Richard D. Fairbank
Management
Well, I hope the overall objective function of Capital 1 is not the maximization of ROTCE in the near term. We all have our eyes on it, and we are heading to a very good exit rate on the other side of this integration. But I wanted to just talk about Brex. And value creation. You know, we all know that you know, tech startups have power metrics that are not, you know, vertical earnings-based. And sometimes, you know, they can feel a far, far cry from how life works in a mature public company. But we feel that Brexit's approach to creating value is very consistent with Capital 1's founding approach when we created the company all the way to today. And that relates to taking an horizontal economic view. So the you know, in the founding of Capital 1, I looked at business, I said it is really striking that financial, you know, big banks and everything are so focused on vertical earnings. But, really, banking is an annuity business. 1 invests quite a bit of money to create annuities that last for a long period of time. And so what we did was build a massive horizontal. We called it horizontal accounting, basically, where as we thought about investments or originating a cohort of accounts, we estimated the lifetime economics of that, the cost to create those, etcetera. And before the investment, during as it played out, and then and then at the end of it all, we measured it to see if indeed value was created. And this approach to rigorous financial decision making horizontally, investing in annuities and creating long term value is the financial basis of how Capital 1 works and how we create value. So when we looked at Brex, obviously, Brex, the world was, you know, looking at their power metrics. But we rolled up our sleeves and looked at how Brex was creating valuable annuities over time. They do not have as deep and rigorous horizontal accounting system. I would not expect them to. But even as recently as today, I was in a conversation talking about the you know, the continuing work we are doing on the Capital 1 side, looking at Brex investments and how each tranche of investment looks like it is paying off over time. And our observation was these are very value creating. So you know, not every tech company's investments are value creating. But from everything we have seen, the approach Brex has especially when we onboard them to a more kind of systematic horizontal accounting system. It will fit right into the value creation philosophy of Capital 1. What we have found in building Capital 1 when we have these growth opportunities is that, actually, the more you really go in and measure the value creation opportunity, very often, the more we invest, because we can validate that these things really create value over time. Brex is in an amazing window of opportunity. They have got a tiger by the tail. They are they are going after 3 markets at once. The card mark the commercial card market, the payables marketplace, and the expense management business. They are going after it with an integrated solution. Strikingly, that solution is something that is needed from small companies all the way to large corporations. it is an amazingly large market. So we are going to lean in and provide the resources and capabilities to help Brex, you know, even create even more value. But along the way, we are gonna very rigorously measure to be sure that what we are investing in generates the value on the other side. But what we see continues to validate our acquisition thesis. And I wanna say too, having seen and hung around a lot of young companies over the years. I continue to be amazed at the sophistication of how this business is run and the opportunity to create value here. Thank you. Next question, please.