All right. Good morning, everybody. So everybody's been excited about this fireside chat. No pressure, both of you. Super psyched to have the President and incoming CEO of U.S. Bancorp, Gunjan Kedia, and of course, trusted CFO, John Stern. Welcome.
Thank you.
Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
Absolutely. So firstly, Gunjan, congratulations on being named the new CEO. So the company has done a very good job at telegraphing the transition. Could you share with us why the board thought that now was the right time for this handoff?
Thank you, Erika. I'm very excited to be leading a wonderful company into the future. So on your question of timing, it was the board's decision based on a very disciplined and measured succession process that went over multiple years. And of course, informed by Andy's personal and professional preferences for his timing. He has spoken about our company being at an inflection point. He looks back over the last two years, and we have done a very decisive and attractive acquisition, which we've integrated efficiently. We built back capital after the banking crisis. And last year, have really flattened our expense curve. And now our attention is on organic growth. And so that's the inflection point. And one year after I stepped into my role as the president, felt like the right time for the transition.
In September, we did hear from you extensively. The company laid out medium-term financial targets, including a high teens ROTCE, or Return on Tangible Common Equity, and a mid to high 50s efficiency ratio. Any changes to those targets?
No changes. Both John and I were very involved in establishing the targets, both driven by what we see as opportunities within our portfolio, but also a lot of feedback from our investors. So those are our targets, and we are executing against those.
Great. And also in September, you nicely laid out the strategy for the future. And while continuity is valued, so is a fresh set of eyes. And of course, given the share price, that's especially a point for the stock. As incoming CEO, where are you placing your sense of urgency in terms of where U.S. Bank's focus should be in terms of what businesses can jumpstart the revenue contribution towards your efficiency goals?
It's a very important question. So first, let me just say we feel the urgency of the stock price being dislocated, and as I come into it, my biggest priorities is to restore investor confidence in our story. We are very optimistic about our franchise. It's just it's a high-quality banking franchise, and it's quite unique. It's quite different. Our opportunities are different, so my first priority is to be laser-focused on delivering our medium-term targets, which would be very attractive to the stock, so the question is, how do we do it, and those are the strategies we laid out. Again, building on a foundation where our Union Bank acquisition gives us this enormous opportunity in California, our expense being in the right place and our capital being in the right place. Organic growth is the big push for me.
Our products have strengthened materially given the investments we have made, and we have 15 million clients. The core nugget of our organic growth strategy has been bringing them together in ways that are creative, interconnected solutions. My second priority is to transform our payments organization. It is a marquee franchise that has not delivered its promise yet, and we have very focused strategies around that, and my third priority is to sustain and strengthen our expense discipline because we want to keep investing in our franchise without trading off efficiency ratio or positive operating leverage, so those are the three priorities I come in to jumpstart the growth.
Great. And we're going to double-click on those priorities during this discussion. But maybe a final top-of-the-house question related to the transition. Aside from the recent announcements that you made in payments leadership, is this the management team that we're going to go forward with, the management team that we all met at Investor Day, or should we anticipate some changes?
One of the big things I did last year when I stepped into the president's role is just examine our revenue lines. We restructured them into six groups that roll up to the three divisions that you are very familiar with. On our client franchises, so the Consumer Bank and the Wealth and Institutional Bank, we split them along the lines of distribution and product. The payments organization split reflected that alignment with the client franchises. Our payments for consumer and small businesses is more tightly linked on the CBB side, and our payments for institutions and merchants collaborates much more on the institutional side. Those six leaders are now in place as of last week, and you've met a few of them, and we look forward to introducing you to others. That's the formation going forward.
That's great.
Yeah.
Maybe, John, a few questions for you. Before we dive more deeply into your businesses, can you tell us a bit more about how business sentiment is trending now that we're 22 days into a new volatile administration, and perhaps we have a better sense of the rate path now.
Sure, sure. So good morning, everyone. You know, I guess I would just say there's really no change since we talked back in January on earnings about the economy. We still feel that the economy is performing well. The labor market is strong. Our payment trends that we see with our clients are robust. Inflation has obviously impacted certain of our clients, but it seems to be ebbing a bit, which is favorable. It's a very resilient economy out there, as everyone here knows. Market sentiment is definitely improving. There's a lot of just enthusiasm for this economy in terms of pro-growth, pro-business, these sorts of things from our clients. We are hopeful, and we do see modest improvement in pipelines and things like that. And we're hopeful that that translates into loan growth, particularly the second half of the year.
In terms of rates, as you said, they've been very volatile. We continue to expect a couple of rate cuts this year, middle of the year, end of the year type of scenario in the 10-Year Treasury, kind of in the zip code where we're at right now. That's kind of how we're thinking about this environment.
And maybe if you could remind us of the guidance that you did provide at fourth quarter earnings. More specifically, John, what is the right NII growth expectation for the year? I know you gave us revenue growth guide, including how you're thinking about the net interest margin or NIM trajectory.
Sure. So our guide really talked about revenue growth of being kind of 3%-5% for the full year and positive operating leverage, 200 basis points or more for the full year. In terms of net interest income, we didn't give specific guidance, but what's implied in there is growth. And in the first quarter, we expect modest or, excuse me, roughly the same relative stability in terms of our net interest income for the first quarter relative to the fourth, excluding days, which is about $40 million for us in terms of impact for the quarter. But we do see growth for the year in net interest income. And that's really going to come in three buckets for us. One is going to be on fixed asset repricing.
We see on a quarterly basis $3 billion of investment portfolio and $5 billion-$7 billion of loans that reprice every quarter. And that favorability is about 150 to 200 basis points on average on a quarterly basis. So that's obviously a very positive tailwind for us. The second is on deposit normalization. We are seeing stability, and we have seen that already in the fourth quarter. And we expect that to continue in terms of rotation out of low or non-interest bearing accounts into higher bearing accounts. That really has stabilized. And so that's going to be very positive for us. And then obviously the mix of our assets in terms of moving toward more higher returning, higher yielding assets and diminishing those that aren't as much.
Those are really the three big pieces that will help us with the NII growth throughout the year, which also implies net interest margin growth as well.
Speaking of Net Interest Margin growth, it's been a while since investors have seen a neutral rate of not zero.
Right.
Maybe we're getting there. How should, as we think about the long-term earnings and the medium-term targets that you gave us, how should we think about what normalized net interest margin looks like for U.S. Bank with this neutral rate of about 4%, let's say?
Sure. Yeah. You know, we don't manage necessarily the net interest margin. We focus principally on net interest income. However, they obviously correlate very, very closely. Embedded in our medium-term guidance, I think the best way to explain it is that north of 3% is something that seems reasonable given the medium-term targets that we've laid out, and that includes the growth that we're seeing. We think that there's just a natural trajectory of growth, both in NII and in interest margin. I think the things that will kind of tilt it in terms of how fast do you get there, it's loan growth and it's the shape of the yield curve. If loan growth is faster, if the yield curve is steeper, those will be faster components for us to grab net interest margin increases, and the opposite would be true as well.
If we could just double-click on this, you had a very good slide, excellent actually, on betas at Investor Day. Asking maybe a similar question differently, as we think about a neutral rate again, 3.25% or 4% or 3.75% rather than 4%, how should we think about what your natural deposit costs look like? Clearly, there have been some acquisitions and partnership with State Farm in terms of how your deposit base has shifted a little bit over the short period of time. How should we think about natural deposit costs for the company?
Yeah. You know, there's a couple of different ways you can look at it. And ultimately, we use beta as a helpful driver to kind of tell investors the direction of where deposit rates are going. But roughly, if you look at where Fed funds is versus where deposit rates are, we're about 50% or so, give or take. And that's probably the right long-term average to have over through the cycle is kind of how I would think about it. In terms of deposit betas, because that is helpful in terms of the direction of where deposit rates are going, we were at 38% this last quarter. We anticipate being mid- to high 40s going into the first quarter and then beyond that. If there are cuts, then we'll get into that fit north of 50% area is what we anticipate.
And so along with that, what we're doing is thinking about the mix and profile of our deposits. You've just mentioned our deposit profile has changed over the years. And that's true. But at its core, we're very happy with the mix that we have. We have 50% retail, 50% wholesale. On the retail side of things, we've been very much angled toward reducing CDs, improving savings, and checking accounts and things of that variety. So the team's very much focused on that. And then as well on the commercial side, it's reducing higher cost deposits and really right-sizing the cost relative to the relationship that we have on those sorts of things. So those are the things that will allow us to have more pricing flexibility as we kind of move through up and down different cycles.
Great. Thank you for that.
Yeah.
Transition into payments. So Gunjan, I want to ask you about the Payment Services business, which as a reminder is 24% of net revenues, so very much top of mind for investors. You recently hired Courtney Kelso from American Express. So at the consumer side, that's 65% of the business on the revenue side. And Mark Runkel, you put him in charge of the merchant and institutional side. What does it say to investors in terms of splitting the responsibilities after the former leader's retirement in terms of how you plan to run the business line?
Erika, thank you for that. It is really about how we run the business and execute the business rather than an indication of a strategic shift in direction here. So as you know, interconnectedness is a big part of our strategic opportunity. And money movement in particular, which is another name for payments really, is a very sticky capability for a bank to provide its customers, more than a loan, more than a deposit products, because some of those can be transactional. So our conviction here is that the more we structurally embed our money movement and payments capabilities in all our products, the more enduring our client relationships will be, the more attractive that client relationship will be. So the question is easier said than done, and you have to focus on the execution of it.
When we split it with the card issuing side on consumer and small business and have that be focused on. And by the way, this split is also more consistent with market practice. When Shailesh announced his intention to retire this year, we started looking at the talent in the market, and we just saw this pattern that almost all our competitors have these two organizations organized sort of closer to the franchises that they partner with. So we were going in the direction of market practice. So now our hope is that the collaboration between Courtney and our consumer and small business, especially around Union's, especially around some of these very interesting offers we are coming up, will be tighter and the execution will be better.
And on the other side, it's exactly the same thing. We created a group called Institutional Client Group. It's led by Felicia La Forgia. That's our traditional corporate and commercial bank. That's where the lending relationships are, and the more they can collaborate to deepen, so it's an execution play and really doubling down on interconnectedness.
More broadly, yeah, how are you thinking about your ability to execute on your growth plan across the payments franchise on the back of investments that you've already made to date in this business? And it's hard for us to see from the outside, so we have to ask you this question bluntly. Do you need to invest more? How do you envision U.S. Bank's approach to the payments business over the next five years?
I was obviously very familiar with payments just over the last eight and a half years of being at U.S. Bank. But last year, I have sort of dug in more to understand. What I would say is the product is very competitive. This business has been the beneficiary of a big chunk of the investment increases that we saw in the past. Even today, it is funded at probably the highest level compared to our portfolio, but it's a stable level. We are very committed to the franchise. We'll keep committing into it, but it's in the run rate at this point. I'm also very pleased to say that the credit profile and the operational risk profile of this business is simply excellent. The downside is just very, very good here. The opportunity we have here is in optimizing our business development.
Instead of sort of trying to go at it alone through massive marketing budgets, we have an ability to be more surgical and more creative with how we go to market. So the strategies that are going to unfold over time, which have begun to take shape very much already, are focused on what I would say a creative optimized business development play. And the split of the businesses was very much a part of that equation. We've talked about the Smartly Banking, Smartly Card program. It really rewards clients for banking with us and using their card with us in a very meaningful way. So it's not traditional sort of sales approaches only. It's creating real value for the clients. So that's the transformation that we are working on.
On the issuing side, which I'll just say two more things about payments because I know it's a big topic of interest. On the issuing side, both consumer small business and corporate, which is about two-thirds of the payments franchise. The products are clean. The strategies are in place. The investments are in run rate. It really is around sort of scaling the business and accelerating growth. On the merchant side, the transformation is more measured. It's also more strategic and upside. So merchant is about 6%, 7% of our revenue for U.S. Bank. But Erika, the small business segment, which is the reason for us to have so much conviction around Elavon, is the lifeblood of the American economy. They hire the most people. That's where the growth opportunities.
We have a very large small business franchise, made larger by our presence in California. California is big for small businesses, and we are big in California. We have an upside play here with Elavon that even if it takes time, has very significant upside to a very significant platform franchise. So Elavon was created by the acquisition of Nova way back when, 25 years back. And we have steadily transformed that franchise from being what I would call a generic acquiring horizontal play to these five deep verticals where you create real value. And these five verticals are now 90% plus of the business. And about a third of the business has transformed there. But that transformation is not about just investments or marketing dollars. It's skill-based. You have to convey the value proposition differently. And you have to convey it through your branches.
You have to convey it through your digital capabilities. So those are the strategies we are working on and slightly different approaches on both sides. But we are very, very excited about what payments will do for us going forward.
So how will investors then "see" the success of payments in your results? Is it through accelerated fee growth from efforts like integrated payment solutions, or is it through accelerating balance sheet solutions to payments clients?
Both. You'll see it through the P&L of the payments, which we are unusual in sort of publishing. And the balance sheet side is a very important part of our story there. It's a growing portfolio. And as we rebalance our balance sheet going forward, you'll see a lot more with credit cards. So both is the short answer.
So good answer. We wanted to switch gears to the Wealth Corporate Commercial Institutional Banking Business, or WCIB, just so that everyone knows what that acronym means. When Stephen presented at Investor Day, there appeared to be a lot of opportunities to improve that were very tangible, such as up-tiering the relationships, improving capital markets, and selective hiring in wealth. On the up-tiering of relationships and capital market side, how much does balance sheet size play a role? And how does your size and the idea that you're a regional bank play into your ability to lead deals?
So WCIB, say that fast many times, is 43% of it. It's a very, very large part of our business. What Stephen and I sort of honed in on a few years back when I stepped into the WCIB role was the fact that we have a very large balance sheet that was deployed against very marquee clients. We touch about 90% of the Fortune 1000 clients. And yet the share of fees and capital markets that we were getting against that balance sheet was less than our fair share. And when we talk to our clients, they said, if you have the capabilities, we are happy to do business with you.
So the strategy to really say we have already deployed the balance sheet and we are going to aspire to a higher return from these relationships by building out our capital markets capabilities and our Investment Services capabilities, which are fee revenue for the use of the balance sheet. So it's an ambitious plan to build out the product capabilities. We are focused on the fixed income loans, foreign exchange derivative side, so not yet wading into sort of the equity trading side because that has real significant upside to us. And every quarter, we are sort of building out that capability set and that capital markets becomes a very big organic growth opportunity for us.
So if we were to look ahead to the end of this year, what part of this is the most difficult thing I'm going to do? WCIB? What did you say? WCIB?
WCIB.
WCIB. All right. I thought you said it's faster. WCIB.
Yeah. Go either way.
Yeah. What part of WCIB would have contributed the most to the company's success?
This year.
Yep, this year.
The two places we just have a lot of tailwinds and a lot of momentum because these strategies were really put in place about 18 months back, and that's when you start to see them come through very much. We have talked about the capital market side, and just a few weeks back, we announced the creation of a new business called Global Transaction Services, and what that is, and we hired a very remarkably talented executive to run it, is we capture a very small single-digit share of the foreign exchange from treasury management payments that are going out of our own franchise for our own clients, and so the idea is to capture that share, so we have talked a lot about capital markets and that we think will deliver for us this year.
The second one is really our Investment Services business, our Corporate Trust and our Fund Services businesses. Very unique properties from within the world of regional banks. Certainly, they look more like trust bank properties. We created a few years back a business that was focused on private capital, just recognizing the burst of growth there. And that has done very, very well for us. You'll see the momentum in our trust and investment fees. So the way that works out is that private capital is hungry for balance sheet. They love U.S. Bank's balance sheet. We are not in direct competition with their core business model, and we have a very large balance sheet, so we can grow with them.
And what has been a very positive partnership is opportunities created on our Investment Services side, which really do our capabilities there have become increasingly sophisticated around private credit in particular. So we are seeing momentum there as well. So those would be the two sort of fee engines for WCIB, along with Wealth, which has been a steady growth story for us. So that's WCIB.
WCIB, it's like GCIB now, remember?
Yeah, right.
So speaking of which, not applicable to you, but let's talk about capital. John, going back to the top of the house, there's been a lot of discussions about deregulation at this conference. At your size, Category III going into Category II and "risk level," and someone who already does well on the DFAST, what does deregulation mean for U.S. Bank?
Sure. A couple of things. First of all, I would just say the regulatory environment we feel is going to be helpful for the banking and the banking industry as a whole. There are two or three things that really come to mind for us. I think Basel III Endgame, getting that finalized in a more capital-neutral manner is helpful. It just gives us more certainty in terms of the path of capital. Things like long-term debt are not as meaningful to us. We are already compliant. But if there is a pullback in that as well, that is great. That is added flexibility. And then the stress test, as you mentioned, that is an area where we have performed well over many, many years. But we have always found it frustrating in terms of just lack of visibility, understanding of everything.
So having more transparency, having a little bit more certainty around the process, and having that written down, so to speak, would be very helpful, I think, for us in the industry.
Gunjan, I thought the way you laid out your opportunities during Investor Day was very thoughtful, which would lead me to believe that if I just read the slides, that deal opportunities would be more bolt-on in nature. In your view, how important is scale for the sake of scale?
We have a lot of scale. Scale is important. Our focus is very much on organic growth. M&A is out of the table for us right now. Even bolt-on M&A, we think of it as an organic strategy because they tend to be very small. If you look at Salucro, which we did, it's a very small acquisition, but it's a very big capability to create a healthcare vertical in MPS. Really, Erika, it's really organic growth. The bolt-on acquisition is very opportunistic, so even not that much of a priority right now.
And to follow up, your businesses already seem to be quite set up to be "national" in nature. And there's clearly a lot of conversation about the missing dots in the map in the Southeast, so to speak. How critical is physical branch presence in winning commercial and payments business?
We are very committed to our branches from a consumer franchise standpoint. The brand builds with all of your product sets. You don't need to have a branch in a place to have your brand known. If you look at our portfolio today, it's remarkable. We've started as sort of a small regional bank, but today, more than 80% of our portfolio is national in nature because even our small business franchise, some of it is delivered through the branches, but much of it is delivered through a direct sales infrastructure. Our mortgage business is almost national in nature. Our view is that these partnerships that we've talked about truly build our brand in a place that is new.
And these national businesses that we are physically creating client centers, so these are not regulated branches, but these are client centers that create physical presence, build brand presence and familiarity. So we want people to know who U.S. Bank is. So you don't need to set up branches. It helps because if people see it while they're driving back and forth, your brand is stronger. And we do see the difference in sort of brand awareness where we have footprint. What we are doing with the branches, though, is really filling out the growth geographies within our current footprint. So Phoenix is important for us. Nashville is important. Charlotte has been a big presence for us. So it's a little bit of you do it in multiple ways to get to be known nationally.
Right. Great. And John, we talked about the industry perhaps redefining what excess capital means. So how are you thinking about the pace of buyback, especially if we don't see loan demand come back in the back half of the year?
Sure. So we look at a couple of things when we think about that sort of question. It's really around what is our capital target going to be? At Investor Day, we shared about 10% as our Category II target where we'd like to be from a CET1 perspective. We're at 10.6% today on a Cat III basis. So we have some glide path. We have some work to do to get to that 10% area. We know that we won't be a Cat II bank until no earlier than 2027. We know that we generate capital 20-25 basis points per quarter. So that offers us some opportunity to balance growth with distribution. And that's what we've been doing. So we started this journey just very recently with the buyback program. As you mentioned, about $100 million this last quarter. We anticipate a similar amount in this quarter.
After that, it really is going to depend on our performance, where the market is, the macro. Loan growth, as you mentioned, would be a consideration. If that's on the low end or there is just non-existence of it, then yeah, that's an opportunity for us for sure. But we have to look at that in the context of all the other things that are going on in the macro.
So sticking to you, John, clearly 200+ basis points of positive operating leverage, achieving it this year will be very impressive. Would you consider this 200+ normal course as you think about sustaining that high teens ROTCE, or do you happen to be lapping a heavy investment cycle at a time when growth and rates are in the industry's favor?
Sure. So to answer your question directly, yes, we expect positive operating leverage going forward. We talked about 200 basis points plus for the year. It's a combination of being laser-focused on the revenue opportunities in front of us. Gunjan illustrated that very nicely. So I won't repeat any of that. And then obviously on the expense side, a couple of points there. We have, as we've talked about at Investor Day, we've hit an inflection point on our investments, which is very good. We have great product capabilities. We have an opportunity here to bend our cost curve. We've been doing that and showing that over the last five quarters for sure. And importantly, we have additional levers to us, whether that's in real estate or third-party spend or additional optimization or automation type of work and things like that. So we have different levers.
So we believe the operating leverage is sustainable, and that's why we put that guidance out there.
And I wanted to double-click on that because I think it's a very important point. Maybe talk a little bit more about how your tech budget has evolved from defense to offense. And maybe describe the tailwinds that you alluded to that are perhaps from project completions and whether or not that's being reallocated to revenue-related investment spend. How much of that is going to revenue-related investment spend versus helping that positive operating leverage from the expense side?
Sure. Yeah. So as a reminder, our tech budget really is about $2.5 billion per year. About half of that is operating expense related. So that's the care and feeding of current systems, improving the systems and products and capabilities we have. And then we have capital expenditures, which are certainly for new products, new big, bold things that we are doing that Gunjan has been talking about. That had been historically two-thirds defensive and has shifted now to more offensive nature. And so we're more on the two-thirds offensive for those sorts of products right now.
I'll add some examples if you like. Employee technologies, we were just looking at this. This was a big spike up for us because we wanted all our 70,000 people, all our branch employees to be on a much different level of, and that has sort of leveled off. So you'd think of that as an example of now taking investments and putting it into new products and user experiences and new capabilities.
Got it. No, that's helpful. You talked about automation. How much time are you spending on AI investments, and what are the real best use cases for a bank like yours?
Sure. We do. We spend some time on AI for sure. It's an area that is part of that technology budget, so there's nothing incremental here, and we anticipate that to continue to grow. The areas of opportunity for us are a number of things: anti-fraud or just looking at fraud in real time, certainly things on the marketing side of things, and then automation and/or helping our call centers. Maybe I'll just give you an example just as how it is, and it's not all about AI, right? It's about how do you utilize AI and then improve your processes and training that goes along with it. Our call centers as an example, the AI can help you find next best action for a call center representative that's on the phone or online or whatever with a client.
And it allows what are the best options for it and with easy access for that call center representative to find out that solution. And from there, while that's helpful, that's the AI part. But then you have to have the process. Where does that get into the call center process and the training so that the individual can not only help with the solution to their problem, but maybe even offensively say, "Hey, you have this problem. Did you know about product XYZ?" That can allow you to solve that going forward. And so it can be solved in a couple of different ways. That's where the AI is going to be helpful in certain areas for us. And we think that will be more beneficial as time goes on.
So before we get to the last two questions, one each, I wanted to remind the audience that if you do want to ask a question, you can scan the QR code at the tables, and I'll receive it via this iPad if you do want to ask the panel a question. So rounding out the discussion on operating leverage, as we look out beyond 2025, should positive operating leverage be driven more by revenue growth or expense management?
Sure. I think, well, we're not giving Q2 guidance or anything, but we did give medium-term targets, and that would imply, yes, that we anticipate certainly this year positive operating leverage and going forward, and the answer is yes on revenue and expenses. It's a combination of those things. It's, again, laser focus on the revenue opportunities in front of us. We have key initiatives that Gunjan has laid out, and the teams are very much focused on those things, and then on the expense side, we've hit that inflection point. We feel like we have a lot of levers to manage expense, so a combination of those things gives us confidence about operating leverage moving forward to hit those medium-term targets we talked about at Investor Day.
And so finally, Gunjan, I always say this to investors, and I say this with positive implications. This is not your father's U.S. Bank, right? Low efficiency, heavy capital return. And you clearly went through a heavy investment period, as you noted in Investor Day, and now you're looking forward. What do you think is the most underrated part of the story that you think investors are not factoring into the earnings power of the bank?
Thank you, Erika. The prudent risk management over the business cycle continues to be very much our DNA, and investors should like that. And I appreciate that being part of the story. The piece that I think is very underestimated is the question mark around our execution capabilities, which I think is just wrong. If you look back over just the last two years on what we have done, the Union Bank integration was done in less than six months. We took $1 billion in cost out, and we cleaned up all of their regulatory issues. That's good execution. Our timing coincided with a banking crisis, and you saw the swiftness and determination with which we built capital back, which was a very important priority for us and the investors. As we entered 2024, we as the leadership team shook hands on getting our expenses under control.
We now have five quarters of flat expenses with runway ahead of us, two quarters of positive operating leverage, and in a sustainable way. We execute when we put our minds to it. I think that part of the story is underestimated. When we say we are at an inflection point and our attention as a team is now on organic growth and delivering in a consistent fashion, the medium-term targets we have laid out, we will execute against that. That's the underappreciated part of our franchise.
For the record, you did say organic growth about four times during this presentation. I think that's also perhaps underappreciated by the market.
Thank you.
So I don't see any questions on the iPad. Any questions in the audience from any old-fashioned mic for Gunjan? We do have a mic. All right. Well, Gunjan, it was a pleasure to host you and John. And I know on behalf of the market, we wish you guys the best of luck.
Thank you, Erika. Much luck to be here.
Thank you.