StoneX Group Inc. (NASDAQ:SNEX) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Dan Fannon: Right. And just to clarify because I look at the institutional segment, the 30.1 in interest and fees on client balances that was reported, there’s also — in the institutional segment, there was some consulting and management account fees that also jumped a lot to 14.4. So I just want to make sure the 30.1 is a good jumping off point to what you just said in terms of incremental, the rate upside, respectively?

Sean O’Connor: Yes. So the interest and fee income we earn on client balances is split between those two lines, Dan, so that all the T bills and overnight balances that we hold probably go into the interest line, but the FDIC sweep, right, which is based on that roughly 1.9 billion that we have, that all mostly flows through the fee income line for consulting and fee revenues you touched on. So that’s the reason, the primary reason for the big jump you saw in consulting and fee income just because that comes through as a fee as opposed to interest. That’s all aggregated down below where we kind of break out and give you the aggregated interest and fee income on client balances figure.

Dan Fannon: We think about that as a run ratable number from here or does — like that consulting fee thing or line item isn’t a one-time component?

Sean O’Connor: No, I’d anticipate both, the interest line and the fee income line. They both go up as interest rates go up during the fourth quarter.

Bill Dunaway: It’s generically bundled into consulting and fee income, but it’s really the interest split we get on the FDIC sweep is paid to us as a fee, not as an interest. So we have to put it in that line.

Dan Fannon: Got it, makes sense. And then just in the securities business, you’ve been showing — you talked about kind of the expansion into fixed income, which is going to take the ag higher and the fee per million lower, but this quarter was kind of a dynamic, the opposite, right, where the fee per million went up a lot and ADV went down. Can you talk to that and obviously the longer term trend?

Sean O’Connor: Well, I think the first thing to recognize is, and we sort of said this a year ago I guess if you want to go back and listen, but the fourth quarter last year was a pretty crappy quarter for us on the securities side. So we are comping to a weak quarter in all of those stats. So I think you should look at it sort of just setting up the quarters, I think the trend will look a little bit different than just the quarterly comparison.

Bill Dunaway: Yes. And I would also say since — yes, the ADV had trended down kind of in the securities just with getting into some of those other products that Sean touched on. But I tried to point out in my portion of the script that as interest rates go up when you’re trading in fixed income securities that the revenue side goes up because there’s just an interest component in the revenues. But you also saw the interest expense for that business going up quite a bit in the quarter as well. So we don’t show a net RPM, because it’s kind of hard to do that across all of our businesses. So we’re showing you gross. But some of that RPM expansion you saw in the fourth quarter is just because interest rates going up, if that makes sense.

Dan Fannon: Okay. But we obviously didn’t see that last quarter, so —