State Street Corporation

call and webcast. Today's discussion is being broadcast live on State Street's website at investors.statestreet.com. This conference call is also being recorded for replay. State Street's conference call is copyrighted and all rights are reserved. This call may not be recorded or rebroadcast or distribution in whole or in part without the express written authorization from State Street Corporation. The only authorized broadcast of this call will be housed on the State Street website. Now, I would like to introduce Liz Lib, Global Head of Investor Relations at State Street.

Good morning, and thank you all for joining us. On our call today, our CEO, Ron O'Hanley, will speak first, then Eric Abloff, our CFO, will take you through our second quarter 2024 earnings presentation, which is available for download on the Investor Relations section of our website, investors.statestreet.com. Afterward, we'll be happy to take questions. Before we get started, I'd like to remind you that today's presentation will include results presented on a basis that excludes or adjusts one or more items from GAAP. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP or regulatory measure are available in the appendix to our presentation. In addition, today's call will contain forward-looking statements Actual results may differ materially from those statements due to a variety of important factors, such as those factors in our discussion today and in our SEC filings, including the risk factor section of our Form 10-K. Our forward-looking statements speak only as of today, and we disclaim any obligation to update them, even if our views change. Now, let me turn it over to Ron.

Thank you, Liz, and good morning, everyone. Before we begin today's discussion, I want to acknowledge the assassination attempt on former President Trump. It was a horrible act of violence that has no place in our democracy and must be condemned. We are relieved the former president was not seriously harmed, and we are saddened by the tragic loss of innocent life and injury that resulted from this senseless action. Each victim was a participant in our democratic process, which makes this act an affront to all. We extend our thoughts and condolences to all those impacted. At this time, we hope for unity and respect in our country. Disagreement can and must sit along civility and a commitment to an even better America. Now, turning to the second quarter, earlier today we released our financial results, which represented sustained momentum as we delivered good year-over-year fee and total revenue growth in both 2Q and for the first half of the year. along with continued expense discipline. This resulted in modest positive total operating leverage, pre-tax margin of almost 29%, and a return on equity of nearly 12% in the quarter. We also continued to take important steps in the transformation and simplification of our operating model, as we successfully consolidated our second operations joint venture in India in the quarter. These actions will enable State Street to continue to improve client experience and will unlock further productivity savings in the years ahead. In May, the transition to T plus one settlement was a significant event for global investors. Importantly, it presented State Street with an opportunity to demonstrate our position as an essential partner to our clients. Our role in successfully assisting clients through this transition reinforced our value to clients and underscored the depth of our operational capabilities. The financial market context in 2Q was mixed. While daily average global equity market levels continued to move higher and equity markets again reached new all-time highs in the second quarter, gains continued to be narrowly concentrated in a few names. Meanwhile, fixed income markets struggled in 2Q as geopolitical risk continued, economic data generally remained robust, and investors priced in more gradual cycle of rate cuts. even as the ECB delivered its first rate cut since the pandemic. Through this market backdrop, we remain focused and successfully executed against our key strategic priorities. Turning to slide two of our investor presentation, I will review our two Q highlights before Eric takes you through the quarter in more detail. Beginning with our financial performance, second quarter EPS was 215 as compared to 217 in the year-ago period. The durable nature of our business was evident in the quarter as year-over-year strength in management fees, FX trading, and NII more than offset a previously disclosed client transition that negatively impacted servicing fee revenues, helping to drive revenue growth of 3%. We also remain focused on tightly managing our cost base. While continuing to make investments in our businesses, 2Q total expenses increased by less than 3% year-over-year, supported by our ongoing productivity efforts. Turning to our business momentum, which you can see in the middle of the page, we continue to execute well against our strategy, making progress in a number of key areas aimed at generating further fee revenue growth, which gives us confidence in our positioning as we look ahead. Within asset services, we generated AUCA wins of $291 billion, which was well distributed regionally, and included more than $200 billion of faster-to-install back-office custody in line with our targeted sales strategy. Encouragingly, roughly a quarter of the AUCA wins this quarter came for an alpha mandate in the APEC region. The win is a large new client for State Street, covering a broad set of our services, including the back office. This mandate is another proof point that alpha is an attractive client value proposition globally. Alpha creates a clear competitive advantage for State Street that strategically positions us to deepen existing client relationship and, as demonstrated this quarter, win new long-term client relationships, in turn helping to drive future growth. This ongoing new business performance coupled with an anticipated increase in installations positions us well for future servicing fee growth. Servicing fee revenue wins amounted to $72 million, up from $67 million in the first quarter. This is the fourth quarter in a row of strong servicing fee revenue wins, totaling over $330 million over the last 12 months. Our pipeline is strong, and we remain confident in our ability to achieve our increased servicing fee revenue sales goal of $350 to $400 million this year. At Global Advisors, buoyed by higher average Equity markets, 2Q management fees were $511 million, an increase of 11% year-over-year, with AUM reaching a record $4.4 trillion a quarter end. While GA experienced aggregate net outflows in the quarter, it was largely driven by a limited number of client rebalancings. Encouragingly, we continue to make progress in a number of key strategic focus areas. For example, total net ETF inflows amounted to $6 billion, benefited from continued market share expansion in U.S. low-cost equity ETFs. Regionally, we also saw SPDR gain market share in EMEA. Elsewhere, global advisors announced the planned strategic investment in InvestNet, a leading provider of integrated technology, data, and wealth solutions. This investment, consistent with State Street's wealth services strategy, will enhance global advisors' access to the independent wealth advisory and high-net-worth distribution channels, driving future growth. NII performance was strong, driven by a number of targeted management actions over the last year to support NII growth. These include increased engagement with our clients to offer them financing and cash solutions, resulting in higher deposit, loan, and sponsored repo balances. while we also carefully expanded our investment portfolio in 2Q. These actions have contributed to three quarters in a row of sequential NII and revenue growth, as well as positive total operating leverage in 2Q. Our balance sheet remains strong, enabling over $400 million of capital return in the second quarter and over $700 million year to date. Our financial strength was evident with the release of the Federal Reserve's annual stress test results in June. Subsequently, and consistent with our commitment to return capital to our shareholders, we were pleased to announce our intention to increase State Street's quarterly common stock dividend by 10% to 76 cents per share beginning in the third quarter, subject to approval by our board of directors. As we look ahead, we remain committed to returning excess capital to our shareholders this year, subject to market conditions and other factors. To conclude, Our strong start to the year continued in the second quarter. We delivered both fee and total revenue growth, which supported modest total operating leverage year over year, and a return on equity of nearly 12% in the quarter, all while continuing to make significant investments in our business, controlling expenses, and returning capital to our shareholders. I am pleased with the progress we are making to drive better business momentum and sales performance as we execute against the sharpened revenue strategy. We recorded another alpha mandate win in the quarter, which demonstrated the clear advantage that strategy brings to our organization by delivering a large and completely new client relationship to State Street. We already have good line of sight into 3Q and remain confident in our ability to deliver on our goals of six to eight new alpha clients and $350 to $400 million of servicing fee revenue wins this year. And with that, let me hand the call over to Eric, who will take you through the quarter in more detail.

Thank you, Ron, and good morning, everyone. Starting on slide three, we reported EPS of $2.15 for the quarter as compared to $2.17 in the second quarter a year ago. EPS was slightly lower year on year, but would have been positive growth were it not for an $18 million reserve release last year. As Ron noted, we delivered 3% revenue growth year over year, reflecting both higher net interest income, up 6%, as well as higher fee revenues, up 2 percent, which supported modestly positive total operating leverage in the quarter. The second quarter's strong performance contributed to an encouraging first half of the year, with both positive fee and positive total operating leverage on a year-to-date basis, excluding notable items relative to the prior year period. Turning now to slide four, period end AUCA and AUM again increased to record levels. largely supported by market tailwinds. As you can see on the right panel of the slide, market indicators related to our trading business remain challenging in the quarter, though we were pleased to see improved client volumes across our FX trading venues, which I will discuss shortly. Turning to slide five, servicing fees declined 2% year-on-year as higher average equity market levels and net new business excluding a previously disclosed client transition were more than offset by pricing headwinds and lower client activity and adjustments, including the asset mix shift into lower earning cash and cash equivalents. The impact of the previously disclosed client transition was a headwind of approximately 2 percentage points to year-on-year growth, while lower client activity and adjustments, including the asset mix shift into cash, was a headwind of approximately 1 percentage point on year-on-year growth. In addition, we saw the pace of quarterly installations track below expectations in 1Q and 2Q. We do, however, anticipate a pickup over the next few quarters as our higher level of recent sales begin to onboard. Sequentially, servicing fees were up 1% reflecting higher average equity market levels and client activity as transaction volumes ticked back up and we saw clients start to put cash back to work. We generated $72 million of servicing fee revenue wins in 2Q and more than $330 million over the last four quarters, with the vast majority in back office, consistent with our strategy to prioritize faster installing custody mandates. At period end, we had $276 million of servicing fee revenues to be installed and $2.4 trillion of AUCA to be installed. Moving to slide six, management fees were up 11% year on year, primarily reflecting our higher average market levels and net inflows from prior periods, partially offset by the impacts of our strategic ETF for pricing initiative, which we believe is starting to pay off in both volumes and revenues. Sequentially, the benefit of higher average market levels was offset by net flows and lower performance fees. We are pleased with the steady growth we are delivering in Global Advisors. In the second quarter, we continue to expand the breadth of our offering through the launch of new funds as we continue to broaden our product range and geographies. Our investment management business had healthy pre-tax margin of 32% in the second quarter, up three percentage points year-on-year, and up eight percentage points quarter-on-quarter. Now turning to slide seven, as I noted, we saw a very nice uptake in client activity in our markets business, with higher volumes across our major FX venues. This helped to drive FX trading revenue growth of 11% year-on-year, though volatility remained muted with compressed margin. Securities finance revenues also benefit from higher balances on both agency lending and prime services. However, our U.S. specials activity was subdued in the quarter, which impacted margins and contributed to the year-on-year decline in securities finance revenues. Moving to software and processing fees, second quarter performance continued to benefit from strong client engagement with CRD, though the cadence of on-premise renewals negatively impacted year-on-year performance, which is shown in greater detail on the following slide. On slide eight, as you can see, software-enabled and professional services revenues increased 17% in the quarter, and we expect these revenues to represent a greater proportion of our front office software and data business over time. as we transitioned another 20 clients from on-premise to more durable SaaS model over the last year. As we outlined in May, we believe our software business can be a significant revenue growth driver for State Street, potentially reaching a billion dollars in annual revenues over the next five years. In addition, we are pleased with the continued momentum we're seeing in Alpha. We reported an additional alpha mandate win, and two mandates went live in 2Q, bringing the total number of live mandates to 23 at quarter end. As Ron mentioned, this quarter's alpha win represents a brand-new 10-year relationship with a large APAC client. We view long-term alpha mandates like this as a key benefit of our differentiated alpha strategy. Turning to slide nine, NII was stronger than expected this quarter. up 6% year-on-year, and up 3% sequentially to $735 million, has higher investment portfolio yields and higher loan growth, more than offset continued deposit makeshift in both periods. In addition, on a quarter-on-quarter basis, we proactively increased our investment portfolio balances at higher yields, which benefited NII. Looking at the strong quarterly performance, Relative to our expectations in early June, we did see an inflow of valuable non-interest-bearing deposits in mid-June and again in late June as clients geared up for the holiday weekend, although I would note that we did see some reversal during the first week of July. Similarly, NII also benefited from higher interest-bearing balances due to our client engagement efforts, as well as better spreads and volumes within our sponsored repo business as more clients joined the program. Average deposits increased 7 percent year-on-year and 1 percent quarter-on-quarter. We would expect to continue to operate at this higher level of deposit balances as we look to the back half of the year. Turning to slide 10, year-on-year expense growth was contained to less than 3 percent. In the second quarter, we continued to invest in the business while also delivering productivity benefits in two key areas. The first is associated with our decision to consolidate two operations joint ventures in India late last year in this quarter. The year-on-year savings associated with these two JV consolidations are approximately $20 million in the quarter, excluding integration costs. Second, we benefited from our ongoing organizational process improvements and initiatives, including streamlining and delaying staff functions to increase our management span of control. which enabled us to lower our headcount on a pro forma basis, including the JVs, by five percentage points year-on-year, as detailed on the bottom left of the slide. Together, these actions helped to drive down compensation and benefit costs by 2% year-on-year in the second quarter and facilitate our ability to reinvest in our franchise. The combination of the JV consolidations, along with our ongoing initiatives serves as a catalyst and, importantly, gives us confidence as we continue to deliver on our strategy to simplify our global operating model, with meaningful benefits expected to build over time, including more productivity saves, as well as an ability to better serve our clients and invest for the future. Moving to slide 11, as you can see, our capital levels remain strong and comfortably above the regulatory minimums. As of quarter end, our standardized SET1 ratio of 11.2% was slightly higher from the prior quarter, as capital generated from earnings was partially offset by continued dividends and share repurchases, as well as higher RWAs as we supported our clients, which in turn drove higher fees in NII. We returned over $300 million in the first quarter to shareholders, followed by $400 million through common share repurchases and dividends in the second quarter, as we have tried to strike the right balance between our capital return goals and the support of our clients. Looking ahead to the back half of the year, we have announced a planned 10% per share quarterly common dividend increase on the heels of a strong performance on this year's CCAR, starting in 3Q and subject to board approval. In addition, our intention is to accelerate the pace of quarterly buybacks relative to the first half of the year. However, given the more modest level of repurchase activity so far this year, the full-year payout ratio for 2024 will likely be closer to the 80% to 90% range, in line with our medium-term targets. In summary, we are pleased with our second quarter and first half results, which demonstrate our ability to execute against our strategy to drive sustained business momentum while delivering positive total operating leverage, excluding notable items. With that, let me cover our improved full-year outlook, which I would highlight continues to have the potential for variability given the uncertain economic and political environment we're operating in. In terms of our current macro assumptions, as we stand here today, we are assuming global equity markets are flat to second quarter end for the remainder of the year. Our rate outlook broadly aligns with the current forward curve as of quarter end, while we expect both FX market volatility and specials to remain needed. Given our strong start to the year and higher average market levels, we now expect that total fee revenue will likely be in the range of up 4% to 5% on a full year basis, somewhat better than our prior expectations for roughly 4% year-on-year growth. Turning to NII, given our 2Q performance, along with the continued benefit of management actions we have taken to support NII growth this year, We now expect full-year NII will be up slightly year over year, which is also better than our previous guide of down roughly 5% on a full-year basis. Finally, given these improved top-line expectations, full-year expenses are likely to be somewhat higher than our prior outlook of up 2.5% this year. We now expect expenses excluding notable items to be up about 3% this year, given the expected revenue-related costs. Importantly, given this improved outlook, we now expect to deliver both positive fee operating leverage and positive total operating leverage for the full year, excluding notable items. And with that, let me hand the call back to Ron.

Thank you, Eric. Operator, we can open it up to questions.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press star followed by one on your touchtone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press the star followed by the two. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up before rejoining the queue. One moment for your first question. Your first question comes from Glenn Shore with Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

Hi. Thanks so much. Question on global advisors. You had some institutional-led outflows in the last two quarters despite the strong markets. I'm just curious how much of that is a function of rebalancing, and are we supposed to expect more going forward given the strong equity markets, and are you seeing similar trends in your custody base?

Hi, Glenn. It's Ron. You have it correct there. Most of it, the vast majority of it, is around client rebalancing. In one case, an extremely large client that's rebalancing away from certain asset classes. It's idiosyncratic. We don't expect it to continue. And we feel very comfortable with the trajectory that Global Advisors is on, both in the institutional business and in the ETF business.

Okay. Ron, while we have you, you know, there's been an several articles over the last year or so talking about a certain European bank potentially selling their servicing platform. You've been linked to it, as you should be. You've been great in consolidating things in the past. So I'm not asking you to comment on that. I am asking, as some shareholders just prefer buybacks, which you might think is near term, I'm curious on your thoughts, conception on how you approach these things if there were any lessons learned from the Brown Brothers Harriman saga, and just conceptually how you're thinking about any consolidation opportunities and services. Thanks.

Yeah, so Glenn, I mean, we've been pretty consistent about this. We have a very, very strong market position. Now, some of that in the past has been built by M&A, if you go back to the 2000s. But if you think about where we are now, it's very strong. And The vast majority of our activity is around organic build-out of our business. Some of that just in terms of focusing on clients within geographies, and some of that focused on building capabilities and extending them to other geographies. That is by far what our focus is. To the extent, and I've said this in the past, I mean, M&A is not a strategy, but if it can help us to effectively implement our strategy and it is superior to, it passes the test of being superior to a return of capital to shareholders, then we'll consider it. But our focus is on building out organically, returning capital to shareholders at a reasonable pace, and continuing to excel at what we do.

Thanks, Ron.

Operator, can we move to the next question? Your next question comes from Ken Usden with Jefferies. Your line is open.

Thanks. Good morning. So, great results on the NII, and we heard the updated outlook for a slight leap up this year now. Eric, just wondering, that would still imply a lower second half versus this really strong second quarter. And I know there's a lot of uncertainty still out there in the environment. So can you just help us think through what are you contemplating in terms of how deposits track from here and what caveats should we continue to think in mind if, in fact, there is still, you know, second half comes off of this second quarter real strength? Thanks.

Ken, it's Eric. As you said, we're pleased with the second quarter results on NII. Some of that is the interest rate environment, but a good portion of that is the management actions we've been taking in terms of engaging with our clients on deposits and really being there for them on both sides of the balance sheet as we lend and support their growth as well. This quarter was particularly strong. We had a nice tailwind from long-term rates during the quarter that helped. You saw us build out our investment portfolio a little more. Deposits ticked up second half of June and towards the end, especially in non-interest bearing. But what I find pleasing is that deposits are coming in stronger across what I'll call the pricing stack, the transactional deposits, the exception price deposits and the initiative, so across the spectrum. And that's really a testament to the engagement that we've had with our clients to be there. I think as we look forward into the third quarter and fourth quarter, you know, we still see some of the headwinds and tailwinds that we've talked about, you know, short-term rates. seem like they'll start to trend down. That'll be a little bit of a headwind. Deposits, we're still seeing some of that rotation from non-interest bearing to interest bearing. Now, that is slowing. That rotated out about $2 billion this past quarter, and that's been less than the prior quarters. But that still continues and still a little bit of pricing and makeshift that we're seeing in the interest bearing deposit base. So that That we see is just playing out through the end of the year, but at a more modest pace. You know, the offsets to that are, you know, a mix of long-term rates, the lending that we continue to do. Lending's up double digits, and that's been purposeful to support our clients and to support NII. And then, you know, tactically adjusting the investment portfolio. And so it's the net of those that probably will come in with some erosion over the next couple quarters. You know, but we're seeing a place where deposits are, you know, could come in at a nice and robust level on our balance sheet. Lending continues. And so, you know, we're getting to a point where we're going to start to see, I think, an inflection of NII And a bottoming, which is nice. And we can see that over the next few quarters. Hard to tell exactly when, but with the headwinds and tailwinds kind of, I'll say, equalizing over time, it gives us a good basis to look forward.

Okay, got it. And then one, Ron, one question, you mentioned that you think that the kind of core fees growth should get better from here. And just wanted to ask you to deepen on that a little bit. I mean, I know that you've mentioned the onboardings and such, but we still have that deconversion working against and you mentioned the episodic stuff in the ETF stuff. But like, you know, I think that's really people are looking for on the increment. So is that is that what drives that incrementally better? fee guide for the second half? Is that we're finally going to see that servicing and management fee line start to show a better rate of change?

Yeah, so there's I think you largely have it, but let me go a little bit deeper, Ken, because if you think about, let's talk about core servicing fees, what really drives it? First is retention. Second is the amount and rate of onboarding. And then third is new business and sales. And then rinse and repeat is And our retention levels, which we talked about them before, they're high, and we're continuing to track well against them, even coming a little bit higher than what we had planned. Second, onboardings, as Eric noted, they've been slower than expected this year, but we see lots of visibility going forward to that increasing. We've got a big book there to onboard, and that will start to onboard and should start to onboard an accelerating rate. And then third is sales, and there's two things going on there. One, the amounts. We upped it in 23. We upped it again in 24. We're on track for that increased servicing fee sales target, but we also have disproportionate focus on on traditional back office fees, either standalone or if they're associated with alpha, making sure that when an alpha assignment comes on board, the back office conversions occur first. And that's part of the learning in this whole alpha process. So that by itself gives us encouragement. And then, and Eric will probably want to go into this a little bit more. The deconversion, it seems like we've talked about forever. I mean, we're hitting bottom right now in terms of that. So we'll start to see improvement on that as a comp and as its effect and move beyond it starting in the next quarter or two. So, that's servicing fees. And management fees, we are very encouraged by what we're seeing at SSGA. It's part of a carefully crafted strategy, both in the institutional ETFs. We've talked about ETF flows. We've talked about market share and the very important low-cost ETFs, which in effect represent penetration into the retail market. All that is working well. And then finally, We've had this historically low volatility in FX. Nonetheless, the team has been highly focused on continuing to build share within our clients to move up on the panels. And you saw some of that pay off in terms of FX and securities finance. Again, there's been a new strategy put in place there and some progress there. You know, this is, much of what we do is a game of inches, but there's a lot of inches coming together here that we feel quite good about.

Great. Thanks, Tyrone.

Your next question comes from Brennan Hawken with UBS.

Your line is open.

Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I would like to start with Euro... deposits, the ECB cut rates this quarter. So I'm curious to hear, I know Euro, I believe, is your second biggest currency in your deposit base. So curious about what impact that you saw from that cut. Where was the beta on that cut and was it roughly equivalent to the betas you saw on the final increases? And based on that experience, how does that inform your expectation for when we see cuts in the Fed funds.

Brennan, it's Eric. You know, it's nice to see the industry environment top out and begin to reverse, though I think it'll reverse slowly. You know, we've seen the beginning of that, and it feels like it'll take some time, which is... which will be... Fine, because remember, our portfolio and our balance sheet is roughly neutral and relatively insulated now from interest rate increases or decreases. You know, we have a slight sensitivity across the balance sheet, but it's slight. It's, you know, if all central banks across the curve cut rates by 25 basis points. We're talking about $5 million per quarter impact on a $2.5 billion base of full-year NII. So we're talking about small effects. To your point, euro is a good place to start because euro rates increased lagged. on the way up and now are starting to move in the opposite direction. We have said and, you know, the Euro experience on this first rate move has demonstrated that we expect largely to see symmetry in the betas. So, as rates rose, you know, we lagged and then the betas increased over time towards the, you know, back into the rate cycle. And what we've said is, you know, area by area, transaction rate deposits, exception rate deposits, and the initiative rate deposits will tend to see the reversal of that. And so, specifically in euros, we did see that. We, you know, the beta on the first tick down was similar to the beta on the last tick up, and I think is a good representation largely of what we expect to see. And that means that if you step back even further, we feel like our pricing is set at a healthy level. We have a range of pricing and pools of deposits and, in a way, have built real engagement with our clients so that they understood the model as rates floated up. And similarly, they understand the model as rates floated down and the balance of trade, and it comes together nicely.

Got it. Thanks for that. Thanks for that. I appreciate it. On thinking about another factor that has been a bit more robust recently, repo has been pretty strong in recent quarters. Do you think, based on what's been happening in the marketplace, that that strength is sustainable? And it seems as though the NII story is playing out better than you had originally anticipated. obvious given you brought up guidance, but is that another X factor that could allow for the back half of the year to maybe see less of a pronounced step down than your improved guidance seems to continue to embed?

Brendan, it's Eric again. There's been a lot of talk about repo, notwithstanding that most of the NII we earn on our balance sheet is really based on deposit funding and lending. So 90% of our NII is around deposits, loans, investment portfolio. We're talking about 10%, which is on repo. So just for context. And it is true repo and NII came in a little bit better than expected in the second quarter. Why? Because there was some dislocation in the overnight repo operation of the Fed relative to SOFR. So clients came our way. We also saw dealer balance sheet strain, but the higher than expectation was in the $5 to $10 million range. It was nice to take, and it was nice to be there for our clients. But in fact, repo has been relatively flat to actually down a smidge over the last couple quarters, and that's because it tends to be a thinner margin, but a useful way to accommodate our clients. And we think it's not going to be a large driver of the coming NII. It's fully included in our guide. I think the real big moving parts are really around deposits, loans, and then followed by investment portfolio and the mix of long and short rates that we'll see.

Thanks for taking my questions.

Your next question comes from Jim Mitchell with Seaport Global.

Your line is open.

Hey. Hey, good morning. Eric, maybe just following up a little bit on the NII story, you talk about potentially an inflection coming. Can you discuss maybe the timing of that? And then when I look at your asset yields, the HTM book is still weighing that down. Can you talk about maybe the pace of maturity on that HTM book that's yielding a little over 2% and how much how long it takes to kind of get that back, coming back in. Is that a big part of your inflection story next year? Thanks.

Jim, it's Eric. You know, calling an inflection or a turn in NII is one of the hardest things to do. And so we've been, you know, our outlook is that, you know, in the next few quarters, we'll begin to see that. But, you know, we'll first go from, you know, the trends that we're seeing to, a stabilization, it'll bounce around some, and then over time tick upwards. The factors are multifaceted and with a number of ins and outs. You're right, the investment portfolio is turning over. It turned over quite a bit in the second half of last year. it's now turning over by about three, maybe three to four billion dollars a quarter. And that's across HTM and AFS. And because there are some longer dated bonds in HTM, you know, those roll through a little more slowly. But in a way, what we have is a sustained amount of, I'll say, tailwind that comes with that. Because remember, the roll-ons in the portfolio versus the roll-offs, those are worth a solid, to 250 basis point of spread differential. You know, and that'll play through the books as a nice tailwind, you know, assuming long rates stay, you know, somewhere in the area and the primary change on the curve is at the front end. So I think it'll be a component. Right now, you know, the biggest component is really the deposit mix pricing levels of non-interest bearing. That's what's moving the needle. the most. I mean, all these factors matter. And I think as the deposits stabilize, and we've started to see total deposit levels stabilize the last few quarters, we have to see now the mix stabilize. Once that happens, the natural benefit from the investment portfolio rolling through, right, and then the growth in loans, and you've seen us lean into lending. Lending's up more than 10% year-on-year because we're trying to be out there for our clients. And as we lend to our clients, they actually often do additional servicing business with us. That factor and the investment portfolio and the long-term rates will then turn to a net positive impact on NII in the coming quarters.

Okay, that's really helpful. And maybe just to your point on deposit growth being a key driver. You know, now that we're looking at rate cuts, QT is less. Do you feel like rate cuts can be a catalyst for growth based on historical experience? How do you think about getting back to kind of more normal growth levels and deposits? What do we need to see?

I think the direct answer is that the rate environment has moved around quite a bit, and we've seen the deposit effects from the rate environment. I think those have been telegraphed through the banking system. And we've also seen the Fed balance sheet actions as they've been tightening conditions with their balance sheet, although that's slowing, and the overnight reverse repo operation is an easing. You know, we've seen that telegraphed through. So I think the exogenous factors that have driven deposits over the last two years have largely been telegraphed. And, you know, the modest number of interest rate cuts, I don't expect to have that much of an impact on deposit levels. You know, we'll see, but that's our kind of sense from talking with our clients and analyzing the vast array of data that we have. What we feel will make the difference over time is sales. So we talk a lot about servicing fee sales, targeting 350 to 400 million this year. That's up from 300 million the year before and even less than the year before that. And with a tilt towards custody. And remember, it's the custodial activity, not just the accounting or the middle office, but the custodial activity That brings with it balances, deposit balances, because they're needed as part of the buffer to handle the transactional activities that we process for clients. And so as we look forward, as sales continue to accelerate and then we onboard those sales, because both have to happen, that's what we expect we'll bring on. additional deposits and in a way are part of our organic growth model, which will bring, you know, fee growth, but also bring deposit growth and thus NII into the system at a, I think, at a nice, you know, rate. And it'll be year by year by year that that'll help drive growth.

Okay. All very helpful. Thanks. Thanks, Eric.

Your next question comes from Betsy Gracek with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Oh, hi. Good morning.

Hi, Betsy.

I did just want to key off of the last comment around the sales. And to your point, 350 to 400 is the goal for this year. You know, obviously on page five, you show us what the rev wins are for 1Q and 2Q, you know, 67 and 72. So that leaves us with an expectation that you're going to be able to bump that up pretty aggressively towards you know, the 105 level for each of 3 and 4Q. And so it gets to my question of what gives you the confidence in that? Is that a function of these are already sales that are, you know, in contract and it's just the installation of the new wins that hits this page? And so that gives you a lot of confidence that you can, you know, generate that 105 level in each of the next two quarters.

Yeah, Betsy, it's Ron. Let me take that. Firstly, just to clarify, these numbers that we're talking about are sales and not installs, right? Right. So it wouldn't include anything that's under contract and subject to onboarding at this point. But I mean, I think the way to think about it is this, that's why Eric gave the four-quarter number there. Third and fourth quarter, historically for us, tend to be a little bit better. The second half of the year is a little bit better than the first half of the year. So that's point number one. Point number two, we know the pipeline. And we feel pretty good about the pipeline. So that's why we're continuing to affirm confidence in that target that we have of $350 to $400 million.

Got it. Perfect. Yeah, and I can see in last year, you know, the second half, was 3x, you know, 2q. So, you know, history, yes, obviously shows that that should happen. So that's great. Okay, so then follow up.

Betsy, let me clarify the first part of my message because I was not clear there. The number would include things that are in contract but not include anything that's actually been onboarded. So when you see the to be onboarded number that we have out there, that includes basically past sales. So I hope that's clear. I didn't mean to confuse that.

Okay. I appreciate it. Thank you. And then the follow-up just on the buyback, I understand you've got the opportunity for increasing buybacks, and I'm expecting that you're going to be flexing that versus your SLR constraint. Is that fair? And with SLR at 6.3 and the minimum at 5, that feels like you've got a lot of room. So I just want to understand how you're thinking about what the you know, what level of SLR you want to hold? Regulatory minimum is five. What kind of buffer should we expect that you're anticipating holding on top of that, just as we're working through our models on how much buybacks we estimate for you? Thank you.

Let me take that. As we had said, and you're reflecting on, you know, buybacks were lighter in first quarter at $100 million. Then we booked $200 million in second quarter. We expect that pace to accelerate into the third quarter and then again into the fourth quarter. So that's our intention. And we have a good amount of room and capital generation each quarter to be able to deliver on that. In terms of the constraints, the ratio constraints, the most important one for us and I think for our various stakeholders is the CET1 ratio. And that we're I think we can continue to operate at a good pace, at a good level, but also that allows us a good pace of accelerating buybacks. The Tier 1 leverage or the supplementary leverage ratio are informative but actually relatively manageable, right, with the right level of preferred equity. we can operate where we need to. I think we've been clear on Tier 1 leverage, what our range is, and we'll operate within that range. And we can adjust the preferred equity stack as necessary. We've not really formalized, at least externally, a supplementary leverage ratio range. But I'd say it kind of flows in a similar way as the Tier 1 leverage. And you can think of those as related from a conceptual and operational standpoint. And both of them are, you know, eminently manageable and are not really the constraint when it comes to common share buybacks.

Right. Okay. That's great. And then when we're thinking about the pace in accelerating from here, is that total dollars or is that the pace of up 100 Q on Q? How should we think about which pace you're talking about?

You know, it's, when we talk buybacks, there's always the, you know, depends on market conditions and the environment and so forth. So we always want to be careful with that. And, you know, you'd expect that of us as a, well-run and a management team that's both careful but also, you know, leans into capital return, and you've seen our commitment. I think, you know, we certainly feel the $100 million in the first quarter was, you know, below what we would have liked to deliver. We feel the $200 million was below what we would have liked to deliver. So I think there's a solid increase coming. You can think about it in dollar terms, you know, two points begin to create a line, but that could be a curve as well. I think you've got enough to go on.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it, and I appreciate the conceptual chart. Thanks so much.

You're welcome.

Your next question comes from Mike Mayo with Wells Fargo Securities. Your line is open. Hi. Hi.

I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying and not read too much into it, but I think what you're saying is over the next two quarters, you should be pretty much done with the NII declines. You should be pretty much done with the non-interest-bearing deposit declines, and you should be pretty much done with the decommission of the major client. Am I reading too much into that, or did I hear that correctly?

Mike, it's Eric. With regard to NII and non-interest bearing deposits, I said the next few quarters. So, you know, I'm giving myself a little bit of room, to be honest, because it's hard to predict perfectly. And so I'll stick with a few quarters. I think that that kind of works. And that certainly covers your range and maybe a little bit more. So, you know, we just want to live through this. But we we can see we can see you know, I think over the horizon here in a way, and that's what we wanted to communicate. On the client deconversion, if you recall, we said this would be the largest year on a year-on-year basis. It was originally worth about two percentage points of total fees. We said about a percentage point year-on-year this year, half a point year-on-year last year, and about half a point year-on-year next year. So by the end of this year, we'll be through, I'll call it three quarters of the effect, but there'll still be a piece of that coming through next year, and then it'll be behind us.

And you also mentioned continuing pricing pressure, which we've talked about for about 30 years, which is nothing new, but you did highlight pricing pressure. So in what context are you referring to? I imagine like your new win in APAC, you know, I assume spreads are better, you know, in Asia and outside the U.S. than in the U.S. So when you talk about pricing pressure, where are you seeing it?

Mike, it's Eric again. I think we talk about pricing pressure because just part of the natural course of events, right, we get a market, we get pricing increases from market upticks. And then with clients, they ask for a part of that back. That's just how the business has operated, as you say, for the last 30 years. This quarter and last quarter and this year and for the rest of the year, we expect pricing headwinds to be in line with the previous years and guidance. We've said pricing headwinds of about 2% per year We're not seeing any more or any less of that. You know, it tends to be a little more geared towards the asset manager segment because that is the group of clients that has mutual funds and some mutual fund versus, you know, ETF shifting. But we're not seeing anything out of the ordinary or anything that is unexpected at this point.

And then one last one to follow up on that. I mean, I guess maybe as goes your clients, as goes any company, or as goes State Street, and with the record high stock markets and historically such a strong position with the mutual funds, which you just mentioned, are you seeing that uptick, or is it still a slog for your big, long-only asset managers that are your legacy strengths?

Mike, it's Ron. Let me take that. I mean, I think that the, as you would know as well as anybody, the business continues to change. And we've seen the continued move from the mutual fund to the ETF to the SMA. But you're also seeing these firms, particularly the the well-managed ones respond, and they're responding in a couple of ways. I mean, one, new product types. I mean, even the most traditional mutual fund companies now have pretty interesting ETF lines. Most of, you know, if they're involved in the DC 401K business, they've got a mutual fund offering, but they've got a collective trust offering, too. So, you know, they're responding to that market pressure. Most of them are figuring out ways to participate in the wealth business, and we continue to respond and support them in that. So the nature of the business is changing. In some cases, some things were more lucrative than others. And so what you're also finding in those businesses, they're very focused on their cost base, their technology stack, their operating stack. And again, that presses in our favor. As we think about the alpha front-to-back solution, we're the largest middle office provider by far in the industry, and we've gotten quite good at that. So we describe ourselves as an essential partner to our clients, and I think that plays through both in supporting them in their revenue and product activities as well as their cost and operations.

Okay, thank you.

Your next question comes from Vivek Junija with JP Morgan. Your line is open.

Hi, thanks. Eric, I just have a quick follow-up trying to understand your NII guidance. I look at your U.S. interest-bearing deposit costs linked quarter. They actually declined. Did you actually start cutting rates? Was there something else that drove that? Can you give some color on that, and is that likely to continue?

Vivek, it's Eric. I would describe that as just part of the normal volatility that we'll see in deposits. I mean, we run such a large franchise and our clients' transactional activity tends to vary over time. But we're seeing healthy levels of deposits across dollars, across euros, And so we haven't seen anything particularly surprising in one area or another. I think total U.S. interest-bearing deposits, if you look at our addendum, are up slightly. Euros are up slightly, and so on and so forth. And to the extent that there are some movements – not driven by our pricing actions per se. In truth, clients need a certain amount of transactional deposits to fund their custody accounts. And the pricing tends to be something that we have negotiated and is well understood now given where we are in the cycle and isn't the determinant of movements at this point.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from Gerard Cassidy with RBC. Your line is open.

Good morning, guys. Ron, you mentioned in one of your answers about the servicing and management fees that foreign exchange activity, the volatility was actually quite low relative to history. Can you share with us what drove that? And then second, what macro factors should we keep an eye on to see, you know, to drive that volatility higher as we go forward, especially in view of the geopolitical environment we're all living in?

Well, I'll start, but Eric runs this business, so I'll turn it over to him. But I think if, you know, what's caused it? I mean, there's been really remarkably low volatility. And I think some of the things that have been driving that, one is just the simple strength of the dollar for an awfully long time. And it's almost become too dangerous a thing to bet against the dollar. And so even in times where you would expect to see some volatility, we simply haven't, we haven't seen that. So I think that's been the primary driver of that, that you've got this inordinate strength of the dollar. But Eric, why don't I turn it over to you?

Gerard, I think to add to that, maybe in two ways, the dollar has been strong and continues to be the dominant currency globally for whether it's petrol, whether it's for core commodities, and the currency of choice. And what we've seen, ebbs and flows and potential substitution, euros won, et cetera, none of that has really come to pass. And so you have a bit of a stabilizing factor. I think the other thing that we've seen recently is because of the clients have been overweight in cash and underweight in equities and bonds and have started to put more of that cash to work. They're doing that both in the U.S. and abroad and internationally. And as a result, we're not seeing a lot of speculation in currency markets. We're seeing more, I'll describe it as natural and transitional flows And so we've not seen disruptions on one hand, knock on wood. And on the other hand, we have seen consistent holding of dollars and consistent buying of other currencies. And so that's created, it feels like a set of muted volatility levels that are fine for clients. And our point of view is we need to serve clients during those times. And the more we can offer them ways to trade through us, through our multiple venues. Some of them are platforms. Some of them are single dealers. Some of them are multi-dealer. And then some of them are algos. We'll continue to do that, and we'll support them. And that'll, because of the higher volumes we're seeing, notwithstanding the lower volatilities, has been fruitful and helped drive revenue growth for us in that area.

Very good. Thank you for that color. And circling back, you both touched on onboarding was slower than expected the first half of the year, but you expect it to pick up as we go forward. What caused the slower than expected onboarding in the earlier part of this year?

Eric, it's Ron. Excuse me. Gerard, it's Ron. I'll take that. It's concentrated in some large clients that also happen to be development partners. And I think we've talked about this concept of development partners. These are early partners that joined us in this journey and were doing a fair amount of development around that. So that's caused some of it. And then some of it has been idiosyncratic to those same institutions in terms of things going on in their own operation that have delayed some of the onboarding. So that's been a big part of it. The second thing that's been driving it has been really around private markets. While we've continued to bring on clients and we're really pleased with our offering and the clients that we've brought on, the whole slowdown in private markets is actually affecting us because we start to get paid right when the fund starts to draw capital, and if you've been following this, many of the new funds that have been raised, including some of the very, very largest ones, actually haven't drawn capital. So we've got them, quote, set up and ready to go, but we're not actually deriving meaningful revenues from that yet. So that would be the other major factor that's going on here.

Great. Thank you. There are no further questions at this time.

Ron, please continue.

Well, thanks everybody for joining us.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.