Stifel Financial Corporation

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the CFO Financial year-to-date and quarterly financial conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Joel Jeffrey, Head of Investor Relations at Stifel Financial. Thank you. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. I'd like to welcome everyone to Stifel Financial's fourth quarter and full year 2021 financial results conference call. I'm joined on the call today by our chairman and CEO, Ron Koshefsky, our co-presidents, Victor Nisi and Jim Zemlack, and our CFO, Jim Marishen. Earlier this morning, we issued an earnings release and posted a slide deck and financial supplement to our website, which can be found on the investor relations page at www.stiefel.com. I would note that some of the numbers that we state throughout our presentation are presented on a non-GAAP basis, and I would refer to our reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP as disclosed in our press release. I would also remind listeners to refer to our earnings release, financial supplement, and slide presentation for information on forward-looking statements and non-GAAP measures. This audio cast is copyrighted material by Stiefel Financial and may not be duplicated, reproduced, or rebroadcast without the consent of Stiefel Financial Corp. I will now turn the call over to our chairman and CEO, Ron Krzyzewski.

Thanks, Joe. To our guests, good morning, and thank you for taking the time to listen to our fourth quarter and full year 2021 results. As always, I'll start the call by highlighting our full year and quarterly results. Then Jim Marish will review our balance sheet and expenses. and I'll wrap up with our outlook for 2022 and some concluding thoughts. With that, let me turn to our results. For the full year, Steeples' performance was stellar. 2021 marked our 26th consecutive year of record revenue and our fifth consecutive year of record earnings per share. Furthermore, we posted record results basically across the board. Simply, 2021 is the result of the historical investments we've made in people, products, and technology, accompanied both with organic growth and strategic acquisition. The market environment certainly was a wind at our backs, but we would not or could not have produced these results without these strategic investments. Looking forward, our optimism for our business is a direct result of our focus on constantly reinvesting in our business and improving our relevance to our clients. For the year, Revenue totaled $4.74 billion, up nearly $1 billion over 2020, while earnings per share of $7.08 increased 55% and drove a return on tangible common equity of 31%. In terms of capital deployment, I've stated that Stifel will attempt to maximize returns on invested capital, primarily through growth investments, including acquisitions. We also utilized capital by increasing the size of our bank. And finally, we returned capital to shareholders through dividends and stock buybacks. In 2021, Stiefel increased capital by approximately $1 billion. In pursuing the objective of maximizing returns on capital, in 2021, we grew our loan portfolio by nearly 50%, made a strategic acquisition of Binding Sparks, paid common and preferred dividends of approximately 100 million and repurchased 173 million in common stock. As we examine the various levers to attempt to maximize the best risk adjusted returns, we concluded that we have underweighted our common dividend relative to other capital deployment strategies and relative to our peers. Given our outlook for 2022, the increased scale and breadth of our business and our ability to generate significant excess capital after continued and anticipated investments in our franchise, I'm happy to announce that Stiefel's Board of Directors has approved the doubling of our annual common dividend to $1.20 a share from $0.60 per share. The fact that we've generated strong revenue growth should not have come as a big surprise, as Stiefel is a growth company. and we posted record revenue every year for over a quarter century. Yet, as good stewards of shareholder capital, we focus not only on revenue growth, but also on profitability and returns on capital. Slide two illustrates our growth since 2015. Basically, in six years, we have doubled Stiefel's net revenue, with global wealth increasing nearly 90% and institutional more than doubling. A particular note is our growing advisory franchise, which has increased from about $200 million in advisory fees in 2015 to $850 million in 2021. I have stated on numerous occasions that our lending opportunities were significant considering the relative size of Stiefel Bank to our combined client-facing franchises in global wealth and institutional. This has resulted, over the past six years, in a 33% average annual growth in our loan portfolio, with our most recent quarter further underscoring Stiefel's ability to source quality loans. To summarize this slide, the growth in the scale of our operations has, over the past six years, produced average revenue growth of 13%, pre-tax margins that improved from 10% to 24%, return on tangible common equity that has surged from 10% to 31%, and earnings per share that has averaged 35% annual growth. Now let me discuss our most recent quarter results. Stiefel generated record quarterly net revenue that surpassed 1.3 billion, an increase of 23% over 2020. Our revenue growth coupled with our expense discipline resulted in a pre-tax margin of 26%, non-GAAP earnings per share of $2.23, which was up 34% year-on-year, and an annualized return on common tangible equity for the quarter of nearly 37%. We are also pleased that we closed on our Binding Sparks deal and welcomed them to Stiefel. The next slide provides more detail on our quarterly results. Our net revenue was driven by record performance in both global wealth management and the institutional growth. Compensation as a percentage of net revenue declined sequentially to 57.5%, reflecting the operating leverage of record revenue. Our operating expense ratio was 16.5%, and excluding credit provision and investment banking growth ups, totaled 15.5%, which was well below our full-year guidance. Taken together, Stifel's quarterly pre-tax income totaled $335 million, which increased 33% from the fourth quarter of 2020. Moving on to our operating segments and starting with global wealth management. Before I talk about the financial results for global wealth, I want to reiterate the importance and stability of this business and the consistency of profitability. Our more than 2,300 advisors serve clients from nearly 400 locations, and combine an entrepreneurial culture with a full suite of financial solutions coupled with excellent service. Their efforts helped us achieve record quarterly and annual results as fourth quarter revenue totaled $674 million of 17% year on year and full year revenue was $2.6 billion, an increase of 19%. The drivers of this continue to be recruiting, increased client activity, and growth in interest-earning assets. Asset management revenue was up 2% sequentially, and we experienced solid asset inflows in fee-based assets, ending the year with $162 billion. We generated annualized net new asset growth of 7% during the quarter as total client assets finished the year at $436 billion. Revenue for this line item is correlated to beginning of quarter asset values as we build and advance for the majority of our fee-based products. As such, the first quarter of 2022 will positively reflect this reality. The next slide highlights the strength of our recruiting and loan growth as growth drivers, as well as the increasing stability of our revenue. For the quarter, we added 34 advisors with total trailing 12-month production of 16 million. This includes 27 employee advisors, of which 16 were experienced advisors, and seven advisors hired into steeple independent advisors as recruiting in this channel is beginning to pay off. That said, I would remind everyone that the fourth quarter tends to be seasonally slower for recruiting, but as I look forward, I'd expect 2022 to be another strong year from a recruiting standpoint as our current pipelines remain robust. Not only have we added more than 121 advisors in 2021, but we continue to see our private client revenue shift to a more fee-based model. In 2015, transactional revenue accounted for 51% of our global wealth management, yet today totals 32%. The increase in fee-based revenues has been the result of recruiting high net worth advisors that typically have more of a fee-based clientele as well as the growth of net interest income as we expand Stifel Bank. While I always said that Stifel is product agnostic, given the trends in the industry and the growth of our balance sheet, I would expect a percentage of these more recurring revenues to increase in the years to come. I am particularly pleased with our loan growth, driven by significant demand from the various facets of Stifel's client platform. Loans increased $3 billion, up 23% sequentially, or 92% annualized. This increase helped drive a 7% sequential increase in net interest income. Jim will provide more color on this later in this presentation. Moving on to our institutional group. Our quarterly net revenue totaled a record $633 million, up 29% both sequentially and from the prior year. Full year revenue, also a record, increased 36% to approximately $2.2 billion. We posted our third consecutive record advisory quarter of $311 million, which was up 49% sequentially. Capital raising posted revenue of $155 million, and was up modestly from last year. Transactional revenue, or some say sales and trading or client facilitation revenue, increased 30% sequentially to $161 million and totaled $616 million for the full year. Our institutional pre-tax margin was 28%. For the full year, pre-tax margin was 26% and was up 550 basis points as we continue to generate substantial top-line growth, which drives operating leverage. Moving on to the components of the institutional group. Our equities business increased 22% to $689 million in 2021, with fourth quarter revenue of $157 million. Our fixed income business finished the year with revenue of $588 million, up slightly from 2020, but still a record. For the quarter, we posted revenue of $160 million, which was the second highest in our history. Our quarterly fixed income business reflected strength in capital raising as well as the benefit of our acquisition of Vining Sparks. As I typically do, I'll focus on the transactional businesses of these segments on this slide. Quarterly equity transactional revenue was up 36% sequentially. This was the result of normal seasonality in our business, increased market activity levels, and solid mark-to-market gains on our portfolio. For the full year, equity transaction revenue was $255 million, roughly flat with the prior year. Fixed income transactional revenue of $95 million was up 25% sequentially. The increase was driven primarily by binding sparks, which contributed to the last two months of the quarter. For the year, fixed income transactional revenue totaled $361 million. On slide nine, we look at our investment banking business. For the full year, investment banking increased 64%. For the quarter, revenues were up 41%. Our performance was strong across our entire platform, and I would note that Stiefel's business is diversified across verticals, products, and geographies. Looking at our advisory practice, I'll simply say that 2021 was outstanding. Our full-year revenue of $856 million was double our 2020 results and an increase of more than 90% from our prior record in 2019, as essentially all of our verticals had strong years, which illustrates the success of the growth strategy. Our fourth quarter results were equally impressive, as $311 million of advisory revenue surpassed our prior record by almost 50%. Moving on to capital raising. Our equity underwriting business posted revenue of $100 million. For the year, we had our strongest ever equity underwriting results with revenue of $476 million. In 2021, Stifel ranked as the fifth most active underwriter and the 11th most active book runner across all equity and equity-linked products. Our fixed income underwriting business posted its third consecutive record quarter with $67 million in revenue, up 11% sequentially. Our municipal finance business posted another great quarter as we lead managed 264 municipal issues. For the full year, our market share, in terms of number of transactions, increased by 130 basis points. to a 13.2% market share. In addition to the strength of our public finance business, we continue to see strong contributions from our debt capital markets business. As you can see from the chart on this slide, we've had a long track record of growth. Allow me to explain this growth and its sustainability. Back in 2011, we made the strategic decision to build our investment banking capabilities. Our growth plan centered on layering investment banking on top of our core strength in equity research. We were then and remain today one of the largest and most respected global providers of equity research. Thus, we have focused our efforts on adding talented investment bankers through selective hiring and opportunistic acquisitions and broadening our product offering and geographic footprint. Our managing director headcount has increased from 79 in 2011 to 205 today, and we've transformed our investment banking product. Stifla has grown from a purely U.S. small-cap focused effort to a full-service investment bank. We started by improving from co-manager to book runner in our equity origination efforts, largely on the back of the strength and research. From there, we have grown to be a full-service global investment bank with growing revenue centers in the United States, Europe, and Canada. We now have the capabilities of a bulge bracket firm and can offer a broad range of products that include restructuring, SPACs, leveraged finance, 144As, private placements, private equity, and venture sponsor coverage. The result of this process is substantial operating leverage in our business, as our bankers that have been on our platform since 2016 have roughly tripled their production over the past six years. Increased productivity, the growth in our total MD headcount, and the breadth of our product offering have combined to drive a nearly 700% increase in investment banking revenue over this timeframe. Said another way, we are building this franchise as we do in global wealth, which is via the addition of talented and entrepreneurial associates armed with a broad array of product offerings and technology. So as we start out 2022, we continue to believe that our investment banking activity will be strong. Our pipelines are meaningfully larger than they were coming into 2021. That said, market volatility can impact the timing of closings, and our performance during the year will not be linear. We do look at our current pipelines, and under relatively normal operating environment, we expect another solid year from our investment banking business. And now, let me turn the call over to our CFO, Jim Marichan.

Thanks, Ron, and good morning, everyone. So, starting with net interest income, we generated $138 million of NII in the fourth quarter, which was up 5% sequentially. The growth in our NII was driven by an 8% increase in our interest-earning assets, as we were able to produce a sizable increase in our loan portfolio. Our firm-wide net interest margin decreased to 204 basis points, primarily due to the bank NIM of 236 basis points. This was driven by increased loan origination activity and a highly competitive lending environment. For the full year, net interest income came in above our guidance at $503 million. This was driven by the more than $5 million increase in our loan portfolio during the year, as we're able to leverage the investments we've made, as can be seen in our fund banking practice, as we took advantage of strong market dynamics in that lending channel. Given our loan growth and the 0% interest rate environment, our bank NIM in 2021 was essentially at the midpoint of our guidance and relatively flat year on year. In terms of our first quarter expectations, We see net interest income in the range of $140 million to $150 million and with a bank NIM of 235 to 245 basis points. I'd also note that we've updated our asset sensitivity based on the increased size of our balance sheet. Given the further growth and based on asset levels at the end of 2021, we now estimate that we would generate an incremental $200 to $225 million of pre-tax net income as a result of a 100 basis point increase in rate. This, again, assumes a 25 percent deposit beta and a parallel shift in the yield curve. An highlight of this analysis is based on the entire last rate cycle and no additional asset growth. Later in the presentation, Ron will discuss our NII forecast, which is based on our anticipated growth, potential timing of Fed rate increases, and the projected range of deposit betas for 2022. Moving on to the next slide. I'll go into more detail on the bank's loan and investment portfolios. We ended the quarter with total net loans of $16.7 billion, which was up approximately $3.2 billion from the prior quarter and was primarily driven by growth in our commercial channel. Our commercial portfolio increased by $2.3 billion, primarily due to a $2 billion increase in fund banking loans. On the consumer side, our mortgage portfolio increased by $500 million sequentially, as we continue to see demand for residential loans from our wealth management clients. Our securities-based loan portfolio increased by approximately $330 million. Growth in these loans continues to be strong as FA recruiting momentum continues to drive increased loan balances. Moving to the investment portfolio, total investments decreased by $100 million sequentially as a result of lower agency MBS holdings. As we continue to see opportunities to grow our loan portfolio, we'd expect to see the bond portfolio to continue to comprise a smaller portion of our overall interest earning asset mix. Turning to the allowance, the loan loss provision expense in the quarter totaled $4.1 million due to the aforementioned loan growth that more than offset the improved economic forecast. Based on the composition of our loan growth during the quarter, which was primarily driven by fund banking, which carries a lower overall reserve than our other commercial portfolios, given the relative level of credit risk, our ratio of allowance to total loans declined to 75 basis points, excluding PPP loans. Despite the growth in our portfolio, we continue to see strong credit metrics, with non-performing assets and non-performing loans totaling seven basis points. As we look forward to 2022, we'd expect to see a more normalized annual provision expense that will more closely mirror our existing reserve levels applied against new loan growth, Moving on to capital deployment, our risk-based and leveraged capital ratios declined to 18.7% and 11.7%, respectively. Modest decreases in our capital ratio were the result of substantial loan growth of the bank, our share repurchase program, and the impact of the acquisition of Vining Sparks. During the quarter, we repurchased approximately 1.2 million shares, and for the full year, our purchases totaled nearly 2.5 million shares. We currently have 10.8 million shares remaining on our current authorization, and we will look to continue to offset dilution and repurchase shares opportunistically. As Ron stated earlier, we're increasing our annual dividend to $1.20 a share from $0.60 a share. Since we initiated a dividend in 2017, we viewed it as a vital element of our capital deployment strategy, and we increased it each year by an average of 23%, including a 32% increase in 2021. As you can see from the charts and the commentary on this slide, we generate a significant amount of excess capital and consistently deploy it. In 2021, we increased Tier 1 capital by nearly a billion dollars and deployed more than that in our capital deployment strategy. While the 100% increase in our common stock dividend is substantial, the necessary incremental capital based on our current share count equates to only $63 million on an annual basis or less than $16 million per quarter. On the next slide, we go through expenses. In the fourth quarter, our pre-tax margin improved 190 basis points year on year to nearly 26%. The increase was a result of strong revenue growth, a lower compensation ratio, and our continued expense discipline. Our comp to revenue ratio of 57.5% was down 70 basis points from the prior quarter. For the full year, our comp ratio was 59%, which is down 90 basis points from 2020 and at the midpoint of our full year guidance. While our comp ratio declined for the full year, given the composition of revenues, I would note that our total comp expense is nearly $550 million above 2020 due to growth in our revenues. Non-compensation operating expenses, excluding the credit loss provision and expenses related to investment banking transactions, totaled approximately $203 million and represented approximately 15.5% of our net revenue. The increase in the dollar value from the prior quarter was driven by increased conference, travel, and entertainment expenses. In the quarter, our non-GAAP after-tax adjustments totaled $13 million, or 11 cents per share. As previously noted, the difference between GAAP and non-GAAP results are related to deal expenses that have primarily included stock-based compensation and intangible amortization. The effective tax rate during the quarter came in at 18%, which is below our full-year guidance. This was due to the benefit related to the tax impact on stock-based compensation. In terms of our share count, our average fully diluted share count increased by 480,000 shares and was below our guidance on last quarter's call due to the share price as well as increased repurchase activity. Absent any assumption for additional share repurchases and assuming a stable stock price, we'd expect the first quarter fully diluted share count to be 118 million shares. And with that, I'll turn the call back over to Ron.

Thanks, Jim. I'd like to take a minute or two to discuss our strategy for our segment and how this positions us for continued growth in our major business lines. In global wealth management, we have focused on enhancing our advice model through aggressive recruiting of entrepreneurial advisors combined with a robust product offering and technology platform. The result of this approach has been solid growth. in both the number of financial advisors on our platform as well as the amount of client assets. As I look forward, our recruiting pipeline is robust, and the traction we are gaining with steeple independent advisors will further enhance our growth prospects as we look to leverage cutting-edge technology with our advice-driven model. In the institutional group, our approach is relatively simple, continually build out our capabilities to become more relevant to our clients. Our client relationships are built on a history of successfully executing mandates, and it has been our experience that the combination of trust and increased capabilities is the best approach to growing the business. We will continue to selectively hire and make acquisitions into verticals and products that we believe can leverage our existing infrastructure and make us further relevant to our clients. Our bank is an increasingly important component of our business, and its increased size and scale will help enhance both our wealth management business and our institutional group as it leverages our wealth management and corporate clients, cash balances, and offers lending products to our clients. We see continued opportunity for growth at the bank as we are undersized, that Steeple Bank is undersized, relative to our 4,000-plus client-facing professionals. We've built out a substantial platform through a conservative approach to lending in channels such as securities-based loans, mortgages, fund banking, and CNI loans. We've accomplished this while maintaining strong risk control, and while we intend to continue to grow the bank, we will continue to be diligent in terms of risk management. Lastly, I want to remind everyone that at its core, Stifel is a client-centric business and quality service for clients has and will be an essential driver of our business. Our focus is to help our clients organize and reach their goals through outstanding service and leading technology. This drives our continued investment in people, products, and geography to enhance the trust our clients have in us and our relevance to them. This approach has not only helped us grow our business with existing clients, but attract new associates to our platform. Before we discuss our outlook for 2022, let's look back a year to what we said at the beginning of 2021. We entered last year optimistic as our investment banking pipelines were strong, our wealth management recruiting pipelines were strong, we anticipated further balance sheet growth, and our client asset levels continued to increase. As you can see, our performance far exceeded our original expectations and even surpassed our updated mid-year guidance. While healthy market conditions help drive our results, the primary factors continue to be the increasing diversity of our product suite and our ability to opportunistically pursue growth strategies. Looking forward to 2022, we believe the Fed will increase rates at least three times beginning in March. The steepness of the yield curve will depend on the market's view of a risk of recession. And while we would be impacted overall if the economy starts to slow, as Jim indicated, our net interest income is highly correlated to short-term rates. Our base case assumes a first quarter market correction followed by improved market with the S&P 500 increasing mid to high single digits year over year. So that brings us to our guidance for 2022 on slide 17. Our guidance is based on our assumptions and our base case scenario, which overall we believe represents a favorable operating environment. That said, I would remind everyone that markets are fluid and can change quickly due to events such as another surge in COVID-19 cases or a geopolitical event. While we cannot predict these events, we believe the best way to forecast our performance is to assume normal operating conditions. As such, we expect net revenue to come in in 2022 between 4.9 and 5.2 billion. We know the street consensus is slightly below the low end of our revenue guidance. The underlying drivers of our guidance are similar to what we saw coming in to last year. Loan growth, our recruiting pipeline, increased client asset levels, and strong investment banking pipeline. As I look at the components of our revenue, I'd highlight the following expectations for 2022. Transactional revenue will be relatively flat for both institutional equities and fixed income. Asset management revenue will be up as we enter 2022 with fee-based assets that are 26% above where we started the year in 2021. And investment banking revenues, they may be down slightly as advisory revenue should be strong but equity underwriting will be highly dependent on market conditions. Additionally, we anticipate relatively flat revenue from public finance. That being said, we entered 2022 with our investment banking pipeline roughly double where it was a year ago, which gives me optimism that despite market volatility, we can post another strong year. In terms of our NII expectations, we're given a specific range of $650 to $750 million. We anticipate balance sheet growth of between $4 and $6 billion and bank net interest margin from 240 to 270 basis points. As I said earlier, our asset sensitivity is almost entirely to the short end of the yield curve. So the difference in our NIM forecast is based on the number and timing of an increase in Fed funds. The low end of the guidance, or $650 million, implies zero rate increases, while the high end, $750 million, assumes increases at the first three Fed meetings in 2022 and a zero deposit beta. So let me be clear. Our base case calls for us to increase our net interest income in 2022 by close to $150 million on balance sheet growth alone. If we get the three rate increases that we expect, I should say beginning in March, our net interest income could possibly increase by approximately 250 million. Given the low compensation attached to net interest income, this will be a significant driver of our bottom line in 2022. So now let me ask Jim to discuss our expense outlook.

Thanks, Ron. On the expense side, we believe that our discipline approach coupled with highly variable nature of our compensation expense and the increased revenue contribution from net interest income will enable us to lower our ratios, even with headwinds being faced from inflation. Our approach to compensation is very much performance-based, and if you look back to 2021, approximately two-thirds of our total compensation expense was variable in nature. Given the structural dynamic and the mix of revenue drivers, we are forecasting compensation expense to be in a range of 57% to 59% of net revenues. Our projected non-comp operating ratio of 16% to 17% should benefit from our expected growth in revenue and offset the expected increases in travel, entertainment, and conference-related expenses. Given advancements in and adoption of technology, it's difficult to predict how travel, entertainment, and conference expenses will normalize going forward, but we don't anticipate these expenses to fully normalized historical levels. I would highlight the total of these expenses in 2019 was approximately $37 million more than the total of these expenses in 2021. If we added the full amount of this difference back into our non-compensation expenses in our 2022 forecast, we are still projecting our non-comp operating ratio to fall within our expected guidance. I would also note that given the expected growth in our loan portfolio, we'd anticipate an increase in our provision expense. Recall that last year we had a negative provision expense as we continue to benefit from the runoff of the reserves we accrued in 2020 due to the expectations for a weak economic outlook. We've essentially worked through those reserves and barring a substantial change in the economic outlook, we would anticipate our provision expense to be driven by loan growth and credit quality. And with that, I'll turn it back to Ron for his closing comments.

Before I turn the call over for questions, let me just reiterate something you've heard me say before. Stifel has been and continues to be a growth company. Our history of growth over the past 26 years, and more specifically over the past decade, has been a function of our continued focus on reinvesting in our business. This has not only led to an impressive streak of annual revenue growth, but also substantial improvement in our profitability. This platform has put our company in a position to continue to grow into the future, despite an ever-changing market environment. Our recruiting and balance sheet growth has substantially increased the percentage of our revenue that comes from recurring sources, which increases the stability of our results. Additionally, our strategic hiring and acquisitions has made our institutional business more relevant to our clients and resulted in our improved standing in industry league table. We will continue to deploy capital into strategies that generate the best risk-adjusted returns and further the growth of our business. Finally, I'd like to thank all my partners at Stifel for their continued commitment to making our firm a premier wealth management and investment banking firm. Without their effort, our history of record performance would not be possible. To them and to our shareholders, I would like to reiterate what I said last year, that the outlook for Steeple is as strong as I have seen in my 25-year tenure as CEO. And as I sit here today, I can say that my sentiment has not changed. With that, operator, please open the line for questions.

At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Steven Chuback from Wolf Research.

Steven Chuback Good morning, Ron. Good morning, Jim.

Good morning, Steve. Good morning.

So, I wanted to just start off a question on capital management. You're running with significant excess today. It's about 10 percent of your market cap. It looks like, based on the guidance ranges you provided for 22, even with the dividend increase, you're going to generate substantially more excess capital. I was hoping you could speak to your capital management priorities, Ron, where they stand today. And with shares trading at such a steep discount to peers and your historical multiple, has your appetite for buybacks changed at all? Why not get a little bit more aggressive here?

Oh, you know, I feel, Stephen, you ask this question every year, not every quarter, and it's a good question. And the answer is always the same, in that we will deploy capital where we think will drive the highest returns. You know, our return on tangible equity is north of 30% annually and quarterly. And so, you know, that's a metric we talk about all the time. And, you know, we will look at stock buybacks when appropriate. We look at acquisitions. We're certainly going to use capital to grow $4 to $6 billion in our bank. And we did, even though we doubled the dividend in terms of capital utilization, it's relatively modest. It's a payout ratio of, you know, south of 20%. So I hear you, and we will, I'm not going to today lay out exactly what we're going to do on capital deployment, but we will continue to use all four levers as appropriate to manage our capital and certainly manage our return on invested capital.

Thanks for that caller, Ron. And just for follow up, I wanted to just dig in a little bit to some of the assumptions underpinning the 2022 outlook guidance. Specifically, I was hoping you could just speak to what you're assuming for equity market appreciation, recognizing we've had a challenging start to the year. on that front and just on expenses, given the favorable expense guidance, especially relative to your bulge bracket peers, I was just hoping you can provide some context as to how you're managing to absorb some of the inflationary pressures a bit better than some of your competitors and any nuanced perspective you could share just on inflationary trends within institutional versus wealth management.

Well, let me take your first question. As I said on the call and as I think we're out there as a firm, Our base case assumptions were three Fed increases beginning in March. You know, first on the interest rate side. As it relates to equity capital markets, we expect a first quarter correction, which we've been seeing. But the S&P 500 will be up mid to high single digits as an assumption for the S&P for the year. So those are the base assumptions, which I characterize as a normal yet favorable operating environment. I always caveat that, that things can change. As it relates, and I'll let Jim get to the fence, but I will say on the inflation question, and I'll point to compensation on this, we manage this firm, first of all, as a firm, we have always been a highly variable company. compensation shot and that we pay for performance across the board. So you'll see pay go up when revenues go up and you'll see pay go down as revenues go down. Because of that model, the reality of that model is that inflation in certain aspects of our firm that could be either on juniors or maybe in various aspects, inflation in some places is absorbed. in other places because our shareholders can expect our comp to revenue ratio to be within our guidance, and we deal with inflation sort of within the ranks of compensation. If you understand the reason we can do that, it's because so much of our compensation is variable.

And maybe just to add on that just a bit in terms or in regards to compensation, when you look at, say, just take the midpoint of our NII guide, so you're up call it $200 million of net interest income. you know, just apply a 50% kind of comp flexibility number on that. You're talking about $100 million on, you know, just take $5 billion of revenue. That's about two points. We're bringing our comp ratio down one point in our estimate, and the difference between those things is essentially accounting for some wage inflation as well as continued investment in the business. And I think just given our relative size and our ability to grow the balance sheet and the comp flexibility that that presents, with additional net interest income is really what's helping us absorb wage inflation. Yeah.

I mean, we see it. We're not saying that we don't see wage inflation, but the way we run the company as a percentage of revenue, we see comp coming down. Okay? That doesn't mean we're not dealing with the same thing everyone else is. We structurally have a model that's highly variable. That allows me to say that.

And you're coming into this year looking at last year where comp, absolute comp dollars were up $550 million to start.

All good points. And just for my final question just on bank growth, you recorded a significant uptick in client cash balances to close out the year in addition to a slight uptick in off-balance sheet cash, which now sits at about $7 billion. In the context of the $4 to $6 billion of bank growth that you're guiding to for this year, How much of that $7 billion are you assuming is swept into Stiefel Bank? And what's your appetite to accelerate some of those sweeps if we do see a more constructive rate backdrop?

Well, we're going to, I mean, look, we will sweep as needed. Okay. I mean, that's what I will say. And, you know, we've had this question for a number of years, too, as to, you know, back when when our total consolidated footings were under $20 billion, and we're $34 billion now. So we have unutilized client and corporate cash balances that we'll utilize for the bank. What I would say is that those balances go up as we continue to grow the firm and recruit. So I think your question is that we'll is that going to be a limiting factor, if I can presume your question? Is our cash balance, as we sit here today, going to be a governing factor on our $4 to $6 billion, or maybe even a little bit more of long growth? And I would say the answer is no.

And to add a little bit of color there, I would also remind everyone that there's about $5 to $6 billion of additional cash balances in the money funds that can be pushed back over into the suite program for additional liquidities. And then in regards to appetite for balance sheet growth, if you think back to what we've done this year, we grew the consumer portfolio, call it $2.5 billion between mortgages and securities-based loan. If you look at that pace in the fourth quarter, that's probably over $3 billion. And so we're talking about $4 to $6 billion in our base case. And then you saw a $2 billion increase in fund banking during the fourth quarter. Now, obviously, there was some outsized growth in the fourth quarter-related fund banking, but we continue to see tremendous demand there. The amount of money flowing into private markets is not slow. And so we view that, you know, is there potential to go beyond the $6 billion? Sure. If those types of low-risk, you know, attractive risk-adjusted returns present themselves, we would definitely want to leave ourselves some flexibility there to grow more than that. And we have the capital and liquidity to do it.

That's great, Collar. Thanks so much for taking my questions. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Devin Ryan with JMP Securities.

Morning, Devin. Great. Good morning, Ron. Good morning, Jim. How are you guys? All right. Good. Good. So just want to follow up on the guidance and slightly different questions here. Just clearly good guidance and appreciate kind of the base case you're running through the model. If we were to assume that some of this market volatility persists longer, I know maybe there's some caveats, but, you know, how, you know, is there downside risk, in your opinion, to investment banking outlook? Or, you know, would the kind of the diversification of the business kind of kick in as it has in the past? So maybe, you know, the outlook still works in a lot of scenarios. And then the last piece of it, I was a little surprised on, you know, transaction revenues being flat, just given the addition of mining spark. So, you know, curious where the other offsets are.

Look, I think, you know, So, I mean, in summary, we like to be conservative. I think we were last year in our guidance, and we're trying to do that. And so in short summary of our guidance, we're basically saying, look, we had a great year. It's hard to predict up from there in transactional and investment banking. It is. It's based on market conditions. So we didn't. because the increase in our guidance to 4.9 to 5.2 is fully supported by, frankly, asset management starting the year with balances of 26% and our NII guidance. You make a good point that binding SPARCs will help, but there are scenarios where we're all of this increased loan across the industry could tap down transactional revenue in the rates business. However, if it goes the other way, well, then the rates business will pick up, and that's the natural sort of hedge that we have in the business. I think probably one of the big variables and one of the hardest numbers for us to get our arms around, and I think for the industry, we're not alone. is on the capital markets, you know, the origination side. So, you know, equity origination, you know, is highly dependent on market conditions and frankly market conditions at the time. And so that's hard to predict. But if that's down, we see other aspects of our business that would be up. And there in life, I think, the beauty of the diversified model that we have built. So in short, I hear you and, you know, having these revenue items flat, I can understand your question, but that's our nature. When I look at our pipelines, I'll go the other side. If you take our pipelines and a favorable equity calendar for the year, yeah, I see good things.

Okay, terrific. Well, we appreciate the guidance. I know there's a lot of moving parts within it, as always, but it's good to have it out there. So thank you for that. And then just to follow up, changing gears, talking about just financial advisor recruiting, and I know pipelines there are at record levels. And So maybe if you just give a little more flavor around the backdrop for recruiting by channel, you're seeing some increasing momentum on the independent side as well, which is good to see. And then the dynamic of interest rates moving higher, is that creating any new competitive pressures on recruiting packages? Or do you expect that will happen? Have you seen that in the past as rates go up? Obviously, the economics of the business can improve. So I'm just curious how you guys are either planning for that or seeing that more broadly in the recruiting backdrop?

Well, first of all, you know, recruiting is always, you know, it's like hand-to-hand combat, right? It's not something that, you know, comes in, you know, they don't come in packages of 20 advisors, you know, come team by team if you're not doing an acquisition. But what I can say, and I have said, is that our people who are talking to the quality teams is very robust and will continue to hire. What impacts recruiting really can be market events, something that happens which will keep people, will make them postpone their plan. But overall, recruiting has been a driver, I see it. On the independent side, we're just getting started. Let's just leave it at that. We're getting started. We're going to be a new entrant into that space for the advisors that we've identified that will fit our strategic goals for steeple independent advisors. And for me, it's always nice to be able to be showing growth numbers and percentages when you're starting from, you know, from a flat start, which is where we were. So I view that as positive. As it relates to deals, I think that that's always dependent on market conditions. But frankly, what I see is I see a lot of these deals that were driven really by low interest rates and by people who discount cash flows back at lower rates. It's kind of like how you value growth stocks. As rates go up, while in many ways you can argue that the economics go higher, I see the net present value of some of these deals making these deals maybe at least get a cap on them. That's a function of rate. All in all, it's going to be very competitive. All in all, we are in a good position to increase our advisors. And on the independent side, the independent advisors bring loans and balances as well. So I'm excited about our entry into that channel. And put together, I think that you'll see very nice results and comparative results for STPL.

Okay, great. I'll leave it there, but thanks for the update.

Yeah, thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Chris Allen with Compass One.

Hello, Chris. Morning, guys. Morning. Thanks for taking the question. I guess if you could just maybe revisit the capital deployment side. You've been pretty clear on the loan growth outlook of deploying capital there and on dividends and repurchases. Maybe give us some color in terms of how you're thinking about the potential deal environment here, whether a market correction may present some opportunities moving forward.

Well, I mean, I passed this prologue for that to me, Chris. I think we are most active on the acquisition front in difficult markets. A lot of things happen that if you're well-capitalized and well-positioned and have a history of being able to successfully close and integrate deals, you know, we're in a good position to take advantage of any opportunities that may present themselves in a market correction. We don't see that today. I mean, we don't see, we can have a correction here, but we don't see something where, you know, a major downturn, like after the tech crash, today at least, or after the financial crisis. But rest assured that if a market correction comes along that we, as a company, are very well positioned, both culturally, capital, capability, and ability to get things done, as we always have, and we'll do that. Today, I get asked a lot about, would we look at acquisitions in the bank space, is a question I get. And my answer to that right now is, look, we grew loans $3 billion last quarter, and we see tremendous loan demand. So when we look at the returns of just doing it ourselves versus going by someone else's loan production at a premium, we're going to do it ourselves. That's just where we are. We see the highest returns. risk-adjusted returns from doing that today. And so, you know, I feel we're well-positioned.

Got it. And then the second question, just any color just in terms of the contribution from Finding Sparks this quarter? I think you guys had talked about $150 million in annual revenues over the last, I think it was 10 years. Was it in line with that, greater than that? And just ex-Finding Sparks, how did the underlying – the legacy Stifel business performed this quarter, and how do you separate the outlooks for both moving forward?

And how do we separate? I didn't get the last part of your question. I'm sorry.

I mean, how do you think about the outlook for both components of the business moving forward? Binding Sparks and Stifel?

Yep. Well, first of all, the first thing is that the Binding Sparks and the Stifel rate platform, as I said, was a tremendous fit. It was, you know, we had a segment of clients, they had a segment of clients with very little overlap and we put those together and, uh, and the capabilities and everything we're doing is, is really good. I will also say that binding sparks brought a lot lot to the table in the way they dealt with depository client portal. They have reporting systems. They have an attitude and not that we didn't, but we're able to combine. these and have a premier, premier rates platform, especially for depositories. And, you know, and I'm excited about it. They performed on expectation for us. I would say that the rates business across the industry, you've seen a lot of people report, I would say the rates business was, you know, below average production. You know, you see our businesses up because of Binance Parts. But it's performed as we thought it would. But more importantly, just to say that the capabilities that they brought to the table is going to be accretive to the overall platform. And that's what I'm excited about. So it's really going to be a deal that's going to really pay dividends on the revenue side, not on us trying to go in and cut expenses. And those are the kind of deals we like. I'm excited about it. Performed two months. It was all we had. We've got to complete the back office integration. And I'm excited about the prospects.

There's definitely a lot of upside for both us and Binding Sparks. And I would say the integration is near complete. We're a month or two away from a full integration from a back office perspective. And it will be one business going forward. And that's how we kind of think about it. And great opportunities for both.

Great. That's it for me, guys. Thank you.

And your final question comes from the line of Alex Blasstein with Goldman Sachs.

Hello, Alex.

Hey, guys.

Yeah, hey.

Yep. Hey, Ron. Hey, Jim. How are you guys? Good morning. Hey, so I want to ask you a couple questions. So maybe first on global wealth business, I think I heard you say 7% net new asset growth over the course of 2021. I guess a couple points. One, is that sustainable from your perspective, given the pipeline comments you made? And does that growth rate, so again, assuming it's kind of mid to high single digits, translate into a similar organic revenue growth in that business? Or is there a makeshift occurring underneath the surface a little bit? That's something we've talked about in the past.

Yeah, well, first of all, it was in the fourth quarter, okay? I think we said 7% in the fourth quarter. Look, I think we're very similar in terms of if you, you know, we're gaining market share. That's how we look at it. The five to six percent, you know, asset growth is a good measure. And you're going to, you just need to see it in AUM. It's not directly correlated to revenue because there is mixes and there's things that happen within there. But at the end of the day, your question is a good one and one that we're focused on and continually focused on, and that is that the objective and the success metric in wealth management is going, you know, for us, just throw a number out there. This isn't a projection, but, you know, we have $400 billion. Well, we want a trillion dollars of client assets, all right? And that's what we're focusing on, and we're going to get there. by organically growing with our existing clients, getting new clients, and by recruiting. And those always sound like hugely aspirational, but they're really not. They're things that we can do. When I started, our AUM was $8 billion. So we can do that, and we will AUM growth. is a core foundation to our growth forward as it has been for the last 25 years.

Got it. That's great. Thanks. And then another follow-up from me on the institutional side, when we look at the advisory business, the contribution from the fund placement business partners, something we've talked about in the past, it sounds like that business has grown and In your commentary, it sounds also like that's going to be driver of the growth and the confidence you're seeing there for 22. Can you help us frame what the size of that business in terms of revenue contribution is today in 21 to help with the jump-off point?

You know, we haven't – we don't break out the fund placement revenues. At least we haven't on this call, so I'm hesitant putting a number out there today. What I'll say – is that what I'm seeing, and I know Victor's on the call too, but what I'm seeing is the interrelation of all these businesses. And so, you know, our fund placement business with Eaton Partners and our fund lending business and Stiefel Bank and our M&A bankers and our debt capitals and all of these teams that we've put together have really, you know, are really coming together. And that's why you're seeing these market share gains. And so we decided a while ago that we needed to be in the fund placement business as a sort of a leg on the stool. And we also decided we needed to be in the fund lending business. And they're all very important contributors to what we're building in the institutional business. And that's always, I want to answer this question because it's a point I'm always trying to get across is to understand what we've built in the institutional business, both banking and transactional sales and trading and all the facets of that. So I don't, I can just tell you Eaton Partners is doing great and it's part of a very successful you know, successful global investment banking franchise.

All right. Thanks very much.

Thank you.

And there are no further questions at this time.

Well, very good. Well, I realize this call was a little bit longer than our normal call, so I thank you. We did want to provide some guidance and some color as to the way we're thinking about the business. I look forward to reporting on our continued growth and success in the first quarter of 2022, and we'll talk to you then. Thank you.

Thank you for participating. This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.