KeyCorp (NYSE:KEY) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Clark Khayat: So if I think about the NII fourth versus third, Ken, the swaps and treasuries maturing, which we’ve talked about and think about, like, if rates don’t change, the swap terminations won’t have a huge impact versus what we’ve already shared. It’s really protection against rates going up. The payers will add a little bit of NII because we’re picking up a little bit of incremental positive carry there. And then you’ll see the benefit of a pull through in the quarter of lower wholesale borrowing.

Ken Usdin: Got it. Okay. All right. Perfect. Thanks.

Clark Khayat: And then all that incorporates I think this was, sorry, implicit or maybe explicit in your question, it all incorporates RWA reduction and the loan reduction specifically that we talked about.

Ken Usdin: Understood. Thanks. And the last one is — just so we’re going to get back that treasury book run off. Any updated thoughts in terms of what you do with the rest of the securities portfolio? Will that continue to just cash flow down as well over time?

Clark Khayat: Yes. So we’re seeing about anywhere, just call it roughly $1 billion of cash flow per quarter, coming out of that book. We’ve used some of that sort of through the course of this year as cash and just short-term liquidity just given some of the things that have happened. You’ll see us start to deploy that back into the portfolio in a variety of different ways, but really focused on bringing the duration of that overall portfolio down.

Ken Usdin: Okay, great. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. And the next question is from Gerard Cassidy from RBC. Please go ahead.

Gerard Cassidy: Hi, Chris. Hi, Clark.

Chris Gorman: Hi, Gerard.

Gerard Cassidy: Chris, you were very emphatic about the strength of the credit book for KeyCorp which is great. Can you guys share with us the second derivative risk? And what I mean by that is maybe some of the non-depository competitors or even depository competitors in your footprint or franchise may be taking undue risk and you may have a customer that borrows from them as well that could then impact your credit quality. Do you know if the competitors are being more rational than in prior cycles, which would obviously have an impact on everybody, not just KeyCorp?

Chris Gorman: Thanks for your question. Unfortunately, I think because there’s excess capacity in the loan market in general, I don’t think you’re seeing the kind of increase in spreads that you would expect to see at this point in the cycle in the private loan market. And I don’t think you’re seeing, frankly, some of the changes that you would expect to see broadly in terms of structure. So I think — as you know, I’ve said many, many times on a risk adjusted basis, a properly graded standalone credit rarely returns its cost of capital. So if I’m right about that, by definition a lot of that stuff in my opinion is underpriced. Now the other thing that we are seeing, obviously, and we have great visibility in, is our third party commercial loan servicing business where we have over 640-some-odd-billion that we service, but we have over 200 billion that is special servicing.

So that’s where we’re servicing, basically, where the workout [ph] agent for very complex deals that we’re not a part of. And that business has already set a record for the year at this point in the cycle. So that gives you a little bit of an insight into what’s going on out there. Clark, would you add anything to that?

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