The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation (BK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Moving right along, very pleased to have BNY Mellon with us like we've done with the other companies, we've kind of just put up the first ARS question. From the company, we have Dermot McDonogh, Chief Financial Officer. So welcome back. I appreciate you participating.

Maybe the best place to start is going to get this asked a lot is since Robin came over, it's the second best-performing large-cap bank stocks since you joined, it's like the third or fourth best performing large cap bank stock. Just what do you think the market finally caught on to and just what do you attribute the success to?

Okay. So I guess, this time 3 years ago, I was in New York on a house hunting trip, so I'm there nearly 3 years now. And so I would say our first point is, I think Robin had a really good run. He worked at the firm about 18 months before he became the CEO. So I knew BNY really, really well before he joined. So I think he is the perfect leader, the perfect skill set to be the CEO of BNY. And when he started pretty much 3 years ago, first of September, I came along a few weeks after that. And we said about doing a number of strategic business reviews. Some people say inside the firm that the firm has good bones or another person says the great assets of the firm never really left the building, but they just weren't managed that well for a long period of time. And so I would say, first and foremost, Robin has given the firm back belief in itself. And is really evolving the culture to be what we described high-performing and human. And I think at the beginning, we didn't have the best credibility with the market we didn't have control of our expenses. We didn't really have a coherent strategy where we've been running as a series of siloed businesses. And so over the last couple of years, I think we've really kind of tried to do a good job of telling the one BNY story, dismantling the silos within the firm, getting credibility with the markets and folks like you for control over our expenses, saying what we're going to do and doing what we said. And so I think that consistency of execution and delivery over the last 12 quarters has got us to the place where we are today.

And I guess, kind of reading up on what you've done over the last few years, you keep on seeing in terms like new commercial model, platform operating model. I guess for maybe those not as familiar with the story, expand on what that means and just how that differs from the prior structure and your peers and just kind of where are you in this process?

Okay. So let's start with the commercial model first. It's probably the one that's a little bit easier to explain. Well, commercial model is, we have 3 segments, several businesses. Five years ago, each of those businesses would have had their own sales force. So as a sales organization representing BNY to the client place writ large, I think we weren't unified, we weren't consistent, we didn't have a consistent way of going to market, we didn't have a joined-up strategy. Robin brought in Cathinka Wahlstrom a little over 2 years ago, as the firm's first Chief Commercial Officer in its history to kind of bring that unified approach to how we deliver BNY to the marketplace. I think I would say, again, it's still early days. But this year, our first 2 quarters were our first -- were 2 record quarters in sales in the firm's history. And so that is kind of a testament to the work that the sales organization under Cathinka's leadership has done. And then over a year ago, we launched -- the commercial model is kind of -- a lot of it is just kind of general hygiene about how you show up in a more professional way with clients, cross-selling new products, delivering existing products that we have at the firm to existing clients that didn't know we had those products, so easy stuff. And we had our first Commercial Liftoff in July of '24. And there are people who have been at the firm a little over 20 years who said we've never had anything like that at BNY before. And this year was version 2 of that. And we thought version 1 was brilliant and version 2 was 2x brilliant, like it really was a very special day for the firm. And I think that has really kind of continues to evolve the culture and show up and I think people walk into BNY every day feeling pride in the brand and what we are doing. And that really helps. Clients notice it. And as a consequence of success and the fact that we're doing well, clients want to know our story. So we have really good client interactions now that then feed further business. So it's a little bit of a flywheel of momentum that's feeding on itself. So that's the commercial side. I think things are going very well there. On the platform operating model, some people think it's a technology, it's an app, it's not really -- it's -- we're just working in a different way. And at the core, we're a financial markets platform infrastructure company. And we provide a lot of goods and services to the ecosystem. We settled the U.S. treasury market every day. So every time you think treasury, think BNY, we're a top 5 dollar clearer in the world. So like 20% of the world's investable assets go through our pipes every day. And so volume is our friend. And so we kind of go we're a platform company. We should run ourselves like a platform company. For a lot of tech companies, this is 101 stuff. So a couple -- we've been working at this for about 3 years. We did pilots, we did lighthouses, and we went live a little over a year ago, and we've organized ourselves into platforms. Sell loans, banks make loans. That's a platform. And we service the loans on our balance sheet. We service loans in Corporate Trust. We service loans in Asset Servicing. Three years ago, that would have been 3 different siloed platforms with their own tech stack. And all the inefficiencies that go in with silos. So we've rationalized all of that. And so as a consequence, we've been able to do things in a more strategic way, while at the same time, reducing our cost to serve. KYC, onboarding, not a very glitzy thing, but 3 years ago, we had several different ways of doing that. Now we have one. And so better tech, better use of AI, showing up to clients in a consistent way. If you want to do business with 3 different products at the firm, we only have to take your passport once. Three years ago, we were just taking your passport 3 times. And so all of those little things add up to good financial discipline, showing up in a better way for clients and that kind of gives a better client experience, better client service. And as a consequence, they want to do more business with us.

Makes sense. I guess in early 2024, you and Robin laid out your kind of strategy and action plan for BNY including kind of financial targets for the medium term. In the near term, maybe what are 2 or 3 of your top priorities and kind of where you're focusing your attention on currently?

So I would say consistency of execution is really, really important. And so I would say, showing up every day, just executing the hell out of the opportunity that we have and doing more with existing clients is priority #1. Number two, I think absolutely, AI is an important strategic objective for us. I think we, under the leadership of Robin decided strategically, we were going to embrace it wholeheartedly as a firm. And so I've -- Robin is the evangelist on AI and I'm the skeptic. So we kind of play off each other. And so I want value for money. We don't spend a lot of money on it, but I think our return on investment over the last couple of years has been phenomenal. And so internally, we're demystifying AI for everybody. We want everybody to have it as a skill. 97% of our employees globally have been trained on AI. They know how to use it. We have AI boot camps, you get badges, you get certified, you get trained. It's a real skill. And so as a consequence, our people internally want to embrace it, want to use it, and it's not -- people aren't worried about it in the same way, am I going to lose my job? That's not really how we talk about it internally. It's how can we use AI to create capacity so we can do more projects with the same resources as opposed to reduce the number of resources that we have. So we're taking a different approach to AI than what's been typically talked about externally. And I think over the next couple of years, I think we have the right strategy in place. We have the right tech infrastructure in place. And I think as a platform company, as we de-silo the firm and build scale in our platforms for large repetitive tasks, I think we're going to -- BNY will see a lot of benefit from the use of AI.

Interesting. And just maybe putting aside external factors like the interest rate environment and market performance, what opportunities are there to drive sustainable underlying growth at BNY over time? Maybe just kind of what are some of the areas with the greatest potential.

So I would say every business that we have has potential, yes. If you kind of take -- let's quickly run through the segments, Securities Services, 3 businesses, Depositary Receipts, Corporate Trust, Asset Servicing. Depositary Receipts, very pleased with this phenomenal second quarter, having a great year, high margin, great market share. Chris Kearns is our leader, hats off to him and the team. You've done a spectacular job, keep at it. Corporate Trust. When I came on board, Corporate Trust was a high-margin business, underinvested in, full of legacy architecture, and we're just sweating the assets. We've invested in the business. We're deploying it. We're building our strategic architecture. We've got 12,000 clients. We're growing our share in CLOs. We're #1 in a lot of different spaces, but we kind of feel like we have a lot more upside in Corporate Trust, and we have 12,000 clients there. And so for me, it's free marketing. You keep your Corporate Trust clients happy. They're going to want to do more with you in other parts of the firm. And we see that in a lot of cases with private markets clients, using Corporate Trust as an entry point to do more with them. And then Asset Servicing, I think, Emily Portney and the team over the last couple of years have really turned the ship around there, reduced the cost to serve, brought on better talent, winning our share. You'll never hear me talk about loss in business, negative repricing, what was me the world's worst oligopoly, you just don't -- we're not talking about that. It's a different -- we've hit our medium-term targets, and we feel like there's more upside. So overall, feel very good about that segment. Market & Wealth Services, mid-40s margin pretty good, very happy with that, keep at it guys at home. And it's probably the segment that's most analogous to a platform at scale, 3 different businesses, Clearance and Collateral Management, Treasury Services and Pershing, all with opportunities for growth. All have done well this year. Volume, markets, the trend has been our friend. And so we kind of -- globally, we've kind of -- we've executed like what we've said we're going to do on earnings calls over the last couple of years and continue to see opportunity there. And then the one that folks like you always continue to challenge on and it's fair that you do is, like what are we doing with IWM? It's not really where it needs to be in terms of margin. We've guided over the next couple of years, we will get to the mid-20s. We feel like we've got good conviction around that. Jose has just celebrated a year in seat. I would say the first couple of quarters has been like rightsizing, kind of doing his own analysis, creating his own vision, taking costs where he could out of the business in order to kind of generate capacity to make some hires. And now we started to make some strategic hires, and we're beginning to see some green shoots. And so we feel pretty good about the forward for that business as well. So when you take it all together, you kind of get back to a mid-30s margin for the firm, mid-20s ROTCE as one of the bank analyst said on the last call -- last earnings call, I didn't think bank ROTCE could be that high. So we're kind of happy with where we're at, and we can continue to execute with tremendous ambition.

I guess, so good returns, good margins. But I kind of look at the first half result, I think organic growth was like close to 3%. Is that the right number? Or is there organic growth target that you'd want to achieve to kind of match those returns?

So I would say, for some reason, you guys really love that organic growth. You want us to guide -- but I think last 3 years, I think we've done a reasonably good job of growing. So we kind of go back like I'm not dodging the question, but I do -- I will go back to positive operating leverage being the North Star. And that's what we've said consistently over the last couple of years. And I think for the first half of the year, positive operating leverage has been north of kind of 400 basis points. Last year, it was pretty healthy. The year before is pretty healthy. The 2 best financial stocks in the mid part of the decade 2010 to '20 were JP and Morgan Stanley as 150. So that's kind of how I as CFO think about us and organic growth is a contributor to that. 3% has been the trend for that. For us, that's kind of roughly where we are. We're looking to outperform it, but that's the ZIP code of where we're in. But if you kind of look at it and we show it like a picture, a little like graph with light blue, dark blue at the earnings call, the second quarter to kind of show the components without actually disclosing the number. Like if you kind of look at the firm, ex-IWM, it's probably north of 3%. And knowing that IWM, Investment Wealth Management, has room to improve. So that's a little sub performing. So I kind of see for the next few years, if IWM returns to where we think it should be, there's room for upside from 3% in terms of organic growth.

Helpful. If we could put up the next ARS question, but I'll ask you. In terms of -- we spent some time on organic growth and maybe shift gears to inorganic growth, what should we expect from BNY with respect to M&A, there was an interesting Wall Street journal article on June 22 or 23 that some of us in the room may read. And just kind of your thoughts on consolidation within the space or kind of what may or may not you be interested in?

Okay. So I think when we started as a team, and another important thing I would bring out -- the team has changed quite a lot under Robin's leadership. If you look at the Executive Committee today versus 3 years ago, it's a very different lineup. And so this is our kind of first real year as a team working together, and that's beginning to yield results as well. When we started 3 years ago, we kind of said, wow, we have a lot of work to do. So let's focus on the home first. The bar is very high. Culture is very important. We worked away for a couple of years. We screened some stuff, and it came more we were looking for capabilities. And so that resulted in the acquisition of Archer towards the end of last year, which really was capability in the managed account base that we were lacking. Very happy with that. It's contributing. Bryan Dori, who is the CEO, who came along with that, has really joined, first-class guy, really contributing to the culture. And so we continue to screen. And so the bar is high. Again, we continue to look for capabilities. Marius, who's here today with me, who runs our corporate development, the worst thing that's happened to him as a result of that article he's become a lot busier because he's getting a lot more inbounds with opportunities for us to look at. So it's always good to look at opportunities because you learn from the market. And so we don't really have anything on the horizon at the moment that we're really looking out for, but we're always trying to learn and look for opportunity and see where our gaps are and how we can grow organically or inorganically.

The audience seems pretty split on whether it's an Archer-like deal, an asset manager or a trust bank. I'm not sure if anything you're leading towards.

I think I'm going to keep you guessing.

Fair enough. We're kind of halfway through, so maybe kind of maybe switch to the financial part of the story. But we've certainly seen a lot of market activity year-to-date, whether it's volumes, volatility, macro events. Maybe just kind of share your thoughts on the kind of operating environment in general.

So look, I've been in the industry in my whole career, financial services. It's a fascinating place to be. It's a fascinating place to work, love what I do, love the operating environment, no 2 days are the same. I think when I was preparing for second quarter results, we were kind of tracking all the different events that had happened that were impacting the market. We kind of counted north of 20 different events that each one in themselves was like, wow, did that happen this quarter? And 20 years ago, that would have been the event of the quarter. So I think we've, as an industry, we've become attuned to just dealing with a lot of -- we're managing a state of constant change and churn, which I think, as a leader in the company is fascinating. So I like the operating environment. I think the firm really performed well in Q2, which is typically our strongest quarter. After April 2, volumes, balances, client engagements, people wanting to know in a non-biased way what we were seeing in the market. I think we showed up in a first-class way. Q3 is typically a quieter quarter for us because of the typical seasonal slowdown. And then we kind of ramp back up again in Q4. So overall, I feel very pleased with the environment. It wasn't what we necessarily thought the year was going to be like, January was very different to today. And so there have been different kind of ebbs and flows to the year. So overall, I think as a firm, we feel very satisfied with how we've managed to deliver for clients.

Got it. You open up the next ARS question and one of the audience votes on this. I guess maybe you could kind of talk to just net interest income outlook. First half of the year was up 14%. You kind of raised the guide in the second quarter call to kind of up high single digits for the year. But even if it's a, call it, 9%, that's kind of a lower 5% growth in the back half of the year, so I mean maybe that's still kind of your expectations. What's driving the slowdown? Maybe kind of update us on how the third quarter is playing out? And then presumably the Fed's going to cut next week, how does that impact the overall thinking?

Okay. So 3 questions there. So I think we're neutral on the Fed next week, cutting. I think we've managed to cut the tails. Of NII outcomes for this year pretty well. A lot of hard work towards the back end of last year, and we're kind of doing the same for '26 right now, so balanced for next week. I think I said on the Q2 earnings call, we updated our guidance to be high single digits. We expect Q3 to be -- deposits usually dip a little bit in Q3, but they didn't dip as much as we thought they would. So that's been a little bit shallower, but higher levels of volatility coming into September on deposit balances generally as the TGA is getting rebuilt. So we're seeing a little bit more volatility than expected. So I would say, NII feel pretty good about the high-single-digit forecast. And look, activity levels have been quite high for us. So the expense is probably smudging higher due to revenue related. So yes.

Right. And then I guess, how does -- I guess, everything you see now kind of inform your view for kind of next year's NII trajectory? I don't know if you want to put up the audience's response to that, the audience seems to think that mid-single digit, maybe plus.

So what's this one saying, for this next year or this year?

Next year.

Oh wow, it's a bit early for me, for next year. Is it? That's a January one.

We'll let it slide.

I'd like #8 or I'll take that one.

I guess on the fee side, I guess your guidance has been higher, but kind of that's it. I think we saw 5% growth in the first half of the year. I don't know if you want to give us a number, maybe talk to the second half of the year. You alluded to maybe expenses being a bit higher. I assume there's revenue associated with that. Anything you want to highlight on the fee side?

So look, overall, I think feel good about fees for the year. It really comes back to your first question, second question around the commercial model and what we're doing on sales and all the leadership that Cathinka's bringing to the firm. So generally speaking, I think our biggest opportunity is doing more with our existing clients. And we have some of the world's like best clients, lots of them and we're spending a lot of time with them. So generally speaking, I feel over the next period of time, notwithstanding kind of weird market stuff that we'll be in good shape on fees. Diversified business model, 3 segments, lots of volume, lots of ways to generate fees not just off balances, it's off transactions, a lot of different ways to do it. And so I think the one thing that I would leave the audience with is -- it's a diversified business model that is kind of a nice way to express an interest in financials with kind of a low-risk approach given where we are in the ecosystem.

Okay. Let me go up the next ARS question. But I guess coming back to expenses on the second quarter call, you kind of tweaked the expense guide from up 1% to 2% to up 3% for full year 2025 as revenues show through. Do you kind of want to update that figure? And just maybe just talk to the cost outlook for the back half.

So I think no real need to update the outlook like in individual meetings with investors, it's kind of -- some of the questions, I guess, is, are you investing enough? And are you missing opportunities? And so we've spent -- like I've spent the last 2 days, if I just switch back to the QPRs [ for a sec or to ] platform operating model. Every quarter, we have something quarterly planning reviews. So there over the course of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, this week, a little bit like your conference, 5 hours each day where each platform comes in and talks about the opportunities, the stresses where they need more funding. And so we're kind of moving towards more of a dynamic budget. And so I think on balance, I think we're in good shape. We're entering into the fall and the busy part of the year in terms of planning for next year. I would say when I spoke with the Executive Committee this morning, I kind of laid out the kind of the principles in terms of positive operational leverage, how we need to set up first based on what I see, what the targets are, and the guidance are. So I think we're going to continue to look for efficiency in the firm. I think we're going to be kind of -- if you kind of go back to our 3 strategic pillars of Power Our Culture, Run Our Company Better and Be More for Clients. I think we're really beginning to learn a lot about ourselves as running our company better and demanding more for our dollar in terms of how we spend this our expectations of vendors, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm pretty proud of how the team has shown up and responded to the financial discipline I've put on the firm. And so I continue to believe that we've delivered positive operating leverage next year and expenses and how we manage that will play an important part. So medium-term target is 33%. I think we outperformed that in Q2. I think we'll be there or thereabouts for the full year. And so I think we can continue to improve that margin.

So it looks like the room seems upside into next year.

Yes.

And I guess if you look at the first half of the year, you did like 400 basis points plus of operating leverage. You've made a comment historically; it's been kind of closer to 150 million.

Well, the external guys have been close to 150. Yes.

Yes. I guess when you kind of think about the 2026 budgeting process or looking out, like how do you think about what that number should or should be?

So it's team sport. It's full contact. I kind of set the guide and then everybody else pushes back on me. And then we agree on what the right balance is. And Robin kind of -- we discussed it with the board, and this is where we want to invest. And these are the priorities that we're not going to invest in because of -- we feel we need to deliver this to the market. And so it's a balanced discussion. There is no right or wrong answer. And so I think it's a good discipline because it's something that everybody can understand and focus on, yes, revenue minus expenses. As one investor said to me, pretax income -- Dermot, keep growing pretax income, and I will be forever your investor. And so he was with us 3 years ago. He had a very big position. And 3 years later, he's still with us. He's our biggest critic and he is our biggest friend. And so we keep it simple. We focus on that. And if we can continue to grow investors who would still want to be in the stock.

Sounds fair. That also strategy generates a lot of capital as you grow pretax earnings. Can you maybe just talk to how you think about maybe returning that capital effective buyback. I think you've talked about 100% payout ratio, give or take, I think you're kind of 92% year-to-date. I'm not sure if that's within that plus or minus, but just what are your kind of capital priorities around that?

So I think at the beginning of the year, we went plus or minus 100%. We slowed it down at the start, given the environment. Robin and I are both conservative risk managers by nature. We like to sleep well at night. And so we're always going to have a conservative tilt to us. We always run a little bit above the -- we're kind of -- we're always in that 5.90% to 6% of Tier 1 leverage ratio. So we're always in that ZIP code. So I would say full year, we're probably kind of -- we're probably at 95% to 100% -- we're going to be -- we'll hit the guide.

Got it. And then you talked about the mid-30s for that, I guess, pretax margin target of 33% -- greater than equal to 33% ROTCE mid-20s. Is that -- I guess, how do we think -- those are kind of medium-term targets? I mean we're, I guess, is that something you kind of revisit beginning of next year, beginning of the year after that? How do you just think about that? Or is that just kind of where the company should be?

So I think it's a great question, and I think it's something that we're going to spend a lot of time discussing internally over the next 3 months. When we announced like January of '26, it will be 3 years since we gave the targets. When we gave the targets, the market liked is stock was up 4% on the day. And so I think we will reflect on that over the next 3 months. And in January, we tend to do an extended earnings update in January. And we're kind of, hey, look, we reflect on Robin's shareholder letter that we put out at the beginning of the year, how we’ve performed for the year and whether we should change our view and if we're going to change our view and give you guidance, we will probably more likely than not do it in January. And if we decide to stick with the current targets, we'd say why and give an explanation first. And I think that's only fair. And I think I think the market has given us as a firm a lot of credit for transparency and executing to what we say. So I think we're going to continue to do that.

Got it. We have about 5 minutes remaining. There's some kind of topical stuff I'd love to run through. But maybe just start with digital assets stable coins have gotten a lot of discussion. You probably have a unique role given where you are in the ecosystem. Just kind of where do you see BNY filling in? And kind of what areas of banking do you think it could disrupt?

So it's a great question. So one thing I didn't mention is that we also -- in the way that we -- Cathinka Wahlstrom joined as Chief Commercial Officer, Carolyn Weinberg has -- beginning of this year joined as Chief Product and Innovation Officer and really, really high-quality individual who has a lot of capital markets, financial services experience. I am very excited to have her on the team. And so as part of our portfolio of responsibilities, she's also responsible for digital assets. And so one of the things that attracted her to BNY was the fact that she can see opportunities to stitch different things together and create new solutions for clients. And so we kind of -- the way she talked about if she were sitting here, she said, we have products, we have services and we have capabilities. And when you stitch them all together, we can have unique solutions for clients because there isn't any other firm really that has the same set of product offerings that we have. And so when you can put them together in a customized way for clients at scale, you can generate some nice alpha in that space. And so I would say with the change in administration, there's a lot more kind of chatter in the space. And so as it relates to stable coins, et cetera, et cetera, we're doing stuff with Circle. We're doing stuff with SocGen. We're doing stuff with Ripple. Now is it moving the needle for us on revenues at the moment? No. But are we getting a lot of credit from clients and the market generally on thought leadership? Absolutely. Do we have the technology? Yes. Do we have the thought leadership? Yes. And will we be able to take advantage of it when the market ultimately moves there and begins to deploy that? Yes. So I would say it's not a needle mover currently in terms of revenue for the firm, but with opportunity for the upside as the market moves and begins to do more stuff in that space.

Interesting. Another, I guess, topic that comes up and you touched on it earlier, just kind of what's going on in private credit or private markets. You've seen, I guess, tremendous amount of growth in that space, particularly private credit over the last several years. Maybe just discuss BNY's roles in that, how you serve that market and just that's probably contributing to growth now.

So again, we hired somebody this year to just kind of be the private markets kind of segment head for the want of a better and deliver BNY to that kind of private market client segment. Each business whether it's Corporate Trust, Asset Servicing doing custody, whether it's classic stuff, ETF stuff, Liquidity Direct, Liquidity Solutions. So each business has clients who are private market clients, but we haven't historically done a very good job of bringing it all together and being able to show the firm 2 private market clients holistically. And I would say that is something that Robin has spent a lot of personal time in meeting with the CEOs of the major private market clients are saying, this is how BNY can service you in a different way because at the end of the day, those guys just want to invest and want funds, they don't want to have the infrastructure behind that on their own books. And so I think going forward, we're going to be -- have much better partnerships with those firms so that we can service them in a much more differentiated way than we have done historically. So more opportunity. And that was one of the kind of big themes of Robin's shareholder letter this year.

And just maybe lastly, you kind of talked on AI. I read somewhere that you now have digital employees working at BNY with like e-mail addresses and like how big of an opportunity is that it sounds a little scary to me, but maybe just talk to that.

No, I think -- yes, I would say plus or minus, we have about 100 different AI activities in production at the moment. So I'll just kind of give you 2 minor examples but will scale up over time. We process a huge amount of payments every day. Some of them, let's say, kind of 95%, 96% of that will be STP, but 2% that maybe falls through the cracks for whatever reason, that's a lot. And so that's manual stuff that humans have to go into fix. Digital employees are now starting to do that work. So that's work that humans don't want to have to do because it's quite messy, it's quite manual, looking up ZIP codes for, Jason. So we can -- you've got to put it in and payment didn't go through. That's all can be done by AI now and digital employees. So the KYC onboarding. You have to go out and search for documents in the public domain. Humans have to spend a few hours searching through Internet looking for facts and figures and stuff about you. AI can do that in a couple of minutes. And so more and more stuff can do that. And you -- in the platform operating model, we use an application called Jira to kind of manage projects and do things, and you can put in a spec in Jira now and say, okay, give me the requirements. AI will give you the requirements and then you click another button and AI will write the code for you. So you don't have to be a software engineer now to be able to write code. And so I can just see like vibe coding in the future, becoming more of a thing. And so people are excited about that. So as Robin said in a different setting, it's like 150 years ago, you were doing -- you're going from A to B on a horse and carriage and then all of a sudden, the plane came and the car came, you embraced it. So AI is just another thing to embrace on the journey, and it'll I think 5 years from now, we won't really be talking about it the way we are, it's just BAU.

We'll write the questions for next year.

There you go.

On that note, please join me in thanking Dermot for his time today.