Good day, and welcome to the Stifel Financial Fourth Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Joel Jeffrey, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. I'd like to welcome everyone to Stifel Financial's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Conference Call. I'm joined on the call today by our Chairman and CEO, Ron Kruszewski; our Co-Presidents, Victor Nesi and Jim Zemlyak; and our CFO, Jim Marischen. Earlier this morning, we issued an earnings release and posted a slide deck and financial supplement to our website which can be found on the Investor Relations page at www.stifel.com. I’d note that some of the numbers that we state throughout our presentation are presented on a non-GAAP basis, and I would refer to our reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP as disclosed in our press release. I would also remind listeners to refer to our earnings release, financial supplement and our slide presentation for information on forward-looking statements and non-GAAP measures. This audio cast is copyrighted material of Stifel Financial Corp and cannot be duplicated, reproduced or rebroadcast without the consent of Stifel Financial. I’ll now turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Ron Kruszewski. Ron?

Thanks, Joel. Good morning, and thanks to everyone for taking the time to listen to our fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings conference call. Before I get into our results and our outlook, I do want to take a minute to send our thoughts and prayers to the people of Los Angeles who have been dealing with the ongoing tragedy. Along with our colleagues and clients, we join everyone in thanking the first responders for their efforts for many of the devastated communities. Now on to our call. As you can see from our results on Slide 1, 2024 was an exceptionally strong year at Stifel, as we generated record net revenue driven by another record year in Global Wealth Management. And within our institutional segment, we generated our second-highest annual revenue as this business continues to rebound from the very difficult operating environment we experienced in 2023. The increase in institutional revenue of more than $360 million was an important factor in our ability to realize the operating leverage in our business model as it more than offset the decline of $110 million in net interest income, which was due in large part to the Federal Reserve rate cut. Overall, we generated a pretax margin of more than 20%, a return on tangible common equity of nearly 23% and a 46% increase in our earnings per share. I'm pleased with our 2024 results, given the fact that we are still not back to what we believe is a normalized operating environment, particularly in our institutional equities business. I stated on our call last year that we view 2024, as a transition year to 2025, and we were not expecting our institutional group to return to normalized productivity levels. Well, this is pretty much how the year played out.…

Thanks, Ron. Looking at our fourth quarter results, we generated record net revenue of $1.36 billion which surpassed our prior record set in the fourth quarter of 2021 by 5%. The strength of our performance was widespread as each of our revenue line items generated meaningful growth from the prior year. Commissions and principal transactions increased 15%, as both wealth management and our institutional group once again generated double-digit increases. Investment Banking increased by nearly 50%, driven by strong increases in both capital raising and advisory revenue. Record asset management revenue was up 23%, reflecting organic growth and market appreciation. Net interest income was essentially flat with the same period a year ago but increased 5% from the third quarter and came in above our quarterly guidance. I'd also note that our cash sweep balances increased by $1.3 billion during the quarter, which is the second consecutive quarter we've seen these balances grow. Fourth quarter earnings per share totaled $2.23, which increased nearly 50% from the same period last year. On Slide 4, you can see our results changed from the fourth quarter of 2023 and how they compare to consensus estimates. In terms of net revenue, we beat on every line item as revenue came in nearly $80 million or 6% above the Street forecast. Investment banking revenue was the largest contributor, accounting for more than half the total revenue beat. While higher advisory revenue was the primary driver, we also surpassed expectations for both equity and fixed income underwriting revenue. Transactional revenue was 10% ahead of the Street due to a significant beat in fixed income. Asset Management revenue was 1% higher than the Street primarily due to a higher fee capture rate, as well as increased third-party sweep deposits. Net interest income was 3% above the Street…

Thanks, Jim. Let me conclude by going over our guidance for 2025. As I said earlier, we entered 2025 well positioned to CapEx and what appears to be a stronger running environment than we've had in the past few years. In terms of revenue, we are guiding to total net revenue of $5.25 billion to $5.75 billion as we anticipate growth in both operating revenue and net interest income. In terms of operating revenue, we are targeting a range of $4.15 billion to $4.55 billion. We expect Wealth Management revenues to grow as investors continue to redeploy cash into the market and client assets growth and recruiting and market appreciation. Institutional revenues are expected to benefit from increased investment banking activity, as well as continued growth in transactional revenues, particularly in our fixed income business. As we stated before, we believe that we are relatively agnostic to further rate changes due to the mix of our assets and deposits. As such, we anticipate net interest income growth to be driven by balance sheet growth. Our NII guidance for the year was $1.1 billion to $1.2 billion. We estimate that every $1 billion of balance sheet growth results in approximately $0.20 to $0.25 of earnings per share. Currently, we are forecasting balance sheet growth of $3 billion to $4 billion in 2025. In terms of expenses, we are keeping the same guidance we had for 2024. We estimate that the compensation ratio to be 56% to 58% and the non-compensation operating revenue to be 19% to 21%. In 2024, our improved pretax margin was a result of a lower non-comp operating ratio as the compensation ratio remained flat. Given our assumption that all our revenue line items will increase in 2025, we would anticipate some leverage on the compensation ratio. So…

[Operator Instructions] We can take our first question from Mike Brown with Wells Fargo Securities.

Good morning Mike.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Ron, I wanted to start on the wealth side. I guess, organic growth has been a little bit soft in 2024 for the industry. And you guys mentioned that the pipeline is strong. So you expect the organic growth here to increase in '25 versus '24? And I guess what's the catalyst that's going to really get some of these advisers to kind of make the move? What's going to get them off the sidelines.

Yes, it's a great question. I think that, as I've said many times, we are recruiting the long-term game. We've been doing it a long time, and it has ebbs-and-flows dealing with lots of factors, some of which include compensation, transition packages, client engagement and frankly, good markets. And in times like this, and we've seen two years of 20% increases in the markets and fee-based assets increasing. Bottom-line is that recruiting in my experience generally slows during those times because transition packages are based on trailing 12 and trailing 12 is going up pretty consistently. So that's where it is. But look, as I look forward, I think '25, I had to say today, '25 will be a better recruiting year in terms of numbers when I look at our pipeline and the people we are talking to. And so I'm optimistic. But if you look long term, what the success of the long term and the foundational aspects that we've done to support our recruiting growth are stronger today. So look, I'm confident, but there's ebbs and flows. That's why we don't give any specific guidance.

One thing I'd add to that, as you think about 2025, we'll also be closing the B. Riley transaction probably in the first half of the year. And that could add somewhere between 30 and 35 advisers, somewhere around $18 million to $20 million of T12. So something to consider in your forecast as well.

Sure.

Okay. Great. Thanks for that color. I just judge gears to the 2025 guidance, one of the things that stood out to me is the bottom end of the comp range, the 56%. When I look back, 58% has kind of been the historical spot for Stifel. And just given the momentum across the franchise, it does make sense that you could certainly get to that level. I guess, curious what would drive you towards the bottom-end of that range in '25? And then if you play this forward and the capital markets recovery continues into '26 and markets remain supportive. Is there enough comp leverage to eventually go below 56%?

Yes, it is a great question. And -- and again, there's -- I wish it was as simple as just putting a couple of numbers in the calculator, right, and giving you the answer, it is not because of various factors that we've discussed numerous times in this call, primarily the need to be competitive and in the marketplace. And in times like this, the recruiting and the need to protect our franchise is acute, all right? It just -- it is and it has been. But the one factor that I’d say, is that happened last year as an illustration, we stayed consistent with our 58% comp to revenue. And I feel that that's really managing it because in NII, which is a positive contributor to our leverage in the comp ratio actually declined. As we go forward, we expect NII to grow. And as that grows, that provides the ability to have a little more flexibility in our comp ratio. Also, productivity will increase. That also helps. We also run our -- a lot of our investments through that number, right? So we made some significant investments, and that's running through. So net-net, I'm comfortable with 56% to 58%. I'm confident as we increase NII, we can see leverage to reduce the comp ratio, but we are always going to be cognizant of our competitive position relative to everything else.

Okay, great. Thanks for taking my question.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Devin Ryan with Citizens JMP.

Hey, good morning, Ron, Jim. How are you?

Good morning.

Good morning. Question on operating leverage in the institutional segment as the business continues to recover. And I guess, tying that to the 2025 guide range for revenues and margins. Does that in that business reflect kind of that more normalized environment, Ron, where we are recovering toward something quite a bit better than we've been in. And as we think about margins, specifically in that business, you were 0% in 2023, 14% this year, 20% in 2020, 26% in 2021. So I just want to think about kind of -- are we -- in 2025 that normalized number of revenues? And then what does the margin get back to when the business does normalize, if it's not in 2025? Thanks.

Not quite sure I -- what do you want me to assume 2025 to be -- that's why I can answer your question.

Yes. I'm just getting at, is the '25 guidance reflecting kind of a normalized investment or institutional segment revenue and margin? Or -- are we still normalizing towards that which would imply that there is still quite a bit of upside even beyond the 2025 number is really what I'm getting to.

Yes. Look, Devin, I'll say I'll let Jim, he can add color to what I'm about to say. We've been pretty conservative even getting to talking about $8 and talking about rebounding and what's the earnings power. And we talked about a retracement from say, $2.2 billion in institutional revenue that dropped to $1.2 billion with no margin, as you said, to about $1.6 billion, which is pretty much what we said that we thought would happen. And we talked about that getting to $1.8 billion that would begin to normalize. Okay, 2021 was an extraordinary time, pulled forward a lot of business into that time frame. I didn't view that as a normalized operating environment, I viewed it as having a lot of factors that doesn't mean it is our ceiling. It just means that -- that's not necessarily normalized. So look, what I would say would be that we are looking towards those margins in institutional, which, by the way institutional business does not get any credit for NII for the most part. We keep that in the bank and wealth, and there are some benefits. But look, I target in my mind as we normalize as that margin should get around 20%. And in good markets, it can be higher. The real question is going to be, is how does 2025 play out. We have and economy. We have a set of factors, including a normalization of the rate curve, a deregulatory environment, an administration that appears to encourage M&A versus discourage M&A, a huge pent-up amount of supply, if you will, of companies and private equity that need to return money to limited partners. That's going to drive capital raising that's going to drive M&A. So if this plays out, absent some geopolitical or some extraneous event that certainly can happen, then 2025 can be a pretty good year, and we can exceed what I'm laying out now. But as we forecast, we are having the same conservativeness that we always have.

As you think about the normalized environment in 2025, in essence, we would be guiding to, call it, $200 million of additional revenues. And so we would be able to theoretically get to that 20% margin. Any enhancement from there is really going to be a function of some of the efficiencies we are trying to obtain with our international operations, both across Europe and Canada. Obviously, we recently announced the acquisition of Bryan, Garnier which will close at some point in 2025. There's various steps we are taking there to improve profitability. And it really takes achieving the efficiencies we're talking about there internationally, to see any upside to the 20%.

Yes. Okay. That's great color, guys. I appreciate it. And then net interest income obviously, very good outlook there as well, relatively resilient NIM outlook, healthy loan demand. Let me to dig into kind of where you are seeing the loan demand come from? And then more broadly, how you would frame just loan demand today? You've obviously widened the funnel within kind of your channels? And then just what current capacity looks like for lending as well? Thanks.

Jim?

Yes. So you look back to 2024, we grew loans in a similar defensive posture more than $1 billion. And I think as we look to 2025, it would be more of the same. I think you're going to see a focus on both fund banking and venture lending, as well as the retail lending. The retail lending is a little harder to predict. We grew several hundred million dollars in our mortgage portfolio in the past year. So I think you can see continued growth there. And from an SBL perspective, our securities-based lending, we saw some tick up recently in loan growth there. But again, that was a little bit harder to determine. But those are the areas where we are going to see most of the capital allocated to in terms of loan growth as we look forward to 2025.

All right. Thanks a lot. Thanks Ron.

Loan demand is strong.

Thank you. And we will take our next question from Bill Katz with TD Cowen.

Great. Thank you very much. I appreciate. Good morning everybody, and thank you so much for your guidance and color. Just some of the items that you didn't explicitly forecast. I was just sort of curious, given -- I think you mentioned in your press release that there was a little bit of erosion in the credit book. I wonder if you could talk to how you sort of think about the normalized provision for 2025. And then Jim, I was sort of curious, just how we think about the tax rate for the year, and underneath that, it seems like you assuming flat share count, but how do we think about capital deployment? Is it all sort of bank lending at this point? Or are there other opportunities? Thank you.

Before Jim answer that, are you asking us to expand our guidance -- but other than that, Jim, you answer.

Well, I'll touch on -- we talked about the provision expense during the quarter, and that's kind of a guide as you think forward. But in the quarter, the provision was slightly elevated, we referenced the macroeconomic forecast. And so basically, what you are seeing there is a higher interest rate environment for a longer, you're also seeing credit spreads widen in later 2025. Those things drive additional provision expense within the CECL model. Now where that forecast is going to go as we think forward into 2025 is very hard to predict. The CECL calculation is somewhat dependent upon that. So we're not going to try to predict where that forecast is going but that's really what had the impact on the fourth quarter. In terms of the tax rate, obviously at a little over 8% in the quarter, it came in well below where we were originally thinking. If we essentially hold the stock price where it's at today, which again is very hard to determine or make an estimate of, we'd have a pretty big benefit next year. So historically, we've talked about 25% to 26% in terms of a full year effective tax rate or quarterly effective tax rate. But again, this year we were around 21% and absent a material change in the stock price, I would expect around maybe a 20%, 21% effective tax rate. Again, that will be backloaded into the fourth quarter, just given how the accounting works for that specific discrete item. But 20%, 21% with the stable stock price is a good way to think about it.

Bill, and you can just think about it. We don't really disclose, but I will say that the way our stock based compensation works, we have we generally just have a little bit longer. We have five and seven year type deferrals. So we're distributing stock for tax purposes that we issued a number of years ago. And so this is -- as long as you have a rise in stock price is pretty consistent. And with our performance in the last year was even more significant. So even if we just held here, we have a number of historical stock grants that were issued at lower prices that will deduct for tax purposes at higher prices. And that's why I think what Jim said, at these levels, we would look next year and say, oh, this is nice.

Okay. I was wondering if you might comment on sort of how you think about capital allocation. It seems like maybe bank growth is the primary focus for '25 of maybe incorrect on that. And then relatedly, as a follow-up, just sort of curious, you mentioned the client cash has improved a little bit. I think wanting to get unpack the seasonal dynamic to the end of the year and how things are trending in the early part of 2025 in terms of client cash trends? Thanks.

Yes, I'll give Jim hit the trends and maybe a little more detail. With the first part of that question. Yes. Look, I think if you do the numbers and you talk about balance sheet growth, you put capital to that and then you look at our increase in our dividend of 10% and then you put in some stock repurchases, you will conclude that we're building capital, okay. Meaning that we have some excess capital that we will be thinking about how best to deploy that based upon the opportunities that present themselves to us. As it relates to the capital build, I've been pleased with really -- I can go back a few years and Jim tell me when, but I'll say even four, five years ago, we really had no commercial deposits or very few. And now today, because of the investments we've made in venture lending, we’ve seen significant growth and I think, we're just getting started in our commercial deposits relating to our venture business. That trend if you want to pick up from here, Jim, but I wouldn't say it was anything really seasonal. It's more that we're getting that business going.

You think about the growth in the fourth quarter, obviously we talked about the increase in the Suite program and that was nice to see for a second consecutive quarter. We have seen that pull back a little bit in the last week or two. Some of that kind of moves around from a day-to-day basis. You could see $100 million swings in and out on a day-to-day basis there, but it has pulled back some. We have seen continued strong growth, as Ron mentioned, within the venture deposits. If you go back to the fourth quarter, we had over $700 million of additional venture deposits we brought on to the platform during the quarter. We've been more in-line of, call it, $300 million or $400 million a quarter. I think as we look forward, if you're trying to run rate that, that $300 million to $400 million might be a slightly better number. But we just had a strong end of the year in terms of bringing deposits on. So I think that kind of gives you an update kind of through at least yesterday of where we stand in terms of cash balances.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Alex Blostein with Goldman Sachs.

Hey, good morning guys. Thanks for the question. I mean I think it's pretty widely expected for the capital markets dynamics to improve in 2025 and into '26. We've talked about for a little while. I guess if you look at your investment banking business and definitely not asking you to put an explicit number on this. But if you look at where that peak back in 2021, with the forces in play, how do you think about the peak revenues for this business? In this current cycle, any KPIs you can provide us to think about either in terms of Senior MDs in the banking division or anything else to kind of help us frame the opportunity set in this business for the next couple of years.

Yes. You -- it started at maybe the product level and then the segment level and what we're expecting and as we look at it today. So first of all I think the environment is going to be a lot better. You got to remember, I said you had this -- for a lot of the banks our size, you had the SPAC phenomenon that drove a lot of business that was sort of a backwards IPO, as we all know. So I'd like to -- one of the things I'd like to do is see the administration make capital raising the jobs act, if you will, which I think has a good chance of reenergizing the markets. So what I would say, I'm not really going to try and Jim can talk about what he thinks about our numbers. I'm not kind of put a cap in any of our numbers. It's going to be driven, though, by where we really have seen a growth, and that is in financials, health care, consumer and tech. If you ask me today, I would say certainly the financial looks -- markets look strong, consumer and industrials look strong. Health care has taken a little bit of a breath here trying to understand what's going to happen with the new Secretary and et cetera. But altogether, as you said Alex, it's going to be a good environment. We feel that we have more capability than we had in 2021. But I'm reluctant to put some numbers on that. Albeit to say I think it's going to be a better year than '24.

So specifically to some of your questions related to MDs, we did disclose the number at 212 in terms of MDs as at the end of the year. And with the Bryan-Garnier transaction, we'll be bringing on an additional 33. But I would just say, Ron talked about ECM and SPACs and whatnot leading to some of the pretty substantial level of revenues for banking in 2021. But we've made a lot of investments and M&A bankers. And I think as we sit here today, we do see the M&A levels reaching similar to what we saw in 2021, given all those investments we've made across our platform across various different industries, as we sit here today and think about the financial vertical, our announced pipeline is 3 times what it was a year ago. So it gives you some idea of what we are looking at today.

Announced. And I think that's a fair point that I focus on the ECM, the capital raising of 2021. But I think what Jim just said, I want to just underline which is that, that was a little bit more market-driven, capability-driven when you look at our team we are putting on the field. You can look at M&A. And M&A is reaching those levels of peak market. So that's just underscoring what Jim just said. And look, Alex, I do think it is going to be a good environment for ECM.

Yes. That's really helpful color. Second question, just around non-comp expense growth. When you normalize for investment banking gross-ups and loan reserves. It looks like you guys have been pretty consistently in sort of 10-ish percent year-over-year growth for the last couple of years and not comp expense. Your guidance implies, I think, something similar to that for 2025. Any framework to think about how you can sort of bend this cost curve for a little? What's driving sort of this pace of expense growth. So anything else you guys could provide to help us think through sort of the longer-term expectations for that expense?

Look, because in many ways, non-comp, there is some leverage in the fact that the fixed components of non-comp rent, some of the communications and quotes and some of that is there. But the big items also are the variable components, which we believe drives revenue and drives future revenue. So we're always pretty consistent. We look at it hard in that. But if we -- where you really saw the curve bend was during the pandemic when no one was traveling and no one was doing conferences and doing all that. And we're not -- we could do that and you'd really see a bend for a year, but you might see some bending revenues going the wrong way as well. So I think we've been pretty consistent. I think we've done a really good job over years of managing margins and non-comp relative to the balance between investing and client acquisition revenues. It's an important mix and something that we look at.

And if you drill down into the 4Q numbers and what we reported, we had, call it $12 million of legal expenses. Those are very episodic. They are very hard to predict. If you exclude that from that number and you look at that from an op ratio perspective, you'd be right at 19.0%. And so again, it is hard to predict when those types of costs that are going to hit our P&L. And over time, they periodically show up. But if you look at the core kind of operating expenses, essentially was at the bottom of our range in the fourth quarter, and that shows some of the potential op leverage absent some of those episodic costs.

Awesome. Great. Thank you guys.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Steven Chubak with Wolfe Research.

Hi, good morning Ron. Good morning Jim. Hope you’re both well.

Thank you Steven.

I wanted to ask on the FIG business. The performance has really started to improve. That full year revenue number of $390 million, it's approaching a previous record as we look at an environment with the recent steepening in the curve, potentially sparking some increased engagement from the depositories in particular, just how you're thinking about the revenue potential for the FIG business especially since we haven't seen a normal environment with the contribution from Vining Sparks, and just what it can generate in the absence of further trading gains?

I will let Jim give some color, but I think he said in his remarks that he saw growth in that business. I think your words were especially in fixed income, what you said you put in numbers to it. So look, we made some investments. We've made some investments in our structured business, our securitization business, we made hires in the SBA business and then the Jenny type business, all of which are on the origination side of products that go into so call it Vining Sparks and our depository business. And you're seeing an environment with the normalization of the yield curve and some of the credit spreads and a number of things coming together that I think bodes-well for fixed income. In many ways, our timing on Vining Sparks was a little challenged relative to what happened with rates and bank balance sheet. But the good news is we had a great integration. We kept all the talent and now we're reaping the benefits of that. So I -- look, I think part of it is it's a good environment, and part of it is, is that we put some capabilities in place that in the market didn't allow us to show you what those capabilities would be able to do in a better environment. And I think you'll see that.

I'd just supplement that by saying, obviously, the rates is our biggest business, right? And if you see banks start to engage in trading activity, I think that bodes well for an environment for us. The other thing I would say, just generally speaking, is we did have some trading gains throughout this past year. And so as you think about the growth potential, I think we are talking about the core business, but some of those lumpier trading gains are a little episodic in nature, and I wouldn't necessarily run rate those.

Yes. And importantly, when you get to -- when you look at our businesses and how we manage business, importantly, how we manage risk. I just want to just reiterate that we are seeing a lot of this but you don't see us taking on risk on our balance sheet. You don't see us getting transactions done because we are taking a slice of something and putting it on our balance sheet. So the principal risk and the risk-adjusted returns on our fixed income business are quite high. And I’d be remiss if I didn't also mention that within fixed income, we just had a phenomenal year in public finance, all right? And our public finance team deserves a call-out on this call as to being #1 in market share in number of transactions, we become really relevant, maybe not in the biggest deals, but across America when you're talking about financing schools and housing and all of those things. Our team has done a phenomenal job. And that our look forward in that segment is also very positive.

That's really great color. And for my follow-up, I have to ask on sweep cash, Jim, and I'm really trying to help you here since you noted that sweep cash balances so far in January are down just given the magnitude of the growth that we saw in 4Q. I was hoping you could explicitly quantify the reduction that you've seen in January? And what level of sweep deposit growth is actually underpinning the NII guidance for the coming year.

So in terms of -- I won't give you an exact number, but the sweep balances are down probably a couple of hundred million dollars in January. Again, two weeks ago, they were up a couple of hundred million dollars. That number moves around a lot. I'm not going to sit here and try to predict where they'll be reported at the end of January. But generally speaking, we feel good about a linear step up in some of those balances over 2025.

Jim, January, in my experience, is for investor dynamics, a number of things that happen, reallocation, people re-getting into the market if they did tax loss selling. In January, generally, is -- sees a decline in balances, as investors start engaging in the new year. So I wouldn't put too much into that, Steve.

Okay. And the other question you talked about is kind of the underpinning for the '25 forecast. And I'll just say we are including in our forecast that all of the loan growth we are talking about of $3 billion to $4 billion is fully funded by smart rate and venture deposits. If we were to see more of a build across the suite balances, that would be incremental performance in terms of NII that we could predict.

That’s great color, Jim and Ron. Thanks so much for taking my questions.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Brennan Hawken with UBS.

Good morning, Ron and Jim. Thanks for taking my question. Ron, you referenced the expectation of comp leverage moving forward, which makes a lot of sense given your outlook for revenue growth. I'm hoping you could maybe help me unpack what happened though in the fourth quarter because both segments actually sort of beat us on the comp ratio, but the firm wide missed by a bit. So could you maybe unpack what caused that disconnect?

I could jump in there, Ron, and jump in as you want to supplement that. But generally speaking, you see more of a fill of the admin accrual late in the year, right? So you are filling the buckets across the models for the commission base, the formulaic, more based institutional folks and a good portion of that kind of what's left over fills admin in that pool. And that just historically is back-end loaded in the year, and that's what's reflected in that segment.

So Jim is saying that our senior bonuses finally got funded. I asked the same question myself, okay? I think it is -- we had forecast, I thought we signaled that we'd be at 58%. And it's hard to look at that linear. I appreciate the question. I think you pointed something out, but it is kind of normal. Historically, though, we have seen a little more comp leverage in the fourth quarter. That's a fair question. I wouldn't try to discern any feature trending in that.

Fair enough. And cheers on that accrual -- okay.

I would say to Jim, what if we had a bad December and he kind of found at me. So I'm not sure what he was saying, okay, but fair enough.

Great. For my second, I'd love to ask a little about institutional. So one of the things -- number one, your fourth quarter advisory was just a lot stronger than the public data normally suggests. So was there a lot more private or smaller deals represented in the advisory this quarter? And do you think that's going to continue based upon the pipeline that you have today? And we've also heard some concerns from investors about recent poor performance of IPOs, a couple of the broken price. What do you think the implications of that could be? I think that it might be --.

I think first of all, I think -- I always try to not only track our see the correlation between our reported results or when I see coming in and what gets reported as activity. And in time for us, we do – we are more middle market. And I just don't feel that those services that you are relying on to try to generate will tend to undershoot our actual performance in good times. We're just doing a lot of transactions. Some don't get picked up. I'm not sure I know the answer to that. But that's -- that doesn't surprise me because I do the same thing. I'm trying to understand and trying to understand the market and I look at reported results, and I'd say where do these numbers come from? So I'm not sure if that answered your question, but I don't see a lot of correlation. Again, it tends to understand.

It's under the radar, right? Like just got it. Fair enough

We also do more private deals, which tend just not to get picked up.

Yes, that's what I meant by that. So that makes a lot of sense. Then any thoughts on implications of the broken IPOs?

In the what?

The IPOs that have broken price recently and whether or not that might have an impact?

Well, it's on balance, it's not relatively positive. I think it's the -- there's a lot of things that some are maybe being taken out of some of the valuations here. And I think it is a natural progression. It can be healthy. It's price discovery. You would rather see positive performance. But the fact remains that there is a tremendous amount of business that has to be done in the private equity side and a lot of capital needs to be raised into an environment that's encouraging capital raising and M&A. So I view it as something that we need to keep an eye on, but I do not sit here with any particular concern about a few deals that broke price. I don't -- maybe I should, but I don't.

Fair. And I mean, could make M&A a more viable option if it is a sponsor looking to sell versus the public.

Yes. So I hope not, though, I want the overall -- the entire process of being able to raise capital for young companies to grow into big companies and investors to participate in the IPO market. I think at the highest level for the United States and our government and our capital markets, that issue has to be dealt with. I'm not a soapbox now, but I want to see that.

Fair enough. Thanks a lot.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Michael Cho with JPMorgan.

Hi, good morning guys. Thanks for taking my question, and squeezing me in here. I just wanted to touch on advisory productivity. Just a follow-up. I think you referenced MD count of 212, excluding Bryan, Garnier. I think that's just a little bit down from what you disclosed prior. So I think anything to call out in terms of what areas might have saw some change there? And then when we think about improvement in MD productivity into '25, I mean, I think you called out '21 M&A levels or recompending levels reaching '21. Like is that the benchmark at this point when we think about MD productivity into '25.

I think it's fair. I think part of the accounts of us managing productivity levels, frankly, without getting too specific. But I think the second part of your question contain the answer in it, okay?

Fair enough. That makes sense. Yes. No, it does. And then just in terms of recruiting, you cited strong pipeline again. You gave us kind of a relative comparison when we think about the banking pipeline. But is there some relative metric that you can help us with when we think about the recruiting pipeline that you're seeing today, maybe versus where you are at the start of '24? And how would you envision the recruiting packages to evolve with markets continuing to reach higher levels in a potentially higher for longer rate environment as well.

Yes. Look, I think I would characterize over time, okay? I feel that the competitive landscape right now is very competitive, meaning things are very high. We look at almost every recruiting situation as what is our return on investment, how does it impact our return on invested capital, so that we are very disciplined on that. And in times where people get really competitive, we may lose the marginal deal because ultimately, we don't want to dilute our return on tangible equity by at the alter of just having revenue growth. These are like CapEx – you are putting fixed cost down, and I don't like putting into some Excel spreadsheet, perennial 20% increases in the market. That just isn't going to happen. So we look at it over time. And I would say today, if there is sort of a governor, it's a very competitive environment right now, and we tend to not adjust our base, if you will, transition deals much with markets. So as markets moderate or maybe you have a little bit of a pullback, we tend to overperform in terms of recruiting.

Yeah. That make sense. Appreciate all the color. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. This concludes our question-and-answer session. Mr. Kruszewski, I will turn the conference back to you for any closing remarks.

I want to complement all of the analysts and all of the questions were very thorough and long and we might have no, I mean good, okay? And I don't think we've ever exceeded an hour on this call, we just did. But I appreciate the interest. I feel that I am looking forward to the next few calls and into 2025 and maybe even 2026. We have a good environment, and we have the -- we -- as do all my competitive peers. We sit at the fulcrum between people that have savings and people that need capital and the investment environment and the corporate activity and M&A and capital raising environment, are all going to improve, and we intend to get not only our fair market share, but we intend to increase our market share. And with that, I look forward to reporting to you next quarter. Thank you, everyone, for your time and attention.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.