Piper Sandler Companies (NYSE:PIPR) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Chad Abraham: Yes, what I would say about ECM, I mean, for us with the start in January, we’ve done a handful of healthcare deals. And so, I would say our pace for ECM, at least for this quarter, feels fairly close to Q4 of last year and Q3 of last year, which is quite a bit better than obviously Q1, Q2. I mean, last January, February, March, I mean, we did almost no ECM. So, I would say, we’re slowly doing transactions. I would say the urgency from clients that need to do a financing this year, I think price expectations are more normalized. So, we certainly think this will be a better year for ECM. I’m not sure I would call it normalized. I mean, it’s still probably nowhere near the overall €˜20 and €˜21 fee pool size, but the flip side of that is, €˜22 was just incredibly low. So, probably somewhere in between, and that’s certainly how the year has started for us.

James Yaro: Got it. That makes a lot of sense. Just thinking about the fixed income business, they were obviously quite strong this quarter and better than most peers, and obviously there was a strong recovery relative to the third quarter. When you think about the Fed continuing its quantitative tightening, Deb, and that does drain bank liquidity. And I would imagine that would sort of dampen securities demand. Is there any risk that fixed income ticks back down to more – to closer to that 3Q level? Or should we think about this quarter’s result as a more normalized run rate for €˜23?

Deb Schoneman: Yes, James, I think I would actually go right in the middle of what you just said. We did see in Q4, activity picked up related to banks repositioning balance sheets going into year-end. And so, that’s what contributed to some of the strength that we had in the fourth quarter. At the same time, I would say, at the end of the day, let me put it this way, there’s so much that clients are just trying to figure out relative to where these interest rates are going. And as that becomes more and more clear, those clients tend to step back into the market, which is why I don’t think it goes back to the levels of Q3 that you’re talking about. Longer term, higher rates are good for the fixed income business. We just need to see more clarity in the outlook of where those rates are going.

So, in the interim, our goal is to continue to build a more diversified platform away from just the banks, which has been more of a strength of ours, especially with the combination with Sandler. So, trying to have that, what you alluded to, what’s going on with the banks’ balance sheets being a little less of an impact to our overall fixed income business.

James Yaro: Okay. That’s really helpful. Thank you so much.

Operator: And our next question will come from Steven Chubak with Wolfe Research.

Steven Chubak: Hi, good morning. So, I wanted to wanted to start off with a question you must have been asked in terms of like some of the topline trends, was probably to unpack some of the commentary around non-com, since the seasonality in your business tends to be pretty pronounced. Is the right way for us to be thinking about the non-com trajectory for €˜23, that somewhere around a $72 million per quarter run rate is reasonable, while just adjusting for seasonality? So, somewhere like the $290 million zone. Just want to make sure I’m thinking about that appropriately, because 4Q is typically the high watermark on the year.