Stifel Financial Corporation

Joel Jeffrey, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. I'd like to welcome everyone to Stifel Financial's second quarter 2025 conference call. I'm joined on the call today by our Chairman and CEO, Ron Krzyzewski, our President, Jim Zimlak, 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.stifel.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 you 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 our slide presentation for information on forward-looking statements and non-GAAP measures. This audio cast is copyrighted material of Stiefel Financial Corp. and may not be duplicated, reproduced, or rebroadcast without the consent of Stiefel Financial. I will now turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Ron Crescesi.

Thanks, Joel. Good morning and thanks to everyone for taking the time to listen to our second quarter earnings conference call. On our last earnings call back in April, I noted that uncertainty around tariffs and the so-called big beautiful bill had created headwinds for the market. But I said then that if we got clarity on these issues, conditions could improve quickly. That's exactly what happened. Investor sentiment improved significantly in the last two months of the quarter. as greater clarity on tariff and tax policy emerged. The S&P 500 rallied 1,000 points since our last call, fueling record client assets and wealth management and sparking a rebound in M&A and capital markets activity. As a result, we exited the quarter with far more momentum than we started the quarter with. If conditions hold, we're positioned for a strong second half. Our second quarter results included a very challenging April, yet we still delivered over $1.28 billion of net revenue and $1.71 in core EPS, which was the best second quarter in our history, and return on tangible common equity of 22%. Our balanced model continues to deliver across market cycles. Global Wealth Management posted its strongest second quarter ever with record client asset levels and higher net interest income. Our institutional business was resilient with a 7% year-over-year revenue increase, record fixed income revenue, and a late quarter pickup in investment banking. In global wealth, Steeple ranked number one overall in the J.D. Power Advisor Satisfaction Study for the third straight year and was ranked number one in five of the six categories measured as follows. Compensation, leadership and culture, operational support, products and marketing and technology. That recognition reflects our commitment to advisor support. It's not just a cultural point, it's a recruiting advantage. This was our strongest recruiting quarter since Q4 of 2015, with 82 new advisors added, including 36 through B. Riley and 21 experienced advisors, representing 51 million in trailing 12-month production. Strategically, we completed our acquisition of Brian Garnier, a European boutique investment bank with deep expertise in healthcare and technology. As Jim will discuss later, this acquisition supports our broader effort to reposition our European operations, de-emphasizing sales and trading while expanding our focus on advisory and investment banking. Combined with ongoing efficiency initiatives, This positions Europe to contribute more meaningfully to the firm's long-term profitability. Moving on to the numbers. Our record second quarter net revenue grew 6% year over year with gains across the board except for a modest decline in advisory. Commissions and principal transactions rose 11% with gains in both global wealth and institutional. With respect to investment banking, the quarter started very slowly in April but ended strongly. Asset management revenues rose 6%, reflecting both market appreciation and improved organic growth. Net interest income was up 8% on higher interest earning assets and lower funding costs. Our compensation ratio was 58%, consistent with the high end of our full year guidance as we continue to accrue compensation conservatively. Operating pre-tax margin was 20.3% and operating EPS was $1.71. up 7% from last year. Before I turn the call over to Jim, I'll walk through our two core business segments and why we're optimistic about the rest of 2025 and beyond. In wealth management, we continue to gain a momentum. Ranking number one overall in J.D. Power isn't just a badge, it's a recognition of our foundation which drives results. Since 2020, we've added nearly 800 financial advisors with 420 million in trailing 12-month production. Recruiting accelerated in 2025. In the first half alone, we brought in 66 experienced advisors with 63 million in production. That includes a major team from B. Reilly and 30 organic recruits with 43 million in production, many in the million-dollar-plus category. For perspective, in all of 2024, we added 50 experienced advisors with 37 million in production. These highly productive advisors bring more client assets, and those assets are increasingly fee-based, which drives more stable recurring revenue from asset management and net interest income. We ended the quarter with record total client and fee-based assets of $517 billion and $206 billion, respectively. The sequential increases were due to stronger equity markets and strong asset inflows, including the advisors from B. Reilly. I'd note that our net new assets improved each month during the quarter, with annualized June net new assets coming in around 5%. Looking ahead, we're confident in continued growth. While recruiting can vary from quarter to quarter, we expect a strong second half, with new advisors transitioning clients to our platform. Our clients continue to hold over $15 billion in money market funds and $6 billion in short-term treasuries. providing potential equity resource for steeple deposit. Now let me move to the institutional group. Total revenue for the segment was $420 million, which was up 7% from the prior year. Firm-wide investment banking revenues totaled $233 million, driven by year-on-year and sequential increases in capital raising revenues. Fixed income underwriting revenue was $54 million, and increased 18%, sequentially driven by a solid increase in public finance activity. CFO continues to rank number one by the number of negotiated issues led as sole or senior manager. Equity capital raising totaled $46 million in the quarter. The market effectively shut down for six weeks following Liberation Day with only a handful of pipes and advisory-linked deals. Activity returned mid-May alongside tariff relief, and we entered the third quarter with meaningfully stronger conditions. While industry-wide ECM fees were in line with the first half of 2024, the mix shifted. Financials and fintech were strong. Healthcare was down more than 50%. We're seeing early signs of a broader IPO recovery and follow-on activity remain sponsor-driven, with private equity continuing to lead issuance. As M&A paths narrow, late-stage private placements, continuation vehicles, and IPOs are increasingly being used to create liquidity. Advisory revenue was $127 million. We continue to get strong contributions from financials despite the increased volatility early in the quarter. In the second quarter, we also got solid contributions from industrials and industrial services. We're also seeing improvement in healthcare and technology, and overall, the accelerating activity levels bode well for the second half of the year and into 2026. Taking a step back and looking back at our acquisition of KBW, now more than 10 years ago, we made a deliberate decision then to preserve the KBW brand within Stiefel. That integration has been a resounding success with nearly all of the original KBW investment banking managing directors still with KBW Stiefel. The sustained focus and successful integration have helped us build a franchise with deep expertise and longstanding client trust. That commitment is now paying off. In 2025, we revised on 84% of total disclosed bank and thrift deal value. an extraordinary market share and a testament to the strength of our platform and positions us as the first call in Bank M&A. Bank M&A, frankly, is accelerating, and the strategic needs for larger banks to combine is also increasing. Given the improved market dynamics, we expect the trend to continue, and I'm confident in our ability to participate and lead at every level. As to our trading businesses, equity transactional revenue totaled $61 million, which was up 16% year on year, driven by increased market volatility. Fixed income revenue of $129 million was up 21% year on year, with increased contributions from our rates, aircraft, and municipal businesses during the quarter. Before I turn the call over to Jim, I want to briefly comment on AI, particularly the promise of agent-based models. We view AI not just as a tool for back office automation, but as a platform to enhance how we serve clients, manage data, and accelerate insights. We are systemically reviewing workflows across the firm where intelligent agents can amplify our professionals' productivity and decision-making. We've already seen early wins in areas like investment banking analytics and advisor support, examples where the right AI tools can create real leverage. That said, we're clear-eyed about the role of technology. It enhances what our people do. It doesn't replace them. Our business is built on trust, relationships, and judgment. AI will help us work faster and smarter, but should not replace the human side of Steeple. Now let me turn the call over to Jim to walk you through the details of our second quarter results. Jim?

Thanks, Ron, and good morning, everyone. Our operating results exceeded street expectations, driven by stronger than anticipated revenue, while expenses remained roughly in line with consensus. Looking at our quarterly revenue, we beat the street estimate by 4%, or $50 million, on stronger investment banking and transactional revenue, as well as higher net interest income. Investment banking revenue came in at $233 million, which is more than $20 million above the guidance we gave in our June operating metric. as we had six transactions that closed right at the end of the quarter that were not in our second quarter forecast. I'd also highlight that fixed income underwriting beat the street estimate by more than 18% on strong public finance activity. Transactional revenue was 9% above the street, primarily because of higher institutional fixed income and equity revenue. I note that our fixed income revenue benefited from a gain in our aircraft leasing business. Net interest income was 2% above the street and at the high end of our guidance, as we benefited from approximately $4 million of fee income, mainly tied to success fees within our venture banking group. Asset management revenue was 1% below consensus, primarily due to lower third-party sweep fees. On the expense side, our compensation ratio was 58%, which was slightly above the street and in line with the high end of our initial annual guidance. Non-compensation expenses were roughly in line with the consensus and were at the midpoint of our adjusted non-comp operating expense guidance range at roughly 20% of revenues. The provision for income taxes came in above the consensus number but was within our expected level of 25 to 26% due to non-deductible foreign losses. Global wealth management revenue of $846 million was a second quarter record, as each line item improved from the same period a year ago. Pre-tax margins were 36%, which was in line with our performance over the past year. During the quarter, we added a total of 82 advisors to our platform, This included 57 experienced advisors with trailing 12-month production of $51 million. The 36 FAs acquired from B. Reilly were included in the experienced hire total. On slide 8, I'll discuss our bank results. Net interest income of $270 million came in at the high end of our guidance. Firm-wide net interest margin increased on higher asset yields, and lower deposit costs, which more than offset a modest decline in average interest earning assets. The 12 basis point increase in bank NIM was a function of lower cash balances, higher yields on our loan book, as well as lower deposit costs. As I mentioned earlier, we generated $4 million of fee income. Excluding these fees, we still would have been at the higher end of our guidance. For the third quarter, we estimate net interest income will be $265 million to $275 million. Our bank balance sheet remains relatively rate neutral, but we experienced some modest benefit from lower funding costs as we had a slight mixed shift in our deposits towards lower cost funding. I'd also note that we anticipate an incremental $1 billion of loan growth in the second half of 2025. Client cash levels decreased during the quarter due to a $1.4 billion decline in smart rate balances and a nearly $460 million decrease in sweep balances. In terms of the decline in smart rate balances, roughly two-thirds of the decline occurred in April, and I note that sweep balances improved late in the quarter as June sweep balances increased $300 million. Since quarter end, we've seen client cash balances essentially flat. As you can see in the chart, we've also included non-wealth deposits, which primarily include our venture and fund channels. Well, these are commercial deposits that provide us with an important funding source and reduce the potential impact of the fluctuations within wealth management cash. In the second quarter, these deposits increased $1.1 billion and have increased more than 2.2 billion year to date, as these growth initiatives continue to accelerate. Our credit metrics and reserve profile remain strong. The non-performing asset ratio stands at 51 basis points. Our credit loss provision totaled $8 million for the quarter, and our consolidated allowance to total loan ratio was 83 basis points. Moving on to our expenses. As we noted earlier, our comp to revenue ratio in the second quarter was 58%, and based on our current forecast, we anticipate our third quarter comp ratio to come in at 58%. Our non-comp expenses totaled $278 million, a 7% increase from the same period last year, and our non-comp operating ratio was 20.3%. We would expect a similar non-comp ratio for the third quarter. I'd also note that we incurred $28 million in severance and other restructuring charges during 2Q in our European operations. As Ron mentioned earlier, this is part of the plan to shift our European focus more towards investment banking. These costs represented the majority of the non-GAAP expenses incurred during the quarter. Our tax rate for the quarter is 25.4%. I would note that we expect to see a similar effective tax rate for the third quarter, but then see a decline in this rate during 4Q. If the stock price holds at current levels, we'd expect the full year effective tax rate to be between 20 and 22% for 2025. On flight 10, I'll review our capital position. Our balance sheet continues to be well capitalized. Tier 1 leverage capital was in line with first quarter levels at 10.8%. Our Tier 1 risk-based capital ratio declined by 10 basis points to 17.5%. Based on a 10% Tier 1 leverage ratio target, we have approximately $315 million of excess capital. In terms of capital deployment during the quarter, we completed the acquisitions of B. Riley and Brian Garnier. This added approximately $90 million to Goodwill and Intangible Assets, and we repurchased roughly 970,000 shares with 8.2 million shares remaining on our current authorization. Absent any assumption of additional share repurchases and assuming a stable stock price, we'd expect a third quarter fully diluted share count via 110.2 million shares.

with that let me talk turn the call back over to ron thanks jim let me turn to our full year guidance despite market volatility in march and april our annualized net revenue is on track for another record year we are seeing momentum build across our businesses which we believe will translate into a strong second half and we remain confident that our full year 2025 results will come in within our guidance range in addition While our tax rate expectations aren't shown on the slide, as Jim said, we continue to anticipate a full year effective tax rate in the 20% to 22% range. From a capital allocation standpoint, we remain focused on generating strong risk-adjusted returns and reinvesting in our business. We anticipate additional bank growth in the second half and have more than 8.2 million shares remaining under our repurchase authorizations. and will continue to pursue both organic and inorganic growth opportunities in global wealth management and the institutional growth. We're also mindful of what's happening at the edges of the market. From a macro perspective, there is still a lot of uncertainty about the overall impact that tariffs will have on the economy. In terms of the market, we've seen a reemergence of mean stock behavior, a sharp rise in margin debt, and pockets of speculation. that feel disconnected from fundamentals, certainly in my view. Valuations are now pricing in near perfect outcomes, and while we're not in the business of predicting pullbacks, we do believe in staying disciplined. We've been through enough market cycles to know that a strong market can be fragile, especially when momentum overtakes fundamentals. A brief pullback wouldn't surprise us. In fact, we'd welcome it as a sign of healthy price discovery. But either way, we'll keep doing what we've always done, serving clients, underwriting growth, and allocating capital with a long-term less. Taking it all together, we're very optimistic about the second half of the year. Market conditions have clearly improved since April. Deal activity is up, investor sentiment has turned constructive, and key macro risks like tariffs and inflation appear better contained than many feared just a few months ago. Additionally, our recruiting activity year-to-date has been extremely strong. and we've built the platform to support it, reflected in our third consecutive number one ranking in J.D. Power advisor satisfaction. That recognition isn't just about today. It positions us for continued recruiting success going forward. In institutional, we're leading in bank M&A and believe that the current environment creates even more opportunity. And in venture lending, we're making meaningful progress, deepening relationships with venture funds, founders, and emerging growth companies across innovation-driven sectors. These are early wins, but they're strategic, and they're building real momentum for the future. So overall, I'm confident in our positioning, and I look forward to a strong second half. Before I close out the call, I want to take a moment to recognize Victor Nisi. As many of you know, Victor recently stepped down from his day-to-day responsibilities as co-president and head of our institutional group after 16 years of extraordinary leadership. At the same time, I'm pleased to share that Victor has joined the Board of Directors of Stiefel Financial Corp. His contributions to our firm, particularly in building one of the industry's leading middle market investment banks, are hard to overstate, and I look forward to his continued insight and guidance as a Stiefel director. So with that, operator, please open the call for questions.

Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Once again, that is star one to signal for a question. And we will take our first question from Devin Ryan with Citizens. Please go ahead.

Great. Hey, Ron. Hi, Jim. And Jim, how are you?

Good morning. Hi, Devin.

I want to start with a question just on KBW, and I appreciate financials, investment banking, KBW has already been, I think, pretty strong just from the non-depository subsectors. But with Bank M&A seemingly re-accelerating here and probably picking up more into the back half, and then you had a nice deal that KBW was advising on last week, what are you expecting there in terms of activity? And if you can, maybe just frame out a little bit more around the opportunity in order of magnitude of kind of revenue potential or maybe what you've maybe been missing because there's been such a dearth of depository M&A over the past four years.

Part of your question answers your question, Devin, in that the dearth of activity over the last several years driven by many factors, you know, the economic, the rate environment, a certain amount, certainly of uncertainty. The regulatory backdrop was not, shall we say, conducive, certainly not conducive to timely M&A approvals. So as those things, all of them have improved, hence the environment for M&A. And you couple that with a need for banks and certainly some of the mid-regional banks to probably combine to be able to compete, whether it's technology or market share or just, frankly, the sheer growth of the city will bodes well, I think, or speaks to the need for some consolidation. We've been talking about this for years, but the environment today is conducive to that and certainly boardroom talks, they understand the benefits of doing smart strategic M&A. As it relates, you know, so that's, the environment's good. That's a long answer to say the environment's good. You know, with respect to, you know, we don't talk about, you know, our share or whatever. We've done very well. I think KBW's default has, you know, shown that it's the way we've approached that deal and the way we've maintained the culture and the brand and the research and the sales and the trading and everything that goes with that has paid some dividends here. So I never am expecting a business at all. We've earned it, but we're well positioned. So I'm not going to give you any revenue numbers. Heck, I don't know. I just expect to get our fair share.

KBW is hosting a depository conference in New York right now, so hopefully they're signing up deals as we speak.

We'll keep an eye out. Thanks for that. And then just as a follow-up on the wealth business, nice to see the strong financial advisor recruiting. And, Ron, I heard the comment about net new assets kind of increasing through the quarter and ending June around 5%. if you're seeing an acceleration in advisor recruiting and there's often a bit of a lag of assets relative to when advisors join, could we expect further acceleration in net new assets from kind of a mid single digits or just more broadly, what are some of the puts and takes you're seeing in the formula for net new assets? Thanks.

Well, look, we're in the business of getting that new asset. And that's just what our business is. So, you know, I, it's, It's always somewhat hard to understand what's really going on because we're not a custody firm. And so sometimes net new assets will appear while you're custodying assets. That's relatively lower margin in terms of what happens with net new assets. But I'm very pleased with our recruiting, especially high-end big teams. And the net new assets bodes very well. So, you know, stepping back and looking at what we've been doing, looking at our momentum, I've been pleased. Devin, we've been doing this a long time, and I think we're doing very well on this front.

Okay. Appreciate it. Good catching up. Yeah. Hey, have a good day. Thanks, Devin. Thanks.

If you find that your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star 2. We'll go next to the line of Steven Schubach with Wolf Research.

Good morning, Ron.

Good morning, Jim. Hey, how you guys doing? Morning. Great. So, wanted to start off with a question on the NII outlook. So, just looking at slide 11 in the deck, You noted that you expect to see a meaningful ramp across majority of fee and revenue categories, second half versus first half. It looks like for the full year NII, you expect the second half run rate to roughly approximate the first half. I want to know if that's the right interpretation and whether there is a credible path to at least reaching the low end of the guidance range that you offered up for NII at the start of the year.

I think that's a fair way to think about it. It is the right interpretation. I'd say if you take a step back and think about 2Q, we certainly benefited from some of the fee income we talked about. In terms of NIM, that probably equates to about four basis points. And then you think about some of the deposit mix shift, given the fact that typically the non-wealth deposits, so venture, fund banking, commercial, are typically a lower cost funding mechanism than smart rate. That's been about 10 basis points cheaper. There's not necessarily a rate sheet we can point you to, but that average is probably the best way to think about it. We really benefited from that. Now, the fee income is hard to extrapolate going forward, but any potential mixed shift is a benefit there. So you think about our guidance for 3Q as $265 to $275 million. That equates somewhere around a $310 to $320 NIM. That being said, we did sell probably about $500 million of middle market CNI loans, which carried higher yields. So it's a bit of a headwind going forward. That will be offset as we continue to grow the balance sheet. You know, a billion dollars is the guidance we gave. Certainly that number can move up from here. We could see more additional growth in the back half. And really then it's going to come down to really what happens with the funding mix. So I think, you know, you're reading the chart right. We're not ready to change our full-year NII guidance. But, you know, there is a path with, you know, more loan growth, with more deposit mix shift. and those various different components to get to the bottom of that as well.

Yeah, look, I'm really, I'm pleased with where we are. You know, always trying to look forward and discern trends, you know, in NII as if there's some long-term, you know, health trend. It's not how I look at it. I just want to tell you, we've done some balance sheet shifts, for instance, selling some portions of our loan portfolio that were higher yielding, but we did not view as necessarily as strategic as to where we're placing other assets. So that has a short-term impact on NII. But look, what do I like? I like the fact that our deposits have grown, our liquidity source for deposits have grown. We do not have a problem generating loans here, all right? So it's a matter of doing it right. And so I think that you're reading the chart right, but I'd tell you to be careful not to read that as some limiter on growth. It's just as we're remixing things, you're seeing us not trying just to hit a target. We're trying to build a high-earning, stable, risk-adjusted NII. And that's just where we're going here. And on that path, we're doing really well.

No, I appreciate all that detail. Maybe just a follow-up on Devin's earlier question around bank M&A and some of the structural tailwinds that you outlined. I think it's consensus, but I think there's a strong case to be had that we're poised to see a meaningful ramp in bank consolidation activity. Certainly, we're seeing a meaningful uptick in deal activity in recent months. One of the concerns that has started to emerge is just some of the weaker performance in the share prices of both the acquirer bank as well as the target. And I was hoping to get some perspective on whether you view some of that price action as being somewhat anomalous or whether that could actually disrupt some of the recent momentum in bank consolidation activity.

Great question. You know, it's so... deal specific, that's hard to answer generally. When you take potentially two high performing banks in the middle market whose stock is discounting growth as they gain market share and combine them, you're going to take that growth premium initially out of those stock prices. And that's what we just saw, in my opinion. But what came out of that is a stronger bank, a stronger competing bank, and a bank that can deliver returns. So I think that the bigger question is putting deals together that are sustainable and that are competitive over the next number of years. And I think boards and management teams are clear-eyed about That is the goal, not necessarily worrying about taking a little growth premium out of stocks. Stocks are highly valued here, in my opinion, in terms of historical valuations. But I don't think that that's a concern regarding the long-term rationale, therefore the underpinning of future bank consolidation. That make sense to you?

That makes perfect sense. I appreciate that.

Overall, these are being done for strategic questions. You need to grow, and some of these banks need to grow. They need technology, their deposits, all of the things that are driving this. Strategic underpinnings are there, and that's what I think these companies are focusing on, which is the right thing. And so I don't really share that concern.

Great. If I could just squeeze in one more ticky tack modeling question, was hoping you could quantify the aircraft leasing gain just so we could gauge what's the right jumping off point for that core FIC brokerage number.

I think that's a good question. So the gain in the quarter was about $28 million. And as we sit here and think about this going forward, you know, $100 million is a good run rate as we look at probably the fourth quarter. But I would say you have to remember that there is some seasonal slowness that we typically see in the third quarter in terms of fixed income transactional. That's a good way to think about it. But that group is still active. You'll see additional gains in the future. But that's a good way to think about the normalized run rate.

Yeah, you know, Jim's been pointing this out as a one-time item for about five times now, so I just want to point that out, okay? So anyway, it is a little more lumpy than, you know, but it's meant to take it. But that's a fair question.

We'll be mindful of the recurring one-timers. Thanks so much to both of you.

Thank you. Thank you.

We go next to Alex Blostein with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Good morning. I have a two-part question, but we can lump it into one, and you guys can kind of take it in parts. But it's related to the overall profitability of the franchise. And I guess on the cyclical part, as you think about recovery in investment banking, I think that's pretty well expected by the market at this point. How do you think the incremental margins from higher investment banking revenues will come through the P&L, both in terms of the impact on institutional margins, but also firm-wide? And then the second question, and I have to ask the AI since You know, you guys put the slide out there. As you think about what profitability and efficiencies that could create to the organization over time, how that would show up and how we could measure that from the outside looking in, that would be helpful.

Thanks. Yeah, well, look, I'll take a second question first and then talk about the other one, although they are kind of related, too. So I'm glad you put them together. It relates to AI. probably the thing that we see is an ability to use a lot of these agent models on things that in our business, so much of what we do administratively is comparing inputs to rule books, whether it's advertising, supervisory analyst type stuff. A lot of things that I can go on and on through our workflows and identify productivity, not unlike what the personal computer did in many areas. So what I see happening is productivity increases where we can continue to grow and not driving profitability by reducing workforce, but by being able to be much more efficient and reassign people to other tasks, whether it's in, again, onboarding, marketing, compliance, AML, investment banking, analytics, all of these things, which I frankly, I read what you're doing over at Goldman as well. And I see it. And the key is to train people. and to make sure that my concern would be that we somehow work to a lowest common denominator, which can be AI. I mean, my goal is that AI is an amplifier, not just something that you just plug in and people can work from home. That's not the viewpoint here. And so we see, and I personally see, big efficiencies, not just at Stifel, but across the industry, primarily in productivity. As it relates to your first part of your question, look, I think we're restructuring in Europe. Our fixed income margins this quarter were very good. Our equity margins were less than optimal. But we have a clear path toward improving our equity business, both our focus shift in Europe, plus some of the productivity things that we have been putting into place, we see meaningful improvement in the margins in that business. And that'll impact overall the margin capability of the business. And, you know, when we talked about getting, you know, I hate to bring it up because no one brought it up, but, you know, we did have a talking about $8 a share. You know, that differential versus where we are to that is simply some of that low-hanging fruit in margin improvement in the institutional primarily equity part of our business. So I'm optimistic about that, Alex.

To put some simple math behind that, when you look at the institutional group, we were sub-15% pre-tax margins this quarter. That number really should be north of 20%, and so you can look at a normalized operating environment in terms of revenue and that kind of margin capability, and that's the kind of lift we're talking about here in terms of the operating leverage, particularly within equities.

Yeah, and this isn't just looking at a number and saying, oh, it should be higher. We have a clear path. to how to get there. We know exactly what, where, what we need to do.

Okay, thanks.

We'll move next to Bill Katz with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

Hey, Bill. Great, thank you. Good morning, everybody. Thank you so much for taking the questions. Just circling back to the NNA discussion on the new assets coming in the door, I was wondering if we could click maybe a level deeper. You mentioned that things are going well. which is great to hear and certainly appreciate the accelerated momentum into the second half of the year. Could you unpack a little bit about what is actually going well? Is it just better recruitment? Is it better packages? Is there a pickup of market share just given what's going on with some larger scale transactions out there? I'm just sort of curious if you could just speak to what's driving that good growth.

I think it's overall the platform of what we do. As we always say, what does business is net new assets. We are in the business of getting net new assets. It's a core basis of what we do. I don't know, Bill, that it's necessarily... quarter to quarter, you can get a couple nice accounts. But across a firm now with some scale, and we have some scale, we just need to put in place the culture and the systems and the technology, all of the things that you see and that you saw come through. The J.D. Power, I know I've said it a couple of times, but that underscores what we're doing in terms of recruitment and the fact that we're bringing in some very large teams now, and they're quite productive. So, you know, we're going to continue to grow, and when I say we're going to grow, and we've grown for, you know, shoot, 28 years. You go back, we've had record, I can't remember when the last time we didn't have a record year in wealth management. It's because we have a culture and a system to grow... our business, which means growing net new assets. So it moves around and sometimes there's noise in those numbers, mostly around the custody side is what I would say. But anyway, I want to just tell you that I'm not sure how much I can unpack it, but we're pleased with the growth. You see it in recruiting first and NAA later.

Okay, thank you. And then just maybe a follow-up on capital allocation. It hasn't come up yet on the call. Just wondering if you could sort of speak to priorities. Appreciate you might grow the bank a little bit, net of the loan sales into the third quarter, I presume. But how should we be thinking about maybe buyback versus bank growth versus maybe where you are in terms of the pipeline of potential deals?

Yeah, I feel like we've come full circle here. You know, we – We talked about, we started the year when our equity values, including financials, were at this level. We said we would focus on bank growth because we view the risk-adjusted returns and the franchise value that we get by allocating. It's just turning the dial. It's not like we're going to do one or the other. you know, we're going to do bank growth. And then, you know, we run into Liberation Day and our stock in the whole industry, you know, corrects down a significant amount, really. We got on the call and said, hey, we're going to focus on buying back our stock and not do bank growth. So now we're sort of all the way back to where we were beginning of the year. And we're going to look at bank growth. You might not see the numbers because we're restructuring the bank a little bit in our loan mix, but we're going to focus relatively, compared to the first quarter, we'll focus more on bank growth. We'll still do stock buybacks, but we see the numbers being more accretive in bank growth. And it's just a function of where the market is from an equity valuation perspective.

Thank you, guys. Thank you.

We'll turn next to Michael Cho with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I'm going to just go ahead and ask an AI question as well. Ron, you kind of laid out the various areas you're looking to improve, and you're clear that it's not just a profitability kind of focus. I'm just kind of curious. You know, with the, you know, dozens or even hundreds of things that are out there in terms of how AI can improve, you know, your own business and your own client experience, I mean, how are you prioritizing some of these initiatives? And maybe you can kind of talk through the pace of focus or pace of investment that you're thinking about when it comes to AI. And are you doing this all in-house or are you using vendors? I'm just kind of, again, just curious about the magnitude and pace as you're thinking through these AI initiatives?

Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, we're starting, I would say, with basics across the firm. You know, AI, you've got to train people. I keep saying, I say it all the time, that AI is an amplifier. It makes smarter people smarter. And on the converse side, if you're not so smart, it makes you look really organized, not so smart. And so, you know, we have to, you know, we obviously do in the basics that are in our system, co-pilot, you know, all of the things. We've rolled that out. We have very high productivity for people that are using that. We're focusing on training and then scaling that up. We've implemented a number of seats on LLMs. that are much more sophisticated. But what I would say is that in our business, the regulatory aspect doesn't say that AI can sign off on Series 24, certain things that require human elements. So we're being a little careful to make sure that our workflows have human interaction at the end. The point is, is there's so much to do on basic, basic things that AI is very good at, which is summarizing, comparing, contrasting, looking at fixed rules and being able to make people much more product, you know, productivity. And so I personally sat down and our workflows and I identified like 70 of them. I just said there was like 70 of me. I'm sitting in my office. I'm not even getting into some of the stuff. and going, oh, my gosh, we can do this, this, this, and this. And a lot of that is off-the-shelf type stuff. This is moving so fast that I'm concerned, if you will, that we don't need to be trying to write our own models when it's evolving so fast that we can get so much lift off of doing stuff that's pretty much off the shelf, and then we customize it a little bit. We don't need to be developing our own or competing with some of these firms. Let them give it to us. There is so much we can do on the productivity front. So that's what we're doing. I think the difference is, from my perspective, the biggest impediment to AI is bureaucracy. Bureaucracies have a way of protecting bureaucracies, and so here at Steeple, I'm taking the lead on pushing through what I think are relatively simple productivity enhancements utilizing AI.

That's great. I appreciate all that, Paula. I want to touch on Europe for my second question. You've talked through the business makeshift there a couple of times, and certainly in the past as well. I recognize you just closed the deal, but going from here, where do you see the kind of incremental changes focus from here as it relates to expansion and then makeshift there, whether it comes from an industry perspective or a geography focus. I'm kind of curious where you think the next incremental focus is at, given where you're at.

Thanks. I wouldn't call it incremental. I'd call it a shift in focus a little bit. learned, if you will, you know, the the sales trading any time you touch markets in any market. But in Europe, the. The overhead associated with that from a legal compliance market structure, making sure, you know, settlement risk, all of those things on. The sales and trading side is, you know, it's a scale business in the US and it's really a scale business in Europe. And so as we've looked at it, we've decided that we would de-emphasize that and then focus on where we see real synergies, which is in banking. And we'll still have sales and trading. You need to have it because we're going to take, you know, we're going to help companies access the U.S. markets or underwrite, as we have in the past. But we're going to not be as much in the day-to-day Trading businesses we're going to focus on advisory and banking which is a natural extension of what we do in the US so Anything we do in Europe will have it will be if you will linked to what we do in the US and in that focus and that shift will will improve our profitability because we were we were not nearly as efficient as we should have done and

over there and we're addressing it. Thanks, Ron. Yeah, thank you.

And we have no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the floor back to our speakers for any additional or closing remarks.

Well, I would just say that it certainly, as I sit here today, I'm I'm optimistic and feel good about how things are positioning for the second half of the year. It's amazing how things have changed even since the first quarter in terms of perception and a lot of the things that are happening. So, you know, we maybe always talked about 25 being a transition year, and I think maybe it'll be the back half of 25 transitioning into 26. because the first half was certainly slower. But I'm excited about that. I appreciate everyone getting on for the call. I look forward to reporting back to you in the third quarter. And thanks for your interest in Stiefel, and we'll be in touch. Thank you.

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