FactSet Research Systems Inc. (NYSE:FDS) Q4 2020 Earnings Conference Call - Final Transcript

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the FactSet Fourth Quarter 2020 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to introduce host of this conference call, Ms. Rima Hyder, Vice President, Investor Relations. You may begin.

Thank you, Kevin, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to FactSet's fourth quarter 2020 earnings call. We continue to be in various remote locations today. And if we have any audio quality issues, we certainly appreciate your patience, should we experience a disruption.

Before we begin, I would like to point out that the slides we will reference during this presentation can be accessed via the website on the Investor Relations section of our website at factset.com. The slides will be posted on our website at the conclusion of this call. A replay of today's call will be available via phone and on our website. After our prepared remarks, we will open the call to questions to investors. To be fair to everyone, please limit yourself to one plus one follow-up.

Before we discuss our results, I encourage all listeners to review the legal notice on Slide 2, which explains the risks of forward-looking statements and the use of non-GAAP financial measures. Additionally, please refer to our Forms 10-K and 10-Q for a discussion of risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Our slide presentation and discussions on this call will include certain non-GAAP financial measures. For such measures, reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are in the appendix to the presentation and in our earnings release issued earlier today.

Joining me today are Phil Snow, Chief Executive Officer; and Helen Shan, Chief Financial Officer. I would now like to turn the discussion over to Phil Snow.

Thanks Rima, and good morning and good afternoon, everyone. First, I hope everyone is healthy and continuing to do well. And when we started this fiscal year, none of us I think could have anticipated what we'd be faced with over the last six months. And I really couldn't be proud of our team's performance, and as a result, to be there for our clients as we all quickly adapted to new ways of working. Our resilience and ability to execute over the last three months meant our client-facing teams, armed with an expanding suite of products, achieved the highest quarter of incremental ASV in our history.

We finished our fiscal year having delivered 40 consecutive years of top line growth and 24 years of adjusted EPS growth. I am pleased with how our digital transformation efforts are supporting this growth and increasing our ability to build personalized solutions for our expanding client base. Earlier this year, we partnered with Forbes Insights to survey 200 asset managers and asset owners from around the globe to better understand where they stood with their digital transformation programs and how they're leveraging next-generation technologies. And according to the results, 75% of executives believe their firms need to invest