Bank of America Corporation (NYSE:BAC) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

But you also have to remember, they are a big beneficiary or hit of the elevated payroll taxes and other things in the first quarter, because as a percentage of our compensation in the company, they’re not a small amount. So — but we expect that to move back in the high-20%s.But we have been working on this business to continue to improve the digitization of the services side of it. So, basically, if you think about it, you get [a dollar’s worth] (ph) of the revenue and you take about half past the compensation in the financial advisory grids and the other payouts, and then we take the rest of it and convert it to about a 30% deposit, the other half and convert about 30 percentage points or 60% at the profit pre-tax this quarter, down a little bit, because of the payroll.So, we feel very good about where we stand on a relative basis, but one of the things the team continues to work on across Eric and Lindsay and Katy is to drive operational excellence to new level in that business, because we believe that there is still a lot of costs that can come out around the simplicity — more simple, straightforward products, the delivery of those products, the paper-based usage and things like that.And then, also, remember, we are making investments in advisors.

We have 4,000 plus trainees in the businesses across the company, and we believe it the best advisors one is growing at our — with our own company, and we continue to do that and that’s a drag on the P&L that we’re willing to take to make sure we have the advisor growth in the future.Steven Chubak Helpful color, Brian. And just for my follow-up, I was hoping, either you or Alastair could provide just an update on expectations around upcoming regulatory developments, specifically higher scenario planning for Basel IV, any expectations around the FDIC special assessment? There are a lot of items that have been floated just given recent events and the SBV fallout. I was hoping to get some perspective just in terms of regulatory mark-to-market.Brian Moynihan I mean, I think we don’t have anything more than you do in a broad sense, but I think, at the end of day, I think this industry has extremely strong capital liquidity and capabilities.

We just demonstrated through the pandemic and then through the aftermath of the pandemic and then through inflation and then through a tightening cycle, that hasn’t happened before. So, we feel good about where the industry stands, and I think people have to step back and think about it overall.And then, frankly, this industry in the United States is so much stronger than Europe. It has so much capital per square inch, so to speak, than Europe does to get to ratios, which on numbers are lower, but the amount of capital to get there is pretty unbelievable. So, we have twice the capitals of European counterparts of similar size and our ratios are considered to be lower. So, obviously, let’s say, pull this together, they got to make sure they aren’t counting the beans in different ways or the gold plating and other things in the United States.

So, hopefully, people will start to see the wisdom and making sure they are careful here and we’ll see that play out, but we don’t have any special understanding.Steven Chubak All right. Thanks for taking my questions.Operator We’ll take our next question from Matt O’Connor with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.Matt O’Connor Good morning. Just a quick clarification on the balance sheet and a several questions. The cash obviously went up a lot and you did allude to that moving some of those securities to cash, but the short-term borrowings was also up a lot. And I didn’t know if that just to kind of hold more liquidity in the current environment and we should assume that continues, which I think weighs on NIM, but not the [NII] (ph) dollars, or was that just temporary in 1Q and we shouldn’t pay too much attention to the period-end trends there?Alastair Borthwick It’s a little bit of both, Matt.

You’ve got — first quarter is just normally a seasonal build for us, so that happens, and a little bit of borrow. And you’re right, it doesn’t impact NIM, because you can invest it in cash three-way and there’s no drag there, but it may hurt NOI slightly at the margin by a little bit.Matt O’Connor Okay. All right. So, I think, you meant to say, it doesn’t hurt the NII dollars that much, but it hurts the NIM percent, right?Alastair Borthwick Correct.Matt O’Connor Yeah. Okay. And then, separately, any kind of trend to call out in spending in March? Some of your peers talked about a slowdown in March, and you highlighted kind of for the full quarter, debit and credit card was up 6% year-over-year and total payments up 9%. Any kind of intra-quarter trends that you want to point to?Brian Moynihan I think, we saw in the first part of the quarter — first quarter, being a little bit — a little bit softer and then we saw it kick back up in March.

So far in April, it’s still early. It’s probably a little lower than it was for the month of March, but it’s a couple of weeks since. So, we got to be a little careful about that just due to the different ways vacations fall and things like that.So — but it’s — over the course of last year, the total spending year-over-year increases have slowed down and I think that means that’s a precursor to the economy being a little bit slower and that we’re seeing and then frankly consumers being more careful in the use of the cash, because the cash in their accounts — in our accounts, especially for the lower income cohorts continues to build honestly. From peak last April, it fell down a little bit all the course of the year, and it’s built back up in the first part of this year.So, we’ll see that play out.

There’s been a delay in some of the tax returns as you know this year that pushes them from quarter-to-quarter, but stay tuned. I think, it’s a little early to call, but it is a little softer in the first part of the April here.Matt O’Connor Okay. Thank you very much.Operator We’ll go next to Vivek Juneja with J.P. Morgan. Your line is open.Vivek Juneja Hi. Thanks. Just a couple of questions. I wanted to just clarify the shift to interest-bearing from non-interest bearing. I know you said you expect that to continue. Do you expect the pace of that to slow, or is it still — it’s still running very high or even to accelerate? Any color on that?Alastair Borthwick Yeah. I’d expect it to slow over time, Vivek, because we’re getting pretty close now to Q4 ’19 levels anyway, which was the last peak.

And, also, if you think about the big driver, it tends to be global banking. And as rates are rising, clients are doing their rotation, but we’re getting towards the end of the hikes now, we would think. So, you’d anticipate there’ll be a little bit of a lag there. But, generally speaking, I’d expect it to slow at some point and I think we’re probably getting close now.Vivek Juneja One more, Alastair. Office CRE, you gave the geographical mix in your slides for the total CRE portfolio. Can you give us some similar thing for the office CRE portfolio?Alastair Borthwick I can do, but I’m going to need to follow-up with you afterwards, because I don’t have it in hand.Vivek Juneja Okay. Thank you.Alastair Borthwick But I don’t think you’re going to find anything there other than sort of typical geographic distribution similar to the way we serve our customers around the United States.Vivek Juneja Yeah.

All right. Thanks.Operator We’ll go next to Gerard Cassidy with RBC. Your line is open.Gerard Cassidy Good morning, Brian. Good morning, Alastair.Brian Moynihan Good morning. How are you doing?Gerard Cassidy Alastair, can you elaborate a little further, you talked about, I think in Slide 12, you showed us 100 basis point parallel shift impacts, net interest income by a positive $3.3 billion over the following 12 months. If the rate environment does shift and, maybe, we do start to see lower rates by the end of the year, how quickly can you guys move this from being asset sensitive to neutral or a liability sensitive on the balance sheet?Alastair Borthwick Well, I think, if you were to take that same metric on the downside, it would be — probably, be down $3.6 billion for down 100, just to give some idea.

And what’s happening now is, obviously, as the interest-bearing piece just continues to rise across the company, we’ve got a hedge now as rates, if and when they start to go back down, it won’t be a complete hedge, but it’ll be a little bit of a hedge there. And then, you also get something back in terms of global markets NII, that will start leading back positively. So, there’s some puts and some takes, but we’ll see how that develops over the course of the year.Gerard Cassidy Very good. And then as a follow-up question, in the global banking slide, you guys gave us — Slide 22, you had a negative provision in this quarter and you referenced that it’s an improved macroeconomic outlook. Can you give us some color, what you’re seeing there to give you confidence to have a negative provision?

And the second, does this also include the recent Shared National Credit exam results in this line item as well?Brian Moynihan It would always include those results. Those come through continuously. It’s — there’s not — Gerard, there’s a change over time, that’s a continuous set of things they look at and we always do well on that. And when we say macroenvironment, remember, this business set is credit across the world. So, there’s places that we finished up on cleaning up. That allowed us to lease some reserves on one side and then we got to other places that we would have put up reserves, but at the end of the day the overall credit quality here is very strong and very stable.Gerard Cassidy Very good. Appreciate it.Alastair Borthwick And you asked the question in commercial, correct?Gerard Cassidy Yes.Alastair Borthwick Yeah, okay.

So, I mean, I think, just a couple of things going on. Number one, we didn’t have any real loan growth. Number two, the asset quality remains terrific. Number three, the macro environment when you look at the blue-chip consensus was ever so slightly better. So, we felt like we were pretty well provided for already. And then, on the commercial side, we had a little bit of exposure run-off in one or two places where we may have been reserved quite conservatively. So, it was all those things added together.Gerard Cassidy Okay. Actually, Brian and Alastair, you guys obviously have been through a few cycles. Why is commercial so strong? As you and your peers all have really good commercial credit quality, any suggestions on what you’re seeing that makes this so good?Alastair Borthwick Well, their profitability remains in a good place.