M&T Bank Corporation ($MTB)

All right. Up next, we have M&T Bank, and we're delighted to have with us today, Rene Jones, Chairman and CEO. Renee, thanks so much for joining us.

Happy to be here.

So Rene, let's get right to it. In your annual letter, one of the things you highlighted was the bank's ability to generate record earnings despite an uncertain environment, and we're just seeing more of that uncertainty play out in the environment right now. Can you talk about the ways the business model has evolved over the years, particularly on the fee income side and where you're most focused on investing now?

Yes. Yes, thanks. So I've been at the bank for 34 years. And it is really interesting to look back and think about sort of where we were, very small community bank in Buffalo, New York, fourth largest bank in Buffalo. And over time, I think one of the most important things -- 2 important things is in the early days, we had very tight inside ownership management, the Board, employees own 25% of the company. At that time, Mr. Buffett owned 8% of the company. So it was very closely held, and I think that sort of set the tone. And then number two was that Bob Wilmers believed in talent. So immediately, when he came in 1983 to M&T, he brought pretty much all the JPMorgan training programs. And if there was ever a recession, instead of cutting them, he would double them because he would say that this is the only time we can get anybody to move to Buffalo. And so when you sort of take the culture of ownership and you take the talent management, that has allowed us to sort of get through challenges but more. We've been on this train for a very long time, sometimes through acquisitions, I think of Wilmington Trust, grabbing the institutional business, scrubbing the wealth business, all those capabilities have come together. And we were looking at the annual letter summarizing what we were doing. And the first draft of the financials, I thought was really boring. And so I looked at and I talked to the team like why it looks so boring because it doesn't seem like anything happened. We didn't have very much loan growth. The balance sheet kind of stayed the same, but we had a tremendous year. And when you look back, it was all of those fee income businesses sort of kicking in, in concert. And so we had -- for example, we had overall 13% growth -- year-over-year growth in fees. We had high double-digit, maybe 20-something percent growth in mortgage banking, which is mostly servicing. portfolios. We had -- in our commercial mortgage servicing was probably up high teens. trust income was up 7%. And then our core capital markets, some of which are new businesses, including institutional, we're up in the teens, right? So all those businesses just had come along. If you think back to 1 example, where instead of buying, we've built it, is when we revisited all of our commercial real estate, most of the market sort of shorten that into where we're going to lower our concentration. But what we actually said 5 years ago was that we're going to actually do more for the customer than we're doing today, and we're going to use less of our balance sheet to do it. and you really begin to see that if you sort of look at the numbers and how those businesses have matured.

So as you think about the runway for the fee businesses from here, it feels like there's more room to go as well. if you think about the environment and you think about the investments you're making there, I guess, what kind of runway do you see for the fee business.

It's almost -- like I said, so it almost took you very surprised. We dive into each business. We look at the capabilities. One of the ones that we're looking at today it already exists. It's running. It seems fine. But in terms of can we do more private banking, for example, I think a lot of people don't think of us as a place to do private banking. But there isn't a product or service I can think of that we don't have. But how have we packaged it, how have we brought it to bear against our best customers, right? And what does that -- do people know that we have those services. So that would be 1 example.

Do you need to have a middle market investment bank?

No. We need to get really good execution for our customers who at the end of the life cycle are selling their businesses. and we need to be there to continue to advise them. And then to the extent that in that transition before that actually happens, as long as we have planning from Wilmington Trust and all that, helping them actually get through that period of time. then we're in good shape. We don't necessarily need to be the banker.

Got it. All right. Perfect. So the other aspect you mentioned in the annual letter was technology. That's been a big success story for the bank. I think you've tripled your expense in 2017. So AI is a big part of that. The next chapter for M&T technology journey. So how does that fit into your operational excellence initiative for 2026? And what are you doing on the [indiscernible]?

The real reason why we went backwards like 7.5 years in the letter to talk about the transformation is there's a couple of reasons. One, if we -- 7.5 years ago, we had sat here and told you what we were going to do, you would have shaken your head and probably sold the star. I said, we're going to be $325 million today. We're going to spend $1.2 billion by 2025. You wouldn't have understood it. And so we wrote that section, which was much more about talent, culture, how we think about investing in technology, what place this technology have? Is it a support service or is it part of your strategy? And that renovation has taken place over that period of time. and we think about the future very similarly. So today, I think if you think about what we've done over the last maybe 3 years, we've replaced our entire general ledger system. We've gone end-to-end on credit. and redid all of commercial credit from beginning to end. And every time we do that, we also put in a really robust data program. It's probably in its third year and maturing. But every time we go in and soup to nuts change everything, we're reengineering how the flow works. And then, for example, take the general ledger, there was a specific effort to say, okay, we're going to work on data quality now. as we actually get into the redesign of the system. So all those things are preparation for whatever AI brings. But if you don't have your data, right, and you haven't got the basics right, it becomes, I think, a little bit unpredictable.

Yes. So the need for high-quality data is prerequisite for good AI story going forward and you're already investing there -- maybe the last piece that you mentioned in your letter as well that it's -- and I got you need to slow down as speed limits or road conditions demand. And part of that is, okay, where are we in the cycle right now? What are you seeing in the environment? Any broader thoughts there?

Yes. -- there's a bunch of ways I could go there. But that's what we do. That's our job, right? And we recognize that we probably have 3, 4, 5 different levers that we can pull to keep the bank healthy in any economy. Sometimes you're fueled by high revenue growth that can be got with the right level of risk and return. But sometimes the market is just not offering that to you, right? So you can use the capital in other places, you can look at efficiency, you can do buybacks. And we're constantly in order to be able to do that looking at these trends that we see. So today, it's not a big problem, but we have been running a credit spreads at really, really low levels for a fairly long time. That could be a good thing or it could be a bad thing. you're tighter, so you're priced for perfection in some ways. But if you think about like what happened with the private markets, and we had these sort of initial concerns about liquidity. the capital markets have been so strong that a lot of those places have now actually gone to the capital markets showed themselves up, kept more liquidity in those funds. And that time that it's taken -- that's been allowed for that to happen has actually been really healthy. So I think versus the beginning of the year, when we were looking at all that stuff, I feel much better about it. But you are at abnormal times in terms of credit spreads, everybody, everything is kind of priced to perfection.

Are you seeing any competition on structure right now? Or is it mostly on spreads?

No, I think it's mostly on spread when we see it. But we're seeing very healthy loan growth. We're seeing our customers begin to draw down. We were talking about this earlier. The typical cycle is if you're holding lots of cash at the beginning and then you see your opportunity to invest it, the cash comes down first. That's the deposit pressure that people are talking about. And then utilization goes up and then expansion of lines, right, and those types of things in that cycle, and it seems to be following that normal cycle.

So given the dynamic macro environment that we're in, and it's not to say it's never -- it's always dynamic, right? But what are you hearing from your client base right now ability, willingness to invest, willingness to take on loans.

I mean it's healthy. It's really healthy. I mean we're not hearing negatives. As I said, people are drawing down on their lines. They're doing projects, maybe more so than a year ago for us. to think if there's anything else there. We are seeing, if we get deep into our customers, thinking of a customer who does gaming, entertainment, they're seeing at the low end people spending less, less discretionary income at the low end. And it's just not subtle. It's very noticeable, but that hasn't sort of resulted in higher delinquency side. credit is improving. I mean just on nonperformance just keep steadily come down. I don't know how many quarters it's been, but it's been -- Darryl says 9 quarters in a row of improving credit trends. So things are headed in the right direction.

And commercial real estate is part of what's driving that improvement? Anything outside of CRE that you're seeing any areas of concern that you're focused on?

No, we really haven't. I think for a while, we saw some slowness in consumer demand, think RVs, I think auto, auto is -- for the entire industry has been soft for the half -- for the entire auto industry has been soft for the last 6 months. We thought it would bounce back -- but as we sit here today, we still have growth in consumer. Seeing good growth in home equity. So people are active. And it almost feels like 18 months ago, everybody was waiting for shoes to drop. So they sat on the sidelines. And as nothing has happened, right? They're like, well, I guess, I got to go do this project.

I guess a lot has happened, but I think people have [indiscernible]

The consequences haven't happened.

Right. Right. Fair enough. The 1 area that you spoke about constantly looking at places for hidden leverage and you highlighted some of the risk transfer trades that many of your peers are doing. Can you elaborate on what your focus is there? And what do you see as a risk?

One of the things I'm really proud of, and I guess it's our culture, but it's not just people who have been there for a long time, people who have joined, all have this curiosity for understanding like what's happening, why are we slower, why are we faster in different places. And so there are a number of places that we sort of step back and look into risk transfer trades is one. And the way I think about this is that's really a story about capital efficiency. And so if you look at our capital structure, where we're a little bit different is we have a really high tangible relative to our regulatory capital. And what we believe we're really managing is tangible capital. And when you look at why that is, there's a number of reasons, but 1 of the reasons is that we don't do a lot of the risk transfer trades. And the reason that we didn't like them, I think we have 4%. The median is maybe 8% somewhere in there and then the highest 15% of your loans in that space. We didn't like them because if there was a delinquency, it would go from low risk-weighted capital, let's say, 20% or something like that, up to dollar for dollar, so 1,200 percent. And we just thought that when an economy takes a turn, you're going to get hit twice. You get the delinquency and then you get more capital unwinds. With the new capital regulations that are coming out, it looks like that only goes to 100% risk weight, right? And so that changes it. So either we will use that lever and we can buy back more and have carry a lower tangible or we'll actually just keep our risk profile modest, right? So it will be adjusted. So I think 1 of the things we don't get a lot of credit for, which you guys years ago used to get with lots of credit for was sort of a risk-adjusted view of our -- of buying M&T Bank stock.

We still give the stock credit for it. But yes, I hear...

I'm not looking for -- the -- but there are lots of examples like that, that we can do things, but we're sort of looking at the economy, thinking about whether we really should -- it's all a game of leverage, right? We wouldn't be better. We'd just be using more leverage. and that would be provided a better return to the shareholders. And so we're always thinking about whether we should or should not do that.

And the other area we're always thinking about is the risk that you're putting on the balance sheet as well. are sitting in the front row here. You mentioned on the earnings call that M&T is choosing not to chase growth if a transaction doesn't meet underwriting standards. And I think Rene, the question for you is, as you see competition intensifying -- why are you seeing competition intensifying? Do you think it's because everyone is freeing up capital and trying to deploy that capital? Or are there other factors that are driving competition higher?

Well, I mean, the market is much more dynamic. we just think of the private credit space and the volume is really high. So there's just more people in the market. I wouldn't characterize particularly on the asset side, as like frothy or anything like that. On the deposit side, I think you're seeing more competition, but that just makes sense as well. I talked about the cycle, there's more leverage out there in the system, the more leverage you have, the more funding you need. We're just at that part of the cycle where the real value of deposits is super high, right?

As we think about deposit competition overall, the value of deposits is high. I guess deposits are coming down as corporates are spending down part of it. You also have value of the curve is higher, you could get rate hikes in the future. And even if we don't, I guess, as a bank, you do have to prepare for that -- so is -- I guess when you put everything together, what are you seeing on the deposit competition side and what are you doing to get ahead of it?

Yes. I think -- I mean, for a long-term measure for us, it's like are you net growing more checking accounts, right? And forget about what the balances are in them, are they -- as long as they're quality counts that people are actively using. But I think that I say like -- I do it this way. But if you look at internally, the way that our structure works, we have these 13 states that we bank in, they provide the depositories. If we're doing middle market lending or commercial real estate, that funding source is the source, and then we also have a lot more deposits than we have loans. And so we're in these national businesses like RV and indirect auto and so forth. And what we tend to do is we think as you get further away from home. So as you get into things like 14 to 15 states, you're really actually pricing those things based on wholesale funding. right? So you're thinking about that. And that really comes to bear when there's a really tight space in liquidity, you will see us go 100% to wholesale funding on auto loans on anything that's out of state or that's national. and that's because the market allows us to bear it. So you might actually see in that period of time, like on a relative basis, deposits actually going down. But it's not -- economically, we've actually considered that already.

So a funding perspective, you were saying it's just the same.

So the balance is going up or down over a long period of time, don't matter as much as, are you growing your customer base? Do you have more customers that are providing the inventory?

So as you think of -- okay, so when we're talking about a 13 states, you've mentioned that there's a lot of advantages that you see of increasing density within existing markets. So can you talk a little bit about that? And why is it on the existing markets? I know when you go to a new state, initially, you're probably paying wholesale funding. But I guess over the longer run, does that still make things.

As we -- I'll try to do it this way, as we look over time and how we've done things, most of our decisions have been to try to get us to 1, 2 or 3 deposit share in the places that we bank. At times, we'll go into a new market where we won't have that. So think Hudson City in New Jersey. New Jersey was a big hole in the market. We had to go there. But we went there, we had a market that actually didn't have as much, I would say, market power, right, because it was thin. And if you did that over and over again and you took on too many of those things, it would actually affect the entire franchise. And so it's why we have a bias for in-market deals, for fill-in deals, bias for adjacent deals. So it's not that we wouldn't go to another state. It would just have to be the right economics, right, in the right situation, and we've done that time and time again. but our bias is not to leave behind a set of markets that are underpenetrated, right, because we think that over time, that produces a pretty weak franchise.

Baltimore has also been a big success story. So can you talk about what worked in Baltimore and how you're thinking of applying that to some of your other key markets in New England?

Yes. I think the playbook is pretty clear. first of all, we tend to be relatively patient. So I often said and sometimes got in trouble with my boss that it takes 7 years to actually effectuate an acquisition and have a ban M&T Bank region. And that sort of bears itself out. People have to get to understand the culture, they understand the new products and services that we have and are able to sort of bring them to bear for the customers. But we are in a steady role from -- we entered in 2020 -- I'm sorry, in 2003. The crisis provided us the ability to actually expand more. And then at some point in the maybe 10 years ago, we were looking at the numbers. And although we had good share, we were losing ground to 1 very mega bank on the retail side and to another regional bank on the loan side. and we just decided to convene and figure out why. It's really interesting. We get a group of people in from Baltimore to come to Buffalo and we sat down and talked about it. And we said, what do you think it is? And I say, well, I think it's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, we say, well, there are 5 things, why haven't you done it? And they said, oh, because we didn't know we had -- we didn't have permission to do it. like crazy things like we look every 3 years at the branch network and figure out the timing of flows and how it should be staffed. But in Baltimore, they already knew that they were going to launch at the time when peak customers were coming in. And so -- we basically said, wait a second, you guys run Baltimore, you guys can go address all the customer needs, make the changes you need to and we'll try to step out of the way. And that resulted in just a massive ramp-up. And so today, 2 fun things. If it's Sunday and you turn the radio on and someone's going to the football game and they ask where you're going, the person on the radio says, I'm driving to the bank, the bank -- 2 years ago when Lamar wouldn't sign, people started coming into the branches and saying, when are you guys going to get that done? Like that's how integrated it is. And so when we talk about places like Boston, you're thinking loan growth, you're thinking balances, we're thinking relationships. And how do we have perceptive scale where we're much bigger than we appear, and most of that comes from massive amounts of community engagement, right, and being there after 5:00. -- in the places that we're adder. So -- and it tends to work and it tends to give us huge amounts of density, and then we become a preferred choice amongst scarce choices that you have today because the number of banks are getting smaller.

How long does that take in terms of developing the relationships, bringing in the customer set, especially as you get [indiscernible]

I think -- what are we in? We're 4 years in on Peoples Bank and really moving to New England. And I feel like this last 6 months this year, we're starting to get lots of traction. volume is up. People know us. But I think the work continues to be done, right? We're still not -- we're probably #2 -- 1 or 2 in Connecticut and share. We're #1 probably in Vermont, but we're probably 5 or 6, maybe in Massachusetts and then the surrounding areas, right? We're not in Rhode Island. So we have a great playing field, right, to do the work. It just takes time.

So another of your priorities is teeming for growth. And that helps you deepen wallet share as well with clients. So can you just dig into the opportunity there? And what is the opportunity across the franchise, especially in business units like business banking, commercial and wealth.

So it's important to talk about how we got there. So this last year, we started asking the executive team individually, what do they see in the markets in terms of opportunity? And what really struck a couple of us was that the group was seeing the same things, but they weren't talking about it. And so we then said, well, why don't you guys get together and share your ideas with each other because I think you'd be surprised. And then we pushed them to say, okay, what would you do with it? And that's where operational effectiveness came, but also most importantly, that's where teaming for growth came. And so the teams just felt like while they were performing well by historical standards, they were leading lots of things on the table because they would run into somebody who was using business banking, but they wouldn't even know that M&T owned Wilmington Trust. right? And so this idea came up from them, which was how do we actually bring to a single customer to bear all the resources that we have to solve any problem. And it's a deep problem because our management systems were built 40 years ago to run as fast as you could in mortgage to run as fast as you could in any other space. And so we're beginning to shift those things, right, to bring the full bank to the customer. And it's in the early stages, but there are some really simple things that we could be doing much better around when someone shows up for a mortgage, what do we introduce into the retail bank side. If we sign up a new middle-market customer, did anybody ever mention that we could actually do bank at work and do the direct deposit and open up accounts for your employees, right? So that's a program that existed, but it wasn't linked to actually introducing ourselves to new customers.

Your -- I guess, how are you changing that? Is it incentivizing employees to do more of it [indiscernible]

One of it is a massive amount of awareness on the issue. #2 is actually meeting like little your meeting routines. So if you go into the Springfield office, or the Boston Off the Hartford office, there are routines where people are meeting across divisions to talk about opportunities that we just didn't do before. we did them within mortgage, for example. So we brought them to bear in that way. And now as you move forward, it's closer to how do you change the incentive system and the reward system. such that in addition to saying you had a great year in commercial real estate, you were part of a region, right, that engaged in providing more services per customer that's a kicker. And so we didn't have that. So if Baltimore did really well, we didn't actually say Baltimore did really well. It was a team effort. It was a compilation of individual businesses. So we have to change all those things. And it takes time -- but it's pretty logical. I think it's -- I think about it as really low risk-adjusted growth that's in front of us. So that's still in progress. It'll be in progress for a long time. So the these sort of 2 priorities are everything else we do has to be in service of those 2 things. Either we're getting super, super efficient data capture, all that stuff, right? Or we're actually just bringing more to bear for the customers.

Does that helps you on the lending side, deposit side and the fee side?

It's -- yes, the whole thing. Yes.

Okay. Perfect. Okay. Maybe we'll pivot over to capital. You brought that up earlier. Excess capital has been for M&T, 1 of the highest in the group. Can you talk about how you approach capital management? And how do you think about -- you mentioned tangible versus regulatory capital. Can you dig in a little bit more there?

Yes. Well, I'll just -- I'll start with those comments. You see the way we think about capital is really about tangible capital. We've gone through a period where we were carrying excess just because there was a lot of uncertainty, and that has been reduced to share buybacks. But I think -- we think about capital, the same capital thought process is in every decision that we make. So if we're buying a bank and the way that model looks and providing free cash flows to shareholders, is the same way it looks for a loan or buying a branch, right? It really is a fairly consistent method over time. So it gives us choices as to what we can do with the capital. And if none of those things actually are available to us, then we give the capital back to the shareholders. If you think about the new capital rules, for example, people are asking the question, okay, what does that do to your risk weights? And for us, I think it gives us a boost of 1% or 1 percentage point on the capital ratios. And that's fine. That has some economic value, but the real value is on every incremental decision you make from today on. So we're about to launch internally our new capital scheme that should the rules get approved the way they which I think they will, it changes the decision on every loan. So if you look at a mortgage -- that mortgage actually needs less capital. It doesn't mean that, that whole thing is going to come to us, but what it means is that some portion of that is going to go to a lower price to the customer, so we can hurdle. So to step back, really what you're seeing with the capital rule is we saw a massive shift because of a lot of excess capital that was put in by the rules to the private markets, you're seeing a slight shift back, right? So it should produce growth and we underestimate that growth potential. We tend to look at just the point in time how much capital you're able to free up and give to me. But it's actually more powerful than that.

So part of it you pass on to the customer about of it is you're on ROTCE in your own returns as well. When you're thinking about, I guess, tangible versus regulatory capital, -- not many talk about that. I guess, do you anticipate that being more of a focus among the investor community or other stakeholders at this point.

We talk about it because we're just an outlier, right? We just have a high tangible. One of the reasons we have a high tangibles we didn't put on long-dated securities, right? So our AOCI is minimal, if any. And so I think people don't -- when they're talking just about the ratios, they don't. But everybody is actually managing return on intangible common equity, right? And so you have to be consistent all the way through. So when we look at that, we think apples-to-apples, it's not just that we're at, I think 10.3% or something would we finish the quarter and 10.3%, yes. So some are thinking, "Oh, well, now you're down to 10%, so you're done. No, not really. We can look at our balance sheet, we can look at the risk transfer trades that I talked about, right? We can think about the mix and the balance sheet. we have a lot more to go to be capital efficient because we have such a high -- we're probably at least 1 point higher than everybody on tangible. So that's an asset that we've got to figure out how to deploy in a safe way.

And how quickly do you think that can get, I guess, freed up or deployed?

It just depends on what the opportunity is. It gets freed up pretty quickly, and you can do it pretty quickly if you do an acquisition because you're restructuring everything, right? But you're always trying to make prudent individual decisions all along the way. And if we were to sort of say, well, temporarily, we're going to put on a bunch of mortgages, it changes the culture and the psyche of the firm. You don't really want that to happen. You want people to make the same sound decisions loan by loan, customer by customer, right? And then at the top of the house, we'll figure out how to optimize the balance sheet.

So how does it change in terms of how you allocate capital under the new rules, whether it's more mortgage, more different areas. How does that change, even if it's over time, how does that change?

Yes. I mean it's a relief, and it's more of a release for residential mortgages than real estate, but -- and then it changes the quality, right? Because now it's based on LTV and the quality. So it's just more aligned with the capital rules and all of it should be net-net more growth in the industry, a better position.

So I guess, you spoke about returns as well. And part of the debate is that as several banks free up capital, right? Like you were you were an outlier with a strong capital position, maybe a couple of years ago, but as more and more banks free up capital, whether it's for the new rules, whether it's creating more capital. How do you think about just competition overall, a lot of those -- the benefits of that improving ROCE with the new capital rules being competed away? Just big picture, how do you think about that?

Let me rewrite your question.

Fair enough.

Now that we're past it, what you could basically say is that we didn't go long. We didn't lose hundreds of millions of dollars, and we gave you that capital back. That's what all the buybacks were -- they were from just a very prudent capital centered decision-making process, right? And so the question is, what are we going to continue to do things at capital that are relatively prudent, and I think they are. I don't worry too much about -- it's better for everybody if we're more capital efficient as an industry. But at the end of the day, we just want to be the best bank for shareholders. So we just want to make prudent decisions and find those and not stretch for example, for a couple of extra basis points when the downside risk is really high. So -- and it works that way in our compensation structure if we get a 17% return over a 3-year period, we get paid a certain amount, which is more than the base. If it goes to 19%, we don't get paid any more because we don't want to underinvest in our franchise, and we're plowing it back most recently in the technology. And if it goes below that, and it's because the industry is having a difficulty, we look at our performance, where we're in the first, second, third, fourth quartile, right? And that's all built into our structure. So we're just trying to be the best bank over long periods of time. Yes.

I guess my question was more for the industry. Do you worry about that impacting industry-wide returns and as everyone frees up more capital, just more capital getting deployed at low returns.

I think it's all -- no, I think -- I don't think they're low returns. I think we step back, we were at a place where there was a proposed rule that would have had the largest banks have 20% capital -- like that just got reversed. That's essentially what happened, right? So we were going to see a big slowdown in the banking industry, and it was probably all going to be picked up by the private markets. That didn't happen. That's a good thing. And 2, it went lower, right? So it means the banking industry is more competitive.

Got it. All right. Perfect. Maybe to end you're also chair of the BPI and you have more unique. [indiscernible] I hear you. And I guess, maybe talk a little bit more about the broader changes to the regulatory environment. There's a growing discussion around liquidity regulation -- what are the main things that for the BPI has been focused.

Well, you see there's been a lot of changes right down to the original capital stuff, it's been tremendous. I think all very, very positive. I don't worry about any of them. I don't think we've pushed anything too far. I do think in the remaining space, the probably most important thing or the prudent thing to keep talking about is because of liquidity is sort of the discount window idea of how do we make -- get rid of the stigma for that? How do source? So how do we actually use that in our sort of inventory of weapons around liquidity. And I think it's particularly important because we're talking about AI, reengineering, speed, speed at which decisions are made. And so if you think about the rapid increase in speed that you could get for a run on a bank, then you have to do something structurally in the system as well, right? And actually bringing maybe the discount window in a safe way back into its original purpose would be a positive. I think that -- I think -- so that is a discussion out there about that. I think it's a really prudent 1 to have. And if we could figure out how to lower the stigma, but not get rid of this idea that you can't have 100% of your funding be -- be the window, then I think we'd be in a better place, more safe and sound place.

Got it. All right. With that, we're out of time. Rene, thanks so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me.