Stifel Financial Corp.
Q2 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 28 Jul 2021

[Operator:]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Stifel Financial Corporation's 2Q 2021 Earnings Conference Call. . As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to hand the conference over to Mr. Joel Jeffrey.

[Joel Jeffrey:]

Thank you, operator. I'd like to welcome everyone to Stifel Financial's Second Quarter 2021 Financial Results Conference Call. I'm joined on the call today by our Chairman and CEO, Ron Kruszewski; our Co-Presidents, Victor Nesi and Jim Zemlek; and our CFO, Jim Marischen. Earlier this morning, we issued an earnings release and posted a slide deck to our website, which can be found on our Investor Relations page at www.stifel.com.

[Ronald Kruszewski:]

Thanks, Joel. To our guests, good morning, and thank you for taking the time to listen to our second quarter 2021 results. I'll start the call with some highlights from our quarterly and first half results, and I'll discuss our revised outlook for the full year. Jim Marischen will review our balance sheet and expenses, and then I'll wrap up with some concluding thoughts. Before I get into the specifics of our quarterly results, let me start by saying that overall, Stifel business in the first half of 2021 has surpassed any 6-month stretch by a wide margin and rival some of our most recent full year results. Our record 6-month net revenue was the result of records in both of our major operating segments. The strength of our top line and our continued focus on operating efficiency resulted in record quarterly and 6-month revenue as well as record earnings per share. As we head into the back half of this year, we are well positioned to continue our strong performance, which is illustrated by our increased full year guidance, which I'll discuss in greater detail in a few minutes. So looking at our quarterly and year-to-date snapshot, the numbers really speak for themselves and are the result of the investments over the last several years and a strong operating environment, especially for our investment bank. Revenue in the second quarter was a record of more than $1.15 billion, an increase of 29%. For the 6-month period, revenue was nearly $2.3 billion, up 27% and further illustrating our growth was roughly as much as our 2015 full year revenue. The growth in revenue and lower expense ratios resulted in record non-GAAP EPS of $1.70, which was up 65% year-on-year and $3.20 year-to-date, which is up 75%. And when compared to our past full year results, would rank as the fourth best in our history. I'm also pleased with our operating leverage as we generated a record pretax margin of 24% and our annualized return on tangible common equity was nearly 31%. Tangible book value per share increased 29% in the last year.

[James Marischen:]

Thanks, Ron, and good morning, everyone. Before getting into our net interest income and balance sheet, I want to make a few comments on our GAAP earnings and non-GAAP charges. In the quarter, we saw a $0.10 differential between our GAAP and non-GAAP results. To add some color to these items. The differential was entirely related to 3 basic deal-related expenses, including stock-based compensation, intangible amortization expense and an additional true-up on an earn-out from an acquisition that's performed better than our original projections. And now let's turn to net interest income.

[Ronald Kruszewski:]

Thanks, Jim. As you can see from our record first half results and the significant increase in our guidance, 2021 is shaping up to be a far better year than we had originally forecast. Given our performance to date and our outlook for the second half of the year, we should again generate significant levels of excess capital. In addition to the excess capital we generate from operations, as Jim noted, we raised an additional $300 million in preferred shares during July. After redeeming our Series A preferred, we netted an incremental $150 million to capital. I mentioned this to illustrate just how well positioned we are to take advantage of opportunities that come our way. I think it's pretty clear from our results and my comments about the benefits of our increased scale that reinvestment into our business is my preferred use of capital. As our updated guidance illustrates, we believe that we can grow our balance sheet by an additional $2 billion in the second half of the year. Many bulge bracket firms and smaller regional banks have had muted loan growth rates given their sheer size or geographic limitations. By contrast, our loan portfolio is relatively small compared to the national footprint of our Wealth Management and Institutional businesses. Security based and mortgage loans have grown primarily through retail demand and new adviser recruiting. And in recent years, we have expanded our capabilities in new commercial lending businesses. The combination of these growth channels has enabled us to generate and the average annual loan growth rate of 30% in the last 7 years while maintaining a strong credit profile. In terms of growth in our other business lines, we continue to focus on both hiring and acquisitions. While we haven't done an acquisition in 18 months, we continue to believe this is an attractive use of capital and a key element to our growth strategy. That said, we'll always focus on deploying capital based on where we can generate the best risk-adjusted returns, and we'll continue to deploy capital to dividends and share repurchases. However, as a growth company, I believe that Stifel and our shareholders have and will continue to see the greatest upside from growth in our franchise. And with that, operator, let's open the line for questions.

[Operator:]

. The first question will come from the line of Steven Chubak with Wolfe Research.

[Steven Chubak:]

So I wanted to start off with a question on capital. I have a very high-class problem. You're running with far too much excess at the moment, especially after the preferred issuance that you cited. It does feel like you're struggling to make a dent in those ratios given the current pace of capital return, really strong earnings. I was hoping you could speak, Ron, just to your appetite to accelerate buybacks to more than offset some of that continued capital build. And whether there's any appetite to deploy some of the $6 billion of third-party cash given very tepid demand for deposits from third-party banks at the moment?

[Ronald Kruszewski:]

As I said, we're always going to look to deploy our capital in the best -- where we see the best returns for our shareholders, dividends, share repurchases acquisitions, or growth in our balance sheet. And all 4 of those are on the table as we continue to grow. I see a lot of opportunity to grow our franchise. I have found that, that is the highest return to our shareholders, and we'll continue to do that. But we're mindful of our capital build, of course, and don't intend to just sit highly by and let capital accumulate. We will address it in an appropriate manner. And again, what -- as a shareholder myself, the best returns to our shareholders.

[James Marischen:]

And maybe just to add to that in regards to the $6 million of additional Suite balances, and we -- we're essentially 2 quarters into the year, and we've doubled our balance sheet growth projections. So I think we have been able to deploy deposits in that manner and utilize some of that excess. And then in terms of the buyback, we have also talked about trying to offset dilution and to put some numbers to that. for the full year, that would be about 2.5 million shares.

[Steven Chubak:]

Got it. But is there any appetite to accelerate that $6 billion of migration, if you will, away from third-party banks just given that those actions would be very NII accretive. Especially given some willingness to how best deploy it into credit-sensitive securities where the yield pickup would be pretty substantial.

[Ronald Kruszewski:]

Look, I think it's -- I think the growth in any bank and in our bank, as I said, we've grown 30% a year. I think we need to have balanced growth. So we flip a switch and try to both through loans and investments increase the size of the balance sheet significantly, of course, we could. But we believe in balanced growth. It layers into the market in a measured manner. And again, we said that we would grow our balance sheet at the beginning of the year by $2 billion. We're projecting $4 million now. And we see, as I said in my prepared remarks, that we see the ability to grow our loans as -- in a real asset of this company. Our bank is undersized relative to our footprint in other businesses. So we're going to continue to grow, not looking at just flipping a switch and taking NIM compression for the benefit of NII. I think there's risk in that we want to be more measured on.

[Steven Chubak:]

Fair enough, Ron. And maybe just switching gears to the Institutional side. You talked about the fact that you weren't getting enough respect for the share gains that you were posting, I mean it's certainly evident this quarter in the results, and you mentioned the record backlog as well. At the same time, we do have the executive order that was just issued by Biden, which specifically highlighted greater scrutiny of financial services M&A, where you do have heavier gearing. Do you expect any direct impact on financial services M&A or bank M&A specifically in the coming months and quarters? And what are you hearing from the bankers and corporates that are on the ground?

[Ronald Kruszewski:]

We announced the deal this morning, if you saw that, which also speaks to what we've been doing, the investment deal where we advise them and that was a nice transaction. I think certainly, the sentiment coming out of Washington is an increased sort of antitrust sentiment, if you will. I believe that's what I'm hearing, we haven't seen anything as it relates to the midsized banks. I think that primarily would focus on the on the big banks where I would see it. But we haven't seen anything yet. It doesn't mean it won't happen. But I believe that for the health of the industry, consolidation is going to continue to occur, especially where we are most dominant and have the greatest market share as I sit here today, I don't see that being impacted.

[Steven Chubak:]

And just 1 final 1 for me. Just on the independent platform on the wealth side and your efforts to scale that. I was hoping you could speak, Ron, just to some of the early feedback you've gotten from advisers on the offering, how you're going to differentiate the value prop versus peers? And whether it makes strategic sense for you to scale that inorganically, just given the strength of your capital position.

[Ronald Kruszewski:]

I think that we -- I'm pleased with our initial feedback. It's -- we're starting from, frankly, a dead stop. We weren't recruiting in that area. We've just announced that in the last effectively 3 months. But our initial feedback is that we have a very competitive offering. As I've said when we did it, we weren't starting this business from scrap, we've had this business for almost 3 decades, and we have all the tools and the foundation to build this business. And I would say that we expect to show increased recruiting as this channel picks up and my initial feedback is very positive on this, not only the platform, but our competitive positioning.

[Operator:]

The next question will come from the line of Devin Ryan with JMP Securities.

[Devin Ryan:]

Maybe to hit the question Steven asked on the Institutional business slightly differently. So obviously, heading into 2021, I think some people felt like the bar was pretty high after a great 2020 in the institutional side, and so it might be tough to grow revenues in that business. Clearly, based on what you've done in the first half and the outlook, your revenue should be up quite a bit on the institutional side. So I'd love to maybe kind of try to strip through if we can how the business is scaling in terms of people. Obviously, you're gaining market share in businesses. And just trying to understand how much of the momentum feels like it's just the cycle benefiting versus Stifel is actually expanding the footprint over the past year. And then expectations for that heading into next year, kind of where the bar maybe feels a little bit high and where you still feel like there's really good growth momentum whether because of the cycle or because of where you've added to the footprint.

[Ronald Kruszewski:]

I mean it's -- this seems like it's a never-ended question, right? And let me just give some numbers to talk about what we've built. And again, we're all benefiting from increased market activity. So myself and all of our peers, whether you're a large bulk cracker of middle market or independent adviser terms were all benefiting from a favorable market environment. I feel that when I talk about not having an understanding, it's that we need to do a better job of explaining how much investment and what we've done to our footprint. So for example, we've doubled the business in terms of revenue since 2015 and we've also doubled our managing directors. So we have 205 to 210 managing directors today, which is double what it was. We participate in a much broader slot of the economy in terms of verticals, and we do it across a much greater array of product offerings than we did even a few years ago. So we're in the fund placement business, we are in financing business on the corporate debt side and our M&A you can see. So the question always does that I hear this is about sustainability, is it sustainable? And I answer well, not only is it sustainable, it's growing. And what I sometimes take not exception, but I throw my brain, it's how The Street and the analysts we'll look at our peers and say that banking revenues will be up, but at Stifel they're not sustainable, they might be down because the bar is too high. And I think we've proven and will continue to prove that we're a growth business, and that business is going to grow with the same cyclical ups and downs that our peers will experience. But for me, it's been higher highs and higher lows. And I've been listening to sustainability for 25 years, some had 25 consecutive years of record revenue. So the business is sustainable because our platform is so much greater than it was even a few years ago. And we'll just keep putting up the numbers and keep answering the sustainability question every quarter.

[Devin Ryan:]

Well, we'll probably keep getting it, but I appreciate the .

[Ronald Kruszewski:]

At the end I just hope you don't keep underestimating it. But okay.

[Devin Ryan:]

Exactly. So maybe to switch gears to acquisitions for Stifel, obviously, 18 months without a deal is quite some time, but I also understand and appreciate that acquisition remains an important part of the growth strategy over the long term. Maybe just thinking about the market right now, is -- the fact that we haven't seen anything. Is that a function of just the expectations in the market are as high as kind of broad valuations. And so there's just not a lot of compelling things to do? Or is it just the areas of where there's opportunity in the market just aren't as interesting? Or obviously, you guys have added so many capabilities that there's not maybe quite as much white space in certain parts of the business. So I want to maybe just think about why there hasn't been anything. And then just what may be the backlog today of how active are conversations, how much is out there that maybe is interesting, but we'll have to just see if something happens.

[Ronald Kruszewski:]

Yes. Well, first of all, I mean, we have spent 18 months and us, that's a while. We are -- we have been a firm that's growing both organically and acquisitions. A good point that out that our growth in the last 18 months has done significant that you can say that's organic. If you really think about it, we haven't layered any acquisitions into that. The -- I think it's hard to say that you're disciplined in the marketplace when the way you prove that is by not doing deals. And so you don't know about what we haven't done because our #1 criteria for doing an acquisition is that it makes us. But importantly, it's accretive and it adds to our returns. So with our return on equity and tangible equity, it's a high bar and you measure acquisitions against building the balance sheet or, frankly, buying back stock, and that adds a level of discipline. So we haven't had anything that has met our return objectives in this time. And you -- but you also have to couple that with the fact that it's 1 thing to announce an acquisition, it's another thing to integrate and execute and bring everyone on board, which has been 1 of our real successes. And so during the pandemic and working remotely and all the technology challenges that come with that, we raise our own bar on the risk of execution. When we can't even for a while from those people that would be -- that would raise our risk of doing deals because culturally, that's been getting in all the people is a very important part of what we do. So we put all that together, it's been slow. But as I sit here today, we're very well capitalized, we see opportunities. And if we can continue to grow as we have for 20-plus years, we will do so.

[Devin Ryan:]

Yes. Okay. Great. And maybe just last 1 here on the recruiting environment in Wealth Management. I just want to make sure I have kind of the right messaging. So obviously, it sounds like competition is very high right now, very high TA packages. How should we be thinking about kind of the push-pull between the -- you said there's a good pipeline. So there's -- it still sounds like quite a bit to do on the other side is quite expensive. So is the expectation that recruiting may slow a bit or that if prices or costs go up more than maybe you would pull back or is it just more a function of, it is expensive, but it's still very economic to do. And so just getting that additional context, I'm trying to just make sure I understand what is the bottom line of the message is.

[Ronald Kruszewski:]

Yes. I think, look, recruiting is somewhat cyclical. I think you have to look at recruiting overall longer period than just quarter-to-quarter. I've always said that. Just we're -- we are a strong recruiter. We have proven that over not just the last few quarters, but the last few decades. And so we're going to adjust to the marketplace. It's a -- and the business always gets competitive. What I see, and this is somewhat instinctive when I talk to people, we were surprised at the depth that we were able to maintain recruiting going into the pandemic for people that were in the pipeline. And it was -- I was surprised at our ability to onboard and even open offices during that time. What I'm really seeing besides competition is that the fact that many people don't get to their office has slowed the recruiting on the employee channel, it just have. We have a number of people in the pipeline, but getting through that in this environment has now extended. That's really what we're saying. But as I look at it and talk to people and see what's coming. I am very optimistic about our recruiting. And then the other thing, as I said earlier, when you talk -- at least compared to peers, we're recruiting in just 1 channel historically, which is the employee channel. And now we're going to be adding the independent channel and that will show a ramp in our just recruited numbers growth. So I think the recruiting business is fine. I think it's always cyclical, and we adjust accordingly. I generally probably on balance recruit less when markets are really crazy. They've been that way, same with acquisitions, and we recruit more when we think the returns are higher. But no change.

[Operator:]

The next question will come from the line of Chris Allen with Compass Point.

[Chris Allen:]

Maybe just a couple of quick follow-ups on Devin's question. I guess, first, you mentioned you raised your own bar on the risk of execution for deals because you couldn't see people. Has that been removed now that the economy is reopening, you're able to kind of travel and get out and see companies right now?

[Ronald Kruszewski:]

Yes, I think so. I mean based on the last couple of days, we might be seeing with masks on again, but I think that, yes, for sure, we -- this economy is opening up, people are planning on having return to the office as are we. We think that's important. But look, we're all ever diligent as to the updates as it relates to the pandemic and the virus and the delta and all things COVID-19 related. But in general, we believe that people are going back to the office, and that on balance will help our recruiting.

[Chris Allen:]

Got it. Good. And then just on the adviser recruiting environment, you mentioned it got more competitive. Is it broad-based across kind of the larger firms of wirehouses or just maybe 1 or 2 players that are kind of really pushing the envelope here?

[Ronald Kruszewski:]

I think both. It's broad based and -- there's always -- you always have leaders in the -- and who's doing what they never always the same. But I would say, in general, it's very competitive. It does also track as you might expect, it tracks the perception or at least short-term rates. And with rates near 0, there might be some models that are discounting that longer than we might be. And so that just results in different IRR type numbers, which might be causing higher transition. That's a guess again, I can't speak for what other people are doing. But again, we're -- I feel very good about where we are and our value proposition. The most important thing is not necessarily are we competing on the money front at the very short-term saying it's important. The most important thing is do we have a competitive platform and the right culture and are we attracting -- because that's the most important. And on that front, I am very pleased with the improvements we've made in our platform, the technology. This is a great place to come and people know that. So I feel really good about that.

[Chris Allen:]

Got it. And then just on the increased asset growth outlook. I wonder if you could provide the granularity in terms of where you see the biggest opportunities that continue to be in mortgages insect-based line? Is that being driven by your adviser/client base? Or is it more balanced between C&I right now? Or are there other opportunities to kind of grow balances from here?

[Ronald Kruszewski:]

Yes. Let me have Jim take that.

[James Marischen:]

Yes. I mean I think if you look back over the last 2 or 3 quarters, the vast majority of the growth that you've seen has been in fund banking, mortgage lending and securities-based lending. I think those all provide an attractive risk-adjusted return today in terms of balance of credit risk and yield. And I think going forward, those are going to be our main areas of growth.

[Operator:]

The next question will come from the line of Alex Blostein with Goldman Sachs.

[Alexander Blostein:]

Just another maybe follow-up on the independent adviser channel. Obviously, I heard your comments around pickup in TA packages on the employee side. But as you reenter the independent channel. Are you seeing similar pressures there as well? And then just curious to get your updated thoughts on sort of Stifel's relative value proposition versus some of the larger independent players like Ray Jim Enterprise LPL, they have been doing that for a while.

[Ronald Kruszewski:]

Yes. Well, well, I must say, in some cases, if you're asking about the cost of recruiting on the independent side. I would say that I have a -- I would say that's even gotten to be almost more competitive on the employee side. It's all -- everything is relative to expected cash flows. And so that is a competitive also channel for sure. Yet we believe that our model allows us to compete. We can do that and get adequate returns. I would say that the independent model is more dependent upon rates, than the employee channel in terms of achieving returns. So this rate environment doesn't necessarily support some of the things that at least what I see going on. But -- so yes, we can -- we have to get our message out and our platform out. As it relates to the platform, which I think is the most relevant or more relevant in your question. We have -- we've run our independent channel in many ways as almost a branch or a couple of branches within our employee channel. So what that means is that all the integration, the ability to transact and to provide support is in place. And I think that the people come to see our platform have been very surprised as to our capabilities to provide a foundation for independent advisers.

[Alexander Blostein:]

Great. And then just another 1 around M&A. I think in the past, Ron, you talked about adding maybe some of the asset management capabilities as well, particularly around private markets. Is that still a priority as you guys obviously have a significant amount of excess capital to deploy? Or as we think about the opportunity set for M&A for Stifel it will largely be centered around kind of the core channels, whether it's the wealth or the independent or the -- sorry, the institutional channel?

[Ronald Kruszewski:]

Well, I think that I've said, and I'll continue to say that on the asset management side, the asset management in terms of alternative space versus a index space, broadly speaking, we -- that's where we would be -- would have interest I'm not sure that an acquisition is ever a priority here. It's always -- does the right situation come along that we believe is not something that will be add to our relevance in the marketplace and to our earnings. So we don't have anything to prioritize. I think the firm has developed to the point where we have a pretty broad-base offering have set. That's where a lot of our acquisitions in the last 5 years have build out our institutional offering. But I think that we will -- we see opportunity and we will add to our product set appropriately. It's -- it is -- it's about being relevant and accretive.

[Operator:]

With that we are showing no further audio questions at this time. I'll now hand the conference back over for closing remarks.

[Ronald Kruszewski:]

Well, I would like to thanks our shareholders and analyst community for participating on the call. Some very good questions. And I will end by saying as I did on my call that the investments that we've made over the number of years is certainly paying dividends in this marketplace. I am optimistic about not only the rest of this year, but frankly, into 2022 based on what I'm seeing today. And look forward to reporting to our shareholders after our third quarter, which ends in September. So with that, everyone have a great day and stay well. Thank you.

[Operator:]

This does conclude today's conference call. We thank you for your participation and ask that you please disconnect your lines.