Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

To bring in $110 billion in one quarter and $1 trillion over the last 3 years, there aren’t many companies in the world that have a trillion assets under management. So, I think we have got to keep our eye on the prize here and not get distracted by going down some rabbit hole because somebody else is in stress, maybe somebody else is in stress because it’s not a very attractive rabbit hole when you get down inside it. We know what we have got here, and it’s a killer machine. Asia is growing nicely. Again, Lat-Am some, but the workplace conversion is a massive opportunity now that we are focused on. Obviously, we are tracking financial advisors from seeing somewhat of a safe harbor, I guess across the industry. In our organic flows, if you compare them to our traditional competitors, the warehouses or the online brokers, our organic flows, I think are on an annualized basis, significantly higher than the traditional players, and higher than anybody in the industry.

So, that’s how we think about it, again, Asia more interesting, Europe not interesting, Lat-Am a little bit interesting and U.S. definitely interesting.Devin Ryan Got it. Okay. Thank you. Helpful. Just a follow-up, it sounds like you are starting to see maybe a little bit better momentum with financial sponsor clients. I would love to maybe just touch on those specifically and kind of what the appetite is to do deals or to sell assets and kind of what the – you think the trigger point is to kind of engage them further?Sharon Yeshaya Certainly, I mentioned is actually when I spoke at a February conference this year, which is that when you think about financial sponsors, they may be in a different position than what we would consider traditional M&A, i.e., they are faster to market.

They are in a position where you might not have the same level of activity from a Board. And because of the size, you might have different regulatory restrictions. And so from that perspective, we would expect that they might be first before we see really traditional activity open up. And that is – that remains kind of the view that we have and also as the pipeline begins to build, that’s also what we are seeing. In order for that to move forward and become realized, it’s really about the opening of the markets in terms of the financing activity. As we have seen some of the backlogs clear, that’s clearly very helpful. But again, it’s about stabilization and it’s about confidence.Operator We will move next to Mike Mayo from Wells Fargo.Mike Mayo Hi. What is going so right – what is going so right in Asia that it’s your third best quarter in an environment like this?

And then what is going so wrong in investment management since you closed Eaton Vance, the first full quarter, it was second quarter ‘21, if I have that correctly. Investment management revenues are down almost one-fourth. So, shout out to certainly E*TRADE and wealth doing well. But in terms of investment management, like it just looks from the outside like Eaton Vance panning out the way you expected. But first, the positive on the Asia was going right and then the negative one, what’s not going right in the investment management?Sharon Yeshaya Certainly. So, let’s take Asia first. What we saw over the course of the quarter was China reopening, obviously, supporting us from the equities side and perspective in terms of client engagement.

And what’s going right also from Asia has been the – what we have a franchise that we have really built in Japan. And in an environment where interest rate dynamics change, such as what’s going on within Japan, that certainly helped us from the macro perspective and the macro business within fixed income. So, I think that we are – that’s very important and critical is that it speaks to the global perspective, and it speaks to our global franchise. Why that is important when you think about investment management, and I will tie the two together is that you have to invest more broadly to be able to create an environment of diversification. And so Asia might be asleep. Japan, for example, could be asleep for many years, and all of a sudden, Central Bank activity picks up, and you are there to support your clients with that global franchise.

Think about investment management quite similarly. What we are doing is we continue to build a franchise where we are able to have diversified products that are there to capture our client assets. You highlighted what’s going on within the investment management. Well, asset levels are down tremendously. However, since we have purchased and we announced the deal associated with Eaton Vance. Look at Parametric, we have raised over $45 billion in that product alone, again, diversification of the portfolio, diversification of product to be there in a period of time where you see activity. That’s what we are trying to do and build.James Gorman Yes. I mean I will just add, I wouldn’t frankly, render a judgment yet on the Eaton Vance deal. I think it’s a little soon through a challenging market environment.

I would tell you, I am personally thrilled with it. And I am highly confident that 5 years from now, we are going to look back and be thrilled with a lot of people said that Smith Barney deal was a dumb idea. And a lot of people said, E*TRADE is a dumb idea. And a lot of people said we overpaid for Solium and these things have moments of sort of settling, if you will. It’s like good house its foundations have to settle. And in a very challenging environment, I think the business is holding up, right. So, I am very happy with that transaction, great people, great company, some fabulous brands. And I think Mike, if you come back and ask that questions in 3 years’ time, hopefully, you won’t reverse the questions. But maybe you will say what’s going right with Eaton Vance and asset management, and what’s going wrong in some other places.

Because I am sure, as I have said in the rolling sense, you can’t always get what you want, given the environment, something might be working. But yes, I am pretty relaxed about that one.Mike Mayo I appreciate the answer. Just a short follow-up, it looks like you are not getting any NII guide, or if you did, I have missed it, and we just want some help with our models here. If you want to kind of guide us in a certain direction, I mean clearly, funding costs have gone up in the industry.James Gorman I mean super hard. I will be blunt. We sort of guided a little higher on growth in the first quarter and came in plus 1%, which I guess was better than most, but just super hard. So, let’s get through – I think let’s get through this quarter.

We will learn a lot of taxes. And as Sharon said, it’s kind of the numbers have reverted back to what we are modeling, which is good. We will see that. We will see how much of this cash that’s moving. We will see whether there is further deposit outflows or not. I mean it’s just super hard to guide right now. So, I don’t think I know it’s sort of – I don’t know if it’s fair or not, but it makes your modeling harder, which I appreciate. But also I don’t want to give guidance that we don’t really have an intellectual basis or fact basis for doing it. It’s just too hard. We are not stressed about it, but that much guidance I will give you, but I just don’t want to put numbers on the sheet of paper at this point.Operator We will move next to Matt O’Connor from Deutsche Bank.Matt O’Connor Good morning.

Can you talk about the sustainability of the strong fixed income trading revenues. Obviously, on an absolute basis, very good, down from a really strong year ago level and benefited from rate volatility, but at the same time, advisory and DCM was sluggish. So, how do you think about this kind of not just 2Q, but the next several quarters in the kind of environment that we are in and maybe some improvement in IB? Thanks.Sharon Yeshaya So, the – our business has done. I think management has done a phenomenal job in really transforming this business to be a client-centric model focused on velocity of assets, focused on supporting our clients. So, the deeper we have gotten into that, the more we have been able to grow our wallet share more broadly and we have been able to be in and around this 10% number.

So, that’s clearly based on the activity that we have seen. Now to your point, should we see an opening up of markets could there be greater activity, that would also obviously support the wallet more broadly, but we would expect to be there to continue to gain our appropriate share of that client activity.Matt O’Connor Okay. And then maybe just broadly speaking, like as you think about client brokerage in both fix and equity, like what’s your thought there in terms of committing capital kind of on an incremental basis, like providing more or less from here or not really any change?Sharon Yeshaya We continued to invest in that business more broadly. You can see that even on the technology side. We are really proud of the equity franchise and business and the transformation that’s had for well over a decade being a market leader.

Clearly, as we think about committing capital, it’s also, again, about our clients being active in that market as we see. And I highlighted this in my prepared remarks, we do see client balances increase. We have obviously been there to support our clients. And we are looking for the appropriate risk-adjusted return as we continue to invest in that business.James Gorman Yes. I would just add, if you step back from this sort of over a 5-year view, firstly, just take hats off to the team led by Ted and Sam, Kelley Smith and then Jay Hallik and Jack [ph] in fixed income. It’s come a long way from, I think a 6% share. I think we troughed that. I don’t even know below after crisis might have been much lower, but sort of 6%-ish share per half of the last decade, and then steadily moved up to 10% and pretty stable.