Q3 2024 Houlihan Lokey Inc Earnings Call
Participants
Charles Yamarone
J. Lindsey Alley; MD & CFO; Houlihan Lokey, Inc.
Scott Lee Beiser; CEO & Director; Houlihan Lokey, Inc.
Alexander Scott Jenkins; Research Analyst; JMP Securities LLC, Research Division
Brendan James O'Brien; Research Analyst; Wolfe Research, LLC
Brennan Hawken; Executive Director and Equity Research Analyst of Financials; UBS Investment Bank, Research Division
James Edwin Yaro; Research Analyst; Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., Research Division
James Francis Mitchell; Research Analyst; Seaport Research Partners
Kenneth Brooks Worthington; MD; JPMorgan Chase & Co, Research Division
Michael C. Brown; MD; Keefe, Bruyette, & Woods, Inc., Research Division
Ryan Michael Kenny; Equity Analyst; Morgan Stanley, Research Division
Presentation
Operator
Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Houlihan Lokey's Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2024 Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) Please note that this conference call is being recorded today, February 1, 2024.
I'll now turn the call over to the company.
Charles Yamarone
Thank you, operator, and hello, everyone. By now, everyone should have access to our third quarter fiscal year 2024 earnings release, which can be found on the Houlihan Lokey website at www.hl.com in the Investor Relations section.
Before we begin our formal remarks, we need to remind everyone that the discussion today will include forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements, which are usually identified by use of words such as will, expect, anticipate, should or other similar phrases, are not guarantees of future performance. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from what we expect, and therefore, you should exercise caution when interpreting and relying on them.
We refer all of you to our recent SEC filings for a more detailed discussion of the risks that could impact our future operating results and financial condition. We encourage investors to review our regulatory filings, including the Form 10-Q for the quarter ended December 31, 2023, when it is filed with the SEC.
During today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe can be useful in evaluating the company's financial performance. These measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for our financial results prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is available in our earnings release and our investor presentation on the hl.com website.
Hosting the call today, we have Scott Beiser, Houlihan Lokey's Chief Executive Officer; and Lindsey Alley, Chief Financial Officer of the company. They will provide some opening remarks, and then we will open the call to questions.
With that, I'll turn the call over to Scott.
Scott Lee Beiser
Thank you, Christopher. Welcome, everyone, to our third quarter fiscal 2024 earnings call. We ended the quarter with revenues of $511 million and adjusted earnings per share of $1.22. Revenues were up 12%, and adjusted earnings per share were up 7% compared to the same quarter last year.
Our third fiscal quarter produced our first $500 million revenue quarter in 2 years. We've now reported 2 consecutive quarters of revenue increases, with a 9% increase in our third fiscal quarter when compared to our second fiscal quarter. All 3 business segments reported their highest quarterly results for the fiscal year, and all 3 businesses enter our fourth fiscal quarter with continued momentum.
This quarter, we closed our previously announced acquisition of 7 Mile Advisors, an IT services business investment banking firm, adding 4 new MDs to our Corporate Finance business. We also announced the pending acquisition of Triago, a private funds investment banking firm. Upon the completion of this acquisition, we believe our private funds group will be one of the few platforms with a fully integrated advisory business, offering clients primary, secondary, directs and GP advisory services on a global basis.
In addition to these acquisitions, we hired 4 new managing directors in our Corporate Finance and Financial and Valuation Advisory business this quarter. Our Corporate Finance business produced $311 million in revenues for the quarter. New business activity remains strong, while the overall confidence of our managing directors in closing active engagements and attracting new business continues to improve as we enter a new calendar year.
While the M&A market has shown signs of steady improvements for several months, we believe that we are still well below what would be considered normal market conditions. Consequently, we expect to see continued steady improvement in our Corporate Finance business throughout the calendar year when compared to the same periods in the previous year.
Two positive signs of improved market conditions are the strength of year-to-date results in our capital markets business and recent strength in the technology sector. Historically, our capital markets business has been a leading indicator to improving M&A market conditions. Additionally, our technology business, which experienced one of the largest revenue declines over the last 2 years as a result of very weak industry fundamentals, has experienced a meaningful increase in new business and transaction closings across geographies and is a significant component of backlog leading into calendar 2024.
Our Financial Restructuring business produced quarterly revenues of $129 million, the highest since the COVID crisis. The business environment for restructuring remains very strong. New business activity has improved in the U.S. since last quarter, and we are now seeing strength in Financial Restructuring across all geographies. While we expect our restructuring business to remain at elevated levels for the foreseeable future, we remind everyone that our Financial Restructuring quarterly results can be lumpy based on the timing of when certain transactions close.
Financial and Valuation Advisory produced $72 million in quarterly revenues. This is only slightly above last quarter's results, but similar to Corporate Finance, shows a consistent trend in quarterly improvements over the fiscal year. Our market-neutral service lines continue to show strong results as we add new clients globally, enabling us to expand our FVA business into new geographies. Our service lines tied to the M&A markets continue to slightly lag our M&A business, but we expect them to eventually catch up.
I would like to end today's comments by celebrating the success of our 3 business segments with accolades similar to those I've announced for the last 9 years. In calendar 2023, Houlihan Lokey was ranked the #1 investment banking firm globally for all M&A transactions based on transaction volume. We are again ranked as the #1 investment banking firm globally for all financial restructuring transactions, both in terms of value and volume. And finally, we ranked as the most active fairness opinion provider globally when measured over the last 25 years.
Congratulations to every employee at Houlihan Lokey who worked hard to achieve these accolades, and thank you to all our investors who, throughout the cycles, have continued to support our efforts to become a trusted adviser to our clients and a leader in investment banking worldwide.
And with that, I'll turn the call over to Lindsey.
J. Lindsey Alley
Thank you, Scott. Revenues in Corporate Finance were $311 million for the quarter, up 6% when compared to the same quarter last year. We closed 117 transactions this quarter compared to 125 in the same period last year. Although our transaction count decreased, our average transaction fee was higher for the quarter versus the same quarter last year.
Financial Restructuring revenues were $129 million for the quarter, a 30% increase versus the same period last year. We closed 30 transactions in the quarter compared to 28 in the same period last year, and our average transaction fee on closed deals increased. In Financial and Valuation Advisory, revenues were $72 million for the quarter, a 9% increase from the same period last year. We had 926 fee events during the quarter compared to 876 in the same period last year.
Turning to expenses. Our adjusted compensation expenses were $314 million for the quarter versus $281 million for the same quarter last year. Our only adjustment was $9.7 million for deferred retention payments related to certain acquisitions. Our adjusted compensation expense ratio for the third quarter in both fiscal 2024 and fiscal 2023 was 61.5%. We do expect to maintain our long-term target of 61.5% for our adjusted compensation expense ratio.
Our adjusted noncompensation expenses were $82 million for the quarter, an increase of $10 million over the same period last year. This resulted in an adjusted noncompensation expense ratio of 16.1% for the quarter compared to an adjusted noncompensation expense ratio of 15.9% for the same quarter last year. On a per employee basis, our adjusted noncompensation expense was $31,000 this quarter versus $29,000 for the same quarter last year. We typically see some seasonality in our adjusted noncompensation expenses with the second half modestly higher than the first half. We expect that trend to continue in our final fiscal quarter this year.
For the quarter, we adjusted out of our noncompensation expenses $1.6 million in noncash acquisition-related amortization $4.3 million for acquisition-related costs, primarily related to the Triago acquisition, which is expected to close during our first quarter of fiscal 2025, and $2.6 million pertaining to professional fees associated with streamlining our global organizational structure, which we refer to as Project Solo.
Regarding Project Solo, we have completed 12 acquisitions since we went public in August 2015. And with most of these acquisitions, we have acquired multiple legal entities. Since the acquisition of GCA, the number of legal entities has become burdensome and costly enough that we decided to streamline our legal structure globally to simplify our operations and reduce our costs. We expect this project to last through fiscal year 2025 and will result in charges to both noncompensation and tax expense, which we plan to adjust out as nonrecurring.
Our adjusted other income and expense increased for the quarter to income of approximately $6 million versus income of approximately $2.2 million in the same period last year. The improvement in this category was primarily due to an increase in interest income generated by our investment securities.
Our adjusted effective tax rate for the quarter was 30.3% compared to 24.6% for the same quarter last year. Our taxes increased year-over-year due to adjustments for federal and state tax returns filed during the quarter and increased taxes due to our foreign operations. Overall, our effective tax rate has also increased for the year-to-date period as a result of the increase in corporate tax in the U.K. from 19% to 25% effective April 1, 2023. Due to our increasing mix of foreign revenues and increase in the U.K. corporate tax rate, we are slightly increasing the long-term range for our effective tax rate to between 28% and 30%, up from between 27% and 29%.
Turning to the balance sheet. As of the quarter end, we had approximately $591 million of unrestricted cash and equivalents and investment securities. In this past quarter, we did not repurchase any shares. We continue to take a conservative approach to share repurchases as we are prioritizing balance sheet strength and flexibility to be able to take advantage of acquisition and hiring opportunities in this market.
And with that, operator, we can open the line for questions.
Question and Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) And our first question comes from the line of Ken Worthington with JPMorgan.
Kenneth Brooks Worthington
Maybe first on restructuring, the MD count, I think, fell from 60 to 52 this quarter. It's not a decline, I think, we've seen since you've been a public company. And assuming my data is correct, what sort of happened here?
Scott Lee Beiser
We took a number of our people that were in what I'll call our oil and gas industry sector, which historically was built through doing restructuring and think back through the distress that oil and gas had over the years. And today, that group of people, we believe, are doing far more work on the healthy environment than on the distressed environment. So we moved those people into the category of Corporate Finance. So it was not departures of people leaving the firm. It was really just an internal shift of categorizing these people, focusing at this juncture more on Corporate Finance activities than Financial Restructuring activities.
J. Lindsey Alley
And just to follow up on that, there were a total of 8 MDs, and the revenues don't change. This is just a movement of personnel. The revenue profile of restructuring versus Corporate Finance will be booked in the areas going forward in which the work is performed.
Kenneth Brooks Worthington
Okay. Awesome. You even got the follow-up question there. Okay. For my other follow-up, in terms of financing, it sounds like the syndicated loan market, at least in the U.S., has opened back up. What are you hearing and seeing in terms of deal financings, I guess, both for smaller companies or smaller deals and larger deals? And then talk to sort of U.S. versus non-U.S. If I'm right and we are an improvement in financing, is it sort of proportional throughout different geographies? Or is it improving more so or less so in any particular region?
Scott Lee Beiser
So a couple of responses to your questions. One, we've seen, for at least several quarters, I think, more of an open market for mid-market sized transactions than the larger syndicated deals. So part of it is a size issue. I do also think that probably the U.S. is leading the way. It still has a healthier economy, a much broader-based capital environment than in Europe or parts of Asia. So I'd say we do see some increased strength in the U.S. versus Europe or some of the other places. But things are opening up slowly but surely at an increased pace, I'd say, month by month and quarter by quarter, at least during calendar 2023.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Devin Ryan with JMP Securities.
Alexander Scott Jenkins
Scott and Lindsey, this is Alex Jenkins stepping in for Devin. I guess just to start on sponsors. They've been really absent from the market for the last calendar year, had their slowest share of announcements, I think, since 2013. So what is the tone that you're getting from sponsors right now? And how is that comparing to the tone from your corporate clients?
Scott Lee Beiser
You're correct, obviously, in the total number or percentage importance of financials, sponsors versus strategics, has weighed more towards the strategic end during this tougher time period. We are seeing more activity in financial sponsors. I'd say a couple of things are happening.
One is interest rates have come down a bit. Spreads have tightened up a bit. I think each and every month or quarter that there has been some, if you might, I guess, hibernation private equity activity. They do run into eventual time lines, for a variety of reasons, that will get them to start considering doing transactions. And we continue to see more dialogue. We are still finding the time frame from conversations to getting hired, to getting closed is still longer than what we might say has been normal over the last decade, but the financial sponsor business environment has been increasing over the last several quarters.
Alexander Scott Jenkins
Okay. Great. And then just one follow-up. You kind of touched on this in your prepared remarks. On the M&A side, are you seeing a lot of pent-up activity starting to move forward, which could, in theory, create like a coil spring for the business? Or do you see a recovery as more of a slow build even if conditions remain favorable?
Scott Lee Beiser
The answer is probably somewhere in between. I don't think we're in a coiled spring where there's a lot of pent-up demand that, for some variety of reasons, needed -- gets accomplished in a short-term basis. But I'd say things are building at an increasing pace. We still do not think we're at, as we described it, at a normal level. And then history would show eventually, you'll go to something that is more robust than a normal level, and you swing back downwards once again.
And so things have been improving. I'm not sure I would use the word exactly slow, but it's not a coiled spring ready to pounce. And then we don't expect to see what we saw probably from summer of 2020 all the way through calendar 2021.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Brennan Hawken with UBS.
Brennan Hawken
So it looks like as far as Corporate Finance goes, you guys have been in this sort of revenue range of about $250 million to $300 million. This quarter came in a little better than that. And we -- it seems as though the commentary around the outlook seems to be improving. So are we at a place where we -- as long as the environment remains constructive, we can begin to start thinking about how to grow in what a growth trajectory would look like within Corporate Finance? Or is it too early to be calling that?
Scott Lee Beiser
What we'd say is we're in step 1, which is to get back to normal levels, which is to increase the number of opportunities per banker, increase the percentage of deals that close and shrink the time to close. We think that there are net more tailwinds than headwinds to make that happen. So we do think it's in a growing and escalating environment. I think the question we would have is really the speed that it will take to get to normal and what does that trajectory look like, but we do think we're operating at a more buoyant level than we were last couple of quarters last year or 2.
Brennan Hawken
Got it. And then when we think about -- previously, you guys had indicated that the MD headcount, I believe, was expected to be pretty stable in the fiscal year within Corp Fin. Did that expectation for stability include the expectation of those 5 oil -- energy bankers moving into Corporate Finance? Or is that exclusive of that recategorization?
Scott Lee Beiser
I'm not sure we sliced that specific when we mentioned this maybe a couple of quarters ago. I mean we have approximately 220 client-facing bankers in Corporate Finance in the way we count it. And I think what we said is we always plan to do some acquisitions that we don't control the timing of those. I think we believe we've been in a normal hiring environment. We have not massively increased our amount of hiring nor slowed down our hiring, and then we have a, I call it, a normal but still relatively small percentage of departures for a variety of reasons.
And based upon all that, we didn't think there would be much change in our headcount in Corporate Finance, at least through fiscal '24, and I think that's going to pan out. But while we have been talking about the potential move of the oil and gas team internally for a while, like I said, I don't have a specific thought I'd said when we really penciled some stuff out a couple of quarters ago where we included or not including, I'd say, ultimately, the 8 people that Lindsey mentioned is still kind of just a rounding percentage in the totality of Corporate Finance's size.
Brennan Hawken
Okay. I wasn't trying to nitpick there. Just curious.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Steven Chubak with Wolfe Research.
Brendan James O'Brien
This is Brendan O'Brien filling in for Steven. So I guess to start just on the restructuring outlook. The commentary there was similar to what we've been hearing from some of your peers. I just want to get a sense as to whether you would expect rate cuts to have any material impact on activity levels. And also, if you could provide some color on whether or not you're seeing more activity on the liability management or traditional restructuring side at the moment, that would be great.
Scott Lee Beiser
I'll take the first part, and Lindsey, you can take the second. All things being equal, as the economy gets better and better and then as interest rates go down, et cetera, it will have some slowdown in the restructuring business. Having said that, we still think we're probably playing a bit of catch-up for things that did not run into some level of financial distress due to governmental intervention over the last several years.
And the difference today is while the financing marketplaces are opening up more and people are able to do some refinancings, a lot of these companies are still going to be refinancing at much higher interest rates, so it doesn't necessarily solve their problem. And that's why we think we will be at kind of an elevated level for some time period, and this is not in a typical, call it, crisis mode where you see substantial shrinkage in EBITDA. This is less about companies' financial performance deteriorating completely, and it's more about a balance sheet problem that's still going to take some while to fix for many companies.
J. Lindsey Alley
And I think with respect to liability management, given the characteristics of the economy that have been in place since early 2022, liability management continues to play an important role in our restructuring business and expect that to continue for the foreseeable future. It's a relatively long runway. The maturity walls are out long enough that companies have time to have those discussions early on versus a scenario like what we saw in COVID or in the Great Recession where there was a crisis and it resulted in sort of an immediate impact in the economy. So just given these characteristics, liability management has and will continue to play an important role.
Brendan James O'Brien
That's great color. And I guess for my follow-up, I just wanted to touch on the Triago acquisition. Given it didn't meet the materiality threshold for disclosure, it doesn't feel like it will have a significant impact on the revenues in the near term. However, it does seem like you could realize significant synergies once it's plugged into your sponsor coverage platform. So I just want to get a sense as to how quickly you believe this business could become a meaningful contributor to your revenues and what the growth opportunity is there.
Scott Lee Beiser
We always felt that, we'll call them, the private finance side, it's an important part of what we can do for our clients. We recognize it's a global business. We recognize there are different components in advising GPs at times and LPs at times, and as we call it, directs, et cetera. And we think we had certain strengths in some of those categories, but not enough of them.
And so really, I'd say what we already had, we will be adding in some acquisitions and some hirings that we've done. We think we will have a much larger platform and will continue to be a growing part of really the whole, call it, capital provisioning to clients for different reasons, and as you've mentioned, a very good connecting point with our financial sponsor coverage efforts. Since we really know hundreds and hundreds of GPs and LPs, we think there's a decent amount of work that we can do over the coming years.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of James Yaro with Goldman Sachs.
James Edwin Yaro
Maybe you could just speak to quickly what you see as the key risks at this point to the M&A recovery for 2024. I thought it would just be useful given there's so much good news here to get your perspective on that.
Scott Lee Beiser
So I'd start with the comment that we do see more I'll call it, positive news than potential negative news going forward. But a couple that I'd point out that we have no control over on what the impact might be. First, I would talk about just the geopolitical environment out there and specifically the 2 wars going on in Europe and the Middle East and where they go and if they expand and what impact they could have on other parts of the economy would be point 1 I'd mention.
I think point 2 is as we get closer and closer to the U.S. elections, there's always uncertainty regarding elections. And regardless of how it goes, you'll likely have some clientele that will just want to wait to see the outcome before they might do things. I don't think that's impacting business yet. I suspect as we get closer to summertime, we'll get a better feel for it.
And the third thing I'd mention is while we do believe interest rates, at least for the moment, have hit their peak and are going to head downward at some level, we are not expecting, and neither is our client base, that they're going back down to 0 or close to 0. So we will be living in a higher interest rate environment than we've seen over, call it, the last 10 years, but you might argue it's an interest rate environment that, for those of us who've been in the business for 10, 20, 30 years, it's probably more akin to what we've seen. Those would be a couple of things I would mention.
James Edwin Yaro
Okay. That's really helpful. Just one for you, Lindsey, just on the noncomp expenses. You did talk about how they should remain higher in the second half of the fiscal year. Maybe you could just speak to the longer-term outlook for those. Should we expect them to continue to rise into subsequent fiscal years?
J. Lindsey Alley
I mean the quick answer is yes. We continue to experience inflation across the major categories, rent, TM&E, professional fees. I don't think that's going away. I do believe you might see a bit more measured increases next year. We did have quite a bit of increase in rent this year, as I think we've mentioned on previous calls. We had a little bit of a perfect storm in terms of movement of offices and investments in rent, and so you saw significant pressure there.
You continue to see a little bit of pressure on TM&E on the return to work kind of as a hangover from COVID. But you should expect to see it, I'd say, probably closer to inflation versus significant growth. But yes, we do expect to see some increases in noncomp next year. And I think next quarter, I'll probably give a little bit more insight on what our fiscal '25 might look like.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Ryan Kenny with Morgan Stanley.
Ryan Michael Kenny
So I thought the comment earlier was interesting around one of the levers to normalize M&A volumes being shrinking the time to close, and we've been hearing about lags and time to close from the peer group. So wondering if you could give more color there. How do you shrink the time to close? And are you seeing any signs that those lags are mitigating at all?
Scott Lee Beiser
I think most of the time frame has to do with outside forces and not necessarily inside what bankers can do. Ultimately, the more robust an auction is, so you have more buyers than sellers at the moment or more potential lenders than borrowers and some fear or concern that if you don't close or you don't have the winning bid or you don't provide the right kind of capital structure, that opportunity may get taken away from you to a competitor.
And I think we've talked about this for quite some time that in the, I guess, truly gogo days of calendar 2021, it was much more of a seller's market and much more of a borrower's market. It then clearly flipped in 2022 and 2023, more probably a buyer's market than a lender's market. It has gotten more balanced, but not to a point where I'd say that it's flipped to the seller side and a borrower side. And when that happens, you will start to see time frames shrink once again.
Ryan Michael Kenny
And do you feel like that's more of a midsized deal phenomenon?
Scott Lee Beiser
It's both. I mean we don't have the issue of some very large mega cap deals that also run into regulations and antitrust, et cetera. So I wouldn't call it -- in our case, it's not governmental issues that are slowing things down. I think it's more just bid-ask spreads, buyer-seller mindsets, that's caused kind of the time frames to get a little longer than what we had seen over the last, call it, decade.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Mike Brown with KBW.
Michael C. Brown
Okay. Great. I guess I'd like to just put a little finer point on the restructuring side of the business. So the fiscal third quarter was, as you said, I think, the second strongest since COVID. And it sounds like there's a number of reasons that the restructuring activity will be elevated here for some time. But I guess as I think about the revenue opportunity versus the fiscal third quarter, is it fair to assume that, that can be kind of a floor near term? Obviously, it's episodic, as you mentioned, but I guess on an average over the next year or so, is that the right way to think about the potential for that business?
Scott Lee Beiser
A couple of comments. I think we've said for the last probably at least year, don't view this restructuring cycle as something that we're going to substantially increase revenues and then watch them substantially decrease but look at this as a much more modest increase but staying higher for a longer period of time.
We did comment today relative to where we were probably a quarter ago, where last quarter, we had noticed some softness in new business on the U.S. side, that is no longer the case. So kind of new businesses really across the globe seems to be on the -- still the heavy, robust side, and expect that it will continue to last for a while.
So I think we kind of look at the levels that we've been at and recognizing this business has more quarterly volatility due to certain size transactions can cause that number to go up or down in a particular quarter. But it feels like where we've been running at for the last couple of quarters is the expected level for several more quarters.
J. Lindsey Alley
Yes. And so another way to say it is kind of take our year-to-date and divide it by 3 quarters and think of that as a proxy. But recognizing that, and we've said this before, it's a lumpy business. You're going to have some quarters like this one where you exceed that number and some quarters like last one where you're below it. But that's a pretty good -- that's a pretty good way to think about how to model it.
Michael C. Brown
Okay. Great. Lindsey, just maybe a quick question for you on the expense side. I know it's probably a little too early to know, but you mentioned this Project Solo. Any way to size the potential benefit of that once it is completed?
J. Lindsey Alley
Yes. I mean we've obviously done some internal work on sort of what the cost savings are. I'm not going to give you a number, but I'll kind of just walk you through a couple of obvious ones. We're moving from roughly 50 legal entities, more than that, to roughly 25. So we're cutting our legal entities in half. And with almost every legal entity, we have accounting and costs. We had tax costs. We have just third-party compliance costs. And you add all that up, and it starts to become a decent number.
So there are some real savings there. They're kind of built into our thinking. I think are they going to be material enough for you to model them? No. But they are certainly material enough to justify the expense. And so that's probably the best way to think about it.
Scott Lee Beiser
And I'd add, Lindsey described kind of third-party costs that have to incur. There's also a decent amount of time that people in our accounting department and our legal department and our compliance department and our HR department, you just -- you have to deal with all these different entities, albeit when we go to the marketplace, we're not working in that mindset as we think about 3 core business segments, industry groups, geographies, et cetera. We think we'll be able to streamline some of the efforts that we're doing with existing employees as well.
So I think we just got to a point we've made so many acquisitions over the years, we need to start more rationalizing and whittling it down. And we'll probably be a little more cognizant of thinking about that every time we make another acquisition, and especially if it's an acquisition outside of the United States. It just seems to always carry another entity that we'd like to ultimately be able to consolidate into an entity that we already have.
Michael C. Brown
Okay. Great. Well, it sounds like a very onerous task and good luck.
Scott Lee Beiser
Maybe Solo was our ultimate objective. Could we get it down to one? But we'll never get it to one.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Jim Mitchell with Seaport Global.
James Francis Mitchell
Maybe you should have called it Project Multiple. But maybe -- it seems like you made a pretty significant hire in private credit, the Head of Private Credit Morgan Stanley. So just how do -- is that bringing on new capabilities in that space? And just maybe more broadly, given the totality of what you're doing there, how are you thinking of the opportunity set in growth?
Scott Lee Beiser
So first of all, we need to take a broad perspective of Houlihan Lokey, and I think it's just our ongoing growth and success and brand recognition allows us to attract and retain certain quality people that we probably would have never been able to attract and retain 3 years ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago. So part of it is just a recognition of who and what Houlihan Lokey is today.
Specific in your individual that you're talking about, we've always been very bullish on our views on what we think we can do in growth in the capital markets area. It's multifaceted in terms of within the different components of the capital structure, going along industry lines, going along certain geographies and being able to help clients in their various financing needs.
And so yes, I think this hire's just another individual that we will build around to continue to expand the capabilities that we have, staying within our true meeting of -- in capital markets, which continue to be a leading adviser, not one that is deploying the capital but one that is actually advising others who are seeking to raise capital for a variety of reasons.
James Francis Mitchell
Okay. That's helpful. Any -- I guess maybe any way to size what you think the opportunity set in private credit is? Relative to today, do you think it's a double or triple in terms of your revenue? I'm just trying to think through the materiality of the investment and growth.
Scott Lee Beiser
I wouldn't necessarily specifically answer your direct question. I think we have looked at how we define capital markets almost in baseball terms. Maybe we're in the second inning. Maybe we're in the third inning, where I think the maturity in the industry of M&A is much further along. So I think everything that is being done, especially for the mid-cap market, especially with private credit, especially with private companies, especially with private equity firms, these are earlier secular times. And therefore, we do think there is quite a bit of growth.
I don't think any of us have a decent crystal ball to tell you whether that's a 50% increase or a 500% increase over the next 10 years. But we do think there is some substantial growth not only for ourselves but others in the industry that participate along these lines.
James Francis Mitchell
That's definitely helpful. And then just as a follow-up, I know you typically have seasonality in your fiscal fourth quarter, kind of step down you see across the industry. But you noted a lot of momentum across all 3 businesses. Do you think that seasonality component is a little less this year? How are you thinking about that cadence on the revenue side?
Scott Lee Beiser
So for almost every year I've ever been at the firm minus the last 2, December was always an abnormally great quarter for the industry. It's still a better quarter than normal, but there just hasn't been the classical rush for tax reasons, accounting reasons, bonus reasons that the service providers have. And so we just haven't seen that since, really, I guess, December of 2021.
And so we still have always felt that our second half is better than our first half. When December is really cooking, I guess we typically see a decline heading into our March. I just don't think we had as much of, in the industry, an uptick in the December quarter like we used to have. And therefore, it could go both ways. There could be some classical industry softening into the March quarter. On the other hand, it is our fiscal year-end, so we have some greater push in wanting to do things.
And I guess I feel rather good about our business and our backlog and our opportunities. And like I said, I think things have been increasing month by month, really since we called April of 2023 as the trough, and I still believe that's the trough. And it's not a straight line, but it continues to improve since then.
Operator
And this does -- we have reached the end of the question-and-answer session. I'll now turn the call back over to CEO, Scott Beiser, for closing remarks.
Scott Lee Beiser
Thank you, and I want to thank you all for participating in our third quarter fiscal year 2024 earnings call. And we look forward to updating everybody on our progress when we discuss our fourth quarter and full year results for fiscal 2024 this coming spring. Bye-bye.
Operator
This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
