Operator
Operator
Good morning, and welcome to CIT's First Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Kate, and I will be your operator today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a question-and-answer session later in the call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Barbara Callahan, Head of Investor Relations. Please proceed, ma'am. Barbara A. Callahan - Senior Vice President & Head-Investor Relations: Thank you, Kate. Good morning, and welcome to CIT's first quarter 2015 earnings conference call. Our call today will be hosted by John Thain, our Chairman and CEO; and Scott Parker, our CFO. After John and Scott's prepared remarks, we will have a question-and-answer session. As a courtesy to others on the call, we ask that you limit yourself to one question and a follow-up, and then return to the call queue if you have additional questions. We will do our best to answer as many questions as possible in the time we have this morning. Elements of this call are forward-looking in nature, and may involve risks, uncertainties and contingencies that may cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. Any forward-looking statements relate only to the time and date of this call. We disclaim any duty to update these statements based on new information, future events or otherwise. For information about risk factors relating to the business, please refer to our 2014 Form 10-K. Any references to non-GAAP financial measures are meant to provide meaningful insights and are reconciled with GAAP in our press release. Also, as part of the call this morning, we will be referencing a presentation that is available in the Investor Relations section of our website at www.cit.com. Now, I'll turn the call over to John Thain. John A. Thain - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you, Barbara. Good morning, and thank you all for being on the call. We reported pre-tax income for the quarter of $148 million and net income of $104 million. The pre-tax income was higher than the prior year, but below our fourth quarter 2014 number. This quarter was impacted by lower profitability in our North American Commercial Finance business and by lower utilization rates in our transportation businesses. The utilization rate in commercial air declined to 97%, as we took aircraft back early from three troubled airlines. We are actively working to redeploy these aircraft. We completed the second piece of the sale of aircraft into TC-CIT Aviation, which is our joint venture with Century Tokyo Leasing. Utilization in rail declined to 98%, which is still a very attractive level, and renewal rates remain above expiring levels. We ordered 2,200 new railcars to be delivered in 2016 and 2017. And we purchased approximately 1,000 railcars in Nacco, which is our European rail business. Our Corporate Finance business experienced lower originations and lower portfolio yields; the lower portfolio yield primarily due to the absence of interest recoveries. The completion of the OneWest transaction with its lower deposit cost and expanded commercial banking capabilities should improve the profitability of this business. Both Direct Capital and our equipment finance businesses generated strong new business volumes. The overall credit quality of our portfolio remains stable. The consecutive quarterly increase in non-accrual loans was primarily due to one energy-related account. We continue to review our energy loans on a name-by-name basis to monitor the impact of lower energy prices. Our capital and liquidity positions remain strong, and we will return additional capital to our shareholders. We continue to target the completion of our OneWest transaction in the middle of this year. And we are exploring the various opportunities created by the GE announcement to divest much of GE Capital. However, we will have nothing specific to discuss on this call. With that, I'll turn it over to Scott. Scott T. Parker - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Thank you, John, and good morning to everyone. CIT reported first quarter net income of $104 million or $0.59 per diluted share. On a pre-tax income basis, we made $148 million. Our GAAP tax provision is now around 30%, up from around 10% last year, given the reversal of the valuation allowance. As we have highlighted in the past, our quarterly earnings will be somewhat variable given the transactional nature of some of our businesses and the impact of executing on our strategic initiatives. This quarter's operating performance was impacted by a lower level of activity in the middle market and the absence of interest recoveries on loans in our North American Commercial Finance segment, as well as additional aircraft off-lease and losses related to our UK business in the Transportation & International Finance segment. As John just mentioned, we continue to proactively monitor our energy portfolios. This quarter we increased our reserve slightly for one account. We've included a slide in the appendix of the earnings presentation with some additional details. We made progress in some key areas as we position the company to achieve our near-term targets. Assets in our commercial franchise grew 7% from a year ago. Deposits are now over 50% of our fundings, which has helped reduce our interest cost by 8 basis points. Credit metrics remain at cycle lows. And we've returned nearly $360 million through share repurchases and dividends. And our board of directors recently approved an additional $200 million repurchase authorization. Turning to page three of the presentation, excluding the portfolio repositioning, the pre-tax return on assets of our commercial franchise was 1.9%, slightly below our near-term outlook and down from prior quarters. We continue to find ways to prudently grow our franchises despite the challenges of a sustained low interest rate environment and growing competition. The impact from our portfolio repositioning activities was relatively small this quarter, while the Mexico and Brazil assets are still on track. The regulatory process related to Mexico is taking a little longer than anticipated, and we now expect both to close in the second half of the year. Also, we made good progress towards the sale of the UK equipment finance platform this quarter. Details on the timing and the expected CTA impact of these transactions are included in the earnings presentation appendix. As I've said before, these platform exits will reduce operating expenses by around $15 million a quarter and improve our return on equity. Turning to slide four of the presentation, the fourth quarter 2014 contained benefits from several discrete items that are shown on the box on the left hand side of the slide. The decline in this quarter in pre-tax ROA also reflects several items, which are listed on the right hand side of the slide. I'll elaborate on these items as part of my review of the segment results. I'll start with Transportation & International Finance which generated $157 million of pre-tax income, which is a 3.3% pre-tax ROA in line with the 3.4% ROA for the full year 2014. TIF assets declined sequentially, reflecting $400 million of asset sales, including the remaining $225 million of aircraft to complete the seeding of the joint venture and fewer deliveries of new aircraft. The sequential decline in net finance margin was driven by the lower asset utilization. And losses related to our UK business also contributed to decline in pre-tax income. We had a higher number of aircraft off-lease during the quarter, due to a few carriers that had performance issues as John just mentioned. As a result, utilization fell from 99% to 97%, still a strong level. We are working on re-leasing these aircraft. This process may take a little longer than usual given they were taken back on short notice, and therefore maybe a headwind to net finance margin in the near-term. The fundamentals in our aircraft leasing market remain positive supported by continued financial health of the airlines as well as consistent growth in demand for air travel. Lease rates on new aircraft also remain attractive and renewal rates are generally stable. And our current order book positions us well for the shift to new technologies. Moving to Rail, Rail utilization also remained strong at 98%, but declined modestly from last quarter's peak of 99%. Renewals continue to average above expiring rents, although that differential is narrowing. As I mentioned last quarter, fewer than 2,000 of our railcars that service the oil sector expired this year. In summary, our Transportation & International Finance segment continues to deliver returns in line with the target pre-tax ROA. North American Commercial Finance reported pre-tax income of $36 million, which represents about a 1% return on asset, which is below prior periods. We originated about $1.4 billion of loans and leases, down sequentially in line with seasonal trends, but at similar levels to first quarter of last year. Assets were down slightly from year-end, as growth in commercial real estate partially offset declines in other NACF divisions. The sequential quarter decline in net finance margin primarily reflects the absence of interest recoveries, given our low level of non-accruals. The middle market has the slowest start to the year since the financial crisis with M&A and LBO activity down about 50% from the fourth quarter. Private equity deal flow has been impacted by the higher cost of second lien debt, and the continuing disconnect between buyer and seller expectation on valuation. On a positive note, new business pricing remained stable and is generally in line with the current portfolio yields. The pipeline is improving, but second quarter volume will likely be below a year ago period. Our real estate finance team continues to leverage its relationships to underwrite deals with strong, attractive risk adjusted returns. The market remains competitive, and we continue to see an elevated level of pre-payments, both of which will challenge the rate of growth in the portfolio. Equipment finance had a strong new business volume for the quarter, and growth in originations at Direct Capital offset lower yields in other channels. Commercial services also had a good quarter with factoring volume up 4% from the first quarter of last year, as it continues to maintain its leadership in its core industries, while expanding into non-apparel sectors. Over the course of 2015, we will continue to prudently manage through the difficult lending market while maintaining underwriting discipline. We expect to achieve a pre-tax ROA of between 1.3% and 1.4% consistent with the near-term target for this segment. Turning to the slide nine. We anticipate asset growth of around 5%, with growth on our commercial franchises partly offset by the platform assets. Net finance margin will remain pressured in the second quarter given the headwinds I just discussed. The operating expense ratio will continue to be above the high-end of the range until we complete the platform exits in the second half of the year, and as we incur OneWest integration costs. Given the current environment, we are targeting a pre-tax ROA of approximately 2% excluding the impact of CTA charges. We will revisit our profitability targets after OneWest closes. In summary, we continue to focus on our strategic priorities to improve our return on equity, by maintaining disciplined growth of our commercial franchises, exiting low return businesses, returning excess capital to our shareholders as well as closing OneWest, which will lower our overall funding cost, accelerate the realization of our U.S. DTA and enable us to achieve our target capital ratios. With that, I'll turn it back over to Kate and we'll take your questions.