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Date

Wednesday, April 22, 2026 at 5 p.m. ET

Call participants

  • Chief Financial Officer — Paul Shoukry
  • President, Private Client Group — Jonathan Oorlog

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Takeaways

  • Record Quarterly Revenue -- $3.86 billion, up 13% year over year and 3% sequentially from the prior quarter.
  • Pretax Income -- $735 million, rising 10% year over year and increasing 1% sequentially.
  • Net Income Available to Common Shareholders -- $542 million; earnings per diluted share were $2.72.
  • Adjusted Net Income -- $564 million, with adjusted earnings per diluted share of $2.83, both figures exclude acquisition-related expenses.
  • Pretax Margin -- 19%; adjusted pretax margin stood at 19.7%.
  • Return on Common Equity -- 17.3% annualized; adjusted return on tangible common equity was 20.9% annualized.
  • Private Client Group Assets Under Administration -- $1.7 trillion, up 15% year over year despite a slight sequential decline.
  • Private Client Group Net New Assets (Domestic) -- $23 billion, implying a 5.8% annualized growth rate for the quarter.
  • Recruited Financial Advisers (Trailing 12-Month Production) -- $141 million, with nearly $21 billion in client assets relocating from previous firms; second highest quarterly result on record.
  • Private Client Group Quarterly Net Revenues -- $2.81 billion, with pretax income of $416 million.
  • Private Client Group Pretax Income Decline -- Down 3% year over year, due mainly to lower interest rates impacting segment revenues.
  • Capital Markets Net Revenues -- $464 million for the quarter, with pretax income of $51 million; segment net revenues grew both year over year and sequentially due to higher underwriting and advisory revenue.
  • Asset Management Segment Net Revenues -- $327 million, with pretax income of $137 million; net inflows to managed fee-based programs in Private Client Group and positive flows in Raymond James Investment Management contributed meaningfully.
  • Bank Segment Loans -- Record $54.8 billion, an increase of 14% year over year and 3% sequentially, with securities-based lending balances up 31% year over year and 6% sequentially.
  • Domestic Cash Sweep and Enhanced Savings Balances -- $57.8 billion, down 1% sequentially, comprising 3.7% of domestic Private Client Group client assets.
  • Combined Net Interest Income and Third-Party Bank Fees -- $650 million, down 3% sequentially from the prior quarter.
  • Net Interest Margin (Bank Segment) -- 2.81%, unchanged from the prior quarter.
  • Total Assets -- $91.9 billion at quarter end, up 3% sequentially, primarily reflecting loan growth and higher bank segment cash balances.
  • Corporate Parent Cash -- $3 billion, representing $1.8 billion in excess liquidity over the $1.2 billion target.
  • Tier 1 Leverage Ratio -- 12.4%; total capital ratio was 24%, both well above regulatory minimums.
  • Shareholder Capital Return -- $507 million returned through dividends and buybacks, with $400 million in share repurchases at a $155 average price.
  • Compensation Expense -- $2.54 billion; compensation ratio was 65.8%, impacted by seasonal payroll tax resets.
  • Non-Compensation Expense -- $583 million, up 10% year over year and 5% sequentially; management affirmed the full-year target of $2.3 billion, excluding certain adjustments.
  • Effective Tax Rate -- 26% for the quarter, affected by nondeductible losses on corporate-owned life insurance; management expects a 24%-25% effective tax rate for fiscal year 2026.
  • Strategic Investments and Acquisitions -- GreensLedge acquisition closed late in the quarter; Clark Capital is expected to close this quarter.
  • Technology Spend -- Over $1.1 billion annually, with initiatives including rollouts of proprietary AI operational agents.

Summary

Raymond James Financial (RJF 0.72%) achieved record revenues and pretax income, while segment performance remained robust across Private Client Group, Capital Markets, Asset Management, and Banking. Sequential declines in certain interest-related revenues were cited, but were largely mitigated by effective capital management and high adviser recruiting activity. Management reiterated continued investments in technology and strategic acquisitions to fuel future growth and strengthen competitive differentiation.

  • Paul Shoukry stated, "financial adviser recruiting activity remains robust and the investment banking pipeline is strong."
  • The company highlighted its commitment to expanding proprietary AI tools, with initial adviser feedback described as "very encouraged."
  • Management emphasized a disciplined approach to deploying excess capital, maintaining flexibility for both organic investments and strategic M&A opportunities.
  • Raymond James Investment Management and managed fee-based programs posted positive net inflows, supporting asset growth in the quarter.
  • Shoukry described the firm's "unique combination" of adviser- and client-focused culture and technology as a differentiator in adviser recruiting and retention efforts.
  • Shareholder return equaled 94% of annual earnings, including dividends and repurchases, underscoring management's capital allocation approach.

Industry glossary

  • RJBDP: Raymond James Bank Deposit Program—an internal system to sweep client balances for interest accrual and fee income via partner banks.
  • Agentic AI: AI systems designed to perform tasks and process optimization autonomously, evolving beyond simple data analysis.
  • Securities-Based Lending (SBL): Loans collateralized by clients' investment securities, often used for liquidity without liquidating positions.
  • Private Client Group (PCG): Raymond James segment focused on serving high-net-worth and retail investor clients through financial advisers.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Paul Shoukry: Thank you, Kristie. Good evening. Thank you for joining us. Raymond James delivered strong results this quarter despite a challenging and volatile market environment. Our steady, consistent performance reflects our disciplined execution against our objective of being the absolute best firm for financial professionals and their clients. In an industry built on relationships and trust, we believe in the power of personal, our commitment to building and maintaining deeply personal relationships with advisers, bankers, associates and clients. Turning to the quarter. Continued focus on our long-term strategy drove record quarterly revenues of $3.86 billion, representing growth of 13% over the prior year quarter and 3% above the preceding quarter.

Pretax income of $735 million increased 10% compared to the year ago quarter and 1% over the preceding quarter. By supporting our advisers and financial professionals across the firm with a personal approach, we consistently retain and recruit high-quality professionals who deliver excellent service and advice to their clients. In the Private Client Group, we ended the quarter with $1.7 trillion of client assets under administration down slightly compared to the preceding quarter, but representing year-over-year growth of 15%.

Our client-first culture, together with our robust technology and product platforms and strong balance sheet, continues to differentiate Raymond James as a destination of choice for financial advisers across our affiliation options, As reflected again this quarter in our strong retention and continued recruiting momentum. In the fiscal second quarter, quarterly domestic net new assets were $23 billion, representing a 5.8% annualized growth rate. We recruited financial advisers to our domestic independent contractor and employee channels, with trailing 12-month production totaling $141 million, nearly $21 billion of client assets at their previous firms. The second highest quarterly result in our history in terms of both recruited production and assets.

Our optimism about future growth is fueled by our commitment to our existing advisers which is reflected in high retention, along with a robust adviser recruiting pipeline and a strong number of financial advisers who have made commitments to join in the coming quarters. Our value proposition is becoming increasingly differentiated. At Raymond James, advisers do not have to choose between culture and capabilities. We offer a unique combination of an adviser and client-focused culture together with leading technologies, products and solutions advisers need to serve clients at a high level. Combined with our strong balance sheet, long-term thinking and commitment to independence, that continues to set Raymond James apart for advisers evaluating alternatives.

But we won't rest on our laurels. We will continue investing in automation, process improvement and AI as part of our more than $1.1 billion annual technology spend to create efficiencies, give advisers more time to deepen client relationships and further enhance the client experience. For example, our proprietary AI operations agent provides curated natural language answers and guidance to operational questions while intelligently evolving based on user activities and preferences. This agent has been rolled out to a few hundred advisers and their team so far in addition to service focus groups at the home office. We are very encouraged by the strong initial feedback, and we'll continue to expand adviser and associate access over time.

Capital Markets results improved this quarter, primarily driven by stronger investment banking revenues with a particularly strong performance in the month of March. We entered this third quarter with a robust pipeline that continues to reflect the opportunities that come from the strategic investments we have made in this segment over the past few years. We are confident we are well positioned to continue building upon this quarter's momentum with motivated buyers and sellers engaging us for our deep expertise across the industries we cover. We remain committed to opportunistically enhancing the platform by broadening and deepening our capabilities through strategic hiring or acquisitions such as GreensLedge, which closed towards the end of the quarter.

In the Asset Management segment, net inflows into managed fee-based programs in the Private Client Group was strong in the quarter, reflecting the complementary impact of offering high-quality investment alternatives to financial advisers and their clients as well as growth resulting from our successful recruiting efforts. Additionally, our Raymond James Investment Management business brought in positive net inflows in the quarter. In the bank segment, loans ended the quarter at a record $54.8 billion, primarily driven by continued outstanding growth in securities-based lending balances, which have increased more than $5 billion or 31% over the year-ago period and 6% sequentially.

This growth continues to reflect a synergistic impact from our growing Private Client Group business as we are able to deploy our strong balance sheet in support of clients. Importantly, the credit quality of the loan portfolio continues to be strong. Our capital deployment strategies remain disciplined and focused on the long term, as demonstrated by our strong organic growth ongoing technology and platform investments and our recent acquisitions of GreensLedge and Clark Capital. Clark Capital is expected to close this quarter. We also maintain our share repurchase program to effectively manage capital levels. This quarter, we repurchased $400 million of common stock at an average share price of $155.

We ended the quarter with a Tier 1 leverage ratio of 12.4%. Now I'll turn the call over to Butch Oorlog to review our financial results in detail. Butch?

Jonathan Oorlog: Thank you, Paul. I'll begin on Slide 6. The firm reported record net revenues of $3.86 billion for the fiscal second quarter. Net income available to common shareholders was $542 million with earnings per diluted share of $2.72. Adjusted net income available to common shareholders which excludes acquisition-related expenses, equaled $564 million, resulting in adjusted earnings per diluted share of $2.83. Our pretax margin for the quarter was 19% and the adjusted pretax margin was 19.7%. We generated annualized return on common equity of 17.3% and annualized adjusted return on tangible common equity of 20.9%. Solid results for the quarter particularly given our conservative capital base. Turning to Slide 7.

Private Client Group generated pretax income of $416 million on record quarterly net revenues of $2.81 billion. This performance was driven by higher PCG assets under administration compared to the previous year, resulting from the impacts of market appreciation, retention and the consistent addition of net new assets. Pretax income declined 3% year-over-year primarily due to the impact on the segment of interest rate reductions over the past year, which reduced our non compensable revenues. Our Capital Markets segment generated quarterly net revenues of $464 million and a pretax income of $51 million. Segment net revenues grew year-over-year and sequentially due to higher debt and equity underwriting revenues as well as higher M&A and advisory revenues.

The Asset Management segment generated pretax income of $137 million on record net revenues of $327 million. Results were largely attributable to higher financial assets under management compared to the prior year quarter due to market appreciation over the 12-month period and strong net inflows into PCG fee-based accounts. The bank segment generated net revenues of $486 million and pretax income of $166 million. Sequentially, the bank segment's net interest income increased marginally. Despite robust loan growth driven by securities-based lending, incremental interest revenues were nearly offset by the impact of 2 fewer interest earning days during the quarter and a full quarter impact of interest rate cuts during the prior quarter. Turning to consolidated revenues on Slide 8.

Asset management and related administrative fees of $2.02 billion grew 17% over the prior year and 1% over the preceding quarter. Record PCG fee-based assets equaled $1.04 trillion at quarter end, up 20% year-over-year and up slightly over the preceding quarter. As we look ahead, we expect fiscal third quarter 2026 asset management and related administrative fees, to be higher by approximately 1% over the second quarter level, driven by the impact of 1 additional billing day in our third quarter, along with the slightly higher PCG assets and fee-based accounts balance at quarter end. Moving to Slide 9.

Clients' domestic cash sweep and enhanced savings program balances ended the quarter at $57.8 billion, down 1% compared to the preceding quarter and representing 3.7% of domestic PCG client assets. Based on April activity to date, domestic cash sweep and enhanced savings program balances have declined due to the collection of record quarterly fee billings of approximately $1.9 billion along with further declines largely driven by the seasonal impact of client tax activity. Turning to Slide 10. Combined net interest income and RJBDP fees from third-party banks declined 3% from the prior quarter to $650 million. Net interest margin in the bank segment remained stable at 2.81% for the quarter driven by the factors I previously mentioned.

The average yield on RJBDP balances with third-party banks decreased 6 basis points to 2.7%. Primarily due to the full quarter impact of the Fed interest rate cuts in the December quarter. Based on static interest rates and assuming unchanged quarter end balances, net of the fiscal third quarter fee billing collection of $1.9 billion we would expect the aggregate of NII in RJBDP third-party fees in the third quarter to be up approximately 1% from the second quarter level. The increase is largely due to 1 additional interest-earning day in the fiscal third quarter.

Keep in mind, there are many variables which could influence actual results including any interest rate actions during the upcoming quarter and factors affecting our balance sheet, including changes in our loan and deposit balances. Turning to consolidated expenses on Slide 11. Compensation expense was $2.54 billion, and the total compensation ratio for the quarter was 65.8%. The adjusted compensation ratio would exclude acquisition-related compensation expenses was 65.7%. The Compensation expenses were impacted by the seasonally higher expenses relating to resetting payroll taxes as of the beginning of the calendar year. Non-compensation expenses of $583 million increased 10% over the year-ago quarter and 5% sequentially.

For the fiscal year, we remain on track with our target level of noncompensation expenses of approximately $2.3 billion. This measure excludes the bank loan loss provision for credit losses unexpected legal and regulatory items and non-GAAP adjustments presented in our non-GAAP financial measures. As demonstrated this quarter, we will continue to invest to support growth across our businesses. while maintaining discipline over controllable expenses. Slide 12 presents the pretax margin trends for the past 5 quarters. This quarter, we achieved adjusted pretax margin of 19.7%, a good result given the headwinds of lower interest-related revenues which we faced this quarter.

Our long-term trend continues to highlight the stability and strength of our diversified businesses to consistently generate strong margins throughout various market cycles. On Slide 13, at quarter end, our total assets were $91.9 billion, up 3% from the preceding quarter primarily due to loan growth and higher cash balances in our bank segment. Record bank loans of $54.8 billion grew 14% over the year ago quarter and 3% sequentially with that loan growth largely in support of our clients. Securities-based loans and residential mortgages represent 62% of our total loans held for investment, reflecting approximately 42% and 20% of the total, respectively. We continue to have strong levels of liquidity and capital.

RJF corporate cash at the parent ended the quarter at $3 billion providing excess liquidity of $1.8 billion above our $1.2 billion target. Our capital levels provide significant flexibility to continue being opportunistic in our pursuit of strategic acquisitions and to invest in organic growth with a Tier 1 leverage ratio of 12.4% and a total capital ratio of 24%, we remain well above regulatory requirements with approximately $2.1 billion of excess capital capacity to deploy before reaching our conservative Tier 1 leverage ratio target of 10%. The effective tax rate for the quarter was 26%, which includes the unfavorable impact of nondeductible losses on the corporate-owned life insurance portfolio in the quarter.

Looking ahead, we continue to estimate our effective tax rate for fiscal 2026 to be approximately 24% to 25%. Slide 14 provides a summary of our capital actions over the past 5 quarters. Through the combination of common dividends paid and share repurchases and we returned $507 million of capital to shareholders during the quarter. Additionally, in January, the firm opportunistically redeemed all of the outstanding shares of its Series B preferred stock for an aggregate value of $81 million. In the quarter, we repurchased $400 million of common shares at an average price of $155 per share.

Over the past 12 months, we have repurchased $1.6 billion of common shares and including dividends paid, we've returned over $2 billion of capital to common shareholders reflecting a combined return of 94% of our earnings. We maintain our long-term commitment to operating our businesses at capital levels consistent with established targets. Over the past year, the Tier 1 leverage ratio has declined 90 basis points as we have focused on strategic balance sheet growth and disciplined capital actions while maintaining a conservative approach to capital management. I'll now turn the call back to Paul for his final remarks. Paul?

Paul Shoukry: Thank you, Butch. I am pleased with our record performance during the first half of the fiscal year. Despite challenging and unpredictable market conditions, our steadfast commitment to prioritizing the client in every aspect of our business has resulted in record revenues and record pretax income during the first half of the fiscal year. We remain well positioned to generate long-term sustainable growth. We started the third quarter with record PCG fee-based assets under administration, record bank loans and strong competitive positioning across all of our businesses with ample headroom for continued growth. Importantly, as evidenced this quarter, financial adviser recruiting activity remains robust and the investment banking pipeline is strong.

Before we conclude, I want to thank our financial professionals and associates across the firm for what they do every day for clients. As we look ahead, our focus remains the same. To be the absolute best firm for financial professionals and their clients. In a world being shaped by AI, technology and constant change we believe personal relationships will matter more, not less. Our strategy is to keep investing in the people, platforms and capabilities that help our financial professionals deliver more holistic more personalized advice to clients while staying true to the culture and long-term approach that have always differentiated Raymond James. Thank you for your interest in Raymond James. That concludes our prepared remarks.

Operator, will you please open the line with questions?

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first questions comes from Ben Budish with Barclays. .

Benjamin Budish: Maybe first, just on -- can you talk a little bit about the competitive environment there? It sounds like you're quite confident on the recruiting pipeline. I think there's definitely a presumption that there's been some sort of M&A-driven advisers in motion over the last few quarters. I'm not sure if you could comment on whether that's continuing up, but just any other color around your confidence, what competitive intensity looks like in that business would be helpful.

Paul Shoukry: Thanks for the question, Ben. Yes, our confidence is just really driven by the volume of home office visits that we're conducting with prospective advisers the volume of new commits prospective advisers across our affiliation options, we're actually seeing an uptick of commits in our employee affiliation option as well. It was consistently strong, but we're seeing an uptick there as well.

And so while there have been catalysts really, there seems to be catalysts every 12 to 18 months over the 16 years that I've been with the firm, there's different types of catalysts, but what remains consistent is our focus on being the absolute best destination and firm for financial advisers and their clients and matching that culture with the capabilities that are very hard to find in the marketplace. Private equity has certainly been competitive over the last 5 years as well as some of the strategic firms. And I think this is going to be an interesting year for private equity.

I've heard that there's at least 1 or 2 firms that have tried to raise capital in the last 3 to 6 months that weren't able to do so. And so I think the valuation -- there'll be close eyes on the valuation in that space to see what the ongoing commitment and value prices that they'll be willing to pay will be going forward. And that certainly could be another catalyst potentially down the road if that doesn't work out the way some people expect. So again, our focus is just to remain the absolute best destination for financial advisers and their clients across all of our affiliation options.

We call it adviser choice -- and that's really what's driven the 7% annualized net new assets for the first half of our fiscal year, which is leading the industry and at least a leader in the industry as far as net new assets go, and that's both from recruiting but also retention, strong retention despite the very competitive environment.

Benjamin Budish: Okay. I appreciate all that. Maybe just a follow-up, sticking with PCG. The pretax yield there has been coming down a bit sequentially. I know you talked a little bit about the company-wide comp ratios, some seasonal factors, but anything decline down for that segment in particular?

Paul Shoukry: Yes. I mean, year-over-year, short-term rates are down. And so that obviously is a headwind to margins in the Private Client Group business because there's a spread dynamic there. which I think everyone sort of anticipates both on the way up with rates and on the way down with rates. We've also ramped up recruiting substantially year-over-year. So we've actually broken out the cost of recruiting and retention because if we were to do an acquisition, which our annual recruiting now is a medium-sized acquisition, a lot of firms break that out. And so we wanted to make sure that you had that transparency to see exactly how much we're paying to recruit and to grow the firm.

Again, very good returns when we make those recruiting when we recruit financial advisers and most importantly, those advisers are big cultural fit. So we prefer to recruit 1 by 1 versus doing acquisitions because we know -- first, 100% of the transition assistance is going to retention of the adviser. And secondly, we can ensure that the advisers we're bringing over a really good cultural fits for the firm.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Devin Ryan with Citizens Bank.

Devin Ryan: Paul. I want to start with an AI question. I appreciate some of the current initiatives that you already launched and you talked about, Paul, it sounds like you think AI will be a net positive for the business versus an overall risk. So would love to hear a little bit more about why. And then if you can just weigh in on how you're thinking about implications of this potential agent cash sweep optimization, which I think some people think in theory could pressure transactional cash balances and whether you would consider kind of evolving the monetization with like a platform fee or something else? Just wanted to get some thoughts on both.

Paul Shoukry: Devin, maybe on your second question first around the genic AI cash optimization tool, which I think is conceptual. I haven't seen it yet, but I think when you step back, it's really the dynamic that the industry has been seeing since rates started rising. And we were talking about before, as you recall, Devin, before rates started rising, which is as rates rise, advisers will help clients invest in higher-yielding alternatives.

At Raymond James, we've been offering one of the most open platforms of higher-yielding alternatives, whether it's the enhanced savings program, which offers a very competitive rate with up to $50 million -- $50 million of FDIC insurance as well as the purchase money market funds, which we let all clients avail themselves to the institutional share class to get higher rates and a whole host of other higher-yielding alternatives for their cash. And because of that, you've seen in our industry cash transactional or sweep cash balances go down 40% to 50%. And now in fee-based accounts, the average cash balance per account is less than $10,000.

So without AI, you've seen that trend happen and I don't think it requires AI for that cash to be invested in higher-yielding alternatives. I think AI is kind of being sort of used to describe the phenomenon that we already anticipated would happen. And so I don't see much more of an incremental threat maybe to the e-brokers where there's not a financial adviser involved that's been helping clients reinvest those cash balances, perhaps, I'm not sure. We're not an e-broker so I'm not an expert in that space. But I don't see it really impacting our space much more incrementally but again, I haven't seen the AI and genetic solution neither that everyone is talking about.

So I'm not sure to tell you the truth. But we feel like the sweep balances have stabilized -- over the last several quarters, we have the quarterly fee billings. We have the tax dynamic every year that we talked about. But outside of that, there's not a whole lot of cash in movement right now given where rates are at. It's been pretty stable across the industry overall. As far as AI goes and your question around AI, I think it's already been helpful in our industry.

And so we've had 3 client events in the last quarter with advisers and clients, 1 in Memphis, 1 in Atlanta, 1 in Miami, and I would tell you, when you see the adviser relationship with clients, there's no doubt that the deeply personal relationships that advisers have with clients trump any kind of technology or AI bot that may exist in the future. I mean these are deeply personal relationships. I know just with my financial adviser at Raymond James, one of the things that help me sleep better at night, my wife sleep better at night as my financial adviser got forbid, if something will ever happen to be shorter intermediate term.

My financial adviser knows my wife knows my family and knows what our financial objectives are and can help my wife navigate that situation. And if that were to exist. And that's not something I would trust to an AI bot no matter how good the algorithm is. And so those are the type of things you hear stories where clients with tears in their eyes talk about what their loved ones funerals, who was there was the religious leader, their family, their best friends and their financial adviser. So when we talk about AI we need to understand the value of those personal relationships advisers have with these families. It's not about transactions.

It's not just about portfolio returns it's about really deeply understanding the family's financial objectives, and that's something that AI should help down the road because it will help advisers come up with more bespoke tailored insights that advice safe there, save them time on administrative tasks and allow them to spend more time developing those deeply personal relationships with their clients.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Michael Cho with JPMorgan.

Y. Cho: I'm just going to follow along to the same line of the question just more operationally. Paul, you talked about, I think, $1.1 billion in tax spend this year. Can you just unpack kind of where the priorities are in terms of the growth of that spend. And if we look at the various AI initiatives that Raymond James has instituted internally, and I think you called out to get operational chatbot as well. How are you gauging success of some of these initiatives? And really, how do you think the next step evolves as you roll out these capabilities?

Paul Shoukry: I mean the $1.1 billion in technology spend, the vast majority of it is being focused on the Private Client Group business. And that's one of the things that make us unique for the size of our platform, well, there are some bigger firms out there that have higher technology spend, they have to focus on credit cards, payments, treasury banking a lot -- a whole host of other priorities, whereas most of our technology spend is really focused on supporting the financial advisers and their clients and the [ Viva ] Client Group business.

And so -- and that's been a key differentiator for us. when advisers come in to the home office visits and they look at our technology, they're blown away by our capabilities relative to what they have even at the largest firms in the industry because of our focus on that wealth management technology. And the way we test whether or not it's working, I mean, first of all, all the development of the technology is guided and directed by our Technology Advisory Council, which is made up of our financial advisers. And so they tell us what they're looking for. They give us real-time feedback.

They've become representatives for the other financial advisers that they have a network with to tell us what they need, what's working, what's not working. And that's what's given us. I mean, we've won awards in our technology, and we'll continue to deliver for financial advisers and their clients there.

Y. Cho: Great. I appreciate all that color. If I could just switch gears just for my follow-up, just on the capital market pipeline. I was hoping you could unpack some of your comments there as well, you called out the strong pipeline. I think you also called out March was pretty strong as well. So I was hoping you can provide any incremental color there and how you'd characterize the pipeline as it sits today, maybe relative to maybe the start of calendar '26.

Paul Shoukry: Yes. I mean we feel really good about the investment banking pipeline. The month of March was a strong month for us, frankly, stronger than we expected. And so there's been a lot of volatility to contend with geopolitical issues with oil prices and other things. And so there's a lot to -- and AI concerns on certain sectors like technology and software, fintech, et cetera. But notwithstanding all those things, we have a very strong platform with great bankers across various verticals. In the pipeline, the activity levels, engagement letters being signed are all very promising. So we feel great about the pipeline.

There's certainly certain volatility and other things that need to be navigated through over the course of the year, but we don't know when those pipelines will convert to revenues. But most of our pipeline is driven by financial sponsors on the buy side and/or on the sell side, and they're motivated buyers and sellers. They have -- the buyers have capital and dry powder and the sellers have investments that are, in many cases, beyond their original holding period. So we feel like these will get done. We feel great about the pipeline. And most importantly, we feel very good about the professionals that we have in investment banking and their expertise and relationships.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Alex Blostein with Goldman Sachs.

Alexander Blostein: I wanted to ask you a question around longer-term profitability and maybe some -- that's something you will talk to on the Investor Day coming up in a few weeks. But was hoping you could help us think through the benefits of AI and other related initiatives that could have on the business longer term? You guys have been sort of hovering around the 20-ish percent margin, which is great, considering I guess, that capital markets obviously hasn't been contributing to its full extent. But as you think about a more normal backdrop with the benefits of AI and any other efficiencies, what do you think the margins could go to over time?

Paul Shoukry: No, it's a fantastic question and one that we talk about a lot because really a lot of the focus on AI across corporate America right now. And for us, it included, has been around the large language models and some of the sort of benefits of an efficiency and increased productivity that large language models can provide by synthesizing a lot of data and we rolled it out. We have a solution called [ Ray ] that we rolled out and that advisers and sales assistants can use to find -- to sit through a lot of information, self-service and very quickly find the answers the complicated questions.

And so we're piloting it with a few hundred advisers in the early feedback has been extremely positive. But what we're all wondering is the next phase of AI really is around Agentic AI and what can Agentic AI do to improve processes and streamline processes and ultimately the cost curve across not only our industry, but all industries. And we're still -- I think Raymond James and all of corporate America is still early in that journey, frankly. And so we think that there will be significant opportunities. The compute power being invested is substantial and significant.

We're using AI in a lot of areas already, whether it be in our cybersecurity area, although that's continuing to evolve as we saw with a new release a couple of weeks ago and some of the notifications from Washington around that. So we're using AI, and we're seeing a lot of benefits from AI, but it's hard to dimension the actual margin impact at this juncture. I think anyone who's talking about cost reductions or margin benefits from AI today at least I would be arbitrary and too preliminary in providing that type of specificity.

Alexander Blostein: No, fair enough, too early. Follow-up for you guys related to something, Paul, you mentioned earlier around private equity having perhaps a little bit more of a challenging backdrop in terms of deploying and raising capital. you guys continue obviously just had a significant amount of excess capital you've been putting in to work via more recurring buybacks, which is definitely welcome. . As you think about the probability of a larger deal and perhaps absence of sort of the private equity competition, which has been weighing on your ability to pull something off that's a little larger. Where are the odds of that today?

So you sort of think about your pipeline of corporate M&A, particularly in the wealth space. What are the chances that you think you guys might be able to do something more meaningful in the next, I don't know, 12, 18 months?

Paul Shoukry: Yes. I mean the biggest obstacle and challenge is there's -- we have a lot of great competitors strong cultures and strong franchises. The biggest challenge is they haven't necessarily been for sale. And so we continue to stay close to those friendly competitors and exchange notes with them and compete with them on a friendly basis. But ultimately, it's hard to know what the catalyst might be to want to join forces and ultimately, make 1 plus 1 equals something greater than 2. We don't really do takeovers. We invite other firms to the Raymond James family and we keep the best of both worlds. We've done that over and over again, starting with Morgan Keegan back in 2012.

If you look at our fixed income leadership team, it's still led by legacy Morgan Keegan leaders. We've actually grown headcount in our fixed income area in Memphis, for example, over that period of time. So we're not a traditional acquirer in the sense that we take over [indiscernible] burn costs, and we want to keep the franchise intact. We want to keep the culture intact and keep the best of both worlds. And so that makes us unique relative to other potential acquirers out there. We're in it for the long term. We're not looking for a 5-year holding period. We're looking for a much longer holding period.

And so we're -- we believe that there are great partners out there. We're confident that they will happen that the families will join that to alter at some point. But in the meantime, we'll be patient and continue to develop those relationships.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Brennan Hawken with BMO Capital Markets.

Brennan Hawken: I got one on the FA comp ratio in PCG. So it's great that you're breaking out the cost of recruiting and certainly, see that it's rising. But if we look at like the revenues for the segment, even the baseline compensation is growing slower than the revenues. And so even though we've got kind of like low double digit or even one revenue growth, we're seeing the comp ratio continue to grind up. So can you explain maybe what's going on there and why we're seeing operating leverage negative despite pretty decent revenue growth?

Paul Shoukry: Yes. I would just say in PCG in particular, with the compensation and payouts to independent advisers versus employee advisers, of course, the independent payouts are higher because they cover their overhead costs, their real estate, their health insurance, et cetera, as you know, and so over the last year, in particular, much more of our recruiting has come from the independent side of the business versus the employee side of the business. So there's just a mix shift there to some extent that you're looking at over the last year or so. And as production increases, we are on the -- even on the employee side, we have tiered payout systems.

And so as production increases, you kind of get higher up on the payout grid as well.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Steven Chubak with Wolfe Research.

Steven Chubak: Paul, Butch, hope you're well. Yes. So maybe just to double-click on Brennan's line of questioning with regards to the PCG margin dynamics. So certainly appreciate the mix shift and the impact that has was hoping you could speak to where the recruiting pipelines are across the different affiliation options. Just trying to gauge whether we should expect this mix shift headwind to persist for a little bit given the wires appear to be doing a little bit of a better job in terms of retention and just given the expectation that the momentum may be more concentrated within the independent channel, that we could continue to see some modest pressure even as the M&A momentum accelerates.

Paul Shoukry: Yes. No, we're actually seeing pretty good uptick in the employee affiliation option as well. And the mix shift is really what I was referring to more about the comp ratio than the margin because the payout difference in the independent channel versus the employee channel. But no, we're seeing really good momentum across all affiliation options and the pipeline is strong. There has been some catalysts on the independent side, as you all are aware, but I don't want it to totally overshadow the success we're having on the employee side, which has been significant and actually it's been -- continues to tick up.

Steven Chubak: And just for my follow-up, I did one digging into some of the comments you made around AgenticAI, specifically, as it relates to the impact that, that could have on cash levels. And Paul, you made compelling points about easy access to cash alternatives, you cited lower sweep cash per account. But it's also pretty clear that the market is ascribing a lower terminal value to cash derived profits just given the risk from whether it's agent, tokenization, pick your poison here. Just trying to gauge in a scenario where competitors in the event that they pivot to more of a fee-based model or approach to reduce the reliance on cash economics -- is that something that you're amenable to?

And are there barriers to introducing things like platform fees given the fact that you service multiple affiliation options with your omnichannel approach?

Paul Shoukry: I mean, ultimately, we want to have a profitable and competitive and fair pricing structure. Fair for most importantly for the clients, also the financial professionals and the firm. And so if that evolves in the industry based on competitive pressures and competitive dynamics and client preferences, most importantly, then of course, we would be flexible and open to evolving with where clients and advisers in the industry is evolving to. I mean we look at that on an ongoing basis for all of our pricing fees and payout.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Mike Cyprys with Morgan Stanley. .

Y. Cho: I was hoping you could maybe talk a little bit about the steps that you're taking at Raymond James to help and expand deepened relationships with advisers in the coming years. How might your offerings evolve? What additional services or value what you'd be able to provide advisers? Is there navigating a very quickly evolving world?

Paul Shoukry: Yes. It starts with bringing advisers like clients, which already makes us very unique in the industry and really understanding what their needs are, what their demands are. Having ultimate accessibility in terms of advisers feeling not only that they're allowed to, but they're welcome to invited to reach out to me if they have any concerns or questions or any way that we can possibly help them out. That culture should not be underestimated or underrated in terms of how unique that is in our industry, both on the independent side and employee side across the board.

And that's where we spend the most time making sure we try to get right and we reinforce because that's what's made us successful since our founding in 1962. But you also have to have competitive technology -- that's why we spent $1.1 billion on technology and AI and all the components of technologies from the adviser tools to the client tools.

You have to have good competitive products not just investment products from the plain vanilla investment products to alternative products, but also managing both sides of the balance sheet with -- we have a bank that helps clients with their lending needs as well on the SBL and mortgage side and then off-balance sheet protection insurance and having competitive insurance offering. So I can go on and on, but it's all of the above. Advisers have been expected and will continue to be expected to provide more holistic and bespoke financial advice to their clients over time. And so that's going to require the firm to provide technology. Again, that's where AI can actually help.

When we look at these AI releases, some of which have negative impacts on our stocks in our industry. I look at it as these are releases that could be extremely helpful to us and to our advisers to help provide more bespoke advice to a larger number of clients. And so that's really what we are here to do is help advisers better help their clients.

Michael Cyprys: And just a follow-up, I was curious if you could comment on how you see adviser behavior evolving -- and when you look at the new advisers that are joining Raymond James, any notable differences in behavior from those versus, say, legacy users? Is there anything notable to speak to on maybe banking adoption or all adoptions amongst new versus existing advisers?

Paul Shoukry: No, not really. I mean it just depends on where we're recruiting from and what affiliation option. So it varies. There's nothing noticeably different. I would say the advisers that were newer to the firm. Sometimes, I think they are more -- actually appreciate our technology capabilities even more because they're coming from a firm where they saw what the alternatives are. And so counterintuitively, a lot of the newer advisers in terms of appreciation of the culture and the technology are even more blown away than some of the advisers have been with us for 25 to 30 years. We still love Raymond James and still appreciate the technology, but they don't realize what the alternatives look like.

Operator: We have time for one more question, and that question comes from Jim Mitchell with Seaport Global.

James Mitchell: Maybe, Paul, you've had pretty significant growth in SBLs and continue to accelerate. When you think about your different distribution channels there, can you discuss how much is being driven by [ TriState's ] platform versus your own private client business? And if you see further opportunities to kind of continue this growth trajectory and further penetrate penetration rate PCG?

Paul Shoukry: No, it's a great question, Jim, and it's remarkable. Over the last year, it's been almost identical between the 2 at the 30-ish percent rate year-over-year growth, which, again, 30-ish percent growth rate, 31% year-over-year is just truly phenomenal and certainly a reflection of the capabilities that we have there. But it's been pretty consistent. And the opportunity to continue growing on both platforms continues to be significant.

James Mitchell: And maybe a follow-up just on [ TriState. ] If you don't talk about it a lot, but it looks like the deposit growth there has been pretty substantial since you acquired it, maybe over 50% and has picked up over the last year. So how is that helping what are the spreads on those deposits? And do you see it as a big contributor to profitable growth in the lending channel?

Paul Shoukry: Yes, absolutely. The reason that we had [ TriState ] joined the Raymond James family is because, one, their FBL capability, their blending capability more broadly and also it diversifies the funding sources through its various deposit products. So you're absolutely right. It's been a contributor on all fronts, very successful. The leadership team, again, going back to culture and joining a family is still in place. They're still independent branded independently, still separately chartered banks. And so just been a really great addition to the Raymond James family.

Operator: We have no further questions at this time. I'd now like to turn the conference over to Paul Shoukry for closing comments.

Paul Shoukry: Great. Appreciate everyone's time and attention to Raymond James, and we don't take your trust for granted. So if there's any other questions, we're at your disposal, feel free to reach out to us at any time.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation, and you may now disconnect.