Operator
Operator
Good morning, and welcome to State Street Corporation's Third Quarter of 2015 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. Today's discussion is being broadcast live on State Street's website at www.statestreet.com/stockholder. 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 for 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's website. Now, I would like to introduce Anthony Ostler, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations at State Street. Anthony G. Ostler - SVP & Global Head-Global Investor Relations: Thanks, Stephanie. Good morning, and thank you all for joining us. On our call today are Chairman and CEO, Jay Hooley, who will speak first. Then Mike Bell, our CFO, will take you through our third quarter 2015 earnings slide presentation, which is available for download in the Investor Relations section of our website, www.statestreet.com. Afterwards, we'll be happy to take questions. During the Q&A, please limit your questions to two questions and then requeue. Before we get started, I would like to remind you that today's presentation will include operating basis and other measures presented on a non-GAAP basis. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP or regulatory measure are available in the appendix to our 3Q 2015 slide presentation. In addition, today's presentation will contain forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those statements due to a variety of important factors, such as those factors referenced in our discussion today in our 3Q 2015 slide presentation under the heading, Forward-Looking Statements, and in our SEC filings, including the risk factors section of our 2014 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. For those of you planning ahead, please note that we expect to release our earnings in the fourth Wednesday of the month, following each quarter-end, starting in 2016. This is a change from the current practice of the fourth Friday of the month, following each quarter-end. This is due to how the calendar works in 2016 and 2017. As a result, we currently expect to release our 4Q 2015 results on Wednesday, January 27, 2016. Additionally, please save the date for our 2016 Investor Day, which is currently scheduled for Wednesday, February 24, at the Mandarin Hotel in New York City. Now, let me turn it over to Jay. Joseph L. Hooley - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Good morning, everyone. Our performance in the third quarter was impacted by the sharp decline in global equity markets, including a more pronounced decline in emerging markets. While I'm not pleased with the negative effect on our earnings during the quarter, I do believe that over the long-term our relatively higher exposure to global equities in emerging markets will benefit us. In light of the continued challenging environment, we are accelerating our multiyear plan to further digitize our operating environment and create cost efficiencies. The plan follows on our successful Business Operations and Information Technology Transformation Program. We are targeting savings that are in the range of approximately $500 million when fully implemented over a four- to five-year timeframe, which is similar to the duration of our recently completed Business Operations and Information Technology Transformation Program. Mike will provide additional details on our plan in his comments. As many aspects of the new regulatory landscape are taking shape, we're moving aggressively to position ourselves to comply. An example of this during the quarter was the significant progress we made in decreasing excess deposits on our balance sheet. Despite the market environment during the third quarter, we were able to advance our core business, growing operating basis fee revenue by 4% and 1%, compared to the nine months and quarter ending September 30, 2014, respectively and adding $141 billion of new servicing commitments during the third quarter. We continue to emphasize returning capital to our shareholders. During the third quarter of 2015, we purchased approximately $350 million of our common stock and at quarter-end had approximately $1.1 billion remaining on our March 2015 common stock purchase program, authorizing the share of up to $1.8 billion of our common stock through June 30, 2016. Now, I'd like to provide a brief overview of economic and market developments and how our business is affected. Concerns about global growth became more acute in the third quarter of 2015 with declines in emerging market growth rates, notably China, further degradation in commodity prices, and even the previously solid economic performance in the U.S. showing signs of hesitation. Equity markets became more correlated as a result. Gyrations in Chinese equity markets, which had been ignored earlier in the year, began to impact markets more broadly. Global equity markets posted their worst quarter since the third quarter of 2011, which was exacerbated by double-digit depreciation in many emerging market currencies, reflecting investment outflows from those markets. A modicum of calm has recently returned in October following the Federal Reserve's September decision to not raise interest rates amid weaker global conditions and accompanying financial stress. With the risk of deflation returning, investors now question whether U.S. monetary policy tightening will begin at all this year. Together these events and trends impact our business in several meaningful ways. First, the lower equity markets have caused our assets under custody and administration and assets under management to decrease. This decline in assets combined with the associated risk-off sentiment has resulted in lower fee revenue. Second, the low interest rate environment continues to negatively impact our net interest revenue and net interest margin. This is in part driven by our higher-yielding portfolio investments maturing or experiencing prepayments. And then those funds being reinvested in lower-yielding investments. Now, I'd like to discuss our Asset Servicing and Asset Management business. We added $141 billion of new servicing commitments during the quarter across all sectors and geographies. New assets to be serviced that remain to be installed in future periods totaled $195 billion at September 30. And we continue to see deep and diverse pipelines. Our Asset Management business experienced net outflows of $29 billion during the third quarter of 2015, driven primarily by net outflows of $42 billion from institutional mandates, partially offset by $10 billion of inflows to ETFs. The significant drivers of passive equity outflows include rebalancing and cash needs of some of our clients due to lower commodity prices, which is a continuation of a trend that we saw in the second quarter, as well as an expected redemption from one large client. The SPDR DoubleLine Total Return Tactical ETF, which is an active equity income ETF launched in partnership with DoubleLine, has gained further momentum. It has attracted $1.2 billion in net flows post-launch and now ranks as the most successful ETF launched in the U.S. this year. Additionally during the third quarter, we launched another 13 new ETFs, bringing our year-to-date new launches to 22. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Mike, who'll review our financial performance for the third quarter, and then we will open the call to all of your questions. Mike? Michael W. Bell - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Thank you, Jay, and good morning, everyone. Before I begin my review of our operating basis results, I will comment on significant items, which affected our third quarter 2015 GAAP basis results as highlighted on slide four. First, we recorded an after-tax charge of $47 million related to severance for targeted staff reductions. This measure was taken to better calibrate the company's expenses to the current environment and will involve a gross and net worldwide reduction of approximately 600 and 200 positions respectively. We expect these staff reductions to be completed by the end of 2016 with projected expense savings of $50 million with approximately 75% of the savings to positively impact 2016 results. Second, we recorded an after-tax gain of $49 million from the sale of commercial real estate acquired as a result of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. And lastly, we recorded a tax benefit of $59 million related to a reduction of an Italian deferred tax liability as a consequence of our European legal entity restructuring activities. Now, I'll refer to slide seven for a discussion of our operating basis results for 3Q 2015 and for the nine months ended September 30, 2015, which I'll refer to as year-to-date. The 3Q 2015 results primarily reflect the challenges from the declining global equity markets and persistently low market interest rates, as well as the seasonal decline in securities finance in comparison to the second quarter. 3Q 2015 EPS of $1.16 decreased from 2Q 2015 and from the year-ago quarter. Year-to-date EPS decreased slightly compared to the same period a year ago. Importantly, compared to the year-ago period, year-to-date total fee revenue increased 3.7%. 3Q 2015 total fee revenue increased 1% from the third quarter of 2014 and decreased 3% from 2Q 2015, primarily reflecting the adverse market conditions. Compared to the year-ago period, year-to-date fee revenue was negatively impacted by $212 million from the stronger U.S. dollar, largely offset by a similar benefit in total expenses. Regarding capital, in 3Q 2015, we declared a common stock dividend of $0.34 a share and purchased approximately $350 million of our common stock. Lastly, we're pleased that we made progress on a key priority to reduce the level of deposits on our balance sheet. So moving to slide eight, year-to-date fee revenue increased 3.7%, while expenses increased 2.8% versus a year ago. On a constant-currency basis, year-to-date fee revenue increased 7.2%. Turning to slide 10, I'll discuss additional details of our operating basis revenue for 3Q 2015. Servicing fees were down from 3Q 2014, primarily due to the impact of the stronger U.S. dollar and lower international equity markets, partially offset by net new business and higher transaction volumes. While the EAFE equity index was down approximately 7%, our 3Q 2015 servicing fees were particularly impacted by the 15% sequential decline in emerging-market average daily levels. We estimate that approximately 10% of our servicing fees are tied to emerging markets. 3Q 2015 management fees decreased relative to a year ago, primarily due to the impact of the stronger U.S. dollar, lower performance fees and lower international equity markets. Total trading services revenue in 3Q 2015 increased from 3Q 2014 due to the higher foreign exchange trading revenue, reflecting higher volatility in volumes. And compared to 2Q 2015, trading services revenue increased due to higher direct foreign exchange trading revenue. Securities finance revenue increased from 3Q 2014, primarily due to new business in enhanced custody, and was lower than 2Q 2015 reflecting seasonality. Processing fees and other revenue increased from the year-ago period and sequentially, primarily due to the impact of certain valuation adjustments and higher revenue from bank-owned life insurance. Moving now to slide 11, as you can see, our operating basis net interest revenue continued to be pressured due to the prolonged low interest rate environment and our success in the third quarter in reducing client deposits. The decline in deposits during the third quarter largely occurred towards the end of the quarter, thus explaining the smaller decline in the average deposit balances quarter-over-quarter versus the period end balances quarter-over-quarter. Now, let's turn to slide 12 to review third quarter 2015 operating basis expenses. Total operating basis expenses decreased slightly from 2Q 2015. Other expenses included a recovery from certain Lehman Brothers claims, which was largely offset by a single securities processing loss of $38 million, which resulted in total securities processing costs for 3Q 2015 of $41 million. This loss was a specific event, and we've evaluated its nature and are implementing control enhancements to mitigate recurrence. Compared to the third quarter of 2014, compensation and benefits expenses increased, reflecting increased costs for new hires to support new business and regulatory initiatives, partially offset by the benefit of the stronger U.S. dollar and lower incentive compensation expense. Information systems and communications expenses increased over both periods, reflecting increased cost to support new business and additional data center capacity. Other expenses increased from the year-ago quarter, primarily due to higher professional services fees, including costs to support regulatory initiatives, as well as higher securities processing costs, partially offset by the third quarter 2015 Lehman recovery and lower charitable contributions. Turning to slide 13. We note that we continue to reposition our balance sheet. The size of the average investment portfolio decreased by approximately $9 billion from June 30 of 2015. The majority of the decrease was related to the sale of lower-yielding MBS and ABS, partially offset by the increase in U.S. treasuries. Now, I'll turn to slide 14 to review our capital position. As you can see, our capital ratios remained strong, which has enabled us to accomplish a key priority of returning capital to shareholders through dividends and common stock purchases. At September 30, our common equity Tier 1 ratio under the Basel III fully phased-in standardized approach increased from June 30, principally due to lower credit risk. The fully phased-in holding company supplementary leverage ratio increased to 5.4% on a fully phased-in basis, principally due to our success in reducing client deposits. Now, I'll address a question that's likely on investors' and analysts' minds, and that's to provide an update on our efforts to reduce client deposits including the total reduction level that we're targeting. Throughout third quarter 2015, we engaged in productive discussions with clients regarding the implications for our balance sheet associated with excess deposits. While overall deposits declined approximately $44 billion during the quarter, some of that reflected a lower deposit spike at the third quarter end. Importantly, excluding the deposit spikes at quarter-end, we estimate that our balances were $30 billion to $35 billion lower at the end of the third quarter relative to the second quarter, and we view this deposit reduction effort as successful. Nevertheless, it's also important to recognize that the external environment can impact deposit levels in the future. And our average fourth quarter balance sheet will be the starting point for our 2016 CCAR submission. In addition, as interest rates increase, we also expect to see further declines in client deposits. Turning to slide 15, I'll update you on where we stand regarding our financial outlook for 2015. Primarily due to the third quarter 2015 steep decline in equity markets, particularly in emerging markets, we likely will fall below the previously communicated 4% to 7% growth of operating basis fees in 2015. The continued strength of the U.S. dollar has contributed to downward pressure on fee revenue growth as well. Given the weakness in fee revenue, it will be more challenging for us to grow 2015 operating basis total fee revenue at least 200 basis points above the 2015 growth of operating basis expenses. While this quarter's severance action will have an immaterial impact on operating basis expenses within 4Q 2015, overall we do expect that 4Q 2015 operating basis expenses will be lower than 3Q 2015 levels. For full-year 2015 operating basis net interest revenue, we currently expect to be near the lower end of our previously communicated range of $2.16 billion to $2.22 billion. Our expectation to be near the lower end of the range primarily reflects both the successful effort in reducing excess deposits and continued low market interest rates. Now, I'd like to add some additional detail to Jay's comments on the next stage of our transformation program to digitize our enterprise. To be clear, our objectives are twofold. First, we intend to make further significant reductions in our cost structure. And second, we plan to digitize our interfaces with our clients in order to deliver more value. We've decided to accelerate the next stage of this work through the execution of a formal multiyear plan along the lines of the recently completed and successful Business Operations and Information Technology Transformation Program. While we are still finalizing the details of this second phase of work, we anticipate targeting at least $500 million of annual expense savings when fully implemented. Importantly, the program will likely involve restructuring costs and investments to fully implement the plan and capture the savings, just as the business ops and information technology transformation program did. The specific timeframe and other parameters are still under development and we look forward to providing a further update on our 4Q 2015 earnings call and review of the detail at our Investor Day on February 24, 2016. And with that, I'll turn it back to Jay. Joseph L. Hooley - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thanks, Mike. And, Stephanie, we are now available to open the line to questions.