Cohen & Company Inc. (COHN) on Q1 2021 Results - Earnings Call Transcript
Operator: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Cohen & Company First Quarter 2021 Earnings Call. My name is Stephanie, and I will be your operator for today. Before begin, Cohen & Company would like to remind everyone that some of the statements the company makes during this call may contain forward-looking statements under the applicable securities laws. These statements may involve risks and uncertainties that could cause the company’s actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in such forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements made during this call are made only as of the date of this call, and the company undertakes no obligation to update such forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. Cohen & Company advises you to read the cautionary note regarding forward-looking statements and its earnings release, and the most recent annual report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC.
Lester Brafman: Thank you, Stephanie, and thank you, everyone, for joining us for our first quarter 2021 earnings call. With me on the call is Joe Pooler, our CFO. To say the least, we are extremely pleased with this quarter’s results. This quarter shows the enormous earnings potential of this platform, and we continue to build adjacent business lines with expectation of growing consistent revenue streams down the road. In the first quarter, our net trading revenue was $19.2 million, thanks to strong performance from our mortgage, repo, and corporate trading groups, and our Gestation repo book grew to $4.1 billion, up from $3.3 billion at the end of 2020. Also in the quarter, our second company-sponsored SPAC, INSU Acquisition II, closes merger agreement with Metromile, contributing $33.4 million to adjusted pre-tax income. We were excited to announce the hiring of several top investment bankers with broad experience in M&A, advisory, private capital markets, equity capital markets and PIPE transactions. We expect that this added expertise will create another source of revenue to complement and continued growth of our SPAC franchise, and contribute to our overall operating leverage. Looking ahead, we are excited to build on our momentum as we grow our business while remaining committed to executing on our strategic priorities, with a continued focus on proactively managing our risk and capital structure, as well as enhancing stockholder value. Now I will turn the call over to Joe to walk through this quarter’s financial highlights in more detail. Joe?
Joe Pooler: Thank you, Lester. We’ll start with our statement of operations. Our net income attributable to Cohen & Company, Inc. shareholders was $9.4 million for the quarter or $6.98 per fully diluted share compared to $14.8 million for the prior quarter or $7.64 per fully diluted share and net loss of $3.1 million for the prior year quarter or $2.70 per fully diluted share. Our adjusted pretax income was $37.6 million for the quarter compared to $23.8 million for the prior quarter and adjusted pretax loss of $4.1 million for the prior year quarter. As Lester mentioned, in the first quarter, our second-company sponsored SPAC INSU Acquisition Corp. II closed its merger with Metromile contributing $33.4 million to the quarters adjusted pretax income. Note that adjusted pretax income is not a measure recognized under U.S. generally accepted accounting principles. See our disclosures, calculations and reconciliations surrounding adjusted pretax income in our earnings release.
Lester Brafman: Thanks, Joe. Please direct any offline investor questions to Joe Pooler at (215) 701-8952, or via email to investorrelations@cohencompany.com. The contact information can also be found at the bottom of our earnings release. Operator, you can now open the call lines for questions if there any.
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Operator: At this time, there are no questions in queue. I’ll turn it back over to management.
Lester Brafman: Thank you all for joining us today. And we look forward to speaking next quarter. Thank you very much.
Operator: Thank you. This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.
