WisdomTree, Inc.
Q3 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 29 Oct 2021

[Operator:]

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the WisdomTree Third Quarter Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. Please be advised that today’s conference may be recorded. I’d now like to hand the conference over to your host today, Jessica Zaloom, WisdomTree Head of Corporate Communications and Public Relations. Please go ahead.

[Jessica Zaloom:]

Good morning. Before we begin, I would like to reference our legal disclaimer available in today’s presentation. This presentation may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, the risks set forth in this presentation and in the Risk Factors section of the WisdomTree’s annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020 and quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2021. WisdomTree assumes no duty and does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements. Now, it is my pleasure to turn the call over to WisdomTree President and COO, Jarrett Lilien.

[Jarrett Lilien:]

Thanks, Jess, and welcome everyone. I am going to kick it off today with some color on the momentum in our business and then turn it over to Bryan to go through the results in more detail and to provide an update on expense guidance and then Jono will give us some closing thoughts before we open it up to Q&A. WisdomTree’s positive momentum continued through Q3 with another quarter of organic growth and strong execution against our longer term strategic initiatives. The $550 million of net inflows in the third quarter marked our fourth straight quarter of net inflows, but the real story is the increasing breadth and depth of our flows and product line-up. Year-to-date WisdomTree is growing at an annualized organic growth rate over 6.5% with twice as many of our funds having inflows than outflows. In Q3 that fund inflow/outflow ratio for ETFs and UCITs increased to 2.7 to 1 and so far in October the ratio is running well over 3 to 1, with over $1 billion in net inflows, marking our best month of the year. Our U.S. business is generating organic growth of 13% and the third quarter marked the fifth consecutive quarter of net inflows, including organic growth in 2021 of the past 26 months. Success has been marked by recent strength in our fixed income suite, but sustained strength in our equities franchise, including our U.S. Efficient Core Fund, which just got its five star rating from Morningstar in September and recognition in the Wall Street Journal about its potential use as the cornerstone of an investor’s portfolio. In Europe UCITs momentum continues with 12 consecutive months of positive flows driving over $1.2 billion of inflows year-to-date and taking AUM and our UCITs suite over $3 billion. Our physical gold suite revamp has proven successful with Core Gold, Swiss Gold and Hedge Gold products taking in $180 million of flows in 2021 so far. Year-to-date, our top 10 inflowing funds are a nice mix of UCITs and thematics, industrial metals and new launches, including gold and carbon. Overall, new fund launches have been a point of strength this year, with 14 new fund launches in 2021 and more on the way. Of note is our Carbon ETP in Europe, which launched on August 27th improved to $165 million in AUM by the end of the quarter. That momentum has continued through October and the fund now has over $220 million in AUM. The pipeline for new product launches remains robust in both the U.S. and Europe, and I look forward to sharing additional successes with you next quarter. We also continue to gain traction with our managed models business. There is a long sales cycle here, especially relative to single ticker ETFs and mandates are hard to win but with success comes stickier and more recurring inflows. To-date, we have reported on some of those hard to win successes, most notably with Merrill Lynch last year and with Morgan Stanley last quarter. But we also have a strong pipeline where we hope to announce another large wire house win and another major RIA win soon. We are still ramping up engagement at Merrill and Morgan and the new wins haven’t yet closed, but through September 30th roughly 10% of our U.S. ETF inflows are already coming through WisdomTree managed models. To be clear, our ETFs are also part of other home office and custom models, and I am referring to flows coming solely from WisdomTree models. If we were to include these other models where we are also having significant success, the numbers would be substantially higher. Bottomline, we’ve been investing in our models business for some time and this investment is paying off. Models are already a meaningful contributor to net inflows today and we see an even greater opportunity in future periods. Lastly, I want to share with you some of our success and momentum in the crypto landscape. First, in mid-October, the WisdomTree Enhanced Commodity Strategy Fund was the first ETF to add Bitcoin futures as part of the fund mix. Second, we maintain our strong position in crypto ETPs in Europe with both Bitcoin and Ether and additional strategies like crypto baskets in the product development pipeline. As the crypto rally extends in the fourth quarter, there’s upward momentum in crypto related management fees from both market move and organic growth. But the momentum has continued even outside ETPs as WisdomTree Partnership with Onramp and Gemini, and our shared initiative to bring crypto to advisors, got its first model win this quarter. Federal Life announced the launch of a variable annuity product that implements a WisdomTree model comprised of nearly two-thirds direct crypto and a third disruptive technology ETFs. We are excited to get this product to market and look forward to further implementations with additional partners in the future. All-in-all, we have momentum and we are generating strong organic growth. As I said last quarter and we will say again this quarter and look forward to saying next quarter, we are executing well on all fronts. Now, let me turn it over to Bryan to bring it all together with the numbers.

[Bryan Edmiston:]

Thank you, Jarrett. Beginning on slide five, our AUM at September 30th was $72.8 billion, a decrease of 2% versus the prior quarter, driven by negative market movement, partly offset by net inflows. Our average AUM was $74.6 billion, a third consecutive record quarter. We generated in excess of $500 million of inflows during the quarter, largely into our international equity and U.S. equity products. We had outflows from emerging markets products and commodities saw mixed results with outflows in precious metals offset by inflows into oil and our recently launched carbon product, which attracted $155 million of flows in just over one month. As Jarrett had previously mentioned, our U.S. listed ETFs have generated positive inflows for five consecutive quarters and 21 of our ETFs currently have over $1 billion in AUM. Our AUM currently stands at $76.9 billion, $4 billion greater than where we ended the quarter due to market appreciation and inflows. Inflows in October are approaching $1 billion or $3.7 billion year-to-date. Next slide, please. Before discussing our financial results, I am bringing to your attention immaterial revisions that have been made to previously reported advisory fees in fund management expenses to align with our current presentation. These revisions were made by us voluntarily to retain an apples-to-apples comparison of our revenue and gross margin trends. These line items have been reduced by equal and offsetting amounts and represent the netting of expense reimbursements collected on behalf of a third-party, which had been reported growth in our income statement. We have also revised previously reported gross margin percentages, operating income margins and our fee captured for this change. There is no impact of previously reported net income. The information shown to the right summarizes these changes as it relates to last quarter’s results. We have included in the appendix the slide showing the impact on prior quarter and annual periods. Next slide, revenues were $78 million, an increase of 3% from the prior quarter due to higher average AUM and a slightly higher fee rate. Adjusted net income was $16.3 million or $0.10 a share, unchanged from the prior quarter. This quarter, we recognized an impairment charge of $15 million in connection with the termination of our New York office lease, as well as the non-cash after tax gain of $1.7 million for our future gold commitment payment and $500,000 in other net non-operating losses. Next slide, our operating income margin was 31% and our gross margin was 80.6% for the quarter, largely unchanged from the prior quarter. The chart in the left demonstrate the operating leverage of our business model, as we’ve seen meaningful margin expansion as our average AUM levels have grown over time. Our gross margin guidance requires an update due to the previously mentioned accounting change that impacted our advisory fee in fund management lines and our income statement. Gross margin for the fourth quarter is expected to fall within a range of 80% to 81%. We typically incur rebalancing costs in the fourth quarter, and therefore, anticipate our gross margin falling toward the lower end of this range. Next slide, please. Our operating expenses were up 3.5% for the quarter due to higher incentive compensation and fund costs. Compensation expense was $22 million during the quarter and our discretionary spending was $10.6 million. We are updating our expense guidance with additional details shown in the next slide. Next slide, please. Compensation levels are determined based upon a variety of factors, including our operating performance in net flows. Year-to-date, we have generated revenue growth of 22% versus the comparable prior year period. Our operating income has grown 58% and our operating margins have expanded from 23% to just shy of 30%. We have also generated about $3.7 billion of organic inflows through today. This performance has us increasing our full year compensation guidance from $85 million to between $88 million and $89 million. As you can see in the chart on the left, our compensation to revenue ratio is 29%, essentially unchanged from our actual ratio in the prior year. This updated guidance assumes steady state market conditions and any meaningful changes weather up or down could have an impact on our year end compensation levels. We are taking our discretionary spending guidance down from $49 million to between $44 million and $45 million. The savings are largely from lower sales expenses due to the persistence of the pandemic, but also include marketing and other discretionary items. We’re also realizing occupancy and depreciation savings from the recent termination of our New York office lease. This reduction in guidance more closely aligns our anticipated fourth quarter spend with the prior quarters and should not have an impact on our organic growth. Third-party distribution expenses are projecting higher than our original guidance as the performance of our Latin American platform has exceeded expectations. We are now anticipating the spend to be about $7.5 million for the year. The changes in guidance within compensation, discretionary spending and third-party distribution largely offset with no net meaningful change in our overall expense level. We are also anticipating an uptick in our fourth quarter tax rate to 22% due to a change in mix of the earnings contribution of our U.S. and European businesses. And as a final reminder, our gross margin guidance for the fourth quarter is being updated, ranging from 80% to 81% due to the previously mentioned accounting change that impacted our advisory fee and fund management lines in our income statement. That’s all I had. I will now turn the call over to Jono.

[Jono Steinberg:]

Thank you, Bryan. As Jarrett and Bryan each outlined, WisdomTree had another strong quarter. I am pleased with the success that the firm is having regarding flows, as we look to extend our streak of inflows through the fourth quarter and into 2022. The 6.5% of organic growth of inflows reflects a significant upward change from recent prior years. But I see further upside as recent model wins ramp up and we continue to win new model mandates. That’s in addition to potential flow acceleration into high demand ETFs like carbon, thematic and efficient core. On the operational side, we’ve executed very well this year and are really leaning into the remote first business model with our New York lease termination back in September. We found that remote first has significantly widened the pool of employee candidates and I am very bullish on the talent we’ve been bringing on. Our strong execution year-to-date has generated nearly 700 basis points of operating margin expansion versus last year. However, I note that our expense guidance for 2021 also includes roughly $4 million of costs related to our digital asset initiatives. So our core business is actually more profitable than the reported results. At the same time, that digital asset spent has already unlocked new revenue streams. We’re already generating $4 million run rate revenue from crypto ETPs in Europe. In the U.S., we see a big opportunity for advisors to give their clients crypto exposure through models and separate accounts. And finally, we remain bullish on future opportunities around asset tokenization and our wallet initiative. The key takeaway of this quarter and really the past several quarters is that, unlike years past our success today is being driven by the breadth and depth of our product lineup. As I said, we are executing well and we are investing in both today’s growth, as well as tomorrows. I am very excited about where WisdomTree is headed. Now, before moving into the analysts Q&A, we’re going to try something new this quarter. In the past, we’ve engaged with our individual shareholders in a more informal manner and we found smart people who are strategic and long-term in their thinking. These individual investors are very important to us at WisdomTree as they are not only shareholders, but in many cases, they’re also WisdomTree clients. This quarter, we contracted with Say Technologies, co-founded by WisdomTree alumni Zach Hascoe, to better engage with our individual shareholders. So, Operator, if you could please turn the call over to our new Head of Investor Relations, Jeremy Campbell, we will answer a few questions from our shareholders before opening up the call to our sell side analysts. Thank you.

[Operator:]

I’d now like to turn the call over to Jeremy Campbell, Head of Investor Relations, for questions from the Say platform.

[Jeremy Campbell:]

Thank you, Liz, and good morning, everybody. We’re going to be doing the Say platform next quarter. So for all you individual shareholders listening in today, we invite you to participate next quarter. We’re going to take one question from our shareholders right now and then we’re going do a couple of analyst questions and then back to a shareholder question and then open it up to the remaining analyst questions in the queue. So, Jono, question number one, how do you see the Bitcoin ETF race playing out? Can you share more about how WisdomTree is investing to benefit from the growth of the cryptocurrency space?

[Jono Steinberg:]

Thanks, Jeremy. And so a good question. Really, it’s a two-part question, so how do we see the Bitcoin ETF marketplace playing out? When we approach new products, our philosophy is launching the best structures, the best structures lead to the best experiences. We felt and we feel today strongly that 100% Bitcoin futures is not the best execution. Simply the possibility really the likelihood of contango, which could meaningfully hurt returns is why we chose to go with a physical filing for Bitcoin. And I am very confident the physical will come to the market. I expect that it will play a big role in clients’ portfolios for those that are looking for Bitcoin exposure and WisdomTree will play a big role within the physical market. I am highly confident. WisdomTree has a lot of experience in crypto in physically owning the underlyings with our Bitcoin and Ethereum launches over the last couple of years. Before I transitioned though to the second part of the question, I will say on the positive, I think that the success that you saw in the U.S. market will be a catalyst for faster institutional and wealth management adoption in Europe as the institutional market can really see that U.S. participation put in a floor and really was a catalyst for higher prices of Bitcoin. But transitioning to the second part of the question, which is how are we investing to benefit from the crypto space? The investment started about three years ago in Europe, when we were preparing to launch our first Bitcoin ETP and the knowledge that we gained from that was just extraordinary. And the nice thing is, we’ve already started to recoup or get like $4.5 million of run rate revenue against our crypto exposures. But, as Jarrett said earlier on the call, we spoke about the baskets. We have further development of crypto ETPs in Europe. We’re going to be launching basket products I think before the end of the year. We’re very excited about that. Also, we work in the U.S., the first ETF to get Bitcoin futures into the ETF with our broad based commodity fund GCC. Unfortunately, the SEC only gave us a one day lead over full Bitcoin, but still part of the investment that we’re making. We also talked about on the call and really prior calls, our investment in partnership with OnRamp, the workflow company for RIAs to incorporate crypto into their book of business. And I actually think in the U.S. market because of the difficulty of the regulators, the SMA maybe a preferred vehicle for the financial intermediary to access crypto. So we’re very pleased with what we’re doing there, and in fact, as you heard earlier, we had our first win with Federal Life. And then, I guess, lastly, in terms of investments, in my portion of the script, I discussed that in the guidance that we gave for discretionary spending, it included $4 million for our digital asset initiatives. So in addition to product that includes dollar for the development of our wallet application and our tokenized gold and treasury exposure, so which should all be coming out early next year. So really I think these investments position WisdomTree very well for crypto and DeFi going forward.

[Jeremy Campbell:]

Great. Liz, if we can take some analyst questions.

[Operator:]

Our first question comes from Robert Lee with KBW.

[Margo Rybeck:]

Good morning. This is Margo filling in for Rob. Thank you for taking my question. So my first question is on the Crypto Model with OnRamp and Gemini. I was hoping that you could talk about the construction of these models and also sort of what the relationship is with OnRamp and Gemini? And then, secondarily, if you could elaborate on the economics of this relationship, is it based on assets or flat rate, any color that you could provide there?

[Jeremy Schwartz:]

So this is Jeremy Schwartz, our Global Head of Research, and I’ve been working very closely with the OnRamp team on some of these efforts. The exciting part about OnRamp, so there’s a few different components. So OnRamp is helping enable the direct access to crypto through their platform. We have -- we launched and announced that we have a + Crypto Model Portfolio series for advisors and they can come and see those sort of pre-built models on our Model Adoption Center, the MAC. The +Crypto Models are there. You could see what’s in them if you’re a financial advisor and there’s sort of three components of those models. There’s a traditional 60/40 that adds 5% to Bitcoin. There’s an 80/20 that add 5% Bitcoin. And then there’s what we call disruptive growth model that has some thematics and Bitcoin and Ether. The Fed Life announcement actually did a customized model. A lot of the model relationships we have do want to sort of they look at your off the shelf, but then they want to tweak it for their specific use case and we have really two models for Fed Life, one that is the crypto focus and one that is a traditional equity bond allocation and there will be more to come from that Fed Life relationship. But for us, it’s really just the ETF business. We have ETFs as part of the models and we will benefit from the flows to the ETF there. For -- a top of that traditional ETF models, there will be other opportunities with OnRamp. We have invested in OnRamp in their very early stage financing and so we have a participation in the company and we look to do more there. But the -- there is a -- there could be some other opportunities for revenue in the future as well. But right now it’s a traditional ETF relationship.

[Jarrett Lilien:]

Yeah. And just adding one other thing, I mean, Federal Life is our first real win and it’s early in the relationship with OnRamp and we expect more wins to come in the coming quarters.

[Margo Rybeck:]

Great. Thank you so much. If I could ask one more on your managed model portfolios, I know you talked about Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, as well as some anticipated wins in the near future. Could you talk about any other distributors that are currently offering the portfolios? And then also elaborate on the nature of these distribution relationships, maybe in your experience so far, how they tend to ramp and the timeline for that?

[Jarrett Lilien:]

Yeah. This is this is Jarrett Lilien. I might take part of that to start. Right now we’ve disclosed Merrill last year, Morgan Stanley this year. Really the names that we disclose we have to do in conjunction with our models partners. So I am not looking to disclose other names right now. But in talking about the ramp up, I guess, there are two really important points to make here, first the type of sales and then the ramp up. But let me actually start with a type of model sales that there are. First of all, there is what we do where we work with advisors and we will come up with help them develop a custom model. We’re doing that with several advisors today and again more in the pipeline. We also build our own models and we then get those on with partnerships on to third-party model platforms and that’s like what we’ve done with Merrill and Morgan Stanley. That is what I referred to in my prepared remarks about that being 10% of our flows this year coming from those type of partnerships. But there’s also another kind of model sale and that’s something we do every day as well, which is winning positions in existing adviser or home office models. And that’s actually substantially more AUM that comes in through models into WisdomTree. In terms of ramping up, on the first two categories I talked about, customizing with an advisor or getting on to a wire house platform on their third-party model platform. There are two real successes that you have to have there. One is just the home office win, getting that partnership in place, developing the model and getting it onto the platform. And that’s sort of victory number one, but that on day one doesn’t really get you any AUM. Then what you need to do is work with your partner and then work with all of the advisors on that platform to get them up to speed in the model and get them to be users of the model and that is what we’re starting to see now is that early traction and it’s growing traction. So it’s significant. It’s meaningful now to our flows. But we are gaining more traction. We expect it to ramp further and we expect it to be a more significant contributor going forward.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Brennan Hawken with UBS.

[Brennan Hawken:]

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Jono, you spoke -- you were speaking about the Bitcoin ETF developments in that market in the answer to the first question, I wanted to just maybe follow up a little bit about that, avoiding contango with derivatives certainly is logical. But are there any other markets that you could use as an illustration either for us or when you’re speaking to regulators where you see physical ETFs that might not necessarily generally be on exchange but are still used in ETFs and therefore there’s a precedent for the physical market and maybe even use cases where contango can cause problems with derivative-oriented ETFs?

[Jono Steinberg:]

We’re -- we think, and I apologize, I had a little trouble in hearing. We have Bitcoin in our broad commodity fund and there we have the ability to toggle up and down exposures and so you can manage your contango. We’ve -- it’s been reported that will be adding it into our managed futures and then you’re obviously you saw that we’re dealing with the models and the separate account. So there is a lot of effort to bring with very difficult exposures to the broader market in a compliant way, a tremendous amount of education to the intermediary market. A little distinction when you’re dealing with retail with Bitcoin, there’s a fanaticism to it. They’re just completely committed. Those that are committed, you see it as something that’s going to $50,000 to $500,000 a coin and they just know it in their heart. On the institutional side it’s more of just an asset allocation for them 1% to 3% to put it into a broad asset allocation. So I my missed a little bit of your -- the nuance of your question. So could you just if I missed something, could you just repeat it?

[Brennan Hawken:]

Yeah. Sure. Thanks, Jono. I am sorry if the phone line broke up a little bit.

[Jono Steinberg:]

Yeah.

[Brennan Hawken:]

So what I was curious about was whether or not there is a good use case or a case study where you could point to other markets where there are derivatives ETFs versus physical ETFs and contango actually creates adverse outcomes in those…

[Jono Steinberg:]

Oh!

[Brennan Hawken:]

… when you’re explaining the virtues of physical or quote-unquote physical?

[Jono Steinberg:]

Well, yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, the most obvious would be U.S., so in the oil market. It had proven to be a very disappointing construction for the market. So it just depends, if you can have physical, we think physical is better. And that -- and in certain cases like, let’s say, gold, you could have gold futures, but most gold investors actually want the physical. So we have plenty of examples. It’s not hard to educate the market. Certainly, the -- and intermediaries are very sophisticated and they understand. I am pretty confident that full Bitcoin exposures that are futures based they will have a tough time accessing the platforms. Jeremy Schwartz, would you like to add more detail to that?

[Jeremy Schwartz:]

I mean, I think, the only thing I would just reemphasize and we’re already doing physical Bitcoin and Ether in Europe, and our team in Europe has a broad expertise on commodities, both with physical and futures and we think there’s opportunity to continue to innovate in commodities with physical, which we’re doing in Europe and continue to do, have some more interesting opportunities going into the end of the year on physical commodities. But this is a well-known issue and it’s also why we have -- we talk about GCC sort of this enhanced rolling process. Europe also has an enhanced role, broad commodity funding. It’s sort of well-known this issue. And so I think we are taking the steps to address both with physical and with this better rolling process in Europe and the U.S., and we think eventually, as Jono said, the regulators will come to see that view.

[Brennan Hawken:]

And are the regulators, I am sure market participants are receptive to these nuanced divergences and the data. Are you finding so far that the regulators are as well or are they a little bit -- have they been more rigid in their approach to this?

[Jono Steinberg:]

Listen, we have very good relationships with the regulators. They’ve had some concerns. We’re addressing their concerns. It’s hard to see how they will allow for a less good user experience be the only way to access this. Since the funds, the full Bitcoin Future Funds have launched, you’re starting to see in the press that they’re getting up to their contract limits and so you’re actually seeing that the contango is real and it’s going to grow over time as you’re forced to grow past the one month contract. So, again, we have a tremendous amount of confidence that it will come to market and that we will be first with the physical and that physical play a big role in the future.

[Brennan Hawken:]

Great. Thanks for that color.

[Jono Steinberg:]

All right. Yeah. Thank you.

[Operator:]

I’d like to turn the call back to Jeremy Campbell for some Say questions.

[Jeremy Campbell:]

Hey. Thanks Liz. So same question number two from our shareholder base is, Jono, what do you see as the biggest growth for drivers for WisdomTree as we look into 2022?

[Jono Steinberg:]

So, first of all, you could tell from the tone of the call, we have a lot of momentum in the business. So the core business is growing very, very strongly. I am very excited about the 13% organic growth in the U.S. We haven’t seen numbers like that in quite some time and we’re -- and what we said earlier, we’re doing without any hot funds and so we see that there could even be further upside to those numbers. When you look under the hood of Europe’s flows, though, they’re slightly negative for the year, our usage suite in Europe had organic growth year-to-date of 90%, taking in a 1.25 billion of flows and I feel very strongly that our usage suite is going to continue to grow very, very quickly. And I guess, when we talk about like hot funds, how our funds are tied to market sentiment, there’s really a sense of growing inflation expectations. And we are global franchise around crypto gold and broad commodities positions us very well for heightened inflation expectations, which could lead to faster all-in growth in the 6.5% organic growth that we’re showing. So I am very bullish on the core. But if you really know if I am pushed, what has me most excited for 2022, we’ve spoken about in the past and I am anxious for time to pass so we can do it. We’re launching native to the blockchain or wallet application, plus tokenized assets like gold and treasuries. I would say that it’s beyond excitement for just 2022. This may be the most excited I’ve ever met WisdomTree and this includes the heydays of DHJ and Hedge being an early pioneer and something is game changing as blockchain enabled financial services. For WisdomTree this is the beginning of a global, consumer centric responsible DeFi business. So I think that is where my greatest excitement is and I am looking forward to giving you more details next quarter and next year.

[Jeremy Campbell:]

Great. Liz, let’s take some more analyst question.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Michael Cyprys with Morgan Stanley.

[Michael Cyprys:]

Hey. Thanks for taking the question. Apologies if you really hit this, I hopped on late. But I just wanted to just talk a little bit about the tokenized treasury and gold products that I believe you were starting, you had filed already with the SEC or looking to launch. Maybe you could just give us an update on some of the initiatives there and remind us like how those products work and how you see the overall ecosystem evolving if you see any of the other folks out there looking to do something similar?

[Jono Steinberg:]

So, I have to -- you can only say so much of, but we filed the treasuries, which is really getting the 40 Act on to the blockchain native. So when you think about why do investors or retail, why are they so excited about crypto when they like the exposure? But there’s an ease with which you can move around the globe. Gold tokens have the ability to really go global so right now we have a gold business which is local in Europe. We have -- I’ve said in the past that, when you put gold done properly on to the blockchain, we have an opportunity with the wallet to turn gold into currency, use gold to pay for things. So saving gold, invest in gold, transaction gold. We’re trying to offer this ecosystem of digital assets or this ecosystem of this DeFi world more choice, so that way you can stay in this ecosystem and make get interest instead of just playing crypto. So we see that there will be a big evolution. We’re starting with sort of the foundational exposures of gold and treasuries, but we’re going to be -- we want to be a big player in this. And so I think really, if I am looking, ETFs are 30 years -- almost 30 years old now. I think the next 30 years you’re going to be talking about regulated tokens. It’s going to prove to be the new wrapper and we want to be really sort of first through the door. So, at the moment, that’s all I can say, except that we’re making progress on all of these initiatives and looking forward to actually launching the next year.

[Michael Cyprys:]

Great. And maybe just a follow up question on the thematic and ETF products. I mean, you could just give us a little bit of an update on some of the traction you’re seeing there and what the pipeline looks like for bringing new products to the marketplace and those sort of categories?

[Jono Steinberg:]

Jeremy, do you mind taking the conversation on the matter, so you do have to be a little careful about talking about future products.

[Jeremy Schwartz:]

Of course. So thanks, Jono. And for the question, as Jono said, the exciting growth, the organic growth rate out of Europe, the 90% growth rate, a lot of that is coming from the growth in thematics and you look at -- this really wasn’t something we really had at the franchise three years or four years ago. I mean, it’s really been accelerating in the last few years, one of the sort of blockbusters for us has been our cloud computing WCLD in the U.S., we launched it September 2019 with NASDAQ and Bessemer Venture Partners, but Bessemer being the premier cloud computing venture firm, that’s -- that fund is growing to $2 billion globally between the U.S. and Europe. In Europe, they’ve had a lot of success with artificial intelligence, a battery value chain type strategy, sort of ESG efforts in Europe have been very strong, and that’s where you saw sort of carbon. Recently is in some ways the spirit of a thematic but commodities focused thematic and I think we’re going to continue to do more and we’re trying to do things globally. So we’re going to learn from Europe and do more things like that in the U.S. as well, where we don’t have the exposure that they have. But, yeah, I think this is one of the -- as you think about the transition of how people use ETFs, sectors are a big category, the thematics are a way to do sectors in a more interesting way. You’ve seen that with cloud and we did cybersecurity together this year. That’s been one of a faster ramp ups. Both have had a good first year success and that’s little bit of a $100 million in the combined U.S. and global cybersecurity. We did a bio revolution fund WDNA in the U.S. that’s early, but we think it’s got a unique value proposition. So, yeah, we’re excited to do a lot more in this thematic space.

[Michael Cyprys:]

Okay. Just…

[Jono Steinberg:]

And I will just add that…

[Michael Cyprys:]

Yeah. Go ahead.

[Jono Steinberg:]

… this is really -- for U.S. business and for Europe, this is really diversifying for us, really gets us into the growth area of equities, which is something that we’ve been trying to do more of over the last few years. I am sure you had an add-on question.

[Michael Cyprys:]

Yeah. Sorry to cut you there. I was just going to ask on a separate topic if I could squeeze in one more just around the crypto European ETF products. You guys were a little early on that. I am just curious if you had any sort of update and at sort of the distribution initiatives. I know the AUM and the flows there have been a little more lackluster. So as you look to bring to the U.S., any sort of lessons learned from your experience in Europe as you think about bringing this product over to the U.S.?

[Jono Steinberg:]

So, the regulators with crypto are sort of a mixed bag. So we’re talking about doing baskets. So that’s a positive. Meaning, how hard it is to get Bitcoin launched in the U.S. So when will they get let you do Ether or other. So it’s very, very challenging. But I think, so there’s a positive from the regulator standpoint. The market for crypto though really tends to be to-date almost exclusively retail. And so there is a big advantage to the U.S. market where you have a much bigger direct-to-retail set of channels or is -- our products in Europe have to go more through sort of institutional and wealth management channels and there is an educational process. And again, for the institutional market, it’s not the same set of passion, it’s more about education, learning about the merits of crypto as an asset class and then getting an entry point and then for them it’s just a 1% to 3% allocation. But I could only say that the engagement of the institutional market has been very strong and heightened since the U.S. launches and so I am hoping to see faster growth in Europe.

[Michael Cyprys:]

Great. Thanks for taking my questions.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Keith Housum with Northcoast.

[Keith Housum:]

Good morning, guys and great job in the quarter. In terms of like the overall market share for WisdomTree, perhaps, Jono, you can give a little bit of color in terms of, how is WisdomTree doing in terms of its influence compared to the verticals in which it plays in the ETF marketplace compared to the competitors?

[Jono Steinberg:]

Jeremy, you want to start?

[Jeremy Schwartz:]

So if I…

[Jono Steinberg:]

It’s really…

[Jeremy Schwartz:]

Yeah. One of the families, we’ve been talking about thematics and that’s a growing share of business. We talked about models, which is one of the ways we think we can get broader, more than diversifying the business, we talked about the breadth and depth of the flows this year. The model effort that was in previous model effort is one of the ways we’re getting broader allocations and helping grow share. I think one of the families, and Jarrett talked about this in his remarks, but I think one of the places where we have a huge opportunity, perhaps, one of our biggest opportunities is our fishing core family with NTSX and we’ve expanded that. We started the year at $400 million in NTSX and now have $800 million in the family sort of doubling and that is competing for unique core data and one of our, I think, our biggest opportunity sett there and can ramp significantly from that. And so, I think we’re in some ways going after these bigger categories with market share in trying to diversify the flows with the managed models. Jarrett, do you have any additional things to say there?

[Jarrett Lilien:]

Yeah. The only thing I’d add is, market share something that we look at very closely, because those are absolute performance, which we’re thrilled with. I mean it’s been actually a building momentum for a couple of years now that I don’t think is entirely recognized. So we’re very happy with the absolute growth. But of course, we also look at market share and that’s -- it’s a -- it’s very nuanced in how you look at it, but you have to look at where we play. So for instance in our product development sort of approach, we’re not thinking about being a me-too low fee beta shop. Well, we’re looking for a more innovative, differentiated products and I think we’re doing a great job. We’ve launched you know as we said earlier 14 really solid products this year, more to come. That’s even a change from the last couple of years. But in the market share where we play and where we compete, we’re doing extremely well.

[Keith Housum:]

Great. Thanks. As a follow up there, in terms of the discretionary cost, obviously, lower than we expected this quarter, it sounds like that’s going to be the same for next quarter. I guess is that sustainable if we look out to 2022 that we have a new level of discretionary cost? Thanks.

[Bryan Edmiston:]

Yeah. And this is Bryan. I think we should just table any discussions on 2022 until next quarter. We will have a wholesome update for you at that point.

[Keith Housum:]

Fair enough. Thanks.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Robert Lee with KBW.

[Margo Rybeck:]

Hey. This is Margo again. Thank you for taking my follow-up. I actually also had a question on expenses. But I guess, if you could provide any color on how we just might think about kind of expense growth moving forward overall? And then, I know you had talked about some remote savings. Do you expect that you might be able to retain these or might they be offset by increased marketing expenses going forward?

[Bryan Edmiston:]

So again…

[Jono Steinberg:]

Bryan?

[Bryan Edmiston:]

I’d -- I am -- yeah, actually, I am on -- yeah. Sorry, I wasn’t sure if I was on mute. Remote First savings, we should be able to retain those. We had disclosed that the total savings and won’t disclose the total savings we were benchmarking that against the full year 2020, it was just easier to quantify that way. But if you look at our remote first savings specifically with respect to occupancy, our space or lease depreciation, fixed assets and leasehold improvements in that kind of stuff. We anticipate that that spend is about $3.5 million less than what those line items were in 2020. And when we provide that guidance, we’re taking into consideration the fact that we do anticipate getting into new space in New York, albeit at a much smaller footprint. But that’s what we would anticipate with respect to remote first. And then, Margo, I am sorry, I forgot the first part of your question, if you could just repeat that again?

[Margo Rybeck:]

Oh! I was just asking about 2022 expenses, but I will ask another quarter.

[Jono Steinberg:]

Okay. Thank you.

[Bryan Edmiston:]

Appreciate that. Thank you.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Ryan Bailey with Goldman Sachs.

[Ryan Bailey:]

Good morning. Jono, I am sorry for what may perhaps be a simple question here and please correct me if my history is wrong. But I think, WisdomTree has always been a business that’s evolved. You’ve moved from being an index creator to a pioneer in the ETF space, in particular smart beta. So my question is, are we at the cusp of that sort of next evolution of the business and if we will roll forward, say, five years, is WisdomTree going to be a DeFi business that has ETFs or an ETF business that’s a pioneer in DeFi or is that just completely the wrong characterization?

[Jono Steinberg:]

So -- thanks for the question. So, WisdomTree really has been a business that has evolved that started as a financial media company, individual investor transitioned to ETFs when I saw how transformative they were for the investing process. The -- I would say that, I am sort of personally all in on DeFi. I say that because I believe it’s going to meaningfully change the user experience for the positive and from a business standpoint transform the economics of financial services. So I believe that over the next five years we will be recognized as a DeFi business that has an ETF business or set a different way, we’re in the business of transparent exposures, whether we’re doing it in regulated tokens or through ETFs. I think they will prove to be quite complementary. Now, we’re 30 years into ETFs, in the mutual fund industry. The mutual funds are still very, very strong. I am very bullish on ETFs. But I -- when I think about where WisdomTree sort of stacks in the competitive set that we were somewhat early in ETFs, we were 13 years after State Street, seven years after iShares. Here we sort of have a chance to be first through the door with this new wrapper. So I think, well, I really see a massive opportunity. I think that’s what will be defined as over time, a DeFi company.

[Ryan Bailey:]

Got it. And so just to sort of make sure I am thinking about this, right, by having a well-established and scaled ETF business, the moment you kind of have the mechanism or at least the platform or base in order to stop pioneering DeFi?

[Jono Steinberg:]

So, one, they’re very complimentary. What are the things that got us so excited about this sort of neck journey was how well our core business mapped to the future. So there’s -- we said that we’re spending in this year $4 million on digital assets. We’re taking, trying to be as efficient as possible, going to some of the margin questions. We’re really asking a number of people to sort of wear two hats. We’re transitioning to building a pure digital active team and we probably have maybe eight or nine people in that space now. It’s very, very helpful. The expertise that we have is the third largest gold manager in the world makes what we’re going to do on gold tokens, work the same for treasuries. And one of the things that DeFi needs and really we’re pitching this as responsible DeFi, which means regulated DeFi. The market needs to get things through regulators and really it is one of our strengths. We -- I think the regulators are viewing WisdomTree in this new world as a trusted solutions provider and so we’re really trying to work out the issues, because obviously the standards can’t be different in a digital asset world. You need to be maintained the foundational principles of regulation of know your customer and know anti-money laundering disclosures. And all of those things that make financial services trustworthy, have to come over to the new world order of distributed ledger tech and so we think we can be sure of that bridge brand that could pull this off.

[Ryan Bailey:]

Got it. Thank you. That’s very interesting.

[Jono Steinberg:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

I am showing no further questions in queue at this time. I’d like to turn the call back to Jonathan Steinberg for closing remarks.

[Jono Steinberg:]

I just wanted to thank everybody for your interest and participation on the call. We look forward to speaking to you next quarter. Have a great day everybody and a great weekend. Bye-bye.

[Operator:]

This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.