The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation

Good morning and welcome to the 2025 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call hosted by BNY. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. Please note that this conference call and webcast will be recorded and will consist of copyrighted material. You may not record or rebroadcast these materials without BNY's consent. I will now turn the call over to Marius Murs, BNY Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our second quarter earnings call. I'm here with Robin Vins, our Chief Executive Officer, and Dermot McDonough, our Chief Financial Officer. We will reference the quarterly update presentation, which can be found on the Investor Relations page of our website at bny.com. And I'll note that our remarks will contain forward-looking statements and non-GAAP measures. Actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Information about these statements and non-GAAP measures is available in the earnings press release, financial supplement, and quarterly update presentation, all of which can be found on the investor relations page of our website. Forward-looking statements made on this call speak only as of today, July 15, 2025, and will not be updated. With that, I will turn it over to Robin.

Thanks, Marius. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Before Dermot takes you through the financials in greater detail, I'll start with a few summary remarks on our strong performance in the second quarter and a couple of reflections on the first half of the year. Stepping back for a moment to look at the operating environment, we began the quarter in April with elevated market volatility record US equity trading activity, and increased treasury market volumes. Through the quarter, we saw shifts in global policy with elevated risk from geopolitical tensions and conflicts, as well as uncertainty around trade, fiscal, and other policies. Periods of volatility and active markets give BNY the opportunity to deepen the connection with our clients, helping them grow while navigating an evolving business landscape. Our unique position as a financial services platforms company at the heart of the world's capital markets, combined with our diversified business model, allowed us to once again demonstrate our resilience and commercial strength against this backdrop. Turning to the results of the second quarter and referring to page two of the quarterly update presentation, BNY delivered a strong performance. Earnings per share of $1.93 were up 27% year over year on a reported basis and up 28% excluding notable items. Total revenue was up 9% year over year. and for the first time, exceeded $5 billion in a quarter. In combination with expense growth of 4%, BNY generated another quarter of significant positive operating leverage, roughly 500 basis points on both a reported and operating basis. And in what is seasonally our strongest quarter, our pre-tax margin improved to 37%, and our return on tangible common equity improved to 28%. These are clear outputs from our multi-year transformation and robust indicators of BNY's potential. Turning to page three. Over the past few years, we have been laying the foundations for our future. In our January update, We outlined how BNY is well positioned to capture market beta and capitalize on evolving market trends as we work hard to generate alpha through the continued transformation of our company. We entered 2025 with good momentum. Midway through the year, we are seeing results from our consistent execution and continuous delivery that add to our confidence for the medium to long term. Our strategy is simple but powerful, to be more for our clients by running our company better, all powered by our culture. I'll briefly touch on each. First, our commercial model enables BNY to be more for our clients, helping them achieve their goals using the full breadth and depth of our platforms. As we mark the model's one year anniversary, early signs points to the growing effectiveness of our commercial organization with significant runway ahead. We achieved a second consecutive quarter of record sales. The number of multi-product relationships continues to grow. and we continue to broaden and deepen our engagement with clients. For example, in June, we expanded our relationship with specialist active UK asset manager Liontrust. In addition to utilizing our data vault and middle office operating capabilities, Liontrust is fully outsourcing its trading to our buy side trading solutions team. which delivers 24-hour global trade execution and reaches 100 markets globally across all major asset classes. Another important way for us to be more for our clients is to deliver innovative solutions to the market that come from the powerful combination of capabilities we have at BNY. As I've said before, we're not just in the product sales business. We're in the solutions delivery business. BNY enjoys a suite of highly adjacent platforms that when delivered together, create powerful solutions for clients. Our commercial model, combined with our platform's operating model, are intentionally designed to encourage more of this type of innovation. An example of this solutions mindset is our work to build the financial infrastructure of the future by bridging traditional and digital financial ecosystems to enable clients to unlock new capabilities securely and at scale. Early and continuous investments in our digital assets platform have positioned us to meet increasing institutional interest and adoption. Last month, Societe Generale selected BNY to act as reserve custodian for their first USD stablecoin in Europe. And last week, Ripple announced that BNY will act as primary custodian of Ripple's USD stablecoin reserves. Today, BNY is a leader in servicing the growing stablecoin market, enabling companies to create and use stablecoins by providing wide-ranging services, from issuance to ongoing operations. Our advancements in the digital assets ecosystem are just one example of continual innovation, but there are many others. Flexible financing and global clearing, the integration of collateral one into liquidity direct, FX hedge direct for private markets, agency lending in Saudi Arabia, depository receipts in Canada, to name just a few. This is an important theme for us, Not just periodic higher profile product launches, but product level micro innovations week by week, month by month that drive our organic growth. Next, on running our company better with purpose. 2025 will be a milestone year for BNY's transition into our platforms operating model, which realigns how we work and organize ourselves across the entire company. As a reminder, running our company better is not just about expenses. It's about better. Yes, we are driving efficiency, but we're also enabling commercial opportunities, enhancing client journeys, and accelerating speed to market. With more than half of our people at BNY working in the model today, we remain on track to complete our phased transition into the platform's operating model by this time next year. Already, we are starting to see the impact of this new way of working, enabling our people to launch more new solutions, deploy more code releases, and come together better than ever before to support our clients. Finally, on culture. Culture is about generating a collective will to make our company achieve its full potential, harnessing the breadth of our talent to be there for clients, and to help the company hum. This includes so many things, but one part of that enablement is our embrace of AI. It's an exciting moment for AI at BNY. Nearly all of our employees are using our multi-agentic enterprise AI platform ELIZA, and we have started to introduce digital employees into our workforce. It's early days, But we are beginning to see the benefit of some of these agents and digital employees, and we expect that to accelerate in the quarters and years ahead. To wrap up, against the backdrop of a busy operating environment, our priorities are clear, and we remain relentlessly focused on execution. BNY is showing strong momentum. and we are determined to deliver further value for our clients, our shareholders, and our people. At this midpoint of the year, we are pleased to see the initial work of our multi-year transformation bearing fruit. I'd like to thank our teams around the world for delivering strong results and for their continued commitment to the work ahead. We have a lot of opportunity in front of us, but the strategy to unlock it is working. And with that, Over to you, Dominic.