T. Rowe Price Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:TROW) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Brian Bedell: Great. Thanks. Good morning, folks. Thanks for taking my questions. If I could just dive deeper in on two channels, the 401(k) channel, both DCIO and recordkeeping, and then maybe contrasting that with the online brokerage platform channels, so like for example, Charles Schwab as just one of them. In the 401(k) channel, we saw elevated outflows in the institutional side of your business. So, I assume that’s a concentrating in your 401(k). Maybe if you can just talk about whether there were any lumpy either mandate losses or something that drove that in the second quarter? And then, are you seeing better potential trends in the DCIO versus the recordkeeping? And then, on the online brokerage platforms, are you seeing better trends there? They’re more retail focused, they may be more performance sensitive. Not sure if it’s a big enough contribution yet, but if you can just provide some color on those? Thanks.

Rob Sharps: Yes, I’ll start and ask Jen to offer her perspective as well. I’ll start with our retirement plan services business or our bundled 401(k) recordkeeping business. It’s a business that overall I would characterize as healthy. We are growing in what we call the core market, which is below the large enterprise market. We’re expanding our coverage of advisors that specialize in retirement and recordkeeping for small-, medium-sized businesses. And kind of overall, I think it’s a business that is executing quite well for us. Where we have some challenges is in, we often have planned deconversions when there is consolidation where you have one of those large enterprises by a midcap or more medium-sized company that’s one of our clients.

So that’s pressured that business to some extent, but we’ve largely been able to set that with growth in the core market. And I feel good about our momentum there. So, I’ll leave that for the 401(k) recordkeeping business. In terms of the DC investment only or institutional defined contribution business, I’d say it’s more mixed. We continue to meet with success in the retirement date franchise there. But it’s an area where we were very well represented in large-cap growth. And that we have had some terminations from plans as a result of performance in that channel and that has put some pressure on close. It’s part of the reason why we’ve called it out. I think it’s been particularly elevated or acute in the first part of this year. I don’t think we’re out of the woods yet with regard to that.

But I think if we continue to drive performance and get back to our historical standards, eventually that will run its course.

Jen Dardis: Yes, I’d add to that, if we think about we’ve been asked previously about trends in the DC, the defined contribution investment only versus our record-kept business. Those are both important business lines for us and we actually see the benefits of the work that we do representing planned sponsors in that 401(k) recordkeeping business. It’s able to help us think about plan design, it’s able to help us think about product design and it’s really helped us to stay front of mind from an innovation perspective in both our target date products and in thinking about retirement income products going forward.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Brennan Hawken from UBS.

Brennan Hawken: Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions or question, I guess. So, my understanding of T. Rowe’s incentive comp is that you tend to skew to longer-term performance track records on the investment professional side. So, just wanted to confirm if that’s right, and whether or not we — number one, like what track records or which time periods are more important and have a bigger impact? And was the better-than-expected compensation expense this quarter beginning to reflect the fact that some of the longer-term track records have begun to deteriorate, and therefore, we could expect to see some continued tailwinds on the expense side from that dynamic?