You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: 2020 was an extraordinary year, and the consistent execution of AMG's long-term strategy resulted in strong business performance and growth.
Complex operating conditions in volatile markets accelerated transition across the investment management industry with a number of our peers and competitors pursuing scale while others look to divest or exit businesses altogether.
Throughout this period, AMG remained committed to our fundamental principles.
That investment performance is about skill, not scale.
That investment alpha is best generated by differentiated active managers and that the entrepreneurial investment-centric cultures of independent partner-owned firms offer clients the greatest opportunity for alpha.
As a result, we remain focused on executing our long-term strategy with excellence and discipline.
Our affiliates built on their strong long-term performance records, demonstrating their ability to distinguish themselves across market cycles, including during volatile periods like 2020.
Today, approximately three-quarters of our products are outperforming their long-term benchmarks on an EBITDA basis.
Our affiliates also continue to evolve and enhance their product offerings, often in collaboration with AMG, expanding their abilities to meet long-term client needs.
Overall, AMG emerged from the unprecedented events of 2020 in an even stronger position than we entered the year.
And we entered 2021 with significant momentum across our business and substantial capacity and flexibility to generate meaningful additional earnings growth and shareholder value.
Turning to our results.
Since the second quarter of 2020, the earnings power of our business has increased considerably driven by the strong and improving performance from the large majority of our affiliates, combined with the impact of strategic investments and actions we have taken to reposition our business over the past 18 months.
These collective actions contributed to year-over-year growth in EBITDA of 27% in the fourth quarter, driven by growth in management fees and performance fees, as well as operational efficiency.
We also capitalized on the market environment in 2020 to strengthen our balance sheet and improve flexibility for the benefit of our shareholders.
With our enhanced capital position and substantial free cash flow, we deployed more than $800 million across the combination of growth investments and share repurchases, including new partnerships with Comvest, Jackson Square and Boston Common while simultaneously repurchasing 10% of our shares over the course of the year.
AMG had a strong finish to 2020 but the results do not fully capture the magnitude of the earnings power heading into 2021, during which significant market, business performance and new investment tailwinds will further contribute to our earnings growth.
In the second half of 2020, business activity and client flows in private markets, wealth management and specialty fixed income were particularly strong.
These areas collectively account for more than one-third of our EBITDA and are becoming a more significant contributor to our overall growth profile.
Our fundamental equity and liquid alternative strategies are better positioned today given their improved track records, increased performance fee opportunity and enhanced potential to generate organic growth.
In addition to the building momentum of our existing affiliates.
The incremental earnings contribution of our 2020 new investments will be fully realized in our 2021 results given the timing of these investments over the course of the year.
And finally, given our substantial liquidity and cash flow generation, we expect to continue to deploy significant capital in 2021 across both our new investment pipeline and additional share repurchases.
For all of these reasons, as we enter this year, we are confident in AMG's forward prospects and our ability to generate meaningful growth in economic earnings per share.
As you know, AMG is a leader in partnering with independent asset management firms.
We have continued to evolve our approach to meet the ongoing needs of our affiliates as they grow their businesses over time.
Today, we offer a uniquely broad set of partnership solutions for independent firms, including growth capital, distribution support, minority investments and long-term succession planning.
Our differentiated approach continues to resonate with the highest quality independent firms as evidenced by our new investments over the course of 2020, which included Comvest Partners, a premier middle market private equity and private credit firm, which is an area of high client demand and increasing allocations; Jackson Square Partners, a leader in global equities with an outstanding reputation and track record for managing high conviction portfolios, and Boston Common Asset Management, a woman-owned innovator in global, sustainable and impact investing, which has significant organic growth prospects given their long record of success in ESG investing.
Together, these new investments evidence the power and breadth of AMG solution set.
And all three firms have joined our global distribution platform to expand their client reach across channels and geographies.
Individually, each new partnership underscores AMG's focus on investing in high-quality, growing businesses at disciplined valuations through customized structures designed to deliver returns across a range of outcomes.
With our unique competitive position and proprietary relationships, our new investment activity remains high.
Across a broader universe of firms around the world, prospective affiliates are increasingly engaging with us.
Notably, Boston Common is our second partnership with a specialist in sustainable investing following inclusive capital last year.
Client appetite for responsible and impact investing is steadily increasing, and this is an important moment in time for the asset management industry to address long-term sustainability through capital allocation.
We and our affiliates are increasingly focused on this imperative.
We are closely collaborating to support affiliates' increased engagement and participation in responsible capitalism, particularly with respect to their product offerings.
For example, we are providing capital resources to Artemis as they launch a dedicated sustainable global equity strategy.
And similarly, we supported GW&K in building out a suite of sustainable fixed income strategies, which AMG is now distributing.
More broadly, our global sales teams are bringing client insight to other affiliates with respect to integrating ESG into investment processes.
Ultimately, we believe that independent active managers are best positioned to generate investment alpha as clients grow their allocations to ESG investing, and our affiliates are increasingly participating in this growth area.
In its most fundamental way, sustainability, from the perspective of long-termism and the preservation of a firm's ability to build and create value over time, has been at the very heart of AMG's business purpose since our inception in 1993.
AMG's foundational principles support enhances the long-term duration of independent firms through succession planning.
We help partner-owned firms to manage their greatest asset and their greatest risk, human capital, and to preserve and enhance partner alignment with their most important stakeholder, their clients.
In addition to human capital, AMG also offers capabilities to assist affiliates in addressing other long-term risks, including operational, regulatory and reputational support.
In helping our affiliates to manage long-term risk and enhance their ability to grow over time, AMG has focused on sustainability of independent partner-owned firms for nearly 30 years.
And as we build upon our three decades of successful partnerships and position ourselves for the future, the impact of the strategic and growth investments that we have made over the past two years are beginning to materialize in our results as they did in the fourth quarter and will more fully manifest in the years ahead.
Over this period, we have invested in four new affiliates.
We have invested in the growth of our existing affiliates.
We broadened our partnership solution offering.
We enhanced our strategic capabilities.
We realigned our distribution platforms with the greatest opportunities, and we significantly enhanced our capital position.
We have achieved all of this while reinvigorating AMG's entrepreneurial culture and reestablishing an ownership mindset across the entire organization.
Looking ahead to 2021.
We have significant momentum in our business and heightened conviction in our strategy.
As we continue to generate increasing levels of free cash flow, and we invest that capital into our growth initiatives while returning excess capital through share repurchases, AMG's long-term opportunity to compound earnings is clear and positions us to deliver significant shareholder value over time.
As Jay discussed, strategic changes taking place in our industry are creating significant disruption, and that disruption is highlighting AMG's long-standing belief in the value proposition of independent partner-owned firms and their unique alignment with their clients.
At the same time, focused execution against our strategy is producing results in both our quarterly earnings and our expectations for future growth.
We entered 2021 with significant momentum across our business, increasing earnings power and a stronger and more flexible balance sheet to execute on the considerable opportunities ahead of us to generate shareholder value.
Turning to the quarter.
Adjusted EBITDA of $255 million grew 27% year over year, driven by strength in both management and performance fees, and economic earnings per share of $4.22 benefited from an enhanced level of share repurchase activity.
AMG delivered strong earnings growth despite net client cash outflows of $15.8 billion that were driven by certain quantitative strategies and seasonal client redemptions.
Quantitative strategies accounted for 95% of outflows in the quarter while contributing approximately 3% of run rate EBITDA.
Away from quant and taking into account seasonality, our underlying organic growth trends continued to improve, and client flows were positive in the quarter.
Strong investment performance and an increasingly attractive environment for allocating to active managers drove further stabilization in fundamental equities.
And affiliate strategies across illiquid alternatives, wealth management and specialty fixed income generated significant positive net flows and continued to contribute an increasing proportion of our earnings.
Turning to our asset class breakdown and excluding challenged quantitative strategies.
In alternatives, we reported net inflows of $700 million in the fourth quarter, reflecting ongoing momentum across our illiquid alternative affiliates.
Strength in private markets was partially offset by $2 billion in seasonal redemptions in certain liquid alternative strategies with fourth-quarter liquidity windows.
Fundraising remains strong at Pantheon, Baring, EIG and Comvest as clients continue to steadily increase private market allocations globally.
Performance in this category has been excellent as our affiliates have been deploying dry powder into attractive return opportunities, including across Asia private equity, global secondaries, co-investments and credit funds.
Overall, our private markets book remains a significant source of earnings growth, accounting for nearly 20% of management fee EBITDA and continues to build future carried interest potential.
Within liquid alternatives, our affiliates continue to post strong performance across relative value fixed income and concentrated long-only strategies, which collectively generated the majority of our performance fees in 2020.
Garda and ValueAct, among others, produced very strong returns in 2020, and our liquid alternative strategies enter 2021 well positioned to deliver for clients.
Moving to fundamental equities.
We reported net outflows of $2.3 billion in global equities and $1.1 billion in U.S. equities, partly due to the impact of retail seasonality.
We continue to generate positive organic growth in areas where client demand for active converges with top quartile performance, including at Harding Loevner, Veritas and GW&K.
Our investment performance across our fundamental equity strategies continues to be very strong with approximately 80% of fundamental equity AUM above benchmark for the five-year period, significantly outpacing the 62% level of two years ago.
And with that strong performance, coupled with a more favorable macro environment for active investing, we are well positioned for future organic growth.
In particular, we are seeing increasing momentum in client conversations regarding value strategies, where overall industry dynamics have improved and our affiliates continued to deliver strong relative investment performance.
Multi-asset and fixed income strategies posted another strong quarter of organic growth, generating $1.9 billion of net inflows driven by muni bond strategies and broader wealth solutions at GW&K and Baker Street.
This area of our business continues to deliver steady, long duration inflows, and we anticipate ongoing client demand trends to support future growth.
In aggregate, AMG is well positioned to generate positive flows over time given our Affiliates' participation in areas supported by long-term client demand trends and their differentiated ability to deliver superior outcomes for clients.
Now, turning to financials.
For the fourth quarter, adjusted EBITDA of $255 million grew 27% year over year, driven by strong investment performance, higher markets, lower corporate expenses and the impact of growth investments in both existing and new affiliates, including affiliate equity purchases.
Adjusted EBITDA included $60 million of performance fees, driven by strong investment performance across a broad array of alpha-oriented strategies.
Economic earnings per share of $4.22 and further benefited from an elevated level of share repurchase activity, which I'll expand on in a moment.
For the full year, performance fees of $86 million represented approximately 11% of our earnings.
With a diverse and growing performance fee opportunity, we are entering 2021 well positioned for continued strength in this area.
Now, moving to specific modeling items for the first quarter.
We expect adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of 240 to 250 million based on current AUM levels, reflecting our market blend, which was up 2.5% as of Friday.
Our estimate includes a performance fee range of 35 to 45 million, reflecting normal seasonality and strong performance at our liquid alternative managers.
Our share of interest expense was 27 million for the fourth quarter, reflecting the impact of our hybrid debt offering.
We expect interest expense to remain at a similar level for the first quarter.
Controlling interest depreciation was 2 million in the fourth quarter, and we expect a consistent level for the first quarter.
Our share of reported amortization and impairments was 87 million for the fourth quarter.
In the first quarter, we expect this line item to be approximately 40 million.
Our effective GAAP and cash tax rates were 24 and 25% for the fourth quarter.
For modeling purposes, we expect our GAAP and cash tax rates to be approximately 25 and 19%, respectively, for the first quarter.
Intangible-related deferred taxes were negative 3 million in the fourth quarter, and we expect intangible related deferred taxes to be 9 million in the first quarter.
Other economic items were negative 8 million and included the mark to market impact on GP and seed capital investments.
In the first quarter, for modeling purposes, we expect other economic items, excluding any mark-to-market impact on GP and seed to be 1 million.
Our adjusted weighted average share count for the fourth quarter was 45.3 million, and we expect share count to be approximately 43 million for the first quarter.
Turning to the balance sheet and capital allocation.
Over the course of 2020, we continue to position the company for growth, taking advantage of the historically attractive financing environment to enhance our capital position by building additional liquidity and flexibility.
We doubled the duration of our debt to 15 years while keeping our cost of debt unchanged, enhanced our capital flexibility by issuing junior hybrid debt and significantly improved our liquidity position, including the repurposing of our dividend in favor of share repurchases.
As a result of these actions, our balance sheet is in excellent position heading into 2021.
And together with the flexibility provided by our significant discretionary free cash flow, we feel confident in our ability to invest for growth and simultaneously return significant excess cash to shareholders.
In 2020, we allocated the cash flow generated by our business toward a combination of growth investments and capital return to shareholders primarily through share repurchases.
We invested approximately 400 million of capital into growth investments across four new affiliate partnerships, an elevated level of Affiliate equity purchases and seed and GP capital commitments.
In addition, we repurchased 430 million of shares during the year, repurchasing 10% of our shares outstanding.
In the fourth quarter, we repurchased 226 million of shares versus our guidance of at least 100 million.
The additional 126 million of repurchases in the quarter reflects strong business performance in the second half of 2020 and significant incremental cash generated from performance fees and tax benefits.
Looking ahead, through the combination of higher run rate cash generation, a more normalized level of Affiliate repurchases and our strong liquidity position, we have the flexibility to continue to increase discretionary capital allocation to both growth investments and capital return.
In the first quarter, we expect to repurchase approximately 200 million of shares, which is elevated by 100 million as a function of our strong year-end cash position and first-quarter performance fee expectations.
Finally, turning to full-year guidance.
While we haven't given full-year guidance in some time, given the sharp move in equity markets, the increased earnings power of the business on both a management fee and performance fee basis, our strong liquidity position and heightened share repurchase activity, we are providing earnings guidance for 2021.
We expect economic earnings per share to be in the range of $15.50 to $17, reflecting an adjusted EBITDA range of 875 million to $940 million.
The midpoint of that range includes a market performance through last Friday and 2% quarterly market growth starting in the second quarter, performance fee contribution of approximately 10% of earnings and a weighted average share count for the year of approximately 41.5 million, which reflects $500 million of excess capital returned through share repurchases.
I would note that while we are not including the impact of new investments in earnings guidance, given timing uncertainty, new investment activity is incorporated into our capital planning and would provide incremental upside to this earnings guidance.
Both our first quarter and full-year guidance are subject to forward prospects for new investments and market conditions.
As Jay discussed, 2020 was a year of unprecedented events and change, and we've remained focused on establishing new partnerships, supporting growth initiatives at our existing affiliates, positioning our balance sheet for future growth and returning excess capital to shareholders through repurchases.
We come into 2021 with even more conviction in our strategy and our ability to deploy capital to compound long-term earnings growth and create value for our shareholders.

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compname reports earnings per share of $2.54, economic earnings per share of $4.22 in fourth quarter.

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