WESTWOOD HOLDINGS GROUP INC

Stockholders and Board of Directors

Westwood Holdings Group, Inc.

Dallas, Texas

Opinion on the Consolidated Financial Statements

We have audited the accompanying consolidated balance sheets of Westwood Holdings Group, Inc. (the "Company") as of December 31, 2024 and 2023, the related consolidated statements of operations, stockholders’ equity, and cash flows for each of the three years in the period ended December 31, 2024, and the related notes (collectively referred to as the "consolidated financial statements"). In our opinion, the consolidated financial statements present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of the Company at December 31, 2024 and 2023, and the results of its operations and its cash flows for each of the three years in the period ended December 31, 2024, in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America.

Basis for Opinion

These consolidated financial statements are the responsibility of the Company’s management. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on the Company’s consolidated financial statements based on our audits. We are a public accounting firm registered with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States) ("PCAOB") and are required to be independent with respect to the Company in accordance with the U.S. federal securities laws and the applicable rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the PCAOB.

We conducted our audits in accordance with the standards of the PCAOB. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audits to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the consolidated financial statements are free of material misstatement, whether due to error or fraud. The Company is not required to have, nor were we engaged to perform, an audit of its internal control over financial reporting. As part of our audits, we are required to obtain an understanding of internal control over financial reporting but not for the purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the Company’s internal control over financial reporting. Accordingly, we express no such opinion.

Our audits included performing procedures to assess the risks of material misstatement of the consolidated financial statements, whether due to error or fraud, and performing procedures that respond to those risks. Such procedures included examining, on a test basis, evidence regarding the amounts and disclosures in the consolidated financial statements. Our audits also included evaluating the accounting principles used and significant estimates made by management, as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the consolidated financial statements.

We believe that our audits provide a reasonable basis for our opinion.

Critical Audit Matter

The critical audit matter communicated below is a matter arising from the current period audit of the consolidated financial statements that was communicated or required to be communicated to the audit committee and that: (1) relates to accounts or disclosures that are material to the consolidated financial statements and (2) involved our especially challenging, subjective, or complex judgments. The communication of the critical audit matter does not alter in any way our opinion on the consolidated financial statements, taken as a whole, and we are not, by communicating the critical audit matter below, providing a separate opinion on the critical audit matter or on the accounts or disclosures to which it relates.

Revenue Recognition for advisory and trust revenues

As described in Note 4 to the consolidated financial statements, during the year ended December 31, 2024, the Company recognized $69.8 million and $21.4 million of advisory and trust revenues, respectively, excluding performance-based fees. Advisory and trust fees are typically calculated based on a percentage of assets under management ("AUM") and assets under advisement ("AUA") and are recognized as services are rendered. Advisory fees are paid quarterly in advance based on AUM on the last day of the preceding quarter, quarterly in arrears based on AUM on the last day of the quarter just ended or are based on a daily or monthly analysis of AUM for the stated period. Trust fees for most of the Company’s trust clients are calculated quarterly in arrears, based on a daily average of AUM for the quarter, or monthly, based on the month-end value of AUM, and are paid monthly and quarterly in arrears.

We identified the auditing of the recognition of advisory and trust revenues as a critical audit matter. Auditing advisory and trust revenues involved especially challenging auditor judgment due to the nature and extent of audit effort required to address this matter.

The primary procedures we performed to address this critical audit matter included:

•Evaluating the amount of advisory and trust revenues recognized by performing substantive analytical procedures, which includes developing expectations of advisory and trust revenues based on the Company’s advisory and trust rates, by quarter, and the average AUM and AUA balances, and comparing the expectations to the amount of revenues recorded by the Company.

•Testing the completeness and accuracy of the data used to calculate the Company’s advisory and trust rates, by quarter, and the average AUM and AUA balances, by selecting a sample of advisory and trust accounts, and (i) obtaining the investment advisory agreements and agreeing the rates used in the calculations to the respective agreements, (ii) testing the completeness of AUM and AUA data by reconciling the priced securities positions to third party statements, (iii) testing the accuracy of AUM and AUA data by comparing the pricing of the securities positions within the AUM and AUA to market data.

We have served as the Company's auditor since 2022.

CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS

(in thousands, except par values and share amounts)