KeyCorp (KEY) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
December 6, 2022
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Ryan Nash
analystUp next, we are happy to once again have KeyCorp. Over the past year, Key has generated better than peer loan growth, has managed costs better than most anyone in the business, is on target for another year of its hallmark operating leverage. This is all while continuing to raise the bar on investing in bankers and tech. Joining us from KeyCorp here, we have Chairman and CEO, Chris Gorman, joining us for what will be his last time as he leads into retirement; and as CFO, Don Kimble, I appreciate all the color you've given us over the years, Don. And lastly, we'd like to welcome for the first and hopefully, many conferences, incoming CFO and current EVP of Strategy, Clark Khayat. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Chris for a short remarks, and then we're going to get into the Q&A.
Christopher Gorman
executivePerfect. And good afternoon, everyone, and thank you, Ryan. I'm joined on stage, obviously, by both of our CFOs. So it's great to be here. On Slide 2, you'll find a statement of forward-looking disclosure and non-GAAP financial measures. It covers my remarks as well as the Q&A. I am now moving to Slide 3. We will spend most of our time this afternoon in a fireside chat with Ryan, but I wanted to begin with a few opening comments. I will start by acknowledging that this is a unique time in our industry. We have rapidly rising interest rates. We have the unprecedented unwinding of the Federal Reserve balance sheet, which peaked at $9 trillion. We have persistent inflation areas such as labor and rents, and we have complex supply chain challenges that are still in the process of being worked out. My message today is a simple one. But despite these headwinds, Key is well positioned to continue to serve our clients and deliver long-term value for our shareholders. And as I shared in one of the one-on-one meetings, there are challenges, but all of this is navigable. I mean it is absolutely in the course of just running the business that we can work through these things. We have de-risked our business. This is the foundation. We've de-risked our business over the past decade and significantly improved our credit risk profile. We have focused on relationship banking and primacy, which provides us with strong stable deposits and high-quality diverse revenue streams. We have a differentiated business model focused on targeted scale, which provides us with clear strategic opportunities for what we talk about as sound profitable growth. We have made a conscious decision to invest and focus our resources on specific vital and growing sectors of the economy, health care, including Laurel Road, renewable energy and affordable housing, all areas that impact both our clients and our communities. We are seeing tangible results in the health care sector. We continue to grow relationships with significant health care providers and expand our Laurel Road business. Year-to-date, we have grown Laurel Road member households over 20%, making progress toward our 2000 -- excuse me, 250,000 member households by 2025. We also continue to make progress with respect to our other targeted scale sectors, including renewable energy and affordable housing. These are not only high growth opportunities for Key but areas that matter to both our country and our economy. Key has a leading position in both. We are the #2 renewable energy lender in North America, and we're the #2 affordable housing lender in the United States. Both renewable energy and affordable housing are also key areas of investment and recently passed federal legislation. Combined, the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill have allocated over $300 billion for energy transition, and Key is well positioned to support growth and investment in both of these sectors. More broadly, our differentiated business model and relationship-based strategy can be seen in both our consumer and our commercial businesses. Importantly, and especially relevant in today's market, we remain committed to serving and supporting our clients through all market conditions. For our commercial clients, we provide a full range of financing options, both on and off balance sheet. We are one of the few platforms that combine a high level of industry expertise and product capabilities with a targeted focus on middle market, a true differentiator for us. Year-to-date, we have seen more client activity move on balance sheet, driving higher net interest income and loan growth, while our capital markets business continues to reflect current market uncertainty. In the third quarter, we raised a record of $39 billion for our clients, of which 23% was retained on our balance sheet, well above our long-term average of 18%. Despite the slowdown in capital markets activity this year, we remain confident in the long-term outlook for this business. Additionally, we remain on track to grow our senior bankers by 25% by 2025, consistent with our Investor Day commitments. As we serve and support our existing 3 million clients across our commercial and consumer businesses, we continue to add new relationships. Our commercial business continues to grow, and we remain on track to grow consumer households by 20% by 2025. We have also been very deliberate and intentional in managing interest rate risk with a very long-term perspective. Our net interest income will be up double digits this year, and importantly, we expect our net interest margin and net interest income to grow over the next couple of years. We benefit from our strong, stable core deposit base with approximately 60% of our deposits derived from consumers and low-cost escrow balances. Additionally, 85% of our commercial deposits represent core operating accounts. On our third quarter earnings call, we mentioned that if we were to reprice our $26 billion in swaps and $9 billion in short-term treasuries to current market rates, we would generate additional annualized net interest income of $1.2 billion. Expense management also remains an area of focus, while concurrently investing for growth. Our 2022 guidance anticipates total expenses to actually be down year-over-year, which we're proud of in an inflationary environment. Our expense levels reflect the variable cost nature of many of our businesses in conjunction with a focus on continuous improvement. We continue to balance expense discipline with investments that we're making in teammates, in digital and in niche businesses. In line with our healthcare focus, we remain encouraged by the growth prospects for Laurel Road, our national digital affinity bank Laurel Road for Doctors, coupled with our recent market expansion to nurses and our acquisition of GradFin. Since the GradFin team joined Key and that was back in May, we have held 25,000 individual consultations for refinance and public service loan forgiveness. These consultations are with prequalified credential prospects, all of whom are new to Key. GradFin is especially well positioned, given the intense focus surrounding student loan debt forgiveness broadly. In addition to the investments that we have made in Laurel Road and GradFin, we continue to invest to remain at the forefront of delivering client-centric digital-first solutions across our businesses. Other recent examples include our acquisitions of AQN and XUP and recent expansion of our Embedded Banking platform with new end-to-end payment capabilities. All of these investments are driving and will continue to drive bottom line growth across our company. I would also like to reaffirm our commitment to maintaining strong credit quality and disciplined capital management. We have de-risked our business over the past decade. We have remained diligent in our underwriting practices and have demonstrated the discipline to walk away from business that does not meet our moderate risk profile. We will continue to support our clients while maintaining our moderate risk profile, which positions the company to perform well through all business cycles. We are committed to managing capital in accordance with our capital priorities. Just to remind everyone, the first is supporting organic growth of our business. The second is our dividends. You probably all saw that last month, our Board approved a 5% increase in our quarterly dividend and finally, share repurchases. We remain committed to delivering on each of our long-term targets, which are unchanged and shown at the bottom of this slide. In the appendix of our slide deck, we also provided an update on fourth quarter guidance. Our fee income will continue to reflect the industry-wide slowdown in capital markets activity. While we would expect our investment banking fees to be higher than last quarter, our results will clearly be below the level we expected coming into the fourth quarter. We expect expenses to move to the high end of our previous range. The increases from higher incentive and -- higher incentive and stock-based compensation, reflecting an increase in our stock price in the fourth quarter. Our expenses will also include a charge related to our reduction in office space that we've spoken of in the past. Credit quality remains strong. However, our provision for credit losses will reflect changes to our assumption and the outlook under CECL methodology. Consistent with our prior outlook, we expect to deliver positive operating leverage for the year. Before I turn it over to Ryan, I want to make one final comment, and that comment is on leadership. One of my priorities and our Board's priorities is the development of the next generation of leaders at Key. And stage with me today is evidence of that. The recent announcement by Don Kimble, our current CFO, that he's decided to retire and Clark will be succeeded by none other than -- Don Kimble will be succeeded by none other than Clark Khayat. And I just want to take a moment and acknowledge Don Kimble. Don, thank you for your steadfast leadership. Thank you for all you've done for Key over the last decade. As Don mentioned to me, he's been the CFO of a publicly traded bank for 19 straight years and done just a great job. So Don, thank you for your partnership. Much appreciated. Clark, thank you for all that you will do for us. Clark is a strategic thinker that has been part of our strategy. He has an intimate knowledge of the environment in which we operate of our industry, and I think will make -- like Don, will make huge contributions to Key. So thank you, Don, for everything you've done. Thank you, Clark, for everything that you will do. And with that, now, Ryan, I can turn it over to you.
Ryan Nash
analystThanks, Chris. And I will say that it's easy to be thank for what you've done than what you will do. Wait us at the bar, Chris. So Chris, in your opening remarks, a lot of stuff in there. You highlighted some challenges that are out there. Key is obviously a leading middle market bank. Can you maybe just talk about what you're hearing and/or seeing in the markets from your clients? How are you feeling as we head into '23? And maybe what are some of these big challenges? And how do you plan on managing them?
Christopher Gorman
executiveSure. So let me kind of -- let me sort of step back for a second. And first of all, there are plenty of challenges out there. Again, not challenges that I don't think we can navigate through. The challenges that we're seeing first and foremost, and kind of in keeping with what we put out yesterday, our fee businesses are very challenged right now. I don't need to tell anyone in this room that the capital markets are challenging. And what's going on is 2 things, particularly, you know what's going on in the public markets, but what's going on kind of in the M&A markets right now is people are in price discovery. There's a huge gap between bid and ask. And if people are under letter of intent, it's sort of a free option to figure out if the market -- if the economy turns down in a significant way, you can re-trade it a lot. If it just turns down in a less significant way, you can trade it to a degree. And so that continues to be a challenge. That will not last forever. The areas where we continue to show, frankly, a lot of momentum. One, we reiterated that we're going to grow our loans, Ryan, 2% to 4% in the fourth quarter. We reiterated that we'll grow deposits 1% to 3%, which I think will make us a bit of an outlier. And with respect to NII, and I mentioned we're well positioned going forward. With respect to NII, we reiterated 4% to 6% growth. So there are some areas of the balance sheet, frankly, where we have a lot of momentum, and I think there's a lot going forward. The fee side of the equation is challenging. And the other thing that we mentioned is a challenge is just expenses. We had a couple one-off expenses that I detailed in my prepared remarks, but also, let's face it, inflation is affecting everyone's business.
Ryan Nash
analystSo given that this might be one of Don's last conferences, I don't think we want to let him get out without answering a handful of question.
Christopher Gorman
executiveNo, we should -- no.
Ryan Nash
analystSo I guess, Chris, you noted $9 billion of treasuries maturing, $15 or so billion of your $26 billion of swaps by the end of '24. Don, can you walk us through the math of realizing the full $1.2 billion? What would this mean for the margin? I think on the last earnings call, you said maybe mid-3s over time if everything reprices consensus for next year is not even in the 3s. And given the market's focus on the peaking of NII, do you still feel that you continue to grow NII into '23 and '24?
Donald Kimble
executiveGreat. And as far as the $1.2 billion, that really was priced as of the end of the third quarter in connection with our third quarter earnings announcement. If we reprice the day, it's still to be in that same general range. The important thing is it's really triggered based on the 2 year to 2.3 year into the curve as far as the swaps and the treasuries. The math to get there is basically taking the $26.5 billion of swaps and repricing those to the current market, and that would be, again, a 2.5 year maturity on those swaps, would add about 300 basis points for those swaps, just the rollover rate to the new interest rates. On the treasury securities and they start maturing at the end of 2023 and mature completely by the end of 2024, that would add us 400 basis points if we repriced the 2-year treasury. And so if you combine those 2, it comes out to be about $1.2 billion. And that's essentially the source of how you get to -- from where our current margin is to a number that's in the mid-3s as far as the net interest margin by just adding that on top of it. But we do believe that there will be margin expansion for us in both '23 and '24 and net interest income expansion for us during that time period as well that many of our peers are saying, once rates stop going up, they'll be capped out, and they'll actually start to see some of their net interest income and margin come down. We do see expansion, and most of it is coming from this dry powder that we have associated with repricing of the swaps and the overall treasury portfolio as well.
Ryan Nash
analystSo one thing I hear from investors is that given the duration of when this matures, we could potentially be in a much lower rate environment Fed's talking about. Potentially, easing forward curves reflect that a little bit. Can you maybe just talk about ways you can lock this in, whether it's forward starters or maybe restructuring some of the securities portfolio? And have you guys actually started to take steps to locking in any of this around $1.2 billion?
Donald Kimble
executiveWell, great. And one of the things that -- we talk about this frequently as far as the management team. And one of the things our team believes is rates will be higher for longer. It doesn't mean that we're going to peak out at a higher rate than what the forward curve might suggest. But we think that once it gets to a peak, it will stay there for an extended period of time compared to what the forward curve expects. And so based on that, we're not taking a lot of action right now to lock it in. We are starting to dabble a little bit in it. We've done a few forward starting swaps. And so essentially, that if we have swaps mature in the second quarter of 2023, we can do a forward starting swap that doesn't actually kick in until that second quarter and then have a 2 year life beyond that. And so that's something that we'll continue to tinker with a little bit, maybe lean in a little heavier as we start getting more confidence in the forward curve and how it's positioned. But right now, we continue to believe that we'll see rates higher for longer. We think inflation is real, and it's going to take some time for rates to start coming down to a level that would be consistent with what the forward curve would imply.
Ryan Nash
analystAnd just to be clear, Don, if there was a change in your rate outlook, would you move to lock in a lot more of this $1.2 billion?
Donald Kimble
executiveWe would definitely be more aggressive. I wouldn't say that we'd do 100% of it, but we clearly would take more active steps to manage that to lock in a more sizable piece, yes.
Ryan Nash
analystGot it. In the slides, you reiterated deposit growth of 1% to 3%. I think one of the few that's talking about deposit growth, while the industry is shrinking. Clark, maybe getting you involved, can you talk about maybe what is driving the deposit growth? And as you look ahead to 2023, how do you see deposit growth playing out in the face of QT? And do you see consumer driving it? Or do you see commercial driving it?
Clark Khayat
executiveSo I think the basis of that conversation, Ryan, for us is 2 things. One is we generally have seasonality in growth in deposits in the fourth quarter. So we expect to see that come through. The other one, I think, starts probably back 3 or 4 years ago, as Chris referenced, when we really started to focus on primacy. And I would say this isn't anything super sophisticated other than just saying, look, it's important for us to be our client's primary bank, and it's important to not chase high rate deposits, but rather get checking accounts from consumers and operating accounts from commercial clients. And we really did that at a time where we're in an excess liquidity environment, and we really anchored down on those pieces. Little changes like not incenting the branches to sell to get deposit balances, but to go get checking accounts and core checking accounts. And I think what that's providing is a little more stability than we would have seen in the past in that deposit base. And then it's allowing us to get closer to those clients and understand their rate sensitivity, so we can manage that more dynamically on both the consumer and commercial side. If you roll into '23, I think we're going to see a lot of activity on the commercial side. We've already seen that where you've seen betas go. To date in the industry, it's really been on the commercial side as people would expect. I think we'll continue to see that, and we will make decisions on how to fund that on the commercial side, primarily based on what the assets and the balance sheet looks like. In the short term, we also have, as Don referenced, the treasury could come up starting at the end of the fourth quarter next year. So we've got a bridge to that. We view that if the asset side continues to grow as a real source of liquidity. If it's not needed, we can reinvest it. And then we have other tools, whether it be the Federal Home Loan Bank or other short-term things we can do if we have to bridge that.
Ryan Nash
analystClark, you referenced deposit betas last cycle. I think you guys were around the 40% level, which I think it was a tiny a bit higher than the peer group thus far in the cycle you guys are running below the peer group, given some of the strategic changes that Chris and the team have put in. Can you maybe just talk about what you're expecting out of deposit pricing over the course of the cycle? How does it compare with the prior? And what has changed that has driven that? And maybe just any update in terms of what you're seeing in the near term?
Clark Khayat
executiveSo we were, as you referenced, 9% year-to-date through the third quarter. That was actually a little bit better than we thought we'd be. Balances were about what we thought we'd be. So net-net, we felt really good about that. This quarter is pretty dynamic. I'm sure you're hearing them. Everybody is sort of stepping into the fray. We guided to about 30% for the quarter. We think that's where we're going to be. So we think we're on there. Obviously, a little bit of growth on the deposit side, as we just referenced. And again, it's really a question of where is that showing up. So on the consumer side, we're not seeing a lot of movement from checking MMDA. It's more for us into CDs. So we're starting to test that market a little bit. And then on the commercial side, we're managing the earnings credit beta, right? We're keeping that treasury related deposit base in place. We're actively talking to clients about where the excess balances need to be to stay. And the further step is if we wanted to bring other balances over, what would we need to do to hit that, and we're making that decision as it relates to the asset side and the wholesale options.
Ryan Nash
analystChris, you guys reiterated solid growth in the fourth quarter. You talked about some of the drivers balance sheeting more than you have historically. As you look out to next year, how are you thinking about what should be the big growth drivers on the balance sheet, whether commercial versus consumer?
Christopher Gorman
executiveThat's a great question. So historically, Key has been driven by commercial loan growth. Over the last period of time, consumer has sort of led the way. We think it will flip again back to commercial. And specifically around commercial, there's a few drivers. One, we're focused on 7 distinct industry verticals, which give us the opportunity to grow. Even at sub verticals, we're focused on -- I mentioned a couple of areas where there's going to be a ton of investment areas in renewable energy and affordable housing, for example. The other thing that we've talked about is when these capital markets get more challenging, we structure -- and we're unique as a regional bank this way. Historically, only 18% of the capital that we raised goes on our balance sheet. Last quarter, 23%, 5% of $39 billion is a lot of money. And that's where, Ryan, you can see as we structure things to put on our balance sheet, we'll get some growth. And then the last area where we'll get some growth. And frankly, we didn't see this in the last quarter. Our historical utilization has been kind of mid-30s. We went from 32% down to 31% last quarter. We didn't expect that. I think over time, we'll migrate back to our historical level of 35%. And I say that because, one, you have an inflationary environment, and you can go long on inventory. And obviously, a lot of people have been burned by supply chain issues as they try to serve their customers. So that's where I think we'll see the loan growth in kind of those buckets. And I think we'll be back to being led by commercial for the near future as opposed to consumer.
Ryan Nash
analystAnd you talked in your opening remarks, and my first question about the challenges in the investment bank, the capital markets, our CEO, talked about that in his opening remarks this morning. You mentioned price discovery. Are we getting closer to the point where you feel you have visibility on deal activity into 2023? Or is it still too early and there's still too much uncertainty?
Christopher Gorman
executiveI think it's still too early, and there's too much uncertainty. There's 2 levels of uncertainty. One is sort of deal uncertainty, what's the value? And the second piece is what's the recession going to look like? Now when it happens, once it happens, it starts happening relatively quickly because people want to transact. If you own a private company and you've decided you want liquidity, you want liquidity. But if you've held it for a couple of generations, Ryan, it's not like you have to go into the market tomorrow. So I don't see where the turning point is yet. But these people will transact. It will happen, and you'll start to see -- you'll probably start to see the public markets open up first, and then you'll see some of the M&A market open up.
Ryan Nash
analystSo Chris, as I said in my opening remarks, positive operating level has been a hallmark of the company. I think based on the fourth quarter update, you'd be 100 basis points, give or take. You obviously have significant revenue tailwinds into next year, given the expansion of NII this year plus the momentum that Don had outlined. How do we think about drivers of expenses? And given what are some of the levers you're having, could we see accelerating positive operating leverage as we move into next year?
Christopher Gorman
executiveSo we'll give guidance with respect to 2023, as you well imagine, when we report our fourth quarter numbers. But the notion of keeping an eye on expenses is really, really important to me. And it's important to me, more important, actually, for the -- is the raw material to invest than even focusing, Ryan, on our absolute level of expenses. We have to continue to invest to keep our business positioned for future success. And there clearly are levers that we can pull. We talk about continuous improvement all the time. Continuous improvement is really investing in software and removing kind of clunky, people-driven processes with software. And we have invested a lot, and we're going to continue to invest. That way, we can redeploy our good teammates to go out and do other things. We're taking a charge this quarter with respect to real estate. We've said for some time, we thought we could take 25% of our costs out of non-branch, non-ops real estate. I think we can probably do even more than that. But obviously, you can only deal with that as the leases come up. And the last thing I'd offer, and probably all of you can relate to this in your business is, we've all changed the way we work. And I think now that the pandemic is behind us, I think it's a good time to reevaluate who's really making contributions, where we've invested in people and kind of just keep a close eye on people expense because in the financial services industry, that is the biggest lever.
Ryan Nash
analystDon, maybe thinking a little bit about credit. So credit performance has been very strong this year. And we've had a handful of presentations, people highlighting areas that they're focused on. Can you maybe just talk about what you guys are focused on from a risk perspective on the credit side? And then second, a more specific question in your 4Q update, you noted a more cautious economic outlook. If you look through the first 2 months of the quarter, we haven't seen material changes in the economic scenarios. Is this really about shifting the weight? Or what is really driving the slightly higher provision than you would have expected?
Donald Kimble
executiveSure. As far as credit areas of concern, we've always talked about as you go into a recession, the first area that you focus on are any credits that are subject to higher leverage. And so things like commercial real estate tends to be one of the areas of focus. As we look across that, we service over $600 billion worth of commercial real estate loans for others. And what you're seeing is things you would expect in the retail sector of commercial real estate is being hit. But we're also starting to see a little bit more of the Class B and C office space start to take some hits and start to see some of those be a little bit more challenged. And so that's something that we continue to monitor. I thank goodness for us, our commercial real estate book has very, very little in that Class B and C office space and it tends to be more multifamily housing, which has held up fairly well for us. The other areas where we are watching are tend to be areas that are outside the normal banking space that we're concerned about some of the lending practices that have occurred in some of the nonbanks, whether it's buy now pay later, whether it's some of the indirect portfolio, some of the small business and even middle market space, where the underwriting standards haven't been at the same level as what we've seen throughout other bank -- from other banks. And so that's an area of focus as well. On the allowance, you're right. As we look at our CECL reserves, one of the drivers that we don't influence is just what the economic scenario is, is the underlying assumption set for modeling our future losses. And so we start with the consensus estimates from Moody's as far as the outlook. And just to put that in perspective as to what we've seen since September 30 until the November Moody's consent assessment. We've seen the GDP for 2023 drop from about 1.5% to about 0.3% or 0.4% for the year. We've seen unemployment increase from a 4% level for '23 to 4.5%. We've also seen a little bit more stress assumed in their outlook as far as home price appreciation. And so each one of those areas would impact our overall modeling. That doesn't mean that we're going to see higher near-term credit losses from that. And as Chris highlighted, we're at near record lows as far as nonperforming. Charge-offs are well below what we would expect. But this would result in an increase to our allowance, and we'll have one more cut of the Moody's consent assessment here in December and make our assessments as to what the appropriate reserve would be for the end of the year at that point in time.
Ryan Nash
analystI want to hand on a couple of more topics. So Chris, Laurel Road has been a big part of the growth story. Originations have declined this year for reasons that I'm sure we'll get into it. Maybe just talk about the broadening of the business, how it's progressing? And do you expect to see a significant increase in terms of originations as we move through the next couple of quarters?
Christopher Gorman
executiveYes. So Laurel Road has exceeded kind of all of our plans that when we bought this platform in 2029. And when we first bought it, it was really a student loan refinance platform, doctors and dentists. Since then, we have turned it into a national digital affinity bank of all 50 states. So the first thing we did is we put in a full suite of products that are all digital. And docs and dentists like it because if -- they're not making any money if they're standing in a branch somewhere. So that's the first thing we did. And the take-up there has been great. Of the loans we've done since we had our national digital Laurel Road for Doctors, 30% are multiple products. The next concentric circle that we expanded to was this May when we expanded to include nurses. Nurses -- there's 1.1 million doctors. There's 4.4 million nurses, huge opportunity. So we expanded this full product suite. That same month, we very fortuitously bought GradFin. GradFin is a leader in providing student loan advice and also helping people through PSLF, Public Service Loan Forgiveness. It's a very underutilized program that's been part of -- that the government has had forever, but people don't use it because it's complicated. You have to file every year, et cetera. But anyone that works for a not-for-profit is eligible. And as all of you know, most all doctors and most all nurses work for large not-for-profit hospitals, which then, Ryan, gives us the opportunity to B2B2C sales. And we go in and we can call on the Chief Human Resources Officer and the Chief Executive Officer. The biggest challenge in all these huge hospitals is they don't have enough doctors and they don't have enough nurses. And so it's -- though all those product enhancements have helped. There's no question that the actual legacy product, which is the student loan refinance that continues to be challenged. And it continues to be challenged. For those of you keeping track, the federal student loan payment holiday has been extended in the last 2 weeks for the 8th time. By the way, when we talk about inflation, think about $1.7 trillion times 3 years, times 5%. And those -- it isn't as though those payments are tacked on the end. Those payments are just -- they just go away. So that will work its way through, but we're really pleased with and it fits with our strategy of targeted scale.
Ryan Nash
analystMaybe one last one in the last minute here. You went over your capital priorities earlier. So a 2-part question. Capital is on the low end of your target range, 9% to 9.5%. The TCE right now is in the low 4s. The peer average is in the low to mid-5s. Does this at all impact the way you think about returning capital? And what is the right deployment strategy? And second, Chris, I noticed in your remarks, you highlighted 3 things in terms of capital priorities? Any sort of M&A did not appear on that list. Is that a priority at all for the bank at this moment?
Christopher Gorman
executiveSure. So there's a lot in there. Let me kind of unpack that. Obviously, our tangible capital, our TCE is not the way we manage our business. We manage our business to CET1 and the 9% to 9.5% is our internal number. I personally wouldn't be concerned if we strayed below that at some point. In terms of TCE, it's frankly not an issue with regulators, not an issue with rating agencies. It's part of short-term AOCI adjustments. And lastly, just to unpack the last piece of the question, just as I've been very direct about people who are in price discovery, right now is not a time that I personally would be interested in buying a depository. I don't think -- I think it would be very challenging to figure out what's actually in their book, particularly as we kind of all look on the precipice of what is a downturn. And I just think we've got a ton of great opportunities to go after organic growth, and that's just not a huge area of focus. What you would see us probably do is continue to buy these niche digital businesses that are additive to all of Key. And we have a pretty long track record of that.
Ryan Nash
analystGreat. Well, we're out of time. So please join me in thanking the Key team.
Christopher Gorman
executiveThank you.
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