JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Jamie Dimon: Erika, thank you. I do want to give a big picture about why and I do not consider 74 conservative. So the Federal Reserve reduced its balance sheet by $400 billion. $1.5 trillion came out of bank deposits. And so investors can invest in bills, money market funds. And of course, banks are competing for the cap of money now, and banks are all in different places. And some banks are started competing heavily. Some have a lot of excess cash and maybe compete less. But if you look at prior €“ and forget what happened in 2016. I think people make a huge mistake looking at that. We’ve never had this queued this zero rates. We’ve never had rates go up this fast. So I expect there will be more migration to CD, more migration to money market funds.

A lot of people are competing for it, and we’re going to have to change saving rates. Now we can do it at our own pace and look at what other people are doing. We don’t know the timing, but it will happen. And I just also want to point out that even at 74, we’re earning quite good returns. And that’s not €“ and we’ve always pointed out to you that sometimes we’re over earning and sometimes are under earning. But I would say, okay, this time we’re over earning on NII this quarter. We’re maybe over earning on credit. We maybe underwriting something else. So these are still very good numbers, and we’re going to wait and see and we will report to you, but I don’t want to give you false notions how secure it is.

Erika Najarian: And my follow-up is exactly in that line of questioning. Let’s zoom out for a second here. To your point, Jamie, the returns are still good. You mentioned that your outlook already captures a mild recession. And I’m going to reask the question I asked in the third quarter. As you think about 2023, do you think JPMorgan can hit that 17% ROTCE that you laid out in Investor Day, even with the headwind in NII and the headwind on the provision?

Jamie Dimon: Yes, we can. But a lot of factors could turn that. But yes, we can. I think when we do Investor Day in May, we may give you a more interesting number, which is what do we think our ROTC will be if we have a real recession, which I think even in a real recession, it would probably equal the average industrial company, which is good. So we’re going to give you some detail around that, and those are still good returns, and we can still grow. And 17% is €“ remember 17% is very good if you compound. Some growth is 17%. Those are extraordinary numbers. And I also want to point, we don’t know exactly what capital needs to be at this point, and we have to modify that at one point.

Jeremy Barnum: And Erika, let me just add a very minor clarifying point as I want to be crystal clear about this. So as you know and as we discussed a lot, like through the pandemic in terms of the way we construct and build the allowance, while it’s anchored around our economist central case forecast, which is correctly, say, is a mild recession, through the way we weight the different scenarios and a range of other factors, the de facto scenario that’s embedded in the forecast is actually more conservative than that from an allowance perspective. So we just want to be clear about.

Erika Najarian: Perfect. Thank you.

Operator: The next question is coming from the line of Ebrahim Poonawala from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. You may proceed.

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