Evercore delivered the strongest year in its history, with full-year adjusted net revenues up 29% to roughly $3.9 billion and EPS up 55% to $14.56, capped by a record fourth quarter of nearly $1.3 billion (up 32%) as advisory, Private Capital Advisory, Equities, and Wealth Management all set records. Full-year adjusted operating margin expanded 300 basis points to 21.6% as the firm benefited from a large-cap M&A rebound, record backlogs, and improving comp and non-comp ratios. Management expects a healthy environment to persist into 2026 and continued gradual comp-ratio improvement, while flagging an intensifying and costlier senior-talent recruiting market and macro and AI-related risks.
Thank you, Operator. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today for Evercore's fourth quarter and full-year 2025 financial results conference call. I'm Katy Haber, Evercore's Head of Investor Relations. Joining me on the call today is John Weinberg, our Chairman and CEO, and Tim LaLonde, our CFO. After our prepared remarks, we will open up the call for questions. Earlier today, we issued a press release announcing Evercore's fourth quarter and full-year 2025 financial results. Our discussion of our results today is complementary to the press release, which is available on our website at evercore.com. This conference call is being webcast live in the For Investors section of our website, and an archive of it will be available for 30 days, beginning approximately one hour after the conclusion of this call. During the course of this conference call, we may make a number of forward-looking statements.
Any forward-looking statements that we make are subject to various risks and uncertainties, and there are important factors that could cause actual outcomes to differ materially from those indicated in these statements. These factors include but are not limited to those discussed in Evercore's filings with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and current reports on Form 8-K. I want to remind you that the company assumes no duty to update any forward-looking statements. In our presentation today, unless otherwise indicated, we will be discussing adjusted financial measures, which are non-GAAP measures that we believe are meaningful when evaluating the company's performance. For detailed disclosures on these measures and the GAAP reconciliations, you should refer to the financial data contained within our press release, which is posted on our website.
We continue to believe that it is important to evaluate Evercore's performance on an annual basis. As we have noted previously, our results for any particular quarter are influenced by the timing of transaction closings. I will now turn the call over to John.
Thank you, Katy, and good morning, everyone. 2025 was a strong year for Evercore. We saw broad-based momentum across all of our businesses and ended the year with the strongest revenue performance in our history. Firm-wide, adjusted net revenue reached approximately $3.9 billion, up 29% versus the prior year and nearly 17% above our previous record in 2021. In fact, our fourth quarter represented the strongest revenue quarter in our history, with nearly $1.3 billion in adjusted net revenue. For the year, we generated approximately $14.56 in adjusted earnings per share, continued to return a meaningful amount of capital to shareholders, and improved our margin profile. Our quarterly and full-year record results reflect the improving market environment, the benefits of our diversified business model, and the execution of our long-term growth strategy.
We're pleased with how we delivered for our clients and our shareholders in 2025, and we enter 2026 with strong momentum and optimism. Before getting into the details, I want to put our results in the context of the market environment. Industry-wide, global M&A activity rebounded meaningfully last year. Announced transactions totaled approximately $4.5 trillion, up 49% from the prior year and just 19% below record levels of 2021. Importantly, activity accelerated throughout the year. Deal volumes in the second half of 2025 were approximately 45% higher than in the first half, reflecting a clear shift in sentiment and decision-making. That improvement was particularly evident in the large-cap segment of the market. Global M&A volumes for transactions greater than $5 billion were the highest ever and approximately 13% above 2021 levels.
Taken together, these metrics reflect improving confidence among boards and management teams, constructive financing conditions across public and private markets, and strong equity markets. Now, turning to Evercore, I want to highlight a few of our key accomplishments from the year across our market position, talent investment, and platform expansion. We continue to serve clients on a number of the most complex and notable transactions, acting as financial advisor on five of the 15 largest global M&A deals for the year and ranked third for sell-side transactions in the U.S. based on dollar value. Relative to our largest global competitors, we continue to gain share. For the second year in a row, we ranked as the third-largest investment bank globally in 2025 based on advisory fees across all public firms.
Nearly all of our businesses posted record results, including our North America and EMEA advisory businesses, Private Capital Advisory, Private Funds Group, our Equities business, and Wealth Management. Importantly, the benefits of our diversification were increasingly evident. For the fourth quarter and full year, approximately 45% of revenues were generated from non-M&A businesses. Turning to talent, 2025 was a year of continued investment as we built out our senior advisory bench globally. We entered 2026 with 171 investment banking senior managing directors. We hired 19 SMDs across sectors, products, and geographies, representing our largest class of new lateral SMDs to date, and added 11 new promotes at the beginning of 2025. We are also excited to announce the recent promotion of eight investment banking SMDs globally, which is in addition to the 171 SMDs, underscoring our continued commitment to developing talent from within.
In fact, 40% of our investment banking SMDs have been promoted internally, the highest percentage in our history. Our SMD base is 50% larger than it was at the end of 2021, and more than 40 SMDs are currently in a ramp mode, positioning us well for years ahead. Finally, expanding our platform across regions, sectors, and products was a key area of focus for us in 2025. We completed the acquisition of Robey Warshaw, a leading U.K.-based advisory firm. The acquisition represents a significant next step in our EMEA expansion strategy, and the integration is progressing well. We also continue to expand our footprint across key markets in EMEA, including significant investment in France and first-time offices in Italy, the Nordics, and Saudi Arabia. We remain focused on building those out over time.
We further strengthened our sector coverage globally, including healthcare, industrials, and transportation, while continuing to deepen our sponsor coverage efforts. We remained focused on broadening our product capabilities, including debt advisory, securitization, private capital advisory, ECM, and ratings advisory, to name a few. Before turning to the outlook, I'll briefly highlight a few key trends across our businesses from the quarter and the year. Our M&A advisory businesses finished the year with strong momentum. In North America, our team achieved a record year, and activity was broad-based across sectors while financial sponsor engagement continued to increase and broaden. Industry-wide, financial sponsor activity for 2025 was up 43% in dollar volume and 14% in number of transactions, excluding deals below $100 million, and we are expecting continued improved activity in 2026. In EMEA, advisory activity accelerated meaningfully in the second half of the year.
Our EMEA advisory business delivered record results in the fourth quarter and year with strength across sectors and products. In the fourth quarter, we advised on a number of significant transactions around the globe, including Warner Bros Discovery on its $83 billion sale of Warner Bros to Netflix and the related spinoff, which was the largest announced transaction of the year, Axalta's $25 billion merger with ExxonMobil, Cidara Therapeutics on its $9.2 billion sale to Merck, and Sealed Air's $10.3 billion acquisition by CD&R. Our Strategic Defense and Shareholder Advisory Group continued to be busy into year-end as activist campaigns remained at elevated levels. The Liability Management and Restructuring Group had a strong close to the year, generating its second-best year for revenues and notably well above last year's performance. Activity in the quarter and year reflected a more balanced mix of liability management and traditional restructuring activity.
The Private Capital-related businesses remained a source of strength. PCA delivered another record year with strong performance across GP-led continuation funds, LP transactions, and structured capital solutions, and we advised on nearly half of industry-wide secondary volumes in 2025. The Private Funds Group also posted a record year, continuing to deepen relationships with our core client base while also expanding our reach. Equity Capital Markets activity continued to gain momentum into the year-end, benefiting from an improving market backdrop for IPOs. We were a book runner in all of our equity transactions across products, and we continue to be diversified across sectors. Our Equities business delivered a record quarter and year and had nine consecutive quarters of year-over-year revenue growth. Finally, our Wealth Management business had a record year and reached its highest quarter-end AUM of approximately $15.5 billion.
As we look ahead, we believe 2025's steady build of activity will continue into 2026 and beyond. We expect many of the themes from 2025 to continue, including sustained engagement on large strategic transactions alongside a further broadening of activity across deal sizes, sectors, products, and geographies. Given the investments we've made across our platform, we believe Evercore is well-positioned to serve clients across the full spectrum of the market. We start the year with strong momentum and backlogs at record levels. Overall, we are constructive on the environment. At the same time, we remain mindful of the geopolitical and macroeconomic risks and note that transaction timing can be uneven. Importantly, the strategy we've been executing over the last several years continues to deliver results. We remain focused on delivering outstanding client service and intend to continue investing thoughtfully as new opportunities arise.
We're confident in our position as we start the new year. With that, let me turn it over to Tim.
Thank you, John. Evercore's fourth quarter and full-year results reflect strong performance across all our businesses. For the fourth quarter of 2025, net revenues, operating income, and EPS on a GAAP basis were $1.3 billion, $312 million, and $4.76 per share, respectively. For the full year, net revenues, operating income, and EPS on a GAAP basis were $3.9 billion, $790 million, and $14.05 per share, respectively. For the full year, net revenues, operating income, and EPS on a GAAP basis were $3.9 billion, $790 million, and $14.05 per share, respectively. My comments from here will focus on non-GAAP metrics, which we believe are useful when evaluating our results. Our standard GAAP reporting and a reconciliation of GAAP-to-adjusted results can be found in our press release, which is on our website.
Our fourth quarter adjusted net revenues of $1.3 billion increased 32% versus the fourth quarter of 2024, our best quarter to date. On a full-year basis, adjusted net revenues of $3.9 billion increased 29% compared to last year and represent our strongest year on record. Fourth quarter adjusted operating income of $337 million increased 55% versus the fourth quarter of 2024. Adjusted earnings per share of $5.13 increased 50% versus the prior year period. For the full year, adjusted operating income of $839 million increased 50%, and adjusted earnings per share of $14.56 increased 55% versus the full year 2024. Our adjusted operating margin in the fourth quarter was 26%, an improvement of 380 basis points versus the prior year period. For the full year, our adjusted operating margin was 21.6%, up 300 basis points from the full-year 2024.
Turning to the businesses, fourth quarter adjusted advisory fees of over $1.1 billion increased 33% year-over-year and represents a record quarter. Adjusted advisory fees were $3.3 billion for the full year, up 34% compared to 2024 and 19% above our prior record in 2021. Our advisory results for the quarter and year reflect strong client activity levels and momentum that built throughout the year. Our fourth quarter adjusted underwriting fees were $49 million, up 87% from a year ago. For the full year, adjusted underwriting revenues were $180 million, up 14% versus last year, reflecting improved market conditions. Commissions and related revenue of $66 million in the fourth quarter was up 15% year-over-year. For the full year, commissions and related revenue of $243 million was up 13% compared to 2024. Both the quarter and the year represented record results.
Fourth quarter adjusted asset management and administration fees were $24 million, up 10% versus the fourth quarter of last year. For the full year, adjusted asset management and administration were $91 million, up 8% versus 2024. Fourth quarter adjusted other revenue, net, was approximately $30 million, which compares to $24 million a year ago. For the full year, adjusted other revenue, net, was $103 million compared to $105 million last year. Approximately 25% of the other revenue in 2025 was a gain on our DCCP hedge, with the remainder predominantly from interest income. Turning to expenses, the adjusted compensation ratio for the fourth quarter was 62%, down 320 basis points from last year's fourth quarter. Our full-year adjusted compensation ratio was 64.2%, down 150 basis points from 2024 and down 340 basis points over the past two years.
Our increased revenue and the reduction in our full-year comp ratio reflect the benefits of a strengthening in the investment banking environment, an increase in our market share, partially offset by our significant investment in talent, including our largest-ever addition of external SMDs. We are continuing to strive for additional gradual improvement in our comp ratio, balancing that with investment in our business and execution on our strategic growth plan. As I have said on past calls, our goals are to deliver excellence to our clients and to create value for our shareholders over the medium to longer term. The latter is accomplished by investing in and building our business and managing our expenses in a way that maximizes the present value of our future earnings and cash flows.
Adjusted non-comp expenses in the fourth quarter and full year were $156 million and $552 million, up 26% and 17%, respectively. The non-comp ratio for the full year was 14.2%, down 150 basis points from 2024, driven by stronger revenues. For the quarter, the non-comp ratio was 12%. The 17% increase in our full-year non-comp expenses was in line with the increase we saw in 2024. The year-over-year increase reflects continued investment in the firm's technology infrastructure and increase in client-related expenses, particularly as deal activity accelerated throughout the year. The increase also reflects higher rent and occupancy costs associated with office expansion, including additional floors in and renovation costs related to our New York offices, and additional occupancy costs related to our new leases in Paris, London, and Dubai. Client-related travel and entertainment spend also increased in the year as deal activity picked up.
As we grow and continue to diversify our revenue streams, both geographically and with respect to lines of business, we must continue to invest in talent, technology, and infrastructure. We have discussed in some depth over the years our investment in talent. Some of our investment, such as in occupancy-related areas, is required to support our growth in the U.S. and EMEA. At the time of investment, we must obtain enough capacity to provide for planned future growth. Part of our non-comp expense is for information services, for which the costs increase at a rate faster than the rate of inflation. In addition, as is broadly known, there are significant improvements in the rapidly evolving technology landscape, and we must make investments and incur costs today that we believe will provide benefits in the medium term.
In the past, we have discussed non-comp growth drivers such as headcount growth, inflation, and some upward pressure beyond that related to the items I have just discussed, and they will continue to influence non-comp costs in the near term. As a reminder, the non-comp expense line consists of a mix of fixed and variable expenses, of which a significant portion would be considered variable and will fluctuate with transaction activity and headcount, both in our businesses and in our corporate area, to execute on our increased transaction activity and growth initiatives. Nonetheless, as you can see from the improvement in both our full year comp and non-comp ratios, we demonstrated leverage in 2025. We maintain a disciplined focus on our expenses, balancing that with investment in order to execute our strategic plan. Our adjusted tax rate for the quarter was 29.4%, up from the fourth quarter of last year.
Our full-year adjusted tax rate was 19.8%, down from 21.8% in 2024. The full-year adjusted tax rate was significantly impacted by, among other things, the appreciation of the firm's share price upon vesting of RSU grants above the original grant price, generating a benefit which was larger than the prior year's tax benefit. As a reminder, the majority of this impact typically occurs in the first quarter. Turning to our balance sheet. As of December 31st, our cash and investment securities totaled $3 billion. In 2025, we returned the second largest amount of capital in the firm's history, totaling $812 million. This included approximately $151 million through dividends and $661 million through the repurchase of 2.4 million shares at an average price of $275.42. Our fourth quarter adjusted diluted share count was approximately 45 million shares, modestly higher than the third quarter.
For the full year, our weighted average share count ended at 44.4 million shares, approximately 225,000 shares higher versus the year prior. We remain committed to repurchasing shares to offset dilution from our year-end RSU bonus grants, and for the fifth year in a row, we have repurchased a number of shares greater than that, and we expect to do so again in 2026. We also repurchased shares sufficient to cover the number expected to be issued in both 2025 and 2026 in relation to the Robey Warshaw acquisition. We continue to maintain a strong cash position and take into consideration our regulatory requirements, the current economic and business environment, cash needs for the implementation of our strategic initiatives, including hiring plans, and preserving a solid financial footing.
We are pleased with our performance in 2025, and as John mentioned, we begin the year with strong momentum in all of our businesses. We believe we are well positioned for 2026 and are approaching this year with optimism. With that, we will now open the line for questions.