，即使在部分交易延宕至 2027 年的情境下亦然。

PWP 繼續預期全年調整後非薪酬費用較 2025 年呈個位數百分比下滑。不含 RSU 歸屬帶來的效益，管理層預計 2026 年剩餘時間的基本調整後稅率介於 30% 至 35% 之間。

管理層表示，部分已宣佈及待審核交易將延至 2027 年。多數交易預計將在未來 一至二個季度 內轉化為營收，完成交易的風險有限，但存在特定交易時程上的不確定性。

風險與關注焦點

• 營收認列時程：計入第四季初完成交易的 5,500 萬美元增加了第三季營收，而其他已宣佈交易可能推遲至 2027 年。
• 利率與估值：管理層表示，市場能夠承受聯邦基金利率再漸進上升 50 至 75 個基點，但大幅波動可能對估值及高槓桿交易產生更重大影響。
• 私募股權敏感度：相比戰略買家，財務贊助者（私募股權）可能更容易受到更高融資成本與持續估值差距的影響。
• 業務組合：債務重組與負債管理營收仍低於 2025 年的歷史高位。
• 能源領域活動：管理層形容 2026 年能源領域表現較為波動，但對未來幾季的客戶參與度與案件儲備趨勢持正面看法。
• 資本配置：由於 PWP 優先進行包括 Gleacher Shacklock 在內的戰略投資，股票買回暫時受到限制。

分析師問答亮點

管理層將積壓案件量的擴增主要歸因於客戶追求戰略機會、近年招募人才效益顯現以及併購的貢獻，而非總體經濟環境所致。PWP 預計部分已宣佈及待審核的積壓案件將在 2027 年初完成交易。

關於成長戰略，管理層表示公司仍專注於透過選擇性招聘、內部升遷及偶爾的併購來擴大規模。擴大客戶覆蓋範圍是首要目標，並輔以選擇性補充產品服務。拓展地理區域將面臨更高的門檻，因為客戶通常希望顧問隨其出差前往各地，而非在每個市場都設立據點。

在併購方面，管理層指出 10 億至 50 億美元 的交易區間特別具有吸引力。管理層估計該市場每年可包含近 1,000 筆交易（相比之下，2026 年超過 100 億美元的交易約 70 筆），同時在賣方委任案中亦能提供豐厚的顧問費及基於結果的經濟收益。

管理層表示，利率漸進上升比突然大幅調升更容易因應。戰略買家對利率的敏感度較低，因為與財務贊助者相比，許多戰略買家擁有健全的資產負債表、潛在的協同效應以及更強的支付能力。

該公司未觀察到有公司因美國中期選舉而加速或延後交易。管理層表示，客戶並未花費大量時間討論中期選舉對戰略的影響。

完整法說會逐字稿

完整財報電話會議逐字稿

管理層陳述

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the Perella Weinberg Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Kendyl Corber, Head of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Kendyl Corber

Thank you, operator, and welcome all. Joining me today are Andrew Bednar, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman; and Alex Gottschalk, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to note that this call may contain forward-looking statements, including Perella Weinberg's expectations of future financial and business performance and conditions and industry outlook.

Forward-looking statements are inherently subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements and are not guarantees of future events or performance. Please refer to Perella Weinberg's most recent SEC filings for a discussion of certain of these risks and uncertainties. The forward-looking statements are based on our current beliefs and expectations, and the firm undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.

During the call, there will also be a discussion of some metrics, which are non-GAAP financial measures, which management believes are relevant in assessing the financial performance of the business. Perella Weinberg has reconciled these items to the most comparable GAAP measures in the press release included within today's Form 8-K, which can be found on the company's website.

I will now turn the call over to Andrew Bednar to discuss our results.

Andrew Bednar

Thank you, Kendyl, and good morning. Today, we reported third quarter revenues of $251 million, up 53% from a year ago and up 61% from the second quarter, bringing our year-to-date revenues to $557 million, up 5% from last year. As we discussed last quarter, we anticipated that our revenue would be back half weighted, and that is exactly what we're seeing.

The momentum in our business has moved from pipeline into announcements and it is steadily converting into revenue. Our third quarter revenues were our highest since the third quarter of 2024, led by our M&A business, which nearly doubled from the third quarter of last year and is up over 40% year-to-date. We saw particular strength in our consumer, industrials, energy and financial institutions businesses.

In restructuring and liability management, revenues are down against a record 2025, but we remain engaged on large and complex situations, and that pipeline continues to build. The 2 metrics we previously highlighted as the strongest leading indicators of our business also continue to strengthen. Our announced and pending backlog at quarter end was up nearly 3x from a year ago. And our total booked plus announced and pending backlog as of today is up about 30% year-over-year.

Finally, the number of announcements year-to-date is up compared to last year, and our current gross backlog under engagement letters is up 40% versus this time last year. Importantly, our strong performance is broad-based. In the third quarter, our fee-paying client count was up 50% from a year ago, and the number of fee events exceeding $5 million was up nearly 80%. This reflects our investments in internal talent development and our relentless focus on expanding client coverage.

On September 1, we closed our acquisition of Gleacher Shacklock. Our combined U.K. business has experienced strong momentum out of the gate with 6 announced transactions since September, and we see accelerating client dialogue, both demonstrating early validation of our combination thesis.

Taken together, the strength of our backlog, the breadth of our client base and the level of activity across our business give us confidence heading into year-end and into 2027. Developing and attracting top talent remains central to how we grow the firm. This year, we have added 14 partners and 13 managing directors, including the Gleacher Shacklock team, and we intend to continue adding talent that broadens our client coverage and expands our product capabilities, consistent with our strategy and our brand.

We remain very excited about our path, and we recognize our duty to you, our shareholders, a responsibility that we take very seriously. Although we regularly evaluate ways to improve our position, we have never made a decision to sell the firm nor have we ever initiated any sale process. We have been building this firm for the long term. We are only 20 years in, and we continue to see tremendous opportunities in front of us.

With that, I'll now turn the call over to Alex to review our financial results and capital management in more detail.

Alexandra Gottschalk

Thank you, Andrew. Our third quarter revenues of $251 million included $55 million related to closings that occurred within the first few days of the fourth quarter, which in accordance with relevant accounting principles were recorded in the third quarter.

Our adjusted compensation margin for the first 9 months was 67%, in line with last year and with our full year target. The third quarter margin of 62.5% reflects bringing our year-to-date accrual in line with that target.

Our adjusted non-compensation expense of $37 million for the quarter was roughly flat with last year. The $6 million increase from last quarter largely reflects the insurance recovery that benefited the second quarter.

For the 9-month period, adjusted noncompensation expenses totaled $106 million, down 14% from last year, driven primarily by lower professional fees. We remain on track for a single-digit percent decrease in full year adjusted non-compensation expense versus 2025.

Our third quarter adjusted tax rate was 29.5% on a net converted basis. Excluding the benefit from RSU vesting, we continue to expect our underlying adjusted tax rate to be in the low to mid-30% range for the remainder of 2026.

Turning to capital management. Year-to-date, we have returned $88 million to equity holders through the net settlement of RSUs, dividends and distributions and open market repurchases. Share repurchase activity has been temporarily limited as we have prioritized deploying capital towards strategic investments, including the acquisition of Gleacher Shacklock.

At the end of the third quarter, we had 79.5 million shares of Class A common stock and 18 million partnership units outstanding. Finally, we closed the quarter with $150 million in cash and no debt. This morning, we announced a quarterly dividend of $0.07 per share.

With that, operator, please open the line for questions.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question today comes from Devin Ryan with Citizens Bank.

分析師問答

Devin Ryan

A quick question. You gave some good stats on kind of the backlog. And just trying to think about after obviously, a good quarter here and I think playing out as you guys have framed kind of back half weighted, the announced and pending backlog, I think you said is nearly 3x last year's level and total booked plus announced and pending backlog is up 30%.

So just trying to understand kind of the expected conversion of those 2 backlog in terms of length. Is it over 2 quarters, 3 quarters, 4 quarters? And then what gives you kind of the greater visibility into 2027 compared to this time last year?

Andrew Bednar

Sure. Thanks, Devin. So not all of that announced and pending will hit in 2026. So some of that will move into '27. There's not a whole lot in there that has any closing risk. It just has timing differences deal by deal. And we expect to take all of that into revenue over time.

I don't think there's much in there that will take 3 or 4 quarters, but there's certainly 1 to 2 quarters out for sure, which is why we have conviction going into '27 because some of that build in A&P, for sure, will close in the early part of '27.

Devin Ryan

Got it. And if you could just elaborate, Andrew, like what has been driving that build? Is it just a function of the specific corporate clients or sponsor clients you're working with? Or is it partners that have been on the platform that are becoming more productive? Or what would you -- or just the environment maybe getting better over the last 6 months, what would you attribute some of that build to?

Andrew Bednar

I don't think it's much on the macro backdrop. That's been quite positive outside of, I would say, energy, which is obviously for most of us has been a bit of a choppy year given things going on in the Middle East. And I think we're starting to see clearly now through the next couple of quarters look good in terms of the engagement and the pipeline. So we feel good about energy going into '27.

It's more just clients that are taking advantage of opportunities. I think we tend to be a little more strategic weighted. And although we've built with a number of more recent hires we've made, it is more about getting our bankers on the platform. It does take time to ramp. We still have more than 30% of our partnership that's here less than 3 years, and that just takes time to hit the stride and get into a rhythm and get into a transaction cadence with their group of clients.

So I think that's just something we continue to see as a natural evolution of the business when you're in the state that we're in where we're hiring, but also where we've made obviously 2 acquisitions in the last 2 years, and then we've got strong internal development. So all of that comes online over time, Devin.

Devin Ryan

Got it. Okay. That's great. And then this is kind of interconnected to that, but you reiterated that you're building Perella Weinberg for the long term and also regularly evaluate ways to improve the firm's position. I think most people on the call here were following the press over the last month or so. It sounds like from your comments without being explicit that it wasn't initiated on your side.

But maybe as you just think about the stand-alone platform over the next 3 to 5 years, how do you think about the current scale of the business, where you want to add additional scale or capability that you think could make the biggest difference and whether that's by product, geography or client channel. You just hit on a little bit of it, but just love to hear a little bit more about that. I appreciate you probably can't say too much more?

Andrew Bednar

Sure. So we're still in our scaling operation here. The first 10 years of the firm was really about starting a company and the second 10 years was about refining the business model. And in this decade, we're really focused on scaling what we know works and works well. And so it will be a combination of hiring and brick-by-brick development. We'll have internal development into partners from Managing Director. And we'll tend to look at some acquisitions from time to time as we have with both the Devon Park transaction and more recently with Gleacher, both of which are working very well for us.

In terms of the specific areas of growth and where we see opportunity, part of the attraction of our firm is the scale. We are small. We have a brand that is much, much larger than our business, and that has always represented the unique opportunity to be part of our building effort. It will come in the form of more client coverage. That's the primary goal we have is to expand our client coverage. But also, we have found that adding product capability selectively is very attractive and that our clients have embraced that.

I think geographically, is probably we'll be a bit more cautious, and that would have to be very compelling to meet our bar to do something geographically because our clients don't really ask us to be present in local markets. They ask us to travel with them. So more likely, we'll be including investments to, again, add client coverage and to add some product capability.

Devin Ryan

Got it. And can you just double-click a little bit into the recruiting conversations and kind of expectations for partner additions? I know everybody is focused on that and kind of where you are right now and what you expect over the next 12 to 18 months? And I'll pass it on after this.

Andrew Bednar

Yes. Look, 2 years ago, we hired 12 partners. Last year, it was 5. This year, we're at 14. It's a combination of promotion and single hires as well as acquisition. We will continue to look for opportunities, again, to expand our client coverage and expand our product capabilities. The hiring cycle, I think, is in a good place. I feel very good about the conversations we're having. And I would expect us to continue to add talent, again, where we think the bankers operating in a way that's consistent with our brand and our values and covering markets and clients that we don't currently cover. It has to be additive for us, not something that's going to be duplicative with other efforts that we have.

Operator

We'll go next to Alex Bond with KBW.

Alexander Bond

I wanted to start on the comp side. Positive to see the deleverage there in the quarter and you're now at the 67% target for the year-to-date accrual. But curious how sensitive that 67% target is for the full year, if you were to see some deal slippage into the first half of '27.

Earlier this week, I think one of the larger deals in your pipeline that the expected close on that moved to early '27 from was previously later this year. So I just wanted to double-click there and get some commentary on that?

Andrew Bednar

Sure. Based on all the modeling we're doing and our expectation about where we're going to land at year-end, we're still committed and very focused on 67% as our full year comp ratio.

Alexander Bond

Okay. Great. Very clear. And then, Andrew, just would be great to get your expectations around large-cap strategic activity in 2027. Obviously, the pipeline statistics that you gave very helpful and suggest some broadening momentum for the platform.

But just curious if you're still seeing a very healthy level of dialogue in that area specifically? And then maybe just taking a step further, do you think that the current or year-to-date activity levels in this area are sustainable?

Andrew Bednar

Yes. Look, in the mega cap above $10 billion level, there's going to be 70 transactions probably this year. So while it's a large market in terms of dollar volume and it takes up a lot of press time, in terms of number of transactions, it just isn't that many. And so that market is quite narrow. We do like participating in that market. But the bigger market for us is really $1 billion to $5 billion, where you're going to have probably close to 1,000 transactions and where we get very significant fees and we often have sell-side transactions where we have good alignment and incentives with our clients where we can earn additional fees for outcome-based projects.

And so those are the areas of the market that I think are most exciting. I think that has a lot of legs. I think we're sort of a natural hedge to asset inflation. So as you look at markets and moving up and valuations moving up, we're still seeing very healthy fee levels in that $1 billion to $5 billion segment where percentages are up pretty significantly in terms of sell-side fees versus where the market was in 2020, '21. So we're feeling very good about that particular market segment with respect to volume, but also with respect to fee realization.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We'll go next to James Yaro with Goldman Sachs.

James Yaro

I was hoping you might be able to dig in on 2 different macro topics. I'll ask them, the first one, and then we can come back to the second one on the other. But the first one is just on the impact of higher rates on your business and in which parts of the franchise might those impacts be felt and in which ways?

Andrew Bednar

I think it depends on how we get to higher rates. I think that path is a very clear one that we will likely be in a higher rate environment in the next 12 months. Right now, we're sitting at a 3.75% to 4% Fed funds target. If you look back at a market like in 2007, which was a very robust M&A market, Fed funds were 4.5%. So I think you have still a lot of room to absorb higher rates. But what markets don't like and what will impact valuations more violently is if we have a gap step-up in rates.

And so I think as long as we're on a trajectory versus something that's more of a violent move up, I think the markets will absorb another 50 to 75 basis points of Fed funds increase. And that will mostly impact more highly levered transactions. In some cases, it will be private equity in not all cases, there are some corporates that also have more levered balance sheets. It's really though the combination of rates and the impact on valuation. It's not the availability of capital. There's a surfeit of capital in the marketplace. That's not really the issue. It's more of a valuation issue, and there are still gaps in valuation that I think need to be that need to be reduced in order for transactions to increase in a meaningful way within the private equity community.

Strategics are less sensitive. Most of our clients have very healthy balance sheets. They see a moment of market opportunity here. They have synergies. There's an ability to pay that usually will outstrip what a financial sponsor might be willing to pay. So for our business, again, a bit more weighted to corporates, we feel good.

But we have an increasing amount of our bankers that are very focused on target-rich areas for private equity. So we have some exposure there, again, if rates really gap up, but I don't see that as the path. I see a pretty healthy flow of activity within the PE world, both buy side and sell side as well as some amount of liquidity structuring transactions, including continuation vehicles in that arena.

James Yaro

Okay. That's helpful. On a separate bigger picture topic, how much are the midterms coming up in boardrooms or with sponsors? And what in your view could the result of these elections mean for deal activity?

Andrew Bednar

I've not heard really much at all other than personal conversations about midterms and impact and what could happen. We haven't seen any evidence of companies either accelerating or delaying because of midterms. I think there's a base case out there and most people are following that base case about rates.

If there's a surprise, then we'll have an adjustment that all of us will need to make if there's a surprise to the base case. But I haven't seen and we haven't seen of the firm or clients spending a lot of time on discussing midterms and the impact on their strategy.

Operator

This concludes the Q&A portion of today's call. I would now like to turn the call back over to Andrew Bednar for any additional or closing remarks.

Andrew Bednar

Okay. Thank you, operator. Thank you, everyone, for joining today. I want to also extend my appreciation to my teammates around the world who have been working tirelessly with our clients and I think producing terrific results here this quarter. We will look forward to speaking to you on our fourth quarter call in 2027. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes the Perella Weinberg Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call and Webcast. You may disconnect your line at this time, and have a wonderful day.