Charles Schwab Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Charles Schwab (NYSE:SCHW) held its second-quarter earnings conference call on Tuesday. Below is the complete transcript from the call.

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View the webcast at https://event.on24.com/wcc/r/5164236/A7FC6BF86DABAEC3F805988376756A0B

Watch the full earnings call below:

Summary

Charles Schwab delivered record financial results in Q2 2026, with total revenue of $7.1 billion, a 21% increase year-over-year, and adjusted earnings per share of $1.62, up 42%.

The company attracted 1.4 million new brokerage accounts and $120 billion in core net new assets, demonstrating robust client engagement and growth.

Strategic initiatives include expanding AI capabilities, rolling out crypto trading, closing the Forge deal for private market capabilities, and enhancing banking services such as tax filing and lending options.

Future guidance remains optimistic with expectations of 17.5% to 18.5% total revenue growth for 2026, and continued focus on client asset consolidation and expanding wealth advisory services.

Management highlighted the importance of innovation and maintaining a strong platform, with investments in AI, trading, and lending expected to drive future growth and efficiency.

Full Transcript

Jeff Edwards, Investor Relations

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Charles Schwab's 2026 Summer Business Update. This is Jeff Edwards, and I'm joined this morning by our President and CEO, Rick Wurster, as well as our CFO, Mike Pradeshi. Hopefully you all had an opportunity to review our second quarter earnings release that crossed the wire earlier today. Similar to Aloha on the pitch this past Sunday, I don't think it's a stretch to frame Charles Schwab's strong results as trophy worthy.

Slides for today's business update will be posted to the IR website at the conclusion of today's prepared remarks. As always, we ask that you please adhere to the one-question, no-follow-up policy during the Q&A portion of the program and do not hesitate to reach out to the IR team with any questions following today's update. Lastly, a fan favorite of every deck, the Forward-Looking Statements page reminding us all that outcomes may differ from expectations.

So please stay up to date with our disclosures, and with that, I'll turn it over to Rick.

Rick Wurster — President and Chief Executive Officer, The Charles Schwab Corporation

Thank you, Jeff, and good morning. Thank you for joining our Summer Business Update. We'll spend our time this morning sharing detail on our record performance and diving into the reason Charles Schwab is incredibly well positioned to deliver for stockholders and clients well into the future. The financial services landscape is becoming increasingly driven by investing. We occupy the trusted center of the investing ecosystem. We're both leading today and uniquely positioned to win in the future.

There are several reasons for our confidence. First, our record results speak for themselves. Our through client size strategy continues to fuel growth on all fronts. Second, Charles Schwab is the trusted industry leader today. Our no trade-offs value proposition is unmatched in the industry as people increasingly consolidate their financial lives in one place and become even more engaged in investing. Our unique combination of strengths puts us in the center of clients' financial lives.

Third, we are winning today and our best days are still ahead of us. We have a clear strategy and we are innovating for clients at a rapid pace. We are continuing to attract new clients, deepen client relationships, diversify our revenue, lower our cost to serve, and reinvest in our growth. I'll share more today about the opportunities ahead of us. Finally, our diversified financial model supports durable earnings growth across market cycles, and Mike will dive into this along with our outlook for the year.

In the second quarter of 2026, we delivered record results and growth on all fronts. We're attracting new clients and assets with 1.4 million new brokerage accounts and $120 billion in core net new assets, up nearly 50% over last year. We're continuing to deepen relationships. Managed investing net flows increased 53% over last year. Bank lending balances reached $67 billion, up 33%. All of this translated to record financial results. We delivered $7.1 billion in total revenue and adjusted earnings per share of $1.62, up 42% over last year.

We are increasing our pace of innovation and adding to our breadth of capabilities as clients want to manage more of their financial life. At Charles Schwab, we've continued to expand our branch footprint and hire financial consultants, wealth advisors, and relationship managers for our clients while advancing our AI capabilities. Our clients are happier, achieve better outcomes, and engage more with our combination of people and technology. AI is expanding our client capabilities and enabling us to serve our clients more efficiently.

We're delivering new products and solutions across our platform at a rapid pace. There are several examples on the page, and I'll call out a few. Our Schwab Crypto rollout is going as planned, and we are on track to start piloting our crypto transfers capability by the end of this month. We believe this capability creates an attractive NNA opportunity over time. We closed the Forge deal and are making progress on bringing their private market capabilities to our clients.

When complete, we will be a premier destination for clients interested in investing in private markets, whether via a leading private manager, an index strategy, or investing directly in private companies. The scale of Charles Schwab will allow us to become the destination of choice for private companies and venture capital firms seeking liquidity options. We've made lots of progress in serving our clients' wealth and banking needs. We've added the ability to complete tax filings for clients through our third-party Tax Prep Introduction program, and we've added to our banking capabilities, including the ability for clients to leverage private assets. With Wealth.com, we'll expand our tax capabilities and introduce tax planning in addition to the insights we already provide today on client trusts. And we've made an investment in Paxos, a firm that is supporting the delivery of Schwab Crypto. These efforts continue to delight clients and earn industry recognition. Client promoter scores are at all-time highs in both Investor Services and Advisor Services, all of which solidifies our role as a trusted platform of choice for investors and RIAs.

We are the trusted platform where investors, traders, and RIAs continue to turn. We are number one in total client assets, RIA custodial assets, and daily average trades. Focusing on trading, we are the undisputed leader with the most activity on our platform and are growing faster than our peers. We're number one in daily average trades by a wide margin. We execute one third of retail brokerage trades in the industry, and we're number one in options contracts.

Our clients remain highly engaged, and we're continuing to invest to maintain our edge as the destination for traders. Leadership at this scale creates advantages that compound over time. As we look to the future, there is a convergence of forces reshaping our industry, and we are uniquely positioned to lead. I discussed these trends at our Investor Day, and we continue to see them play out. As we go through today's discussion, I will share how these forces are creating opportunity.

The bull market for convenience is driving investors to increasingly consolidate their financial lives. 61% of affluent clients ages 25 to 44 say they prefer to consolidate their wealth and banking relationship. Households with $1 to $5 million in assets using only one financial services firm jumped 11 percentage points year over year to 22%, and we expect this to grow as more investors seek the convenience of one-stop shopping in all aspects of their life.

This consolidation is happening at a time when investing has never played a more important role in the broader financial ecosystem. As recently as a decade ago, investing skewed towards higher-income, older, college-educated households. Today, stock ownership is at the highest levels we've seen in nearly 20 years. People are investing earlier in their life, and we're seeing engagement across a broader income and education spectrum. Investing is playing an increasingly central role in people's financial lives, and we believe this trend has a long way to go.

In a world where clients want to do more with one firm and investing is more important than ever, we are uniquely positioned at the center of the investing ecosystem with the ability to support the breadth of clients' needs in the channel of their choice and in the form they prefer. With our wealth offer, clients can access financial planning, full-service advice, tax, trust, and estate services, tax-aware strategies, and more. With our bank, retail investors can manage their day-to-day financial lives with checking, savings, and bill pay while also turning to us for lending needs.

The RIAs we serve value our bank because they don't have to introduce another relationship to their clients. We have the best trading platform in the industry supported by industry-leading service, as well as research, education, and coaching for traders of all sophistication levels. We offer our clients choice with third-party and proprietary products. We continue to build out a compelling alternatives offer. We've launched crypto and are adding capabilities throughout the year.

Clients are turning to us because we simplify their financial life and help them achieve great outcomes across their investing, trading, wealth, banking, and lending needs. Legacy Ameritrade clients continue to engage in our wealth and lending capabilities, and 27% of all thinkorswim users are now legacy Charles Schwab clients. These capabilities are delivered in the ways our clients want to interact as they manage their financial lives, at different times in their lives and for different activities.

Clients engage with us in person, on the phone, web, mobile, or via AI. Our clients value that flexibility, and in every interaction, across every channel, we are bringing them an experience that combines the best of people and the power of AI by using our scale to deliver exceptional value. Finally, we're building towards a technology platform that will support the industry well into the future, whether that looks like it does today or if the industry moves more towards a digital markets infrastructure and blockchain technology.

While there are clearly pros and cons to tokenized securities and it is unclear how much this market will take off, we're actively building the infrastructure to support client activity on the technology of clients' choice. With our product and capability breadth, combination of people and AI, scale with a unique platform advantage that positions us to be the financial services provider of choice now and in the future, a position that is difficult for any competitor to match.

All of this translates to delivering for stockholders. We're tackling our growth opportunities head on with two equally important growth levers: serving more clients and deepening relationships. We are continuing to attract new clients to Charles Schwab with 2.7 million new brokerage accounts opened in the first half of the year and $260 billion in core net new assets, representing year-over-year growth of nearly 20%. We're continuing to make investments that will support this growth in the future with more branches in local communities, more financial consultants, strategic marketing and advertising, including adapting our marketing to the increased influence of LLMs, the build-out of an RIA support ecosystem, and investments in bringing the breadth of Charles Schwab to our workplace clients. At the same time, we are deepening relationships with clients, meeting more of their needs while diversifying our revenue streams. I'll discuss the opportunities we have ahead. In wealth and banking, there is a bull market for advice. We benefit from that in two ways. First, our RIA business continues to grow at a record pace as more investors seek advice and guidance.

Second, more of our retail clients are seeking holistic financial advice delivered seamlessly on their terms through a combination of people and increasingly AI-enabled technology. We see consistently strong growth in net flows to both our Schwab Advisor Network and flagship proprietary wealth offer, Schwab Wealth Advisory. We're continuing to invest heavily in our Schwab Wealth Advisory offer, including in our tax, trust, and estate capabilities to make sure we can meet the needs of retail clients that want more help and guidance in their life.

And it is working. The client promoter score for Schwab Wealth Advisory is the highest of any offer. We have grown significantly. We barely scratched the surface on our opportunity in advice. The U.S. retail market is $37 trillion and growing, and we have just 2% market share. At the same time, just 5% of Charles Schwab retail households earn a fee-based advice solution. 31% of Charles Schwab clients say they are willing to pay for advice. Our opportunity to close this gap is a win-win for clients and Charles Schwab.

We're helping clients conduct more of their financial lives in one place. And clients in our Schwab Wealth Advisory offer generate three times the ROKA of our retail clients. The combination of the investments we're making in our wealth business plus the sheer size of our self-directed investor base creates an unmatched conversion funnel into advice that will delight clients, continue to fuel our growth, and diversify our economics over the long term.

A bank is an important differentiator for us. Our ability to offer checking, payments, and lending makes it easy for clients to consolidate their financial lives with us. For our RIA clients, this represents an opportunity to help the RIAs on our platform meet more of their clients' financial needs in one place. We have been focused on meeting both the asset and liability needs of our clients. Our lending balances have increased 33% year over year, driven in large part by adoption of our digital Pledged Asset Line offer.

Our digital PAL offer delights clients with consistently strong client promoter scores. We're continuing to make investments to enhance our lending offers, including the addition of structured asset lending, which allows clients to leverage their private investments and private shares. The growth opportunity in bank lending is meaningful. Today, at Charles Schwab, 0.5% of clients use one of our lending products versus 4% on average across the industry, with an average spread to securities north of 100 basis points on PALs as an example.

Narrowing the lending penetration gap as more investors consolidate their financial lives at Charles Schwab is a win for clients and a win for our economics. Let's turn now to scale and efficiency. Our ability to execute at scale continues to drive efficiencies that allow us to reinvest in growth. Our cost per account continues to decrease, and our expense on client assets is the lowest in the industry. These efficiencies unlock dollars we're investing in enhancing our AI experience, our Global Capabilities Center, and our growth initiatives.

In other words, our scale powers our reinvestment capacity and durable earnings power. We've talked about AI as part of our omnichannel experience, and it is becoming more embedded in all we do—accelerating our strategy and amplifying our competitive advantages by personalizing client experiences and enhancing productivity and driving scalable growth. Importantly, we believe our greatest advantage comes from combining people with AI-powered capabilities to create deeper relationships that scale with our clients' needs.

AI will help us attract new clients, deliver new capabilities to them, personalize more journeys, and create more opportunities to deepen relationships over time. We are making tangible progress here with the rollout of Portfolio Insights in May and the employee pilot for the first iteration of Schwab Assistant that launched earlier this month. With our combination of technology and people, our client easy scores are at or near all-time highs. AI is also driving efficiencies.

As an example, over the past year, developer team productivity has improved by 15% to 20%, and with that, I'll turn it over to Mike to share our financial picture.

UNKNOWN, Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Rick, and good morning, everyone. During my time today, I'll discuss how we converted our sustained business momentum into another quarter of record financial results. In addition, I'll cover how our approach to managing the balance sheet and financial resources enables us to support robust engagement as we seek to meet the evolving needs of our clients across different environments. I will also share an updated perspective on the full-year 2026 financial scenario.

And finally, as we continue to do more for our clients across our platform, including incorporating emerging technologies such as AI, Charles Schwab's model becomes increasingly diversified and scalable, helping to further enhance our financial durability through the cycle. In doing so, we remain positioned to continue providing individual investors and RIAs with an industry-leading value proposition. 2Q was yet another strong quarter for Charles Schwab, where the combination of our continued business momentum, client engagement, and diversified model enabled us to deliver strong outcomes well beyond the second quarter scenario we shared with you at Investor Day in May. This outperformance was a result of a number of factors, including a further acceleration in client trading activity. Through the end of the quarter, total revenue grew 21% year over year to $7.1 billion, including a 19% increase in net interest revenue versus the prior-year period due to increased utilization of our lending solutions by clients, the reduction of high-cost borrowings at the banks, and demand for long-short strategies.

Momentum within the technology sector helped lift equity markets to their best quarterly performance since early 2020, which in combination with robust asset gathering and client interest in Charles Schwab's wealth and asset management offerings drove 16% year-over-year growth in asset management and administration fees to $1.8 billion. Charles Schwab's industry-leading retail trading platform supported continued client engagement with daily average trades of 11.9 million, driving a 28% increase in trading revenue to $1.2 billion.

Bank deposit account fees grew 35% year over year due to continued improvement in the net yield, and other revenue was up 32% versus 2Q25 with stronger trading volumes as well as typical second quarter seasonality. Moving to expenses, adjusted expenses for the second quarter grew 11% year over year, reflecting strong client engagement across our trading, wealth, and banking solutions and the first full quarter of Forge. While underlying expenses remain in line with our initial expectations, we also continue to make investments in key strategic initiatives to support organic growth, new products, client experience, scale and efficiency, as well as artificial intelligence. Record quarterly revenue combined with balanced expense management delivered an adjusted pre-tax profit margin of 54.3% as second quarter adjusted earnings per share reached a record $62, a year-over-year increase of 42%. Moving to the balance sheet, demand for our secured lending solutions remains strong. Total margin balances ended the quarter at $165.1 billion, including continued growth in long-short related activity led by new pledged asset line originations.

Total bank loan balances grew to $67 billion, up 33% from 2Q25 and 16% versus the prior year end. While investment securities remain relatively flat as we continue to support client lending needs, increased lending activity helps further deepen relationships with clients and drives relative improvements to both Charles Schwab's revenue growth and mix as we earn an incremental spread to the security we'd otherwise purchase. Client cash followed typical seasonal trends, including tax payments in April, and while strong equity markets lifted sentiment and supported elevated trading activity, transactional sweep cash increased by $24.2 billion in 2Q, largely driven by demand for long-short strategies as well as organic asset gathering. Beyond the growth related to long-short, client cash trends remain strong, with year-to-date underlying cash performing better than our initial expectations coming into the year. At the same time, we continue to optimize our funding mix to efficiently meet the client demand for our lending solutions. Looking ahead, we'll keep prioritizing flexibility in managing the balance sheet to remain well positioned for different macroeconomic environments.

Capital levels remain strong with our adjusted Tier 1 leverage ratio finishing the quarter within the 6.75% to 7% range. Our adjusted ratio of 6.8% reflects our support of business growth and client engagement as well as the net redemption of preferred equity and the repurchase of $1 billion worth of common shares. Looking ahead, we will continue to apply our consistent capital management framework, including prioritizing our resources to support client activity and the growth of our franchise.

The second quarter further demonstrated the strength of Charles Schwab's model, positioning the firm to continue supporting clients while delivering strong financial outcomes over time. Now, pivoting to the full-year 2026 scenario, let's take a moment to review how certain key assumptions have evolved over the first six months of the year. At the Investor Day back in May, we spoke to a scenario that reflected flat Fed funds for the year, stronger equity markets, and increased client trading activity.

We also incorporated Forge's revenue and expenses following the acquisition's close in 1Q, and while the impact of that acquisition is not material to the 2026 scenario, it does influence the revenue and expense year-over-year growth rates. In terms of where we are today, market expectations for interest rates continue to evolve, with the forward curve pricing in 125 basis point rate hike before the end of the year. Given the strong year-to-date equity market returns, we are now assuming approximately 13% full-year market appreciation, and our asset gathering momentum reinforces our confidence in the 5% organic growth rate we outlined for 2026.

Following another quarter of strong trading volumes, we have taken full-year daily average trades up to 10.6 million. This trading assumption does include a pullback from recent monthly levels, reflecting an expected moderation in activity, in part due to the seasonal slowdown during the summer. Therefore, we would anticipate revenue per trade to increase modestly from 2Q26 levels, as rate and volume tend to be inversely correlated. Finally, today's updated scenario includes Forge but excludes the impact from any opportunistic share repurchases during the second half of 2026.

Using these updates, we would expect total revenue growth of 17.5% to 18.5% in 2026, with full-year net interest margin expanding to a range of 3% to 3.10%, and average 4Q 2026 net interest margin expected to finish in the 3.25% to 3.30% range, as the timing of the potential Fed rate hike late in the year limits the impact in 2026. Full-year 2026 interest-earning assets are expected to expand modestly year over year, and given our sustained business momentum, we now anticipate annual expense growth to range from 9.5% to 10.5%, and I would note that underlying expenses still remain in line with the 5.5% to 6.5% range we shared at the January Winter Business Update. The higher expense view is driven by a couple of factors: first, volume-related expenses as we supported client engagement, where this increase is more than offset by stronger revenue, and second, the inclusion of Forge, which contributes approximately 100 basis points to the year-over-year growth rate. Putting it all together, today's scenario implies stronger positive operating leverage and expanded adjusted pre-tax margin levels versus our prior scenarios.

Similar to past business updates, when we share a financial scenario, we have included a set of high-level static revenue sensitivities. Today's sensitivities are as of June 30th and are intended to complement the updated scenario we just walked through, helping you refine your estimates and shape your own perspective around the remainder of 2026. So to wrap up, I wanted to revisit the financial formula slide from our Investor Day. Charles Schwab's strong momentum and success over the past five decades has been driven by our focus on clients, and as Rick noted up front, we remain extremely well positioned for the future with an expanding set of wealth and investing solutions to help clients meet their financial goals. And in continuing to do more for our clients, we can drive long-term organic growth while further diversifying our revenue streams, which when combined with Charles Schwab's leading scale as well as our disciplined approach to expense and balance sheet management helps reinforce our confidence in delivering mid-teens earnings growth through the cycle. And with that, let's move on to Q&A. Jeff, operator, can you

Jeff Edwards, Investor Relations

Please kick off the Q&A portion of the program?

OPERATOR (Operator)

Thank you. We will now begin our question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one. Please press star two if you would like to withdraw your question. Again, that is star one to ask a question. Our first question will come from Dan Fannin with Jefferies. Your line is open.

Dan Fannin, Analyst at Jefferies

Thanks. Good morning, Rick. NNA accelerated throughout the quarter, capped by a record June. Was hoping you could discuss the sustainability of these trends, as well as provide some context on the contribution from new-to-firm clients versus increasing share of wallet of existing customers.

Rick Wurster — President and Chief Executive Officer, The Charles Schwab Corporation

Thanks for the question, Dan. I still believe 5% or higher is the right long-term expectation, and we remain bullish on NNA. I also expect we'll deepen relationships, and we really do see clients consolidating their financial life, with investing being more at the center, and that puts us in a winning position. And you see it in the growth of everything we're doing. Wealth—our proprietary wealth offer—flows are up 86% year to date. Power originations are up 60%.

Our number of bank accounts we have I think are up 12%. Look at all of these statistics, and it just shows that clients are doing more and more with us. And I think that helps bring more NNA to the firm as well. So it's a nice cycle. You know, as I think about our three businesses, starting with Advisor Services, I think we continue to distance ourselves from competition in the marketplace. And we see NNA and TOA both accelerating. And I think the capabilities we have are becoming even more and more challenging to match.

And as independence continues to win and RIAs thrive, we're the natural leader in the advisor space. And I expect that to drive more than 5% NNA growth, just as it has for the last several quarters. I think we're 6% plus in that business the last four quarters or so. NIS. I think that we continue to do a nice job of driving NNA. We are investing in FCS and in AI. And one of the things we observe is that even with the advent of AI, our NNA growth rates where we have a relationship already outpace those where we don't have a relationship.

So we continue to invest in making sure our clients have coverage or having their needs met. And when we do that, again, our expectation is NNA growth should be 5% or higher. Finally, our workplace business, our stock plan business, has been thriving and been a nice contributor to NNA. We have a big opportunity to increase NNA in our retirement business over time. That's an area where we could be doing more, where we have an opportunity to introduce ourselves to many working Americans for the first time.

And I believe we have an opportunity to grow our NNA there. So all in all, I'm bullish on our NNA. We remain positive about hitting 5% or higher and feel good about each of our three client-facing businesses in that regard.

OPERATOR (Operator)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Patrick Moyli with Piper Sandler. Your line is open.

Patrick Moyli, Analyst at Piper Sandler

Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. So I wanted to hit on the Record trading activity in the quarter. 12 million daily average trades. Pretty impressive. I know you rolled out crypto trading. There were also some pretty high-profile IPOs that attracted lots of retail attention. So curious what you would characterize as normalized engagement here versus what's market-environment driven and just overall how we should think about sustainability of the trading activity. At these levels. Thanks.

Rick Wurster — President and Chief Executive Officer, The Charles Schwab Corporation

Thanks for the question. We believe that the trading engagement you've seen is sustainable and it's supported by broad client participation. We've really seen a growth in young investors. I think part of that was started with the removal of commissions which brought more people into the market that had less money. We've also seen growth and comfort with options trading as people become more familiar with that as a way to add income or hedge portfolios.

I think there's been a structural shift in the amount of options trading that we'll see. The change in the pattern day trading rule is another factor that's likely to be in some of our numbers, but also likely to fuel our numbers in the future as the barriers for less wealthy clients continue to be removed in them actively participating in markets. I think AI is absolutely a benefactor in our trading levels and will continue to drive trading as people use AI to both do research on how to position themselves and how to invest as well as use AI in more of an algorithmic fashion to drive some of their trading.

So I think it is a factor. Finally, I do think the market environment is conducive and it's conducive for a few reasons. Number one, returns have been good, but we actually find client behavior to be more driven by the volatility of markets and then the, you know, the interesting activities in the market. So the fact that there's been the AI, the Mag 7, SpaceX more recently, all those things drive client interest and not just in those areas, but more broadly interest in investing.

So I think you've seen a structural shift in people wanting to be engaged and wanting to invest. Young investors. All of that is leading towards more sustained period of high levels of trading from our perspective.

OPERATOR (Operator)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Devin Ryan with Citizens Bank. Your line is open.

Devin Ryan, Analyst at Citizens Bank

Thanks. Good morning, Eric and Mike. Another question just on the June strength and want to hit on SpaceX specifically. Just get a sense of how much that mattered for the June momentum and some of the behaviors you saw around. And I guess the reason I'm asking is because if we think that's maybe the beginning of a broadening of kind of an IPO window opening, the type of multiplier you might see on that. Some of the areas that maybe still are far away from getting back to where they could be maybe like securities lending or just other areas that have some upside.

Thank you.

Rick Wurster — President and Chief Executive Officer, The Charles Schwab Corporation

Let me start with SpaceX and Mike could cover securities lending and some of the other benefits. There was tremendous interest in SpaceX from our client base and participating in the IPO. And we obviously made as many shares available to them as we could get. It drove high levels of volume into our service centers, high levels of engagement with financial consultants, with RIAs and the like. It did not meaningfully impact NNA in any way. So the numbers you see in June, you know, I know some other firms reported huge bounces in NNA from SpaceX-related activity.

That was just not the case for us. And it was more a factor of just broad-based strength in our client base.

UNKNOWN, Chief Financial Officer

In terms of the securities lending activity, we're not expecting much there from SpaceX. And so that's been somewhat of a subdued set of activities in that space this year. So not expecting much to come from that.

OPERATOR (Operator)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Bill Katz with TD Cowen. Your line is open.

Bill Katz, Analyst at TD Cowen

Okay, thank you very much, Mike. Maybe one for you as I sort of pencil out your financial guidance. I think I get something like 6.65 for the full year if I just assume about 23% tax rate and a flat share count from the second quarter. So I'm just so curious if we could dive into the share count outlook and maybe the broader question on capital return. So here's my question. If you assume that the earning assets grow a little bit this year and your NIM expands the way you think it expands, your incremental margin seems to be running about 75%.

How do we think about that use of free cash flow from here? Maybe you could unpack that between supporting loan growth, maybe more reduction on the preferred side and then common share buyback and anything you might be thinking about on the M&A side.

UNKNOWN, Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Bill. Thank you for the question. So we have seen tremendous growth this year. As you noted, loan growth has been up. That's including margin lending as well as our bank product, the pledged asset line up 59% year over year. So that has been terrific and we are of course happy to support that. We're meeting a client need, clients are deepening their relationship with us. And obviously it comes with an incremental spread over security. So you are seeing the year-over-year NIM expansion.

Primary driver was that lending activity. And of course we'll have to see where interest rates go from here. In the scenario, we assume that one hike, but that's very late in the year, that's December, doesn't impact the financials for 2026. If that hike occurred, you would see further expansion in 2027. So good expansion of that net interest margin, good engagement by our clients. When it comes to capital, same framework that we continue to think about where the resources of the firm first and foremost are going to support client needs, going to continue to drive the expansion of the franchise.

And so we feel very good about that use of resources. And so that is going to be our first priority. Beyond that, we continue to look to that capital framework and look to opportunistically return where it does make sense. We see value in returning capital in buybacks, but we see even greater value of deploying those resources into the franchise like we've done this year. And you can see as clients engage across our platform, that has been enormously profitable.

When we started the year in our financial scenario, that operating leverage in that first scenario was 400 basis points. The updated scenario has operating leverage of 800 basis points. So quite good. I think the last point of your question was around M&A. And again, we're growing organically very nicely. Again, we'll always look at our capabilities, we look at scale, so we never rule anything out. But again, we always think about that organic growth and continuing to deploy resources to carry out the firm's strategy.

Thanks for the question, Bill.

OPERATOR (Operator)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Alex Blosstein with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Alex Blosstein, Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Hi, good morning. Thanks for the question, Mike. I was hoping we could drill down a little more into the updated guide as well and specifically zoning in on Q4 NIM guidance, which I think you said 325 to 330. I think that's unchanged from the prior guide you guys provided, despite the fact obviously the environment's been a bit healthier even excluding the potential rate hike. So, you know, whether it's margin balances, that lending perhaps, etc. So just curious, what are some of the potential offsets that you see in the back half relative to what it feels like should be an improvement in the guide relative to the prior number. Thanks.

UNKNOWN, Chief Financial Officer

Thanks for the question. Keep in mind that we'll have to see how the rate path plays out. But right now we were assuming one hike, but that hike was for the December meeting. So you're not seeing that incremental pickup in 2026. If that hike were to occur, then it's going to be impacting the financials in 2027 so that we feel good about the net interest margin expansion that we've seen so far. And, you know, if rates resume a hiking pattern, you'll see even more expansion.

Again, that lending activity has been strong. That comes with incremental spread relative to securities. We continue to see cash build organically as well. Again, we've seen growth in the first half of the year despite the seasonality of 1Q and 2Q. So we think we are well positioned to see that continued margin expansion through the rest of the year and beyond. Again, there'll be puts and takes, but overall we feel really good about the trajectory.

OPERATOR (Operator)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Steven Chewbacc with Wolfe Research. Excuse me, your line is open.

Steven Chewbacc, Analyst at Wolfe Research

Thanks for taking my question. Mike, you gave some helpful color with regards to what I wanted to unpack, which is looking at that higher NIM exit rate for the year. Was hoping you can contextualize just how much of the contribution to growth is really from asset repricing tailwinds and the core loan deposit growth you were just speaking to versus some of the other sources like RIA long-short and securities lending that might be a bit tougher to predict and then just your appetite to grow the RIA long-short further from here.

UNKNOWN, Chief Financial Officer

Steven, thank you for the question. When I look at that year-over-year growth in net interest margin, the vast majority certainly was driven by that, I'll call it that lending. Both that margin lending, non-long-short, as well as the bank lending which was primarily driven by the pledged asset line. So much of that is coming from that lending activity. And of course, as I mentioned, we've seen deposits perform well despite the first couple of quarters of seasonality.

Now, in securities, we haven't grown that portfolio meaningfully. It's been relatively stable because, again, given the demand for lending, we've been happy to meet that client need. Again, I've talked about how it meets the client need. It deepens the relationship and it comes with better economics. So you are seeing some repricing of the securities book, but it's at a much slower pace given the demand for lending activities. And in terms of the long-short and RIA activities, we do see continued demand for that in the near term.

We are well positioned to continue to support that. We'll have the resources set aside to support that activity. But again, while it's grown very quickly, it's still a relatively small percentage, a very small percentage of our economics. It's roughly 1% of our revenue, but we stand ready to support it. But the expansion of the net interest margin, it's being driven by that lending activity and supported by our deposit base.

OPERATOR (Operator)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Ken Worthington with JP Morgan. Your line is open.

Ken Worthington, Analyst at JP Morgan

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe digging in further into the long-short tax benefit strategies. How big do you think these can ultimately be? Are you seeing demand accelerate here or is it starting to satiate at all? And is this ultimately a good business for Schwab? I guess like, is it good relative to the P&L and traditional margin lending business from a risk and economic perspective?

Rick Wurster — President and Chief Executive Officer, The Charles Schwab Corporation

Thanks for the question, Ken. Let me start with the growth of it. We continue to see client interest in long-short. I do think we've seen a particular surge as, if you look at the market dynamics, you know, our bigger competitors were maybe not making this as available, which probably led to a little bit of a surge. But I think we're past that now in more of a stable growth environment. I think it's a strategy that makes a lot of sense for clients, particularly those that have sold a business or have a large and concentrated position that they want to diversify out of.

Being able to generate and harvest losses against that while still largely tracking an index is quite a powerful strategy. So over the coming five or ten years, I expect this strategy will get bigger than it is today. And we want to find a way to support our RIA clients. In terms of whether it's good for the business, I'd answer that in a couple different ways. Number one, as we look at the economics and look at the ROE, we find it to be accretive, so it's good from a financial standpoint.

Number two, we think it's beneficial to the end client of the RIA because it's helping them live their best financial life. Number three, we think it's good for the RIA as a way to differentiate themselves for the client and bring a great wealth strategy to their clients. And then finally, it's great for our business because when we win the long-short business, not only do we win that business, we tend to run the business not only of the whole household, but we build the trust and confidence with the RIA.

And so one of the reasons you've seen a nice acceleration in our RIA business is because we've been there, able to support them on this strategy as they wanted to use it with their clients. So I think this has been a win for the client, a win for the RIA and a win for us in our economics and an ability to serve clients.

OPERATOR (Operator)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Brian Biddell with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Brian Biddell, Analyst at Deutsche Bank

Great. Good morning, folks. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe to switch gears a little bit to prediction markets. Can you just talk a little bit about the timing of your upcoming launch with CBOE, the binary index options? And then also they've announced that they've applied to the SEC for company financial KPI binary options. So if that were to be approved by the SEC and CBOE does launch them, what's your interest in also launching them within your franchise?

And how are you seeing maybe initial client interest in that, both from the retail and advisor sides?

Rick Wurster — President and Chief Executive Officer, The Charles Schwab Corporation

Thanks, Brian. Let me start with the first part. We are actively working with the CBOE on their rollout of binary options, but we haven't yet put out a timeline. So we'll be sure to keep you and the market updated. It is something of interest to us and we're working on it, but we haven't committed to a timeline. In terms of broadening that out, maybe I could just highlight the principles that I think about as it relates to prediction markets. I think there's three elements of prediction markets, two of which I think are interesting and relevant to our clients and a third which I really do not.

The three elements to me are: one, there's important information embedded in prediction markets about what's going to happen with employment, what's going to happen to inflation, what's the probability of a recession. Those kinds of things are interesting information to our clients as they are increasingly active in markets. And that's information I think over time we'd like to make available to our clients. Second, there are financial-related events, and KPIs may well be one part of those, that our clients care about that I think are relevant to our clients for either accentuating or hedging a position.

If you have a big, say, position on Tesla and a KPI is how many cars are they putting out in that quarter, you can see how that would be relevant to that investor's financial life. And therefore I think it is a good fit and of interest to our clients and something that over time we will take a hard look at and have a role in. The third part of prediction markets, and where 90 to 95% of the volume exists today, is just really sports gambling. It's betting on the World Cup, the Super Bowl, Taylor Swift's engagement — all these things that capture the public's attention.

That's where all the volume is. We have no interest in it. And I think it's completely disingenuous for people to be out in the market calling this an asset class and a new way for young people to invest. It's gambling in another stripe. It's a way for people to lose money. And I have no problem with it — people want to gamble, terrific. Have fun, entertain yourself, gamble, be more engaged in the game. But to me, it doesn't have a role in a client's financial life and therefore it doesn't make sense for Schwab to offer.

And so as I think about the three parts of prediction markets, that's our view: two of them we will support over time, one of them we will not.

OPERATOR (Operator)

Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Michael Cypress with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Michael Cypress, Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Just wanted to ask about tokenization. I was hoping you could speak to how you're going about building the infrastructure to support client activity there, which is something you had referenced. And then more broadly, I was hoping you could elaborate on your wallet strategy and potential use cases and utility for clients over time.

Rick Wurster — President and Chief Executive Officer, The Charles Schwab Corporation

I think as it relates to tokenization, my view and the way we've talked about it as a team is that we want to be able to deliver securities to clients in the way that they want those securities. And the analogy I've used with our team is it's a little bit like gas and electric cars. We're not, as a company, going to make a huge bet in one direction. We're going to have the ability to support both and let the client choose the way they want to engage.

I think there are some benefits to tokenization and some real drawbacks. And it's unclear how much it's going to take off. If you look at the two main benefits, I think 24x7 trading — I don't know how valuable that truly is. We have 24x5 trading today. One to two percent of trading actually happens outside of market hours, and that's for good reason. Having people in the market at one time creates more efficiency, more effectiveness to trading. It's been a good model for a long time. But again, we still support 24x5. If the market really wanted 24x7, we could do that on today's infrastructure. The other issue is settlement and doing it immediately, and I think again there's pros and cons to immediate settlement. So, you know, again. But again, if the market wanted immediate settlement, we could find a way on today's rails. And when we went to T+1, we built the ability in our technology to go to T+0.

So for us, we were ready and able to do that if that's what the market wants. So we're going to be excited to serve clients in whatever form they want. I really want to consume securities. I think there's real pros and cons in either direction. In terms of getting into the details of the technology we're providing, our wallet strategy — we're not ready to share that other than to say we're actively working on it, we're testing different ways of going about it, we're going to be ready.

Should clients want to hold securities in another form, we will be there. We will meet our clients' needs as we always have.

OPERATOR (Operator)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Ben Buttish with Barclays. Your line is open.

Ben Buttish, Analyst at Barclays

Hi, good morning and thanks for taking the question. Mike, I was wondering if you could give us an update on some of the revenue diversification initiatives and how we should be thinking about timing. Obviously the big one is sort of the ETF monetization strategy you guys have been talking about. But also things like, you know, Forge, the self-directed alts platform, crypto — when should we be thinking about seeing these things starting to materialize in the P&L?

UNKNOWN, Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Ben. Thanks for the question. As we talk about revenue growth and diversification, we covered a lot today — some of those immediate drivers — and that includes the momentum in lending that has been accelerating and has been even beyond what we had anticipated this year. That's welcomed, of course, and recovered wealth and managed investing. And so those present enormous opportunities for us and are enabling us to not just grow revenue but diversify revenue as well.

And back at Investor Day we talked about the concept of diversification within that interest revenue where more of the economics are being driven by lending and then outside of net interest revenue, including in areas like managed investing — of course, trading as well. We continue to invest in our industry-leading trading platform. We continue to see that engagement high. We think engagement from that client set, again with our platform, with the education, with traders supporting traders — that has been a very strong activity for us as well.

Beyond that, then I think you get into some of the areas that you mentioned, and those will continue to contribute over time. And whether that's ETF monetization, Forge, crypto — not as meaningful as what we're seeing in those other areas that I mentioned — but those are areas over time that are going to contribute to revenue. ETF is moving in line with where the industry either already is or is going, so just reflecting the value of our platform and the distribution.

And of course Rick touched on Forge earlier in terms of what that does for us from a strategic capability, as well as crypto too. But those will continue to add over time to complement the very strong growth and diversification we already have underway. Thanks for the question.

OPERATOR (Operator)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Chris Allen with KBW. Your line is open.

Chris Allen, Analyst at KBW

Good morning, guys. Thanks for the question. I wanted to ask, maybe you talked this already, but the rebound in SEC lending revenues this quarter — 178 million, strongest quarter we've seen since 3Q last year when we had CoreWeave. Were there any special situations this quarter? Maybe you could talk to the growth drivers here in terms of the underlying book of business, and then just remind us what's included in your NIM guidance for SEC lending for the full year.

UNKNOWN, Chief Financial Officer

Thanks for the question, Chris. That SEC lending revenue — just to bifurcate that for you — the hard-to-borrow activity that is the typical driver of SEC lending has not been playing the role in that SEC lending revenue increase. That activity has been somewhat subdued this year. For our outlook, we assume that it will remain somewhat subdued. What you're seeing go through that SEC lending activity is part of that long-short set of activities, so that is contributing to that SEC lending revenue.

And as I just mentioned, the broader SEC lending — the hard-to-borrow — we are anticipating that to remain subdued. Of course, if you see variations in IPO markets and more hard-to-borrow activity, that could be upside for us, but not contributing meaningfully to net interest margin in the back half of the year. So again, a lot of the NIM drivers I covered already — that organic lending activity has been a primary driver. Thank you, operator.

OPERATOR (Operator)

I think we have time for one final question. Thank you. Our final question will come from Mike Brown with UBS. Your line is open.

Michael Cypress, Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Great. Good morning. Thanks for squeezing me in here. Appreciate all the color on the NIM side, I guess. I just wanted to ask maybe one more there on the PAL growth. It continues to be really impressive. Can you just expand on how that's generally being used by clients and what financing source are they kind of switching from as they opt into using more PAL loans? And then on the AFS yield that ticked up nicely this quarter, being kind of flat to down for the last six quarters.

So is this some of the repricing starting to really come through, and maybe any color you can add there, Mike, about the back half and as we exit the year, how that repricing can continue to play out?

Rick Wurster — President and Chief Executive Officer, The Charles Schwab Corporation

Mike, thanks for the question. I'll cover the first part and then Mike will cover the second part. I think what's driving pledged asset line growth is a few things. Number one, the experience is incredibly easy. You can get access to money in a day, and it's done very, very simply. Number two, we have clients that have large gains with big embedded capital gains, and so they don't want to sell securities. They have growing wealth, and they have concentrated positions, and they have a life they want to live.

They're seeing their wealth grow, and they might want to buy a house, put their kid through college, whatever it may be. Whatever they're spending money on, they have plenty of wealth to afford it, but they don't want to sell the position given the gains that they have. And so they want to leverage that position, and that pledged asset line is a great way to do it. Incredibly easy, and they can have access to the money quickly.

UNKNOWN, Chief Financial Officer

In terms of the securities, yes, we've seen good momentum in terms of that yield pick-up. A couple of things. I would say you probably see 6, 7, 8 billion of cash flows coming off of that portfolio. Again, I touched on earlier how with, with lending that has been, you know, we've been happy to meet that client need given the pickup in economics. But within the investment portfolio we are seeing that yield shift. We continue to allocate in a way that we've discussed before, U.S. Treasuries being the primary set of purchases. We also did some asset-backed securities as well. Very high credit quality allocations just as a means of diversification. So given where rates are and where they're projected to be, we would expect to continue to see a lift in that yield as more of the securities are rolled over and reinvested. And again, if we're reinvesting less because we continue to meet lending needs such as PAL, we're more than happy to do that.

Meets client needs and the economics are even more favorable. So thank you for the question.

Rick Wurster — President and Chief Executive Officer, The Charles Schwab Corporation

Well, with that we'll wrap up. Thank you for your time this morning. I'll leave you where I started. Rob is clearly leading the industry today, and he's uniquely positioned to win tomorrow. By seeing through clients' eyes and putting clients at the forefront of every decision, we have earned our place at the trusted center of the investing ecosystem. And we are uniquely positioned to win in the long term with our strong momentum, no trade-offs value proposition, clear client-focused strategy, and diversified financial model.

Thank you.

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