State Street Corporation (STT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to State Street Corporation's 2021 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. I'm Jeremy Kream, State Street's Assistant Secretary, and I'd like to lead off with a few formalities. Today's meeting is being conducted virtually. It is copyrighted and all rights are reserved. The meeting may not be recorded for rebroadcast or distribution in whole or in part without the express written authorization of State Street Corporation. In addition, the presentations and potentially the responses to questions at the meeting will contain forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those those statements due to a variety of important factors, such as those factors referenced during the meeting and in our SEC filings, including the risk factors in our Form 10-K. Our forward-looking statements speak only as of today, and we disclaim any obligation to update them even if our views change. Further, some financial results referenced during the meeting will be presented on a basis that excludes or adjusts 1 or more items from GAAP. Reconciliations of those non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP or regulatory measure can be found within our fourth quarter 2020 earnings release addendum, which can be located on our Investor Relations website, investors.statestreet.com. Let me now introduce State Street's General Counsel and Secretary, David Phelan, who will call the meeting to order and review the meeting guidelines and other matters. David?

Thank you, Jeremy. Hello, I'm David Phelan. Thank you for joining us today. Our Chairman, Ron O'Hanley has asked me to call to order State Street Corporation's 2021 Annual Meeting of Shareholders, and I am doing so now. I note that we have representative in person or by proxy more than a majority of our outstanding shares of common stock at this meeting. A quorum is therefore present, the details of which we will walk through later in the meeting. To start, I'd like to make some introductions. Ron O'Hanley is present and will shortly provide a review of corporate developments and lead us through the voting portion of the meeting. In addition to Ron, let me introduce the other members of our Board participating in the meeting. Amelia Fawcett, our Independent Lead Director; Marie Chandoha, Patrick de Saint-Aignan, William Freda, Sara Mathew, William Meaney, Sean O'Sullivan, Julio Portalatin, John Rhea, Richard Sergel and Greg Summe. Also participating is our Chief Financial Officer, Eric Aboaf; and other members of our management team. Shannon Stanley, Assistant Secretary, will be coordinating shareholders submitted questions. Please note that today's meeting guidelines can be found to the virtual meeting portal. As noted in the meeting guidelines, only shareholders [indiscernible] questions are voted at the meeting. In the event of a technology failure that prevents us from continuing, we will keep the line open and attempt to rectify the issue, but the intention to resume as soon as practical. Please then remain logged in, you would like to continue your participation to the remainder of the meeting. If we encounter technical difficulties preventing the meeting from continuing, please note that the notice of meeting has been properly served, a quorum is present, and all proposals will be deemed properly presented and the meeting will be adjourned. Questions and comments are welcome. There are 2 forms for questions. One, prior to when the polls close for questions regarding specific voting matters. Another general question-and-answer session after the formal part of the meeting. Please submit questions or comments with the virtual meeting portal at any time during the meeting. We ask that each shareholder to provide his or her name, if an individual, and both his or her name and affiliation of an institutional shareholder. Please also note, questions for the formal part of the meeting regarding specific voting items must be pertinent to the matters properly brought before the meeting. To ensure that everyone has an opportunity to ask a question, shareholders are limited to 1 question for each voting matter and one question during the general question-and-answer period. When submitting a question for a voting matter, please identify the matter to which your question pertains. Questions and comments may be summarized or consolidated with others. And if appropriate, will be addressed, time permitting. These guidelines are administrative, the Chairman or his designees discretion. Depending on time, the number of pending questions and other factors, we may permit additional appropriate questions. If you have voted your shares prior to the start of the annual meeting, your vote has been received, and there is no need to vote these shares during the annual meeting, unless you wish to revoke or change your vote. If you wish to vote through the voting portal, you may do so by clicking on the voting button on the virtual meeting portal and following the instructions. At the Chairman's request, I now declare the polls open. Let me now introduce our Chairman, Ron O'Hanley.

Thank you, David, and welcome fellow shareholders to this year's annual meeting. Thank you for investing your time with us. Relative to this time last year, thankfully, where we are today could hardly be more different. Economic activity is rebounding, unemployment is declining and equity markets have recovered strongly from the crisis levels experienced in 2020. While short end rates remain at historically low levels, long end U.S. bond yields are rebounding. With the continuing rollout of vaccines, we see some hopeful progress towards an end of this pandemic. At the same time, COVID-19 infection and death rates remain stubbornly high in many parts of the world. In particular, our thoughts are with our team members and their families in India. In light of the current state of the pandemic there, the State Street Foundation is making a donation to a pan-India NGO with a strong history of being at the forefront of disasters and working on the ground with communities in need. Before we proceed through the formal meeting agenda, I would like to reflect on how we at State Street advanced and position the business for future success in 2020 despite the challenges presented. 2020 was a year like no other in recent memory, and it is impossible to focus on the performance of our business last year in isolation from the pandemic, economic shutdown, historic market volatility, the radical shift in working and living conditions and the continued racial and social inequities to challenge all of us. When faced with these economic and social challenges, I am proud of how we at State Street came together like never before in the service of our clients, our employees, our communities and the global financial markets. All the while generating solid earnings growth for our shareholders in 2020. I am grateful to our Board of Directors. This thoughtful, diverse group of remarkable leaders provided meaningful oversight and guidance and help management navigate COVID. Despite the significant disruption caused by the pandemic, our global operating capabilities allowed us to continue to innovate and make client-focused product and service enhancements, including the further development of our State Street Alpha front-to-back asset servicing platform. We also focused on resiliency and on improvements to our operating model, while continuing to be a trusted and essential partner to our clients. Throughout 2020, we focused our innovation efforts on further software and operational development and delivery of the State Street Alpha platform, helping to accelerate the platform's development. The platform has already gained traction with clients as demonstrated by the addition of 6 additional clients in 2020, with a further 3 Alpha client mandates reported in the first 3 months of 2021. Because of the platform's open architecture design, we are able to rapidly increase functionality by adding a number of partnerships, unlocking new sources of revenue and enabling greater flexibility and choice for clients. State Street's Alpha strategy has been enabled by the 2018 acquisition of Charles River Development. I am pleased to report that the acquisition became accretive to our earnings during 2020 and CRD's strong performance continued last year. We also continued to innovate and invest in CRD's capabilities. For example, Charles River moved to a secure public cloud solution that is now live with clients and launched a wealth hub for managed account program sponsors to securely connect with their asset manager distribution partners. Both CRD and Alpha also are driving meaningful new servicing mandates and contributing to servicing fee growth. While the Alpha platform is an integral part of our growth strategy, we remain laser-focused on continuous improvement within investment servicing overall, which includes institutional services, global markets, State Street Alpha and Charles River Development and is the core growth engine of our firm. By providing our clients with leading products and service quality, as we emerge in the pandemic, we expect that our clients will focus on outsourcing more of their environment and look to us to help them modernize and improve the efficiency of their operations. Our global market's franchise demonstrated its strength during 2020. Amidst heightened market volatility, our FX business leveraged its ongoing investments in talent, capabilities and digital platforms, which led to record client volumes, increased market share and another #1 ranking in 2020 among asset managers. Even as we enter 2021, our FX trading services revenue continued to be above pre pandemic levels as we saw in the first quarter of this year. Turning to our asset management business, State Street Global Advisors had strong performance, delivering good revenue growth in a year of market turbulence, while at the same time, tightly managing expenses. This drove SSGA's pretax margin to increase by over 5 percentage points relative to 2019. Our SPDR suite of ETFs saw strong inflows during 2020, with total net ETF inflows up almost 30% as compared to 2019, driving continued positive annualized net new revenue from the franchise. SPDR ETFs collectively represented approximately 40% of all U.S. ETF trading activity from late February through early March last year, demonstrating the liquidity of these vehicles. In fact, SPY, S-P-Y, alone, the first U.S. ETF saw 15 consecutive days of secondary market trading of more than $50 billion, including a record high day of $113 billion. SSGA's GLD and sector ETFs witnessed record flows in 2020. Sector and industry ETFs captured approximately 50% of market flows, resulting in increased market share last year. We also saw continued strong inflows to SSGA's short-term cash products as our clients turn to us as part of their flight to safety. And as with other areas of our business, we continue to innovate at SSGA during 2020. For example, SSGA launched 5 SPDR environmental, social and governance funds globally, 3 of which were fixed income funds, expanding its already large suite of ESG offerings. Turning more broadly to ESG. The pandemic reinforced the connections between corporate resilience and our ESG initiatives. Indeed, we have elevated the importance of ESG by appointing new leadership, reporting directly to me to coordinate our efforts across the organization and leverage what we do externally and internally, which we expect will generate long-term value for our shareholders, clients, employees and communities. In 2020, we leveraged our global platform and industry associations to scale our ESG impact, driving action on the sustainability and equity issues that are central to a more resilient future for us and our shareholders and also for the broader communities in which we live and work. The long-standing racial inequities exacerbated by the pandemic led us to launch our 10-point action plan to strengthen racial equity. Consistent with our 10-point action plan, we are examining and leveraging both our commercial and community relationships. For example, we are partnering with minority and women-owned firms as we access capital markets. And early this year, we structured a major debt offering using a syndicate, including lead book runners, substantially made up of minority-owned business enterprises. We are also focused on our own workplace practices as part of our holistic actions to address racism, inequality and social in justice, including providing transparency around our workforce demographics by publicly disclosing our EEO-1 data, a practice we started in 2019. We have joined the inaugural cohort of management leadership for tomorrow's or MLT's black equity at work certification program. This independent evaluation process establishes a clear and comprehensive multiyear road map for certification and provides a rigorous, transparent and results-oriented approach towards addressing the persistent inequities faced by black professionals across Corporate America. Our Board of Directors continues to provide strong leadership and oversight of State Street's ESG and racial equity priorities. The Board reviews progress and performance regularly and provides ongoing guidance and advice. In addition, our foundation has recently completed an independent audit to identify the impact of our grant-making activities on communities we serve. We engaged an external consultant to audit State Street Foundation's current grants portfolio to assess the impact and demographic makeup of grant recipients. In connection with this effort, we are updating the foundation's grant making guidelines during 2021 to establish combating racism as a clear funding priority, building upon our long-standing philanthropic focus of addressing socioeconomic and racial inequities and education. During 2020, we made solid financial progress relative to 2019 as we work to drive fee revenue growth higher and total expenses lower. On a GAAP basis, full year revenue was up, though total revenue was roughly flat because of the ultra-low interest rate environment and the negative effects it has on our net interest income. Expenses were down. Together, these results drove positive operating leverage and improved pretax margin and return on equity relative to 2019. The full year earnings per share was $6.32 or [ $6.78 ], excluding notable items. EPS results were up 17% and 9%, respectively, excluding notable items, despite the dramatically low interest rate environment last year. Supported by year-over-year improvements in servicing and management fees, very strong FX trading results and a higher contribution from Charles River, total fee revenue increased 4%. Turning to expenses. State Street has been on a journey to transform its operating model for the last 2 years. In 2020, we continue to rigorously manage costs, self-fund investments for the future and transform how we compete and operate for the years ahead. Our team drove total expenses down 1.5% year-over-year, excluding notable items, as we continue to build on the strong culture of productivity and expense reduction that we successfully established in 2019. As a result of the dedication of our team members and the continued successful execution of our strategy, during 2020, State Street's operating leverage was positive, and our pretax margin improved in one of the most challenging years in history. Turning to capital. Our shareholder capital return was limited during 2020 by our decision to suspend common share repurchases at the onset of the COVID crisis in coordination with other large U.S. banks and subsequently by restrictions introduced by the Federal Reserve in response to the pandemic in the third and fourth quarters of 2020. I am pleased to report that we resumed common share repurchases during the first quarter of this year through our $475 million program, consistent with limitation specified by the Federal Reserve. Further, our Board recently approved a $425 million common share repurchase program for the second quarter of this year, again, consistent with the limitations set by the Fed. I would like to take a moment to review the current thinking on our medium-term targets, which were originally set back in December 2018. In January, we outlined how we will now aim to achieve our medium-term targets by the end of 2023 or on a run rate basis for 2024. We consider those targets to be the right ones for our business and our shareholders, and they remain unchanged. Though interest rates have impacted the timing of our medium-term targets, I am confident in the direction of our business, and we will continue to innovate to meet our clients' needs and drive business growth, while also focusing on improved productivity to achieve our goals. Turning to our strategy as we look ahead. In 2021, we are focused on 3 key objectives: grow revenue, transform the way we work and build a higher-performing organization. First, this year, we are focused on delivering fee revenue growth by improving our investment servicing client engagement and sales effectiveness, advancing our suite of products and capabilities and continuing to position SSGA for growth. For example, we are further extending our successful asset servicing client coverage model for our largest clients to cover our top 350 investment servicing clients. We have also tailored value propositions and service plans by client segments and by region to increase accountability for client and regional strategic objectives. Second, we are transforming the way we work. The pandemic has highlighted many operational strengths across State Street's organizations, which we are institutionalizing to drive better results. By automating repeatable processes, we are able to redeploy our people to higher value-add roles, which in turn, we expect will lead to greater productivity and more innovation as well as reducing the cost to serve our clients. We are leveraging the lessons of 2020 and are beginning to roll out our workplace of the future plan. This will include hybrid work models, new approaches to space and our real estate footprint and new ways of collaborating with clients and employees. Third, we are focused on building a higher-performing organization. An important objective for this year is building on the cultural strength and resilience we saw in our workforce in 2020 to promote an even higher level of innovation, execution and productivity. We will continue to simplify the organization and incentivize behavior that drives strong results and even higher client and employee engagement and satisfaction. Ongoing work on our 10-point action plan to strengthen our racial equity and diversity will, in turn, result in an even higher-performing organization. We intend to deliver on our objectives in 2021 as we work toward achieving our medium-term targets. Thank you for your continued investment and confidence in us. Let's now move to the matters presented for voting by shareholders. As David indicated earlier, I will take questions specific to the voting matters before the polls closed. After the adjournment of the formal part of the meeting, I will take general questions about our company. Christopher J. Woods of American Election Services is serving as inspector of elections for the purpose of determining the shares represented at the meeting and by proxy and the validity of the proxies and ballots and counting all votes and ballots. Will the inspector of elections, please confirm the quorum.

Mr. Chairman, there are represented in person or by proxy at this meeting, at least 85.94% of the total outstanding shares and therefore, a quorum is present.

Thank you. I confirm the meeting is properly convened. The notice of meeting sets forth 4 specific voting items, each of which is described in the proxy statement. I will present these items before the meeting in the order that they appear in the proxy statement. If you have a question about a proposal, please note the proposal matter when submitting a question. The first item is the election of 12 Director nominees.

Mr. Chairman, there are no questions at this time.

The Board of Directors recommends a vote for each of the nominees for Director. The second item is the approval of an advisory proposal on executive compensation.

Mr. Chairman, we do have a question on this matter. We received a question from the Carpenter Funds, and I will read it as it came in. The Carpenter Funds holds a total of 1,336,800 shares of the company's stock. We believe that the company's executive compensation plan should drive the successful execution of the Board's long-term strategic business plan. Today's public company executive compensation plans are largely formulaic peer related plans with simplistic annual say on pay voting, reinforcing plan homogeneity. With you or the Chair of the Compensation Committee speak to whether State Street might be better served by an executive compensation plan tailored specifically to the company's particular circumstances and its unique long-term strategic business plan.

Thank you for the question. I'll begin and then I'll turn it over to Sara Mathew, who chairs our Human Resources Committee. Our compensation plans actually are tied to our strategy. They're tied to our strategy. And of course, we measure our compensation against peers. But how compensation actually works is there's a set of strategic goals. There's a set of financial goals. And then there's a scorecard that develops against which management is measured. Sara, I'll turn it over to you for any additions you'd like to make.

Sure. Sure, Ron. Thank you. First, thank you for your ownership and loyalty to State Street and as well, thank you for the question. So I'd just say this, Ron laid it out pretty clearly. Our compensation philosophy is designed to position State Street for long-term success. So as Ron said, in addition to financial performance in the year being assessed. We also have, I would describe a strategic performance, which is for the years out front because we want to position us for growth and, of course, risk as well. We are not rule based, but there is a very rigorous assessment we undertake versus our objective, and we do use discretion. And concurrently, we provide comparators versus both the S&P as well as a bank subset. All of this is laid out in the proxy, as I'm sure you've already seen. And so what you're proposing is exactly the way our compensation program works. It is not rule based. And we believe that is the best way of aligning our shareholder interest with the interest of our key executives.

The Board of Directors recommends a vote in favor of this matter. The third item is the ratification of the selection of Ernst & Young as our independent auditors for 2021. I would now like to introduce representatives of Ernst & Young, Robert Wadley and Cliff Cammock. They have indicated they do not wish to make a statement at this meeting.

Mr. Chairman, there are no questions on this matter.

The Board of Directors recommends a vote in favor of this matter. The fourth item is the shareholder proposal requesting that the Board oversee a racial equity audit. Operator, is the shareholder proponent from the Service Employees International Union on the line to provide a statement?

There.

Can we hear from the representative of the Service Employees International Union?

Can you hear me?

We can hear you.

Okay, great. My name is Edgar Hernández. On behalf of the Service Employees International Union Pension Plans Master Trust and I am presenting proposal #4. The proposal urges the Board of Directors to oversee racial equity audit, analyzing State Street Corp.'s impact by nonwhite stakeholders and communities of color. This includes input from civil rights organizations, employees and customers should be considered in determining the specific matters to be analyzed. The racial equity audit would, one, analyze the full range of adverse racial impacts caused by State Street businesses and operations; two, allows State Street to catalyze action by other companies; and three, address racial inequities that are curbing economic growth and potentially depressing investor returns. Events of the past year from the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor to the racially proportionate impact of COVID-19 pandemic on people of color have greatly intensified the [indiscernible] for racial justice. Corporations, including State Street, have acknowledged the existence of systemic racism and deplored discrimination on racialized violence. Conducting the racial equity audit is not only the right thing to do, it makes good economic sense. A 2014 study estimated that eliminating the racial pay gap alone would have added $2.1 trillion to the U.S.' 2012 GDP. "Systemic racism" according to Federal Reserve President and CEO, Raphael Bostic, said last year is a "Yoke that drags on the American economy." In 2017, State Street paid $5 million and back paid and settled department of labor charges based on pay equity analysis that the company paid top female and black workers less than top male and white workers. Stage 2 statement and opposition to the proposal does not, however, outline any step State Street may have taken to audit its pay practices to determine whether a racial pay gap exists more broadly at the company. The finance industry has played an important role in perpetuating unequal wealth distribution of 2 communities of color, whether it be modern-day redlining techniques related to mortgage loans, success of checking account fees or more recently, the payday protection program distribution. Communities of color have faced [indiscernible] discrimination as a result of financial industries' practices and policy. The consulting firm of BCG has stated that we see the financial institutions as uniquely well positioned to act as to further catalyze more action in Corporate America. In the statement and opposition proposal, State Street [ touses ] 10 actions to address racism and equality, but they do not focus on the full range of adverse impacts, including the broader societal impacts with racial equity that the racial equity audit would address. But 2 of the actions -- also 2 of the actions involves diversity and inclusion at the Board and workforce levels. State Street also promotes its participation in the black equity of work certification offered by MLT. MLT's governing advisory board includes no representatives of any civil rights organizations, but instead is populated by celebrities and business representatives. We are skeptical that participation in this program reflects any commitment to anti-racist work. A racial equity audit has the benefit of being conducted by an outside person or organization, which avoids blind spots to providing fresh perspective. A racial equity audit would help State Street to identify and analyze the racial impacts of its business activities. The company's statement and opposition once again described changes that have made to proxy voting guidelines that addresses, to some extent, criticism and reports and in part by reported last year offered by SEIU and the majority action, which found that State Street supported all directors at 60% of companies that had no black directors on their Boards. However, the change that State Street has made do not address voting on shareholder proposals seeking political spending disclosure, which State Street has supported by only about 1/3 of the time. Such disclosures allows shareholders of companies [ of business ] have racially [ disparate ] impacts like [ private person ] and [ meat-packing ] company to monitor efforts to influence elections and public policies, nor do they include a revised approach to all their proposals on subjects which potential racial impacts such as environmental practices. More fundamentally, State Street changes do not appear to reflect any kind of systemic analysis to the rational impact of proxy voting. We urge State Street to assess its behavior to racial equity then to identify how it contributes to systemic racism, including areas of misalignment between State Street stated values and the impact of its actions and could help begin to [ disventilate ]. We are asking for State Street to be fearless. Once again, we are asking State Street shareholders to vote in favor of the SEIU Pension Plans Master Trust proposal #4. Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation.

Mr. Chairman, we have no questions on this matter.

The polls are now closed. Will the inspector of elections, please report upon the matters presented for voting at the meeting.

Mr. Chairman, this is a preliminary report. The shareholders have voted to elect each of the 12 nominees for director. Each director received at least 87.19% of the votes cast. The shareholders have also voted to approve a nonbinding proposal on executive compensation with a vote of approximately 94.37% of the votes cast. And the shareholders have voted to ratify the selection of Ernst & Young LLP as the State Street's independent registered public accounting firm for the year ending December 31, 2021. The shareholders have also voted against the shareholder proposal requesting that the Board oversee a racial equity audit with a vote of approximately 63.25% of those votes cast.

Final tallies will be filed with the SEC in a Form 8-K within 4 business days of this meeting. I hereby adjourn the formal part of this meeting. I will now take any additional questions from shareholders.

Mr. Chairman, we do have a question. It is from Scott Shepard from the National Center for Public Policy Research, asking or noting, State Street has taken an aggressive stand in favor of ESG investing, which is to say making investments based on left of center assumptions about society, the economy and the future. You've told corporate Boards that they must conform to State Street's policy preferences or you'll use your investors' proxies to vote against them, claiming that your fiduciary duty requires this. But Warren Buffett has said that many ESG proposals are F9 and that they are not fiduciary requirements, but moral judgment about which it is very tough to decide their real benefit to society. Who is right, you or Buffett? And can you explain in detail what you do to ensure your proxy decisions reflect the actual wishes of your investors instead of those of State Street executives.

Thank you for the question. State Street Global Advisors is the third largest asset manager in the world and a large proportion of its roughly $3.6 trillion in assets under management is in index funds. And the unique characteristic of an index fund is that as long as the stock is in the index, we will be invested in that stock and in that company. As a result, for a long time, we've taken the view that engagement with shareholders is quite important because we don't have the ability to, in effect, not own the stock, if it's in the index. Our views on so-called ESG matters are, in fact, not based on politics, but are based on value, that is the value of the company. And as our State Street Global Advisors does its research, it has come to the conclusion that there are many elements of governance of environmental policy that, in fact, do have long-term impact on a company's value. It is on those matters that State Street will exercise -- will engage from a stewardship perspective. Given that it doesn't have the ability to disinvest, its actions, if it decides that a company is, in fact, impairing long-term shareholder value. One of the only actions that can take is its vote, whether it's voting against particular directors, voting against entire Boards of Directors. But that, again, that's always done in context -- in the context of a view on what's in the best interest of long-term shareholder value. Thank you for the question.

Mr. Chairman, we do have another question from [ Derrick Adam Yeck ] from the Carpenter Pension Funds of the holding 1,336,800 shares of State Street stock. The topic of stakeholder capitalism as an alternative to shareholder capitalism has received considerable attention recently. As long-term pension fund investors, the Carpenter Funds appreciate the sentiment embodied in the stakeholder capitalism perspective but feel that execution could be complicated. Could you discuss the Board's perspective on the concept of stakeholder capitalism and what principles the board would use to balance the interest of varied stakeholders as it develops and implements the company's long-term business strategy.

Thank you for the question, and thank you for your shareholding. I will start with a management view to that question and then turn it over to Amelia Fawcett, our Lead Director. As I said in response to the prior question, we do believe that as -- particularly as an index investor, where we are focused on the long term, that oftentimes, long-term value does include factors that some might characterize as being part of so-called stakeholder capitalism. For example, how a company treats its employees, but all of our actions are grounded in the view of what it is that's going to advance long-term value for the shareholder. Over time, we do believe that some of these things like how our company treats its employees, what are the environmental impacts that a company might have and what that might mean, either for its own long-term value or for example, its legal position are relevant parts of how we think about long-term shareholder value creation. But I would emphasize, we always come back to value, not values but value and the long-term value that's being created. And Amelia, I'll turn it over to you if you'd like to add anything?

Thanks, Ron. And I agree with you, it's a very, very good question. And the Board would look at it very -- obviously, the same way. And this Board is particularly focused on value and long-term value and how do you create long-term value. And it is clearly our view that there are a number of stakeholders that we do consider. We always have for years, investors, employees, clients, communities, and I think it's been proved over time that taking that into consideration is indeed how you generate long-term value for your shareholders and your stakeholders. And we think that, that view is essential, and we believe our focus on these issues, which do indeed come back to how do we create long-term value, taking into account the interest and impact on a variety of stakeholders is how you do generate that long-term value. But it is something that we think about and have thought about as a Board, and we just keep coming back to the generation of long-term value.

There are no further questions at this time.

Well, that concludes the questions then. I thank you again for participating in our 2021 annual meeting, and I look forward to seeing you again next year, perhaps even in person.