WisdomTree Board of Directors Issues Year-End Letter to Stockholders

NEW YORK, Dec. 21, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- WisdomTree, Inc. (NYSE: WT), a global financial innovator, today issued a 2022 year-end letter to stockholders from the WisdomTree Board of Directors. The letter provides an update on the Company’s strategy and strong financial results, employee and corporate governance initiatives, digital assets initiatives and continued engagement with stockholders.

Fellow WisdomTree stockholders:

2022 was a unique and exciting year for WisdomTree. While operating in a challenging macroenvironment, we successfully broadened and grew our ETP business and advanced our early mover strategic expansion into digital assets and blockchain-enabled finance. We also welcomed change in our boardroom and continued to engage with our stockholders. As we approach the end of the year, WisdomTree’s Board of Directors would like to provide you with a brief update on the Company, what we’ve achieved this year and how we see WisdomTree continuing to generate long-term value for stockholders.

First and foremost, we are pleased with the Company’s progress and our strong financial results. We are in the midst of our tenth consecutive quarter of net inflows, and we see immense opportunities for continued organic growth in both our ETP business and as an early mover in digital assets and blockchain-enabled finance. With more than $11 billion of net inflows to date in 2022, we have achieved a 14% annualized pace of organic growth – the best of all publicly traded U.S. asset managers. Our success over the past year has been driven by strong breadth and depth of global flows, with inflows into seven of our eight major product categories. We launched 20 new ETPs globally in 2022 and have new products in the pipeline for the upcoming year, which we expect to serve as another lever of future growth. Our products are also extremely well positioned for the rotation to value, driven by rising interest rates and an inflationary environment and have delivered outstanding performance.

We also have continued to execute on our digital assets strategy, which is a natural extension of our core business and we believe will bring us new, diversified and high-growth revenue streams. In 2022, WisdomTree minted gold and U.S. dollar tokens, and we have announced that 10 blockchain-enabled funds are effective with the SEC, allowing us to lay claim to the deepest exposures in the new digital wrapper. Looking ahead, WisdomTree Prime™ is on track for a broader roll out in 2023 and currently has a waitlist of more than 6,500 people. As an early mover in tokenized assets and blockchain-enabled funds, we are ahead of the curve and establishing ourselves as a leader in this space. Overall, with our scalable business model, excellent product positioning and performance, a broad and growing managed models business and innovative approach to digital assets and blockchain-enabled finance, we have a strong foundation. We are well positioned to continue on our growth trajectory and identify further opportunities to expand our business and reach a greater addressable market.

In addition, this past year was an important one for our WisdomTree team and we are proud to have been named one of the 2022 Best Places to Work in Money Management by Pensions & Investments for the third consecutive year, and this year securing the top ranking for firms in the 100-499 employees category. Our most recent employee engagement survey found that our employees are more connected and committed to the Company and to our goals than ever before, which we believe has contributed to our strong performance this year, as well as to our continued ability to attract and retain top talent.

This year, we also made meaningful changes in the boardroom with the addition of four new directors – Harold Singleton III, Lynn S. Blake, Deborah A. Fuhr and Daniela Mielke – resulting in more than half of our current Board members having been appointed within the past two years. In May, we formed an Operations and Strategy Committee of the Board, with the goal of evaluating our operations and corporate strategy. This Committee, which includes two directors appointed in May 2022, gave us the chance to educate our newest directors about the Company, our operations and the execution of our strategy, and utilize fresh eyes to look for opportunities to improve. For all of our directors, both recent additions and longer-serving members, this was an unparalleled opportunity to re-examine our procedures, policies and assumptions.

The Committee, the full Board and the Company’s management team have worked closely to ensure that this review would be informed by a comprehensive and transparent view of every aspect of WisdomTree. The Committee met numerous times as a group, with management and with the Board, including 15 management presentations, and in doing so conducted a thorough, independent review of our efficiency and operations, M&A and strategy, stockholder and capital deployment, digital assets, budget process, global sales, models, product development and compensation and culture. Throughout the process, both management and the Committee devoted considerable time and resources and collaborated to ensure the Committee had unfettered access to the information and insights they needed to evaluate our business and make objective recommendations. We are proud of the meticulous and collective efforts of this review process.

We are also proud of the outcome. The Board, in reviewing the Committee’s recommendations and observations, unanimously concluded that it fully supports WisdomTree’s management team and the current strategy and plan for stockholder value creation. The Board will continue to review and evaluate the Company’s operations, management, strategy and its execution on an ongoing basis, as well as all approved Committee recommendations and those modified into Board directives. The Board also unanimously agreed with the Committee’s recommendation that the Committee be dissolved by December 31, 2022 and that management subsequently report on the execution of all approved Committee recommendations and Board directives in a quarterly report to the Board.

The Company’s results support these conclusions and speak for themselves: excellent product positioning and performance, a broad and growing managed models business, industry leading organic growth, and an early mover advantage in digital assets and blockchain-enabled finance, all built upon an efficient and highly scalable operation.

While the Committee’s review process has concluded, our commitment to engage with stockholders remains as strong as ever. As we move into the new year, we will continue to welcome thoughtful feedback, and we remain committed to honing our operational efficiencies and assessing opportunities to improve our business to create additional value for WisdomTree stockholders. Despite the challenging 2022 backdrop, our focus has remained firm and steady on running the business and continuing to execute on our vision. We look forward to what 2023 will bring and appreciate your investment in WisdomTree.

Sincerely,
WisdomTree Board of Directors

Frank Salerno
Chair of the Board     

About WisdomTree

WisdomTree is a global financial innovator, offering a well-diversified suite of exchange-traded products (ETPs), models and solutions. We empower investors to shape their future and support financial professionals to better serve their clients and grow their businesses. WisdomTree is leveraging the latest financial infrastructure to create products that provide access, transparency and an enhanced user experience. Building on our heritage of innovation, we are also developing next-generation digital products and structures, including digital funds and tokenized assets, as well as our blockchain-native digital wallet, WisdomTree Prime™.

WisdomTree currently has approximately $80.5 billion in assets under management globally.

For more information about WisdomTree and WisdomTree Prime, visit: https://www.wisdomtree.com.

Please visit us on Twitter at @WisdomTreeNews.

WisdomTree® is the marketing name for WisdomTree, Inc. and its subsidiaries worldwide.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release may contain a number of “forward-looking statements” as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements about our ability to successfully implement our digital assets strategy, including WisdomTree Prime™, and achieve its objectives, as well as statements relating to our future growth prospects and potential for business expansion. These forward-looking statements are based on WisdomTree’s management’s current expectations, estimates, projections and beliefs, as well as a number of assumptions concerning future events. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, conditions or results, and involve a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other important factors, many of which are outside WisdomTree’s management’s control, that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements included in this release speak only as of the date of this release. WisdomTree does not undertake any obligation to update its forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this release except as may be required by the federal securities laws.

Contact Information

Media Relations
WisdomTree, Inc.
Jessica Zaloom
+1.917.267.3735
jzaloom@wisdomtree.com / wisdomtree@fullyvested.com

Investor Relations
WisdomTree, Inc.
Jeremy Campbell
+1.646.522.2602
Jeremy.campbell@wisdomtree.com