紐約梅隆銀行 (BK) 2019 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good morning, and welcome to the first quarter earnings conference call hosted by BNY Mellon.

(Operator Instructions) Please note that this conference call webcast will be recorded and will consist of copyrighted material.

You may not record or rebroadcast these materials without BNY Mellon's consent.

I will now turn the call over to BNY Mellon.

You may begin.

Good morning.

This is Magda Palczynska, Head of Investor Relations.

Today, BNY Mellon released its results for the first quarter of 2019.

The earnings press release and the financial highlights presentation to accompany this teleconference are both available on our website at bnymellon.com.

Charlie Scharf, BNY Mellon's Chairman and CEO, will lead this morning's conference call.

Then Mike Santomassimo, our CFO, will take you through our earnings presentation.

Following Mike's prepared remarks, there will be a Q&A session.

Before we begin, please note that our remarks today may include forward-looking statements.

Actual results may differ materially from those indicated or implied by our forward-looking statements as a result of various factors including those identified in the cautionary statement in the earnings press release, the financial highlights presentation and in our documents filed with the SEC, all available on our website.

Forward-looking statements made on this call speak only as of today, April 17, 2019, and will not be updated.

With that, I will hand over to Charlie.

Thanks, Magda.

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us.

Before turning it over to Mike to take you through the first quarter financials in more detail, let me share some high-level thoughts about our performance.

Reported earnings per share were $0.94, down from $1.10 a year ago.

Revenue was down 7%.

Both fees and net interest income declined.

Expenses were down 1% and after-tax earnings decreased 20%.

Return on tangible common equity was 21%.

A few thoughts on our results.

Our performance this quarter was mixed.

Several of our fee-based metrics in Investment Services were consistent with recent results, while we experienced weakness in Investment Management and net interest income.

The year-over-year declines in revenue and earnings per share were primarily driven by the changing mix and cost of our deposits and the impact of the prior year asset management outflows.

We also saw lower foreign exchange volumes and volatility, volume reductions and spread compression in securities lending and lower clearance volumes in Pershing.

In addition, the impact of divestitures and asset gains and particularly strong markets and deposit balances in last year's first quarter also made the year-over-year comparison more difficult.

Last quarter, we said that if our rate assumptions played out, we would expect net interest revenue to be flat to a little up versus the fourth quarter.

As you'll see, it was down 5%.

Subsequent to our last earnings call, rates across the entire yield curve declined versus our assumptions, deposit balances declined and we saw changes to the mix between interest and noninterest-bearing deposits.

We see significant competitive pressure for deposits.

I'll let Mike discuss that in more detail.

As we've said, we remain focused on our expense base and our overall expenses remained well controlled while we continued to significantly increase our investment in technology and infrastructure.

Our assets under custody and/or administration reached $34.5 trillion, up 3% reflecting higher market values and net new business, partially offset by a change in foreign currency translation rates.

Let's go through our businesses starting with Asset Servicing.

Asset Servicing fees were down year-over-year largely due to lower foreign exchange and securities lending volumes and lower activity from existing clients.

On a linked-quarter basis, fee-based metrics were generally consistent.

We continued to see growth in alternatives with recent wins and a strong pipeline in real estate, credit funds, private debt and private equity.

Let me make a few additional comments about our BlackRock strategic alliance.

We have said we will work with third parties to more closely integrate the front-to-back operating model.

And this is one meaningful example of how we will use data and tools to benefit our clients working on our own solutions and with third parties.

For the past few years, we've been working with BlackRock to transform the investment manager operating model.

Through our collaboration, we've driven increased quality and efficiency with high straight-through processing rates, increased transparency throughout the investment lifecycle, accelerated information delivery and synchronized data that supports core functions for asset managers.

Those benefits are available to our common clients in addition to benefits related to our new integration.

By integrating our data insight, accounting and servicing tools into Aladdin, we offer seamless connectivity, transparency and near real-time insight to our common clients through a single platform.

These joint capabilities bring immediate benefits across the investment lifecycle by helping clients simplify workflows, improve efficiency and drive performance.

In addition, we're working closely with BlackRock to bring more tools and functionality to the market soon.

This is the beginning of us offering additional value-added services ourselves and working with third parties.

In Pershing, revenue was down year-over-year primarily due to the impact of the 2 previously disclosed client losses, which will no longer impact year-over-year growth after the first quarter.

We also experienced lower clearance volumes than a year ago quarter when they were particularly strong.

This was partially offset by growth in total client assets.

We've been successful in converting our broker-dealer pipeline into signed business and are currently onboarding more new business than we have in many years.

This will start to show up in our results in the latter part of the year, and we'll have a more meaningful impact next year.

In addition, the pipeline remained strong.

In Issuer Services, revenue is down reflecting lower fees in Depositary Receipts.

The Corporate Trust business continued to grow despite a slower debt issuance market.

We are acting with a greater sense of urgency and our work in repositioning our sales and service teams has yielded incremental growth in rising asset classes like insurance-linked securities and CLOs.

We're continuing to focus on the structured finance market, where we are capturing additional market share and will benefit when issuance volumes recover.

We have begun converting clients onto our new CLO platform, which we got up and running in less than 6 months.

Clients are already benefiting from our loan reporting platform, which provides them with access to high-quality loan and CLO compliance data.

The combination of the 2 platforms will allow us to automate a number of functions and become more scalable.

In Treasury Services, revenue is down slightly due to lower net interest revenue.

While total client deposits continued their upward trend, the benefit was offset by the change in mix between noninterest-bearing and higher cost interest-bearing deposits as clients more actively managed their balances.

We're focusing our relationship and sales teams on growing higher-margin areas of our business including electronic payments, liquidity and trade and associated deposits from our global clients.

We have seen some very positive results year-to-date in terms of client wins in these higher-margin areas.

Our focus on FX payments is showing early signs of progress with a growing pipeline.

In Clearance and Collateral Management, we reported 8% revenue growth.

We again benefited from the full run rate of the newly converted government clearing broker-dealer clients, higher clearance volumes related to the heightened level of U.S. Treasury issuances and increased market volatility and growth in collateral management activity from new clients as well as increased activity from existing clients.

We're investing to extend the service to market participants, help clients optimize their funding needs and provide more options for our clients.

As part of those investments, we've been developing capabilities to help market participants with new margin requirements for derivative transactions not cleared with the central counterparty clearing house.

Since 2016, we've been providing services to over half of institutions that are currently affected, and we'll start to assist smaller institutions that are coming into scope later this year.

Turning to Investment Management.

It was another tough quarter for asset management with revenues down 17% reflecting the impact of divestitures and of cumulative assets under management outflows over the last 12 months.

On the positive side, outflows have slowed significantly from the fourth quarter and investment performance across some key strategies has been strong, which contributed to the improvement in flows and generated solid performance fees.

To further abate outflows, we're developing multiasset capabilities at Mellon, where we're realizing savings in support and back-office functions and reinvesting and developing enhanced capabilities that deliver solutions for our clients.

Wealth Management fee revenue was mainly impacted by lower net interest revenue and lower fees.

While still small, we've seen positive flows over the last few quarters.

In terms of talent, last month, we announced that Senthil Kumar will be joining our Executive Committee as Chief Risk Officer in July.

Senthil is an accomplished risk executive with extensive experience.

He knows the global financial markets.

He has a deep understanding of the regulatory agenda, and he is the right leader to continue to strengthen our risk culture and capabilities, while partnering with our business to support our growth agenda.

Lester Owens has joined us as Head of Operations and is beginning to revisit how we process securities and cash with the goal of gaining material efficiencies and improving service quality.

And we made several important hires in the digital area to focus on building and launching new digital offerings and reimaging the end-to-end client journey.

As we look ahead, while the current expectations for the yield curve will likely negatively impact our revenue growth for the next several quarters, we will remain disciplined on expenses and continue to build out capabilities, which should eventually enable stronger growth.

As you can see on Page 3 of the financial highlights document, we're adding new capabilities and unique functionality to help our clients become more efficient and make better investment decisions.

We're building and upgrading platforms in many of our businesses to better support our clients, attract new clients and capture market share and we're investing in technology and digitization to drive a more efficient and complete product set than we have today.

While we certainly aren't happy with this level of performance, we remain focused on building the franchise and remain confident in the actions we're taking.

With that, let me turn the call over to Mike.

Thanks, Charlie.

Let me run through the details of our results for the quarter.

Note that all comparisons will be on a year-over-year basis unless otherwise specified.

Beginning on Page 4 of the financial highlights document.

In the first quarter, total revenue was down 7% to $3.9 billion.

Total fee revenue was down 9% year-on-year with just over 1/3 of that driven by adverse currency translation due to a stronger dollar, the impact of divestitures in asset management and asset gains in the first quarter of 2018.

I will cover the other drivers later in my commentary.

Sequentially, many of the Investment Services fee-based metrics were consistent with or had small variations versus the fourth quarter with the exception of Issuer Services, where volatility quarter-to-quarter is normal.

Within Investment Management, fees were down due to the timing of performance fees and lower Investment Management fees.

Net interest revenue was down 8%, driven by lower noninterest-bearing deposits and loan balances, higher deposit rates and the impact of hedging activities.

This was partially offset by higher yields in the securities and loan portfolios.

The lower day count is a revenue drag of approximately 1% versus the fourth quarter.

Noninterest expense was down 1%.

The stronger U.S. dollar had a favorable impact of approximately 1% and sequentially expenses were down slightly excluding the notable items booked in the fourth quarter of 2018.

This resulted in a 17% decline in pretax income to $1.2 billion, $910 million in net income applicable to common shareholders, a 15% decrease in earnings per share to $0.94, which was helped by our common stock repurchases, which reduced the share count and partially offset decline in net income.

And our pretax operating margin was 31%.

Now moving to capital and liquidity on Page 5. Our capital liquidity ratios remained strong.

As of March 31, our key ratios increased since year-end, primarily due to earnings, unrealized gains on our investment securities portfolio and capital related to stock awards offset by capital distributions.

Common equity Tier 1 capital totaled $18.2 billion as of March 31, and our CET1 ratio was 11% under the advanced approach.

Our average LCR in the first quarter was 118% and the SLR was 6.3%.

In response to legislation passed last year, the U.S. agencies released a proposal at the end of March that would exclude Central Bank placements with some limitations from the denominator in the SLR for us and a couple of our peers.

As written, this proposed change would add about 130 to 140 basis points to our SLR.

While we support this proposal and it adds flexibility to our day-to-day balance sheet management, our binding capital constraint remains the Tier 1 leverage ratio in CCAR.

Looking at net interest revenue on Page 6. First quarter net interest revenue was down 8% to $841 million and was down 5% sequentially.

Sequentially, the day count accounted for approximately 1% of the decline in net interest revenue.

Year-over-year, our deposit balances decreased.

As discussed last year, our deposits in the first quarter of 2018 were higher than expected.

Given the elevated deposits last year, it might be more helpful to look at the sequential change in deposits.

Noninterest-bearing deposits continued to decline as clients redeployed the balances to higher-yielding alternatives or used the cash for other needs.

Our interest-bearing deposits were also down slightly versus the fourth quarter.

As I've mentioned each quarter over the last year, pricing continues to be competitive and betas are high.

The rates on interest-bearing deposits increased from 86 basis points in the fourth quarter of 2018 to 99 basis points this quarter.

On the surface, this would imply deposit beta of approximately 15% across all currencies.

When you focus on core interest-bearing U.S. dollar client deposits, excluding wholesale funding, betas have been on average a little lower than 100%.

Although the rate curve has flattened and expectations for future hikes have lessened, we have not seen -- yet seen a decline in the competitive pressure for deposits.

Higher yields in our securities and loan portfolios were the primary driver in the increase of the yield on our interest-earning assets, which was partially offset by the impact of lower deposits and loans and higher deposit pricing.

Loan balances declined year-over-year and sequentially driven by lower-margin loans in Pershing due to lower client activity and lower volumes in other areas due in part to normal paydowns.

The net interest margin decreased 2 basis points to 1.2%.

Sequentially, the NIM declined 4 basis points.

Also, note that the effects of certain hedging activities are recorded in fee revenue and not reflected in net interest revenue or the net interest margin.

This negatively impacted net interest revenue by a little more than 1% and the NIM by approximately 2 basis points against both comparative periods.

The offsetting benefit is reflected in FX and other trading and is not included in the net interest margin.

Page 7 details our expenses.

On a consolidated basis, expenses of $2.7 billion were down 1%.

The stronger U.S. dollar had a favorable impact of approximately 1%.

We remained vigilant on managing expenses and funded our increased investment in technology with ongoing efficiency efforts and other decreases in expenses including lower incentive expense, volume-related expenses and lower bank assessment charges.

Please note that the technology expenses are included in staff, professional, legal and other purchased services and software and equipment expenses.

We continue to believe we have opportunity to drive more efficiency across the organization in the coming quarters.

Now turning to Page 8. Total Investment Services revenue was down 5%.

Asset Servicing revenue was down 7% to $1.4 billion, primarily reflecting lower foreign exchange activity, lower net interest revenue due to lower deposits, lower client activity and the unfavorable impact of a stronger U.S. dollar.

We are asked a lot about pricing pressure in Asset Servicing.

While there continues to be pricing headwinds, the pressure has been consistent with recent years.

We haven't seen a meaningful uptick from the trend.

Pershing revenue was down 5% to $554 million.

Previously disclosed lost business impacted growth by approximately 3%.

The remaining decline was primarily related to lower clearance volumes compared to the first quarter of 2018 when volumes were particularly strong.

The decline was partially offset by growth in client assets and good growth in the RIA servicing business.

Although RIA servicing is a smaller piece of the revenue, it grew roughly 10% year-over-year.

The sequential decrease reflects lower net interest revenue, primarily due to lower-margin loans, which was a result of lower client activity.

As discussed previously, the new business that we're onboarding will start to show up in our results in the latter part of the year and have a more meaningful impact in 2020.

Issuer Services revenue was down 5% to $396 million, primarily reflecting lower fees in Depositary Receipts and lower net interest revenue due to lower deposits in Corporate Trust partially offset by slightly higher volumes.

Given that the timing of fees in Depositary Receipts can vary quarter-to-quarter based on client activity, it's more meaningful to focus on fees over the full year versus one single quarter.

The sequential decrease primarily reflects lower depository receipt fees, volumes and net interest revenue in Corporate Trust.

Treasury Services revenue was down slightly to $317 million, primarily reflecting lower net interest revenue.

Although total deposits are up in this business with the greatest traction coming from clients in Asia, we are seeing the impact of lower noninterest-bearing deposits and higher competitive pressure on pricing for interest-bearing deposits.

Clearance and Collateral Management revenue was up 8% to $276 million, primarily reflecting growth in collateral management and clearance volumes.

While the majority of the growth in this business was driven by the conversion of new clients due to a competitor exiting the U.S. government clearing business, we are seeing growth from other new clients and also increased activity, particularly in the U.S. Average tri-party collateral management balances were up 21% reflecting the strong growth.

A few additional items of note.

As you can see, foreign exchange and other trading revenue was down 7%.

Within that, foreign exchange revenue within the segment was down 18%, driven by lower client volumes and lower volatility.

And securities lending revenue was down 8%.

Assets under custody and/or administration increased 3% year-over-year to $34.5 trillion, primarily reflecting higher market values and net new business offset by the impact of the stronger U.S. dollar, which negatively impacted assets under custody administration growth by approximately 2%.

Turning to Page 9. Although we have already covered all the details for Investment Services, hopefully this will be an easy reference page for you.

It summarizes the key drivers that affected revenue versus the first quarter of 2018 for each of the Investment Services businesses.

Now turning to Page 10 for the Investment Management business highlights.

Total Investment Management revenue was down of 14%.

Asset management revenue was down 17% year-over-year and 3% sequentially to $637 million.

Almost half of the year-over-year decrease resulted from the impact of the 2018 divestitures and the unfavorable impact of a stronger U.S. dollar principally versus the British pound.

The rest of the decrease primarily reflects the cumulative impact of assets under management outflows over the last year and lower performance fees.

The sequential decrease primarily reflects the timing of performance fees and the impact of outflows partially offset by higher equity market values.

Our overall flows were flat in the quarter.

We had $4 billion of outflows from equities driven in part by lower-performing strategies and a shift to passives and $2 billion of outflows in index products primarily driven by 2 clients withdrawing assets.

Multiasset and alternative outflows were $4 billion.

Fixed income and cash turned to inflows with $3 billion and $2 billion, respectively.

Our liability-driven investment strategies had $5 billion in inflows after strong inflows in the second half of last year.

And the pipeline for LDI remained strong.

Overall, assets under management of $1.8 trillion is up 7% versus the end of the fourth quarter primarily due to higher markets.

Wealth Management revenue was down 5% year-over-year and essentially flat sequentially to $302 million with the year-over-year decrease primarily reflecting lower net interest revenue and fees.

Within Wealth Management, client assets decreased 1% and were up sequentially to $253 billion.

Wealth Management client deposits grew both year-over-year and sequentially, however, net interest revenue overall declined due to lower loans and higher deposit pricing.

Now turning to our Other segment on Page 11.

Fee revenue decreased year-over-year primarily reflecting asset-related gains recorded in the first quarter of 2018.

Also just a reminder that last year, we recorded $49 million of net securities losses related to the sale of approximately $1 billion of debt securities.

Noninterest expense decreased year-over-year reflecting lower incentive expense.

The sequential decrease primarily reflects the expenses associated with severance and relocating our corporate headquarters, both recorded in 4Q 2018.

Looking ahead to the second quarter, there are a few things to consider for your modeling.

With respect to the net interest revenue, I'll walk you through the assumptions for the key variables impacting NIR.

As of today, our total deposit balances and noninterest-bearing deposits are a little lower than the average deposits in the first quarter.

We are expecting that average noninterest-bearing deposits will continue to come down.

Short-term rates have declined since the first quarter and the yield curve has flattened.

As a result, we expect the yield on our securities portfolio to be relatively flat to the first quarter.

As I mentioned earlier, competition for deposits is still high, and thus we expect that the rate paid on interest-bearing deposits will increase a little.

Given these assumptions, we would expect net interest revenue to decline between 3% and 5% in the second quarter versus the first quarter.

Given the levels of assets under management, we should benefit modestly versus the first quarter in Investment Management fees.

And lastly, we continue to expect the full year 2019 effective tax rate to be approximately 21%.

With that, operator, can you please open the lines for questions?

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the line of Betsy Graseck with Morgan Stanley.

A couple of questions.

One on the deposit -- the NIR guidance that you just laid out.

I know you gave us a lot of detail around 2Q.

And I guess I'm just wondering as we think forward from there, do you anticipate that the deposit competition would slow and then really it's a function of yield curve?

Or is there anything that you expect you'd be doing in the balance sheet to shift the trajectory of NIR if this current rate environment held?

Betsy, it's Mike.

I'll take a shot and Charlie can add if he wants.

I think if rates sort of stay where they are, we would expect over time that pricing sort of stabilizes.

As I said in my remarks, we haven't quite seen that yet, but we would expect pricing to stabilize as we go.

And as we sort of think about the new rate environments and things we can do on the balance sheet, we're doing all the things you would sort of expect us to do as we sort of look to optimize as we look forward both on the funding side and how we sort of manage the securities portfolio primarily.

Okay.

Anything on like bringing down other wholesale cost of funds or shifting the liability structure at all that might help out here?

Yes.

We're looking at all of that.

And I think there's things we can do both on our long-term debt that we've got both on tenor and quantum as well as sort of all the funding sources that we're sort of looking at.

Okay.

All right.

And then, separate topic on the efficiency improvements that you outlined.

Maybe give us a sense as to the quantum of that and kind of the time frame that you think that, that would occur over?

Sure.

Betsy, it's Charlie.

So when we talked last quarter, what we said was we're continuing to significantly increase our investment in technology and we wouldn't expect to see a meaningful change in expenses this year.

So obviously embedded in there are a whole series of efficiency improvements that we expect to get throughout the year, and we feel very good about our ability to deliver that.

I'll say that we are in the early stages of figuring out kind of what's next, taking it to the next level.

We have several new people who've joined us.

As I mentioned Lester, who runs over 20,000 of the 50,000 people, and I think we all have -- we all believe that there's continued meaningful opportunity to become more efficient and improve the quality.

And so hope -- we would expect there to be more, but not quite sure on the timing yet.

Okay.

And then just lastly, on -- go ahead.

All I was going to say is but -- just you can assume that we're pushing as hard as we can.

Okay.

And then, just lastly on the announcement that you made with BlackRock regarding the Aladdin functionality that you're enabling your clients to benefit from.

Could you give us a sense as to how much you think that is going to help out either on your efficiency or your clients' efficiency?

And I know in the press release, you highlighted this was the first of many -- or enhancements that you're anticipating.

Maybe you can give us some color on the road map that you're expecting with this strategic alliance?

Yes, so I put it into 2 different categories.

There's series of things that we've been working with BlackRock for a long period of time on that relate to the processing environment that we have between what Aladdin does and what our capabilities are.

And as we have gone through that journey with them -- and by the way, just to be clear, a lot of it is them.

So I'm not saying this is just us, we've just taken the efficiency with which we process our transactions to an extraordinarily high level that we haven't seen in many other places.

And so that's an opportunity, which benefits us because we've become more efficient, but it obviously benefits the asset managers well because they see efficiencies on their side as just well as quality improvement with the extraordinarily high rates of straight-through processing that we ultimately have.

So those are opportunities that common clients have.

And then, in addition to that, we've introduced a series of analytical capabilities that benefit both operations professionals and investment managers embedded in the Aladdin technology that we think provides further benefits.

So I think when we -- as we look at it, it benefits us for sure just, but it also creates additional capabilities for clients that today -- that are available in the marketplace today.

This isn't something that we're dreaming of.

This isn't an idea that we have.

It's there today, and our goal is to continue to expand the integration and to think about other third parties that are important for our clients who are non-Aladdin clients.

Our next question comes from the line of Glenn Schorr with Evercore ISI.

Looking for a little more color on the comments around the significant deposit pressure.

And we all know it's real and ongoing.

But I'm curious on how it manifests itself?

How the dialogue happens?

And more importantly, if you have metrics around overall client profitability that you can price per client, I'm just looking for a little bit behind the scenes, if I could?

Glenn, it's Mike.

Sure.

So as you know, many -- most of what we do is -- it operates in a pretty competitive marketplace right across lots of strong competitors, both here in the U.S. and outside the U.S. And so our clients are -- and many of our clients are doing business with multiple providers both in the Asset Servicing space and the Treasury Services space.

So the price transparency around deposits is there for clients.

And so they're very well informed and in dialogue with all of those competitors.

And so it happens naturally in sort of the conversations around what am I getting paid on my deposits and here's what so-and-so is sort of offering.

So very natural conversations sort of with clients.

And that, as I said, that transparency is very much there in the marketplace.

Now just keep in mind, as you know, many -- most of our deposits are linked to operational activities, but there is ability for clients to sort of move deposits on the margin to take advantage of where there are differences in what clients are sort of paying.

So I think that's the nature of that.

What was the second part of the question?

Our client profitability.

Oh, client profitability, sorry.

Yes, so we do very detailed client profitability for our clients and have a very good sense of what's driving that and can be smart about pricing both deposits as well as sort of the overall relationship in a way that optimizes it by client.

So we feel pretty good about that.

Yes.

And I'll just add to it.

I think it's a strong discipline that exists not just in how much we make on NII with the client, but it's a relationship view, where we see all the activity that we do at the client across the entire firm.

And I think we -- you try and be smart about maximizing profit and returns relative to what the relationship looks like.

I appreciate that.

Just one another quick one and we can stay high level, but the notion of nontransparent ETFs obviously is on display with the SEC's recent comment.

So the question is from both asset management and Asset Servicing, I would think from an asset management standpoint, and I'm curious on your thoughts on how much of a benefit and how much product design you might have in motion?

And on the flip side, is there risk on the Asset Servicing side simply because I think of it generically of -- look these products, if they succeed in the future, succeed because they bring a lower cost and lower-cost investment management fee, lower cost on the servicing side, so how much of an impact is that there for you guys?

Glenn, we're looking at that now.

As you know, it's not a big piece of the pie now nor do I personally think it will be a big piece anytime soon, but we're sort of -- we're spending some time looking at it now both on the asset management side and Asset Servicing, make sure we understand it fully.

We'll next go to Brian Bedell with Deutsche Bank.

Maybe just to go back to the deposit questions to Charlie and Mike.

Can you talk a little bit about some of your organic growth initiatives, the progress on the priorities that you highlighted in the presentation in terms of the ability to grow deposits organically and then potentially stabilize the net interest revenue profile and do you think regrow it maybe later in the year or is that longer term?

Yes, I think we just, sort of, think about the organic growth initiatives.

I mean, Charlie sort of highlighted a bunch of them by business.

And as we said, this will take some time to really be meaningful across the -- any of the businesses or sort of in total, but we're seeing good traction in a lot of it.

Charlie highlighted the Corporate Trust activity that we're seeing.

We're seeing some green shoots in sort of that business as we sort of build out the capabilities.

Pershing continues to be strong and getting stronger in terms of the pipeline.

Asset management's been doing a good job building out some differentiated strategies like risk parity and a whole bunch of other items that will build over time.

We've seen -- also seeing some good performance in some of the key strategies as of today in that business as well.

And so I think we feel confident, sort of, in our ability to, sort of, execute on these.

But as we've said, it will take some time to see it come into the picture.

I think -- do you want to add anything?

No.

The only thing -- listen, I just -- listen, we're not going to hide behind the facts of the quarter, right?

They are what they are.

NII is disappointing.

That's obviously clear when you look at the results.

But when we look at the underlying metrics of the progress that we're making, which is what will drive the long-term performance, within the Asset Servicing business, we feel very good about the pipelines and the types of things that we're seeing.

The things that we've announced with BlackRock and other things we're working on are what's going to drive the success in the future both in fees and, ultimately, in our ability to attract deposits, which come with that business.

We talked about Pershing extensively, about getting through this -- these couple of losses that we've had, but we've got a lot more coming and which we feel great about the pipeline there.

Issuer Services, we talked about the share that we're taking or I should say winning back in some respects.

In the Corporate Trust business, Treasury Services, we feel very good about the way we're building the business and what the opportunities are there.

Clearance and Collateral Management has done extremely well not just because of the conversions from JPMorgan, but just the underlying growth that we've been able to generate there.

And Investment Management, we had the outflows last year, but performance is coming back.

So I just -- we do have to get to the reality of the interest rate environment, but the things that we're doing to drive growth over a period of time, we don't feel any worse about.

And I think on the margin, we feel slightly better, and we're continuing to drive it, but it will take time to show up in the numbers.

No, that's super helpful.

And then, just -- I'm back to the BlackRock announcement.

I think it's 40-or-so clients that -- I think we saw in the press in terms of common clients between BlackRock and Bank of New York.

Can you just talk about the timing of the integration of the -- of their services on the 2 platforms?

And then the organic growth potential from that combined offering as you look to your other BNY clients that are not using Aladdin right now, but maybe could either switch and sort of how you think about that in the long-term paradigm of integrating the front to the back office given the, sort of, industry shift in that direction?

Yes.

As I said before, the additional capabilities and the widgets and the apps that we have created to be integrated into Aladdin are available immediately.

And our ability to integrate data in a more seamless way to help drive the more efficient operational process, that's available today.

So we made the announcement.

We're in conversation with the common clients that we have to make sure they understand what the capabilities are.

And so we'll see over the next couple of months what the uptick is.

Again, we feel very good about the value add that's there.

And as I said, we're continuing to -- the capabilities that we announced aren't the end of the road.

We're continuing to build new capabilities, which will be integrated.

Beyond Aladdin, as I said, we are -- we believe that we should be an open platform.

In fact, most asset managers use more than one provider.

To the extent they want to use Aladdin, we're obviously there to support them today, but we also want to be where our clients are.

And so there are a lot of very strong platforms out there that our clients use.

You can assume that we're having lots of discussions and the benefits that we've been able to bring to Aladdin, we would assume we would be able to bring to other providers as well so we can help a much broader set of our clients.

Our next question comes from the line of Michael Carrier with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Maybe just a two-part question.

You gave a lot of guidance on the net interest income.

Just wanted to get sense given the rebound in the markets, can you provide some context on how you see that benefiting some of the fee revenues ahead?

And then, have you seen any improvement on the transaction side across some of your businesses like throughout the quarter given the weak start that we saw across the capital markets at the beginning of the quarter?

I'll start on the second part first, Mike.

I think transaction volumes were pretty muted all quarter.

So we didn't see really any big uptick in the second part as we, sort of, came out of the quarter.

So it was pretty consistent.

And if you recall last year, last year's volumes were very high, particularly in the first half of the first quarter of 2018.

So we certainly didn't see -- even as the market rallied in the first quarter, at least, in the U.S., we didn't see that transaction volume, sort of, follow with it.

So I think that's the case.

I think on just the overall market impact, I think you can see in our disclosures in asset management what the AUM looks like.

So that will give you a good sense of how we're entering the quarter by asset class and how to think about that.

And then, on the Asset Servicing side, in particular, just if you recall, roughly 2/3 or a little less of our AUC/A is fixed income.

And so we get the benefit of the market impact on the rest of -- on other pieces of AUC/A, so you get a sense of how to model that as you go into the second quarter.

Our next question comes from the line of Brennan Hawken with UBS.

This is Adam Beatty in for Brennan.

Just wanted to step back for a sec and talk about EPS growth, you guys had earlier outlined, being able to grow adjusted EPS off the 2018 base.

Could you just outline for us what are the key building blocks or drivers of that?

And where you expect to have that growth?

Well, just to be clear.

As we've laid out in here, it's a different environment today than when we made those remarks.

And so our ability to fulfill exactly those words is certainly far more challenging.

And I'm not sure how to answer the question other than revenues and expenses, right?

I mean, we have the pressures that we've seen in NII, which we've laid out.

Fees, presumably, will continue to grow both with the net wins that we're seeing in our businesses, the improved flows in asset management and the market levels.

And as we've talked about, we're going to continue to be very disciplined on expenses and continue to see what else is available.

Understood.

Then just to hone in on deposits, particularly noninterest-bearing deposits.

They were down a fair bit and you talked a bit about that.

How much of that do you view as seasonal versus the yield seeking that you identified?

And what's the outlook?

Do we -- should we expect stabilization from here?

I wouldn't think of the decline as seasonal.

I don't know that would be the right way to think about it.

And look I think we -- as we said for a while and as I said in my remarks, we would expect those to come down a little bit more in the second quarter, and I wouldn't go any further than that at this point.

Our next question comes from the line of Alex Blostein with Goldman Sachs.

So first question, just looking for a little bit more color on an ARB on, sort of, second quarter commentary and specifically as the yield curve has flattened out here, can you help us think through the repricing risk on the fixed side of the securities portfolio, so kind of where are you reinvested today?

What sort of rolling on versus what's rolling off?

And if the curve kind of stays at its current state, sort of -- what, sort of, the spread pressure we should anticipate over the next coming quarters?

Yes.

So Alex, it's Mike.

So I think what we've said in the past which is still the case, call it 1/3 of the securities portfolio reprices every quarter, roughly 1/3.

So that's either maturing securities or floating, that sort of coming into what the current rate -- what the yield curve looks like.

So I think you can, sort of, use that as the basis to do your modeling.

And then I think as I said for the second quarter, we would expect pricing to inch up a little bit on interest-bearing deposits and so that will give you a sense of how to think about the compression there.

Okay.

And then on the expense outlook, I don't know if I heard you guys update the guidance there, but I think on the last call, you talked about, sort of, flattish, maybe slightly higher expenses for the year, which I think off of the, call it, $10.9 billion expense piece last year.

Obviously, the environment has changed where you guys are doing what you can on that front, saw a nice reduction in the headcount this quarter.

But I guess as you look beyond, does the expense guide hold, so kind of flattish expenses for the year?

Or should we anticipate slightly lower costs?

I think I answered this earlier.

I think we are still very comfortable with what we've said, which is we're continuing to significantly increase the investment in technology and offset it with efficiencies that we're getting elsewhere.

And so our ability to deliver on that, I think, we still feel very, very good about.

We've got some new people in some big jobs here that are continuing to dive in and figure out what comes next.

We all feel like we've got a lot more opportunity than we've currently addressed, but not exactly sure what the timing is.

So more to come as the year unfolds.

Our next question comes from Vivek Juneja with JPMorgan.

Charlie, I just wanted to follow up on something you mentioned earlier.

You said the widgets are all ready for the Aladdin to be able to roll that out to other -- to all your clients.

But you also talked about developing stuff for the others.

Are you already ready with developing products for other providers like Aladdin?

Or is that something in process?

Where are you in that...

Yes, that's a good question.

And so just to be clear, the capabilities that we have in these applications and widgets can be integrated into countless operating environments elsewhere as long as they can accept them.

So these weren't built necessarily for one specific environment and so we're going full speed with others.

Okay.

Great.

And so is the next step now just, sort of, going out and offering this to your Asset Servicing clients?

And is this something you'd get paid for, Charlie, a separate fee?

Or does it roll into the overall fee rate?

How -- can you walk through, sort of, what it means from a revenue and business standpoint now that you have this and can provide this?

Yes.

So for the things that we have rolled out now, these are -- they're actually capabilities that existing clients currently have in our Asset Servicing space.

And so whatever we get paid for the business we have with them, they have access to those capabilities.

What the integration with Aladdin does is, it makes it far, far easier to actually access our capabilities at the same time they're accessing all of the information and capabilities that lead up to the time we get involved in the trade.

So just think of the ability to be -- have one screen with your front end on one part of the screen, your back end on the other and being able to answer questions real time effectively on one screen.

And so to the extent that we build out additional capabilities just like we would in our typical business, those are things that we might or might not charge for.

But what we're doing today is what we're getting paid for.

But I would say that there is relatively little uptick -- uptake on the things that we have created because it's hard to use them in concert with the front end and what we've done with Aladdin solves that problem.

Okay.

Great.

Now if we compare this with what State Street did by buying CRD.

Do you feel this, sort of, completely fills that without having -- you having to do the acquisition?

Or is there more stuff that you need to add or build from a capability standpoint?

Yes.

Listen, I think we've been very, very clear that we don't believe that owning a front end is necessary or even the right thing, certainly given what our business is.

As I said before, many -- most asset managers use multiple providers.

Staying at the forefront of building capabilities on the front end is an entire business onto its own that has changed and will continue to change dramatically.

That's not our sweet spot.

But there are others that do nothing but this that focus on that.

And some of them are really good at it.

And so what we want to do is make sure that we're working as closely together as we can, not just on integrating capabilities, but working on common data sets and a whole series of things that do make the process much more seamless than it's been.

And so that's the journey that we're on, and we think that will be extremely attractive to asset managers and asset owners.

(Operator Instructions) We'll next go to the line of Ken Usdin with Jefferies.

Just a big picture question on just the activity levels.

I think for the last couple of quarters, we've been understanding just how good the year ago was and getting down to some different level now.

Can you just characterize what you think of the activity that we saw across the businesses in the first quarter?

And if you're getting any sense that you're feeling that this is either a baseline or more stable or more -- just -- and trying to put into perspective how would you think about a kind of a normal environment?

Ken, it's Mike.

I think given, sort of, the moves in the market that you've seen over the last couple of quarters, I think the activity is definitely a little more muted than what we would have expected in terms of just pure transaction activity across the different businesses.

Is it a new normal?

It's hard to say, right?

I think that could change tomorrow depending on, sort of, how investors are, sort of, feeling and the activity levels that are, sort of, coming off the back of that.

So -- but I would definitely say, it's a little more muted than what we would have thought just given the moves in -- that are happening in the market.

Okay.

Follow-up on the deposit competition that you mentioned.

Last quarter, you talked about 100% betas.

Obviously, with rate stopping, we can't really measure beta anymore.

But when you talk about competition for those deposits, how do you gauge when that starts to abate?

What do you think is driving that pressure?

And do you have a feel for the magnitude of deposit cost increase you're still expecting?

Yes.

Look, I think it's -- I think the way we're going to know it's abating is based on the client dialogue that we're having, right, which is happening every day right across different teams.

So we get real-time information about, sort of, what we're seeing in the marketplace.

And so I think that will be the best judge as we start to see the dialogues change a bit, but you would expect as -- as we discussed earlier that as -- if rates, sort of, stay here for a while that, that pressure would abate at some point.

Yes.

And just -- I was going on to add to that is the way we know is we sit in the room with the business leaders and we go through exactly what they're seeing in the marketplace as they talk to clients because it's not like we just sit and look at a bunch of reports and see numbers go up or down.

Those conversations, where's the money coming from, where is the money going to, at exactly what rates are we paying, what rates are others paying.

And I'd just echo what Mike said is, I think as we've gone through a period of change, people have done some different things in the marketplace, but as rates stabilize, you would expect deposit -- the rates that people pay to do the same as well.

And I think -- Ken, I would just add, I think if you've looked across the folks we compete with every day in our businesses and you could actually see into those businesses, you would see a very -- the same dynamic.

It's just more transparent here.

Okay.

Last quick one, just on CCAR.

Obviously, we know you just submitted.

You guys did a nice job asking for that re-up for last year.

Capital ratios continue to build.

Can you help us frame just how you're thinking about capital return in the context of still being in a really strong position and -- versus still waiting for some of the things from the Fed to swing one way or the other?

Listen, I think we said what we have to say on capital, right, which is to the extent that we're not going to be using it to grow, we believe we should return it, and we feel good about our position and the process is the process.

Our next question comes from the line of Gerard Cassidy of RBC.

Following up on the deposit commentary that you guys had this morning, have you been able to determine from your customers, the customers that are taking the deposits out of noninterest-bearing, which ones are putting it into interest-bearing versus putting it into their own businesses?

Have you been able to decipher how much is going into their own business versus them just moving it over for a higher-yielding deposits?

Yes.

Gerard, I think it's almost an impossible question to answer with any degree of like certainty by client.

So -- but I think as you, sort of, look at the themes, like it's clear, people are managing their cash more.

They're trying to optimize the yield they get on their cash and being a little -- having more urgency around that.

And some are -- some asset managers are putting it to work.

Some companies that we deal -- other corporates that we deal with may be investing, but it's hard to say that with any degree of real certainty.

I see.

Okay.

And then second, if Powell -- if Chairman Powell pivots similar to what Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan did following the '94-'95 tightening cycle, where they were raising rates in the spring of '95 and cut by July.

If we see rate cuts, and some of the futures markets is calling that the Fed funds rate will be cut this year, how quickly do you think your deposit betas could fall in that kind of environment?

I think it's -- I mean obviously we'll have to see what's happening at that time, but if rates start to decline, we would expect that we would recapture that pretty quickly.

Our next question comes from the line of Brian Kleinhanzl with KBW.

Quick question on the loans.

You mentioned that there was lower client activity driving down the balances in the lending.

Can you just maybe highlight or give a little bit more color as to what the client activity was that was decreasing?

And is that expected to increase at any point?

Yes.

Look, loans are a really small driver for us as you know from our balance sheet.

But just to give you a sense of a little bit of color, we have margin loan activity, our other securities-based lending activity in Pershing as an example.

And we saw that come down.

We don't think that's a permanent decline, but we saw that come down based on activity in the quarter.

That's just an example.

But it's a pretty small driver overall for the results.

Okay.

And then, sort of, separate question on asset servicing.

You mentioned you saw growth in the alternatives.

Was that new?

Or was it alternative clients new to outsourcing?

Or was it just -- were any relationships from clients that were already outsourced?

Mixed, both.

Okay.

I think that's the last one.

Thanks.

We appreciate everyone dialing in.

Thanks for the time.

We'll talk soon.

Thanks, everyone.

Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call webcast.

A replay of this conference call webcast will be available on the BNY Mellon Investor Relations website at 2 p.m.

Eastern Standard Time today.

Have a good day.