Raymond James Financial, Inc. (RJF) Q4 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Kristina Waugh: Good evening, and welcome to Raymond James Financial's Fourth Quarter and Fiscal 2026 Earnings Call. This call is being recorded and will be available for replay for the next 30 days on the company's Investor Relations website. I'm Kristie Waugh, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you for joining us. With me on the call today are Chief Executive Officer, Paul Shoukry, and Chief Financial Officer, Butch Oorlog. The presentation being reviewed today is available on Raymond James' Investor Relations website. Following the prepared remarks, the operator will open the line for questions. Calling your attention to Slide 2. Please note that certain statements made during this call may constitute forward-looking statements. These statements include, but are not limited to, information concerning future strategic objectives, business prospects, financial results, industry or market conditions, anticipated timing and benefits of our acquisitions, and our level of success in integrating acquired businesses, anticipated results of litigation and regulatory developments, and general economic conditions. In addition, words such as believes, expects, anticipates, intends, plans, estimates, projects, forecasts, and future or conditional verbs such as may, will, could, should, and would as well as any other statement that necessarily depends on future events are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Please note that there can be no assurance that actual results will not differ materially from those expressed in these statements. We urge you to consider the risks described in our most recent Form 10-K and subsequent Forms 10-Q and Forms 8-K, which are available on our website. Now I'm happy to turn the call over to CEO, Paul Shoukry. Paul?

Paul Shoukry: Thank you, Kristie. Good evening, and thank you for joining us. Some people like to tailgate and eat hamburgers and hot dogs prior to a World Series games. Others like to listen to a really good earnings call. I want to thank all of you for being in that latter category and joining our call this evening. Us folks in Tampa Bay are rooting for the Rays to keep things alive tonight, but there are thousands of really great Brew Crew fans who have made the trip down and are ready to pop the champagne. We will see how things shake out in the next few hours. But first, our results. Raymond James delivered record net revenues and record net income for both the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2026. This was our sixth consecutive year of record annual results, underscoring the strength of our long-term approach and resilient, diversified business model and most importantly, reflecting the commitment of our financial advisers, bankers, and associates to serving clients with integrity and putting people first every single day. In the quarter, we generated record quarterly revenues of $4.27 billion representing growth of 15% over the prior year quarter and 9% above the preceding quarter. Record pretax income of $862 million increased 18% over the year ago quarter and 15% over the preceding quarter. What has always set Raymond James apart is our ability to invest for the long term without losing sight of the deeply personal relationships at the heart of our business. That was evident this fiscal year as our investments across the organization in people, technology, and capabilities enabled advisers, bankers, and associates to meet the increasingly complex needs of their clients. In the Private Client Group, we had record quarter end client assets under administration of $1.87 trillion, up 1% from the preceding quarter and 12% year-over-year. Strong retention and continued recruiting momentum again demonstrated that Raymond James remains a destination of choice for financial advisers across our affiliation options, where our growth remains focused on quality over quantity. For the fiscal year, domestic PCG net new assets increased 88% to a record of more than $98 billion, representing 6.4% of beginning-of-year assets. Contributing to the excellent net new asset results were not only our record recruiting results, which far surpassed the previous year's records but also increased net new assets from existing advisers and strong adviser retention. Over the fiscal year, we recruited financial advisers to our domestic independent contractor and employee channels with trailing 12-month production totaling $538 million and more than $82 billion of client assets at their previous firms. The source of this year's recruiting success as well as our current pipeline remains diverse across all of our affiliation channels. Throughout the year, we remain focused on expanding capabilities and empowering advisers. For example, enhanced succession and capital solutions for advisers, streamlined branch workflows, and adviser productivity initiatives support practice continuity, growth planning, and adviser transitions. With regard to clients, we have expanded specialized resources available to business owners, high-net-worth families, and multigenerational households, helping advisers address clients' increasingly complex planning, succession, and liquidity needs. Lastly, we continue advancing automation, process improvement, and AI as part of our more than $1.1 billion annual technology spend. These enhancements help advisers work more efficiently and deliver increasingly personalized advice spending less time on administrative tasks and more time with clients. Tools such as our proprietary AI assistant, Raimond, an AI-powered integrated CRM solution meeting manager, improve access to institutional knowledge, client insights and workflow support. In Capital Markets, revenues grew this quarter driven primarily by stronger Investment Banking results as well as higher affordable housing investment business revenues. We generated record consolidated Investment Banking revenues of more than $1.1 billion for the fiscal year. We achieved this milestone despite economic and global challenges and uncertainty including concerns about disruption from emerging technologies. These results reflect the continued investments in our capital markets businesses. During the year, we acquired GreensLedge, which provides origination and structuring capabilities that complement our existing structured products distribution. Additionally, we made strategic hires and expanded specialized practices to continue to deepen our expertise, including adding a leveraged finance and debt advisory practice and expanding our ESOP advisory team and our consumer franchise. In public finance, the addition of MBS Capital Markets increases our capabilities in land secured finance and strengthens our ability to serve special districts, master planned communities, and mixed-use developments. Our Investment Banking pipeline remains strong and as we saw this quarter, we believe we are well positioned for future growth. In the Asset Management segment, net inflows into managed fee-based programs in the Private Client Group were strong during the quarter. This reflected the growth from our successful recruiting efforts as well as a cross-business collaboration with PCG to provide high-quality investment offerings such as the newly launched Private Wealth Guided Portfolios that expand solutions for private wealth clients looking to add alternative investments in their managed portfolios. Additionally, we experienced solid net flows into Raymond James Investment Management, including the recently acquired Clark Capital, which continues to grow assets by serving adviser-oriented channels with high-touch asset management and model portfolio capabilities. In the Bank segment, loans ended the quarter at a record $57.5 billion driven predominantly by continued growth in securities-based lending balances. Those balances increased more than $6 billion or 32% from the year ago period and 6% sequentially. This growth continues to reflect the synergy with our expanding Private Client Group business as we deploy our balance sheet in support of clients. Importantly, credit quality across the loan portfolio remains strong. Our capital deployment strategy remains disciplined and long-term focused with priorities that include organic growth, technology, and platform investments, strategic acquisitions and returning capital to shareholders. Before I turn the call over to Butch, I want to highlight 2 things we are excited about. First and most importantly, our latest satisfaction survey showed that advisers' overall satisfaction with Raymond James' service levels reached an all-time high of 96%, with 87% of our advisers saying that they have experienced an improvement over our already strong service levels over the past year. These remarkable results reflect the collective efforts of our associates to serve advisers and their clients. Also during the quarter, we announced a new partnership with the PGA Tour as a title sponsor of the GO by Raymond James Golf Tournament in Greensboro, North Carolina. One of the tour's most historic tournaments, the event will become a championship-level competition featuring the best players in the world. This partnership provides a unique opportunity to invest in our brand and deepen relationships with clients and prospects. Now I'll turn the call over to Butch Oorlog to review our financial results in detail. Butch?

Jonathan Oorlog: Thank you, Paul. I'll begin on Slide 6. The firm reported record net revenues of $4.27 billion for the fiscal fourth quarter. Net income available to common shareholders was $666 million with record earnings per diluted share of $3.40. Adjusted net income available to common shareholders, which excludes acquisition-related expenses, equaled $703 million resulting in record adjusted earnings per diluted share of $3.59. Our pretax margin for the quarter was 20.2% and adjusted pretax margin was 21.3%. We generated annualized return on common equity of 20.6% and annualized adjusted return on tangible common equity of 26.6%, strong results for the quarter, particularly given our conservative capital base. Turning to Slide 7. The Private Client Group generated pretax income of $458 million on record quarterly net revenues of $3.06 billion. Revenues grew 15% year-over-year primarily driven by higher PCG assets under administration, resulting from market appreciation, strong retention and the continued addition of net new assets. Pretax income grew 10% over the year ago quarter as the revenue growth was partially offset by higher financial adviser commissions tied to strong compensable revenue growth and increased expense supporting the record recruiting results Paul mentioned earlier. The Capital Markets segment generated quarterly net revenues of $549 million and pretax income of $106 million. Segment net revenues increased year-over-year and sequentially, driven by higher M&A and advisory revenues. This growth was partially offset by lower fixed income brokerage revenues as rising interest rates and increased market volatility created a challenging environment, especially for municipal securities. Fourth quarter results also benefited from seasonally high revenues in our Affordable Housing Investments business. The Asset Management segment generated record pretax income of $170 million on record net revenues of $409 million. Results were largely driven by higher financial assets under management compared with the prior year quarter, reflecting market appreciation over the past 12 months and strong net inflows into PCG fee-based accounts as well as the addition of Clark Capital. The Bank segment generated net revenues of $483 million and pretax income of $180 million. Segment net revenues increased 5% year-over-year, largely due to net loan growth over the period. Results also benefited from a loan loss reserve release during the quarter, driven by continued strength in credit quality measures as the loan portfolio continues to shift towards lower credit risk securities-based loans and residential mortgages. Turning to consolidated revenues on Slide 8. Asset management and related administrative fees were $2.31 billion, up 23% over the prior year and 11% over the preceding quarter. Record quarter end PCG fee-based assets were $1.16 trillion, up 15% year-over-year and 1% over the preceding quarter. Looking ahead, we expect fiscal first quarter 2027 asset management and related administrative fees to increase approximately 1% from the fourth quarter level driven by higher PCG assets and fee-based accounts at quarter end. Brokerage revenues were $614 million, down 2% from the preceding quarter as higher PCG retail brokerage revenues were more than offset by a decline in fixed income trading revenues described earlier. Moving to Slide 9. Clients' domestic cash sweep and Enhanced Savings Program balances ended the quarter at $58 billion, up 3% over the year ago quarter and down 1% from the preceding quarter. Our client deposit balance mix continues to highlight our diverse funding sources through both the sweep program and the Enhanced Savings Program through Raymond James Bank as well as TriState Capital's deposit gathering capabilities. Additionally, a portion of the sweep balances held off balance sheet with third-party banks, which totaled over $16 billion at quarter end, is immediately available to fund future loan growth as client demand warrants. Turning to Slide 10. Combined net interest income and RJBDP fees from third-party banks were $674 million, up $16 million or 2% from the prior quarter. Fee revenues earned on RJBDP balances with third-party banks increased $12 million as a result of both an increase in average balances swept to third-party banks in the quarter as well as a 6 basis point increase in the yield on such balances to 2.81%. Firm net interest income increased year-over-year and sequentially as higher interest income driven primarily by higher bank segment interest-earning assets more than offset higher interest expense. Looking ahead, based on interest rates that include the full impact of the September rate increase and assuming unchanged quarter end balances, net of the fiscal first quarter fee billing collection of $2.1 billion, we would expect aggregate NII and RJBDP fees from third-party banks in the first quarter to be up approximately 1% over the fourth quarter level. Keep in mind, actual results could be influenced by several variables, including any interest rate actions during the upcoming quarter as well as changes in loan and deposit balances. Turning to consolidated expenses on Slide 11. Compensation expense was $2.77 billion and the total compensation ratio for the quarter was 65%. The adjusted compensation ratio, which excludes acquisition-related compensation expenses was 64.6%, a really strong result given the business mix and robust compensable revenue growth in PCG. As we said at our Analyst Day in June, we expect to achieve an adjusted compensation ratio of approximately 65% based on our revenue mix. And as evident this quarter, improvement in that ratio can result from strong performance of the Capital Markets segment. Noncompensation expenses were $633 million, up 5% from the year ago quarter. Sequentially, noncompensation expenses increased 6% and driven primarily by a lower bank loan benefit for credit losses compared to the preceding quarter as well as higher investment sub-advisory fees that align with higher fee-based assets. Certain noncompensation expenses are tied directly to our growth and many of those expenses, particularly those associated with successful recruiting benefit future periods. For the fiscal year, we delivered adjusted noncompensation expenses, excluding the bank loan benefit for credit losses of approximately $2.3 billion, in line with our target. Importantly, we achieved this while absorbing incremental operating expenses from businesses acquired during the year which were not contemplated in our target. Excluding those expenses, we would have come in below our target. Looking ahead to fiscal 2027, we expect noncompensation expenses, excluding the bank loan loss provision for credit losses, non-GAAP adjustments presented in our non-GAAP financial measures and any unexpected legal and regulatory items to be approximately $2.5 billion, representing about an 8% increase year-over-year. This target reflects the full year impact of the businesses acquired in fiscal 2026 contributing approximately 100 basis points of the expected expense increase. Slide 12 presents the pretax margin trends for the past 5 quarters. This quarter, we achieved adjusted pretax margin of 21.3%, a strong result and above our guidance of approximately 20%, helped by higher Capital Markets results and also reflecting an increase in operating leverage in our PCG segment. Our long-term trend on profitability continues to highlight the stability and strength of our diversified businesses to consistently generate strong margins throughout various market cycles. On Slide 13, at quarter end, our total assets were $94.4 billion, which approximated the preceding quarter end level. Record bank loans of $57.5 billion grew 11% over the year ago quarter and 2% sequentially, with that loan growth largely in support of our clients. Securities-based loans and residential mortgages represent 65% of our total loans held for investment, reflecting 45% and 20% of the total, respectively. RJF corporate cash at the parent ended the quarter at $2.9 billion, providing excess liquidity of $1.7 billion above our $1.2 billion target with a Tier 1 leverage ratio of 12.1% and a total capital ratio of 24.2% we remain well above regulatory requirements with approximately $1.9 billion of excess capital capacity to deploy before reaching our conservative Tier 1 leverage ratio target of 10%. The effective tax rate for the year was 23%. Looking ahead, we estimate our effective tax rate for the fiscal 2027 to be approximately 25%, which excludes any impact the Corporate-Owned Life Insurance or COLI portfolio valuation could have on the rate during the year. Slide 14 provides a summary of our capital actions through the combination of common dividends paid and share repurchases, we returned $154 million of capital to shareholders during the quarter. In the quarter, we repurchased $50 million of common shares at an average price of $166 per share. Over the past 12 months, we repurchased 8 million common shares for approximately $1.25 billion. Including dividends. Over that period, we returned $1.7 billion to common shareholders, representing 71% of earnings. Through successful execution on our capital deployment priorities over the past year with strategic balance sheet growth, completion of acquisitions, and capital return to shareholders, our Tier 1 leverage ratio has declined 100 basis points over that period to its still-strong 12.1% level. We remain committed to operating our businesses over the long run at capital levels consistent with our established targets. I'll now turn the call back to Paul for his final remarks. Paul?

Paul Shoukry: Thank you, Butch. In summary, we finished fiscal 2026 with record results and an adjusted return on tangible common equity of 23% and while investing in future growth. We are entering fiscal 2027 with many tailwinds, including records for client assets and a strong Investment Banking pipeline. Of course, we also maintain a watchful eye on the uncertain geopolitical and macroeconomic environment. But we avoid trying to time the markets and instead focus on making investments to better support our advisers and their clients over the long term while also maintaining a strong balance sheet with ample liquidity and capital to be nimble and opportunistic in a wide range of potential market environments. Our leadership team believes what people want more than ever in this world of technology, AI, and social media, which I call antisocial media, is deeply personal relationships. And counterintuitively, what's harder to find than since our founding in 1962 across almost any industry is a deeply personal relationship. To that end, we are making significant investments in technology and AI, not with a focus on disintermediating our financial advisers, but instead, with a focus on saving our advisers and associates time on administrative tasks so they can spend more time developing deeply personal relationships with their clients. We believe human financial advice grounded in these relationships will be an even bigger differentiator going forward. I want to thank all of our advisers, bankers, and associates for helping Raymond James generate our sixth consecutive year of record results. This concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, will you please open the line with questions?

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from David Smith with Truist Securities.

David Smith: You had a pretty healthy capital uptick to 12.1% Tier 1 leverage this quarter. But despite that, you really curtailed the buyback. Can you share more about that decision and whether there's been any shift in your capital allocation strategy right now, I don't know, if blackout period just made it tough to take advantage of the leg down for the stock in September.

Paul Shoukry: No. Really, what happened during the quarter was we were evaluating an M&A opportunity. And so we kind of suspended buybacks as we were evaluating that opportunity to see if we can get it to progress through the process. As of right now, our plan -- that opportunity does not look like it will progress. And so as of right now, our plan is to resume buybacks at that $400 million a quarter level going forward.

David Smith: Okay. So not with a catch-up necessarily?

Paul Shoukry: No, that was -- no, we'll just continue at the same level going forward.

Operator: Your next question comes from Bill Katz with TD Cowen.

William Katz: I want to sort of hone in a little bit on balance sheet strategy from here. I heard you in terms of having some of the third-party sweep available to fund loan growth. If I look at your balance sheet, it's about 90% funded loan to deposits the NIM went down a little bit quarter-on-quarter. So strategically, how are you thinking about managing the growth of the strong security-based lending and the mortgage opportunity and how might that sort of play through for the NIM outlook?

Paul Shoukry: Yes, Bill, good question. I mean, really, if you look at our overall cash availability, we have lots of flexibility. The loan-to-deposit ratio for us is not as relevant as a pure-play bank because we do have so much cash with third-party banks that provides a lot of flexibility. And beyond that, we have diversified sources of deposits both from Raymond James Bank and TriState Capital. So we feel confident in our ability to continue supporting clients with the balance sheet. And to your point, we're really more focused on growing NII and BDP fees over time than optimizing NIM. We're really focused on increase supporting clients and improving profitability over time. And that's how we think about the strategy going forward.

Operator: Your next question comes from Craig Siegenthaler with Bank of America.

Craig Siegenthaler: So just a follow up on the last one. Does that mean the NIM is going down despite the fact that Fed's raising rates because in the quarter, liability cost, as you know, rose a lot faster than asset yields.

Paul Shoukry: Yes. I'll have Butch speak to the specifics on our near-term outlook. But I think what might be missing in the long-term perspective is that as deposit costs across the entire industry continues to increase on an incremental basis, you're going to see that reflected in loan pricing as well over time, whether it's in higher spreads, and just loan pricing. So the returns, I think, in the industry will keep up with the deposit costs over time, but Butch can speak to the near-term sort of outlook from the latest rate increase.

Jonathan Oorlog: Yes. One aspect of the NIM decline in the Bank segment, this particular quarter was -- you'll recall that we significantly increased the -- our ESP deposit balances in Q3, and that was a ramp-up over the quarter. So basically, in Q4, we experienced a full quarter effect of the increase in those higher cost deposits, and that was an impact on NIM. I would also focus that with our third-party bank balances, we actually increased the yield from our third-party banks by 6 basis points. It kind of offsets the NIM. So as Paul mentioned, we really think about it as managing the aggregate of NII and BDP. And going forward with future rate hikes, all things being equal, meaning no negative impact on balances. Given our -- the floating nature of our balance sheet, the fact that we don't take interest rate bets. All things being equal, increases in short-term rates. Would have a positive impact on our NII and typically on our NIM on a longer-term basis.

Operator: Your next question comes from Michael Cyprus with Morgan Stanley.

Michael Cyprys: Just wanted to ask about the recruiting backdrop. You've obviously had a very strong year here, and you've talked about the pipeline remaining healthy across the different affiliation options. So I was hoping you could maybe give us a sense of how you see the competitive environment evolving particularly around transition assistance and how you're seeing the sort of advisers in motion evolving across the broader industry? And how you're thinking about sustainability of the sort of growth you put up here into fiscal '27?

Paul Shoukry: Yes. We feel really good about our pipelines across all of our affiliation options. I pop into a lot of these recruiting meetings and there's a lot of them happening at our home office. And again, it's from a wide variety of sources from different firms and it's -- they're evaluating a wide variety of our affiliation options. So it's a pretty balanced and strong pipeline I know there's a lot of questions around there about the competitive environment and the economics of recruiting right now because I think there's been sort of a fallacy of assuming that the economics are binary and consistent across the industry. And I can't speak for all the participants in the industry, but I could speak for Raymond James in that the recruiting environment and the way we recruit is very economically attractive for Raymond James. And I always say the proof is in the pudding. You see that this year with an adjusted ROTCE of 23% for Raymond James with consistently strong recruiting results, record results for us for the last couple of years. And so you may be wondering why -- are you hearing different things across the industry? I think what makes recruiting attractive economically for Raymond James is really 3 things. Most importantly, it's the value proposition, we call it the best of both worlds where we tell advisers they own their book of business across all of our affiliation options, and we have an adviser and client-focused culture and approach, which is getting harder to find across the industry. And we have a full service offering. We have a bank. We have a trust company. We have equity research, all the things that advisers may want to help provide to their clients to provide the absolute best financial advice possible. The second thing that's important in being profitable with the recruiting is scale. We invest $1.1 billion in technology. There's a lot of firms we compete with that just can't keep up with that level of investment given their size. So it's harder to remain competitive, harder to provide that value proposition that I just described as differentiated, and harder to keep up with the demands of clients and advisers. So scale is really important. And then finally, it's a long-term time horizon that we have as a management team as a company and that we've always had as a management team as a company because, like most growth investments, it actually creates a drag on near-term profitability. So if we're just focused on the next quarter or even the next year, recruiting may not be attractive on an incremental basis but we're making decisions for the next 5 years and beyond. And so with the value proposition that we have, that's differentiated, the scale that we have, and our long-term time horizon. That's why we're so excited about the recruiting opportunity, and that's why it's economically attractive for Raymond James.

Operator: Your next question comes from Alex Blostein with Goldman Sachs.

Alexander Blostein: Just following up on that last discussion around recruiting and tying that back maybe to PCG comp rate and margins. I was hoping double click on a couple of things. I guess, one, typically, the recruiting TA system comes a little ahead of revenues. So presumably, that's still playing out. So couple that with robust recruiting pipeline, Paul, that you alluded to, how should we think about PCG comp rate into '27 off of this kind of 75-ish percent range that you exited fiscal '26?

Paul Shoukry: Yes, to your point, I mean, we're going to continue investing in growth, and we've been ramping up, as you know. We had net new assets this year of $98 billion, which was a record of 88% year-over-year, which is, I mean, remarkable when you think about the level of growth we invested in during the year, and so yes, all else being equal, that transition assistance as you ramp up, that does create a higher pressure on the comp ratio and on the margin. But again, we have scale and we are being very disciplined on the investments we're making in noncomp. And we -- just as you saw this year, we're still able to grow pretax income in the Private Client Group business despite that investment in growth and also despite the pressure we had in interest rates during the year. So we're going to continue to focus on not what the pretax income does just next year but over the next 5 to 10 years as we grow the business.

Alexander Blostein: Got you. Just -- but just in terms of the pace of PCG comp rate trajectory, is that upward bias moderates from here? Or does it stay at about the same pace?

Jonathan Oorlog: Yes. I mean in terms of -- 1 way to think about the comp rate is it's impacted by our channel -- our 2 channels, the employee channel and the independent contractor channel. So the payout on the independent contractor channel on the financial adviser payout higher. But the flip side of that -- the other side of that is that they absorb their fixed costs and expenses and so we get leverage in spite of a higher FA comp payout and FA comp ratio, we get leverage in the segment from lower noncomp expenses. And you're basically seeing that with relatively flat noncomp expenses in the PCG segment. So -- and our ability to increase the margin in the segment of 10 basis points to 15%. So I think while we may see some increase in the comp ratio in the segment, there are other aspects that are creating leverage for the segment.

Operator: Your next question comes from Steven Chubak with Wolfe Research.

Chris O'Brien: This is Chris O'Brien on for Steven. I wanted to ask on the adviser movement and sort of across the industry, we've seen at some of your competitors, large advisory teams that are trying to become their own RIA. So we were wondering what you're hearing from some of the larger advisers on your own platform? And if you see any risks that advisers might move -- become their own RIAs and even if it stays within the RayJay platform, we're wondering what that might mean for your economics?

Paul Shoukry: Yes. We call it adviser choice. So we have all the affiliation options, and there's advisers that are attracted to our W-2 channel, independent contractor channel, our custody channel where RIA custody as well as our Financial Institution division. And we -- the key to adviser choice is truly being agnostic into which channel the adviser affiliates with. We want to really convince the adviser and the teams and their clients that we are the best destination as a firm, the culture, the capabilities, the best of both world value proposition and how they affiliate with us is their -- based on their individual preferences and how they want to run their business. So we are seeing incredible interest across all our affiliation options, as Butch mentioned in the last couple of years, the independent contractor channel in terms of dollar volume is where we've seen the most interest. But the RIA custody division on a smaller base is growing at a high percentage rate as well. So that's the 1 benefit of a major benefit of Raymond James' long-standing multi affiliation option is we have the largest total addressable market based on having all of the affiliation options at scale and when advisers are thinking about making a move, they don't have to select. They don't have to think about whether or not Raymond James offers a channel, they know that we offer it, they can really just understand whether or not we're a good fit for them culturally in terms of the capabilities that we offer.

Operator: Your next question comes from Michael Cho with JPMorgan.

Y. Cho: Paul, you've mentioned M&A earlier in the call and I just thought I asked, given you've done a couple of acquisitions over the last 12 months, you mentioned Clark Capital, GreensLedge is the other one. So maybe you can remind us again as we start fiscal '27 in terms of your priorities as it relates to M&A and areas where you may want to either close a capability gap or maybe expand in terms of growth opportunity?

Paul Shoukry: Well, our biggest business is a wealth management business. So certainly, that's an area that we look for good acquisitions. And when I say good acquisitions for us, acquisitions have to be first and foremost, a good cultural fit, where we really see ourselves working well with the people and the people have aligned values to ours where they put clients first, make decisions for the long term and have integrity and so that's the most critical aspect of evaluating any acquisition opportunity. It has to be a good strategic fit, where 1 plus 1 gives us a chance of being more than 2, the firm that's joining Raymond James better and they make us better. And we don't do acquisitions to slash costs. We do acquisitions to grow revenues and to be better firms together over time. And then of course, financially, it has to make sense for Raymond James and the sellers and everyone involved. So those are our criteria, which is a pretty strict set of criteria, but we think that's appropriate because acquisitions are inherently risky. And so we evaluate acquisitions again in all of our businesses, Wealth Management being our biggest business. But within capital markets, particularly as it relates to M&A and advisory, some of the things that we've added already to fixed income have been good examples of advisory businesses that we like within capital markets. asset management is a much tougher business, but Clark was very unique in their focus on serving advisers. And then within the bank, we're not really pursuing traditional bank-type brick-and-mortar acquisitions. That's a very competitive space. So we're unique in that regard where we're really a utility bank serving our clients and the rest of the businesses for the most part.

Operator: Your next question comes from Dan Fannon with Jefferies.

Daniel Fannon: Paul, I wanted to follow up on your comments around the Investment Banking pipeline. It seems like the narrative is very similar to what you've said in the past, but curious if there's anything you'd call out that's different as you sit here in late October versus a quarter ago or a year ago in terms of the business activity or the type of business or client in terms of that interaction?

Paul Shoukry: No. I mean, the pipeline has been strong now for quite a while. And so it was just a matter of whether or not the deals would close and the revenues would be realized. We had a very strong quarter this quarter. I think we are getting further and further away. A lot of the portfolio companies, the majority of our M&A business is driven by financial sponsors and a lot of these portfolio companies were portfolio companies that were acquired back in the early 2020s, during COVID. And so those investments are beyond their -- probably a lot of those investments are beyond the original intended holding period. And even if multiples haven't gotten to where -- rebounded to where these financial sponsors have wanted the multiples to expand to, they focused on increasing earnings and getting the cash-on-cash return hurdles that they've strived to achieve. So Again, our pipeline continues to be strong. We have done a lot to invest in the platform even as recently as this quarter, adding a pretty substantial team. So we're going to continue to enhance and invest in the platform and hopefully continue to take share to provide really great service to our clients on both the buy and sell side.

Operator: Your next question comes from Ben Budish with Barclays.

Benjamin Budish: I wanted to follow up on some of the earlier commentary on the NIM outlook. Butch you mentioned that with short-term rates going up, you should see NIM go up over time. Curious if you could talk a little bit more about that. How much of the asset side flows? How long does it take for things to flow through? How should we think about future incremental changes on the liability side? Any color there would be helpful.

Jonathan Oorlog: Yes. So the -- in the guidance that we provided of the aggregate BDP NII guidance up 1% in the upcoming quarter. We layered into that the fully -- the full impact of the September 25 basis point rate hike. So that assumes that those assets have repriced as of the 9/30 balance level. And the deposits repriced immediately. And as you point out, the asset side takes more time to reprice. So that 1% guide takes that into account. And the actual amount in terms of future rate hikes from here and the impact of that are really going to be dependent upon the deposit betas that are going to apply during -- to those future cuts and we're going to evaluate those under market conditions at the time. And -- but -- so it's really hard to project exactly what impact future rate hikes would have on the NIM. But generally speaking, we would expect it to be a tailwind.

Paul Shoukry: But just for the folks that have started covering us since 2023, I mean, we've always strived to maintain pretty floating rate balance sheet. So we -- the majority of our bank balance sheet assets are floating rate assets because we want those to match the associated liabilities of the funding, which are -- the vast majority of those are floating rate as well.

Operator: Your next question comes from Brennan Hawken with BMO Capital Markets.

Brennan Hawken: I'd like to follow up on the question on banking activity. So the pipelines have been building for a while. We saw that start to come through here this quarter. Is the better-than-expected revenue trends that we saw here in this quarter sustainable? Are you beginning to see these sponsors reengage in a more durable way? Is this the beginning of the recovery we've all been waiting for, for so long in other words?

Paul Shoukry: Well, Brennan, we hope so. I mean there's always uncertainty quarter-to-quarter. I mean we had the tariffs a year ago, a year plus ago, and then we had the AI concerns that impacted fintech earlier this year. And so there's always something that -- and then there's geopolitical risk. So who knows. But right now, I would say, yes, the reengagement has been strong. Now this quarter, seasonally and typically has been a very strong quarter for us in Investment Banking, if you look at historically this is our September, 4th quarter. It's historically amongst, if not our best -- amongst the best quarter of the year for us. So -- but as we look at the full fiscal year going forward, we are optimistic about our pipelines and the activity levels we're seeing with our clients. And so we -- until something happens, we remain optimistic about the ability to kind of hopefully convert those -- that pipeline to realized activity.

Brennan Hawken: Great. And then just a couple of questions on the deposit side. One, I noticed that this week, the sort of public advertising, your CD rates came down. I was curious about whether or not there was any reason behind that or if it was just an oversight. And then -- it may be Butch, if we could get an update on October cash trends that you've seen here quarter-to-date?

Paul Shoukry: Yes. I would say monitoring the CD rates week-to-week or month-to-month, it just depends on the demand we have for different buckets of different tenures. So I wouldn't read into that at all, but Butch can speak to the cash trends so far in October.

Jonathan Oorlog: Yes. So the fee billings this quarter were $2.1 billion, they have come out of the accounts earlier in the month. And as we sit here today, those balances are about $1.7 billion lower than the month end. So we're out -- the $400 million better than that $2.1 billion outflow.

Operator: Your next question comes from Devin Ryan with Citizens Bank.

Devin Ryan: Coming back to PCG, obviously, good discussion on recruiting. And I know these metrics don't line up perfectly but the recruited assets really seem to be supporting the net new assets that are driving a lot of it. So can you help separate that from the same-store growth across the existing adviser base and how that's been evolving? And also just discuss kind of what could accelerate same-store growth from here? And maybe AI could help with that and identifying held-away assets. But just trying to understand what you're seeing there? And then if there's an opportunity to do more?

Paul Shoukry: Yes, absolutely. We saw a pretty nice uptick in same-store sales of what we call it, in the past fiscal -- in this fiscal year. And so -- to your point, the technology and the products and the solutions that we're offering, which will be augmented by AI and has been augmented by AI is really the opportunity for us to help advisers get more capacity, spend less time on administrative tasks, and more time really understanding their client situation and gaining share of wallet from their clients to increase the net new asset picture, so -- on a same-store sales basis. So that is something -- I mean, if you look at our technology investments, that are focused on the front office and the AI focus, for example, we just have a rollout of what we call the meeting manager workflow, which is saving advisers hours and hours a week through AI to not only prepare for the meeting, but to summarize the meeting that they just had to come out with the action items and the follow-up and automatically integrate that into their CRM into supervisory systems. And that's all being enabled by AI and technology and automation and those type of investments help advisers, again, save time on those type of tasks and their teams so they can focus more on developing those deeply personal relationships and gaining share of wallet from their clients and having more visibility on what in their wallet is on a consolidated basis.

Devin Ryan: Yes. I appreciate that, Paul. And then maybe if I could just squeeze 1 for Butch, just on the model. I get some questions. Just on the fixed income brokerage, I heard the comments on the muni side. I'm assuming the differential from last quarter, kind of the run rate of closer to $100 million is primarily just marks with higher interest rates. Is that fair? And I just want to clarify that and then kind of how to think about that business going forward, just more broadly fixed income and a little bit higher interest rate backdrop.

Jonathan Oorlog: Yes. So I mean, that's a fair assumption to say that, that decrease is really being driven by marks, especially on the muni portfolio, the muni trading inventory positions and we would expect and history basically shows that when that dislocation that volatility clears that typically vacant -- that market recovers, and so that can come back. So I think we would think subject to what happens in the future in terms of the market, but we would think about that as a temporary dislocation and that there's more certainty in those markets even in October than there was in September.

Paul Shoukry: Higher rate [indiscernible] income business. Sorry about that, Devin.

Operator: Your next question comes from Dan Welden with Wells Fargo.

Daniel F. Welden: Wondering if you could touch on how you're sort of approaching the opportunity to distribute evergreen or semiliquid kind of retail-alt products through PCG and how the sort of the economic share for those products work?

Paul Shoukry: Yes. I mean it's a part -- it's a relatively small part of our overall asset mix at the firm. So we offer -- we're competitive and we have a broad offering that's competitive with the industry, but it's not something -- at Raymond James, we've never pushed products for mandated sales or influence sales of products. So it's -- we want to have the offering and for the advisers and clients who demand those type of products. But again, it's a more organic process at Raymond James. And then in terms of the fees and the structure of the fees, I can't really get specific into that. And frankly, it varies across the different sponsors and product types. So I don't know how much more color we can add on the call around that.

Operator: Your final question comes from Bill Katz with TD Cowen.

William Katz: So a 2-part question. Thank you for the October cash numbers. I was wondering if you could break that down between the sweep portfolio at ESP. And then, Paul, a bigger question for you, just sort of thinking through the comments today? I'm just trying to understand what the algorithm is here to drive better operating leverage? If I look at the private client business, I think if I did the math right, your margin -- segment margin is down about 50, 60 basis points year-on-year. You guided to relatively sluggish NII growth sequentially and year-on-year. So is it really just a swing factor for the iBank, but I also heard you reinvesting back into the business there as well. So how do we think about maybe the margin opportunity from here?

Paul Shoukry: Great. Listen, we've -- the big picture, Bill, adjusted pretax margin finished the year at 20.3% above our 20% target. And that is with significant growth investments, record growth investments in the Private Client Group business. And so again, we are focused on expanding profitability over a long period of time. That requires growth, that requires scale, that requires long-term investments. And so when you think about the margin improvement opportunity and the return opportunity, again, a return for the year on the adjusted return on tangible common equity for the year was 23%, and that's with strong capital levels and the investments I mentioned earlier. So we're really pleased with the profitability with the returns. We're, of course, going to flatten the curve. As Butch mentioned, we are flattening the curve on noncomp expenses and technology and AI is helping us with that. We are looking at AI utilization across every function, and we are seeing efficiency improvements early innings there, but we are seeing the efficiency improvements even as we think about the budgets for next year and that's incorporated in that noncomp growth. As Butch mentioned, the noncomp growth a year ago was 9%. Even with the acquisitions, we're looking at 8% guidance for this year. And if you exclude the acquisitions, it would be 7% and again, that's with very high growth of the growth-related drivers in noncomp, including sub-advisory fees and fee-based accounts, for example. So we are very focused on managing the controllable expenses. But what we're not going to do is try to optimize margin at the expense of long-term growth and long-term investments. And that's the pressure we constantly have to fight as we've got to continue to focus on investing over the next 5 or 10 years, even if that does hurt margins over the next quarter or the next year. And so we are -- our values are to be long-term oriented and to have integrity in that regard and that's exactly what we're going to continue to do because it shows that it delivers superior earnings growth and shareholder growth over time.

Jonathan Oorlog: And I'll just add in terms of your initial question, most of that comes out of the sweep program as opposed to ESP balances.

Paul Shoukry: All right. Well, it looks like there's no more questions. I want to thank everybody for your time and interest in Raymond James. We certainly don't take it for granted. And again, I just want to reiterate my thanks to the advisers, bankers, associates and clients for entrusting Raymond James and helping us deliver our 155th quarter of consecutive profitability, which not -- which is very, very unique, if not totally unique in the financial services industry and we deliver that by focusing on The power of personal, the deeply personal relationships that will ultimately and continue to win the day. So thank you so much. Have a great evening and, go Rays.

Operator: This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.