Hello everyone. Thanks for joining. Brennan Hawken, UBS's Capital Markets Analyst. Pleased to be joined by Paul Shoukry, CFO of Raymond James. Paul, thanks so much for joining.
Oh thanks. It's good to see everyone here in sunny Florida.
Not too far for you.
Oh.
A short trip.
Yeah.
So we'd love to start out talking about capital. So you guys have a leverage ratio that's north of 12% but a target that's 10% which is also pretty high above your minimum. So already pretty conservative. So given how conservative your target is you know why not stay closer to that 10% range? You know why is it drifted a little higher?
Great. Maybe first just stepping back and explaining how we think about capital. I think it's worth doing from time to time. Really for us you know our capital and our balance sheet is there to serve as a source of strength for our advisors their clients and our associates. And not just a source of strength in good times but also a source of strength in bad times which seem to come every few years, oftentimes unexpected. I remember at this conference last year, different name of a conference but at the same location, we were getting criticized for not buying you know longer dated securities. Because at that time everyone quote unquote knew that rates were only gonna rise 1, 1.5%-2% and that taking duration would make a lot of sense.
It was only three weeks later that everything changed in the banking sector. So it was a good reminder that having a strong capital position in our business just with the volatility and uncertainty is usually serves the shareholders and all the stakeholders well over a long period of time. Now with that being said we do have a 10% target which is conservative. It's two times the regulatory requirements to be well capitalized. We are 12.1% now. We were at 10% maybe a little over a year ago. So it's not like we haven't gotten to the 10% range. But you know capital is hard to manage you know real time in our business. You know and our capital growth prioritization framework you know the very first thing that we wanna prioritize is organic growth.
We think organic growth historically has produced the best risk-adjusted returns to shareholders. And then our second preference would be acquisitions. And we've grown more organically than through acquisitions over history. But we have done and have a track record of doing successful acquisitions over time. Then we did six in two years just a couple years ago. And that's how we got the ratio down to 10%. And so but those acquisitions have to be you know good cultural fits good strategic fits and at a price that makes sense for shareholders. And then third we have a dividend ongoing of 20%-30% of earnings. And then our fourth preference is buybacks. If we can't use the capital within a reasonable amount of time using those other three levers then you know we would do buybacks.
We've been more steady with doing buybacks to offset dilution related to compensation. And also we did an issuance related to TriState Capital acquisition a couple years ago, a year and a half ago. And we're offsetting that issuance as well. But that's something that, you know, we while it's our last preference on the capital prioritization framework, it is something that we look at from time to time.
Yeah. And given some of that history of M&A, a lot of investors are wondering whether or not that's something you might be working on today. So, understanding you're gonna be limited in exactly what you tell us, is M&A something that you think could be attractive in the current environment? And what types of capabilities might you be interested in adding?
Yeah, and as Paul Reilly said, our CEO and chair said on the last earnings call, we are very active in looking at opportunities in the M&A space. We hired a new head of corporate development. He started with us about six or seven months ago. He's really increased the conversations that we have with both strategics and sponsors and just the connectivity and being in the flow of information with bankers. So we are having lots of conversations, some with firms that we've been wanting to have conversations with for years. So we are optimistic. But you can never time these things. You know, we especially—our approach is going after good cultural and strategic fits on a more proactive basis versus kind of a reactive basis.
You know, the Charles Stanley acquisition, for example, that we closed a couple years a year and a half ago. We first had conversations with them in 2014. So that was a very long process as an example. So you can't time them perfectly to align with your capital ratios. But we take a long-term approach. We're looking you know really over the next three to five years in how we think we can deploy capital. And we're optimistic that acquisitions will be a part of that formula.
Some of the M&A that you've done recently has been when people think of RJ they think of the wealth business the private client right? It's like your core business. Some of the recent M&A though has been in either on the banking side. Now you could argue that TriState is private client adjacent right? 'Cause of the SBLs. Or maybe like SumRidge in some of the institutional businesses. How is your view of some of the it's wrong to call them tertiary but you know sort of the non-core non-private client businesses? Do you feel like those are relatively built up now? Or there's still more work to be done on the M&A front in some of those other businesses?
Yeah, we are first and foremost a Private Client Group firm. You know, last year over 70% of our revenues were attributable to the Private Client Group business, the 8,700 financial advisors across the country in Canada and the U.K. But we do have diverse and complementary businesses in capital markets, asset management, and our bank segment. And while those segments are all at critical mass, there's still significant opportunity and significant headroom for growth across all of our businesses including the wealth business. We just have been less active on the wealth side in the last few years 'cause frankly a lot of the deals that have transacted on the wealth side are firms that have had franchises with advisors that have lower average assets and average productivity than we target in our core Private Client Group business.
So we're a quality over quantity strategy at Raymond James, and we always are trying to improve the average production and assets and profitability of the franchise and trying to preserve the culture that we've built over since our founding. So we're not gonna just do a deal to do a deal or to get our ratio down from 12 to 10. We're not gonna force a deal. We're still gonna be very deliberate and make sure that first and foremost any company we purchase in any of our segments are a good cultural fit.
Yep. Makes sense. And then thinking about that core PCG business. Yeah, you know, net new assets, which is a key metric in any wealth management firm. We had been a little slower last year, but fourth quarter really rebounded nicely. You know, you spoke to some of the trends in recruiting and retirement. Yeah, you know, does that suggest that maybe in the near term we should think about gross NNA being a little slower than what we're used to seeing out of RJ?
Yeah, our NNA was a little slower for us last year, but it was still a leading metric in the industry. So our NNA growth has been, you know, really consistent year in and year out. And that starts with a base of very strong retention. We typically lose less than 1% of regrettable attrition a year in terms of advisors. There are firms that average multiples of that. And that's 'cause we treat our advisors like clients. You know, we have the breadth and depth of services that they've been accustomed to at the big firms. 80% of the advisors we recruit come from the wirehouses. But we have the culture that treats them like clients and that respects the relationship that the advisors have with their clients. And we're very intentional in calling them their clients, not our clients.
We're the only firm that says that you own your book of business across all affiliation options. If you leave on good standing, we'll actually help you move your clients to your new firm. Whereas all of our peers would, you know, particularly in the employee side, obviously call their clients and try to retain them and provide discounts and other things. We have a very unique pro-value proposition which helps with our retention, which is what we focus on first and foremost. Then, on that base of retention, we can grow through recruiting across all of our affiliation options. We have an employee, independent contractor, a Financial Institutions Division, and an RIA Custody Division. While other firms talk about having a large addressable market in these various affiliation options, we're really the only firm that has all of those affiliation options at scale.
We've been in those businesses for decades. So our addressable market's large and the pipeline for recruiting remains very consistent and strong going forward. And not only that but the quality of the advisors we see in the pipeline continues to just increase and improve over time. We're seeing a lot of $10 million $20 million even $30 million-dollar teams that are interested in joining and affiliating with Raymond James. So we're really excited about our growth prospects which really drives NNA going forward.
Yep. Fair enough. Is it? When you think about the pipelines and the recruiting pipelines, is there any particular affiliation model that's looking particularly stronger now whether it be you know employee or independent or whatnot?
No, I think all the channels are seeing a lot of success and having a lot of traction. So you know there's nothing thematically I could tell you. There's just certain advisors that prefer to have the firm deal with the real estate and the employee benefit cost and you know all those type of things. And there's certain advisors that you know wanna be that are more you know entrepreneurial and willing to deal with the real estate and the overhead and running of the business not just in addition to serving the clients. And so our history is that those are very different types of advisors I for the most part. We don't see a lot of crossover between the different affiliation options over time. Not to say that there isn't any crossover. Certainly there is.
You know, there's just a difference in preference as with most advisors between one channel or the other.
Mm-hmm.
There's no difference in product support, no, between our independent contractor and employee channel. The product support, technology support, the concept of independence that exists in both channels.
Got it. Okay. And then one of the things I think your retention ratios do not include retirements. And retirements are always something to deal with in a wealth business. So, do you all have a financing program in order to help to transition a book from a retiring advisor to another advisor on the RJ platform?
Yeah, absolutely. And we've had these programs for quite some time, so it's not new to us. We call it Retirement Choice. So there's a couple of different paths that advisors can take, either kind of continuing on and sharing with the business or receiving sort of a payment up front. And Raymond James will help finance that. But beyond financing, we have an area that is dedicated to helping advisors who are thinking about this, either being, you know, buyers or sellers of practices that are going through retirement transition, structure the deal, value the deal, figure out the best financing options, play matchmaker within the Raymond James ecosystem. And so this is something that we have been very focused on for quite some time. We have a dedicated group that focuses on this.
That's why you know when we say that there's elevated retirements, which there typically is in the fourth calendar quarter as people retire at the end of the calendar year, we retain the majority of the assets because we have plans in place for those retiring advisors to help them transition their business to their teams.
Got it. Okay. Would love to talk about the enterprise channel. This is something that's gotten a lot more attention in the last couple years. And you're definitely one of the few scale players in that space. So would love to see like what you're seeing as far as competition. Is it, is it just investor perception that the competition is ramping or are you seeing that as well? And you haven't been as active in that channel so is some of that competition maybe not hitting your return thresholds and therefore you've just pulled back? Or what's your view of that market today?
Yeah, and we've been in the , what we call the Financial Institutions Division, supporting banks and credit unions across the country. We've been in that business for over 20 years. I would kinda bifurcate the business. There's two types of programs. There's one where you know the advisors are full-time financial planning advisors not too dissimilar in average assets or business focus as the advisors in the rest of our independent contractor division or even in our traditional employee channel. They just happen to be based and working in a bank branch setting. Then there's other, what we call, platform or program banks that are much larger. Some of the advisors may not be full-time advisors but they might maintain a license to you know in addition to selling banking products they wanna sell brokerage products from time to time.
We're in that first category of serving advisors. If you look at our average production in our Financial Institutions Division, it's multiples of many of our competitors. And so we don't really a lot of the transactions you've seen recently; they really wouldn't have hit our radar because it falls into that second category of bank program where there's a whole very large number of advisors with a relatively low average production or level of assets per advisor. Not to say that that's a bad strategy. That can actually be a very effective strategy if you have the systems and platform to support it. But it's just not our strategy. Our strategy is to focus on advisors that are full-time financial planners with relatively high level of productions particularly for that per channel.
Got it. And how big is that business for RJ today? And you know, you mentioned where you focus on the market. But like, so competitively, you know, how is RJ differentiated in the marketplace?
Yeah, I mean, we don't break out the assets in that business, but it's a meaningful business for us. Again, we've been in it for over 20 years. And we're a meaningful player. We're probably the second largest player, you know, in that space, and so it's a meaningful business for us and.
Mm-hmm.
something that we have dedicated a lot of resources to. But I think your question's stemming from the fact that there's been a lot of these big program announcements that really don't fit our strategy.
Right.
That we haven't partaken in.
Yep. Got it. Okay, on the phone and here we go. We've almost gone 15 minutes without talking about deposits. But I'll end that streak now. So we've had really strong inflows, seen it in ESP product that you offered. It's clearly resonating a great deal with investors. But it started to slow down here more recently. And so you know when we think about some of the recent flows into that product, how much is coming from net new money you know and is it still a compelling proposition on that front?
Yeah, absolutely. So you know, this is something we're really pleased with. We rolled it out last March in the midst of all the turmoil in the banking sector. Since then, we raised north of $14 billion of deposits. Again, a testament to being a source of strength and stability for clients and advisors during challenging times. So it's been a very compelling product. The majority of the flows in this product have come from outside, so net new flows to the system. So it's been a win win win for clients, advisors, and the firm. The growth of that product has slowed down as we expected because just as the cash sorting dynamic has slowed down over time.
You know, essentially, if you've had cash over the last year to invest, that you're price sensitive to, that's not just working capital cash awaiting investment, then by now you've placed most of it in the money for the most part. And so that has contributed to the deceleration of the cash sorting activity that we've seen, which is also very much related to the deceleration of the growth in the Enhanced Savings Program balances that we've seen. So, you know, but we're continuing to look at ways to fulfill client and advisor demand with various cash products. So we take feedback from our advisors all the time. And you know we wanna be, you know, a source of strength for our advisors and their clients. But also provide products that help them gain wallet share, you know.
'Cause a lot of these advisors as they grew the $15 billion flow over $14 billion of balances they're calling us saying this is great. I've been trying to get that cash from that bank for so long from this client and now you gave me something, a tool to be able to do that. Now that I have it here you know the client is probably gonna keep it here you know. And so that has been a great asset acquisition tool for advisors to use with their clients.
Yeah, and is it really basically the gist of the strategy to use it as a way to drive net new money and capture better wallet share?
Absolutely. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Got it. So you touched on sorting. And so we've seen slowing in the trend of sorting. Incredibly hard trend to try to predict you know given all of the things happening across the industry. But you know is the right idea to be thinking about largely stable sweep cash from here? We saw that play out in January as you sort of suggested on the call. We got that in the monthly. You know how is February trending in a similar way of general stability? Is that how we should think about it? And when do you think we need to get to before we can see actual sweep balances start to grow?
Yeah, January so far and February—I mean, the sweep balances have performed better than we expected. Now we tend to be conservative when there's uncertainty. But one month doesn't make a trend. We're not gonna declare victory on the cash sorting dynamic until we see several months of stabilization. So we're monitoring it closely. But again, as I said even two earnings calls ago, I think we're much closer to the end of that dynamic than the beginning just because there's been so much time now for advisors to help their clients, you know, reinvest the price-sensitive cash into higher-yielding alternatives. But we'll continue to monitor it going forward.
Sure. Sure. When you taking a step back and when you think about the experience that you had in the sorting dynamic, obviously you had ESP launched the Enhanced Savings Program launched during the middle of it. So that was maybe, you know, something that will be different in the next cycle. But was there anything that you learned that might feed into how you would approach at a rate hiking cycle and maybe approach it a little differently? Or were you pretty pleased with how it all went?
No, we're pleased with how it went. I mean, we always look back and wish that we've done things we did things a little bit sooner or had a little bit more technology around something or, you know, like we could have fully incorporated or included the Enhanced Savings Program balances into the asset allocation models and reporting that the advisors use. We're working on that now, but we didn't have time to fully roll that out, you know, last March by last March. So you always look back when you see these trends and say, gosh, I wish we were a few months earlier. But the challenge is, you know, you never know when you need to be that early.
When we were working on the program, you know, we thought that it'd be months and months, if not maybe a couple years, before we really needed a program like that. 'Cause remember we had $ tens of billions of cash sitting on the sidelines, you know, off balance sheet, you know. And so those kinda things we look back on and reflect on. But overall we're very pleased with how that performed and the deposit gathering efforts overall.
Great. Excellent. So staying on the balance sheet but transitioning to some different topics you know we talked before about how you have such a robust excess capital position. How are we thinking about loan growth in the current environment? You know clearly that excess capital could be used to fund some growth. But I know the environment hasn't been as conducive to that. So what are you seeing here? What do you think maybe needs to happen in order to get the parts of the market that you're really interested in providing lending to get growing again?
Yeah. So we have plenty of capital and funding as you point out, Brennan. But you know, remember our balance sheet and our loan growth is really there to support client demand. And ultimately you know, SBLs for example, which is our largest loan category between Raymond James Bank and TriState Capital Bank. And these are over-collateralized loans with liquid securities that reprice daily. So we love that loan category. That's been flat-ish you know, year-over-year in a rising rate environment 'cause they're floating rate loans after growing you know 40%-ish a year during COVID in a near-zero rate environment. And so we wanna we're optimistic that clients will reengage with that product as they get used to the higher rate environment.
It just moved so rapidly and so at an unprecedented rate that a lot of the clients who had outstanding funding if they didn't need it they paid it down. But we actually had a lot of new originations in that product over the last year. And so we have a lot of capacity in that product and you know we certainly would love to see growth in that product. But we don't know when that growth is gonna come. And one thing we don't do at Raymond James which a lot of our bigger competitors do is we're not gonna have quotas. We're not gonna change deferred comp formulas. We're not going to force the product. We're gonna make it available to advisors to provide to their clients if their clients want it. But we're not. We don't aggressively push product at Raymond James.
That's one of the things that makes us unique going back to our culture. So it will grow when client demand comes back. And I'm confident that it will come back at some point. But that's true on the corporate loan side too. The demand has been tip-toed on the corporate loan side. And so we're not gonna stretch outside of our areas of focus to grow loans beyond what you know we can naturally grow it at given the demand.
Do you have any insights on the corporate side as if it's the same thing, just an adjustment to the higher rate environment, and need a little bit of time before that demand comes back?
Yeah, I think it's that the higher rate environment and a lot of corporations came into the higher rate environment flush with cash on the balance sheet.
Mm-hmm.
'Cause it was a conducive financing environment leading up to it. And then another reason corporates typically need cash is for M&A activity. And M&A activity has been, you know, nearly non-existent over the last year. So I think it's such a variety of factors. But to your point, loan demand will come back both, you know, on the Private Client Group side and on the corporate side. So it's just a matter of being patient in the meantime. And where a lot of banks, not most banks, but where some banks go wrong is, you know, when loan demand is tepid, they get outside of their core areas of focus to grow loans. And that oftentimes doesn't turn out well.
Sure. Sure. And you touched base on how there's been some new originations on the SBL side over the past year. You know, do you—is that a typical leading indicator? Like, are you guys confident that we're gonna begin to—maybe it's certainly not gonna be as robust as it had been. But you know, do you believe that we're gonna be starting to see actual decent growth pick up here on the SBL front?
Yeah, I think now that it seems like the payoffs or paydowns have really leveled out, it seems like this is a good foundation to grow off of. I can't tell you what the growth rate's gonna be. But I am optimistic about the loan growth over the next couple years.
Got it. And then last one on loan growth. You had indicated, and I believe in November, that we could see a mid-teens SBL growth, you know, in the coming years. Was that meant as a kicker? Or did you, and you know, what would be, how long will it take and what would be driving that acceleration?
Yeah, I think if I recall correctly, I think the quote might be what I said was five years from now I wouldn't be surprised if you look back at the last five years and see kind of double-digit SBL growth. And that was more a remark on our on where that product is in its life cycle. It's still relatively new compared to other major lending products available to Private Client Group clients, certainly a mortgage or a home equity loan or something. Not that we provide home equity loans at Raymond James Bank but at other banks. So it's still a relatively new product when you compare to other lending products. And it's a very attractive product. So I think that there's a lot of upside over time.
That's one of the reasons we did the TriState Capital acquisitions is because they are a leading provider of that product to independent advisors across the country.
Got it. Okay. I'm sure there might be some questions around the room. So if anyone's got any then I know there's an app which you can submit or you can raise hands and we can run mics. So if you've got something for Paul just go ahead and let me know. Maybe we'll, all right. I can dive back in. I'll keep an eye out for now but I'll keep on rolling. So when we circle back to the PCG Group and we think about the asset management business, you know what level of penetration of your asset management product is within and comes out of the private client business? And how much is reliant to third party? I believe it's really pretty tight relationship. But any color you can give on that would be great.
Yeah, our traditional asset manager is called Raymond James Investment Management. We just rebranded it from Carillon Tower Advisers to Raymond James Investment Management. Give or take $70 billion-$75 billion of assets under management for that third party asset manager. So that's something that you know we don't think it's you know at scale. But frankly I'm not sure you know what scale is anymore in asset management when you hear these multi-trillion dollar players saying they're not at scale.
Yeah.
But of that, you know, I think maybe 20% or so. I don't know the number right off the top of my head. But it's a number like that that is distributed internally to our Private Client Group business. And it's mostly fixed income related products. The short-term bond funds and those type of products are distributed internally. So we've always made it almost more difficult frankly to sell our own asset management products internally through the Private Client Group. And remember we have $1.3 trillion of client assets in the Private Client Group business. So you know it's a very small fraction of those assets that are internally managed by Raymond James Investment Management. So we always actually were a pioneer in open architecture.
The firm was founded by Bob James in 1962 as a financial planning firm when all of our competitors were firms that were selling internal insurance and asset management products. We were saying no, we wanna really help clients with financial planning and have an open architecture system. I mean, it wasn't called open architecture at that time, but-
Right.
-that really is sort of core to our DNA.
Excellent. Capital Markets has been an area where there's been some focus recently. So obviously 2023 was a tough year for Capital Markets on the activity side. But it does look like things are starting to pick up. So curious about whether or not you're seeing that pick up in some of the leading indicators in that business and how you're thinking about managing the expense base given the challenging revenue environment.
I was wondering if that's why you had all these green shoots and these potted plants behind me here. That's the buzzword in our industry in capital markets.
That's right.
We are optimistic. I mean, 2023 was a challenging year, you know, across the entire investment banking landscape across the industry both for M&A and underwriting. I mean, it basically froze. It's still not robust. I mean, things are starting to slowly get better. But you know, I would emphasize slowly. You know, it's still. There's still pretty significant gaps between what buyers are willing to pay and what sellers are willing to sell for. So I think until that converges or gets a little bit closer, I think we're still gonna have to be patient and wait for activity to come back. In the meantime, we're optimistic about the leading indicators. So our pipelines continue to build. We're continuing to pitch activity. Remember, 60%-65% of our M&A activity historically.
Right.
Has been private equity sponsors. And you know, so we pitch sell-side mandates. And we have won a lot of those mandates and we're signed up. But at the end of the day, you know, those ingredients I talked about earlier need to come together in order for there to be realization. So we're being patient. I think the entire market's being patient. We're all cautiously optimistic, using the words green shoots quite a bit. But you know, it could turn any day, but it, you know.
Right.
It's certainly still slow out there today.
Yeah. And we've seen M&A announcements pick up, but it's really been big strategic deals.
That's right.
Not the capital markets to stay quiet. So nice to see the FIC activity improve in the fourth quarter after several quarters of muted volume. So you know what caused that shift in engaged behavior last quarter? And you know was there any seasonal component or was it more like the rate environment just getting a little more conducive?
Yeah, I wouldn't necessarily call it seasonal, but there's sort of a catalyst that we could point to. You know, with the ten-year coming in almost 100 basis points in a very short period of time, that did create repositioning opportunities for a lot of the banks that we serve on the fixed income side. We primarily serve small and mid-sized depositories. And so when rates came in, the values of their portfolios improved. And that gave them opportunities to reposition, you know, out of their portfolio, maybe take some losses and reinvest in higher yielding securities going forward. So there was a catalyst that helped activity last quarter. SumRidge was an acquisition we completed a couple years ago. They have performed very well. They're in the corporate trading technology-enabled corporate trading business.
And they have performed well now since we closed the acquisition. So that helps diversify our business outside of the depositories. Gets us into a new client segment, a new product type, and also gives us a technology that over time we can apply to our legacy fixed income business serving depositories.
And so rates is a nice catalyst in the fourth quarter while the, you know, forward curve and the expectation for the number of cuts has moderated and it's a little less dovish. I don't think the long end has really moved all that much. So has that better activity sustained, at least based on what you've seen quarter to date?
No, I mean, I would say last quarter was a pretty good quarter given the macro factors that I described.
Okay.
I mean, at the end of the day, our legacy business serving depositories really thrives when our bank clients have excess deposits and they get paid to take duration in the portfolio 'cause there's a yield curve that pays you more on the long end than the short end. Right now, we're not in a situation where there's excess deposits out there. And you actually get paid less the longer out you go. So it's not the most conducive factors for our fixed income business right now.
Got it. Okay. So more of a moment than the beginning of something sustaining. Fair. On the expense front, so you know you expect adjusted non-comps to be around $1.9 billion in the coming year. You know it certainly suggests continued growth. Can you maybe give us an idea of how much inflation is still driving that expense growth versus investments that you're making in the business?
Yeah, I would say it's mostly growth-oriented expense. And some of it's directly correlated. So FDIC insurance expense grows as we grow deposits on the balance sheet. Sub-advisory fees grow as we grow fee-based assets. You know, occupancy expense grows as we bring on new advisors and they take on new branches or bigger branches. And so and then technology's an area where we have we have consistently been focused on you know investing in technology to remain competitive and also to comply with regulatory requirements. And that's frankly a moat in our industry that's gonna make it challenging for small players to you know get into our industry or continue growing in our industry 'cause the technology requirements are pretty significant. So mostly growth-oriented, I would say. The inflation we saw around compensation the last couple of years that's sort of subsided.
And so our turnover for Raymond James is really low, after kind of a couple years of it being elevated. I think that was true for most corporates during that COVID period. You know, I think we're gonna continue to share in our success with our associates. But most of the growth you're seeing in the non-comp expense is really growth-focused.
Got it. And how do you strike a balance in between continuing to invest for that growth versus discipline, you know, just as a sort of general philosophical framework?
Yeah, we've always looked out next 5-10 years and kinda what is a sustainable growth rate for the firm. So, you know, unlike a lot of other firms, we don't really try to time our growth investments to where interest rates are, to where the market is. It's too hard for us. We don't think we're smart enough to time those cycles. So we just try to focus on, you know, what's a sustainable healthy level of growth that the organization can digest. I mean, our head of technology and operations Bella Allaire, she'll tell Paul Reilly and me, hey, we can't take any more funding 'cause, you know, we're we won't be able to develop that technology as good as it needs to be developed if we try to stretch ourselves out more.
It really is having that long-term mindset and focusing on sustainable growth over time and healthy growth over time.
Got it. All right. Well, that sounds like a really nice note to end on.
Yeah, no, thank you all for your interest in time and learning more about Raymond James. I think one of the things that we look back on in the last three years 'cause we're all concerned about the market environment. It's very volatile and uncertain with rates and other issues. But in the last three years we just finished our fiscal year September thirtieth. We had record revenues and record earnings in all three of those years in very different market environments you know with rates and equity markets and capital markets doing very different things in all three of those years. And that's really a testament to us being focused on the Private Client Group business which is a relatively stable business and having diverse and complementary businesses to augment that.
And also to have it having a rock-solid balance sheet where we don't take outsized bets on our own behalf. Our balance sheet's really there for clients. Over time that's led to a lot of consistent success for Raymond James. That's what we're looking to do going forward. We're really excited about the future with our strong balance sheet and our opportunity for growth in all of our businesses. Thanks for your time.
Thank you.