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Text: I am Patrick Suehnholz, Greenhill's Head of Investor Relations.
And joining me on the call today is Scott Bok, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.
These statements are based on our current expectations regarding future events that, by their nature, are outside of the firm's control and are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and assumptions.
For a discussion of some of the risks and factors that could affect the firm's future results, please see our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and current reports on Form 8-K.
We reported second quarter revenue of $43.2 million and a loss per share of $0.45.
For the year-to-date, we had revenue of $112.2 million and a loss per share of $0.34.
Revenue for the year-to-date was 2% lower than our figure from last year when we had a slow first half that was followed by a strong second half.
Industry data makes clear that global M&A activity has been very strong for the year-to-date, we see that in what has been a significant increase versus last year and the year before in the number of new assignments we are winning.
We also see the result of a more active market in the number of deal announcements we are associated with, as shown on the transaction list we regularly update on our website.
This past quarter, we announced the second highest number of transactions in any quarter in our history and on a trailing four quarters basis, our number of transaction announcements is at the highest level ever by a meaningful margin.
Many of those transactions have been for major companies but for the year-to-date, the sizes of deals that have completed have skewed toward the smaller end of the scale, resulting in soft year-to-date revenue.
In the second half, we expect the size of completed deals and related fee events to significantly increase such that we should get to a full-year revenue outcome that shows improvement over what was a respectable year for our firm in 2020.
We saw the first versus second half play out similarly to the way I'm describing both last year and the year before.
On a regional basis, for the full year we expect to show a stronger year than last year in the US and Canada and a much stronger year in Australia, offset by reduced revenue in Europe where we had a particularly strong revenue year last year.
By type of advice, M&A is where we are seeing the greatest opportunity.
Restructuring activity is materially lower given the strength in credit markets, but we are making progress in our strategic initiative to be more active in financing advisory assignments of various kinds.
In the private capital advisory area, we continue to be busy with secondary transactions in Europe and Asia, including an increasing number of complex fund restructuring transactions, led by fund general partners.
In addition, over the course of the year-to-date, we've succeeded in building out a global primary fundraising team and we expect to start seeing revenue from that group already in the current quarter.
In all our businesses, we are making progress on our strategic initiative to do more business with financial sponsors.
In addition to two more recruits in the private capital advisory area.
We have other recruits in progress.
We already see this year as an important one in terms of recruiting and we should see more success in that regard in the second half.
Now turning to costs, our compensation costs were lower than last year in absolute terms, given our objective to bring quarterly compensation more in line with quarterly revenue but our compensation ratio was still higher than our target range.
Our objective is to bring the ratio down to our target range for the full year, while still paying our team increased compensation in absolute dollars.
Where we end up in terms of compensation cost and expense ratio for the year depends as always on our revenue outcome for the year.
Our non-compensation costs were materially lower than last year and are running at a rate slightly better than our target.
Our interest rate expense continues -- interest expense, rather, continues to trend lower given declining debt levels and continued low short-term interest rates.
We continue to estimate our annual tax rate will be in the mid-20% range after adjusting for the impact of charges relating to the vesting of restricted stock, which is consistent with our prior guidance.
We ended the quarter with $92.5 million of cash and $306.9 million of debt and we paid down another $15 million of that debt after quarter end.
We also declared our usual $0.05 quarterly dividend.
And lastly as of quarter end, we have bought back 1.5 million shares and share equivalents for a total cost of $23.8 million and had an additional $26.2 million of repurchase authority available for the year ahead through next January.
As I said last quarter, our principal focus is on deleveraging but we also intend to continue to purchase shares in a prudent manner to further enhance the upside potential for continuing shareholders.
Our employees currently own about half of the economics of the firm through stock and restricted stock and are thus fully aligned in trying to drive shareholder value in the quarters and years to come.
To sum up, we recognize that our first half is an outlier relative to peers in what is a strong M&A market.
At our smaller scale, the random timing of deal completions has a large impact and can result in a weak quarter or even multiple quarters.
Last year, we saw that same phenomenon, yet with the help of a record quarter at year-end got to a very respectable full year result.
This year, we have the benefit of what is a significantly higher pace of new assignments and of deal announcements.
Looking beyond this year, the same smaller scale that today results in greater quarterly volatility is what creates future upside potential for our shareholders.
First, the strategic moves we are making should reduce future quarterly volatility as well as increase annual revenue.
The effort to develop a financing advisory business and to devote more resources to serving financial sponsors should be particularly important in diversifying and growing our revenue base.
Second, the successful rebuilding and expansion of our Private Capital Advisory business should also add to revenue diversity and scale starting later this year.
And lastly, with our lower cost, declining debt and interest expense and much reduced share count, the benefits of increased revenue would be magnified in terms of net income and shareholder value creation.
With that, I will take any questions.

user
compname reports q2 revenue of $43.2 mln.
q2 revenue fell 10 percent to $43.2 million.
q2 loss per share $0.45.

assistant