The Charles Schwab Corporation (SCHW)Spring Business Update Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Jeff Edwards

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Schwab 2024 Spring Business Update. This is Jeff Edwards, Head of Investor Relations and I'm joined today by our Co-Chairman and CEO, Walt Bettinger; President, Rick Wurster; and CFO, Peter Crawford.

As you saw in earnings today, we had a nice strong start to the year, so there's plenty to cover today. But before jumping in, let's quickly cover off a few of the typical housekeeping items. The slides for today's business update will be posted to the IR website at the start of Peter's remarks. Q&A is still one question, no follow-up and let's try to limit the six and seven part questions if possible. Of course, we always encourage you to jump back in the queue if additional questions come to mind.

And as always, please don't hesitate to contact the Schwab IR team regarding any clarifying or some of the more tactical questions. And finally, the ever present wall of words that showcases our forward-looking statements and remind us that the future is indeed uncertain, so please stay up to date with our disclosures.

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

Walt Bettinger

Thank you, Jeff, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us for our April business update. So we began welcoming, the majority of our employees back to the office last October 1st. And as a result, I began traveling the country, hosting town halls and round tables to meet many of the employees who had joined us both before or during the pandemic and hear from them. In addition, I shared some of my perspectives on the economic environment, the strength of the Schwab franchise and my confidence for the future.

After having lived and worked through many economic cycles, I shared with our people that right when things often seem the darkest, they tend to turn around and begin to appear brighter. Of course, I didn't know last fall just how accurate that would turn out to be. It's a wonderful lesson in not overreacting to things that are outside our control.

As I sit here today and of course, recognizing that there are certain environmental and geopolitical risks that remain the green shoots of a turnaround in the environment are appearing and we're seeing it positively impacting virtually every area at Schwab, from investor engagement to net new assets to client cash realigning to capital building and, of course, to revenue and earnings.