TD Ameritrade Holding Earnings Call NUGGETS: Where’s the Growth?, Efficiency Opportunities

On Tuesday, TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation (NASDAQ:AMTD) reported its third quarter earnings and discussed the following topics in its earnings conference call. Here’s what executives shared.

Where’s the Growth?

Richard Repetto – Sandler O’Neill & Partners: I guess the first question is on the net new assets and we just had a look whilst during the call Schwab’s number was only $16 billion of net new assets here, 60% of Schwab — I’m sorry I guess the question is where are you seeing the growth you mentioned the breakaway broker of 120 if that seems higher? Just how you are maintaining this growth rate compared to your larger peer?

A Closer Look: TD Ameritrade Earnings Cheat Sheet>>

Fred Tomczyk – President and CEO: I could say just great management, but I think we’ve been I think the first point is we set to allow earlier phase out, but not a late phase out. So, we have lots of runway to do things and those continue to work for us. When we started on this journey, it was obvious to us that things we had to do, and we just have continued to execute against that and our client service scores, our net advocate scores, I can tell you are very high, and I know I went to the most recent regional Advisor Elite conference out in Laguna Beach about a month ago, and I would say the attitude and the advocacy for TD Ameritrade inside the RIA community is actually very healthy. So, I feel very good about that and on the retail side, as I said in the call, we’re seeing client retention rates that we’ve never seen before, so people are definitely, some of it maybe they are sitting on their hands here in this market and just flattening down the hatches. We’ve also seen – there is some good growth in the accounts. We’ve seen an increase in size of the account, so we continue to – just continue to push on every button and remain very focused on this and right now it’s both just keeping the momentum up.

Richard Repetto – Sandler O’Neill & Partners: Then I guess Bill the question is on the idea you spread I know you’ve given the guidance, I’d believe that was for the year, the %1.35 to %1.40 but if you look at – are there any other more aggressive measures that you can take if the 7 year swap rate is 120, less the TD fee and FDIC fees. If the interest rate environment stayed like this, are there more aggressive measures you can take to combat that reinvestment rate?

Bill Gerber – EVP and CFO: Fred won’t let me buy European debt. I mean, essentially our strategy is to stay where we are and we’re going to have to – we don’t think being aggressive in an environment like this makes sense. We don’t want to reinvent ourselves here. So, we are going to continue to look at what the market is giving us and we still think being aggressive in the long term, although it might have a short term pop, but the long term would not be a viable strategy of course.

Efficiency Opportunities

Michael Carrier – Deutsche Bank: Just maybe on the expenses, they came in lower this quarter. You guys had mentioned just on the project Lean initiative, the efficiency opportunities that you see over time. I guess, just given this environment both in terms of rates and then (indiscernible) activity being kind of weak. When you think about, maybe what (indiscernible) in that project Lean and how much further can you go versus that near term guidance that I think you said, below that 365 for the quarter. Just trying to get some expectation on, are there further opportunities over time, versus the current run rate?

Fred Tomczyk – President and CEO: We believe so that the — (indiscernible) Lean huddles and we look at benchmarks. We actually measure what we call a new sell against an old sell and just see what the improvements are. We’re seeing very strong efficiency. So we’re actually – it looks very promising. So there are opportunities beyond what you’re seeing right now and I think it’s still early in terms of its impact on our quarterly expense run rate but having said that, I’m not going to get into – we’ll play our hand on the fourth quarter call, when we give our guidance for 2013, we’ll give more color on where we think those expenses will be over the next year but we’re not going to do it just yet.

Michael Carrier – Deutsche Bank: Then maybe on the NIM, just given where the rate environment is currently, you guys always give that activity on – if you get a 100 basis point improvement, you know what the up side is and I guess relative to where, we were at, like a 2% tenure, at 150 is there any type of sensitivity that you guys can give? Then maybe on the offset, is you have transitioned some assets from the broker to the IDA, so are there further opportunities to do that to try to offset any of the rate pressures?

Bill Gerber – EVP and CFO: Mike, I think the key here is we’re trying offset all the rate pressure, with growth and then that has been – we’ve been successful doing that for the last couple of years and your point is exactly right, if net interest margin contracts and as Fred said in his script as well. We’re obviously focused on revenue and so we’ve been able to mitigate most of that. Very difficult rate compression over the past couple of years with growth, so we’re certainly hopeful that we’ll be able to continue that into 2013, and we will reassess the 100 basis points up and what that means in terms of sensitivity, then they think of course, is as we have grown the balances, so although the rates would come down, balances have gone up, so they do obviously offset each other a bit. But we’ll give you more in ’13 in October, but that’s really where we’re at right now.