The Charles Schwab Corporation (SCHW) 2023 Fall Business Update (Transcript)

For the period ending September 30, 2023

October 16, 2023 9:00 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Jeff Edwards

Hello, and welcome to the Schwab 2023 Fall Business Update. This is Jeff Edwards, Head of Investor Relations, and I’m joined today by our pair of presenters, Co-Chairman and CEO, Walt Bettinger; President, Rick Wurster; and CFO, Peter Crawford.

We have plenty to cover today, so I’m certainly going to get out of the way here pretty quickly, but let’s touch on a few housekeeping matters. Similar to past events, I’ll be helping facilitate Q&A. And another friendly reminder to please adhere to the one question, no follow-up format. As always, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your friendly IR team with any clarifying or other reconciling questions.

The slides for today’s business update will be posted to the IR website at the beginning of Peter’s section. And finally, the forward-looking statements page in all its glory, which reminds us all that the future is indeed uncertain, so please stay in touch with our ongoing disclosures.

And with that, I’ll turn it over to Walt.

Walter Bettinger

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our October business update. Rick, Peter and I are excited to share good news with you as we review our third quarter. You’ll hear about our tremendous progress in the conversion of former Ameritrade clients over to Schwab, our ongoing success serving clients and gathering assets, the significant opportunity for ongoing organic growth and marked improvement in some of the key indicators that have attracted outsized attention recently, including the pace of client cash realignment.

But maybe most importantly, you’ll hear about the consistency of our strategy, our ideal positioning in the fastest-growing segments of the investment services industry, our ever strengthening position as the low-cost provider, the world-class trust and confidence our clients place in us, our superior pretax profit margins even during one of the most difficult environments possible for our financial model and our commitment to disciplined ongoing investments designed to drive organic growth for many years to come.

Now certainly, I understand that the overall backdrop of the environment today is decidedly negative. And I understand that for some, it might be easier to look at the near-term challenges we face at Schwab. I encourage you to consider the entirety of our position and the potential it creates for the future.