Richard D. Fairbank
Analyst · Buckingham Research Group
Well, the -- we have just had a lot of strength on the revenue side, and I've embarrassed myself on -- you should be cautious asking me this question because if you remember when I kept predicting this revenue margin to come down and it stubbornly kind of refused to do that. So it demonstrates, though, the power of several things that are going on. I mean, some of the revenue margin strength has been related to credit that has continued to come in a little bit better than expected, and, of course, that's not a sustainable point, and we would expect not to get too much more of those credit effects. But the marketing we're doing over the last few years has been really light in terms of teaser-oriented balance transfer of products. I mean, we're just not really active participants in that particular segment. We have -- our highest yielding parts of our portfolio have had significantly less attrition than we expected also which has contributed. And funding costs are down also, which helps the current revenue margin. So we feel very good about this and, of course, now we bring on HSBC, who I think the earnings power of that enterprise really comes from revenue margin strength. And what excites us is the fact that there we see a lot of opportunities in the way we can manage accounts and hit the ground running with that business. That, I think, will show continued strength in revenue margin. I do want to say, though, that, of course, note, we are pointing downward with respect to revenue margin and we really mean it here relative to this known impact of taking a little bit of the air out with respect to some of HSBC's practices. So that's a very real effect. I think also we should expect the competitive environment, which is gradually heating up. I think that, that impact will clearly, I think, kind of take things down a little bit. And I do want to also say that as we continue to get traction in partnerships, which I'm really bullish about the continued opportunity we have there, that will be great in terms of value creation, but that's a thing that pulls down margin as well.