Earnings Labs

AMTD IDEA Group (AMTD)

Q3 2011 Earnings Call· Tue, Jul 19, 2011

$1.03

+0.00%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, everyone and welcome to the TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation’s June Quarter Earnings Results Conference Call. This call is being recorded. With us today from the company is President and Chief Executive Officer, Fred Tomczyk and Chief Financial Officer, Bill Gerber. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Bill Murray, Managing Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Bill Murray

Management

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone and welcome to the TD Ameritrade June quarter earnings call. By now, you have most likely seen our press release and I’d like to direct you to amtd.com to view today’s presentation. Before we begin, I would like to refer you to our Safe Harbor statement, which is on slide two of the presentation as we will be referring to forward-looking statements. We will also be discussing some non-GAAP financial measures such as EBITDA. You can find a reconciliation of these financial measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures in the slide presentation. We’d also like to review our description of risk factors contained in our most recent annual and quarterly reports, Forms 10-Q and 10-K. As usual, the call is intended for investors and analysts and may not be reproduced in the media in whole or in part without prior consent of TD Ameritrade. Once again, we have a large number of covering analysts, so if you can keep your questions to two, we will try to get through most of you in the allotted time. With that, we have Fred Tomczyk and Bill Gerber here to review our third fiscal quarter results and major accomplishments. Fred?

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Bill and good morning everyone and thanks for joining us today to discuss our June quarter results. As we all know, the one thing the markets do not like is uncertainty. Well, we have lots of that today, the state of the US economy, the European debt situation, and last but not least, the discussions in Washington around the deficit and the debt ceiling. As a result, the slowdown in retail engagement that we normally see in the summer months started early this year. However, we are pleased with our performance as we continue to gather assets and build our long-term earnings power despite this difficult environment. While we don’t believe we will see these uncertainties clear in the short-term, we do expect to see some resolution by the fall, which will bring greater certainty to the markets. Our strategy and business model continues to work for us. Our strong balance sheet and cash position allowed us to buyback close to 5 million shares of our outstanding stock during the quarter, which when combined with our quarterly dividend, means that we returned 80% of our quarterly net income to our shareholders. We continue to be well-positioned to drive further organic growth and to take advantage of opportunities as they present themselves. Let’s turn to slide three to talk more about our third quarter results. We ended the quarter with $0.27 on earnings per share and net revenues of $685 million. This includes a $0.02 per share charge related to technology related write-offs, which Bill will discuss in more detail shortly. Turning to our key metrics for the quarter, trades per day were 370,000. Net new assets were $7.9 billion or an 8% annualized growth rate. We ended the quarter with record interest-sensitive assets of $74 billion and total…

Bill Gerber

Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Fred. Three months ago, when we updated you on the March quarter results, the economy environment was very different. The yield curve was more favorable, market sentiment was generally positive and consensus economic forecast expected rate increases to begin in early 2012. As Fred mentioned, we are now in the more difficult business environment with lots of uncertainty. Despite this, we are maintaining our focus on what we can control. So, let’s begin with the financial overview on slide seven. We will start with the June quarter to June quarter comparisons on the left side of the page. But before I get in to the details, please recognize that the June quarter last year was the second highest ever in terms of trades per day for the company and the March quarter on the right hand side of the page was the highest ever in terms of trades per day. So, trading being lower this quarter on a comparative basis isn’t surprising. Now the details, transaction based revenues for the quarter seen on line one, were down $51 million from last year’s results. Trades were down $44,000 per day, driving $35 million of the decrease. The remaining $16 million of the decline was due to lower commission rates, which were down $0.71 to $12.08. This decline was due primarily to three areas. One payment for order flows lower this quarter due to fewer trades and less shares per trade being executed by clients. Two, higher futures and foreign exchange trades being done by clients both of which are at a lower price point and they have no payment for order flow. And three are active traders, many of whom have negotiated rates, remain trading in the market while our long-term investor clients are generally less active today. On line…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Rich Repetto of Sandler O'Neill. Please go ahead.

Rich Repetto

Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Please go ahead

Yeah, good morning, Fred. Good morning Bill.

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

Hi Rich.

Bill Gerber

Chief Financial Officer

Hi Rich.

Rich Repetto

Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Please go ahead

I guess the first question is on the key driver, the investor activity, so Fred it sounds like you think that this is mostly just due to the pullback, which you acknowledged was sort of abrupt in June, but do you think it’s summer seasonality and uncertainty. So you think is there any other divers that you can see by having a better look at the customer base and maybe what the impact of the city reverse split was in the quarter?

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

The city did have some impact but is rather insignificant. I think to your question what we saw generally is and I would say it started in the middle of May. All of a sudden people started pulling away. There is no question about that. The active traders continue to trade, but there was less volatility to trade off, so they slowed down a bit, but continuing to be quite active in the market. But if you look at the sort of less active traders are though, just investors, long-term investors, they definitely pullback, got conservative. You see that in a whole variety of metrics when you want to look at their net sellers of equities, they only think positive on mutual fund flows was into taxable bond funds. And you saw very low intraday volatility. And so just despite the uncertainty in the last half of May and June, there wasn’t a lot of intraday volatility, so it was dead. Since June, the reality is and so far in July you have seen a little bit more volatility and you are seeing the (indiscernible) come up a bit and you are seeing the trading come up a bit, but there is no question, the long-term investor is on the sidelines here and hesitating until they see some of the uncertainty clear, particularly around the US debt ceiling.

Rich Repetto

Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Please go ahead

Got it. Okay, thanks. And then my one follow-up would be it shows a return like you said in the presentation 80% of income back to shareholders. And that’s well above the 40% to 60% with the stock at least as far as close last night a little bit above 18. Could you expect to be well above that range again in the quarter?

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

We have said 40% to 60% more on opportunity. I think I was pretty clear that these share prices, it will be more.

Rich Repetto

Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Please go ahead

Okay, thanks guys.

Bill Gerber

Chief Financial Officer

Okay, Rich.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Patrick O'Shaughnessy of Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Analyst · Raymond James. Please go ahead

Hey, good morning guys.

Bill Gerber

Chief Financial Officer

Hi Patrick.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Analyst · Raymond James. Please go ahead

I was hoping you could maybe provide some more commentary around the breakaway brokers’ RAA business. I think there is probably couple of trends out there that seem like they should be favorable to you. One, I think some of the sign on bonuses that some of the big warehouses signed or ended out a few years ago probably are coming due. Now, I think on top of that, some of the warehouses are talking about layoffs and certainly they are under pressure. So, how are those trends impacting the inflow of breakaway brokers that you guys are seeing?

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

Those types – the trends you are talking about right there, I think, are more indicative of what’s in the pipeline. On the pipeline, it’s very big right now, but we also had very good success against sort of which you might call the independent broker dealers in this environment. So, whether it’s the wire houses or the independent broker dealers, we’ve had very good success so far this year. And as I said, I think all of those things are weighing into that as the economic environment, bonuses coming up, I think it’s just the uncertainty about the economy and how they might deal with that. All those things, the regulatory changes and the fiduciary role, all those things are causing uncertainty. And the one thing about the RAA model is you know what that is and you have certainty. And as you believe in the long run that is the model that most advisors see as the end game for them both personally and also for the clients.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Analyst · Raymond James. Please go ahead

Got you. And then my follow-up question, Bill, you always like to say that you think half of your marketing spend works, you are just sure which have. This quarter certainly you took your marketing spend down by quite a bit, but your new account additions have actually stayed pretty strong. So, is there an argument there that maybe you could take down your marketing spend going forward and still keep 80%, 90% of your new account growth?

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

I wish that were true. It’s Fred. I am going to take this question, because I think whenever you have a marketing you have a momentum that naturally goes with it. But, I think making the assumption we could cut marketing and keep up the new accounts, we don’t believe that. What we did do is when we saw the how things started to change in the middle of May, we decided to say, okay, well, there is no sense spending a lot of money in this environment and even it’s true that summer will be the same way. We’ve got to pull in. Until the uncertainty clears, just we don’t see, we don’t see it as a good use of our shareholders’ money.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Analyst · Raymond James. Please go ahead

All right, I appreciate it.

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

Okay.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Daniel Harris from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Daniel Harris

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead

Hey, good morning guys. How are you doing?

Bill Gerber

Chief Financial Officer

Hey, Dan. How are you?

Daniel Harris

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead

I wanted to touch a little bit on the NIM that you guys were able to generate this quarter. Maybe if you could give some more color. Obviously a lot of compression out there on the rate curve and reinvestment yield. So, sort of two questions here, what are you guys reinvesting at more broadly for the interest earning assets? And then two, how should we be thinking about that going forward, given the environment, not the IDA yield, but just the overall NIM for the franchise?

Bill Gerber

Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, the NIM is obviously made up of several key areas, Dan, and probably the one that is almost impossible for us to gauge is when you get a hot stock that wants to be, the people on the short and so there is a lot of activity in our stock (indiscernible) business and this quarter the hot stocks in there were the lot of the Chinese stocks. So, we got a boost in the NIM from that in the quarter. And I think generally, just watch the LIBOR curve and you can see where we are investing and it’s, there is really no magic to it, but we still think that the NIM is doable to keep in this range for an extended period.

Daniel Harris

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead

Okay, that’s helpful. The other area that was a surprise was the uptick in margin loans despite as you guys had talked about, investors getting a little bit shaky in the market and pulling back on trading and yet margins loans were higher. What do you attribute that to? Is that sustainable? And what you guys have been seeing maybe in the first two weeks of July?

Bill Gerber

Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, margin loans, I mean, they do tend to fluctuate. So, we ended the quarter at about $8.9 billion. So, there was a downtrend. We started the quarter strong and then it stayed strong for a while and then it started moving probably mid to late May and it came down. And there hasn’t been a heck a lot of additional information we would give out relative to July, outside of the trading activity as Fred said earlier.

Daniel Harris

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead

Okay, thanks guys.

Bill Gerber

Chief Financial Officer

Okay, Dan.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Eric Bertrand of Barclays Capital. Please go ahead.

Eric Bertrand

Analyst · Barclays Capital. Please go ahead

Hey, guys. Coming off of Dan’s question on the margin loans. The yield continue to compress, I think the balances are up, offsetting a lot of the compression. If you start to see the reverse – if you start to see balances come off, could we see yield tick back up as the mix shifts favorably towards you?

Bill Gerber

Chief Financial Officer

That is certainly possible. It really, like everything it depends on who is borrowing. And the, obviously, people with higher balances get a lower rate, not much a surprise there. So, it’s really a mixture is very important in order to watch that.

Eric Bertrand

Analyst · Barclays Capital. Please go ahead

Okay. Fair enough. And can you comment on your efforts to work more extensively with TD on the banking products. What are some of the first products are you expecting to rollout, I believe next quarter your comment and what are the economics from your site?

Bill Gerber

Chief Financial Officer

Yes, when we say banking products I think just for clarity is not so much we wanted to go into being a direct bank. Let sort of backup for a second. So, first off on the lending side, we will work with TD2 and sort of originate loans, but we will just generate referrals, which we give to them and they go from there. We really not interested in getting into the credit business in that way we just don’t have those competencies or capabilities. The second, working with branches, we continue to do that to get new accounts and assets that continues to move along, along with expectation. When it comes to products, what’s we are trying to do with cash management is more about having the functionality our clients are looking for from us. So, these are the things like money movement, the ease of doing that, check writing, check imaging, bill pays those types of things. That the things that you come to expect from the banking account you can do in the IDA inside TD Ameritrade and you may or may not need a separate banking account. But it’s not to go and offer direct checking accounts. We do offer a savings account, but the savings account we use as a defense of product only not as an offense of product. We are not going to start to chase yield with banking products. Is that answers your question?

Eric Bertrand

Analyst · Barclays Capital. Please go ahead

Yes, thank you.

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

Okay.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Matt Fischer of CLSA. Please go ahead.

Matt Fischer

Analyst · CLSA. Please go ahead

Thanks. Good morning guys.

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

Hi, Matt.

Matt Fischer

Analyst · CLSA. Please go ahead

Hey, first just to follow on the TD Bank branches. How many of your FAs are out there now and do you have any metrics regarding referrals that they are generating and how that relationship just working out?

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

We don’t start our retail institutions. We are not going to start out what we get from TD. Having said that, there is about 30 to I think 35 by Cs that are working directly with TD branches now.

Matt Fischer

Analyst · CLSA. Please go ahead

Okay. And you are going to expand that footprint into basically across the continent?

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

We will expand that footprint as we see opportunity. We will continue to grow, but we are being cautious to make sure we bring it up and do it right. Don’t all of a sudden magically go to 100.

Matt Fischer

Analyst · CLSA. Please go ahead

Right, okay. How many are you adding I guess per quarter I don’t remember you did last year?

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

Well, we don’t add so much per quarter as much as every year around this time. We look out into 2012 and we decide now many we add. Last two years we have added 100 new ICs in the fourth quarter. This year right now it’s probably going to be more like 70.

Matt Fischer

Analyst · CLSA. Please go ahead

Okay. And then if regarding the DARTs you mentioned futures and foreign exchange being I guess a bigger piece. Could you give us the breakdown of ETS options and futures and foreign exchange the percent of total DARTs?

Bill Gerber

Chief Financial Officer

Futures and foreign exchange is 7% this last quarter. ETS is about 12%.

Matt Fischer

Analyst · CLSA. Please go ahead

Okay and option?

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

Option is about 25.

Bill Gerber

Chief Financial Officer

Sorry, options to be about 25, 26.

Matt Fischer

Analyst · CLSA. Please go ahead

Okay, great. And then lastly you mentioned your success against both independent on the large wire houses. Could you give us any idea in terms of net new asset coming from breakaway brokers or how many breakaway brokers you were able to pull away this quarter?

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

Well, we don’t spread out our net new assets by breakaway brokers in existing RAAs and obviously we know those numbers, but we don’t disclose them. I don’t have that number in the quarter off the top of my head, but it is 260 year-to-date.

Matt Fischer

Analyst · CLSA. Please go ahead

Okay.

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

When you talk later, Bill Murray may be able to give you that answer.

Matt Fischer

Analyst · CLSA. Please go ahead

Okay, great. Thank you very much.

Bill Gerber

Chief Financial Officer

Okay, Matt. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Joel Jeffrey of KBW. Please go ahead.

Joel Jeffrey

Analyst · KBW. Please go ahead

Good morning guys.

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

Hi, Joel.

Joel Jeffrey

Analyst · KBW. Please go ahead

Yeah, couple of times during your presentation, you said you are expecting the IDA to compress next quarter. You were sort of very specific about that. Is there anything that you are seeing after the quarter that you believe will cause it to expanding in or stay steady or you are just being sort of conservative in your guidance?

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

I think this is one you are asking us to sort of predict what’s going to happen with the yield curve. The yield curve has been extremely volatile depending on which week you pick, which day you pick, and sometimes the last three weeks, which time of the day you are picking will give you a different answer. So, I think right now what we are trying to say is so volatile and has sort of flattened somewhat. We could very well, we are not saying we will, but we could see some compression in the fourth quarter. It will be not significant, but having said that we come back in the fall and hopefully some of this uncertainty clears, I think we will be in a better position to say where we think it’s going to go.

Joel Jeffrey

Analyst · KBW. Please go ahead

Okay, great. And then just lastly past few years you guys have certainly been growing net new assets at greater than 10%, but just your asset base continues to grow. I mean, how long do you think you can continue to grow at this rate and do you continue to need to make the types of investments in sales to support this or can you get some further operating leverage to grow at consistent rate like this?

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

Well, we hope that’s forever, but I think to be realistic, we have always said 7% to 11%. I think depending on your timeframe and everything I do think coming down into the 8%, 9% range over, eventually it will be a reality, because every year you get bigger, this gets harder, particularly on the retail side, but also on the institution side. It gets harder the bigger you get. And so you have to continue to push. We continue to say 7% to 11% and it is higher in the institutional business and the retail business. We haven’t seen any signs of that coming off obviously in this market environment, that’s hard. And we are in the summer season, so the fourth quarter is not going to be up there. But for the year, we feel pretty comfortable. We have the upper end of the range. And management team is certainly focused on 2012 delivering the same kind of numbers.

Joel Jeffrey

Analyst · KBW. Please go ahead

Great. Thanks for taking my questions.

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

Joel, just one other point on the IDA, I forgot to – neglected to mention is what we talked about is all basically says we don’t do any alternative ALM strategies or extension strategies. And no other things that we will look at over the summer as the yield curve takes shape.

Joel Jeffrey

Analyst · KBW. Please go ahead

Great, thanks.

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

Okay.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Chris Harris of Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Chris Harris

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead

Thank you very much. Good morning.

Bill Gerber

Chief Financial Officer

Hi, Chris.

Chris Harris

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead

I know that acquisitions are always part of the mix for you guys and you clearly have a lot of liquidity, I know you can’t comment on specific transactions, but I was wondering if you could maybe share your perspective on just the general environment for deals right now, whether you are seeing good opportunities or whether you are finding it maybe difficult to negotiate with sellers?

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

Well, we are not actively negotiating with any sellers right now. So, I can’t really specifically comment on anyone right now. We continue always to be active in looking at potential transactions. We are very careful to make sure that in both strategic and financial sense. I do think we also have to recognize we are in a period here where there is a fair bit of uncertainty. And when you have uncertainty you tend to take your time. And right now, we will be prudent, I don’t – we want to see what’s going to happen with the US economy and the US debt ceiling just like everyone else. And so for the next little here, while we will be continued to be active we are going to continue to be cautious here.

Chris Harris

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead

Okay, thanks for that Fred. And then just a follow-up on growth, it sounds like the growth in your retail business slowed a little bit from a net new asset perspective. And just wondering if you guys could share with us any more granularity there, what – maybe where that growth is kind of slowing whether it’s the active investor or more the long-term investor maybe just you can give us a little bit more detail if possible?

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

Well, I think it’s just a general market and sentiment period. It is when you see that kind of an abrupt change that we started to see in the middle of May pretty much across everything. You do realize that people are generally nervous and they are not about to make any long-term decisions right now. When you think about, when you get into periods of heightened uncertainty, what does a CEO do, what does a consumer do, what does investor do, they are all going to be quite cautious, pull in, protect their short term, protect their downside, and not be aggressive. And that’s what we are seeing. Until this uncertainty clears and we are all looking to Washington, we’re no different than anyone else, to clear the uncertainty, so that people can get back and decide what they are going to do. And we do think after that happens, markets can deal with negative news, but they can’t deal with this uncertainty. And so, I think the best thing we can have here is for Washington to clear the uncertainty and then I think we’ll see a different market.

Chris Harris

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead

Great. Thanks for taking my questions.

Bill Gerber

Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Chris.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Howard Chen of Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Howard Chen

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead

Hi, good morning, Fred. Good morning, Bill?

Bill Gerber

Chief Financial Officer

Hi, Howard.

Howard Chen

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead

Just given the changing business environment that you've alluded to a couple of times, are you just seeing any interesting changes in the composition of the asset gathering? In the past you've given some interesting stats on size of new customers or new mandates and retail versus institutional, so we just love any sort of update there.

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, there really hasn’t been a change, Howard that we’ve noticed in the nature of people. What we’ve seen is a generic, pretty much across the board, people have pulled in and become more conservative. We see it everywhere, whether the long term investors definitely move to fixed income versus equities. They are being more cautious. They are keeping more power dry and being conservative. If you look at the active triggers while they are trading up some of the volatility, they are going a little bit shorter. They are not making as longer a bit. So, if you are trading options, you are trading shorter options which also has an impact on payment for order form. So, you are just seeing everybody go very short term in their orientation right now and people are waiting for the uncertainty to clear.

Howard Chen

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead

Okay, thanks. And then, Fred, you've spoken to a couple of times in the call the desire to be aggressive on share repurchase at current levels. Just in your mind, how much is the TD Bank ownership threshold just a limiting factor in the company doing that right now?

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

Right now, it’s not a factor at all. They are below the 45%. If you recall, Howard, when our stock was up over right on 20, whatever it was, they sold all of their shares to enable us to take full advantage of the full share repurchase, authorization was, we have 20 million remaining on. So, if we went out and just bought 20 million over the next quarter, they will just come back to 45. So, it’s not a restraining factor at all right now.

Howard Chen

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead

Perfect. Thanks a lot, Fred.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Alex Kramm of UBS. Please go ahead.

Alex Kramm

Analyst · UBS. Please go ahead

Hey, good morning.

Bill Gerber

Chief Financial Officer

Good morning.

Alex Kramm

Analyst · UBS. Please go ahead

A couple of leftovers here. First of all, the comment interesting on the derivatives versus equities, obviously we’ve seen that. But, if I look at this quarter, market volumes looks like options again are outperforming equity. So, just wondering if you could give us a little bit more color in terms of what you’re seeing exactly when it comes to your clients. Is that just like the active investor embracing the product more? Is it people saying, I don’t know what’s going on the equities market, I’m buying a lot of covered calls to protect myself or generate incremental income, any more color there would be great, just to see the trends.

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

The only color I can give you is that certainly to our investor education offering, there is an increased interest in it and when we do webinars and whatnot on the first basics of options trading, we always take people to covered call writing, protective puts, the appropriate use of options. And particularly in this kind of a market environment that people are very interested in that and we’re seeing increased interest in those particular strategies.

Alex Kramm

Analyst · UBS. Please go ahead

All right, great. And then just lastly, obviously one of your big competitors reported yesterday and I think some of the new disclosures that they gave, they’re going to show the strong growth that they have in their kind of like proprietary advisory products which has been like an area of focus for them. Can you remind us how you are doing on that? I know you have the Amerivest product out and you have a couple of other things. Is that still a big focus and are there any metrics like they have that you have share with us in terms of how the customer adoption is there, how the revenue generation is there and how the assets coming along and just really like advisory products. Thank you.

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

So, the first thing, you call those proprietary products. I think that’s a little bit different than what I think the tried as close. We don’t have proprietary products and by intend, so strategically, we are very much committed to open architecture. Even when we do offer Amerivest we use Morningstar to do the asset allocation. We use Morningstar to pick the funds as that is definitely part of our differentiation that we don't have any real or perceived conflicts for the investor. We always do what’s in the best interest of the client and that’s something that we differentiate ourselves. That’s the first point. The second point, I think what they are trying to get to this, annuitized assets that is something that we do measure we do spend our time on. We don’t disclose it. But what I’ll say is that when we measure that and we look at our organic growth rates only 11% year-to-date. Our organic growth rates of annuitized assets is above that number and so our management goal is continue to try to grow our annuitized assets on a faster rate than we are gathering assets generally and we have been doing that.

Alex Kramm

Analyst · UBS. Please go ahead

Right, great. Helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Michael Carrier of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Michael Carrier

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead

Hi, guys. On the expenses, I guess two things. Do you have and you might have given this, I just missed it, but the actual expense related to that charge. I think we are back in something like ($92) million, but I just wanted to make sure?

Bill Gerber

Chief Financial Officer

It’s closer to $15 million, just a little over $15 million.

Michael Carrier

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead

Okay, 15. Okay.

Bill Gerber

Chief Financial Officer

That includes Kansas City.

Michael Carrier

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead

Okay. I know you said in October, we will get more kind of guidance on the outlook for expenses, but just heading in to the next quarter. When you think about that 350 to 360 range and then just the thinkorswim conversion like any stage there, is that still like accurate meaning in that range?

Bill Gerber

Chief Financial Officer

We are just going to be probably a little bit above 360 for the September quarter is my best guess right now and that would be inclusive of additional monies on the pension conversion or at the Tosk conversion at Pensen and then any other larger initiatives we are kind of putting our shoulder to the wheel on.

Michael Carrier

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead

Okay. Right thanks. And then or maybe one, you guys have a lot of new initiatives, the organic growth continues to hold up really well. So, when you think of either trade architect, the cash management opportunity, the referrals, are there any particular strategies or initiatives that really stand out over the next six months, where based on your targets or your goals you are likely to see those ramp up or are there kind of opportunities across all of them?

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

Well, obviously there are opportunities across all of them otherwise we wouldn’t be investing in them. Sometimes things work better than you expect and sometimes they don’t and sometimes they get up quicker than you think and sometimes they don’t. So, I think to keep up the kind of that organic growth that we have got. We have to find new ways and new ideas. Particularly in the retail business to acquire new accounts and assets and so, you should make the assumption that we were always have somewhere between 2 and 5 new initiatives to try and keep up bringing in new money, in accounts and assets and that is what management continues to look at. TD Bank initiative will be one of those and there is a few more.

Michael Carrier

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead

Okay. Thanks guys.

Bill Gerber

Chief Financial Officer

Okay.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Mac Sykes of Gabelli & Company. Please go ahead.

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

Hi, Mac.

Bill Gerber

Chief Financial Officer

Mac, are you there?

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

Are you on mute?

Mac Sykes

Analyst · Gabelli & Company. Please go ahead

Hi, sorry guys. Good morning. Just a follow-up on Michael’s question, in terms of the conversion, where would we see the impacts in terms of the line items, it just the clearing part or?

Bill Gerber

Chief Financial Officer

Yes, clearing line item.

Mac Sykes

Analyst · Gabelli & Company. Please go ahead

Great and what was the quarter end share accounts?

Bill Gerber

Chief Financial Officer

$574 million.

Mac Sykes

Analyst · Gabelli & Company. Please go ahead

Thank you.

Bill Gerber

Chief Financial Officer

Okay, Mac.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from David Chiaverini of BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

David Chiaverini

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead

Thanks. Good morning. I was curious about how the adoption rate is toward trade architect progressing relative to your expectations?

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

The trade architect is gotten very well. We have had over 200,000 people signed up onto it and that continues to grow and a good base of people are using it, multiple times now and getting more used to it. So, in terms of a new trading technology launch, it’s ahead of where we expect it.

David Chiaverini

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead

Great.

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

And you’ll see us come up with a version 2 and then a version 3. I mean eventually it will have features and foreign exchange on it, and all the functions, all the sort of product functionality you have on, just a different look and feel that it will be a web based streaming platform. But, one of the things we built into it is to get constant feedbacks and suggestions from clients. And so we’re going to continue to upgrade it. But, so far we’ve got excellent feedback and adoption rates beyond what we’re expecting.

David Chiaverini

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead

Great. And my follow-up is regarding an international offering or capability, a couple of your competitors now offer international equities trading. I was wondering are you seeing much demand from your clients and where you stand in potentially offering that capability?

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

Well, we’ve looked at that a number of times and every time we do what we see is more of the opportunity is foreigners wanting to trade on the U.S. market, not Americans wanting to trade on foreign markets. Americans have decent access to foreign exposure whether that would be through mutual funds, ETFs, ADRs, so they have a variety of ways to do that. And we haven’t seen a huge demand for that. If we saw huge demand, maybe we could do something and we’ve got lots of calls from vendors who say we could help you get that up, but we just haven’t put that near the top, unless we don’t see that as something we’re seeing a big demand from our client base at this point.

David Chiaverini

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Michael Tarkan of FBR. Please go ahead.

Michael Tarkan

Analyst · FBR. Please go ahead

Hey guys, most of my questions have been answered, but I just did find it interesting that you guys mention about adding around 1200 new mobile users per day. Is that primarily coming from exciting customers who are just now using the mobile platform or is that totally new Ameritrade customers, anyway you can break that up for us?

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

It would be primarily existing customers downloading the new apps. There is no question the tablets are very popular particularly the iPad.

Michael Tarkan

Analyst · FBR. Please go ahead

Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

I am showing no further questions at this time. I’d like to turn the call back over to Mr. Fred Tomczyk for any closing remarks.

Fred Tomczyk

Chief Executive Officer

Well, thanks for joining us everyone today. Obviously in light of the end market we find ourselves in, we are quite happy with how our results come out. We’re very happy with our organic growth, year-to-date we’re over $29 billion and 11% at the top end of our range. Our balance sheet continues to be strong. We bought back 10 million shares so far this year, and we remain very well positioned to continue to be aggressive on share buybacks and to take advantage of opportunities that we see as they present themselves. So, we feel pretty good about where we at. And let’s hope that next time we meet all the uncertainties cleared and we are in better markets. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen this does conclude today’s conference. You may all disconnect and have a wonderful day.