加载中...
共找到 39,007 条相关资讯
David Foulkes, CEO of Brunswick, joins CNBC's 'Power Lunch' to discuss outlooks on the consumer, the company's most recent quarter, and much more.
David Foulkes, CEO of Brunswick, joins CNBC's 'Power Lunch' to discuss outlooks on the consumer, the company's most recent quarter, and much more.
The yen's haven status in times of global stress is being threatened, all while a “widow-maker” trade is becoming increasingly lucrative. Here's what's happening in Japan's markets.
The yen's haven status in times of global stress is being threatened, all while a “widow-maker” trade is becoming increasingly lucrative. Here's what's happening in Japan's markets.
The yen's haven status in times of global stress is being threatened, all while a “widow-maker” trade is becoming increasingly lucrative. Here's what's happening in Japan's markets.
The S&P 500 Index (SPY) appears overextended, making a 3-5% correction likely before any potential year-end rally materializes. Recent sharp pullbacks in gold and Bitcoin may signal an impending risk-off move in equities, with technicals suggesting the market is due for profit-taking.
The S&P 500 Index (SPY) appears overextended, making a 3-5% correction likely before any potential year-end rally materializes. Recent sharp pullbacks in gold and Bitcoin may signal an impending risk-off move in equities, with technicals suggesting the market is due for profit-taking.
The S&P 500 Index (SPY) appears overextended, making a 3-5% correction likely before any potential year-end rally materializes. Recent sharp pullbacks in gold and Bitcoin may signal an impending risk-off move in equities, with technicals suggesting the market is due for profit-taking.
S&P 500 closes lower at 6,699 after disappointing earnings from Tesla and IBM. Geopolitical uncertainty and potential export curbs to China pressure risk sentiment.
S&P 500 closes lower at 6,699 after disappointing earnings from Tesla and IBM. Geopolitical uncertainty and potential export curbs to China pressure risk sentiment.
S&P 500 closes lower at 6,699 after disappointing earnings from Tesla and IBM. Geopolitical uncertainty and potential export curbs to China pressure risk sentiment.
Operator: Thank you for standing by, and welcome the Lloyds Banking Group 2023 (sic) [ 2025 ] Q3 Interim Management Statement Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this call is scheduled for 1 hour and is being recorded. I will now hand over to William Chalmers. Please go ahead. William Leon Chalmers: Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our Q3 results call. As usual, I'll run through the group's financial performance before we then open the line for Q&A. Let me start with an overview of our key messages on Slide 2. We continue to make great progress on our strategy. In doing so, we are creating value for our customers and wider stakeholders through improved propositions, targeted growth and enhanced operating leverage. In Q3, we delivered a robust financial performance, supported by healthy growth across the business, driving continued income momentum. We maintained our cost discipline and strong asset quality, reflecting stable credit performance in the period. Taken together, this is driving strong capital generation. As you know, in the third quarter, we've taken an GBP 800 million additional charge relating to the FCA consultation process on motor commissions. Clearly, we are disappointed by this outcome, and I'll talk more about it later in the presentation. Accordingly, we've revised our 2025 guidance to reflect the motor provision. Excluding the charge, we are beating our prior targets. We remain highly confident in our 2026 guidance. Before turning to our financials, a brief update on 2 important strategic developments. Firstly, I'm delighted to say that we have completed the full acquisition of Schroders Personal Wealth to be renamed Lloyd 12. This is an exciting step forward for both our customers and shareholders. who will deliver full control of a market-leading wealth management business that has GBP 17 billion of assets under administration, more than 300 advisers and 60,000 clients. Embedding Lloyd's Wealth into the broader group will advance our end-to-end wealth ambitions, delivering clear benefits and proposition and journey for our customers. Secondly, we've taken significant steps forward in our digital asset strategy. Earlier in the year, we partnered with Aberdeen Investment to deliver a U.K.-first FX derivatives trade collateralized with tokenized digital assets. Alongside, we're co-chair and the U.K. finance project to deliver GB tokenized deposits. Retail and commercial pilot use cases in programmable digital money are due to deliver in H1 of next year. These developments will ultimately drive material customer opportunity and maintain our commercial leadership. We look forward to elaborating on this alongside other areas of our technology, digital and AI strategy in an investor seminar on the 6th of November. Let me now turn to the financials on Slide 4. The group demonstrated a robust financial performance during the first 9 months of the year. Year-to-date, statutory profit after tax was GBP 3.3 billion with a return on tangible equity of 11.9%. Excluding the motor provision, return on tangible equity was 14.6%. Looking at the full year, we now expect RoTE to be around 12% or around 14%, excluding motor. We are pleased with the group's continued income momentum. In the first 9 months, net income of GBP 13.6 billion was 6% higher than the prior year. This was driven by further growth in net interest income, alongside a 9% year-on-year rise in other operating income, led by customer activity and strategic investment. Within the quarter, net income was up 3% versus Q2. This was supported by a net interest margin of 3.06% and in line with our expectations for a gradual increase, again, alongside ongoing OOI growth. Looking forward, we now expect net interest income for the full year to be circa GBP 13.6 billion slightly ahead of our previous guidance. We remain committed to efficiency. Year-to-date operating costs of GBP 7.2 billion were up 3% year-on-year, in line with our expectations for this stage. Credit performance meanwhile remains strong. year-to-date impairment charge of GBP 68 million equates to an asset quality ratio of 18 basis points. Given our performance to date, we are upgrading full year guidance on the asset quality ratio to circa 20 basis points. Meanwhile, tangible net assets per share increased to 55, up 2.6p in the year-to-date and 0.5p in the quarter. Our performance delivered strong capital generation of 110 basis points year-to-date or 141 basis points, excluding motor. Our losing CET1 ratio is 13.8%. I'll now turn to Slide 5 to look at developments in our customer franchise. We have seen good growth across both the lending and the deposit franchises so far this year. Group lending balances of GBP 477 billion are up GBP 18 billion or 4% year-to-date. Focusing on Q3, lending is up GBP 6 billion or 1% versus Q2. Within this, retail lending grew GBP 5.1 billion. This was driven by an increase in the mortgage book of just over GBP 3 billion, reflecting both market growth and a completion share that remains at around 19%. So far, we are seeing no sign of a slowdown in mortgage applications ahead of the budget in November. Elsewhere in the retail business, we saw continued growth across each of our cards, loans and motor businesses as well as growth in European retail. Commercial lending balances meanwhile, are up by GBP 1.3 billion in Q3. As has been the case throughout the year, we saw growth in CIB across our targeted sectors, including in institutional balances. In BCB, balances were broadly stable with new lending in mid-corporates, offsetting the net repayments of government-backed facilities. Turning to liability franchise. Year-to-date deposits have grown GBP 14 billion or 3%. In Q3, we also saw a good performance, up GBP 2.8 billion quarter-on-quarter. Within retail, PCAs grew by GBP 1.2 billion, driven by income growth, subdued spend and lower churn during the quarter. Alongside the reduction in savings balances of GBP 0.9 billion, was largely due to some fixed rate savings outflows following our post ISA season pricing decisions. Commercial deposits are up by GBP 2.4 billion in Q3, driven by growth in targeted sectors across both CIB and BCB. Pleasingly, NIBCA balances were up in the quarter. Alongside deposit developments, we continue to see steady AUA growth in insurance, pensions and investments, with circa GBP 3.3 billion of open book net new money year-to-date. Let me turn to net interest income on Slide 6. Year-to-date and in Q3, we are seeing sustained growth in net interest income. And for the first 9 months was up 6% year-on-year to GBP 10.1 billion. This included GBP 3.5 billion in Q3, up 3% quarter-on-quarter. Income growth continues to be supported by positive momentum in the net interest margin. The Q3 margin of 306 basis points was up 2 basis points on Q2, driven by a growing structural hedge tailwind. Net interest income was further supported by average interest earning assets of GBP 466 billion in Q3, up GBP 5.5 billion versus Q2. The increase was driven by sustained lending growth, particularly in the mortgage book. Looking ahead, we now expect net interest income for 2025 to be around GBP 13.6 billion. This incorporates the healthy volume developments we have seen alongside a slightly more supportive rate environment. We remain very confident in the trajectory for net interest income growth. Let's turn to other income on Slide 7. We continue to demonstrate strong and broad-based momentum in other income. Indeed, our diversified franchise has supported consistent high single-digit growth over the last 3 years. Year-to-date OOI is GBP 4.5 billion, up 9% year-on-year. In the third quarter, OOI was GBP 1.6 billion, up 3% versus Q2. This was particularly driven by growth in motor and LPG investments. It also represents a good performance in protection, boosted by improving mortgage take-up rates. Other income growth continues to be supported by investment and strategic progress across the business. I spoke earlier about 2 specific areas of delivery, the slide shows a number of other proof points to testify to our progress, including, for example, the launch of the Lloyd's Ultra card in retail as well as further scaling of capabilities in our commercial franchise. Looking forward, the full acquisition of Schroders Personal Wealth will further support OI growth. We see an opportunity to meaningfully grow the business in the coming years as part of our integrated wealth proposition. Briefly turning to operating lease depreciation. The Q3 charge of GBP 365 million was up slightly, in line with growth in the fleet, driving other income. Moving to costs on Slide 8. The group continues to maintain strong cost discipline. Year-to-date operating costs of GBP 7.2 billion are up 3% on the prior year, in line with our full year expectations. Excluding growth in severance, operating costs are up 2%. Business growth and inflationary pressures continue to be mitigated by savings driven by strategic investment. Within the third quarter, costs of GBP 2.3 billion are down 1% compared to Q2. This is partly helped by investment timing. And looking forward, Q4 will see higher operating costs due to the usual seasonal factors and added costs from the full acquisition of SPW. We will meet our GBP 9.7 billion full year guidance, excluding these additional SPW costs or modestly above this, including them. Remediation was GBP 875 million in the quarter. This reflects low levels of non-motorbased charges alongside the GBP 800 million incremental motor finance provision. I'll now spend a moment on that on Slide 9. The additional GBP 800 million provision for the potential motor commission remediation costs takes our total provision to GBP 1.95 billion. The recent FCA proposals are subject to consultation and so the final outcome differs. However, as it stands today, they represent an outcome that is at the adverse end of our previously modeled expectations. Based on the proposals, there are a high number of cases determined to be unfair. Resumptions a unfairness do not apply the legal clarity provided by the recent Supreme Court judgment. And the address calculation is less linked to harm than it should be. We will, of course, be making representations to the FDA on our points of concern, and we look forward to engaging in a constructive dialogue. Our total provision of GBP 1.95 billion still using scenario-based methodology includes both redress and operational costs. It represents our best estimate of the potential impact of this issue. Moving on to asset quality on Slide 10. Asset quality remains strong. Neutral arrears are low and stable across our portfolios. Early warning indicators also remain benign and again, very stable. The year-to-date impairment charge is GBP 618 million equivalent to an asset quality ratio of 18 basis points. The charge of GBP 176 million in the third quarter represents an asset quality ratio of 15 basis points. This is the result of a low underlying charge, reflecting our prime customers, a prudent approach to risk and stable macro conditions as well as some one-off model benefits. It also incorporates a small MES charge of GBP 36 million in the quarter. Our stock of ECL on the balance sheet meanwhile, is GBP 3.5 billion, which remains around GBP 400 million above our base case expectations. Given the strong performance year-to-date, we now expect the asset quality ratio for the full year to be circa 20 basis points. Let me turn to our returns and tangible equity on Slide 11. Lloyd Group delivered a return on tangible equity of 11.9% year-to-date or 14.6%, excluding the motor provision. This benefits from strong business performance, cost control and low impairments. Below the line volatility and other items were GBP 157 million in the 9 months or GBP 109 million in Q3. The third quarter charge driven by negative insurance volatility and market developments and the usual fair value unwind. Tangible net assets per share at 55p are up 2.6p since year-end. This continues to be driven by profit build and the unwind of the cash flow hedge reserve partly offset by shareholder distributions. Looking ahead, we expect material TNAV per share growth in both the short term and in the medium term. Including the motor charge, return on tangible equity for the year is now affected at around 12%. Excluding Motor, the RoTE is expected to around 14% and upgrade versus prior guidance. Turning now to capital generation on Slide 12. Our business performance has driven strong capital generation in the year-to-date. Within this, total RWAs ended the quarter at GBP 232 million, up GBP 7.7 billion year-to-date and GBP 0.9 billion in the third quarter. This increase reflects strength in lending, partly offset by optimization activity. Q3 also saw the full reversal of the remaining GBP 1.2 billion of temporary RWAs that we have previously highlighted. Note that while we've taken no new additions for CRD 4 secured risk weightings in the year so far, we do expect to do so in the full quarter. Year-to-date, our strong banking profitability has driven capital generation of 110 basis points in the first 9 months or 141 basis points, excluding motor. Expected full year capital generation is now circa 145 basis points or circa 175, excluding Motor. Our closing CET1 ratio is 13.5%. This is after a 74 basis point accrual for the ordinary dividend. We still expect to pay down to around 13% by the end of 2026, with this year a staging post towards that target. I'll now wrap up on Slide 13. To summarize, group demonstrated a robust performance in the first 9 months of 2025. We are building momentum in income growth whilst retaining cost discipline and strong asset quality. Together, this is delivering meaningful operating leverage. The business is performing as we expected, if not a little better in some areas. While the motive provision is obviously unwelcome, the underlying business continues to drive strong, growing and sustainable capital generation. This financial performance results in improvements to our underlying 2025 guidance, including net interest income, asset quality and return on tangible equity ex motor. Alongside, we remain confident in our 2026 targets. Guidance for both years is laid out in full on the slide. Overall, the business is in good shape to deliver for all stakeholders. Third quarter represents another step in this journey. That concludes my comments this morning. Thank you for listening. Now I open the lines for your questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first caller is Benjamin Toms from RBC. Benjamin Toms: The first is Motor Finance. The provision post top-up leaves you with the [indiscernible] just below GBP 2 billion. That's based on a weighted average scenario calculation. If the consultation paper does not get softened and the FCA is correct with their 85% claim rate, how material would the provision top-up be from here? Just some sensitivity around that would be useful. And then secondly, on NIM, I think before you said you expected NIM to build faster in Q4 than Q3. Is that still the case? And can you give us some indication about whether you'd expect NIM to continue to build through 2026. I think the hedge will continue to be additive and mortgage margin compression deposit mix shift should fade. So it's hard to see how NIM doesn't increase materially next year? Is there a missing moving part like asset mix shift that we need to consider? William Leon Chalmers: Thanks, indeed, Ben. Just to take each of those in order, the start point and perhaps the end point is to say GBP 1.95 billion in respect of motor represents our best estimate of the cost of this issue. It is, as you say, a scenario-based estimate and those scenarios or sensitivities, as you called them, represent what we think are reasonable FCA responses to the issues that we raise, and I assume the issues that others raised. And those will be principally around things like the calculation of dress, which is set, we think is best tenuously linked to [indiscernible].The termination of fairness, which we think is too broad. And these types of things will be part of our response to consultations. And when we look at scenarios, that's what's figuring into those scenarios, some slide amendment around those. But to be clear then, the FCA proposals, as currently proposed, represent the heaviest weighting in our overall scenario analysis. My script at the adverse end of our expected outcomes, i.e., they are all DCAs, most of the commission that we get -- that we received gets handed back, and it is a very high response rate. That all means that with the FCA being the heaviest weighted component in our overall provisioning analysis suggests that even if the FCA proposals come out exactly as they are today, then our overall position is not going to move by that much. So we are not far off then in short. On your second question, Ben, in respect NIM has said, has had a tick up in the course of Q3 by a couple of basis points. We're now at 3.06. And it is our expectation that we see continued, if you like, growth in that earn interest margin over the course of Q4. As I alluded to, I think at Q2 and possibly before that in Q1, we do expect to see a bit of a back-end loaded step-up in Q4, and that is predominantly because of the structural hedge contribution, which is slightly more heavily weighted in Q4. It is somewhat offset by the usual headwinds that is to say bank base rate and deposit effects, predominantly deposit effects as our -- rather our next bank beta is now not expected until next year. but then also at the mortgage point. So the mortgage headwinds, as you know, has a little further to play out, that includes quarter 4, and it includes '26. But summing all of that up, then you should expect to see that interest margin expansion in the course of Q4. There will be a step up there. And it will be a little greater than what we have seen Q2 to Q3. In respect to '26, Ben, your analysis is right. We should expect -- you should expect -- we do expect to see continued margin expansion during the course of '26. It is predominantly because of the factors that you've identified, that is to say the structural hedge makes a meaningful contribution, GBP 1.5 billion increase in structural hedge expected earnings for is what we've guided to earlier on this year, and that still remains more or less the case as we go into '26. And then there is some offset from that in the context of, again, base rate decisions and indeed some continued level of deposit churn off the back of a slightly higher rate environment. And then alongside of that, the playing out of the mortgage refinancing headwind. So those factors are still at play. But nonetheless, the net of it for 2026 is continued and reasonably meaningful margin expansion. That is our expectation. Ben, maybe I'll just finish off with the point. As you know, we have moved from kind of large AIA and nonbanking net interest income guidance to net interest income guidance in its totality. And we've upped that guidance for the remainder of this year, i.e., circa GBP 13.6 billion. We will be guiding to what that means for 2026 in due course, but it is the combination of net interest margin expansion as well as AIA growth that we expect will deliver meaningful NII growth in 2026. And that, in turn, is what will help us deliver our greater than 15% ROE. Thank you, Ben. Operator: Our next caller is Jason Napier from UBS. Jason Napier: Two, please. The first, I wonder if you could just talk about how Lloyd's sees wealth as a sort of a banking business in the U.K. the Schroders Personal Wealth business today, you might, as you read your slides, about the 300 advisers and the funds that they advise and look after but then the bullet point on scaling to mass affluent and workplace might suggest that this is really just an integrated mainstream client type offering. The backdrop for this is, as you recognizes that the market is quite interested in whether you might be interested in inorganic expansion in IFA led businesses. And so if you could just talk about what we can learn from the buy end of the half of the SPW business? And then the second, I don't want to steal the thunder from your upcoming tech event, but the slide on tokenized assets does, I think, invite further inquiry. At a very high level, I just wondered whether you could talk about the work that you've done so far and where you think things like tokenized assets and deposits. What that does to banking industry revenues in total. At a high level, people are somewhat concerned that we might see compression in things like payments and remittances and a bunch of the CIB revenue lines that we actually can't see from the outside as the sort of technology takes through. So any early thoughts you might have on the outlook for [indiscernible] William Leon Chalmers: Thank you, Jason. On both questions. First of all, in respect to the wealth question, a couple of comments there on SPW and then a couple of comments on how we see the wealth opportunity. it's worth me just repeating that we are really pleased to see the conclusion of the SPW -- now Lloyd 12 transaction. It brings us full control of what we think is a great business. So you've heard the statistics, but at the risk of repeating them, 17 million assets under management, 60,000 clients, 300 advisers. It is a really promising start, if you like, for a business that we hope to grow into, frankly, an awful lot more. So there is a great business there that we think we can really grow and help profit going forward. It is part of an integrated proposition as we see it. That is to say it will sit alongside our direct-to-consumer self-serve proposition. It will also sit alongside the building digital proposition that we are currently creating. But it is important to have alongside those more or less self-service facilities, an advisory capability. And that's really what Schroders Personal Wealth now Lloyd's Wealth will deliver for us. It is important in the sense that we can make our customer journey seamless with those other capabilities, EG, the digital direct-to-consumer offering. Likewise, we can, if you like, bring the benefit of the group to bear here, not just in terms of group infrastructure, cost synergies and the like, but also in terms of plugging it into our 3 million affluent customers, and then there's a third really important part of that integration, if you like, which is around the workplace proposition. At the moment, at least, we have a very strong workplace proposition in the context of our insurance, our [indiscernible] business. But at the same time, we really want to build the advisory component of that as people's pensions plans mature so that we can advise them properly on what to do with those proceeds, which at the moment, is a source of leakage from our perspective to other third-party providers, we'd much rather keep it within group. And that's what SPW now Lloyd's Wealth will allow us to do. So there is something with the Lloyd's Wealth acquisition, the SPW acquisition, which itself is in good shape as we speak today. And my statistics earlier on, then testimony to that. But hopefully, you can tell from my comments that we think it can be, frankly, a lot more going forward. You asked in that context about inorganic, Jason. I obviously shan't comment on that explicitly. Safe to say that we've got a lot to do with what we've just done. The acquisition of Lloyds Wealth is a tremendous step forward for us and the franchise. It enables us to develop and enhance our existing customer propositions in what we hope will be a very compelling way which in turn, most importantly, will create customer value, but in doing so, we think, create quite a lot of shareholder value, including benefits to our other operating income over the course of Q4 and looking forward into 2026 and growing thereafter. So I think for now, at least, we're very happy with what we've done. We're going to focus on the organic integration of it, and we're going to build our customer propositions and shareholder value as part of that. The totalized deposits topic is a very interesting one. It's a topic which I could probably talk for ever on, but I won't. I'll try to [indiscernible] my remarks somewhat. In essence, there's a couple of things going on right now. First of all, as you mentioned, in respect of our strategic update, I just mentioned that we've done what was a really exciting partnership with Aberdeen, where we effectively delivered an industry first tokenized assets use case, i.e., using tokenized assets as collateral for a market-based trade. That was the industry first. It was more or less a proof of concept, but it offers illustration of the potential. When we look at the landscape right now as it's developing, there are a couple of things going on. One is, obviously, the rise of stable kind, which is much commented on. And indeed, it seems to us that in the international sphere it may be that by virtue of speed of payments, for example, and by virtue of low costs, it may have something to offer in respect of international transactions. But actually, if you bring that back to the U.K., much of what is offered by stable coin is already effectively offered in the context of things like faster payments. That is to say they're instantaneous and they're very low cost. So really what excites us actually in the context of tokenized assets is an opportunity that goes well beyond stable coins, which is around programmable currency. And we're currently sitting at joint chairs with U.K. Finance, in a project, which is called GB tokenized deposits, GTD is the acronym. It used to be called regulatory liability network. But GBTD is essentially building of a programmable and exchangeable currency in the U.K. that is part and parcel of the existing commercial money framework. That is to say it is interchangeable between digital money and if you like, analog money. We think that has the potential to offer customers tremendous amounts of value in terms of programmable capabilities. And at the moment, we're running use cases in respect of wholesale use cases, particularly digital gilts, in respect of mortgage use cases, i.e., programmability around that capability and an exchange of effectively payment on receipt capabilities from a consumer point of view. So there's 3 use cases that will land in early part of next year. The reason for just briefly commenting on that detail, Jason, is because we see that as an example of tokenized deposits, digital assets, offering a tremendous customer opportunity. And if it can be brought in the sterling monetary framework, if you like, and be interchangeable with analog money and the way that we're proposing, I think there's a lot more that we can do with our customers to offer them value. And if you like, far from this being a threat, it's an opportunity. Operator: Our next caller is Perlie Mong from Bank of America. Perlie Mong: William, so just a couple of questions. One is on distribution. So it sounds like you're pretty comfortable with the motor finance charge or any top-up if necessary. So clearly, you've talked about paying down to 13% next year. But as you think about full year distribution at '25, would you think of it as there is no more uncertainty in your mind regarding to [indiscernible]? And then while we are on that topic, clearly, one of your peers have moved on to quarterly buybacks. You're still on annual buyback. So is there any thinking about maybe moving to a more frequent distribution cadence? And then secondly, on mortgage margins, again, your peer reported yesterday talked about 5-year mortgages rolling off next year. And that cohort had a relatively high margin. So I presume that is already in your guidance and in the way you think about '26 mortgage margins. But as we come into this period, do you expect competition or behavior of competitors to change in any way, given this is something that is happening across the board. William Leon Chalmers: Yes. Thank you, Perlie. There's -- perhaps 3 questions there, at least that's how I'll interpret it. And you'll have to let me know whether I'm responding appropriately. First of all, in respect of motor, as said, our current revision, GBP 1.95 billion, best estimate, to the extent there's a worst case, we can't be far off simply because, as I said, the FCA case is most heavily weighted in scenario-based planning. Alongside of that, the FCA case captures a pretty adverse outcome, all DCAs, for example, most of the commission will be received being handed back a very high response rate. Those 3 things tell us that the FCA case, the proposals, if currently enacted are, as I say, at the adverse end of the spectrum and most heavily weighted in our overall provisioning. So not terribly far off. When we look at distributions for 2025. A couple of points to make there, really. One is we remain very committed to distributing excess capital. Two is, as per the comments earlier on, we are generating strong capital generation over the course of this year. We put forward guidance now of 145 basis points, which that is post motor to be clear. When we look at our expectations for the full year in terms of distributions, we also have the reduction in CET1 ratio that we have previously advised you of and we expect it to reduce our CET1 ratio from about 13.5% end of last year to about 13.25% or thereabouts, give or take towards the end of this year before landing at circa 13% at the end of '26. So that is an additional 25 basis points of capital there, which if you add it to the GBP 145 million that we're guiding to is 170 basis points in total. Perlie, you'll be able to tell from our numbers today that the dividend will be about 100 basis points of that. We've accrued 74 basis points year-to-date. So therefore, a full year is about 100 basis points of that 170 that I just mentioned, which in turn, leaves about 70 basis points of excess. Against what will probably end up being about GBP 234 million, GBP 235 billion of risk-weighted assets, something like that. And all I'm doing is simply taking Q3 outcomes in RWAs and adding on a bit for our continued lending performance. and indeed a CRD4 add-on in the quarter of quarter 4. So that gives you an idea of 70 basis points against that GBP 234 million, GBP 235 billion of RWAs. It gives you an idea of the excess capital that will be available and up for consideration by the Board as to what it chooses to do with it towards year-end. Clearly, you asked about buyback and whether we should move to a more frequent buyback. The I guess what I'd say to that is, first of all, capital distribution, not just the quantum, but also the form, if you like, is always going to be an outlet for the Board. And we'll, of course, respect that. What we've done to date, of course, is once per annum. And our view is that, that has allowed clarity in terms of our guidance, number one, and it has been appropriate as we reduce our capital ratio, number two. As we look forward, there are some advantages from considering a switch. Lower CET1 over the course of the year is one of those. The timing benefits, obviously, from a shareholder point of view is another. There are also some considerations taken into account, which is to say a lower capital base implies a slightly lower level of flexibility either for dealing with contingencies or alternatively, take advantage of opportunities. So these are the types of things, probably that we'll have to consider when we look at the buyback. But every year, we consider not just the quantum, but also the form in which we make distributions. And this year, in that respect will be no different, and we'll have a conversation with the Board at the end of the year to that effect. The 1/3 of your topics earlier around 5-year merges, in a sense, it's welcome to the club. We've been talking about a mortgage refinancing headwind for about 2 years now. Our expectation was that, that will continue during the quarter of '25, and that it will continue into '26. And we said that before, and that remains the case. What I am pleased to say though is that our guidance in that respect has not changed. And when we've talked about in the past, our expected increase in net interest income, including in response to Ben's question later on, that incorporates our expected headwind from a mortgage point of view over the quarter '26. So we do expect continued growth in net interest income and indeed margin. And that does incorporate the headwind that we see from the type of 5-year mortgages with the spreads written at that time as they mature in '26. So yes, it is all integrated into guidance for sure. In terms of what effect that might have, it's obviously a little hard to say, but at the risk of speculation, maybe there is a chance that as these higher spreads roll off, people reconsider the spreads that they're currently writing business at today. And maybe, therefore, there is a marginal benefit to spreads being written during the course of '26. Partly, that is, of course, speculative. But as these higher spread mortgages come off, will that cause people just to reconsider the rate at which they or rather spread at which they write new mortgage business and cause them to revise up what I think an appropriate spread is for mortgage business? Possibly, yes. And if it does, we'll obviously welcome it. Operator: Our next is Jonathan Pierce from Jefferies. Jonathan Richard Pierce: Got 2 questions. The first is on structural hedge, again, some about that. I wondered if you could help us a little bit scale the contribution from Q4, you talked previously in that significant increase this year and the contribution to the movement has been was 4 basis points in the latest quarter and 10 basis points in the first quarter. Maybe you could put Q4 in the context of that for that would be helpful. And just a supplementary on the hedge. I wondered if you could -- just talk a little bit about what happens to '26 in terms of timing because I'm still entirely -- sure, I understand how are you thinking about that? I mean it's rose that the '27 tailwind is probably more about the full year impact of the '26 in the trend then we get as a lot of the [indiscernible] starts to roll through be helpful just to get a little bit more on that. [indiscernible] an idea what will be next year and how fast forward you will be looking in the sort of metrics you will be updating or distribution so on and so forth. But will this be sort of 2028, '29, look forward. William Leon Chalmers: A couple of questions there. First, on the structural hedge. Second on strategy and what we'll be talking about and where the next year. In respect to the structural hedge, maybe just a kind of a mark-to-market. The Q3 yield on the structural hedge is about 2.3%. As you rightly said, the contribution to the margin of the structural hedge in respect of Q3 was about 4 basis points. And we've previously highlighted and maintained still today that the contribution of the structural hedge going into Q4 will be meaningfully greater. We've put a precise number on that, but just maybe help the discussion. The expectation for the yield as a whole during the course of '25 will also be around 2.3%. I'll come back to '26 in just a second. . But the expectation is, as I said, is that the structural hedge contribution to the margin will meaningfully increase in the course of quarter 3 and I would expect in that context, Jonathan, again, without putting too precise number on it, the structural hedge contribution to the margin will more than double in quarter 4 versus what it was in quarter 3. And as I said, that all leads in combination with the deposits headwind and mortgages headwind to an expectation that the margin in totality will step up in Q4. Will step up in a way that is more significant than what we saw Q2 to Q3. So I know I'm not putting precise numbers on it, but hopefully, that gives you some steam. When we look at 26% on the structural hedge, the expectation for the yield in '26 is consistent with our previous discussions, actually, on average, about 2.9%. You cut that out, obviously, from the circa GBP 6.9 billion guidance that we've given you for structural hedge earnings off the back of about a GBP 244 billion structural hedge, you'll get to 2.9% through that path, too. But that gives you a sense for the year as a whole. There is obviously a bit of a journey in respect to the structural hedge. At this point in the year, I'm not going to kind of go through it on a quarterly basis. But it isn't all delivered on quarter 1. It isn't all delivered at quarter 4, and it won't be perfectly linear in between. But overall, that is the contribution of the structural hedge, i.e., GBP 6.9 billion in total, an incremental circa GBP 1.5 billion versus what we got over the course of '25 as we look forward. It is important to say in this content section that structural hedge then continues to build over the course of future years. And I would -- again, I won't give precise numbers on it. but you should expect continued build, most notably in '27 and then continue building the years thereafter '28, '29 and so forth, but at a slightly lower level. We'll talk more about that in the course of the year end, give you more specificity. In respect to strategy, Jonathan, our focus right now is very clearly on delivering '26. We set out some very explicit, some very clear and I think some very important commitments in respect to what we're going to do in '26. Cost-to-income ratio less than 50%, ROTE in excess of 15% and capital generation in excess of 200 basis points we are going to deliver on those '26 commitments. And so that is very much our focus. Now it's a very fair question for you to ask having said that, about where do we go from there? Our expectation is that we will also update in the course of next year as to '27 and beyond. It will probably be around the middle of next year when we come to market with that update. So that gives you a sense of timing. Then in terms of the look forward period, that's something which we'll probably discuss actually over the course of next year. But these things often end in round numbers, and maybe I'll leave it there. Operator: Our next caller is Aman Rakkar from Barclays. Aman Rakkar: I actually had 2, please. I wanted to query on nonbanking funding costs. I think that's actually [indiscernible] a touch lower than your commentary previously around up GBP 100 million year-on-year. So I was wondering if you can give us an update for that. And I don't know if that's contributed in any way to slightly firmer outturn for this year. But if you could just kind of update us on that particular line item within NII, that would be great. . Just another one on other operating income, actually. So obviously, the headline rate is good again. It's quite divergent trends within the division. So I think it looks like retail has kind of reaccelerated again in Q3. The insurance business is, it looks like it's actually tapering off, if I look at the year-on-year trends through the course of this year, and then commercial continues to be quite soft. So could you give us a bit of a kind of steer on how to think about these divisional trends going forward? I'm just trying to work out how we arrive at a similar kind of run rate next year. And if there's anything kind of episodic or lumpy that we should think about or one-off elements that might kind of unwind into next year, that would be very helpful. William Leon Chalmers: Thank you, Aman, both of those questions. The -- taking them in turn. In terms of NB NII, nonbanking net interest income. Q3 as we disclosed today, GBP 136 million, that is running at about 10% ahead of where it was last year. So year-to-date, I think it's about GBP 372 million thereabouts. That's about 10% up versus where it was -- and what's going on there, as you know, it is very much about the funding of the other operating income -- income streams insofar as they're not related to banking. So LDC is an example of that. Lloyd's living in is an example of that. Of course, Motor is an example of that, but so is the insurance pensions and Investments division. And so is commercial banking activity. It is probably running a little bit more slowly, i.e., slightly slower growth rates versus what we previously thought. That is, if anything, partly attributable to commercial banking activity, which has been a little bit less in that space, at least than we previously expected. I'll come back to that in a second. But overall, what's going on within the nonbanking net interest income that is most important is that we are seeing the takeover of volumes rather than rate rises driving it. So if you look at the trend last year in nonbanking net interest income, it was probably about half and half to do with volumes, number one, but also increased rates in refinancing number two. But if you look at it this year, it's more like 15% or thereabouts in terms of rates and 85% in terms of volumes. So volumes is really making the running in terms of the increases in nonbank net interest income that we see over the course of this year. And of course, looking forward, what that means, Aman, is that if you believe in other operating income growth, which we do, and I'll come back to in just a second, you should expect that nonbanking net interest income to continue to grow over the course of 2026 but continue to grow from very much a volume-driven perspective as opposed to a rate perspective. Rates won't be 0 because there is some term financing going on, in particular in relation to Motor, which has got about a 3.5-year average life. So it won't be 0, but it will be predominantly a volume-led story within long bank net interest income. Before moving on, it's worth just wrapping that up in the context of the net interest income guidance that we have given you and will give you for 2026 and beyond. That is including, obviously, nonbanking net interest income in all of that. So that is wrapped up in the guidance that we give you for net interest income, GBP 425 million this year, circa GBP 13.6 billion now. And indeed, for the guidance, we will give you next year of '26. In respect to other operating income, maybe just to start off with the core point that as you know, when Charlie and I launched the strategy in February 2022. It was very much focused upon trying to ensure that we diversified the business from an undue dependency on rates. Looking to avoid being, if you like, pressured by a downward trend in rates during the next cycle and also achieve the benefits of what is a strong and very highly present franchise right the way across the U.K., across the retail the commercial sector and indeed within insurance, pensions and investments. So the other income -- the other operating income strategy was a strategic diversification, which is intended to benefit from the strength of the Lloyds Banking Group franchise. It's that combination that led us to deploy significant strategic investments in this area. And then we've seen the benefits of customer activity, if you like, picking up on those strategic investments and helping us drive the operating income now for about 3 years of high single-digit growth. And that's again what we've seen during the quarter 3, whether you look at it year-to-date or whether you look at it year-on-year [indiscernible] introduction, Aman, but before getting into your question, I thought it's important to highlight those points. The individual business components within other operating income, as said, up 9% in total. What are we seeing year-to-date? We're seeing strength within retail. I've talked about transportation there, but it is also about PCA offering. It is also about protection offering increasingly to mortgage customers and it is also about cards year-to-date. So a retail offer that is growing significantly. It's transportation, but it's also those other factors. Within commercial, commercial has been a slightly slower pattern over the course of the year-to-date performance, and that is partly because low markets performance has been probably slower than we would have perhaps expected but it's been somewhat offset by things like cash management and payments, number one, it has been also the case that the comparative period benefited from valuation adjustments on a year-to-date basis, which, of course, inherently don't repeat during the course of '25 so there's a slight comparative issue there, which has meant that commercial has been slower year-to-date versus where you would normally expect it to be. And indeed, our expectation looking forward is that, that is going to change as those comparatives come out of the analysis. I'll come back to that in just a second. Insurance pension investments up about 5% year-to-date. That is off the back of long-standing strength. It is also off the back of GI strength and things like share dealing. But to be clear, if you look at it on a quarterly comparison basis, weather in respect of substance, the back of dry weather hits a little bit in the course of Q3. So insurance is still growing for sure. But the reason why you're seeing it at 5% in part at least, is because of that weather during the course of quarter three, which, of course, we wouldn't expect to be repeated on a BAU basis. And then finally, Aman, the strength in investments is clear to see. That is the living LDC has been a significant contributor to the business on a year-to-date basis and again, on a look-forward basis. When we put that together, Aman, first of all, we would expect those growth streams to continue to build over the course of the remainder of this year and certainly into next. And that is a combination of strategic investments landing, if you like, and increased customer takeup. Allied to that, we now are adding in previously -- that is going to contribute in Q4, and it's going to contribute during the course of 2026 more meaningfully. We haven't given precise numbers around that. Our expectation is that, that is going to boost other operating income for the course of 2026 at least, by around GBP 175 million or so beyond what you would have previously seen in the other operating income line. Now of course, our ambitions in respect of Lloyds Wealth go meaningfully beyond that. And so we would expect it to build in the years thereafter, but that gives you a sense to what we expect it to contribute in '26, which, of course, will be added to the contributions from the other income streams that I've just been highlighting. Hopefully, that's useful, Aman. Operator: Our next caller will be Sheel Shah from JPMorgan. Sheel Shah: The CIB business has been particularly strong this year. I want to stand out performance, I think, at least when I look at your balance sheet momentum, could you talk a little bit about this business? What's actually happening? How much of this is market driven? How much of this is an active strategy to maybe target share gains and what are the margins looking like in this business? And then secondly, to come back to your less than 50% cost-to-income ratio for 2026. Just looking at consensus, it sits at 51% at the moment. You've just mentioned GBP 175 million coming from the Schroders Wealth business into OOI. What do you think the market is missing either on the revenue line or the cost line to get to this cost-to-income ratio target? William Leon Chalmers: Thanks, Sheel. Two questions there. One relation to commercial bank in CIB in particular and one in relation to costs. Just before getting into CIB, just to step back, as you know, our commercial banking business consists of both business and commercial banking BCB and the CIB business. And we are engaged in quite a bit of transformation in respect of each of those 2. When I look at the BCB business, as I mentioned in my comments earlier on, we've seen some really constructive signs in terms of BAU lending growth, which is great to see. When you look at it externally, that is offset by the government repayments that have been going on in respect to bounce back loans. And so the net, if you like, is affected by that. But we are encouraged by some decent positive signs, if you like, our ongoing BAU growth. And that is alongside of creating a much broader digitalized proposition to our customers, which in turn is going to help us drive other operating income growth going forward. When we look at CIB, again, that is going through a significant period of transformation, but it is about product broadening and product deepening. There have been some areas that have probably been slower than we might like to have been, for example, the loan markets area. There have been some areas that have been successful, particularly successful over the course of this year. I mentioned cash management and payments, for example, capital markets have shown some strength alongside working capital. And actually, the indicators that we've got on an early Q4 basis have been really promising in respect of CIB. Now CIB comparatives, as I mentioned a second ago, have been a little bit weighed down by strong valuation adjustments in the course of '24. So kind of bear that in mind. But the underlying momentum in CIB we're really encouraged by. We think it's really positive, and it's really -- it's a big part of our transformation story going forward. In respect to your second question, Sheel, on costs, the cost shape for 2026, as said, remains very much a commitment to sub 50% cost income ratio. Within the cost/income ratio, it is clearly composed of 2 elements. One is to say income strength. We've talked a bit about that during the course of this call, so I shan't repeat those points. But your specific question is around the cost part of that equation. And how do we see that developing? I guess a couple of points, really. One is we spent quite a lot of money on various strategic initiatives, which in their orientation are cost focus. As we go into 2026, we see the full year run rate benefit of those investments take place. Whether those are around the business units are alternatively around the functions, including things like our systems and, of course, our various other risk, finance and other support functions, those strategic investments engineer rather help us engineer a lower cost base going forward and '26 represents a full year run rate for a number of those. At the same time, our cost growth in respect of OpEx is slowing somewhat. And that in part is because of some of the investments in things like the FTE reductions that we have made over the course of this year. You'll remember earlier on this year, we talked about our severance budget being higher for '25 than it had been previously. And that has been the case, said in turn, that helps us address OpEx growth over the course of '26. The result of that is that we expect 26 costs to be flatter than you have seen recently. I won't commit to absolutely 0, but nonetheless, you should expect to see them be flatter than they have been previously. And that, in turn, or rather in conjunction with the income developments that we talked about is what helped us deliver a cost/income ratio of sub-50%. Now to be clear, Sheel, it is not going to be sub-50% by much. And we've said that before, it's worth repeating. But nonetheless, it will be delivered and it will be sub-50%. Operator: Our next call is Chris Cant from Autonomous. Christopher Cant: I had one on stable coin and tokenized deposits and one on motor, please. So on the former topic, I mean, obviously, lots going on and you're involved in this U.K. finance initiative in terms of tokenized deposits. In terms of time scales and relative regulatory burdens, I guess the question is, can the industry move fast enough to deliver tokenized deposits ahead of stable coin providers potentially trying to get a foothold? And what sort of time lines do you think we're talking about to move beyond the use cases? I know there's a few things that are moving outside the sandbox in terms of remortgage, for instance, what sort of time line are we talking about to move beyond the use cases currently envisaged by the U.K. finance initiative. And on programmable money, could you give us an idea of the use cases that you see? I guess, it's corporate clients that are more interested in these options. Could you give us some examples of use cases that corporate clients are looking for? That would be interesting. And then on motor, the FCA consultation, obviously, you're going to feed into. One of the points from the FCA's perspective, I suppose, is that if we don't capture the majority of cases through a redress program, and it goes through the courts, then administrative costs would be potentially materially higher. Is that something that you agree with? i.e., you would be pushing for a narrower scheme potentially or for less redress and taking then some risk that the administrative burden of more cases remaining in the court system would push costs in that area. William Leon Chalmers: Yes. Thanks for those questions, Chris. First of all, on stable car and tokenized deposits. A couple of points to make there. What is about the path forward on that? And then the second is around use cases. Said earlier on, the rise of stable kind has obviously been notable in recent periods. And it's been particularly notable in the context of international payments where, as I said, there may be some advantages in terms of speed and cost. What we think in the U.K. is that the GB tokenized deposits, GTD that we are constructing together with the industry is effectively commercial bank money in its current form, which allows interchangeability between a digital point, if you like, an analog coin the current coin that is there in the market. And that has tremendous advantages. It has tremendous advantage from a customer point of view because it is basically one and the same, and they should be able to move freely between digital money and, if you like, analog money. And that makes it a much more kind of customer-friendly approach. It also means that we, as banks can offer that to customers as our money effectively together with all of the security and indeed, insurance benefits that are currently in place and of course, from a regulatory point of view, together with all of the KYC and so forth that we currently have in place. So it is -- it goes hand in hand with today's money in a way that is, as I say, very user-friendly from a customer point of view. And in that sense, has material benefits over what stable coin has to offer, which is clearly not interchangeable with commercial bank money. It is not one and the same thing. In terms of timetable, Chris, I think your point -- your question rather, is a good one. We need to move quickly on this. And indeed, use cases, as I said, landing in the first half of next year, we would expect off the back of that to be able to get something out in a workable customer proposition format, I hope by the first half of 2027, if not before. Now what we really need to fall into place in order to secure that progress, if you like, is a regulatory framework that is consistent with the ambitions of the industry and indeed is consistent with how the Bank of England would like to see this play out. As a form of digital money in the U.K., it is important that in place in a supportive manner. So that's really what we need. But if that is in place, then the speed of this is very much within the sex hands, and we would expect to play a leadership role in securing that, making progress and indeed getting to the customer benefits that we think are promising as a result of this. In terms of use cases, you mentioned hotel and for sure, there are wholesale use cases here, Chris, but I don't think it's just that. That is to say, digital money offers use cases, both in the wholesale and in the retail space. Wholesale, we've just started an example with Aberdeen using basically tokenized assets as collateral that offers meaningful efficiencies in the context of collateral management and need speed and pace and indeed cost of collateral alongside transactions. Likewise, the digital kill is an innovation that is being sponsored in terms of one of my use cases and again, offers meaningful speed, cost and efficiency benefits from a customer point of view. And then, of course, transacting with each other. I say corporates can transact with each other in digital asset format. Again, that is going to offer speed and transaction cost benefits. But as I said, these are also [indiscernible] benefits. So 2 out of 3 of our use cases are in the retail space, one being effectively cash on delivery to meaningfully cut fraud in the retail space and the other being effectively reengineering the home buying journey off the back of programmable money for just that journey. So I think there are meaningful retail benefits there, too, Chris. We've got a lot to do in this area in digital assets. But as I said, if we get it right, there's an awful lot of customer value to be created. On the second topic, Chris, on Motor. It is our view, as I mentioned earlier on, that the motor proposals as put forward by the FCA are currently disproportionate. And they're disproportionate as for 3 main reasons. One is because we believe the determination of unfairness is too broad who is because we build the judgments that are inherent in these proposals do not align to the Supreme Court clarity that was provided earlier on this year. And 3 is because we think the redress calculation as said, is at best tenuously linked to harm. Now what that all means, Chris, is that, indeed, if the proposals remain as broad as they are. In many respects, at least, we would expect to see better outcomes in the context of litigation because presumably, the courts will take into account the Supreme Court rulings in the way in which they were made. And presumably, the courts will take into account the linkage between address and harm. So in that sense lease, I would expect litigation outcomes to be better than much of what is in the FDA proposals right now. Now having said all of that, Chris, we clearly want to move on from this. We clearly want the business to move Ireland to focus on customer value creating propositions we have today just as we expect to be in the future. So as a result, that is why we've taken a GBP 1.95 billion best estimate for the provision which in turn is not far away from what it would be if the FDA were to enact their proposals in full. It's very much in the spirit of saying, okay, look, we don't agree with them. We're going to do what we can to change them and get them into a better place. But we are provisioning on the basis that a large part of them is going to stay in place, and we want to move on, and that's what this provision is designed to do. Operator: Our next caller is Guy Stebbings from BNP Paribas. Guy Stebbings: Had a couple of questions back on net interest income. The first one is around volumes. The interesting asset growth was quite strong in the quarter, a couple of billion ahead of consensus on average nearing assets and the end of period position at [indiscernible] Q4 in a good place. If you could talk about sort of broad expectations for the outlook from here, I made your contractor comments on mortgage volumes probably being out of our better-than-expected performance in Q2. So it sounds like we're talking to a positive trajectory, which given your Q4 NIM which takes quite a promising picture. And then related to this, on mortgage spreads. So interested in your comments in response to Perlie's questions and perhaps the market reacts to the headwind from mortgage spread shown on upcoming maturing cohorts by lifting new spreads. I wondered within that, your comment signal that maybe current spreads have drifted a little bit lower in recent months on new lending and perhaps you're getting to levels you're a little bit less comfortable [indiscernible] just reading too much into the remarks there. I guess I'm really trying to work out on the upside versus downside on your initial expectations. You had the visibility clearly on the maturing yields for quite a while, but where the new lending spreads are coming in better or worse than what you'd initially envisaged. William Leon Chalmers: In respect of AIA, first of all, the Q3 performance, as you know, saw a meaningful jump in terms of AIs off the back of what has been increased lending over the course of the year as a whole and continued into the third quarter. So maybe taking a step back before getting to AAAs. As you know, we've had GBP 18 billion growth within the lending book year-on-year, which, of course, contributes to meaningful IA growth on a kind of realized basis, if you like. And within that, we've had cards year-to-date up 7%. We've had personal loans up 13%. We've had Motor up 5% over the course of the year. We've had mortgages up GBP 8.7 billion or 3%. It's a really decent loan performance for the business. in total, GBP 18 billion, up 4% up on assets for the year. And as you say, that is now translating into AIA growth, 65.5% in the -- we're seeing continued growth in the course of quarter 4 across the asset. So of course, it is a slightly shorter period because of seasonal factors but [indiscernible] you should expect to see growth within assets within quarter 4 that will be perfectly respectable. And off the back of that, deliver continued strength in AIA for the remainder of this quarter and looking into '26 and it will be that combination, i.e., AIA growth, together with the step-up in the margin that I mentioned a second ago, which in turn sets the stage for 2026 and gives us a lot of confidence in our 2026 guidance. So that's a picture of AIA's guy, which I hope is helpful. On mortgage spreads, it's interesting. I mean, we've seen now 70 basis points Q1, Q2, Q3. It is fair to say that we've seen perhaps a basis point or 2 of erosion within that over the course of these successive quarters but we are still rounding to circa 70 basis points in the course of quarter 3 and comfortably rounding to circa 70 basis points in quarter 3 to be clear. A couple of points to make within that. One is -- when we look forward, my comment earlier on about whether there will be a bit of repricing of the back of 5-year charities and therefore, people feeling a bit more pressure in their mortgage books. We're not banking on that to be clear. When we put forward our guidance for in excess of 15% ROTE and the guidance we'll be giving you next year for the component of net interest income that will make up or contribute to that outcome. We have never been and are not banking on any uptick, if you like, in mortgage spreads that is driven by that 5-year maturity pattern that I talked about earlier on. So we're not banking on it. If it comes, so much the better, and you'll see that in the context of our interest income at the time. The second point I wanted to make is the business or rather the spreads at which we are writing business right now, contribute to ROE attractive mortgages for us. And that's certainly true on a stock -- on a marginal basis. It is also true, albeit at a lower level on a fully loaded basis. So you're seeing very attractive marginal returns even at the current spreads. You are seeing, if you like, fully loaded returns that are still above the cost of equity. So we're happy to write them. We're particularly happy to right and bearing in mind a couple of other factors. One is that we are increasingly able to contribute protection alongside the mortgage product as our insurance and our retail businesses work increasingly closely alongside of each other. We're now up to about 20% protection penetration for mortgage products and so this is a strengthening relationship that we're seeing, not just a one-off mortgage relationship. And then the second is that we see an increasing share of our mortgage coming through the direct channel. And that is a more profitable product for us to write. It is also one that more closely aligns us to the customers, to be clear. But at the moment, at least, we're seeing about 24% of our mortgages coming through the direct channel. That is, frankly, more than we've had for a long time, and it is a result of a very deliberate strategy that we are embarking on. So in that context as well, Guy, we were able to write mortgages which are attractive to us on a stand-alone basis. But off the back of the, if you like, relationship that we're developing and the channels through which we're distributing is a more attractive position. Operator: Our next caller is Ed Firth from KBW. Edward Hugo Firth: I had 2 questions actually. The first one was just the sort of -- I guess, I don't know what the right way is cadence, I guess, if you like, or the growth rate of NII. I mean if I look at your -- you're talking about around GBP 13.6 billion for the year. And year-to-date, it's 10.1%, which would suggest somewhere around 3.5 in Q4, even my analysis, I can do that. We suggest that to a slightly slower growth rate than you saw in Q3 rather than a higher growth rate. So I'm just trying to think -- is there something I'm missing there? Is it something about nonbanking income? Or is the GBP 13.6 billion really a number that we should take us up as a sort of very safe space that actually all other things being equal, we could see something better than that. So I guess that's my first question. And then the second one was, I think you were saying that we should put another GBP 175 million in for next year for the buyout in revenue, other income for the buyout of the SPW joint venture. Is there a cost offset on that? Or is that just like straight through the bottom line? I mean, obviously, you talk about modestly higher for the little bit for this year. I'm just wondering what sort of cost numbers might equate to that GBP 175 million or is that just a straight number we should just put in straight [indiscernible] William Leon Chalmers: Yes. Thanks, Ed. In respect to net interest income growth, first of all, the easiest way to explain it is I think the following. As you know, we've upgraded to circa GBP 13.6 billion from GBP 13.5 billion. That is intended to be, and I hope very clearly is a sign of confidence in terms of our net interest income trajectory. It is -- as you pointed out, hopefully, as is evident in the guidance, the circa word, the C is very deliberate. That is to say 13 points is not intended to be a cap. It is saying circa GBP 13.6 billion. So I'll kind of leave you to move around from that. But it is -- now that in how things develop will be around GBP 13.6 billion, including numbers that go above GBP 13.6 billion provided that they are within the circa range. . The -- stepping back, net interest income in quarter 3 was, what, GBP 3.45 billion. It's up about GBP 90 million growth versus Q2, which we, as you know, is about 3%. Some of that Q2 growth that we saw in Q3 is day count increase. And so a slightly lower amount of that is underlying increase. If you look forward into Q4, we expect to show continued progress in NII with to be clear, probably a similar absolute income growth in Q4 as we saw in Q3, a similar absolute income growth in Q4 as we saw in Q3. But to be clear, none of that will be daycount benefit. And that is to say the daycount in Q4 same as the daycount in Q3, which if you translate that, that means that growth is actually strengthening, not weakening. So growth is strengthening in Q4 rather than weakening, and that is off the back of the factors that we discussed before, which is the step-up in the margin, which is, as I said, more pronounced in Q4 and then the AIA progress that I was discussing with guidance just a second ago. And now it's coming off the back of the fire. So all of that, hopefully, helps can illustrate the point. And in turn, we have a lot of confidence in that number. So hopefully, that's helpful. On the SPW point, when we -- unfortunately, all good things come into price, I guess. So when we look at the GBP 175 million incremental That, in turn, comes with costs, which are probably going to be about GBP 120 million in excess of what you saw previously there. Now you didn't actually see them previously because they were all consolidated in the OI line. So it's probably about GBP 120 million adding costs to procure that circa GBP 200 million which, in turn, the OOI is about GBP 175 million ahead of what we'd have previously seen. So I hope that's clear. There's a couple of other points that maybe I should make in the context of the SPW transaction, [indiscernible] transaction, which are important to us, one is we did it at 0 capital cost. As you know, we had to give up our 20% share in [indiscernible] in order to get that. But the benefit that we're getting from that casino share was a modest annual dividend that you saw in Q4 and frankly, this feels to us like -- from our perspective at least, a really positive trade, but it was done at 0 capital cost. And then the second point is we'll have to work at it to make sure that it comes within our cost income ratio. But as I said, that's consistent with our sub-50% cost income ratio guidance. But at the same time, you can probably imagine, as with many of these wealth businesses, this is a materially RoTE positive transaction, and we'll deliver an RoTE that is well above not just our cost of capital, but probably well above the types of IoTs that we'll be delivering on a kind of group aggregated basis. This is a net positive contributor to the ROTE of the business. Most importantly, Ed, it's a very important strategic development and indeed, a very important part of our customer proposition. Operator: As you know, this call is scheduled for 1 hour, and we have now exceeded the end of the allotted time. So this is the last question we have time for this morning. If you have any further questions, please contact the Lloyd's Investor Relations team. With that, our final caller is Amit Goel from Mediobanca. Amit Goel: So 2 relatively quick questions from me. One, just on the deposits -- the real deposits. So some positive trends there on the back of the pricing decisions. Just curious whether that's largely done now or whether we could continue to see a little bit of that shift and whether or not that can benefit the hedge capacity. And then the second question, just curious how engagement with the government is going ahead of the budget and also whether or not they kind of recognize the motor costs when also thinking about banking sector taxation? William Leon Chalmers: Yes. Thanks, Amit. The -- in respect of each of those, as you say, deposit performance has been pretty good over the course of this year, GBP 14 billion up in total, 3% year-to-date increase. So a good performance in deposits. And within that, retail is up GBP 4 billion year-to-date. And what we saw within retail in the third quarter was a little bit of outflow within the U.K. retail savings area, and that was very much within the fixed-term product, off the back of effective pricing decisions that we had taken, given the fact that we performed so strongly in Q2, in particular, in the ISA season, which we highlighted at the time. So this was a kind of, I suppose, inevitable reaction to very deliberate pricing decisions that were taken in the course of quarter 3. It was good to see that it was offset by PCA performance in the course of we were up GBP 1.2 billion, which is a good performance. And as you know, leads us to a year-to-date performance within PCA is up around GBP 0.5 billion or so. I think a couple of things are happening there, Amit, which are pretty constructive on the whole. We're seeing continued wage inflation with respect to our customers. Importantly, we are also seeing reduced levels of churn out of the PCA product into savings products and into fixed term in particular. And so that falling churn is down about 33%, i.e., down about 1/3 in Q3 versus Q2. That's a material reduction in churn, and we expect to see that pattern more or less continue going forward. But it's good to see. As said, PCA is an incredibly important customer product from our point of view. It's an incredibly important product from a structural hedge point of view. And so the solidity of the PCA performance has been good to see. As we look forward, I think we do expect churn to continue to add Q3 was particularly marked, but nonetheless, we continue to see -- we continue to expect it to add going forward. PCAs, we are seeing other trends slowing government payments, for example, probably over time saying wage growth as well. And so PCA performance, I don't think we expect to see it be particularly exciting, maybe more or less static might be a reasonable way of looking at it. We'll see how it goes. Going into next year, I think that starts to change as things pick up perhaps a little bit more. Our expectation for the structural hedge to be clear and it insofar as it relates to this issue is we're not banking on significant increases in structural hedge balances. So all of our forecasts for you, the GBP 1.5 billion growth in structural hedge income, for example, going to next year, GBP 6.9 billion revenue in total from the structural hedge. That is built on a steady hedge. And so if we see performance within PCAs, instant access and other hedge eligible deposits, including NPCA within BCB, which has shown an uptick actually in Q3, if that performs more positively than we expect, that would represent structural hedge upside and opportunity. At the moment, we're expecting flat structural hedge performance. On your second question, Amit, in respect to budget, a couple of points to make, really. One is the business has been really only very modestly affected, if at all, by budget concerns. So I mentioned earlier on that we've seen mortgage performance being very strong. As you know, GBP 8.7 billion year-to-date, GBP 3.1 billion of that in the third quarter. We've seen applications up 19% over the course of the third quarter. We've seen completions up 23% over the course of the third quarter. And so no meaningful sign, if you like, of insertion because of budget in the third quarter mortgage performance. And then within the pensions business, another area that conceivably might be affected. We've seen a little bit of an increase in individual pension encashments, but no material change to be clear within Workplace. And in any case, any change in volumes that we have seen in the pensions area have been well below what we saw last year. So really nothing to report effectively in terms of the, I suppose, hesitation that might be induced by the budget overhang in respect to the business as usual. In respect to tax, I mean, I think those are really decisions for the government, obviously, and we'll leave them to make those decisions as and when they see fit. From our perspective, at least, the most critical thing is that we have a stable and a predictable tax regime and one that is competitive. That is to say, at the moment, we're a material taxpayer as you know, GBP 1.5 billion of corporate tax all in, including things like NII and BA and so forth about GBP 2.5 billion of total tax paid. We see ourselves a meaningful tax contributor. We see a stable and competitive tax regime and indeed a predictable tax regime as essential, frankly, to the continued prosperity in the financial services sector and by extension, all of the things that we can do for the U.K. economy as a whole. So I think that's really all we'd say on the tax front, Amit, which I hope is useful. Operator, we're going to call it a day for now on the questions. I just want to say thank you to everybody for joining the call today and your interest in the stock and the company is, as always, greatly appreciate it. Thanks very much, indeed. . Operator: Thank you. This concludes today's call. There will be a replay of the call and webcast available on the Lloyds Banking Group website shortly. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect your lines.
Operator: Hello, and welcome to the AutoNation, Inc. Q3 Earnings Call. My name is Harry, and I'll be your operator today. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand the conference over to Derek Fiebig, VP of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Derek Fiebig: Thanks, Harry, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to AutoNation's Third Quarter 2025 Conference Call. Leading our call today will be Mike Manley, our Chief Executive Officer; and Tom Szlosek, our Chief Financial Officer. Following their remarks, we will open up the call to questions. Before beginning, I'd like to remind that certain statements and information on this call, including any statements regarding our anticipated financial results and objectives, constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Federal Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks that may cause our actual results or performance to differ materially from such forward-looking statements. Additional discussions of factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially are contained in our press release issued today and in our filings with the SEC. Certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined under SEC rules will be discussed on this call. Reconciliations are provided in our materials and on our website at investors.autonation.com. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mike. Michael Manley: Yes. Thank you, Derek. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us today. And as usual, I'm going to start on the third slide. Firstly, we were very pleased to report our strong third quarter. We delivered 25% adjusted EPS growth, generated strong cash flow and deployed significant capital for share repurchases and acquisitions while maintaining our leverage at the lower half of our targeted range. Overall market conditions for New and Used Vehicles, we think are reasonable and holding up well, industry inventory of about 2.6 million units remains well below the 4 million units which was the norm ahead of the pandemic and units are down about 6% year-to-date. I think OEMs have been adding some production, but overall, inventory levels are in good shape. New vehicle sales remained below historical standards with the year-to-date light vehicle [indiscernible] averaging 16.3 million units and the retails are averaging around 13.6. Our industry sales are up 5% year-to-date, with about half of that increase attributable to a strong performance in March and April. But we think comparisons will probably get tougher in the fourth quarter as we [indiscernible] of $16.7 million and $13.9 million, respectively. The tariff story continues to evolve. Most of the negotiations with major trade partners are nearing completion, and the effects on the auto industry, I think, are becoming clearer. The impact on the OEM profitability is significant and well chronicled but they're clearly not standing still. There will be manufacturing relocations and other actions to drive a more efficient tariff supply chain and the knock on impacts of the dealers and consumers are beginning to play out as well. We expect decontenting and reductions in trim levels, additional fees and moderation in incentives and marketing spend. Now in the third quarter, we've already started to experience a reduction in certain types of incentive spending, which I will discuss a little bit more shortly. Our same-store sales of New Vehicles increased 4.5%, largely in line with the overall industry and unit growth was led by our domestic segment, which increased 11% from a year ago on a same-store basis. Import brand also increased and Premium Luxury was slightly down. With the expiration of government incentives for EVs on September 30, there was a significant increase in sales of Hybrid Vehicles, which were up 25% from a year ago and [indiscernible], which increased 40%. With the incentive exploration in mind, we reduced our BEV inventory by approximately 55% from year-end to around 1,550 units or less than 20 days of supplier quarter end. New Vehicle profitability moderated in the quarter as one might have expected with the mix of ourselves being more heavily weighted to bad and domestic vehicles. And as I mentioned, our [indiscernible] incentive spending played a part in here as well. [indiscernible], it is worth noting over the course of the quarter, we did see an improvement in unit profitability with September closing out more strongly than the average. Used Vehicle gross profit increased 3%, which was 2% on a same-store basis year-over-year as we benefited from stronger unit sales and improved performance in wholesale. Our unit sales increased 4% overall and more than 2% on a same-store basis, outpacing the industry. We had strong performances for the over $40,000 price point. In terms of acquisition, the team did a nice job acquiring vehicles through trade-ins and directly from consumers to our We'll Buy Your Car effort and these channels accounted for around 90% of the vehicles acquired in the quarter. We ended September with over 27,000 Used Vehicles and inventory, which has positioned us well for the fourth quarter of this year. Customer Financial Services gross profit was the highest we had ever reported in a quarter increasing 12% from a year ago. We continue to attach more than 2 products per vehicle with extended service contracts continuing to be the top offering which is, of course, fantastic for our future After-Sales revenue and customer retention. Our finance penetration was higher from a year ago with around 3/4 of units [indiscernible] with financing and we benefited from improved margins on vehicle service contracts. The momentum in After-Sales continued. We delivered record [indiscernible] revenue and gross profit. Total gross profit increased by 7%. The total gross profit margins expanded by 100 basis points from a year ago. Our growth was led by customer pay, which reflects our ongoing customer retention efforts. We continue to focus on our technician workforce by recruiting, retaining and developing our technicians. And I think we're continuing to see positive signs here. Turnover has decreased and franchise technician hand count increased 4% from a year ago on a same-store basis. Now the strong momentum at AN Finance continued originations have nearly doubled from the year prior, and we continue to scale the business with the portfolio now exceeding more than $2 billion. The portfolio and balance continues to perform in line with our expectations from a delinquency and a loss perspective and the business's base cost to remain reasonably stable, enabling good profit scaling as the portfolio grows. Our Q3 performance, combined with our share repurchases, helped us to grow our adjusted EPS by 25% from a year ago. This was the third consecutive year-over-year increase in adjusted EPS. Cash flow for the quarter and year-to-date was also strong. On a year-to-date basis, our adjusted free cash flow is 1.7x that for 2024, and Tom will talk a little bit more about that after me. Our investment-grade credit rating and balance sheet, as you know, is really anchored around a low net capital, high free cash flow model, enabled us to once again deploy significant capital in the quarter for both share repurchases and acquisitions to improve our franchise density and portfolio in existing markets. We've expanded our presence in 2 key markets, including the acquisition of a [ Ford and Matastore ] in Denver as well as an [ Audi ] in the Mercedes store in Chicago. All in all, I think, really good results and good progress from the automation team. And as usual, it is their results that have delivered this. So thank you all, many of you listen. At that time, I'm going to hand it over to you to take everyone through the results in more detail. Thomas Szlosek: All right. Great. Thanks, Mike. I'm turning to Slide 4 to discuss our third quarter P&L. Our total revenue for the quarter was $7 billion an increase of 7% a year ago on both total store and same-store basis. We achieved attractive same-store growth across the entire business, including double-digit growth in Customer Financial Services. 7% increase in same-store new vehicle revenue, which reflects new unit volumes across all 3 segments and After-Sales growth of 6%. Gross. Profit of $1.2 billion increased by 5% from a year ago, reflecting same-store CFS growth of 11%, After-Sales growth of 7% and Used Vehicle growth of 2%. The growth was offset in part by a decline in New Vehicle gross profit. Adjusted SG&A of 67.4% of gross profit for the quarter was in line with a year ago. For the year-to-date, we are at 67% within our targeted 66% to 67% range. Adjusted operating income increased by 9% and margin of 4.9% increased modestly from a year ago, reflecting excellent growth and performance in CFS and After-Sales, offset by moderation in new vehicle gross profit -- our unit profit. As a reminder, CFS and After-Sales comprise close to 80% of our gross profit together comprised a gross margin rate of more than 60% of revenue. Below the operating line, floor plan expense decreased by $13 million from a year ago as average rates were down approximately 100 basis points, combined with lower average outstanding borrowings. Non-vehicle interest expense was approximately flat from a year ago. As a reminder, we reflect floor plan assistance received from OEMs in gross margin. This assistance totaled $34 million compared with $38 million a year ago. Net of these OEMs have net new vehicle floor plan expense totaled $12 million, down from $20 million a year ago. In all, this resulted in an adjusted net income of $191 million compared to $162 million a year ago, an increase of 18%. Total shares repurchased over the 12 months decreased our average shares outstanding year-over-year by 5% to 38.1 million shares, benefiting our adjusted EPS, of course, which was $5.01 for the quarter, an increase of nearly $1 or 25% from a year ago. Adjusted EPS for the quarter excludes the $40 million in business interruption insurance recoveries related to last year's CDK business incident. Also the year-over-year comparison of adjusted EPS benefited from non-reccurence of the residual effects of the CDK business incident that adversely impacted the third quarter last year by approximately $0.21. Slide 5 provides some more color on New Vehicle. New Vehicle Unit volumes increased 5% from a year ago in total store, on a total store basis and 4% on a same-store basis. Total store unit sales were led by domestic vehicles, which grew approximately 12% in the quarter, followed by import growth at 4%. Premium Luxury was relatively flat year-over-year. By powertrain, Hybrid New Vehicle unit sales representing 20% of our volume, were up nearly 25% from the third quarter of a year ago. BEV New Vehicle sales representing nearly 10% of our volume, we're also up more than 40% year-over-year and on a sequential basis. Our New Vehicle unit profitability averaged approximately $2,300 for the quarter, down approximately 500 from a year ago for the reasons Mike mentioned. New Vehicle inventory amounted to 47 days of supply, down 5 days from the third quarter of last year and down from 2 days or down from 2 days at the end of June. The strong BEV sales during the quarter reduced battery electric inventory close to 70% from a year ago to less than 1 month of supply. For the fourth quarter, we expect the mix of new unit sales to improve, including less Battery Electric Vehicles and a higher percentage of Premium Luxury, reflecting seasonal strength during the holiday season. Turning to Slide 6. Used Vehicle retail sales improved on a total store basis by 4%. Average retail prices were up about 4%. Used Vehicle retail unit profitability of [ 14.89 ] was lower than a year ago, reflecting higher acquisition costs, but remains in line with historical levels. Total used gross profit increased 3% from a year ago, reflecting increased units and stronger wholesale performance. We remain focused on optimizing vehicle acquisition, reconditioning, inventory velocity and pricing. Overall, industry supply of Used Vehicles remains tight. We continue to be competitive in securing our vehicle supply from our retail operations, including trade-ins, We'll Buy Your Car, services loaner conversions and lease returns. We source more than 90% of our vehicles from these channels and are encouraged by the level and quality of our Used Vehicle inventories heading into the fourth quarter of the year. Turning to Slide 7. Customer Financial Services. Momentum continues to be strong for CFS. Gross profit increased 12% on a total store basis. Approximately 2/3 of the increase was from higher unit profitability. The rest was volume related. The results reflect improved margins on vehicle service contracts, consistent product attachment and higher penetration of finance products. The continued unit profitability performance in CFS is even more impressive considering the growth of AN Finance which, while superior long-term profitability dilutes our CFS PVR unit profitability. In fact, without the AN Finance dilution, our CFS per unit profitability would increase by an additional $30 from a year ago. Slide 8 provides an update on AN Finance, which is our captive finance company. As expected, the profitability of this portfolio is gaining meaningful traction as the portfolio matures and we get leverage on the fixed cost structure from the outstanding portfolio growth. Year-to-date, you can see that we improved from a $10 million operating loss in 2024 to a $4 million operating profit in 2025. During the third quarter, we again originated more than $400 million in loans bringing the year-to-date originations to more than $1.3 billion, nearly double our originations from last year. We had approximately $160 million in customer repayments in the quarter. Portfolio has more than doubled since last year is now greater than $2 billion. The quality of the portfolio continues to be credit and performance metrics are improving with average FICO scores. Our originations of [ $6.97 ] year-to-date compared to [ 6.74 ] a year ago. Delinquency rates at quarter end of 2.4% or solid and losses are stable as a percentage of the portfolio. We do expect delinquency rates to continue to normalize as the portfolio continues toward full maturity with delinquency rates migrating to the 3%-ish range. Our loss reserving methodology incorporates this expectation. The nonrecourse debt funded status of the portfolio also continued to improve as we have improved advance rates for our warehouse facilities and are benefiting from higher nonrecourse debt funding levels from our ABS issuance in the second quarter. Just going to 86% debt tonnage status that you can see on the page, released over $100 million of equity funding back to AutoNation. As we become a more regular ABS security this year, we expect to further increase the nonrecourse debt funding proportion of the portfolio, and we expect to carry out a second ABS transaction before the end of the first quarter 2026. Closing off [indiscernible] finance, the businesses attractive offerings are driving strong customer takeup, and we continue to expect attractive ROEs in the business driven by profitability growth and the shrinking equity. Moving to Slide 9, After-Sales. Representing nearly 1/2 of our gross profit, continued its revenue and margin momentum and gross profit posted a third quarter record for AutoNation. Same-store revenue increased 6% and gross profit was up 7% led by customer pay, which increased 10%. Internal and warranty were also higher than prior year, reflecting higher value repair orders along with higher overall repair orders. Our total store gross margin increased 100 basis points to 48.7% of revenue. We remain focused on hiring, developing and retaining our technicians. And as Mike mentioned, these efforts helped us to increase our franchise technician headcount by 4% from a year ago on a same-store basis. The increased technician workforce is a key to consistently driving that mid-single-digit growth in after sales gross profit. On Slide 10. Adjusted cash flow for the 9 months of the year totaled $786 million, which is about 134% of adjusted net income, and this compares to $467 million or 91% a year ago. The big increase reflects stronger operational performance, including our continued focus on working capital and cycle times as well as CapEx management and prioritization, which resulted in a $40 million lower spend on CapEx in 2025 and '24 as well the recovery from the CDK outage, including the $40 million in business interruption insurance receipts in the quarter. Our CapEx to depreciation ratio was at 1.2x compared to 1.5x a year ago. We continue to expect healthy free cash flow conversion for the full year. Slide 11, capital allocation. As we've discussed in the past, we consider capital allocation opportunity to either reinvest in the business in the form of CapEx or M&A or to return capital to share owners via share repurchase. Year-to-date, we've deployed over $1 billion in capital, as you can see on the page. We remain prudent in CapEx, which is mostly maintenance-related compulsory spending and totaled $223 million for the first 9 months of 2025, which is 15% lower than 2024, as I previously mentioned. We continue to actively explore M&A opportunities to add scale and density to our existing markets. So far this year, we spent approximately $350 million closing on transactions in Denver and Chicago, which Mike discussed. Share repurchases have been and will continue to be an important part of our playbook year-to-date. We've repurchased $435 million worth or 6% of the shares that were outstanding at the end of 2024 at an average price of $183 per share. In the 9 months ending September 30, we repurchased September 30, 2024, we repurchased $356 million at an average purchase price of $159 per share. In our capital allocation decisioning, of course, we consider our investment-grade balance sheet and the associated leverage levels. At quarter end, our leverage was 2.35x EBITDA, down from 2.45x EBITDA at the end of last year and well within our 2 to 3x long-term target which gives us additional dry powder for capital allocation going forward. Now let me turn the call back to Mike before we go to question and answer. Michael Manley: So I think we just go straight into Q&A. Derek Fiebig: Harry, if you could please remind people how to... Operator: Yes, of course, no problem at all. [Operator Instructions] And our first question will be from the line of Michael Ward with Citi Research. Michael Ward: Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. I wonder if you can quantify, it looks like the variable gross per unit from 2Q to 3Q went down by about $250. And it looks like -- is it split about equal between the unfavorable seasonal mix with Luxury and then in the BEV sell-up. Is that what we're looking at? And how does that reverse? Or does it fully reverse in 4Q? Michael Manley: Yes. Mike, I'll answer first and then Tom if you've got anything that you want to attend. So I think you saw 2 effects really on the growth. Obviously, everyone is talking about the significant increase in BEV mix, and there's no doubt about it that margins are absolutely -- were absolutely terrible and have been terrible for some time, but we'll talk about our view on how that moderates going forward. So we -- it's still -- even though they increased significantly, it was only 10% of our total mix and it did have an effect on our margin, the biggest effect, frankly, came from our domestic combustion or [ life sales ], where we saw quite a compression, particularly in the middle part of the quarter. We were able to reverse that to some extent as we came out of the quarter, as I alluded to in my comments, and I was pleased with our exit trajectory, but I think we had too much pressure on our domestic mix, as I said, in the middle of the quarter. And that was the largest contribution to the sequential and year-over-year reduction. I think we've got better balance now going into Q4 with regard to that. And I do think that we are going to see a much better dynamic with regard to supply and demand on BEVs in Q4, and we could have a relatively long discussion about what does the effect of the loss of the $7,500 due on that? And what's the thoughts about that? But I do think that we have a better dynamic in terms of supply, matching demand and therefore, less pressure potentially on margins. So a long answer to your question. It was actually more from our -- the highest contribution with our domestic sales. And Tom mentioned, they were up [ 11% ] in the quarter. There was, of course, an impact of BEV, but remember, it was only 10% of our total mix. Some of which will get mitigated as we go into the Q4 and you'll obviously get the benefit if we see normal patterns of a better luxury premium mix in December. Tom, do you want to add anything? Thomas Szlosek: No, I think you hit them all, Mike. Michael Ward: And the flip side of that is you have this record level of finance and insurance per unit. Any reason that won't continue? Michael Manley: Well, I have expectation that team has continued to grow their contribution to our company throughout my 4 years now with AutoNation. And they are led by a great group of people in the dealerships, by the way, in our markets and here. So our expectation is that their performance will continue. And I think the thing that Tom and I are delighted about is that it's really in value-added products. We mentioned the attachment rate, for example, of [indiscernible] service contracts. And it is clear that, that really for us is good for the future in terms of loyalty and in terms of our After-Sales business. So there's no reason why we would see that not necessarily change. It is and will continue to be mitigated by increased penetration of AN Finance in terms of the periodic reporting of that. But over the long term, the contract turn, we're better off with the overall returns AN Finance delivers rather than the one-off contracts we sell on behalf of others. Operator: The next question today will be from the line of Rajat Gupta with JPMorgan. Rajat Gupta: I just wanted to ask a little bit of a high-level question on just the auto credit trends. You noted that delinquencies were flat quarter-on-quarter looks like your average FICO mix is a little similar to some of your public peers out there, you know CarMax and others. I'm curious like, is there anything in the data that you see or the performance that you see in your loan book that concerns you with regard to the health of consumer with regard to how maybe losses or delinquencies have been performing within the quarter, maybe in certain cohorts of the consumer? Any more color you can share there would be helpful. And I have a follow-up on the Used car business. Thomas Szlosek: Yes. Thanks, Rajat. This is Tom. Good question. And obviously, there's a few headlines with some of the well-chronicled issues that came through in a couple of the larger portfolios this quarter. Obviously, that makes us double down and look at everything that we're doing, and we're very, very confident in the portfolio. I mean the growth has been outstanding, the financing levels continue to grow, minimizing our equity. But importantly, the portfolio itself is something that we look at very closely. Mike looks at it every week. And we look at not just the delinquencies, the delinquency rates, but we look at loss rates and write-offs, high vintage going all the way back to the start of when we were -- we did this business. The trends are all in line with what we expected. Our reserving has reflected those expectations and not seeing anything by way of acceleration in anything like repossessions or first payment skips or anything like that, that is not already reflected in how we manage the book. So I'm pretty good, pretty happy knock on wood with how that's been going. Rajat Gupta: Understood. That's helpful color. Just following up on the Used Car business, you had a pretty strong same-store growth number last quarter. Looks like it slowed down a bit. I'm sure like there's been some effect of the prebuy that happened last quarter that's causing the decel. But curious if we can get an update on some of the initiatives you talked about last time on improving the business there, both growth and profitability, where you are in the time line of that progress? And should we start to see further acceleration in that growth here over the next few quarters? Michael Manley: Yes. I'll give you an answer to that question. I would tell you that one of the things that we talked about was that we believe that we could grow our Used Car business, and we are -- we are growing our Used Car business above the industry. And all of those things are continuing to happen and our margin is relatively stable, albeit there's some downward pressure on it. So I think if you look objectively at our performance, you will say, yes, it's market, that's a good performance or some people would. So I would tell you that the team and I are really, really focused on what the other possibility here. And we are maintaining higher stock levels for the sale than we would normally have. Historically, I'd like to make sure that we have an inventory turn rate that for me, balances, obviously, the depreciation that we're now back into a normal cycle with how long we're keeping those vehicles in our inventory. And we're not at that turn rate but the level of inventory that we're carrying today. We are typically the team would balance back down to just above their run rate to give them room to grow. But we're not going to do that time. We're going to hold the line with higher inventory on Used for a period of time. While we continue to work on the other levers to get our run rate to get back to the turn levels that we would expect. Now the consequence of that, of course, is the depreciation effect on our margin will be there for a period of time and will continue, frankly in Q4. And as you know, when you think about depreciation impact and it is completely time based that put some downward pressure on our overall result. So I would say we've made -- we continue to make progress that more headroom, we're not where I or the team would like to be. We're not going to take the balancing approach that we've taken before because we want to work the kinks out of the system. There will come a point that we may have to rebalance Used Inventory down so that we can alleviate some of that margin pressure that we're seeing. We're not there at this moment in time, but we'll make that decision as the quarter continues. So the short answer is progress above industry in Q3. Our expectations are higher. We are doing numerous things to get there. They haven't all worked in the quarter, albeit the result was good. We're going to hold higher inventory levels than we normally would to make sure that we have the supply that is there as we work through those other things. The consequence of that is pick up increased depreciation, which is accounting for about 0.2% of our margin at this moment in time, and we will stay there in Q4 to enable the organization to grow, and we will see what happens with the overall marketplace. That doesn't mean to say that at some point in the quarter, we will balance our inventory back if we see that the market is not giving us the results that we need. That's what our job is to do. But at the moment, we're holding the line with our inventory, which is why you see our inventory levels where they are on Used. So hopefully, that's enough color for you. Operator: The next question will be from the line of Jeff Lick, Stephens inc. Jeffrey Lick: Tom, I was wondering if you could give a little more detail on the impressive 100 bps of gross margin expansion in service and parts, just kind of what's driving that and how sustainable that will be going forward? Thomas Szlosek: I mean when you look at the performance in the quarter, I would say that the total -- just to reference, the growth was roughly [ 7% ] in growth. And I'd say it's equally balanced between volume and price. And with volume, I'm talking about both parts, number of repair orders and labor hours per repair order. Those were all up and tracking nicely. Also from a price perspective, there's inflation in the market and we definitely do our part to offset that on a regular basis. And then we probably got a little bit more mix favorability as well. But the initiatives that Christian and the team are driving around technicians and the hiring and training of technicians as well as having appropriate capacity from a service day perspective or working out well for us, and we're able to leverage the investments that we've made. We talked about maintaining a reasonable level of CapEx spend and been able to achieve these results while being thoughtful about the amount of capital we're putting in as well. So I'd say those are the big drivers. Jeffrey Lick: And just a quick follow-up on SG&A, 67.4% as a ratio of gross profit and flat last year, which given your peers' reports that you're the leader in the club. Outlook's pretty impressive. I know you're kind of taking a bit of an outsider's point of view given your previous professional experience in -- just curious where you see that going and what highlights you'd give as to what's going to lead that? Thomas Szlosek: Mike has his expectations. We talked about a range of 66%, 67%, but that's we're driving even more aggressive than that. I think the other important thing is there's a disparity amongst the group in terms of how service loaners are reported. We include the entire expense for service loaners and our SG&A rate as well. So that I think ours is a bit penalized compared to some in the group. So overall, it's a I agree with you that the performance is good from an outsider's view. But I would say we have a number of initiatives driving productivity on the -- in our variable side, both whether it's on the sales side in the service space, that's really important and drive the outcomes -- unit outcomes also on advertising being very, very thoughtful in terms of return on investments that we're getting there. And then lastly, there was a whole pool of cost, other SG&A types of costs that we manage every day. We have a number of initiatives I've talked about before. But those are front and center. We look at them every month as a leadership team and course correct when we see things not in the direction we want. I think it's getting the right amount of attention in the company. I expect us to closely manage that. Now we've got investments that we make and those are fairly regular. They can be a bit variable and spike at times, but they're all made with the idea of driving further growth. So that's in terms of how I'm looking at it. I think it's a big area focus. Jeffrey Lick: Mike impressive performance. Best of luck in the fourth quarter. Operator: Our next question today will be from the line of Daniela Haigian with Morgan Stanley. Daniela Haigian: One question on forward demand. As we've kind of passed through the peak tariff fears as you spoke to, Mike, we're now seeing OEMs revise up guidance is. Kind of clears the bar on improved outlook here. You spoke to decontenting, but how are you seeing pricing on new model your vehicles. Is that relatively unchanged? How are you thinking about '26? Anything you can share there would be helpful. Michael Manley: Yes. So I think you're right in your view. I think the OEMs now have had enough time and are getting to a level of clarity where they have looked at their product plans, look at their supply chains. And the 2 big impacts of tariffs, but also from a powertrain perspective, have driven significant change into all of the OEMs views on their product lineup and the powertrains that they're going to deploy. And I think that they have, to the most extent, got their heads around that and understand what they want to do and therefore, they're being much more clear and less cautious about their future outlook. A lot of that hasn't really made its way yet into the market. Some of it has, of course. But I would tell you that my view on this is look at pricing and what's come through the system so far, it looks broadly in line with normal pricing that we would expect for the model year changeover. But that, of course, is just a headline. We know that there is, as always, option decontenting. Things that were standard made optional and there is always value engineering that happens with every single OEM. So at the end of the day, if you were to assess true value delivered to the customer for each dollar. I can't really give you a clear picture on that yet. But we know that the levers that have been pulled are on the supplier side, they are on, obviously, the cost per vehicle side and the bill of materials and also on some of the incentives that have been provided to dealers, whether it's volume growth incentives or other support incentives that do not directly impact net transaction price in the marketplace, but ultimately do impact dealer margins. So we know there's effect across all of that. Some of that we saw in the quarter. We alluded to that in my incentive comments. I think that's going to continue as we get into deeper into Q4 and we clear our prior model year. But I'm pleased with where the industry is, frankly. We said at the beginning of the year, we thought it was -- we were hoping 5% up year-over-year. And we had no clue really of the turbulence that we were going to see that we have seen this year. And I think the OEMs have largely navigated it well, some better than others are always. So we are hoping that Q4 continues back. We think that the year-over-year comps are higher bar in Q4. And we said that because we wanted to give you an indication of our view of October through the end of December. But as we get into next year and you see some of the more rapid supply chain changes that OEMs are there. I think what they're going to want to do is to maintain the progress in this year. So it's too early for me to call what I think 2026 will be in terms of the total inventory. But I do think there's a lot more clarity from the OEMs. And I do think we're going to see more potential impacts that will be mitigated to some extent by their actions and dealer actions in Q4. Daniela Haigian: Great. That's very helpful. And back to Used Car, you spoke to sourcing challenges. Availability should improve at the margin over the next year. But how do you expect the strategy around older Used Cars to shift over time? It's clearly a very fragmented Used Car market? How are you viewing competition from the likes of online pure play retailers? And is there a greater opportunity to grow and consolidate there? Michael Manley: Yes. I'm always -- I always believe that there's opportunity to consolidate, particularly when you add the fragmentation that we have got. I mean even if you take the largest of the players in their forecast, it's a tiny percentage of market. So there's always opportunity for that to happen. But let me try let me try and answer your question in sections and redirect you if necessary. Firstly, we have continued to see competition for retail grade used inventory and that competition, it has resulted in some upward pressure on wholesale prices. We and the other big retailers benefit from one more channel than some of the pure plays, and that is obviously in our trading, but that channel is not completely isolated from competition because of the level of transparency pricing in the marketplace, which will only increase. But I think we have a very strong sourcing strategy that enables us to keep the level of inventory we want in place, albeit an elevated, albeit at an elevated cost. Our growth, really, as we alluded to, came from higher-priced vehicles. Others are leaning into maybe lower-priced vehicles. I think as we exhaust the art of the possible from 20,000 units [indiscernible] and above, and we want to continue to grow, we can lean higher into those lower-priced vehicles with obviously, the consequence of the investment required to get them road ready. But as I mentioned, we're going to hold slightly elevated used inventory in the quarter. Really to see the art of the possible of our sales teams and our marketing teams to get our turn rates back up to what we're used to. They'll be given some time to do that. We understand the consequences of that which will be some downward pressure, particularly around the aging that will be in addition to some slightly elevated wholesale prices that we're seeing. We may have to balance that, as I mentioned before, as the quarter closes. But I do think for us, we have a very strong North Star in terms of what we think we should be capable of with our physical the relationships and the confidence that comes from the brands that we have above our doors and the fact that we have multiple sourcing channels. So I am -- if you were to talk to any of our market presidents, I would tell you that I am very bullish on Used Car volumes. I understand it doesn't -- it's not a switch. It takes time, and of course, it includes all of the channels. But the reality is most people buy a Used Car within 50 miles of the dealership that's got it. Operator: The final question in the queue today will be from the line of Bret Jordan with Jefferies. Bret Jordan: One of your peers yesterday was noting that the consumer sentiment around the luxury space was feeling a little softer. Are you seeing any changes sort of at the underlying demand level at the higher price points? Michael Manley: Yes, I think that -- so I mean, it's a good question because really when we closed out the quarter and we saw the level of activity around hybrid and there's a lot of that, obviously, for us is in luxury space, and we come into what really is a bit of a quiet period for luxury. I would tell you that I think it is more muted than last year. But I still have expectations we will see a seasonal uptick in December. But I do think it is more muted, particularly as the way as I see October developing. So that's the best color I can give you at the moment. Bret Jordan: Okay. And then within the domestic internal combustion GPUs, was it brand specific? Or was there sort of a one-off event in there that is to be corrected? Or are we thinking that domestic ICE GPUs are just under some sustained pressure? Michael Manley: Well, I tell you something. I think some of them self-inflicted, frankly. And that's one of the conversations that we have internally. We've set ourselves strong expectations in terms of how we want to perform in line of the marketplace. And it is always a 3-way balance between what share are we able to achieve with the brands that we've got at what margin level and what marketing expense. And I think we -- as I tried to allude to, probably had some self-inflicted downward pressure in the middle of the quarter that was corrected in September, and I expect that to continue to be corrected. But you saw all of the domestic players, all of the domestic players chasing volume, domestic players tend to chase volume and they do it in conjunction with their dealers. In other words, they have programs and schemes and relationships with their dealers when they're chasing volume. Everybody participates into driving a very competitive net transaction price, we're very -- we have a strong partnership with all 3 of the domestics and we were supportive as we could, and that had general downward pressure across the piece. It is true that some domestics had higher downward pressure than others, but that's the nature of the game and the cycles that they're in. I think, as I said, some of our performance was a bit self-inflicted, which was corrected as we came out of the quarter. We just want to make sure that we are growing because I think there's opportunity for us to grow but we do that in an appropriate balance fashion, knowing that for every new car that we sell, we get a customer who has a very high loyalty for us to have 7 years if they keep the vehicle. And large percentage is a great opportunity on used car sales because the value we offer for their trades as well. So it isn't just one element. We try to think about the best balance we can achieve in the business. Sometimes we get it right, sometimes we push a little bit hard. That's why we look at it every day. Operator: With no further questions on the line at this time. I will now hand the call back to Mike Manley for any closing comments. Michael Manley: Yes. Thank you, Harry. Thank you all for being on the call. As always, we appreciate your questions, and we wish you well. Thank you. Operator: This will conclude the AutoNation, Inc. Q3 Earnings Call. Thank you to everyone who is able to join us today. You may now disconnect your lines.
Operator: Good morning. The Roper Technologies conference call will now begin. Today's call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Zack Moxcey, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Zack Moxcey: Good morning, and thank you all for joining us as we discuss the third quarter 2025 financial results for Roper Technologies. Joining me on the call this morning are Neil Hunn, President and Chief Executive Officer; Jason Conley, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; Brandon Cross, Vice President and Principal Accounting Officer; and Shannon O'Callaghan, Senior Vice President of Finance. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release announcing our financial results. The press release also includes replay information for today's call. We have prepared slides to accompany today's call, which are available through the webcast and are also available on our website. Now if you please turn to Page 2. We begin with our safe harbor statement. During the course of today's call, we will make forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties as described on this page, in our press release and in our SEC filings. You should listen to today's call in the context of that information. And now if you please turn to Page 3. Today, we will discuss our results primarily on an adjusted non-GAAP and continuing operations basis. For the third quarter, the difference between our GAAP results and adjusted results consists of the following items: amortization of acquisition-related intangible assets, transaction-related expenses associated with completed acquisitions; and lastly, financial impacts associated with our minority investment in Indicor. Reconciliations can be found in our press release and in the appendix of this presentation on our website. And now if you please turn to Page 4, I'll hand the call over to Neil. After our prepared remarks, we will take questions from our telephone participants. Neil? Neil Hunn: Thank you, Zack, and thanks to everyone for joining us and excited to be with you this morning. As we turn to Page 4, you'll see the topics we plan to cover today. We'll start with our third quarter highlights and financial results. Next, we'll review our segment performance, our AI progress and momentum and our most recent set of bolt-on acquisitions. Then I'll get into our guidance details and of course, wrap up with your questions. So with that, let's go ahead and get started. Next slide, please. Turning to Page 5. Let me run through the 4 key takeaways for today's call. First, we had a strong third quarter. Total revenue grew 14%, organic revenue grew 6%, software bookings grew in the high singles area, and we continue to deliver impressive free cash flow with free cash flow growing 17%. And of note, free cash flow margins posted at 32% for the TTM period, really impressive financial results. Second, we're super encouraged by the progress and momentum we're seeing across all of our businesses as it relates to our AI enablement and our product stacks and our internal operations and more on this in a moment. Third, we're announcing today our first share repurchase authorization, $3 billion in total. And lastly, we continue to execute on our M&A strategy of acquiring faster growth platforms and bolt-on or tuck-in acquisitions at a high fidelity rate. In the quarter, we deployed $1.3 billion, $800 million for Subsplash, which we detailed this time last quarter, and $500 million on a series of tuck-in acquisitions. Also more on this later, but worth highlighting here, we are very encouraged by this recent capital deployment execution and the future growth potential that's being layered into our enterprise. Importantly, we remain very well positioned for the continued execution of our M&A strategy and continue to have north of $5 billion of capital deployment capacity available over the next 12 months or so. As I turn the call over to Jason, reflecting on the quarter, I'm quite bullish on most of what we're seeing, a very strong 3Q, real demonstrable AI progress, which is a long-term growth driver for us, excellent execution of our higher growth, higher returning capital deployment strategy and the announcement of our first-ever buyback authorization. This all bodes very well for the future. That said, we'd like to see some of our markets start to cooperate a bit better, namely the government contracting and freight markets, and we have some delays in Neptune. Much more on this as we walk through today's call. So with that, let me turn the call over to Jason to talk through our P&L and our balance sheet. Jason Conley: Thanks, Neil. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. I'm pleased to take you through our third quarter results and strong financial position. Turning to Page 6. Q3 and TTM results reflect the long-term financial profile of Roper, which is to compound cash flow in the mid-teens area. We'll start with revenue, which was 14% over prior year and surpassed the $2 billion mark. Acquisitions contributed 8%, led by the final quarter of Transact before it turns organic and CentralReach, which we acquired in April this year. Of note, these businesses are tracking very well against our acquisition expectations. We printed 6% organic growth, both for the consolidated enterprise and across each of our 3 segments. Our Application and Network Software segments were in line with expectations, while TEP was a bit below given near-term timing at Neptune, which Neil will discuss further. EBITDA of $810 million was 13% over prior year with EBITDA margin of 40.2%. Core margins expanded 10 basis points and segment core margins expanded 30 basis points, led by our software segments. DEPS of $5.14 was 11% over prior year and $0.02 above the high end of our guidance range despite absorbing $0.05 of dilution from Q3 acquisitions that were not reflected in previous guidance. Free cash flow was outstanding at $842 million, up 17% over prior year and representing 32% of revenue on a TTM basis. Our software businesses captured strong renewals, and we drove great working capital performance across the board. Broadening out a bit, TTM cash flow of over $2.4 billion is a 17% CAGR over a 3-year period. And for those looking at per share metrics, you'll note that our share count has compounded at about 0.5% over that same time period. At Roper, we have been and will continue to be relentlessly focused on cash flow and shareholder value creation. Now let's turn to Slide 7 and discuss our very strong financial position. Our net debt-to-EBITDA stands at 3x, which is up only modestly from Q2 at 2.9x despite deploying $1.3 billion towards acquisitions. This places us in a great position with over $5 billion in next 12-month capacity for capital deployment. Regarding M&A, you can see that we've been quite active this year in acquiring high-quality growth businesses and several strategic bolt-ons. This is against the backdrop of a muted PE deal environment. The pipeline of high-quality acquisitions continues to build as assets mature in PE portfolios and a return of capital to LPs becomes paramount. Additionally, as Neil mentioned, we're pleased to announce another capital deployment lever that was previously unavailable. Our Board has authorized a $3 billion share repurchase program with an open-ended time period to execute. While M&A will continue to be the majority of our capital deployment allocation, our share repurchase program will allow us to opportunistically complement our M&A program. Over the last year or 2, we have talked about the great business building taking place across the Roper portfolio from strategy to talent to execution, all now greatly turbocharged by AI. Our repurchase program reflects both confidence in our strategy and our commitment to delivering long-term shareholder value. So with that, I'll turn it back over to Neil to talk about our segment performance. Neil? Neil Hunn: Thanks, Jason. Turning to Page 8. And before we get into our segment details, we want to discuss why AI is a powerful and durable growth driver for Roper. To start, AI represents a meaningful expansion of our TAM across the portfolio. We can now deliver transformational software solutions that automate labor-intensive work adjacent to our existing platforms. This creates substantial new value streams for our customers and correspondingly facilitates long-term growth for Roper and our businesses. Importantly, our businesses are uniquely positioned to win in AI, in fact, having a very high right to win in the AI world. Our software solutions are deeply embedded system of record applications with workflow-oriented domain-specific architectures. The decades of cumulative workflow knowledge built into our platforms, combined with the proprietary vertical market data, provide the precise context needed to develop Agentic AI solutions. Because of this, our businesses have an exceptionally high right to win as we deploy these capabilities across our VMS end markets. Internally, we're becoming AI native across all functions to drive productivity gains. We're excited to reinvest these gains to further accelerate our product development and go-to-market initiatives. It's important to note, we've always had more great ideas than resources needed to execute, and AI has the potential to attack this challenge. Finally, we have tangible proof points, though it's still early. Aderant has claimed a technology leadership position in legal tech, accelerating their bookings growth. CentralReach now has roughly 75% of their bookings attributed to AI-enabled products, which have automated 100 million reimbursement rule evaluations, over 3.5 million learner appointments and over 1 million clinical summaries being generated, great real-world examples of the power of AI. Deltek has released over 40 AI features into their cloud offerings, driving increased cloud conversion activity. And DAT has industry-leading AI/ML-enabled freight matching capabilities, which I'll detail shortly. These are but a few examples from across the portfolio. Very exciting times for sure. With that, let's now turn to our segment review, starting with Page 10 and our Application Software segment. Revenue for the quarter grew by 18% in total and organic revenue grew by 6%. EBITDA margins were 43.4% and core margins improved 40 basis points in the quarter. Starting with Deltek. Deltek delivered solid performance in the quarter with particularly strong results in their private sector end markets. Construction, architecture and engineering remained robust throughout. The GovCon business experienced softness in September as agencies paused activity ahead of the pending government shutdown. This timing is unfortunate. Pipeline activity and commercial momentum had been building nicely following the passage of the one big beautiful bill in July, and we are seeing increased engagement across our customer base heading into the new fiscal year. The fundamentals remain strong. The OB3 authorized significant increases in defense and infrastructure spending that will flow through to our customers once appropriations are finalized. This is simply the timing issue, not a demand issue. Finally, retention levels across the entire Deltek franchise remain very high. Aderant continues to be incredibly strong and continues to post impressive bookings and recurring revenue growth. The booking strength is broad-based, fueled by their AI-enabled solutions, especially as it relates to AI-enabled compliant time capture and billing and is a combination of market share gains, cloud migration and SaaS growth. Vertafore continues once again to be steady and solid for us. We continue to see consistent ARR growth and strong customer retention and strength across their agency, MGA and carrier solutions. This growth is enabled by their strong go-to-market capabilities and their long-term commitment to product strength. PowerPlan's performance has been terrific. Their success is a result of several years of business building in the product stack, the go-to-market capabilities, their service delivery really across all functions. In addition, to remind everyone, they serve power generation customers, which are adding capacity as quickly as possible to handle the AI workloads. The setup here should be quite good for a long time. Also in the quarter, we completed the acquisition of Orchard, a tuck-in acquisition for our Clinisys business. Orchard brings additional clinical laboratory capability to Clinisys with particular strength in reference, physician office and public health labs. Finally, the balance of our application software portfolio continues to execute very well. CentralReach was awesome again in the quarter, driving accelerating adoption of their AI tools and capturing ABA therapy capacity additions. Procare made a great installment of progress with new bookings continuing to be strong, posting low double-digit growth in payments with improved gross margins, though still work to do, in particular, with faster implementation time frames and share of wallet expansion, but meaningful progress for sure. Finally, Strata and Transact were steady and solid in the quarter. As we look to the final quarter of the year, we expect to deliver mid-single-digit organic revenue growth. This outlook reflects high single-digit growth in our recurring revenue base, offset by declines in nonrecurring revenue, primarily due to anticipated softness in our Deltek business stemming from the ongoing government shutdown. Given the uncertainty surrounding the duration and impact of the shutdown, we see potential outcomes across the full range of our MSD outlook from the lower to the higher end. That said, our businesses in this segment continue to compete and execute exceptionally well. The primary variable remains a higher level of market uncertainty than we typically experience for our Deltek business. Please turn with us to Page 11. Total revenue in our Network segment grew 13% and organic revenue 6% in the quarter. EBITDA margins remained strong at 53.7% with core margins improving 60 basis points. As we dig into the individual businesses, we'll start with DAT. DAT was solid in the quarter and had strong ARPU improvements. DAT continues to execute exceptionally well on their core strategy of driving enhanced network value for both brokers and carriers. This dual-sided approach positions DAT to better monetize their entire network ecosystem and more on this when we turn to the next page. ConstructConnect was solid again for us in the quarter. The growth was fueled by strong customer bookings activity and improved customer net retention. Of note, this business continues to make good progress with our emerging AI-enabled takeoff and estimating solution. Foundry is turning the corner on growth, posting continued sequential improvements in ARR, and we expect our Q4 exit ARR to grow year-over-year in the HSD area. Really happy for the team there as they've had to work through some tough market conditions. Next, our network health care businesses, MHA, SHP and SoftWriters were very good in the quarter. Of particular note, SoftWriters is executing at an exceptional level, winning a few very large pharmacy customers and making substantial progress on a high-impact AI solution, which is being beta tested in the market currently. Congrats to Scott and his entire team for their success. Finally, Subsplash, our most recent acquisition that closed on July 25, is off to a great start, delivering financial results in line with our deal model expectations. Of note, they saw very good market traction with their AI-driven [ sermon ] content offering, Pulpit AI, and they deepened its integration with their core engagement platform, driving strong product-led growth, exciting stuff. As we turn to the outlook for the final quarter of the year, we expect to see organic revenue growth at the higher end of the mid-singles area. As we turn to Page 12, we'd like to spend a few minutes describing the strategic evolution of our DAT business and why we're so excited about its future growth prospects. To start, our legacy DAT platform is the largest freight matching network across the U.S. and Canada. The scale is remarkable, over 1.2 million loads posted and 15 million rate views every single day. DAT is the clear market leader, delivering tremendous value to both freight brokers and carriers, both of whom pay to participate in this powerful network. As strong as the legacy business is, we're even more bullish about where DAT is headed. To bring this vision to life, DAT is building capabilities across the entire freight automation workflow from carrier vetting to broker carrier matching to AI-driven rate negotiation, load management tracking and finally, payment and settlement. Through deep customer partnering with the brokerage community, DAT is working to fully automate the freight matching process. As this happens, DAT will generate $100 to $200 per load in savings for brokers while giving carriers greater predictability and faster payments on their invoices. What sets DAT apart is this end-to-end product capability and its role as a neutral trusted partner, a Switzerland-like player that equally serves the entire freight brokerage market. This is a truly unique position in the market. This evolution also highlights the Roper DAT partnership at its best. We work closely with the DA team to craft this strategy, then we executed a focused M&A program to strengthen it through 3 strategic tuck-ins: Trucker Tools, Outdo and Convoy. With the deals complete, DAT is now fully focused on delivering against this strategic opportunity. Important to note, Convoy is an unusual transaction for us as it currently is not profitable, but we expect the financial returns over the next several years to be extremely attractive. The key to success is scaling efficiently, leveraging DAT's advantaged customer unit economics for both brokers and carriers to drive sustained growth and profitability. We are confident in this strategy, market position and DAT's ability to execute. I know this was a bit of a deep dive, but we wanted to share with you why we're so excited about the growth opportunity that sits in front of DAT, true AI-based freight automation. Now let's turn to Page 13 and review our TEP segment's quarterly results. Total revenue here grew 7% and organic revenue grew 6%. EBITDA margins came in at 35.2%. Let's start with Neptune. As we've said before, Neptune continues to execute really well, particularly around its ultrasonic meter strategy, and we're seeing strong traction in its data and software billing solutions. The new copper tariff that took effect on August 1 caused some short-term disruption. Neptune responded by implementing surcharges to offset the tariffs impact, which temporarily slowed order timing. These actions reflect the benefit of being part of Roper, doing the right long-term thing for customers and the business even when it creates near-term headwinds. Verathon continues to perform well. In particular, during the quarter, Verathon saw continued strength in its single-use recurring product lines, both BFlex and GlideScope, which remain key growth drivers. NDI also delivered an excellent quarter. As we discussed previously, NDI provides proprietary world-class precision measurement technologies to a range of health care OEMs. These technologies in turn enable guidance-enabled solutions across multiple clinical markets, including orthopedic surgery, interventional radiology and cardiac ablation. Finally, we saw strong execution and growth across CIVCO, FMI, Inovonics, IPA and rf IDEAS, rounding out a solid overall performance for this group of companies. Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, we expect organic growth in the low single-digit area given the very difficult prior year comp and the timing we discussed at Neptune. Now let's turn to Page 15 and review our Q4 and updated full year 2025 guidance. Starting with the full year outlook, we continue to expect total revenue to remain in the 13% area. Also, given the delays at Neptune and the temporary impact of the government shutdown, which is slowing year-end commercial activity at Deltek, we now expect organic revenue to land in the 6% area versus our previous 6% to 7% range. Relative to our full year DEPS outlook, we're tightening guidance to the high end of our prior range after adjusting for $0.10 of dilution from the $500 million of tuck-in acquisitions completed during the quarter. Specifically, we now expect adjusted DEPS to be in the range of $19.90 and $19.95. We expect to see our tax rate at the lower end of our 21% to 22% area for the full year. For the fourth quarter, we're establishing adjusted DEPS guidance to be between $5.11 and $5.16, which includes $0.05 of dilution for last quarter's tuck-in deals. Now please turn with us to Page 16, and we'll open it up to your questions. We'll conclude with the same key takeaways with which we started. First, we had a very good third quarter with exceptional free cash flow. Second, we're super excited about the pace of AI innovation and the growth potential in front of our enterprise. Third, we're announcing a $3 billion authorization for a share repurchase. And finally, we remain super well positioned for further M&A activity. Relative to our financial results, we grew total revenue 14% and organic revenue 6%, grew EBITDA 13% and delivered 17% free cash flow growth in the quarter. AI is a significant growth driver for Roper, expanding our TAMs by automating tasks and work across our vertical market offerings. With deep workflow integration, proprietary data and vertical market-specific architectures, our businesses are well positioned to succeed in AI, in fact, have a very high right to win and are already seeing measurable yet early product and commercial results. DAT exemplifies this strategy in action, evolving from a traditional freight matching network to a fully automated freight marketplace powered by AI. Through this transformation, DAT is unlocking significant efficiency and economic value for brokers and carriers alike, positioning itself for improved high-quality growth. As Jason mentioned earlier, we're excited to announce a $3 billion share repurchase authorization, which will deploy opportunistically, enabling us to take advantage of dislocations in the market. We're super confident with our talent advantage, our strategy and our execution capabilities, and this first-ever buyback is evidence of such. Importantly, we remain exceptionally well positioned to execute our M&A strategy. We have north of $5 billion of available firepower over the next 12 months and a very active, large and attractive pipeline of opportunities. Importantly, Roper continues to strengthen its position as an acquirer of choice for both target CEOs and their private equity owners. As always, we'll pursue these opportunities with our consistent, unbiased, patient and disciplined approach. Prior to turning to your questions and if you flip to the final slide, our strategic compounding flywheel, we'd like to remind everyone that what we do as Roper is simple. We compound cash flow over a long arc of time by executing a low-risk strategy and running our dual threat offense. First, we have a proven powerful business model that begins with operating a portfolio of market-leading application-specific and vertically oriented businesses. Once the company is part of Roper, we operate a decentralized environment so our businesses can compete and win based on customer intimacy. We coach our businesses on how to structurally improve their long-term and sustainable organic growth rates and underlying business quality. Second, we run a centralized process-driven capital deployment strategy that focuses in a deliberate and disciplined manner on cultivating, curating and acquiring the next great vertical market-leading business or tuck-in acquisition to add to our cash flow compounding flywheel. Taken together, we compound our cash flow over a long arc of time in the mid-teens area, meaning we double our cash flow every 5 years or so. So with that, we'd like to thank you for your continued interest and support and open the call to your questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of George Kurosawa with Citi. George Michael Kurosawa: Great to be on the call here. Wanted to first touch on kind of the high-level organic growth picture. I think you can -- took a step back this quarter, but I think you can certainly argue there are some onetime or short-term dynamics at play here. Maybe just if you could frame your confidence in a reacceleration from here, particularly as we start to sharpen our pencils for '26. Neil Hunn: Yes. Appreciate it. Thanks for being on the call this morning. So the -- yes, I think you're right. I mean the reason that was a little rough this quarter were the 2 reasons we talked about, the commercial activity at Deltek with the government shutdown and then this tariff-related impact at Neptune. As we think about '26, I mean, it's a little early for us to get super detailed about '26. But if you sort of roll sort of segment by segment, it's been pretty -- in application, it's been pretty consistent trends there throughout '25. Deltek and government contracting should improve next year given the passage of OB3. I think the timing of when that improves is still up in the air a little bit. We'll see that as we get through our planning and roll into next year. But there's definitely sort of improvement happening in that market given the spending attached to OB3. In the Networks segment, it's been pretty consistent over the last 3 quarters. There is sort of a comp thing in the first quarter. So pretty consistent over the last 3 quarters despite the sort of the headwinds in the freight market. We'll have to see how the freight market evolves next year, but really like the business building we're doing at DAT, as I talked about. As I also mentioned, foundry is going to be better next year. And then on TEP, the Neptune order patterns likely continue normalizing the pre-COVID sort of lead time levels. Orders there have been pretty good. It's just the lead -- and the lead times are going to continue to shorten. NDI is poised for a couple of strong years, but we really need to get through our planning process to have more clarity on how TEP is going to play out next year. But all in all, we feel pretty good about the trends in GovCon, Foundry, CentralReach and Subsplash turning organic in the second half of next year and the general business building. But as usual, we go through a pretty exhaustive Q4 planning process, which we kick off in a couple of weeks. George Michael Kurosawa: Okay. That's super helpful color. And then maybe just one quick follow-up here on the AI strategy. I think you disclosed 25 products last quarter. I'm curious if you have an updated number just to give us a sense for the pace of innovation and just more generally, how you feel businesses are coming up the AI curve here. Neil Hunn: Yes. We feel very, very good. I won't rehash all the prepared comments about why we feel that way. But we're going from having a large number of products and key features. We talked about the 40 AI features in the Deltek core that's driving sort of the cloud migrations and SaaS. But increasingly, we're seeing sort of AI SKUs. So we feel real good about that. Now we've got to get through the commercial activities as we release these SKUs across essentially every one of our software businesses now and in the first half of next year that we got to go sell them and commercialize them and then the momentum will sort of pick up from there. But feel very good, very high right to win, a lot of compounding of knowledge about how to do all this stuff internally. This is -- you can hire some talent, you got to build it. So we feel real good about that. A lot of internal sharing that's going on, which is great to see, a lot of momentum. So we can certainly talk more about that, but feel great about where we are on the AI front. Operator: And the next question comes from the line of Brent Thill with Jefferies. Brent Thill: Just on the buyback, I guess, maybe walk through the strategy, why not leaning harder into M&A versus -- I believe this is your first buyback ever. What drove that decision? Neil Hunn: Yes, I appreciate it. The -- so just to be clear on what it is. So it's $3 billion. It's open-ended timing. It's opportunistic and in no way, shape or form, a change in our strategy. Set this in the context of the amount of capital we have to deploy over the next 3 years is somewhere in the $15 billion to $20 billion range. So it's not a change in any way, shape or form. The rationale for it is pretty straightforward. We just have a ton of conviction in what we're doing. And in terms of the talent we have on the team and that lead our companies, the strategies, the AI execution, the general continuous improvement execution, the business building we're doing. And we think this buyback is just clear evidence and support for our conviction there. But we're going to maintain a strong bias towards M&A. The compounding nature of the numerator is better than the denominator. It's just straight math. We're super active on the M&A front. We cultivate every day. In fact, our Janet Glazer leads our capital deployment efforts had a fantastic meeting 3 or 4 weeks ago, I think, with 18 CEOs of companies that are in the pipeline, so a marketing event, and it was met with great reviews, and we're really becoming sort of a buyer of choice, both for the CEOs of companies and also the private equity sellers. So we feel real good about the execution of our M&A strategy, and this buyback is just a small complement to the overall strategy of Roper. Brent Thill: Okay. Neil, I know the last couple of years, we've had a couple of things that maybe haven't gone the way you wanted to. The question is just how do you derisk this out of the guide? And I think investors have looked at the portfolio and said that you get the diversification aspect, but why do we keep having kind of the setbacks if we're that diverse. So that's the question I'm getting. Neil Hunn: Yes. So you're right. I mean we've built this portfolio to essentially take as much cyclicality and cycle risk as you can take out of an enterprise. If you look back over our long history, before we sold and divested all the industrial businesses, we'd cycle up or down 5 to 10 points. Now we're cycling like a point here or there. So we've essentially beaten out ostensively all the cycle risk you can in an enterprise. In this case, it's just -- it's frustratingly bespoke situations. Government contracting, normally, you're in GovTech because of the stability of the end market here. It's been anything but that the last couple of years. Transportation, who would have predicted like a 3-year freight recession. And so it is frustrating these things are stacking on top of each other, but they're bespoke, and we like the construct of the portfolio for sure. Jason Conley: I think the cash flow generation continues to be strong and consistent with what we thought. Obviously, we've had some new deals come in that have been dilutive, but we have been able to sort of push through that. Our guidance is -- adjusted for dilution is pretty close to where we were before. So despite some of the softness we've seen, we've been able to sort of maintain the bottom. Operator: The next question comes from Brad Reback with Stifel. Brad Reback: Software bookings decelerated a little bit sequentially, I think from the mid-teens to the high singles. Was that predominantly Deltek? Or were there other drivers there? Jason Conley: Yes. It was mainly Deltek, a little bit of frontline. We've talked about the -- some of the funding from the DOE. We don't get a ton of funding down to the states, but at the margin, it does slow down a little bit in K-12. But yes, it's Deltek Frontline. Outside of that, it's very strong. So if you look on a TTM, also a very lumpy dynamic, right? Software bookings are -- can be lumpy quarter-to-quarter. TTM is up low single digits -- sorry, low double digits. So I feel good about that trend. And I would also just call out that health care has been particularly strong this quarter. Our Strata business, we combined Strata and Syntellis a couple of years ago, and that's really starting to take hold in the market. So bookings are really strong there. And actually, our Clinisys business is doing quite well, too, in Europe and even in the U.S. with some of the bolt-ons we've done for them to get outside of the hospital, that's starting to gain traction as well. So just some color behind the bookings this quarter. Brad Reback: Great. And then, Neil, I think 2 questions ago, you talked about the rollout of the AI SKUs happening now through the first half of '26 and then needing to sell it. That all seems like we should be thinking about this more of a '27 and beyond organic driver as opposed to '26? Neil Hunn: I think that's a fair -- we're certainly viewing it that way. I think it's a fair assumption. We'll certainly see progress in bookings throughout next year because again, this is across 20-plus software companies and multiple products across 20 software companies. And so we'll see building momentum. But before it has a meaningful impact, I think it's '27 because of the commercial activity that has to go along with the innovation. Operator: The next question comes from Ken Wong with Oppenheimer. Hoi-Fung Wong: Fantastic. I wanted to maybe drill in a little bit on just the organic growth. Any way for you guys to help kind of slice what you might have seen from maybe the same-store sales versus maybe the net new organic that's coming on to the P&L. Hopefully, that question makes sense. Neil Hunn: We want to make sure we're framing -- answering the right question. Essentially, what's the cross-sell versus sort of net new mix? Is that your question? Hoi-Fung Wong: No. I guess what was coming from, let's say, the portfolio, let's say, prior to, let's say, like a Procare, Transact versus the stuff that is now kind of flowing in as incremental organic. What was once inorganic coming in as organic? Does that make a little more sense? Jason Conley: Yes, like what's the impact of Procare coming into organic. A little bit of accretion from Procare, not as we talked about, not as much as we had thought when we did the deal, but it's certainly accretive to the segment. Hoi-Fung Wong: Okay. Got it. And then on the TEP business, I think going into the quarter, I think the expectations were high single digit in the back half. I guess, yet only 6% in the quarter, low single in Q4. Was that isolated to any particular piece? Or was it a little more broad-based? Is it just Neptune? Or should we think about any other pieces that contributed to that slight weakness? Jason Conley: Yes. It was Neptune predominantly. I mean you had -- it was an acute impact in Q3. We always had a little bit of a tougher setup in Q4, but even aside from that, it was definitely down in both quarters -- it's Neptune, sorry Neptune. Operator: The next question comes from Joshua Tilton with Wolfe Research. Joshua Tilton: Hey guys, can you hear me? Neil Hunn: Yes. Joshua Tilton: I've been bounced around a few earnings this morning, so I apologize if it's already been asked. But I guess the #1 question for me is just, is there anything you can give us on the guidance front, specifically for organic revenue growth that could increase our confidence that like you derisked it enough. Maybe you could just like walk us through a little bit further on where the derisking is coming from Deltek versus Neptune and kind of what gives you the confidence that this is a good base to start for the rest of the year? Jason Conley: Yes. I mean I think we've given the outline by segment. And so I think Neil had framed at AS, we've got it at mid-single-digit growth. There could be a range there, and it really depends on Deltek's perpetual license activity and a little bit to a lesser extent, there's a couple of projects at our Transact business that might hit this quarter or next quarter. So that's sort of the range there. And so I think we've given you that. Network is going to be sort of mid-single-digit plus. I think we've -- a lot of that's recurring revenue. And the only thing that can move around is Truckers, right? They can come in and out of the DAT on a monthly basis. So we think we've sort of -- we've got that sort of boxed. And then on low single digits for TEP, I think we've identified where the challenges are for Neptune's tariff activity. NDI works on mostly backlog for the quarter. The others are a little bit less backlog. But just based on the trends and the call downs we had with the business, we feel like that's an appropriate number for the quarter. Joshua Tilton: Really appreciate the color. And just maybe for a quick follow-up. I really appreciate all the color you guys gave on the AI positioning that you guys have and some of the examples. I guess what I'm trying to understand is it feels like every company that we talk to is trying to race to be a winner in this AI world at a pace that we've kind of never seen before. Is there a dynamic? Or do you feel that maybe you guys have this unique AI think tank going on inside of Roper because you have a group or a portfolio of companies that are all marching towards the same AI goal? And then if that's the case, maybe could you share with us how they're sharing knowledge and best practices and what they're seeing across some of the use cases that are already being successful to kind of set up the rest of the portfolio to be just as successful in their AI endeavor? Neil Hunn: Yes, I appreciate that. So I don't know if I would go as far as say like there's some think tank sitting in Sarasota that's like crafting all this. What it is, is we have clarity of purpose, right? So when you're vertical market, system of record, you're going to evolve like system of work, it's everybody -- the portfolio construct is so similar that we're running basically the same play across the 20-plus software companies. There's common purpose and common understanding about that. Then there is a lot of information sharing. Every 3 weeks, there's an AI sort of showcase inside of Roper. We have a few hundred people in sort of talking about 1 company or 2 companies to highlight what they're doing internally or externally, architecture, commercial, whatever it may be. We send a weekly e-mail about sort of where the state of the technology is, the state of the evolution of AI to galvanize the leaders. There's telemetry we're putting into our planning process that we're looking for, for both the product road maps and internal productivity. The group executives who, as you know, coach 6 or 7 businesses each, those businesses are together all the time on all things related to business, AI being a big topic of it. And I could see us in the not-too-distant future, sort of adding some resources at the corporate office at the center that are an overlay to all of that, that are really sort of scanning the horizon for the -- enabling technologies are going and how to apply that technology. Because at the end of the day, this stuff is hard. I mean it's what we're trying to do to identify tasks and work where you have to be deterministic and not probabilistic. It's hard to do. It's good that it's hard because when you do something that's hard, you create this magical moment for your customer, and that's where you can sort of have this win-win relationship on value. And so we're super excited about all that, again, have this high right to win because of all the context and data and decades of sort of accumulated knowledge about how these verticals work. And the final thing I would say is the real unlock for really anything inside of Roper is our org structure, right? where this highly decentralized high-trust autonomous structure, taking an $8 billion P&L gets put into 29 units. You have super talented leadership teams that are highly motivated intrinsically and through our financial reward system to compete and win in the marketplace, and this is the new frontier on how to do that. Joshua Tilton: Sounds like a good setup for AI success. Operator: The next question comes from Terry Tillman with Truist Securities. Terrell Tillman: Two questions. The first question is on software bookings and specifically with Deltek. The second one is going to be DAT. So first, in terms of software bookings, I think you said high singles in 3Q. So what are you assuming in 4Q? And the second part of that first question is, and maybe this is wildly optimistic, but assuming at some point, the government shutdown thesis, could you actually get those licenses in still in November or December? Or are you just assuming that doesn't happen? And then I'll have that DAT follow-up. Jason Conley: So -- yes, so thanks for the question, Terry. So I think for the fourth quarter, we'll see how it plays out. We had a very strong Q4 last year. So the comps are a little tougher, but I think it's the end of the year. And obviously, the pipelines look very strong across our businesses. You're right about Deltek. We're not assuming that's going to hit this year, but we've also seen customers make very quick decisions in the last few days, especially if it's sort of -- they've got an internal budget dynamic that they can utilize. So we're not assuming that at this point, but I will say just for '26, we do feel really good about what [indiscernible] is going to mean for Deltek. Additionally, I mean, just Deltek's had -- the markets haven't been cooperative just in general for the last couple of years. So the demand is definitely there. Deltek has done a lot to their cloud product. They're incorporating a lot of the new AI features that are going to be cloud only. So that should help drive some higher conversion. That's one of our -- I think it's our biggest maintenance base at Roper. So excited about the future, just need to get past this quarter of sort of uncertainty. Terrell Tillman: Got it. And then, Neil, on Slide 12, I like that slide, shows kind of where you've delivered on the platform. I know with DAT, pricing and packaging was an important kind of growth unlock and improvement this year. But now you have this idea of one-click automation and then newer areas that seem like they've expanded the TAM around management and payments. Like is there any way you can frame like how much you can garner now per successful load or transaction going forward with some of this newer technology versus the past or the present as you laid out on that page? Neil Hunn: Yes. I appreciate it. So yes, you're right. So the strategy at DAT, and I've called this out for a few quarters, if not longer, is we have this remarkable business that's a network between brokers and carriers, and we monetize both sides of the network on a subscription basis. And we have -- what we have is the market captured, and we have very favorable go-to-market unit economics, especially on the carrier side because the carrier, you get your authority first, then you probably subscribe to DAT second, so you can understand where you're going to grab your load from. So they -- it's a very efficient go-to-market motion on capture there, very unique go-to-market motion relative to the unit economics. So then the strategy is how do you just scaffold more value on both sides of that network. And then the ultimate value creation is the one you're talking about, which is how you sort of take the labor -- the task labor out of the matching of a broker transaction. As we mentioned today, we broker about -- there's about 1.2 million loads a day on DAT. There's about $100 to $200 in task labor savings for each one of those that's automated. So you can apply whatever percentage you think is fair. I'm going to leave that open at the moment. We have a good indication internally, but some small percentage of the total loads and then some small percentage, a fair percentage of the labor task savings, and you'll get a very large sort of opportunity. Now that's the opportunity. Now we have to go equip it. You've got to make -- we've got to integrate this capability into the TMS of every broker, so it's native. You got to onboard a large portion of the carrier base into this, which we're actively doing. So we're super excited. The early results were like sold out on the broker front. So the early results for integration is great. But there's a business we've got to go build here. And the reason that we're unique in this is that we're truly Switzerland. Like we don't -- we're not competing with the brokers. We're enabling the brokers, and it's a huge value savings for both the brokers and the carriers. Operator: The next question comes from Deane Dray with RBC Capital Markets. Deane Dray: Just want to get a clarification on the timing delays at Neptune. Our experience has been, especially recently going through COVID is once a utility is ready to place an order, they're unlikely to switch. It's already gone through the rate case. It's all a pilot study and so forth. So have they lost any of these orders? Or this is strictly delay at this point? Neil Hunn: No, no, just to be super clear. This is pushed to the right. So what we've done, and I alluded to this in the prepared remarks, is we have this tariff coming through. We at Neptune decided we concurred fully that they're going to assess a surcharge, which then you've got to go essentially recontract or renegotiate with all the open orders about how to do that, and it just puts some gum into the system. It's a little bit easier when you're going through distribution to do that because you have a distribution partner, you can sort of share some of this surcharge with, but when you're doing the direct business, that's a little bit more difficult to do it and a little bit slower. So this is 100% pushed to the right. In fact, Neptune reports, I mean, there was a little market share gain in the quarter for Neptune, but these sort of market share quarter-to-quarter are sort of a point here, a point there, 0.5 point here, 0.5 point there, but the latest report is the share has actually improved a little bit with Neptune in the quarter. Deane Dray: That's really helpful. And then a follow-up, and I'll echo the -- how much we appreciate that spotlight on DAT. And just the idea, can you talk about the implications of making the investment in Convoy. You added that it's not profitable, but just the willingness to subsidize and make that investment so you have this end-to-end automation, but just the implications of a bolt-on that's not profitable. Neil Hunn: Yes. So I'll just -- I'll start and ask Jason to add a little bit of color. In our case, it was very -- it was a unique situation for us. It was very much a buy versus build. This is very complicated. It sounds very easy. It is very complicated, complex algorithms to do this. They have to be absolutely deterministic. It's more ML than AI. There's a very large group of talented engineers that came with the acquisition. They're now part of the DAT sort of franchise. And so it's unique in that it's money losing at the moment, but it's like the final piece to sort of manifest the strategy of DAT and because of what we talked about earlier, we have such high conviction of what's going to happen here. Jason Conley: Yes. I would just add that, I mean, most of our strategies call for tuck-ins that are adjacent and they sort of fold them in. It's like we just did Orchard for Clinisys. That's sort of the bread and butter that we would do for bolt-ons. This is really a technology acquisition that was -- it's really to create a new market. And so I would say that's very rare for us, but we think it's a great opportunity. And so we're willing to make that technology investment. Operator: The next question comes from Dylan Becker with William Blair. Faith Brunner: It's Faith on for Dylan. Maybe expanding on the DAT question. It seems like this end-to-end platform has been in the making for some time. So can you talk about where you see DAT growing as you continue to build out this network and the long-term potential there? And maybe even how this can drive durability despite some of the headwinds we're seeing in freight? Neil Hunn: Yes. So we want to -- so the DAT core business is a low double-digit growth business when you get the benefit of some unit growth versus just packaging and price. So that's the long-term sort of organic growth rate of the core business. When you talk about this sort of this entire sort of tracking automated business, we're talking about adding a capability that doesn't exist in the industry that is multiples of the existing TAM. And so we want to see actual momentum in there before we quote sort of what the acceleration magnitude could be to DAT, but it's exciting for sure. So I know that's a little bit of a -- but not an answer you're not looking for at the moment, but we want to actually see the growth on the field before we call the how much accelerated growth rate that's going to be there. Faith Brunner: All right. No, that's helpful. And then maybe just double-clicking on Deltek. Can you maybe remind us what you guys saw during past government shutdowns and the impact to the business and any potential insulation there? Neil Hunn: Yes, happy to do that. So just to remind everybody, Deltek is 60% GovCon, 40% non-GovCon. We're talking about the 60% of Deltek that's in GovCon. What we've seen is when you have the government shutdown, it's the pending -- it's the potential of the shutdown and the actual shutdown that it just pauses commercial activity. The activity is still there. The pipelines continue to build. There's still discussions because everybody knows the shutdown will end, the government will be operational again, and we have this OB3 spending where we have to -- all that will be awarded and has to be delivered. It's just -- in the height of the uncertainty, there's just not a lot of signing of the purchase orders or the contracts. If this were -- hypothetically, if this were happening in March, we would probably not be calling down the year because there'll be time left in the balance of the year to sort of for the commercial activity to sort of resolve itself. It's just we're sitting here in the last 2 or 3 months of the year, we're going to run the clock out on the year and roll into next year. Operator: The next question comes from Joe Giordano with TD Cowen. Joseph Giordano: Just looking at App Software, I mean, if we strip out the Deltek GovCon stuff for a second and just think about like the acceleration of organic here, what's the catalyst for this? I mean you look back, I mean, it's been small variance, but we're kind of like 3 years around 6%, give or take. So like what in your sense is like really the catalyst to bring this into like a high single to -- more of like a high single framework? Neil Hunn: Yes. So it certainly will help when your largest business -- the largest segment of your largest business can sort of grow at its normalized growth rate. I mean we're a couple of years into sort of a slowdown with the uncertainties across all the government sort of spending so that helps quite a bit when you look at that. We've had -- just going through the businesses, Vertafore is steady for us, a lot of AI opportunity in front of that business, probably takes -- I mean, we'll see some early green shoots of that next year, but as we said earlier, probably more '27. Aderant has been just killing it. PowerPlan, doing a great job. CentralReach will turn organic, which will help. Frontline has been a little sluggish for the last couple of quarters, couple of years -- a couple of quarters, largely because of some uncertainty around the funding coming from what's happening in Department of Education. You've got this hangover from all the COVID spending and it's just now that's getting more normalized. So frontline reaccelerating, which is in the offing in the next couple of years will be super helpful to that regard. And then finally, our Clinisys business for the U.S. part of our laboratory business, the legacy Sunquest has just lagged for all the reasons that everybody knows for 8 years, and now that's turning or that's a mid-single-digit organic growth enterprise for us now. So that starts to help. So we like what's happening here in terms of the growth optionality and growth capability. Joseph Giordano: When you think about the buyback now and you think about the multiple of your stock, like what's the thought process when you're weighing like, okay, here's a $1 billion opportunity here or $1 billion of deploying capital. Like it used to kind of be pretty straightforward with where the multiple your stock was versus the multiple of what you're acquiring, and now it's kind of -- it slipped a little bit. So maybe talk us through how much that's informing your decisions on where to allocate at a given moment in time. Neil Hunn: Yes. For us, it's never been about the multiple of our stock. It's been what's in the compounding math for a cash flow acceleration, what's the best deployment of capital to optimize the long-term cash flow compounding of the enterprise. And now we just have another lever to buyback to put into that consideration set. Operator: The next question comes from Julian Mitchell with Barclays. Julian Mitchell: Just wanted to start off with the outlook for TEP and Neptune, in particular, on the top line. So you had the backlog declining there for sort of 2-plus years. The revenue growth is slowing a little bit. So I just wondered sort of what's the confidence that, that organic growth on revenue doesn't continue slowing into next year, just given those backlog dynamics? Neil Hunn: Well, I think we got to -- so let's be clear about the backlog dynamic. This is about the buildup from the COVID period. I mean pre-COVID, this was -- you might have a couple of quarters of visibility to an order backlog. And it wasn't quite a book and ship business, but much more book and ship than it was when you ran up through COVID. And then all the customers gave us blanket orders that were a year plus out. Now we're -- when I spoke earlier, we're normalizing the order lead times slowly over time. So we -- the backlog grew and it's bleeding down based on this order timing dynamic. Set that apart from the demand environment, the market share environment. So that's point one. Point two, on the more normalizing piece at Neptune on the demand environment is we're just in a cycle now this year, probably next year, where we're just in normalized growth for that business, where the prior 2 or 3 years were accelerated growth because of the hangover from the COVID period. Julian Mitchell: That's very helpful. And then just my second one might be around sort of with all this effort around sort of AI, just wondered what the implication for that might be on your, let's say, core R&D. Is that -- could that be a bigger headwind to core margin expansion in future? And whether there's been any view to sort of looking to acquire more AI-intensive businesses within your overall capital deployment framework? Jason Conley: Yes. So actually, this is Jason. I think the -- it's interesting. We're getting quite a bit of activity using some of the frontier models out there, CloudCode, Codex, Cursor. And so we're not really seeing now. Obviously, we're going through our planning this year, but it's creating a lot of opportunity to just do more with less. And so that's the -- that's our posture is that our R&D envelope will probably stay the same, and we'll just get more out of it. And when it comes to acquisitions, look, yes, we'll look for small tuck-ins that we can do. We just did a really small one for Aderant, and that's not necessarily buying AI talent, but it's providing an AI solution that gets us faster to market. So we'll do those occasionally, I think it's not going to be our primary way to get after AI faster, but certainly will be an option. Operator: And this concludes our question-and-answer session. We will now return back to Zack Moxcey for closing remarks. Zack Moxcey: Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We look forward to speaking with you during our next earnings call. Operator: And this -- the conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
Operator: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Textron Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Release. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Scott Hegstrom. Please go ahead, sir. Scott Hegstrom: Thanks, Rob, and good morning, everyone. Before we begin, I'd like to mention we will be discussing future estimates and expectations during our call today. These forward-looking statements are subject to various risk factors, which are detailed in our SEC filings and also in today's press release. On the call today, we have Scott Donnelly, Textron's Chairman and CEO; and David Rosenberg, our Chief Financial Officer. Our earnings call presentation can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website. Revenues in the quarter were $3.6 billion, up 5% or $175 million from last year's third quarter. Segment profit in the quarter was $357 million, up 26% or $73 million from the third quarter of 2024. Adjusted income from continuing operations was $1.55 per share compared to $1.40 per share in last year's third quarter. Manufacturing cash flow before pension contributions totaled $281 million in the quarter compared to $147 million in last year's third quarter. With that, I'll turn the call over to Scott. Scott Donnelly: Thanks, Scott. Good morning, everybody. Let me just start with yesterday's announcement. I'm sure you've all read by now that yesterday, we elected Lisa Atherton to become our new President and CEO, effective at the beginning of January. At that point in time, I'll transition to be the Executive Chair. This is the result of a long, thorough process that we worked with on the Board. I think Lisa, who's been with our company for about 18 years is an outstanding leader. She's had a number of really important roles in the company over the years. She was the President and CEO of our Textron Systems business for about 5 years. Most recently, obviously, she's the President and CEO of Bell, where she's been very involved in both the capture, the win and now the execution of the ramp on MV-75. She's a fabulous leader. She knows the team. She's surrounded by a great team at the business level across the company. So we're proud of the fact that we had a great internal promotion, and I think she'll just do a fabulous job leading the company into the future. So with that, let me go ahead and talk about the quarter. Overall, revenue was higher, driven by strong growth across our aerospace and defense businesses. Aviation had higher segment revenues and profit compared to the third quarter of last year. We delivered 42 jets and 39 commercial turboprops compared to 41 jets and 25 commercial turboprops in last year's third quarter. Textron Aviation's fleet utilization remained strong in the quarter, contributing to an aftermarket revenue growth of 5% as compared to last year's third quarter. Aviation backlog ended the third quarter at $7.7 billion as demand remains strong. Earlier this month, Textron Aviation completed the certification of the CJ3 Gen2 and autothrottles on the M2 Gen2. Also this month, the Citation Ascend made a debut as it landed in Las Vegas for the NBAA exhibition. We are nearing completion of the certification process and continue to expect deliveries this quarter. During the quarter, the Latitude received FAA certification for new features of the Garmin 5000 avionics suite. These features include Synthetic Vision Guidance Systems and for improved approach capabilities down to 150 feet and a new taxiway routing feature. We continue to implement Starlink high-speed Internet connectivity onto our aircraft. With the recent announcement of the Latitude and Longitude supplemental type certifications, Starlink is now available on 14 platforms across Aviation's product portfolio. On the defense side, Aviation announced a partnership with Leonardo to launch the Beechcraft M-346N as a solution for the United States Navy Undergraduate Jet Training System competition. Throughout the quarter, Aviation participated in a nationwide demo tour to highlight the capabilities of this aircraft. At Bell, increased revenues were driven by higher military volume, reflecting the continued ramp and acceleration of the MV-75 program. In the quarter, Bell exceeded their 90% engineering release milestone, enabling continued fabrication and procurement activity for the prototype aircraft. Fabrication and assembly work on the program is continuing across numerous sites, including wing assembly at our Amarillo, Texas site, fuselage assembly at our Wichita, Kansas site, in addition to ongoing fabrication of critical rotor and drive system components in our Fort Worth operations. On the commercial side of Bell, we delivered 30 helicopters, down from 44 in last year's third quarter. Bell continues to see strong demand across its commercial product portfolio. Bell announced a purchase agreement with Global Medical Response for 7 429s and an option for 8 additional helicopters with deliveries expected to begin in 2026. Moving to Systems. Revenues were up as compared to last year. During the quarter, Systems received new contract awards for several programs, leading to an increase in backlog of about $1 billion in the quarter. These awards included ATAC awards for both the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps, a new contract award for the U.S. Army to provide 65 mobile strike force vehicles in support of the Ukraine Security Systems Initiative and increased quantities for the Ship-to-Shore Connector program. In the weapons business, Systems completed delivery of the first production lot of XM204 anti-vehicle terrain shaping systems to the U.S. Army in support of operations in Europe. Moving to Industrial. We saw lower revenues, reflecting the divestiture of the Powersports business. At Aviation, we continue to make progress on several of our core development efforts. The team completed the Hover flight test envelope for the Nuuva V300 and set the stage for Air Vehicle 2 to enter the flight test program. As disclosed in our 8-K filing, Textron will be eliminating the Textron Aviation segment as a separate reporting segment, realigning the eAviation business activities across Textron Aviation and Textron Systems to leverage our existing sales and business development capabilities. This change will be effective at the beginning of fiscal year 2026. With that, I'll turn the call over to David. David Rosenberg: Thank you, Scott, and good morning, everyone. Let's review how each of the segments contributed, starting with Textron Aviation. Revenues at Textron Aviation of $1.5 billion were up 10% or $138 million from the third quarter of 2024, reflecting higher aircraft revenues of $116 million and higher aftermarket parts and service revenues of $22 million. The increase in aircraft revenues were largely due to higher volume mix, which included higher Citation jet and commercial turboprop volume, partially offset by lower defense volume. Segment profit was $179 million in the third quarter, up 40% or $51 million from a year ago, largely due to higher volume and mix. Backlog in the segment ended the quarter at $7.7 billion. Moving to Bell. Revenues were $1 billion, up 10% or $97 million from the third quarter of 2024. The revenue increase was driven by higher military revenues of $128 million, primarily due to higher volume from the U.S. Army's MV-75 program, partially offset by lower commercial volume of $31 million. Segment profit of $92 million was down $6 million from last year's third quarter. Backlog in the segment ended the quarter at $8.2 billion, an increase of $1.3 billion from the prior quarter, primarily reflecting the award for the prototype testing and evaluation phase of the MV-75 program. At Textron Systems, revenues were $307 million, up 2% or $6 million from last year's third quarter, which included higher volume on the Ship-to-Shore Connector program. Segment profit of $52 million was up $13 million compared with the third quarter of 2024, largely due to a gain resulting from the early termination of a vendor contract. Backlog in the segment ended the quarter at $3.2 billion, an increase of $980 million from the prior quarter, reflecting new contract awards for the Ship-to-Shore Connector land vehicles in the adversary air business. Industrial revenues were $761 million, down $79 million from last year's third quarter, driven by Textron Specialized Vehicles. This reflects $88 million in lower revenues related to the divestiture of the Powersports business. Segment profit of $31 million was down $1 million from the third quarter of 2024. Textron eAviation segment revenues were $5 million in the third quarter of 2025 as compared to $6 million in last year's third quarter, and segment loss was $15 million as compared with a segment loss of $18 million in the third quarter of 2024. Finance segment revenues were $26 million and profit was $18 million in the third quarter of 2025 as compared to segment revenues of $12 million and profit of $5 million in the third quarter of 2024. The increase in revenues and segment profit was largely due to gains on the disposition of noncaptive assets. Moving below segment profit. Corporate expense were $26 million. Net interest expense for the manufacturing group was $26 million. LIFO inventory provision was $48 million. Intangible asset amortization was $8 million and the non-service components of pension and postretirement income were $67 million. As expected, our adjusted effective tax rate for the third quarter of 2025 was 25.5%, largely reflecting the impact of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. We now expect our full year adjusted effective tax rate to be approximately 21%. During the quarter, we repurchased approximately 2.6 million shares, returning $206 million in cash to shareholders. Year-to-date, we have repurchased approximately 8.4 million shares, returning $635 million to shareholders. To wrap up with guidance, we are reiterating our expected full year adjusted earnings per share to be in the range of $6 to $6.20 and maintaining our expected full year manufacturing cash flow before pension contributions to be in the range of $900 million to $1 billion. That concludes our prepared remarks. So operator, we can open the line for questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] And your first question today comes from the line of Peter Arment from Baird. Peter Arment: Congratulations, Scott. I appreciate all the help over the years. On the MV-75, could you guys give us -- there was an announcement by the Army here recently regarding accelerating the fielding of the Version 2. Just how that would impact any the cost profile? Or does it change anything? Scott Donnelly: It won't change anything in the near term, Peter. I mean, obviously, part of the strategy on the program, which has been there all along was to start with a very basic aircraft and focus on the critical parameters around speed and range and basic aerostructure. But as you know, part of the incorporation of MOSA in terms of the architecture of this aircraft allows you to do that and then build out variants and derivatives and capabilities in different variants going forward. So our focus, obviously, right now is very much around the acceleration, getting the first prototype aircraft going. Those will be the first variant. So -- but there's already a lot of work clearly going on in the Army around what future capabilities they'll want to put on the aircraft, but that's enabled by the MOSA architecture. So it doesn't affect or impact the work that's going on around the basic aircraft today. Peter Arment: That's helpful. And then just a quick one on -- just on Aviation, you talked about the demand remains strong. Just maybe any highlights you would call out just regarding whether it's regionally or just in general on the biz jet market. Scott Donnelly: It's really across the whole portfolio, Peter. I mean we continue to see strong retail demand. People are flying. The end market industry remains robust, I would say, everywhere that we see it. The performance of the business is improving, obviously, as we talked about every quarter, improving margins. We had a lot of certification activity in the quarter. We would have originally planned probably to get the M2, the CJ3 and the Ascend in Q3. It's turned out. Of course, we now have the M2 and the CJ3, but those happened right at the beginning of Q4. And Ascend, we should have wrapped up here by the end of the month. The FAA, despite the shutdown is supporting us in that effort, which is great. So I think the market is strong. Our product portfolio is in a good place. So we feel pretty good about where things are. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Sheila Kahyaoglu from Jefferies. Sheila Kahyaoglu: Congratulations, Scott, on a great run and promoting both Dave and Lisa internally. I think that says a lot. Maybe if I could follow up on the MV-75 question, if that's okay, for Peter. Can you provide additional color on like where -- what's the update on the program? You've completed 215 flight hours. I think you're scheduled to deliver 6 test articles over the next 1.5 years. What happens from there with the Army? And how do we think about a contract being signed on? Scott Donnelly: Sure. So I mean, the current program, it's -- Sheila, it's a good question. I think there are some misunderstandings about this program and sort of where it is and what's going on. I've heard a lot of people said, hey, is this going to be one of these programs as we've seen with a lot of defense contractors around these big fixed price programs. We're familiar with those. We had that, as you know, on Ship-to-Shore Connector. It's a healthy program today, but went through a very difficult phase given the nature of the fixed price development and production at the beginning. As you know, we don't have that. This is a very large program, obviously. It's mostly cost-plus development. There are some fixed price elements. We've already put the fixed price LUT aircraft into our program estimates to complete. We will, at some point, add the LRIP 8 once that is exercised by the government. But I think that the program as it's laid out today covers all of that development, which is largely cost plus. It does have LUT as a fixed price. It does have LRIP as a fixed price. And that's kind of where that -- where the current program stops. So the discussions around acceleration are really bringing forward that LRIP. We collectively with the Army, believe this is something that we can do with low risk. That's in part by, as you referenced, the fact that we flew 200 and some 300 hours on the V-280. The team is already building a lot of the key components and fabrications, getting ready to build the first prototype test aircraft. There will be 6 of those and then the 2 LUTs. So the risk of bringing that LRIP in rather than having a big gap is pretty minimal. People need to keep in mind that, that first LRIP aircraft is really sort of serial # 10, if you count the initial V-280 plus the 6 EMDs, which are cost plus and then those first 2 LUTs that are fixed price. So I think the team is doing a great job on executing. Obviously, we work very, very closely with the Army on the acceleration process. It's going very well. We're building wings. We're building fuselages. We're building gearboxes. It's all going quite well. And again, I think there is a little bit of a misconception around how this works. It is a big performance obligation. We will -- as you guys saw last year, when we did the LUTs and added those to the mix, we took our booking rate down, and that will result in a [ cume catch ]. It did result in a cume catch that was a bad guy. On the other hand, this quarter, they exercised one of the large cleanse for the cost-plus side. We actually increased our booking rate and took a modest cume catch good guy. So this is something to expect through the course of the program. But unlike these big fixed-price development, fixed-price production programs, we certainly don't see this thing entering into lost territory. It will continue to book at a low margin, which we've said from the beginning. But I think we're, again, in a pretty good place, and it's a program, I think, that's executing well and obviously is hugely important to the future of the company. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Gavin Parsons from UBS. João Santos: This is João Santos on behalf of Gavin Parsons. You have talked before about improving Aviation profitability. What is the long-term margin target that you are aiming for? And what are the main levers to get there? Is it volume, pricing or more of mix? Scott Donnelly: Well, I mean, obviously, these dynamics are different in each one of the businesses. But generally speaking, across all of our product lines, we have good gross margins. So the biggest lever is around volume and what that does in terms of conversion to the bottom line in terms of performance. So that's -- most of the investments that we make around product are around making sure that we have products that have high demand and can command good volume and obviously, solid pricing, which, again, we've seen that in the last number of years where we've had very positive price feedback as well. João Santos: Great. And then in Aviation bookings have been fairly steady each quarter this year, even through the 2Q tariff uncertainty. Do you think long lead times are holding back new orders? And if production ramps, could that actually drive bookings higher? Scott Donnelly: Well, look, it's -- there is some connection between news. There's no doubt if you get out too far out in time line that it's difficult for people to make that commitment. But as you said, look, I think that the market demand remains strong. It has been pretty steady. We've guided a 1:1 book-to-bill through the course of the year. I still feel good about that. And certainly, we do have plans where you'll see incremental volume in 2026 as opposed to 2025. So we're not obviously quite ready to guide 2026 here, but we certainly expect, as manufacturing continues to ramp, we will see additional output in terms of the number of aircraft. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Robert Stallard from Vertical Research. Robert Stallard: Congratulations, Scott, on the move up. But my first question is actually in relation to that and how you and Lisa expect to divide the role going forward because you will be Executive Chairman. Scott Donnelly: Sure, Robert. Look, I mean, this is, I think, a fairly standard transition in our business. I've been working with Lisa for a very long time in her capacity and key program jobs. She worked for me directly for the last 8 years running the Systems business and then the Bell business. So I want to be really clear, she becomes the President and CEO. She's running the company. That's -- and she's ready to do that, by the way. So I'll be there to help with some of the processes that we just haven't gone through around regulatory stuff and closing out the year and things like that. But I fully expect she's ready to run the company, and she'll start doing that on January 4, and I'll be there to help and do whatever it is that she needs me to do and obviously run the Board. But I think it will be a normal transition. I expect it will be very, very smooth. Again, we've been working together for a very long time. So I'll be around, but no one should have any questions, she's going to be running the company. Robert Stallard: Okay. And then as a follow-up on Aviation, we've seen some recent signs of biz jet activity actually picking up in terms of year-on-year growth. Are you starting to see this flow through in terms of your aftermarket activity? Scott Donnelly: Yes. We had a good quarter on the aftermarket side. There's no doubt utilization is strong. People are flying, which is a great indicator. Obviously, it's really important in terms of helping to continue to drive growth in the aftermarket side of the business. But I think it also bodes well just for demand for aircraft, which again, we're seeing the retail, the level of interest, inquiries, orders, bookings remain strong. So I think the industry right now probably is as healthy as we've ever seen it. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Myles Walton from Wolfe Research. Myles Walton: Scott, on the retirement or move to Executive Chairman. You're not retired yet. Work to do. On the Aviation side, can you comment on the supply chain and how that's coming along and whether or not that's an impediment to hitting the $6.1 billion rev placeholder within the forecast? Scott Donnelly: No, look, I mean, there are still supply chain issues as we've kind of talked about, it's not as many part numbers, for instance, as it used to be, but there are still some critical suppliers that are struggling. And yes, it does impact us on different models at different times. It continues to create a little more problem in just some production efficiencies and flow doing out-of-station work. Again, it's not as bad as it was. And so we are seeing improvements in that area. But there's some critical things that are sort of a little bit of hand to mouth and that we keep a close eye on with a relatively small number of suppliers, but they're critical suppliers. So again, overall, it's improved, but it's one that we -- I mean the team works this stuff every day. There are still some problem children out there, and that's been the sort of the nature of where we are. But I don't believe -- just to be clear, I think everything we look at today, getting to that $6.1 billion, we clearly feel good about our path to get there. Myles Walton: Okay. Great. And then just a follow-up on Systems, great bookings. Is this the point of inflection for growth after a long time of relatively flat revenue? Scott Donnelly: Yes. Look, I think so. The bookings were very strong. You guys know we started the year with a bit of a challenge with things like RCV and FTUAS getting restructured and changed. I do still think there's opportunities there in our participation in those kinds of programs. There's a lot of interest in a lot of the technology we developed around FTUAS. And so that stuff will play out. But for sure, what you're seeing, despite not getting those bookings, the growth in the rest of the business has kind of overcome that. Our ATAC business is just doing great. Those guys are performing really, really well. They've won a ton of new programs. Ship-to-Shore continues to grow. And as I said earlier, with Sheila, the program is healthy. Volumes are there. The team is executing really well. We continue to see growth in the Sentinel program. So I think when you look across that business, despite some of the challenges around a couple of those programs, it's good growth. And absolutely, we feel good about sort of that inflection point you referred to. this business has been executing, performing really, really well for a number of years. The only thing that's lacked, as you guys know, is growth. And I do think we're hitting that inflection point where we'll start to see it growing here as we go forward. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Seth Seifman from JPMorgan. Seth Seifman: Congratulations, Scott. Just wanted to ask, starting off about Aviation, and you just spoke to kind of the revenue. When we think about the margin, it's a pretty significant uptick in profitability in the fourth quarter and kind of what enables that. Scott Donnelly: Yes. I mean, look, I think as we've talked about, Seth, we expected to see a progression as we go through the course of the year. The fourth quarter will be strong on the volume side, which it normally is. I think we -- I mean, there are still challenges, but the team is performing better and better every quarter around getting flow. And largely, we'll see a nice significant bump in volume in the quarter, and that will drive good margin with it. Seth Seifman: Okay. Okay. Excellent. And then maybe one more on MV-75. When we think about the LRIP units and bringing those forward, are there kind of additional contractual provisions that you can get to protect the company from concurrency risk? Scott Donnelly: Well, so the LRIP have always been laid in there. So I don't think there's anything that would change contractually on that. To be honest, we're not that worried about the risk of that. Again, the base configuration of the aircraft is really solid. Obviously, it's a derivative off of what we did on V-280. There are changes, but we know what those are. We are fabricating right now the first of the prototype aircraft. So again, by the time we are building that first LRIP aircraft, we will have built, obviously, the original V-280, but we will have built 8 aircraft, the 6 EMD aircraft and the 2 LUT aircraft. So -- and certainly, there's an enormous amount of ground testing, component level testing, stuff that we already are fabricating and building parts. So I think we feel very good about the things we need to learn, any issues that we run into -- we're going to run into here on these initial EMD aircraft long before we get to where we're building that first LRIP aircraft. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Ron Epstein from Bank of America. Ronald Epstein: Yes. Maybe just circling back on Systems. How is the unmanned portfolio doing when you look across the -- you've got unmanned land system stuff and Shadow and Aerosonde and some other stuff. We've seen such kind of surging demand for unmanned stuff. Just curious how that's going for you guys? And do you have anything in the pipeline that you're working on developing to kind of expand in that market? Scott Donnelly: So I would say that, Ron, the Aerosonde program is going well, right? You know we went through a bit of a challenge as Afghanistan came out. We had a lot of aircraft that were deployed over there. Those have largely been redeployed to other theaters, other applications, a lot of marine applications. So that business is doing very well. That is where the next significant tranche really was going to be around FTUAS with that program not happening at least in the way it was envisioned. That was a hit. But look, the reality is these brigades need ISR. And so what really changed on FTUAS is that you understandably frustrated over how long it was taking to get stuff out there has basically said, look, you got to take these systems directly to the brigades and they'll drive that demand. So that's what we're doing right now. And that's why I say, while FTUAS didn't happen as a program, I do think that we will see a number of opportunities as we go out and sell that technology directly out to the war fighter. So there's also been some international opportunities. There's things out there with customs and border patrol. So in terms of our core platform today from Aerosonde and then transitioning into what was basically the FTUAS configuration, I believe we're going to start to see some nice growth in there. In terms of new platforms under development, part of what we did with the eAviation segment is that team in Pipistrel has been developing this unmanned cargo aircraft, what we call the Nuuva 300. That's now into flight test. We've already done the flight testing on Article 1. We're about to do the final build-out on Article 2, which has our own flight control fly-by-wire systems and such. And so part of the change here in the segment is that our Textron Systems business, which has always been the developer and sort of leading the business development on Aerosonde and Shadow and those other unmanned platforms, we will basically have responsibility to take that kind of product to market. And so it's the Nuuva unmanned cargo. We also have a nice niche that we've -- Pipistrel has for a long time and in high altitude unmanned sort of long-duration surveillance products. That's a product we already have today. We have some new developments in process there for very long duration aircraft. And again, those will now start to largely go to market through our Textron Systems business, augmenting our strength in unmanned aircraft. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Kristine Liwag from Morgan Stanley. Kristine Liwag: Scott, congrats on your next chapter. I guess over the years, there's always been discussions and conversations with you about the broader Textron portfolio and if it should all belong together or if there are other ways to unlock shareholder value. At this point, all reporting segments are fairly stable. The balance sheet is very strong and the company generates solid free cash flow. I wanted to check with you to see if this management change also signals a reevaluation of the portfolio once again and how you think about it now? Scott Donnelly: Well, I don't know that we would say that the change is drive that. I do think we are always looking at the portfolio. I think to your point, look, we don't have a burning platform, but would we look at either disposing or acquiring? Of course, we would. So that's a process that has been ongoing for some time. Obviously, we just did the dispositions around the Powersports business earlier this year. That was something we thought we really needed to do and wanted to do to help position the company going forward. But we're -- we continue to look at other opportunities, and I expect we'll continue to do that regardless of the leadership change. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Doug Harned from Bernstein. Douglas Harned: If you look at the mix of deliveries across business jets, it's been pretty stable over the last 2 years. I mean I would have expected more of a shift toward the Latitude and Longitude, although that might have been an incorrect assumption. Are you seeing demand shifts across your portfolio? Is that -- and is that -- is the mix in there constrained more by where demand is or where your capacity is? Scott Donnelly: Look, it is right now probably more of a capacity issue. I would say in terms of the end market demand, it has been steady, right? The demand or whether it's a Longitude or Latitude, whatever has been pretty stable, these things are often influenced by new products. So I would say, for instance, when we launched the new CJ4 Gen2, we saw a very strong spike in order activity, which kind of puts that lead time well out there because people were pretty excited in that piece of the market about that product. And we've seen the same things with things like the CJ3 Gen2s, certainly the Ascend. So there's -- I would say the end market is stable. Demand is pretty strong across all the pieces of the product portfolio. Usually, you see some of these spikes of order activity demand that can be affected by the launch of new product, of which we've had quite a bit. Douglas Harned: Yes. And then when you look -- you've talked a little bit today about the strength of the demand environment. But if you look back to the beginning of the year and then where you are today, how would you characterize demand mix in terms of corporate versus high net worth individuals? Have you seen any shift there? Because obviously, there's been a lot of -- it's been a very dynamic sort of economic outlook over the last 9 months. Scott Donnelly: Yes. It's actually pretty remarkable despite all of the noise of which there's plenty for sure, we're not seeing it impact that market. We haven't seen any piece or segment or interest that has changed because of what's going on. And I think part of that is the fact that you're out there, whether it's 18 months or 2 years, people are kind of looking beyond what current noise is in the marketplace, because they're not going to take delivery of that new aircraft for 18 months or so. So I think it's had a little bit of a muting effect on that. So -- but yes, remarkably, despite all of the noise that's going around, it's -- the demand is stable. Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the Textron Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. Thank you for joining us today. You may now disconnect.
Operator: Good day, and welcome to the Allegion Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Vice President of Investor Relations, Josh Pokrzywinski. Please go ahead. Joshua Pokrzywinski: Thank you, Betsy. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for Allegion's Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. With me today are John Stone, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Mike Wagnes, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Allegion. Our earnings release, which was issued earlier this morning, and the presentation, which we will refer to in today's call, are available on our website at investor.allegion.com. This call will be recorded and archived on our website. Please go to Slide 2. Statements made in today's call that are not historical facts are considered forward-looking statements that are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of federal securities law. Please see our most recent SEC filings for a description of some of the factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from our projections. The company assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Today's presentation and commentary include non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the reconciliation in the financial tables of our press release for further details. Please go to Slide 3, and I'll turn the call over to John. John Stone: Thanks, Josh. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining. Q3 was another strong quarter as we execute our long-term strategy and steadily deliver on our commitments to shareholders. I'm proud of our team's performance as we've remained agile in a dynamic operating environment. The double-digit revenue growth for the enterprise and continued segment margin expansion speaks to the resiliency of our model, our broad end market exposures and the depth of our relationships with channel partners and end users. We continue to take advantage of our business' strong cash generation, returning cash to shareholders and growing our business through accretive acquisitions. Year-to-date, we have allocated approximately $600 million to acquiring businesses consistent with the priorities we outlined at our Investor Day. As we approach year-end, the key market trends supporting our outlook are largely unchanged. Our team continues to execute well, and we are allocating capital for the long-term benefit of our shareholders. As such, we are raising our 2025 full year outlook for adjusted earnings per share to $8.10 to $8.20. I'll be back later to discuss the outlook and share some early views on markets for 2026. Please go to Slide 4. Let's take a look at capital allocation for the third quarter, starting with our investments for organic growth. In September, the Allegion team launched a new mid-tier commercial product line for Schlage, our Performance Series locks. These locks bring Schlage quality to more price points in nonresidential applications, giving us more ways to win in the aftermarket and building on the success of the mid-price point Von Duprin 70 Series exit devices released last year. Turning to M&A. Since we spoke at Q2 earnings, Allegion has announced 2 more acquisitions, UAP and Brisant. These U.K.-based businesses strengthen our product portfolio, including electronic locks in addition to enhancing our cost position. As discussed previously, the acquisitions of ELATEC, Gatewise and Waitwhile closed earlier in the third quarter. Allegion continues to be a dividend paying stock, and in the third quarter, this amounted to $0.51 per share or approximately $44 million. We did not repurchase shares in the quarter. And you can continue to expect Allegion to be balanced, consistent and disciplined with capital deployment over time with a clear priority of investing for profitable growth. Mike will now walk you through the third quarter financial results. Michael Wagnes: Thanks, John, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining today's call. Please go to Slide #5. As John shared, our Q3 results reflect continued strong execution from the Allegion team, delivering double-digit revenue growth for the enterprise. Revenue for the third quarter was over $1 billion, an increase of 10.7% compared to 2024. Organic revenue increased 5.9% in the quarter as a result of favorable price and volume led by our Americas nonresidential business, where demand remains healthy. Q3 adjusted operating margin was 24.1%, down 10 basis points compared to last year. Both our segments had margin expansion which was offset by higher corporate expenses relative to the prior year comparable. Volume leverage and mix were accretive to margins. Additionally, price and productivity, net of inflation and investment was a tailwind of $2.2 million. Adjusted earnings per share of $2.30 increased $0.14 or 6.5% versus the prior year. Operational performance and accretive acquisitions contributed 10.6 points of EPS growth. This was partially offset by higher tax and interest and other. We still anticipate the full year tax rate to be in the range of 17% to 18%. Finally, year-to-date available cash flow was $485.2 million, which was up 25.1% as we continue to generate strong cash flow. I'll provide more details on the balance sheet and cash flow a little later in the presentation. Please go to Slide #6. Our Americas segment delivered strong operating results in Q3. Revenue of $844 million was up 7.9% on a reported basis and up 6.4% on an organic basis, led by our nonresidential business. Organic growth included both favorable price and volume in the quarter. Reported revenue includes 1.5 points of growth from acquisitions. Pricing in our Americas segment was 4.6% in the quarter. This includes a combination of core pricing and surcharges as we cover inflation, including tariffs. Our nonresidential business increased mid-single digits organically and demand for our products remains healthy, supported by our broad end market exposure. Our residential business grew mid-single digits, primarily driven by volume associated with new electronic products that we launched in the quarter and price. However, we still consider overall residential market demand to be soft, consistent with year-to-date growth rates. Electronics revenue was up mid-teens and continues to be a long-term growth driver for Allegion. Americas adjusted operating income of $252 million increased 9% versus the prior year. Adjusted operating margin was up 40 basis points as volume leverage and favorable mix were accretive to margins. Price and productivity, net of inflation and investments was a tailwind of $10.2 million. Please go to Slide #7. Our International segment delivered revenue of $226 million, which was up 22.5% on a reported basis and up 3.6% organically, led by our electronics businesses. Acquisitions contributed 13.6% to segment revenue, consisting of the acquisitions John mentioned earlier, net of the previously announced divestiture of API. Currency was also a tailwind, positively impacting reported revenue by 5.3%. International adjusted operating income of $32.3 million increased 28.2% versus the prior year period. Adjusted operating margin for the quarter increased 70 basis points, driven by volume leverage and mix. Acquisitions were accretive to segment margin rates, although slightly dilutive to the enterprise rates. We continue to drive portfolio quality in the International segment through self-help and adding high-performing businesses where we have a right to win. Please go to Slide 8, and I will provide an overview on our cash flow and balance sheet. Year-to-date available cash flow was $485.2 million, up nearly $100 million versus the prior year. This increase is driven by higher earnings, lower capital expenditures and improvements in working capital. I am pleased with the strong cash generation in 2025. And based on year-to-date performance, we see upside to our previous cash flow outlook. We now expect conversion of 85% to 95% of adjusted net income. Working capital as a percent of revenue increased due to acquired working capital, which does not impact cash flow. Organic working capital improved compared to prior year. Finally, our balance sheet remains strong, and our net debt to adjusted EBITDA is at a healthy ratio of 1.8x. We continue to generate strong cash flow and our balance sheet supports continued capital deployment. I will now hand the call back over to John. John Stone: Thanks, Mike. Please go to Slide 9, and I'll share our updated outlook. With one quarter remaining in the year, our markets remain largely consistent with our prior outlook. And the Americas nonresidential markets remain resilient, and Allegion is performing well in the aftermarket. Our spec activity has grown over 2024 and year-to-date 2025, driven by our broad end market exposure, and this supports our outlook. Residential markets, however, remain soft. And as Mike mentioned, solid performance in Q3 was primarily driven by new electronic product launches. International markets have largely been unchanged year-to-date, and we continue to expect roughly flat organic performance. We expect approximately $40 million of surcharge revenue in the Americas related to tariff recovery, which does include the August 18 scope expansion for Section 232. Based on strong execution and the recent acquisitions of UAP and Brisant, we're increasing our 2025 adjusted EPS outlook to $8.10 to $8.20. You can find additional details as well as below-the-line model items in the appendix. As you know, we'll provide Allegion's formal 2026 financial outlook during our February earnings call. So please go to Slide 10. Today, we'd like to provide a preliminary view on our markets for next year. And I'd say, overall, we expect rather similar market conditions to 2025. In the Americas, our broad end market coverage and spec activity continue to support organic growth in our nonresidential business. Residential markets continue to be soft. The input cost environment remains dynamic with tariffs, and you can expect us to continue to drive price to offset inflation. Internationally, markets have been sluggish; however, we do expect to benefit from 2025 acquisition activity. For the enterprise, we expect carryover revenue contribution of approximately 2 points from acquisitions closed in 2025. Please go to Slide 11. In summary, Allegion is executing at a high level, while staying agile and steadily delivering on the long-term commitments we shared with you at our Investor Day. Our performance is led by an enduring business model in nonresidential Americas, double-digit electronics growth and accretive capital deployment as we acquire good businesses in markets where we have a right to win. I'm proud of the performance by the Allegion team in this very dynamic environment, which gives us the confidence to increase our EPS outlook for the year. With that, we'll take the questions. Operator: We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] The first question today comes from Joe Ritchie with Goldman Sachs. Joseph Ritchie: So I appreciate all the color and the initial look into 2026. John, maybe just pulling on that thread on spec writing continuing to be up and nonres specifically, I think you mentioned last quarter that you were starting to see some positive momentum on spec writing specifically as it relates to office. Can you maybe just give us an update on the key verticals and whether there's -- there were any kind of like discernible differences between how you feel today versus how you felt a quarter ago? John Stone: Yes, it's a good question, Joe. And I think the comments would be very consistent that our spec activity accelerated over the course of 2024 and has grown year-to-date 2025. Rather than picking and choosing this vertical or that vertical, I would just say Allegion's spec writers are very versatile in their expertise and one day could be writing a specification for an elementary school. The next day, they could be doing multifamily and the next day after that, they could be doing a data center. So they have that capability and that engine never turns off. I think the main thing we'd have you take away is that spec activity has continued to grow in 2025, broadly speaking. And spec activity supports our outlook as we talked about in the prepared remarks and gives us the confidence that we still see organic growth in non-res Americas. Joseph Ritchie: Okay. Great. Helpful. And then I want to also kind of just talk a little bit more about your M&A pipeline. It's been such a great part of the story, really over the last, like, 12 to 18 months. And recognize that you've kind of given us the 2 points as a placeholder for next year. Just talk about the pipeline as you see it today. And as you're kind of thinking about like the potential accretion from an earnings standpoint into next year based on what you already know, just any color around that would be helpful. John Stone: Yes, it's a great question, Joe, and it's something we're really excited about. I think the pipeline is still strong and strong in both of our reporting segments, so strong in International, strong in the Americas. And if you recall our Investor Day material, where we talked product categories that we're looking for, whether that's portfolio expansion in our mechanical business, whether that's electronics, whether that's complementary software, we've got activity in all of those categories right now. So very excited about the pipeline. And I'd say you can expect us to continue to be disciplined around the strategy and around the types of businesses we acquire and around the shareholder returns that we generate from these acquisitions. So I feel real good about it. And I think it continues to be an important part of Allegion's overall growth story. Michael Wagnes: Joe, with respect to the question on the EPS. In the appendix, we provide what the full year benefit this year is, which allows you to calculate what the EPS benefit on acquisitions is in the fourth quarter. And think about that as a carryover rate for the first 2 quarters of the year. The acquisitions were largely done early July. So that should provide you enough information for you to get a framework for the relative size of the benefit that we have. Operator: The next question comes from Joe O'Dea with Wells Fargo. Joseph O'Dea: Can you just talk about conversations with building owners, architects, overall end users on the current kind of uncertainty impact in the macro, what they're looking for? Really just trying to get a sense for what your perception is of activity that's sidelined and just waiting for a little bit better visibility and what some of those key ingredients are to bringing that activity off the sidelines? John Stone: Yes, Joe, it's a good question. And I would say there's a couple of things going on. And as we are out with customers and end users quite frequently, our own channel checks would indicate comments very consistent with what we shared with you in the prepared remarks, that nonres project activity is humming along pretty well. And I think some private finance came off the sidelines this year. A more favorable interest rate environment would certainly continue to be a swing factor that we would see to bring more of that private finance off the sidelines. But I would say, overall, positive environment and channel checks, our customers' backlogs are pretty healthy and has given them pretty good confidence about organic growth as well. And that's what we've tried to convey to you today. I think nonres overall is humming along pretty well. Joseph O'Dea: Appreciate that. And then on the International side, I think this was the first quarter of volume growth after 4 of declines, actually better volume growth in International than Americas even this quarter. So just kind of unpacking a little bit more what you saw in the quarter, how you think about any momentum behind a little bit of volume growth there? John Stone: Yes. I appreciate you noticing that, Joe. I mean we were certainly really happy to see that and proud of the International team to put those numbers up on the board this quarter. I would say our view on the end markets is still largely unchanged, that it's around flattish kind of organic growth. But I would also say you've had some of the market segments there really at historical troughs, and we don't anticipate that they trend negative in perpetuity. So I think the International team has executed well in a lot of pretty challenging environments. And like Mike mentioned in the prepared remarks, our electronics businesses are still performing very well. And you add to that, we're still really excited about the ELATEC acquisition, which is a pretty sizable deal for us that will continue to add momentum there in the electronic space. Operator: The next question comes from Julian Mitchell with Barclays. Julian Mitchell: Just wanted to start with maybe the adjusted operating margins. So those were flattish in the third quarter year-on-year. Just wanted to check, but it looks like perhaps you're assuming they pick up again with some margin expansion of a few tens of basis points in the fourth quarter. Just wanted to check if that was the right assumption and how we should think about the corporate cost movement into Q4 and next year in that context? Michael Wagnes: Yes. Thanks for the question, Julian. If you look at the third quarter, pleased with the segment margin expansion, did a really good job. We were negative in corporate. Part of that is just the year-on-year comp. Last year in the third quarter, corporate was low. This year, our third quarter is really consistent, slightly less than even what you saw in the second quarter. As you think about margin expansion for the year, you can back into it, we expect to have margin expansion for the year and in the fourth quarter. And then from a run rate perspective of corporate, the question you asked, you saw what we put up in the third quarter. Think of that as relatively what we've ran in the last couple. So you can kind of use that as a fine estimate. Julian Mitchell: That's very helpful. And just within the Americas segment for a second. You had a decent tailwind from that PPII bucket in the third quarter, and I think that was a good pickup from what you'd seen, that being flattish in the second. When we're looking out the next few quarters, should we assume that, that sort of gross price of about 4 or 5 points is a good placeholder and PPII stays as a decent tailwind? Just trying to understand operating leverage, you have that mid-30s placeholder from the Investor Day. Are we sort of on that path now leaving aside the corporate costs moving around? Michael Wagnes: Yes. If you think about the Americas, I talked about this earlier in the year. Inflation, especially associated with the tariffs, right, was a little quicker than some of the pricing benefits. We said that would improve as the year progressed. You see that in the third quarter. The big item for us on the pricing side is what is inflation and tariffs are a component of that inflation. Just look for us to drive pricing and productivity, and you've heard me mention this many times before. Pricing and productivity covers the inflation and the investment, and that helps drive the margin expansion. Overall, I feel good about the progress we're making in the Americas. I think we're doing a great job in combating a very dynamic environment of change when you think about tariffs and expect us to continue to drive that margin expansion that we talked about. Julian Mitchell: Got it. And that sort of mid-30s type rate based on inflation and mix and price, that should be achievable the next x kind of quarters. Nothing looks too out of line versus that. Michael Wagnes: Yes. Certainly, Q4 you could calculate. We'll be back in February to give you a '26 margin outlook. Think of that as a long term, right, to the long-term investors out there. Long term, we should be able to drive incrementals of 35%. Let us get to February of next year when we give our outlook and complete the annual operating plan. But certainly, for the fourth quarter, you could calculate the implied margin expansion. Operator: The next question comes from Jeff Sprague with Vertical Research. Jeffrey Sprague: I want to come back to the deals, really kind of maybe a 2-part question. First, just thinking about sort of everything that you've done here. It all looks like it makes sense and fits in and is nicely moving the needle as we've seen your results. But just thinking about kind of the margin entitlement of what you've acquired, where you might be on integrating these assets? Are they all truly being integrated or any of them sort of stand-alone? Just trying to kind of get my head around kind of the journey you're on here. John Stone: Yes, I appreciate the question, Jeff. And I think if you recall our Investor Day commentary, we talked about being disciplined. And I would say some of those guardrails around being disciplined would be consistent with our strategy, consistent with our geographic exposure and consistent with markets where we've got a right to win, meaning we've got brand strength, we've got human capital and talent, we've got distribution strength. And so yes, to specifically answer your question, all of these acquisitions are being integrated and being integrated rapidly. I think there are synergies across the board in revenue synergies, cost synergies. There are exposure to faster-growing segments that we've acquired. So I feel real good about the strategic alignment of every deal we've done and continue to feel the same way about the outlook on our pipeline there. So really good. But yes, I mean, we're not looking to acquire our way into adjacent spaces. We're not looking to expand geographic scope. We're staying in markets we know where we've got a right to win, and we're acquiring enhancements to our product portfolio in electronics and mechanical and complementary software and feel real good about it. So I think you can -- again, you can look for us to continue to be acquisitive but continue to be disciplined like we've shown. Jeffrey Sprague: And then I guess, discipline also includes the element of price paid. And I kind of appreciate like each individual deal, it's hard for me to press Josh or Mike for like specifics on multiples and all that. But is there a way to just step back and sort of collectively say, you gave us the dollars deployed, right, on a year-to-date basis, kind of what the average multiple has been? And when you think about the synergies, kind of what the -- maybe what the forward multiple would be looking out kind of 12, 24 months as you integrate these things? John Stone: Yes, Jeff, it's a good question. Very fair question. I think we've had some commentary around this in past quarters. So on the mechanical side, if we're expanding our mechanical portfolio, you would see something in the high single-digit EBITDA multiple would be a fair approximation. On the higher growth electronics and software, you're going to see a bit of a higher multiple there because we're expecting higher growth and higher longer-term returns. Michael Wagnes: Jeff, maybe also to help you out, the biggest acquisition is ELATEC. Clearly, that is the lion's share. So we gave that information when we released the -- when we made the acquisition and we issued the press release. You could see that and you get at least a pretty good idea of all the acquisitions, what's the biggest piece there from a multiple [ paid. ] Operator: The next question comes from Tomo Sano with JPMorgan. Tomohiko Sano: I'd like to ask you about the residential outlook for Q4 in America. So the residential revenue improved to up mid-single digit in Q3. And you mentioned no clear signs of the recovery of the market for 2026. But how do you see the residential segment performing in Q4? Could you share your current market outlook and also the new product contributions, especially for electronics in Q4, please? Michael Wagnes: Tomo, to answer your question on the residential. I apologize, we had some phone difficulties there. Overall, market demand for residential is soft. It's been that way for a while. In the third quarter, we did have that benefit associated with the new product introductions, the e-locks, that was the Arrive lock that we talked about in the first quarter earnings call. We launched it in the third quarter, and we had the benefit. As I said on the prepared remarks, overall, think of market demand consistent with year-to-date growth rates for residential, which is down slightly. So as you think about the fourth quarter, we would not expect a mid-single-digit positive growth. We would expect it more in line with market demand, which is that softer nonresidential market that we're in -- I'm sorry, residential. Tomohiko Sano: And my follow-up question is on tariffs and pricing. So you have demonstrated strong pricing power and agility in managing a tariff-related cost pressures. And are you seeing any signs of pricing fatigue or customer weakness? And how would you see the other market players reacting for pricing in the market, please? John Stone: Tomo, this is John. I would say -- I appreciate the comment. And yes, I think our teams and our customers have collectively responded well to the inflationary nature of the tariffs. I think our industry as a whole has moved up with price realization. And I'd say, just as Mike said in the prepared comments, as inflationary pressures continue, we stand ready to cover that with price. I would say the demand environment in nonres, as we mentioned, is good. It's healthy. Nonres is humming along pretty well. So I haven't yet seen something that we would call fatigue. Operator: We have one final question in our queue today. The next question comes from Tim Wojs of Baird. Timothy Wojs: Maybe just the first one, I'm kind of thinking bigger picture about kind of spec and spec writing and just kind of content within the spec. John, how would you kind of compare the content in the spec that you're kind of writing today versus maybe what you were doing 3 years ago? And I'm just trying to kind of get at how that spec is evolving, particularly as you kind of have done some of the, I'd say, ancillary product kind of M&A over the last couple of years? John Stone: Tim, that's a great question. I appreciate you asking. I would say a couple of things come to mind in terms of spec content. We're seeing electronics adoption accelerate, and that's evident in our specs. And I think evident in the electronics growth numbers that we've been showing lately. So very pleased with that. And I think the new product launches that we've been doing in nonres, in particular, are paying dividends there. I would also say we're starting to see -- it would be very small, but starting to see even opportunities to spec in some of the complementary software that we've developed organically into like a multifamily application. So that's very exciting for us to see as well. In terms of the new acquisitions, several of them, if you talk nonres Americas like Krieger Specialty Products, hand-in-glove fit with our spec engine, and we're excited to see the growth there. Because if you recall, that acquisition brought products that we didn't have in our hollow metal portfolio, high-margin, fast-growing niche products that we're finding great opportunities to spec into new customers even. So really good fit. Another good example from this year would be Trimco, makes high-end specialty hardware for commercial applications. If you had pulled channel customers of ours for the last couple of years, they would highlight something like a Trimco as one of the best acquisition targets for Allegion to go after. So really excited to have that team on board with us. And it's -- again, it fits right into the spec engine. So we're happy to see that momentum. Timothy Wojs: Okay. Okay. That's great to hear. And then maybe just on the modeling side. Just in International, kind of the opposite of Julian's question on PPII, that flipped negative this quarter. Is that just a timing consideration? Or is there anything kind of to read in there around price, productivity and inflation? Michael Wagnes: Yes. If you think about margins in International, good performance this quarter. It was slightly negative on the PPII. On a year-to-date basis, though, Tim, think of it as it's negative like $1 million if you add up the 3 quarters. So it's essentially covered. And look for us in International to cover that inflationary pressure. So I wouldn't look too much into the third quarter at all. Look at the year-to-date rate and you get an idea, we're doing a pretty good job there. Operator: This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to CEO, John Stone, for any closing remarks. John Stone: Thanks very much, and thanks, everyone, for the very engaging Q&A. We look forward to connecting with you on our Q4 earnings call in February. Be safe, be healthy. Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
Operator: Greetings, and welcome to the Mobileye 3Q '25 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Dan Galves. Mr. Galves, you may begin. Daniel Galves: Thank you. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Mobileye's Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call for the period ending September 27, 2025. Please note that today's discussion contains forward-looking statements based on the business environment as we currently see it. Such statements involve risks and uncertainties. Please refer to the accompanying press release, which includes additional information on the specific factors that could cause actual results to differ materially. Additionally, on this call, we will refer to both GAAP and non-GAAP figures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures is provided in our posted earnings release. Joining us on the call today are Professor Amnon Shashua, Mobileye's CEO and President; Moran Shemesh, Mobileye's CFO; and Nimrod Nehushtan, Mobileye's EVP of Business Development and Strategy. Thanks. And now I'll turn the call over to Amnon. Amnon Shashua: Hello, everyone, and thanks for joining our earnings call. Starting with the results. Q3 revenue of $504 million was up 4% year-over-year. The driving force was 8% EyeQ volume growth significantly outpacing the 1% growth in overall vehicle production among our top 10 customers in Q3. Operating cash flow was again a highlight. We generated $167 million of operating cash flow in Q3, well above net income. On a year-to-date basis, we have generated nearly $500 million of operating cash flow, up around 150% year-over-year. This reflects the cash generative nature of our business and our continued discipline in managing working capital. The core ADAS business is performing well, with volumes in very healthy range for the last 5 quarters and expected to do so again in Q4 based on our updated guidance. We again raised the midpoint of our full year outlook this time by 2% in terms of revenue and 11% in terms of adjusted operating income. Compared to our initial 2025 guidance, these increases are even more pronounced, 7% for revenue and 27% for operating income at the midpoint. Overall, we expect volumes to come in about 2 million units higher than our original guidance. This outperformance reflects a combination of stronger-than-expected launch activity, ADAS adoption growth and better than accepted results in China both from our shipments to Chinese OEMs and from the performance of our top 10 Western OEM customers in China. If we adjust our inventory digested in 2024, our 2025 volume growth is expected to outperform the production of our top 10 OEM customers globally by about 5 percentage points. We see continued momentum as EyeQ6 light is generating ADAS program wins at a high rate. So far this year, we already have been nominated for programs with future expected volumes well above our full year 2025 volume. We have added a new customer in Volvo. The growth potential in India is becoming increasingly clear as strengthening adoption trends and supportive regulatory environment. Additionally, we are seeing continued traction in adding REM to front-facing camera programs further reinforcing our base business. On the advanced product side, our position is differentiated in the fact that we are an OEM neutral platform that is cost-efficient and scalable with a credible technology path to eyes-off autonomy in both privately owned vehicles and robotaxis. All 4 of our advanced products surround ADAS, SuperVision, Chauffeur and Drive share common building blocks including the EyeQ6 high inference chip, substantial portions of our perception policy AI stacks and the REM crowded crowdsourcing driving intelligence and robust safety frameworks and the company's comprehensive data and validation infrastructure. The EyeQ6 high-based surround ADAS systems continue to develop as the next generation of standardized driving assist on high-volume vehicle platforms. This system addresses multiple objectives in a cost-efficient package. It's designed to meet stricter late-decade safety standards enables highway hands-free performance for lower cost and current systems and supports OEM goals to consolidate ECUs and to integrate technology on a single SoC. We have meaningful traction with a number of OEMs and very recently, received confirmation from a leading Western OEM that were nominated for a high-volume EyeQ6 high-based surround ADAS program across mass market vehicles. We continue to pursue a number of promising SuperVision and Chauffeur opportunities, although timing remains difficult to predict. The best way to ensure eventual new customers is to focus on execution of the SuperVision and Chauffeur production programs with Volkswagen Group, where we are first movers. Near-term execution includes major software drops in the coming few months that embodies significant innovation in AI. A few weeks ago, we received the first silicon sample of our next-generation SoC, the EyeQ7 high and all initial tests have been successful. EyeQ7 and its successor EyeQ8 now in design stages are designed for upgrading eyes-off autonomy to minds-off autonomy. Eyes-off systems is what Mobileye is bringing into production in early 2027 and also describes the current technological state of robotaxis. In both cases, there is a human either the driver or a teleoperator, that can resolve issues when needed. In the minds-off system, which we are targeting for 2029 and beyond, there is no human to resolve issues, and therefore, the driver can sleep and the robotaxi no longer needs teleoperators to intervene. This transition from eyes-off to minds-off is where EyeQ7 is going to play a meaningful role. More details will follow in the coming months. Turning to robotaxi. Our engagements are expanding through both Volkswagen and Holon, a division of Benteler. Once we remove safety drivers in our first U.S. city in 2026 and secure type approval for self-driving vehicles, the Volkswagen ID.Buzz and Holon urban shuttle in Europe, we anticipate geographic expansion. VW and Uber in Los Angeles, Lyft and Holon in the U.S. and multiple commercialization initiatives with Volkswagen and public transport operators across Europe. Additionally, we continue to get closer to naming an automaker and vehicle platform to complete the Lyft Marubeni value chain. That will enable preparations for commercialization in Dallas and other cities to accelerate. On the robotaxi technology front, we continued to outfit more of the ID.Buzz test fleet with a full EyeQ6 high-based production hardware and have successfully completed the first closed-loop testing with the Holon production vehicle. The MTBF performance is tracking well against the KPIs that are required to remove safety drivers in 2026 and begin commercialization. Everything continues on track. In summary, the opportunity set in front of us today is larger, broader and more urgent than it was when we went public in 2022. Near-term volumes remained strong. The demand for higher performance at lower cost is intensifying and eyes-off capability whether for personal cars or robotaxi is no longer seen as an experimental science project, but as an achievable and commercially viable reality. This is exactly where Mobileye excels. I'll now turn the call over to Moran. Moran Rojansky: Thank you, Amnon, and thanks for joining the call, everyone. Before I begin, please be aware that all my comments on profitability may refer to non-GAAP measurements. The primary exclusion in Mobileye's non-GAAP numbers is amortization of intangible assets, which is mainly related to Intel's acquisition of Mobileye in 2017. We also exclude stock-based compensation. Our Q3 results exceeded the color we provided on the Q2 2025 earnings call in July, with revenue up 4% year-over-year versus our prior outlook of roughly flat. The upside was a combination of EyeQ volume, which came in at 9.2 million units compared to the outlook of 8.7 million to 9.3 million and SuperVision volume, which was higher than 20,000 units in the quarter, a meaningful uptick versus Q2. Just a quick note on SuperVision. Volumes were higher than prior quarters, but should not be viewed as establishing a new higher run rate. We now expect around 50,000 units this year. This full year number is significantly higher than our original expectations and a good reflection on what we see as a sustainable run rate heading into next year for the current first generation programs applied to ZEEKR export volume and Polestar 4. These programs remain relatively small within our overall business and quarterly volumes can fluctuate as they have this year. Our gross margin declined by just over 100 basis points year-over-year basis. EyeQ ASP was down about $0.50 year-over-year. This was primarily due to higher volume of Chinese OEMs, where pricing remains a significant headwind, as we've discussed before. Another factor was higher volume of ADAS program based on EyeQ5 which carry lower gross margin due to higher costs. EyeQ5 currently represents about 10% of volume and is expected to peak to around 15% next year, creating some continued pressure. Beginning in 2027 and the more profitable EyeQ6 Lite significantly ramps up EyeQ5 share will go down, providing a tailwind to margins. Operating expenses were up 4% year-over-year, which was a bit higher than what we expected due to timing of engineering reimbursement. We continue to expect overall non-GAAP operating expenses in 2025 to be up about 7% to just below $1 billion. As Amnon mentioned, operating cash flow was $489 million through the first 3 quarters of the year. This is primarily due to strong cash flow from the core business. However, we've also managed tight control over the working capital accounts, particularly our balance sheet inventory which came down by about $100 million year-to-date. We are now well aligned with our 6-month target for balance sheet inventory, and we expect working capital to be more cash natural going forward. Turning to full year guidance. We are increasing the revenue midpoint by 2% and the adjusted operating income midpoint by 11%. Our full year outlook is based on EyeQ volumes of 35 million to 35.5 million, up from 33.5 million to 35.5 million. Earlier in the year, we maintained an unusually wide range to reflect macro uncertainty and ensure conservatism. Without condition now better clarified, we have greater confidence in narrowing the range and increasing the midpoint. Giving 27.3 million units year-to-date, the implied outlook for Q4 is 7.7 million to 8.2 million. At this point in the year, we expect that Q4 volume will end at the higher end of the guidance. We retained a small buffer to account for any unforeseen year-end logistical issues or OEM production constraints to stay cautious. In terms of understanding the current run rate of volume, we think it is best to look at the full year. This is particularly the case in 2025 where normal seasonality was affected somewhat by tariff timing and expectations. Typically, global production is stronger in the second half than the first, but that pattern did not hold this year. Bottom line is the lower Q4 volume compared to Q3 and Q2 should not be interpreted as a trend. It simply reflects an alignment of supply and demand across the full year to ensure customers enter 2026 with lean inventories. As noted earlier, SuperVision volumes are tracking ahead of expectations, and we are modestly raising the outlook to low 50,000 units at the midpoint versus prior outlook of around 40,000 and original outlook in the low 20,000. We expect full year gross margin to be right around 68%, implying a slight uptick in Q4 versus Q3. The full year is expected to be up about 30 basis points year-over-year, pretty consistent with our July commentary. Operating expenses, as noted earlier, are expected to be up 7% year-over-year to just below $1 billion, in line with our original outlook. Thank you, and we will now take your questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Aaron Rakers with Wells Fargo. Aaron Rakers: I guess the first question is, you mentioned a Western OEM design win that you've achieved. Can you just remind us again, is that additive to the prior kind of development engagement status that you've outlined previously? Is that reflective of the prior Western OEM that was on that list? And just anything around timing of volume contributions? And then I have a quick follow-up. Nimrod Nehushtan: So to be clear, the confirmation for a nomination that Amnon referred to in his remarks is for a second surround ADAS program. We have announced previously in the year our first surround ADAS program. This is the second from a second OEM, a leading Western OEM with significant volumes with multiple vehicle models, and we expect this to be a significant portion of that OEM's vehicle lineup in the future. And we will disclose more details on this in the next few weeks. Daniel Galves: Yes. And Aaron, this is Dan. You might be referring to the IR Day, the Investor Day slide from last year. It is one of the OEMs that was on that chart for surround ADAS. Aaron Rakers: Yes. I appreciate that. And then talk a little bit about gross margin. You highlighted the fact that EyeQ5 volumes at 10% would go to 15%, and that would continue to be a headwind to gross margin. As the EyeQ6 volumes start to ramp, how do we think about the delta or the gross margin inflection as we think about 2026 between those platforms? Moran Rojansky: Yes. So just to highlight that EyeQ5 volume doesn't have a lot of running programs or production programs, and we don't anticipate any new programs with EyeQ5. So all the new launches we have with EyeQ6 Lite. The profitability is not that different between them. It's just that it has a bit lower profitability than our EyeQ4. As for EyeQ6 that, again, is launching for our new programs, the profitability is, of course, the gross margin is higher than EyeQ5 and very similar to EyeQ4 that we are currently selling. So it's not some significant headwind. It's just a matter of platforms or specific of vehicle launches, mix between products, sometimes some of the projects ramp more, some of -- it's not something you can anticipate, but it's not very dramatic in terms of gross margin fluctuations. Daniel Galves: Exactly. Yes. I don't think we're going to specify like the impact, but the bottom line is EyeQ5 like percentage of total will be the highest next year, around 15%, so not too meaningful versus this year and then start to go down. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Edison Yu with Deutsche Bank. Yan Dong: This is Winnie on for Edison. My first question is on the 4Q expectations. Just curious if there's any other factors that you're factoring into the market or recently, we've heard about the chip issue, whether you're baking that into the outlook? And then the second question is wondering if you can provide a bit more details around the Lyft and demo program, the launch time, the economics, et cetera. Daniel Galves: Yes. So I think on the Q4 volume, I think the point we're trying to make in the script is that you should look at the full year volume of kind of around 35.5% as the right number. Like when we're looking at '26, we are -- the starting point is 35.5%. It's not Q4 volume times 4. So there's really nothing going on specifically besides seasonality was different this year due to really, we think, because of the tariffs and trying to pull ahead some production into Q2 and Q3. So this is kind of exactly within expectations for us, shouldn't be seen as a trend. And I think that we see the trend of around $9 million a quarter. And that's -- there's -- in terms of [ Nexar ] we have not received any indications of request to reduce production, reduce shipments at all. In fact, if anything, it's the opposite. It's a very new situation. We don't -- in talking to customers, we don't expect any material impact in Q4, but we do have a bit of margin in the guidance versus the high end to account for that if there's a bit of lower production, but we don't expect it to affect Q4. Amnon Shashua: What was the second question, if you can repeat it? Yan Dong: It was on the Lyft and demo program, you can talk about the evolution to that win, the launch time and the economics. Nimrod Nehushtan: So if you refer to the Lyft robotaxi program, so we are working with Lyft and Marubeni and a vehicle producer on a robotaxi program in the U.S. We disclosed that the first city will be in Dallas-Fort Worth. We are now in advanced testing stages of this program, and it follows the leading program we have with Volkswagen Group for robotaxi activities in the U.S., and it's been tracking well. And the launch date will be disclosed in the near future. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Joshua Buchalter with TD Cowen. Joshua Buchalter: I wanted to ask about the metric you gave about normalizing for inventory. I think you said you grew volumes 5% more than your top 10 customers. Is this sort of a rule of thumb we should be using of your expectations for sort of normalized unit growth in '26 and beyond as you see ADAS market and attach rates develop and then we layer in ASPs more. I'd just be curious to hear if that's like sort of a normalized growth rate you think is the right level for us to benchmark to on a unit basis? Daniel Galves: Yes. I think the key here is that investors and analysts should focus on kind of the expected volume of our top 10 customers, which are mostly legacy OEMs and has been a bit below kind of the overall vehicle production for the last few years, not meaningfully, but a bit below. And then we would expect to grow faster than in volume and revenue, we would expect to grow faster than that level because of things like ADAS adoption growth because of things like growing share within some of those customers because of things like emerging markets like India. So this year, we consider the performance pretty good. We grew about 5 percentage points faster than the top 10 OEMs, which were down 2% to 3%. And we're not going to put a precise number on what we think it should be going forward, but something in that range is probably fair. Joshua Buchalter: Got it. Dan, I appreciate the color there. And for my follow-up, so it sounds like you're speaking to engagements for eyes-off continuing to move forward. And it does seem like there is a good amount of momentum across the industry from both the robotaxi side and in consumer passenger vehicles for eyes-off features. I guess what do you think the OEMs need to see that gets them across the line in these engagements and I guess, any time line you would expect to be able to -- a reasonable time line to expect where you think you will be able to announce some additional Chauffeur or even SuperVision wins? Amnon Shashua: I think the focus now is execution. We are with the SuperVision, the hardware is on the C sample stage, which is very advanced from a production level. We have a number of meaningful software drops in the coming 6 months. So I believe that somewhere in the first half of 2026, we'll be in a very good position of being very close to production ready with the platforms of SuperVision and Chauffeur. And that should enable us to get more exposures to new program -- new program wins. So the focus of the company in that area is execution also in the robotaxi with a driver is execution. So really 2026 is an execution year and not necessarily focusing on bringing new business, at least not in the first half of the year. Nimrod Nehushtan: If I can add color to what Amnon said, in the last 1.5 years, we've been working simultaneously on SuperVision, Chauffeur robotaxi for execution in the past, let's say, 8 months, we've added also surround ADAS production program that execution process. Right now, we are on track with the original time lines of all of these programs, and we are in B sample or C sample hardware and stable platforms, which is an important achievement in order to maintain the original time line. And now we're focusing on software iterations, AI innovation and integrating the latest AI stack into these platforms. Doing so simultaneously is a significant achievement for us. And we believe that now within the next few months of showing a very mature production platform that uses production hardware with the latest AI technologies that shows meaningful performance improvement compared to what exists today in the industry is the next big thing for us to show in general to our customers and also for new engagements, and that's expected within months from today. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Chris McNally with Evercore ISI. Chris McNally: Amnon, I wanted to dive in on the Surround and congratulations on the big win. It sounds like there's a different technology path that maybe you and the industry had thought a couple of years ago where supervision would sort of be the kind of a walkway to higher forms of Chauffeur and eyes-off and it sounds like given the industry has been a little bit slower on that front, maybe how much they would charge for it, et cetera, it seems like Surround is now that technology gateway. And I just would love to understand from your standpoint, is it sounds like a must for the OEM to hit 2029 regs, meaning they really can't do this with an internal solution or even the solution that you've been providing them originally with the $50 chip. So is this sort of -- is this one of the reasons you're seeing so much traction this is the logical step up of your Level 2 customers to Surround? Amnon Shashua: Okay. So I'll let Nimrod first answer and then I'll complete if necessary. Nimrod Nehushtan: Chris, so I think Surround ADAS is a very important category for OEMs because it's not just about new user experiences, but also adhering to emerging regulation in developed markets. And it's a very, very cost-optimized product segment. because it's designed for high-volume vehicles and for pretty much $20,000, $30,000 vehicles and above, it requires very, very efficient design and a close software hardware integration. Mobileye is known to have a very efficient chip and very efficient software, and we can achieve pretty much, we think, the most competitive price point for this product category. And from an OEM standpoint, thinking about whether you want to buy or build a product in that category, it's not just about understanding AI or different software technologies, can you get to such a level of efficiency on vehicles that are in tens of millions per year, if you fail, you may jeopardize your core business. And so forcing an existing available solution that is very mature is the safe choice. And maybe if you're into in-house development, you can focus this on the higher end of applications and smaller volumes, maybe 1% of your cars and then if it fails or is significantly delayed, there is no damage done to the core cash cow of the company. And that's where we see their interest just yesterday, GM announced their Level 3 eyes-off development. That is designed for a very specific vehicle category. I think they disclosed the type of vehicle, and it's a very high price point. As you all know, GM sells cars in $30,000, $40,000 also. Obviously, that solution is not appropriate for these vehicle price points. And it may make sense for them to find a proven, reliable, trustworthy high-performing, cost-efficient solution for the vast majority of volumes, while they focus on the high end. Amnon Shashua: And I think I'll continue. I think likewise going into Level 2 plus with 11 cameras, our SuperVision, we are working very diligently on very innovative cost reduction schemes. So looking into 2028 time frames and beyond, we can offer significant price reduction on SuperVision. The next level that OEMs are considering are eyes-off systems. And there, as I said before, execution is the key. If we launch an eyes-off system, and that's what we are planning to do in 2027 with Audi, that will be kind of an inflection point. Seeing such a product at work passing through all the regulation, the sub certification and regulatory approvals, passing the MTBF bar that is needed to have eyes-off, this is a significant achievement. Once we pass that bar, I think that will be a big inflection point. Nimrod Nehushtan: Yes. I think that there is no question beyond or about the fact that eyes-off driving and later mind-off driving is the ultimate value proposition for consumers. And we think that most OEMs are very interested and very bullish on this sort of proposition. The question is, is now the right time given the maturity of the technology and the available system is what costs for them to go all in with a partner. Today in the industry outside of China, there is no other technology provider that is working closely on the entire system, hardware, software, silicon, AI -- receiving approvals for testing and going through the ropes of homologation and all the necessary check boxes other than Mobileye with Audi. And all eyes are on us. And hopefully, within months, we'll show more and more evidence of the maturity of the technology getting there. And as Amnon said, we believe that will be a significant inflection point for that product. Chris McNally: Nimrod, my only clarification or a summary of what you said is super helpful. So is it logical then to think like your first customer, which is VW, that basically your target audience it's not going to be 100%. But your target audience for Surround is existing basic ADAS customers that now need to convert for 2029 and so your second customer, as an example, upgrades ADAS into Surround. And then there's a future path beyond that to eyes-off? Nimrod Nehushtan: That's exactly the case in that nomination we disclosed. It's an upgrade from EyeQ6 Lite to EyeQ6 High. That's -- that's essentially the decision that OEM made. And so that's the right summary of how we see things. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Mark Delaney with Goldman Sachs. Mark Delaney: I hope you can double-click on the DRIVE opportunity with Lyft and Marubeni. I believe the company said today, I think it can name the OEM partner for that engagement soon. So should investors assume that the OEM partner is already effectively finalized? Or is there still uncertainty as to which OEM Mobileye is going to partner with? And if there is still uncertainty, what would the time frame need to be to line up the OEM partner in order to meet the 2026 start of operations objective? Amnon Shashua: So there's no uncertainty who that OEM is, but it's not finalized yet. So I cannot say with 100% guarantee that it will be finalized, but it looks on track and it looks good. I would say that this is in parallel to our existing activity with Volkswagen of the ID.Buzz and with the Holon platform with Benteler. So we have quite a lot of scale opportunity with the existing relationships. We have -- this is why I mentioned before that it really focuses execution. Scale and business will come once execution is there. Nimrod you want to add something? Nimrod Nehushtan: Just one more clarification, Mark. That vehicle provider, it's not that we will just start working with that vehicle OEM once we will finalize the agreement. In the past almost 18 months, we've been working closely between Marubeni, that vehicle OEM and Mobileye on creating multiple prototype vehicles and then working on the actual vehicle platform itself, integrating our self-driving system with the sensors, and it's all pretty much -- we have numerous vehicles that are equipped with all the sensors and all the compute infrastructure needed as if it's like an ID.Buzz we do in our leading program, and so we are starting -- we're hitting the ground running once it will be finalized and disclosed. It's a natural transition into serious development towards commercial launch. Daniel Galves: Yes. And I would just add one more point here is that if there's a bit of wait and see on consumer-owned high-end eyes-on and eyes-off technology, robotaxi is exactly the opposite. There's so much activity, but the key is removing the safety driver and starting to commercialize. And that's our main priority right now. And the core technology is the same, no matter what the vehicle platform is. There's integration work to be done, but it's the core technology that's being worked on. And once we kind of can remove the safety driver, then we can start to commercialize and scale. Mark Delaney: That's all very helpful. My follow-up question is also on Drive with VW and the ID.Buzz, you mentioned you're tracking to be driver out next year. Could you just speak a bit more on what still needs to happen in order to take the driver out next year? And any sense of when within the year that milestone may occur? Amnon Shashua: Well, there are a number of milestones. One is the readiness of the vehicle that should be ready in the next weeks or a few months. And second is the MTBF KPIs, which we are tracking, that are on track. And we believe that in the first half of 2026 we can start removing the safety driver in one city in the U.S. and to prepare for a commercial deployment later in the year and beginning of 2027. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Joe Spak with UBS. Joseph Spak: Just going back to the surround ADAS nomination. I was wondering if you guys could provide a little bit of color as to sort of what got the customer over the line, maybe a little bit of detail on the level of integration that you were doing versus maybe the automaker is DXP involved? And then just in terms of the rollout, is this a case where we need to wait for new model launches? Or can this product be placed on refreshes? Nimrod Nehushtan: I will take this, Joe. So we think the driving forces behind this decision to upgrade from EyeQ6 Lite to EyeQ6 High was about basically, the standard sensor set for that OEM is at minimum 5 cameras and 5 radars. And in the older days, these -- some of these cameras was used just for top tier visualization when you do parking, for example, for the human driver. And just the front camera was used for ADAS and the radars were used for ADAS and that created a very inefficient design. And that OEM decided to create a more consolidated ECU architecture in which you can think of this as somewhat of a -- like simplifying the architecture and then routing all the sensors to the EyeQ, the EyeQ6 High is powerful to process all of these sensors and creates a much richer sensing state, a much richer user offering. For example, hands-free driving in highways, supporting all of the most cutting-edge advanced ADAS requirements in NCAP and so on, as we've mentioned. So it's about system simplification consolidating efforts and routing all sensors that already exist in the car to a more powerful chip, they can process them more intelligently and offer better user experience. The added cost for that OEM was very reasonable compared to the added value as evidenced by their decision. So it's not like a 10x more expensive chip in order to get that value, it's as we've disclosed in the past, it's 2 to 3x more expensive for that silicon component generally speaking. So I think it makes -- as they said it, it makes too much sense not to make this transition. We are also discussing about potential future -- that's with other OEMs but potential future consolidations like with parking applications and driver monitoring system and ADAS and hands-free driving all can be processed and provided by Mobileye on the EyeQ6 High chip with a very attractive cost and I think that's a compelling proposition for OEMs. And regarding your question about vehicle launches, it's a new architecture. And in parallel, we work on other, let's say, more existing architectures as well. So it's a combination of the two. Joseph Spak: And then I guess just as a follow-up, I think in the prior update there were maybe 3 or 4 other sort of advanced engagements about Surround. I was wondering if you could just get an update there. And maybe going off of some of the commentary on Chris' question, like have you seen sort of more initial maybe SuperVision move more towards surround in the near term? Nimrod Nehushtan: So I wouldn't say it's SuperVision engagements moving towards around. It's more about base ADAS engagement expanding to Surround from what we're seeing. The first 2 design wins we have for Surround ADAS are examples of OEMs with high volumes, the sell cars at relatively low vehicle price points that have, in the past, sourced a front camera solution and these examples decided to source Surround ADAS solution for the same vehicle category. So I think that's the evidence that we're basing our assessment on. And yes, we have a lot of engagement. Mobileye works with pretty much all of the OEMs on a recurring basis on what we have to offer, and we see a lot of interest. And I think we will -- we prefer to disclose when we have nominations and it's concrete like we did today. But we remain confident in the strength of our outlook. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Shreyas Patil with Wolfe Research. Shreyas Patil: Maybe just to follow up on the earlier one. How do you think about the competitive landscape when it comes to Surround ADAS? I think there are 3 or 4 other major suppliers that are trying to win awards here as well. And maybe just to give a little bit of background on the bidding process that went into securing this award, the second award that you just announced. Amnon Shashua: We're talking about a very highly competitive in terms of cost, cost optimized product. So all the high-performance chips that you hear the price point is not relevant for such a product. Our chip, the EyeQ6 High is both the core chip for our AV, for example, in SuperVision, we have 2 of those chips and in Drive we have 4 of those chips and in Chauffeur 3. But one chip is highly cost optimized, and we can meet the cost desires of OEMs with our system on chip that can process all those multiple sensors, 5, 6 or 7 cameras and 5 radars and ultrasonic and so forth. So we're talking about the game in which cost is highly, highly critical. So we have first mover advantage. So we were the first to receive nomination with the Volkswagen Group on Surround ADAS. And the new win of today shows that we are successful in leveraging our first-mover advantage. So it's all about here cost and performance, but cost is critical because we're talking about high-volume vehicle categories. And so it's not that there is no competition, but we do have first-mover advantage, and we are showing that we can leverage that. Yes, Nimrod go ahead. Nimrod Nehushtan: Another aspect of efficiency that we are -- should be considered beyond just the price, our EyeQ6 High chip does not have any limitation in deploying pretty much all of the state-of-the-art AI architectures while being very efficient in power consumption. This offers us -- this allows us to offer a solution that is passive cooled, for example, and does not require liquid cooling. So this is a small technical detail, but for the OEMs, it's a big difference in overall system cost in the complexity of the system, combustion engine vehicles may not have liquid cooling available, for example. Other competitors are trying to rely on more -- because the underlying product requires sophisticated processing of sensors and using some of the AI technologies, other competitors may try to use a high-performance chip for that product category. And beyond just the price disadvantage, it also complicates the overall system. So this is another element that is hard to compete with the low power consumption of our chip without compromising performance. Amnon Shashua: Yes, I'll just give a color in terms of performance of the EyeQ6 High. Our internal benchmarks running on both convolutional METs and vision transformers show that we are on par and in many cases, better than the Orin-X, which is now the choice of competition when OEMs are considering the Level 2+ systems. But at a price point, which is less than 25% of it. So this gives us a great advantage. On one hand, we have a high-performance chip, which is on par with the latest high-performing chips in the automotive industry. On the other hand with a cost structure and power consumption constraints that are way, way more appealing. Shreyas Patil: Okay. That's really helpful. And then maybe, Amnon, I think last quarter, you talked about Drive potentially becoming a more material revenue contributor by 2027. Wondering if maybe you can expand on that a little bit. And you've talked about in the past at a relatively high upfront revenue stream, maybe $40,000 to $45,000? How should we think about the rate at which you can bring that down, especially as robotaxi operators are looking to bring down vehicle costs to improve overall unit economics? Amnon Shashua: Our economics from every robotaxi is comprised of both onetime fee and revenue sharing on price per mile. And over time, we will kind of change the equation, maybe reduce the onetime fee, increase the cost per mile. So we both will have a recurring revenue and also the onetime fee of the system. With the robotaxi, it's really just execution because the current contracts that we have with the existing partners they talk about many tens of thousands of vehicles in the end of the decade. Just to give you a proportion, today's very, very successful Waymo is based on 3,000 vehicles. So it's really just a matter of execution. If we execute, we execute our plans of removing the driver during the first half of 2026 prepare this for commercialization beginning of 2027, the volume is there and in very, very big numbers. Daniel Galves: And in terms of the upfront cost, we have we have the room to switch around upfront cost versus recurring revenue because we have low costs in general. So we can stay profitable on the upfront cost down quite a bit and kind of replace that with more recurring revenue. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Luke Junk with Baird. Luke Junk: I want to stick with robotaxi. We've talked a lot about U.S. robotaxi and Driver Out this morning. Hoping we could get an update on progress towards Driver Out in Europe as well, especially relative to the different regulatory homologation there and just maybe Europe versus U.S. dynamics in general right now for Mobileye. Amnon Shashua: Yes. So there are differences between Europe and the U.S. U.S. is mostly a self-certification process which we're doing. And we have today, close to 100 vehicles driving in the 3 locations in the U.S. for testing and working with additional carmakers or additional robotaxi platforms as mentioned, expanding that further. In Europe, we have an equivalent, let's say, volume of vehicles. The process for launching commercially is around -- is more about homologation and engaging with regulatory bodies in advance before you can commercially launch. We are doing this process alongside Volkswagen Group that are directly engaging with the German government. Just to add color on this, in the last IAA conference in Munich, we had a chance to meet the German chancellor who visited the Mobileye booth, and he also participated in a test trial with our ID.Buzz vehicle in Hamburg, and he was very impressed, he made remarks. It was covered all over the German media, and he made a very interesting remark about how Germany wants to be the leading country in Europe for autonomous driving, that he believes the time is now that our funds by the German government that should be allocated to accelerate this as much as possible. And he was very happy to see the successful collaboration between Volkswagen and Mobileye on this, and it's all covered in the German news so there is nothing confidential in what it I just said. And we think that we have good tailwinds to engage with the German government, specifically, and we plan to launch first in Germany. In Munich, in Hamburg and Berlin are the first 3 cities and we have good support, good alignment working with Volkswagen on that. We think it raises the entry barrier for other competitors when they want to enter the European market. So it's -- I think, again, as the first mover advantage by collaborating with an OEM at Volkswagen that has good ties with the German government, which really helps us in this situation. Luke Junk: And then for my follow-up, Amnon, you mentioned just a wrinkle in terms of more OEMs adding REM to front-facing programs, just curious your thoughts on that. Is it mainly around increasing the data collection? Could it be maybe a precursor of something in terms of future advanced product engagements with those customers as well? Amnon Shashua: So it's both for data collection, what we call harvesting. We have more OEMs using REM for harvesting and that's a precursor to also using REM for hands-free driving. Maybe Nimrod, do you want to add more? Nimrod Nehushtan: Yes. We recently signed with a new OEM for one of the bigger OEMs in the world that has significant volumes, and that's designed to provide significant volumes for harvesting globally and also use the REM database to improve the performance of the front-facing camera. It is for us today, the strategic value is mostly about expanding the OEM pool that uploads data. This data is important for us not just to use REM database explicitly as one of our moats, as we mentioned many times in the past, but also it's -- we use this very elegantly in our AI training and development. And that's something that maybe we'll share more details on in the future. But it is a very significant competitive advantage and expanding by being able to offer much better performance with not significant price increase OEMs of for front cameras, getting more data from multiple OEMs in millions. I think today, we have more than 7 million vehicles globally uploading data, more than 2 million vehicles in the U.S. alone. Europe is a similar number, also in Japan and Korea and soon in India and so on. So it's really a good global coverage but it is also diverse in terms of the type of OEM, type of vehicles, a number of OEMs. So we feel very comfortable with the strength of harvesting. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Dan Levy with Barclays. Dan Levy: I wanted to just follow up on the prior question first and on the driver out, specifically in the U.S. for some of the programs you had, I know you said it was a self-certification process, maybe you can just go into maybe what are some of the gating factors that you need to see from a technical side to get comfortable to actually pull the driver? And what is the expected timing on driver out? Amnon Shashua: In terms of expected timing, we said it's going to be the first half of 2026 in one city in the U.S. In terms of the technical milestones, now we have a very elaborated safety program. It's called the PGF that we talked about in the past IR meetings and at the CES and we made that public also in terms of an academic paper that we published around it. And also in terms of mileage driven in order to prove to ourselves what is the MTBF. So together with ADMT which is the daughter company of Volkswagen, who was responsible for this program, we have agreed on MTBF milestones per type of accident. So it's not just one number. There are a number of different types of accidents. What is the MTBF, and we're tracking those numbers. And the trajectory that we see gives us confidence that we can achieve that by the first half of 2026. Dan Levy: Great. As a follow-up, on Tesla's call last night, Elon talked quite a bit about efforts with AI, their AI5 chip and all of the efforts in design and the strength of the performance, really emphasizing this, I think, is a key advantage. So -- and I think you've talked about this on the call here and more broadly. But as it relates to EyeQ6 and eventually EyeQ7, can you maybe just remind us to what extent the engagements with customers are looking at the strength of your SoC design, how that stacks up versus some of the other players? And for those that are maybe SoC agnostic, bring your own silicon, to what extent you're seeing customers actually leaning into your solution because of the SoC? Amnon Shashua: Well, I think the first question that you need to ask is why do you need more compute? And Tesla's approach and Mobileye's approach are different. Tesla is relying on a single sensor modality, which is cameras, omni cameras. And therefore, there are this bias variance in machine learning, you want to lower the variance, you need more and more data and more and more compute in order to bring the variance down to a point in which the MTBF is high enough. And the MTBF of Tesla's FSDs, just based on the public record of the FSD tracker, is orders of magnitude away from the bar that you need to pass in order to be unsupervised. Therefore, the requirement of significant more compute and significant more data is very, very intense and hence, the AI fight. Mobileye's approach relies also on redundancy. So we are doubling down on computer vision, on cameras and bringing the camera processing MTBF to be very high, but we are also relying on imaging radars, relying also on a front-facing LiDAR for eyes-off. So when you have redundancy, it's a different equation. And this is our PGF framework for creating profusing redundant subsystems. So then in our context, the question is, if with the EyeQ6 High, we are going to launch eyes-off at a very, very cost-optimized platform, right? The Chauffeur has 3 EyeQ6, and it's very, very -- it's highly cost optimized. The Drive 4 EyeQ6 is highly cost optimized, especially compared to platforms of robotaxis of today. So then the question is, why do we need more compute? Right, we replaced the EyeQ6 with EyeQ7. Is that going to reduce -- for what purpose? Is this to reduce price, not necessarily. So in our view, you need more compute to move from eyes-off to minds-off, and this is something that the industry are not talking about at all. All the targets around eyes-off, what is the bar to reach an eyes-off system. We are thinking of 0.29 and above on mind-off. And mind-off means that you need an AI that has very, very strong see understanding capabilities maybe it can work at lower frame rates. It doesn't have to be, let's say, 10 frames per second. Maybe it can be slower frame rate doesn't have to be doesn't have to replace the safety mechanism. So in our view, the EyeQ7 and EyeQ8 and all the additional compute comes on top of EyeQ6 and does not replace it. So it's a different concept. It's not that we have an EyeQ6 generation, and now we're replacing the EyeQ6 with EyeQ7 generation and then we'll replace EyeQ7 generation with EyeQ8, actually does not make sense when you are thinking about eyes-off systems because the validation process that is required to remove the driver is huge, is huge, right? So now you did all this validation process and now you are replacing your chip, and you have to do all those validation process again, doesn't make sense. So we have a completely different view of where compute is needed, where the added compute is needed. Daniel Galves: This will be our last question. Operator: Okay. Our final question is coming from Colin Rusch with Oppenheimer & Company. Colin Rusch: I just have a quick one around the cadence of your own chip design. Given some of the tools that we're seeing out there and the potential for accelerated time frames, are you seeing meaningful opportunities in terms of accelerating some of those development time lines and really being able to validate some of these more simplified designs that you guys are talking about? Amnon Shashua: Our chip portfolio covers both the very, very low end, like EyeQ6 Lite and the very high end. So EyeQ6 High, which is in production, is equivalent to, say, Orin-X in terms of looking at running programs like convolutional net ResNet, Vision net transformers, and the like. And EyeQ7 would compare to Thor in terms of its strength. And EyeQ8 is going to be -- which is now in the design stages and will be ready for 2029 production, is going to be 3, 4x stronger. And again, the EyeQ7 and EyeQ8 are responsible for the minds-off. It's not -- for the eyes-off we are set. We have the EyeQ6. We don't need to replace EyeQ6 with a more powerful chip to reach eyes-off capability or to reach a robotaxi -- robotaxi with teleoperators in the back office. The idea in robotaxi is to remove the teleoperators. This is why we want minds-off and the idea with consumer operated cars is to enable the driver to sleep while using the system. This is where we need more compute. And the cadence is once every 2 years. So this is the cadence and which is sufficient for the speed of where the industry is going and where technology is going. Daniel Galves: Colin, thanks for the question. I don't think we have time for a follow-up. I want to respect everyone's time. Operator: Thank you. This now concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the floor back over to management, Dan Galves for closing comments. Daniel Galves: Thanks, everyone, and looking forward to the Q4 call in January. Thank you. Have a good day. Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines, and have a wonderful day.
Operator: Greetings, and welcome to the Dow Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] And as a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn it over to Dow Investor Relations Vice President, Andrew Riker. Mr. Riker, you may begin. Andrew Riker: Good morning. Thank you for joining today. The accompanying slides are provided through this webcast and posted on our website. I'm Andrew Riker, Dow's Investor Relations Vice President. Leading today's call are Jim Fitterling, Chair and Chief Executive Officer; Karen S. Carter, Chief Operating Officer; and Jeff Tate, Chief Financial Officer. Please note, our comments contain forward-looking statements and are subject to the related cautionary statements contained in the earnings news release and slides. Please refer to our public filings for further information about principal risks and uncertainties. Unless otherwise specified, all financials, where applicable, exclude significant items. We will also refer to non-GAAP measures. A reconciliation of the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure and other associated disclosures are contained in the earnings news release that is posted on our website. On Slide 2 is our agenda for today's call. Jim and Karen will review our results and discuss how we are navigating current market conditions to restore our core earnings. Karen will also provide an overview of our operating segment performance. Jeff will share an update on our in-flight actions to provide near-term cash support as well as some details on the macroeconomic environment and our modeling guidance for the fourth quarter. Jim and Karen will close the prepared remarks with Dow's view on current industry actions while demonstrating how Dow is well positioned to win in a recovery. Following that, we will take your questions. Now let me turn the call over to Jim. James Fitterling: Thank you, Andrew. Beginning on Slide 3. In the third quarter, we executed against now strategic priorities to deliver sequential earnings and cash flow improvement despite continued pressure across the industry. These results reflect our focus on navigating the near term while positioning the company for profitable growth when our industry recovers. In the third quarter, we delivered net sales of $10 billion. Sequentially, gains in our Industrial Intermediates & Infrastructure segment were more than offset by declines in Packaging and Specialty Plastics and Performance Materials & Coatings. EBITDA was $868 million, and while this is lower than the same period last year, our earnings reflect an improvement over second quarter. This was driven by volume gains stemming from our new growth investments in the U.S. Gulf Coast, lower planned maintenance activity and the progress we're making on our cost reduction actions. Cash provided by operating activities was up $1.6 billion sequentially, primarily driven by working capital improvements, and advanced payments for low carbon solutions and other long-term supply agreements. We also delivered $249 million of dividends, reflecting our commitment to competitive shareholder returns over the cycle. Next, Karen will provide some additional context around the more than $6.5 billion in actions that we have completed or currently have in flight. Karen Carter: Thank you, Jim. We advanced several strategic actions in the third quarter. We announced an expansion of our strategic agreement [indiscernible] global to formalize the contractual offtake of an additional 100 kt of ethylene supply at attractive economics for both parts. We closed the second and final phase of our strategic infrastructure asset partnership in the U.S. Gulf Coast delivering $3 billion in total proceeds for Dow this year. We completed the second of 2 previously announced noncore divestitures, delivering a total of approximately $250 million at attractive EBITDA multiples of around [ SYNNEX ]. And we issued an additional $1.4 billion bond to take advantage of tight credit spreads, providing added financial flexibility. We are progressing the delivery of at least $1 billion in targeted cost savings by the end of 2026. We are on track to deliver approximately $400 million of the cost savings this year, which was clearly visible in our third quarter performance. We have also lowered our CapEx spending in alignment with our $1 billion reduction target this year compared to our original plan of $3.5 billion. This reduction is largely due to our decision to delay the Alberta project until market conditions improve. As we announced in April, this decision supports our near-term cash flow and adjust our timing to align with the market recovery. We remain committed to the long-term strategic rationale of the Alberta project, which further improves our industry-leading cost position and the growth upside that it will enable and targeted applications like pressure pipe, wire and cable and food packaging. However, our expectation for when this capacity will be needed have changed, given the prolonged down cycle our industry is facing. As we committed, we will provide an update on this during our fourth quarter earnings call in January. Any decisions related to the project time line will remain centered on maximizing value. So taken all together, these near-term strategic actions demonstrating Dow's continued efforts to adjust our cost structure and response to the current operating environment. These actions also support our overarching goal to build a more simplified modern Dow that consistently delivers strong performance, profitable growth and lasting competitiveness. Next, I'll turn to our operating segment performance on Slide 4. In the third quarter, we continued to focus on margin improvement, while prioritizing volume growth in attractive end markets such as food packaging, electronics, home care and pharma. We also took decisive actions to lower our cost base and progress our cost savings actions. So starting with the results for our Packaging and Specialty Plastics segment. Net sales were down compared to the year ago period. Higher demand for flexible packaging applications was more than offset by lower downstream polymer prices, lower merchant olefin sales and lower licensing revenue. Sequentially, net sales declined, driven by lower prices for downstream polymers and olefins. Volume decreased 1% year-over-year and 2% sequentially. Notably, the polyethylene volumes increased in both comparison periods, particularly in flexible packaging applications, and as a result of our new polyethylene unit in the U.S. Gulf Coast. These items were more than offset by lower Olefins volumes in Europe, following our earlier decision to idle one of our crackers into [indiscernible]. Operating EBIT was $199 million, reflecting a decrease compared to the year ago period. This was primarily driven by lower integrated margins. Operating EBIT increased sequentially due to higher integrated margins and operating rates, lower fixed costs from our cost reduction actions and the benefit of the startup of our new polyethylene unit in the U.S. Gulf Coast, which is helping Dow to realize the full benefit of our integration. Next, turning to our Industrial Intermediates & Infrastructure segment on Slide 5. Net sales were down 4% year-over-year driven by continued pricing pressures globally, resulting in an 8% impact on revenue. Sequentially, net sales increased, reflecting volume gains in both businesses and all regions. This was supported by lower planned maintenance activity and the start-up of one of our near-term growth projects, which partly offset lower prices. Volumes increased 2% compared to the year ago period, driven by gains in the U.S. and Canada and both businesses as well as in energy applications. Sequentially, volume increased 5% with improved supply availability following planned maintenance activities in both businesses as well as additional volumes from our new constellation unit in Seadrift, Texas. Operating EBIT for the segment increased versus the year ago period, driven by higher volumes and operating rates as well as lower fixed costs, which were partly offset by lower prices. Sequentially, operating EBIT increased by $138 million. This was driven by lower planned maintenance activity and higher volume in both businesses. This volume growth was enabled by the startup of our new alkoxylation unit in the U.S. Gulf Coast, which serves more resilient home and personal care end markets. Moving to the Performance Materials & Coatings segment on Slide 6. Net sales in the quarter were $2.1 billion, down 6% versus the year ago period and 2% sequentially, driven by pricing pressures on the upstream areas of the segment. In the third quarter, Architectural Coatings experienced normal seasonal patterns, but downstream silicones remained a bright spot, both compared to the year ago period and prior quarter, particularly in high-value applications such as home care and electronics. Operating EBIT decreased both year-over-year and sequentially, driven by upstream margin compression, partly offset by lower fixed costs from our cost reduction actions. To conclude, Team Dow is focused on continuing to take actions to help navigate the challenges our industry is facing, while driving a streamlined, more modern and more simplified enterprise. We are protecting and growing our position in high-value markets while also realizing the benefit from our targeted and accelerated actions to deliver at least $1 billion in cost savings by 2026. We also continue to optimize our global manufacturing footprint as evidenced last quarter when we announced the outcome of our strategic review in Europe, resulting in the shutdown of 3 upstream assets in the region. I will now turn the call over to Jeff, who will share more on the actions we are taking to ensure Dow's financial flexibility as well as some macroeconomic insights and our outlook for the fourth quarter. Jeffrey Tate: Thank you, Karen. Good morning to everyone participating in today's call. Turning to Slide 7. We continue to advance several strategic priorities to support Dow's near-term cash flow, further enhance our balance sheet and deliver structural improvements. This positions the company for growth and better profitability and the recovery. For example, this quarter, we completed the second phase of our strategic partnership with Macquarie for the sale of a 49% equity stake in select U.S. Gulf Coast infrastructure assets, receiving approximately $3 billion in total cash proceeds this year, and we're making solid progress on several additional actions that support our near-term cash generation. This includes optimizing working capital, which we expect to be an approximately $200 million to $300 million release of cash in the second half of the year compared to the first half. In addition to these items, we've completed 2 bond issuances at attractive spreads for a total of $2.4 billion this year. Doing so provides added flexibility and support while maintaining our commitment to investment-grade credit profile, and it extends our material debt maturities out to 2029. As of the end of the third quarter, our cash and cash equivalents balance is above $4.5 billion. We have an additional approximately $10 billion of available liquidity including a revolving credit facility that we recently renewed through 2030. With all these actions, we're building on our long history of navigating the cycles our industry faces. As we've demonstrated in the past, we will continue to take additional actions when and where warranted. With that, I'll share some of the key indicators we're continuing to track on Slide 8. The broader macroeconomic landscape remains largely unchanged since our last update. As it relates to Dow's key market verticals, while we are seeing some pockets of stability of broader recovery has yet to take hold. Based on the visibility we have through current customer orders, we continue to see a cautious operating environment. Business investment and consumer spending are subdued due to ongoing economic uncertainty and affordability challenges. These dynamics are impacting demand across several key end markets Dow serves. At the same time, recent monetary policy shifts and the beginning of a rate cutting cycle so it begin to more positively influence demand, and our packaging market vertical, global demand remains steady. Industry growth in North America was supported by record September domestic and export volumes. Manufacturing activity in China continues to be modest, while Europe contracted in September. In the infrastructure sector, market conditions remain soft across the United States, Europe and China. In the U.S., 30-year mortgage rates have eased modestly, but remain above 6% this month. Demand is unlikely to increase in the near term due to limited affordability, but lower mortgage rates could spur a recovery in 2026 as conditions improve. Consumer spending has remained resilient, but with that, confidence is low, which has been driving value-seeking behaviors. In September, U.S. consumer confidence declined to its lowest level since April and sentiment in the EU remains below historical averages. In China, retail sales grew year-over-year in August, but at its slowest pace since last November. And in mobility, we continue to see mixed demand signals across the industry and regions. In the U.S., auto sales rose in August as consumers moved ahead of the EV tax credit expiration. And in China, government incentives for EVs also continued to support higher auto sales and production. This strength has helped offset weakness in internal combustion vehicles, including in Europe, where new car registrations are down year-to-date. Given this backdrop, we will continue to focus on the actions within our control. Doing so, we have Dow to navigate the complexities of this down cycle while strategically positioning the company to capitalize when the market conditions do improve. Next, I'll turn to our outlook for the fourth quarter on Slide 9. The macroeconomic dynamics that I described continue to limit visibility into customer buying patterns, making projections challenging. As always, we're committed to maintaining transparency and will provide timely updates if they become available. Based on current indicators and normal seasonality, we anticipate our fourth quarter EBITDA to be approximately $725 million. Our disciplined and targeted cost actions and lower planned maintenance activities are expected to provide sequential tailwinds. Normal seasonality, especially in building and construction end markets should be a headwind for our Performance Materials & Coatings and Industrial Intermediates & Infrastructure segments. Additionally, we anticipate some margin compression from our feedstock costs in the fourth quarter. In Packaging and Specialty Plastics, lower planned maintenance in the U.S. Gulf Coast in Europe will provide a $25 million sequential tailwind, along with another approximately $25 million in support from our cost reduction actions. Higher feedstock and energy costs are expected to be a headwind for the fourth quarter despite anticipating higher downstream volumes. Globally, we expect approximately $0.01 per pound of margin contraction in the quarter. This will be partly offset by higher equity earnings following an unplanned outage Estadao in July as the impacted asset is now back up and running. Additionally, following a fire at our [indiscernible] polyethylene unit in Texas this month, we anticipate a $25 million unfavorable impact for the fourth quarter. Initially, the event required us to bring down 3 polyethylene units at the site. Two of those units have already resumed operations. However, we expect that [indiscernible] will remain offline for the remainder of the year. We are leveraging our global flexible asset footprint to mitigate impact and meet our customers' needs. In Industrial Intermediates & Infrastructure, we expect fourth quarter EBITDA to be approximately $20 million lower than the third quarter. This is largely driven by seasonally lower demand in building and construction. Additionally, we anticipate margin compression from higher energy costs and pricing pressures. We'll see this primarily in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India as Asian exporters redirect volumes into the region from prior U.S. locations where those volumes would now be subject to adopting duties. Sequential tailwinds are expected to be provided by higher demand for deicing fluids, lower turnaround spending and our cost reduction actions. And in Performance Materials & Coatings, we expect lower sequential EBITDA of approximately $100 million. Normal seasonally driven decreases in demand for building and construction and infrastructure end markets reflect an approximately $100 million headwind in the quarter. We expect this to be partly offset by continued strength for downstream silicones applications in electronics and home care. Finally, the incremental tailwinds from our cost reduction actions will be partly offset by planned maintenance at our Deer Park Texas site. So in summary, as we look ahead, Dow remains committed to delivering accelerated cost savings actions across the enterprise as we've demonstrated throughout the year. Doing so will help offset the impact of higher feedstock costs and normal seasonality. Now I'll turn the call back to Jim. James Fitterling: Thank you, Jeff. Turning to Slide 10. The prolonged down cycle continues to weigh on our entire industry, but we're starting to see some encouraging actions in response, most notably around addressing industry oversupply. Specifically, announcements to date include significant rationalization of global ethylene, propylene oxide and siloxane capacities, each of which will benefit Dow's diversified portfolio. The vast majority are occurring in Asia and Europe, targeting assets that sit high on the global cost curve. This includes Dow's decision to shut down 3 European assets across each of our operating segments in order to rightsize upstream regional capacity, reduced merchant sale exposure and remove higher-cost energy-intensive parts of our portfolio. Dow's rationalization announcements and those from industry peers have exceeded the majority of consultant projections, paving the way for improved operating rates, which will also be supported by anticipated polyethylene demand growth remaining above GDP for the foreseeable future. As we have experienced through prior down cycles, we expect to see additional announcements and actions until more visible signs of recovery begin to materialize. As it relates to anticompetitive oversupply activities, our teams continue to be actively engaged in conversations with governments around the world to mitigate impact, progressively defend local production and to ensure a fair trade environment remains. These discussions have led to various actions and duties to protect local industries, including MDI in the United States, polyols in Brazil and more. Dow's global asset footprint and product portfolio position us well to win in the key markets that we serve, particularly as purchasing patterns trend for buying local products and materials to mitigate any potential tariff headwinds. Next, Karen is going to unpack some of these advantages in more detail. Karen Carter: Thank you, Jim. We are pleased to see several of the industry actions that you described beginning to unfold. We continue to monitor both supply and demand signals, and we're staying close to our customers and key external stakeholders to understand their unique challenges while identifying opportunities to drive profitable growth. At the same time, our teams are working to lower Dow's cost structure, enhance our cash position and strengthen our manufacturing footprint through the shutdown of higher cost assets and the start-up of our advantaged growth investments serving high-value end markets. And as the macroeconomic environment improves, our actions will ensure Dow is best positioned to beat our competition, capitalizing on our key advantages. First and foremost, we are committed to being a low-cost producer. Currently, more than 75% of our global cracking capacity is in a top quartile cost position. This number will increase to approximately 80% once we complete the announced shutdown of our [ Bowling cracker ]. In addition, we continue to upgrade our world-class asset footprint by rightsizing higher cost capacity across a variety of value chain, including the shutdowns of 500 Kt of PO capacity in North America, 150 kt of upstream siloxanes production in the U.K. and one of our CAB units in Germany. Our downstream specialties capacity helps to differentiate and improve Dow's performance across the economic cycle, which will become more evident when our previously announced shutdowns are completed. And our innovation capabilities also enable strong earnings compared to our peers over the cycle as evidenced in this year's annual benchmarking report. So to summarize, with the addition of our U.S. Gulf Coast investments, broad product range, leading cost efficiency and global scale that expect to gain share in premiums in markets that traditionally grow above GDP like packaging, electronics, mobility and consumer goods. And we are confident that Dow's differentiated portfolio paired with our team's strong execution will position us to outperform as the industry recovers. James Fitterling: In closing, on Slide 11, our priorities are clear, and our teams remain focused on restoring core earnings enhancing our long-term competitiveness and delivering more than $6.5 billion in strategic actions and cash support items to position Dow well for profitable growth and value creation and the recovery. As a reminder, this includes the $3 billion we received for our strategic partnership with Macquarie as well as accelerating our in-year savings from the $1 billion in cost actions that we announced in January. In addition, our diverse product portfolio, strategically advantaged asset footprint and global scale will help now to capture demand in attractive end markets growing above GDP. And our new alkoxylation and polyethylene units in the U.S. Gulf Coast are already delivering returns, providing further evidence of the value of our integration and low-cost asset footprint in the Americas. Importantly, we continue to engage in positive and productive conversations with several governments around the world as it relates to anticompetitive behaviors as well as changing trade and tariff policies. We remain confident that we're in a strong position to mitigate the impact of tariff costs. In summary, we're focused, and we're taking strong actions to navigate the current environment while advancing our long-term strategic priorities. We remain committed to delivering strong performance, profitable growth and lasting competitiveness in key value chains. And as we have demonstrated in the past, we will continue to identify and implement the right actions that help us stay closer to our customers while outperforming the competition. With that, I'll turn it back to Andrew to get us started with the Q&A. Andrew Riker: Thank you, Jim. Now let's move on to your questions. I would like to remind you that our forward-looking statements apply to both our prepared remarks and the following Q&A. Operator, please provide the Q&A instruction. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Vincent Andrews with Morgan Stanley. Vincent Andrews: Wondering if we could just get a bit of a reconciliation about the third quarter. Ultimately, the results came in nicely ahead of what you expected when you gave the original guidance at 2Q. Obviously, about a month ago, you were anticipating things were going to fall short of that, particularly in Packaging and Specialty Plastics, but you wound up being able to exceed your original estimate there, likewise in III. So just wondering what happened. Was it just in September came in better than expected? Or were you better on costs or just what allowed this outcome to take shape? James Fitterling: Vincent, let me ask Karen to walk through the business results, and then maybe Jeff to comment on how things came in on cost and cash. Karen Carter: Yes. Thank you for the question. There were really 2 areas that I would like to highlight in terms of the sequential improvement. Higher integrated margins in both NSP and II&I, and that was, in part, driven by our new growth assets. So volume did come in better than we expected. And then the second thing is really around our cost efforts. And of course, we committed to those earlier in the year, the $1 billion. Originally, we thought that $300 million would be the number in 2025. We [indiscernible] accelerated that to $400 million and have clear line of sight to that. And that actually showed up in the bottom line in third quarter in a visible way. So I would say that those 2 things were really the difference in terms of how we not only exceeded expectations from the last guide, but also sequential improvements quarter-over-quarter. Jeffrey Tate: Vincent, this is Jeff. I'll just make a couple of additional comments here related to cash flow. And even on the cost reductions that Karen was just mentioning, initially in our guide for 3Q, we expect it to be approximately $50 million. Tailwind for us, it was actually better than that in September came in a little bit stronger on the cost reduction side at about $75 million. So about a $25 million improvement there. I do want to spend a second on the cash flow as well, though, because you'll notice that our cash from operations came in at $1.1 billion in third quarter, which was an improvement sequentially of $1.6 billion. And that was really driven by 3 different areas here. Sizable improvement in our working capital. The team has done a phenomenal job of continuing to really double down on the working capital improvement going into the second half of the year. In fact, as you heard in my prepared remarks, we're expecting in the second half of the year, our working capital to deliver a release of cash of $200 million to $300 million, and we saw $80 million of that working capital improvement in terms of a source of cash during the third quarter. We also had the 2 long-term strategic supply agreements that Karen mentioned in her prepared remarks, as well as the improved earnings that we have sequentially from second quarter to third quarter. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Hassan Ahmed with Alembic Global Advisors. Hassan Ahmed: Jim, really appreciate the industry sort of outlook you guys provided on Slide 10. So just a broader question around rationalization and new project cancellations. On the rationalization side of things, obviously, the South Korean side, the Japanese side and the European side, you can assign projects. You can see which capacity is being shut down. What's less clear is the anti-evolution side. China, in particular, what cancellations may transpire over there. So I'd really appreciate if you could sort of provide your thoughts around that. And part and parcel with that, I keep hearing that, look, I mean, once China announces new facilities, they never canceled those projects. I mean they have a long track record of that. So is that also changing? James Fitterling: Hassan, thanks for the question. I would say a couple of things on the ethylene supply outlook. And I think most of your questions were geared toward that. We've got right now line of sight to about 9,300 kilotons of global capacity, which has been rationalized. You've got about 4,400 kilotons in Europe, Middle East and Africa, and those have been announced and I think are well documented, and that includes our [ Bolon asset ]. You've got 4,900 kilotons in Asia Pacific. That includes China, obviously, about Japan, China, Singapore and about 1,000 tonnes -- kilotons across the rest of Asia. We've got speculation on the closures of about 13 million metric tons from a combination of additional capacity in Asia, Japan and Korea to the tune of about 5 million tons and China from the [ anti-evolution ] policies to the tune of about 7 million tons. So that's what's out there. Obviously, the 9,300 kilotons that I mentioned, I would say, much more confirmed than the 13 million. But all of that together starts to bring you toward 10% of the global capacity. And when you get into Europe, it's probably bringing you more into the 20% of European capacity range. And I think that's right in line with what the industry is seen. Your comment on China in terms of once announced completed, I don't have any data to counter that. I would say, I think you might see some delays in some announced capacity in China just from a standpoint that the market in China is slow. And for certain grades of product, we're not as big and something like high-density polyethylene, for example. But for certain grades, they've reached self-sufficiently -- self-sufficiency. And they really don't have the cost position to export them. And as the world pushes back with antidumping duties and other measures to keep trade fair, that's going to put pressure on them. And so I think they'll look at the timing on those. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Michael Sison with Wells Fargo. Michael Sison: Nice quarter. In terms of PSP, I think you noted global integrated margins could be down $0.01 in the fourth quarter. Can you bifurcate that from whether pricing or cost in the U.S., Europe and export? And then just a quick follow-up. Slide 8, the pretty colors really haven't changed, well, they're not that pretty. But -- if those -- if the global demand backdrop stays similar in the first half of '26, does EBITDA improve? And I know you have more cost savings next year. Can you maybe just talk about what happens in the event that we have this same colors heading into next year? James Fitterling: Thanks, Michael. Karen, do you want to hit P&SP and I'll try to cover Slide 8. Karen Carter: Yes. So it's important to note that, first of all, in third quarter, take a look at how we ended the quarter from an industry perspective. So when we came in the third quarter, we expected that prices would move up. And of course, as you know, they settled flat even though we thought the market fundamentals were there. And so if you look at the ACC data in September, both domestic and export demand set record for the month, but then also industry inventories drew down. It was the second largest draw of the year. And so that's why we expect and we anticipate that prices should go up in October. We have $0.05 on the table, and that should continue to occur even though it's a challenging market environment. So when you look at why our integrated margins are predicted to be down by $0.01, it's really because of the higher feedstock cost that are expected based on weather, frankly. So natural gas and ethane are both expected to go up. At the beginning of the month, there was a spike on ethane. It has since come down. And so we could get some relief on that. But right now, our view is that integrated margins will decline by about $0.01 globally. But that also should provide some support for prices going up in October. And again, we've got $0.05 per pound on the table. James Fitterling: And Michael, if I could touch on Slide 8. I think the main reason for the no change that you see there is there's just a lot of uncertainty in the marketplace right now. And we don't have settlement yet on all of the trade deals that have been announced. And you see in the market, and I think everybody feels that every time there's a swing in an announcement from either side on one of the trade deals, there's usually a bit of a pullback and everybody is trying to figure out what the impact is going to be. We've seen throughout the year, our own supply chain team who's been doing a phenomenal job, really shifting gears to try to make sure we don't get caught out and product keeps moving. So that's the hardest part to project going forward. The industries that are driving the demand are still good. If you look at electronics, if you look at data centers, tech AI and really in the construction side of things, that is what's driving the construction markets today. There's government spending on infrastructure. We've seen more government support for infrastructure projects that's helping to drive demand than we have seen, for example, in China, you see really no support for the housing industry there. So that's having a pretty heavy weight on the Chinese market. And here, we've got, I would say, some interest rate declines in housing, like Jeff mentioned, but nothing yet that has caused an uptick in new mortgages or existing home sales or anything that would drive demand. So we're optimistic that things are moving in the right direction. And I think if we can see some completion of some of these trade deals by the end of the year, that should bode well for next year. If this lingers into next year, then obviously, we need some of that certainty to be able to have people make decisions, stop sitting on the sidelines and move forward with investment plans. I think tech AI and data centers, that utility construction for power, I think that's all going to continue because that's new capacity that's needed. Those are decisions that can be made right now, and people are ready to move fast in that space and there's liquidity. And so there's good money to chase those projects. But I think when it comes to rebounds in some of the existing long-established global supply chains, we need to see some certainty. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Josh Spector with UBS. Joshua Spector: I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about kind of the range of CapEx as you think about 2026. I mean I think you made the comment that you're not going to make a decision on Alberta or at least you're not going to announce it until the January or February call. But can you help us think about maybe a low end range if you decide that you're not going to do it and bring basically everything down versus the high-end range if you say we are going to kind of continue what that ramp-up would look like? James Fitterling: Yes. I think the simple answer, Josh, is if we continue the way we are, you could see another $2.5 billion next year, and we can manage that. And within that, you've got about $1 billion of maintenance CapEx. We've obviously got less -- we just started up a unit down in Texas and our [ coxilation ] unit as well. So those come off the docket going into next year. We have some downstream silicones projects that are very good, that will be on the docket. But we're not starting anything else right now until we get a little bit better line of sight to demand and the question that Michael raised just previously. So I think we could land it in that range. And we will come back in January. I think we've got teams working really hard on the triggers and what would cause us to declare when the start of construction would be on path to 0. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Zekauskas with Morgan Stanley. Jeffrey Zekauskas: One of the things that Dow hasn't really talked about is joint venturing the Alberta cracker. Why wouldn't that make sense and take pressure off the cash flows of the company? And then is that something that you're considering? Or why wouldn't you consider it? And then secondly, what's polyethylene demand been like for you in the third quarter and year-to-date? James Fitterling: Jeff, let me ask Karen to talk about polyethylene demand, and then I'll come back and talk about Alberta. Karen Carter: For us, polyethylene demand has been stable. I mean if you look at the market segments that we play into packaging, has remained relatively stable. I know there's been discussion around the consumer and although consumer sentiment is weaker. What we are hearing from both brands and our customers is that they are actually shifting down. So shifting from of course, the consumer branded labels down to private labels, but that's still good for us. We sell into all of those segments. So packaging has been stable. Personal Care for us is another space that's been stable for us in packaging as well. You heard me say earlier that the industry set a quarter -- a record in September, both for domestic sales as well as exports. And so we continue to see those exports flow, and we grew in the third quarter. So we expect that packaging demand for us will continue to be stable to relatively strong depending on the segment. The other thing I would just highlight again is [ Polyseven ]. And we brought up Polyseven early in the quarter and third quarter, and it's already sold out, and we expect that to continue to occur. James Fitterling: And on Alberta, Jeff, I don't have anything specific to say, and I don't have a pushback on your question on joint venturing. If you look back at Texas 9 at the time when we did it, our partners from Kuwait, I mean, Global came in and made an investment to consume up to 30% of that cracker and that's worked extremely well. In fact, we just contractualized the last increment of that in the third quarter. So that's worked extremely well. So we have experience to do something like that. I think a couple of things I would say about Alberta, still a delay, not a cancellation. It's still an asset from an investor standpoint that you want in the fleet longer term. It has the scale, it has the cost position, and you're bringing an additional asset cracker and derivatives up into that pocket in Alberta, which has really a cost advantage on ethane over a long period of time, decades that you can lock in where the Gulf Coast is a little more exposed to market swings. And so I think that's a big advantage. So we're looking at how to time it. We're looking at, obviously, the best value creation for it. We don't want to bring it on well ahead of demand. We want to bring it on with the market. Those are some of the things that we're factoring in. And don't have anything to talk about in terms of the JV, but certainly, all possibilities are things that we would consider. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Matthew Blair with TPH. Matthew Blair: I was hoping you could talk a little bit more about some of the moving parts in your polyurethane business. Are you seeing any benefits to U.S. MDI margins from tariff impacts that have reduced imports from places like China. Also on the -- just on the construction end market side, I think you mentioned that rates are coming lower, but is it fair to say that's not really coming through in the market yet. And then finally, do you have any sort of commentary you can provide on the relative strength with your polyols business versus your isocyanates business. Is one holding up a little bit better than the other? James Fitterling: Thanks, Matthew. Karen, do you want to tackle that? Karen Carter: Sure. So let me start just with the building and construction market because you're right. We did see rates come down, but we definitely believe that they need to come down further for us to see really a recovery in that space. They're currently sitting in the mid-6% range. We believe they'll probably need to have a 5 handle on them before we see any reasonable recovery in that segment. And of course, as we said before, about 40% of our products are aligned to infrastructure across our entire portfolio. So it's a good start, but it's not good enough for us to see a recovery. Let me answer your second question, maybe it was your first on MTI because we are encouraged by some of the recent rulings that we've seen around antidumping. And so in September, the U.S. Department of Commerce made a preliminary finding concluding that MDI dumping was occurring by Chinese producers in the United States. Chinese imports account for about 20% of the MDI market here. And so industry imports are reporting that on top of the preexisting duty that were already there, that the market for Chinese imports is dissipating quite quickly. And so we are seeing some starts of additional volume, not yet a lot of pricing there, but we are seeing some additional volume. And again, I have been encouraged by those initial findings. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Kevin McCarthy with Vertical Research Partners. Kevin McCarthy: Jim, I was wondering if you could comment or elaborate a little bit more on the here and now in terms of the demand function. How are your October and November order book shaping up relative to normal seasonal patterns? Just trying to get a sense for your fourth quarter guide of $9.4 billion in sales, $725 million on EBITDA. How conservative or not, you think those levels are relative to the normal seasonal year-end movements? James Fitterling: Kevin, I'd say a couple of things and then I'll get into the order pattern stuff here in a second. On GDP, there was a report out. I think Harvard put a report out recently that if you looked at the U.S. economy and you backed out growth from data centers and all of the related investments that are going into that space, the rest of the economy grew at about 0.1% GDP for the year. So I think that tells you that in some manufacturing sectors where you're up against, and we know China's domestic -- gross domestic product has been under pressure as well because their domestic economy hasn't shown the kind of resilience that they saw. Karen just mentioned what's going on with MDI, antidumping duties here. And while that means that MDI coming into the U.S. is down about 80%. The product has gone somewhere, right? It's showing up in Europe, it's showing up in other areas, and it's probably more than likely being dumped there. And so we have to pursue those same kind of cases around the world. And so that's the thing that we've got to look at is how does the rest of the GDP to recover. And when do we start to see durable goods move, when we see automobiles move again, appliances move again. Some of the other things that are really going to drive some of this economy. September was a strong month, and I think October order books look good. A little bit early to call November. Usually, when we get to the beginning of the month, we have a really good line of sight to the order books and way too early to call December. But so far, so good on the order books. I don't think -- I wouldn't lean in too conservative or too optimistic, I'd say, kind of right down the middle with our experience year-to-date. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Chris Parkinson with Wolfe Research. Christopher Parkinson: Jim, on Slide 10, we can all see that the cost curve is pretty steep when it gets to the third and the fourth quartile and we continue to see some of the rationalization of the asset footprint, presumably in the fourth quartile on an ongoing basis. But at the same time, that means certain third quartile assets become the operational fourth quartile assets. And the cost curve, the perceived cost curve could actually be a little bit flatter than previous estimates. How, if any way, whatsoever, does that filter in to your return assumptions, your longer-term term resumptions on Alberta? And how does that help you triangulate your decision-making process over the next 6 to 12 months? Or is it simply just too early to tell? James Fitterling: Yes, Chris, it's a good question. I mean you know these curves change over time. They get steep and they flatten out in different periods of time. I'd say it's been pretty steady in this kind of range. Just recently, I think you've seen some moves at naphtha that have brought some things down. But at the same time, propane's come down as well. And so that gives us a little bit of pro-nap advantage in Europe. So things move around. What I would say is that in any scenario on a Canadian asset, will be a low-cost asset and to be a first quartile assets. So I think we look at it that way. And then we look at the rest of the footprint and through the cycle, peak-to-peak, trough-to-trough, you want to try to make sure you're in a position to maximize the next peak for the shareholders. And when you get to the next trough, you've got your high-cost assets out of there in the next trough, you have got more assets to the left of the center point of that line. And so that's our decision-making right now. The focus in Europe has been rightsizing it to the European market. And I think the big question mark is going to be how long will the European market continues to stay at that size, we'll continue to [indiscernible] stop or continue to shrink. And then China, I think the other factor that comes in is the trade and how trade is going to be regulated because a lot of capacity that's been built there is not low cost. And if countries around the world are trying to keep their manufacturing industries, they're going to have to put up some protection barriers to keep product from being done. And we're starting to see that happen now as a result. Those are the big factors. And I think we try to factor in that. And then the timing of the demand to come back. So if you think about what we were talking about on supply-demand rationalization before, you've got 10% of global capacity, either announced or talked about in terms of coming out. That would be a significant bump up in ethylene operating rate. Karen mentioned polyethylene demand, which has been for a low, slow growth economy has been pretty good volume. We haven't seen the pricing power yet. But I do think the world is not going to sit at the slow growth place forever. So that capacity comes out, that demand rate kicks up pretty quickly, you get yourself into that 85-plus percent operating rate, and then you start to see price power and you start to see move up that's going to really benefit the investors. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Duffy Fisher with Goldman Sachs. Unknown Analyst: First of all, 2 questions maybe. So one, just to be explicit, your guide for Q4, what are you baking in for ethane pricing doing in the U.S.? How much of that $0.05 do you have baked in and then your sequential operating rates, do they stay flat, would be question one, just around the fourth quarter. And then second question is, have you guys done work or do you have a view on what you think happens with natural gas pricing in the U.S. as we start to export more natural gas. So a view on where '26 natural gas price goes? James Fitterling: Duffy, on ethane, we got $0.04 in -- on the ethane in the quarter. Ethane is moving as you see. But I mean, natural gas production is good. The U.S. has plenty of natural gas liquids. So it's all going to be a function of operating rates. Our view on operating rates is the assets are going to run hard in the Americas. So I think that will come through. Natural gas, weather is going to be a big factor, always is this time of year. And you've seen it, it has come off where the strip was for the beginning of the quarter. It's come off because we're still producing products still going into inventory. There hasn't been as much demand for heating. And so we've had this kind of warmer September, October, I think, which has helped into the strip starting to cool off a little bit now. So we'll watch the inventory levels. That will be the biggest factor there. But the near-term moves on gas have been positive. And as gas moves down, you'll probably see the frac spreads will stay about the same, so that they bring ethane down. The other wildcard to watch is, does ethane get in the middle of a trade negotiation between U.S. and China. It did in the previous round. And so what happens with ethane exports. I'm not advocating for anything here. I'm just saying that China is a big receiver of ethane exports. And so it got treated a little bit like rare herbs in the last discussion and we have to watch that. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Patrick Cunningham with Citi. Patrick Cunningham: You talked quite a bit about volume gains from new investments in the U.S. Gulf Coast and reference picking up share in better markets. I guess, first, can you help quantify the run rate earnings contribution from some of these growth investments? And are there any other incremental investments or tailwinds we should be aware of that gives additional uplift next year? James Fitterling: Maybe I'll ask Karen to make a few comments on the run rate investments. Karen Carter: Yes, absolutely. Thanks for the question. So just to clarify, the 2 growth assets that are now up and running are the Polys unit down in the U.S. Gulf Coast, and then the [indiscernible] capacity that's also down in the U.S. Gulf Coast. So we expect that from a full run rate perspective on an annualized basis that, that will deliver $100 million to $200 million. And so far this year, and so I'll talk about third quarter in particular, it's around $40 million in the quarter, and we expect that to continue into fourth quarter. James Fitterling: And the other factor, Patrick, that I would just add in is we're balanced now on ethylene in the marketplace. And so what that allows us to do is capture the full integrated margin on that ethylene versus selling merchant ethylene. Karen Carter: Yes. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Matthew DeYoe with Bank of America. Matthew DeYoe: I appreciate the view that PE demand is going to grow in excess of GDP. But as we look across -- a lot of the chemical chain and trends you're seeing in China. Is it possible that multiplier has been diluted because domestic sales year-to-date are up 1%, which is below expectations on GDP, but I know there's a lot of noise and just to put in context, I guess, a higher level rate, inventories are down in September for polyethylene, but that's because the industry took rates down. But how do I rationales the plan or the expectation for that to keep going at lower rates? Because I know there's also the view that the U.S. will run harder. And I guess I asked this because it reflects a larger question that we have. It's like if we're still going to be adding capacity in things like MDI and polyethylene, is it possible that U.S. assets just have to derate if we can't take capacity out in Europe anymore? James Fitterling: Yes, there's a lot there, Matthew. Let me take a couple of stabs at it. So domestic sales and production are 2 different things. And I think, as I mentioned before, the U.S. GDP ex data centers and that has been relatively low. So I think the multiplier is still there. It's been in around the 1.4x GDP multiplier. It feels like it's still there. I mean at the heyday of the big ramp-up in plastics, it was probably in the 1.5 range. I've seen estimates from third parties that could go as low as 1.2%. That wouldn't be surprising as the industry matures. And then I think product mix is the other thing that factors in. We're geared more towards elastomers, about 30% of the capacity being in Functional Polymers. And then obviously, a lot in flexible packaging, linear low density is a big part of what we do, low-density is a big part of what we do. I think we're pushing for a lot of capacity adds and isocyanates here. I think the world has enough isocyanates capacity. So I don't think you're seeing that coming on. I think it's more a question of rebalancing of the trade and then taking people off the sidelines because there's a lot of people on the sidelines right now. I'd say the supply chain is more hand to mouth. There's not a lot of inventory build anywhere. Maybe in the year, we've seen a little bit of early moves on imports and exports because people are trying to get ahead of tariff dates like the first of October, you see that drive certain shifts we saw it in China with their production rates and exports. But those are the things. But at the high level, I don't think the GDP multiplier has shifted. Operator: This concludes our Q&A session. I will now turn the conference back over to Andrew Riker for closing remarks. Andrew Riker: Thank you, everyone, for joining our call, and we appreciate your interest in Dow. For your reference, a copy of our transcript will be posted on Dow's website within 48 hours, which concludes our call. Operator: This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.
Operator: Good morning, and welcome to CenterPoint Energy's Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call with senior management. [Operator Instructions] I will now turn the call over to Ben Vallejo, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Planning. Mr. Vallejo? Ben Vallejo: Good morning, and welcome to CenterPoint's Q3 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Jason Wells, our CEO; and Chris Foster, our CFO, will discuss the company's third quarter results. Management will discuss certain topics that will contain projections and other forward-looking information and statements that are currently based on management's beliefs, assumptions and information currently available to management. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially based on various factors as noted in our Form 10-Q and other SEC filings as well as our earnings materials. We undertake no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statement other than as required under applicable securities laws. We reported diluted earnings per share of $0.45 for the third quarter of 2025 on a GAAP basis. Management will be discussing certain non-GAAP measures on today's call. When providing guidance, we use the non-GAAP EPS measure of diluted adjusted earnings per share on a consolidated basis referred to as non-GAAP EPS. For information on our guidance methodology and reconciliation of the non-GAAP measures used in providing guidance, please refer to our earnings news release and presentation on our website. We use our website to announce material information. This call is being recorded. Information on how to access the replay can be found on our website. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Jason. Jason Wells: Thank you, Ben, and good morning, everyone. On today's call, I'd like to address 3 key focus areas for the quarter. First, I will briefly touch on the 10-year financial plan update we introduced just weeks ago. Second, I will walk through our strong third quarter financial results. And lastly, I'll discuss our announcement from earlier this week regarding the sale of our Ohio gas LDC. Last month, we introduced an ambitious 10-year plan focused on supporting economic development, delivering strong customer outcomes, reducing O&M through operational efficiency and driving value for our investors. Our capital investment plan of at least $65 billion is supported by some of the fastest-growing demand for energy anywhere in the country. Importantly, we also have visibility to at least $10 billion of incremental capital investment opportunities over the course of the plan, particularly in Texas, given the dramatic growth the communities we serve continue to experience. Specifically, in our Houston Electric service territory, we forecast peak load demand to increase by 10 gigawatts in 2031. This forecasted growth would represent a nearly 50% increase in peak demand over the next 6 years. Additionally, through the middle of the next decade, we estimate the electric load demand on our system will double to approximately 42 gigawatts. This level of demand will continue to support a strong investment profile. Our capital investment plan through 2030 drives a projected rate base CAGR of over 11% through the end of the decade and the potential for double-digit rate base growth through the middle of the next decade. The Greater Houston area is thriving, powered by what we believe is the most diverse set of growth drivers in the sector. It is not relying on any single industry and the results speak for themselves. This growth isn't aspirational. It's already here. Notably throughput in our Houston Electric business were up 9% year-to-date. This strong growth is anchored by our surge in industrial customer class throughput, which are up over 17% quarter-over-quarter and up over 11% year-to-date. This incredible growth provides a solid foundation for our earnings guidance. Specifically, we have strong conviction in our ability to achieve non-GAAP EPS at the mid- to high end of our 7% to 9% annual growth guidance from 2026 through 2028, and 7% to 9% annually thereafter through 2035. I continue to believe we have one of the most differentiated plans in the industry because of our unique combination of the diversity and pace of electric demand growth, a derisked regulatory and financing profile and our ability to continue investing affordably for the benefit of our customers. These attributes set us apart from our peers and enable us to continue to deliver value for all our stakeholders over the next decade and beyond. Now moving to our strong third quarter financial results. This morning, we reported non-GAAP EPS of $0.50 for the third quarter, representing a 60% increase over the same period last year. As we signaled last quarter, 2025 earnings reflect a more back-end weighted profile for the year, consistent with our return to traditional capital recovery mechanisms now that the bulk of our rate case activity is behind us. I'll let Chris cover the details in his section, but we remain well positioned to execute on our recently increased 2025 non-GAAP EPS guidance. As such, we are reiterating our full year 2025 non-GAAP EPS guidance range of $1.75 to $1.77, which would represent 9% growth over 2024 delivered results of $1.62 per share. Additionally, we are also reiterating our 2026 non-GAAP earnings guidance we initiated a few weeks ago. As a reminder, we are targeting at least the midpoint of $1.89 to $1.91 per share. At the midpoint, this range would represent an 8% increase over the midpoint of our 2025 non-GAAP EPS guidance range. Further, we continue to expect to grow non-GAAP EPS at the mid- to high end of our 7% to 9% long-term annual guidance range from 2026 through 2028 and 7% to 9% annually through 2035. As a reminder, our guidance is based on actual delivered results as we continue to execute and deliver value for our shareholders each and every year. I'd now like to discuss the recent announcement regarding the sale of our Ohio gas LDC. Earlier this week, we announced the signing of our Ohio gas LDC transaction, which is expected to generate approximately $2.6 billion in gross proceeds, representing a significant milestone in executing our 10-year financial plan. The strong valuation of approximately 1.9x 2024 rate base underscores the exceptional demand for U.S. natural gas LDCs. This outcome once again demonstrates our ability to efficiently finance our growth investments, this time by recycling the transaction proceeds of a high-quality business at nearly 2x book value and reallocating capital into our remaining portfolio at 1x book value. The after-tax net cash proceeds of approximately $2.4 billion will be redeployed into higher growth jurisdictions to efficiently fund our capital investment plan. Importantly, the proceeds should also provide additional flexibility in funding for future incremental capital investments. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026. Chris will go into the details of the transaction, including its structure, which will allow us to more smoothly redeploy capital while maintaining a strong earnings profile. It has been a privilege to serve the customers and communities in our Ohio gas business, and we are committed to a smooth transition for our customers. This is a tremendous business with fantastic employees, and we know they will continue to provide great service to the 335,000 meter customers in Ohio. This transaction reflects our continued commitment to disciplined capital allocation as we seek to further enable growth, especially in Texas and long-term value creation for all stakeholders. Our growing capital investment opportunities are supported by accelerating and diverse set of load growth drivers. This, coupled with our ability to efficiently finance our plan continues to support our conviction that we have one of the most tangible long-term growth plans in the industry. And with that, I'll hand it over to Chris. Christopher Foster: Thanks, Jason. This morning, I will address 4 key areas of focus. First, I will review the details of our third quarter results. Second, I'll discuss the transaction structure of the recently announced sale of our Ohio gas LDC. Third, I'll highlight our progress on the execution of our 2025 capital investment plan. And lastly, I'll provide an update on where we ended the third quarter with respect to the balance sheet. Let's now move to the financial results shown on Slide 5. On a GAAP EPS basis, we reported $0.45 for the third quarter of 2025. On a non-GAAP EPS basis, we reported $0.50 for the third quarter of 2025 compared to $0.31 in the third quarter of 2024. Our non-GAAP results removed $0.03 of charges, primarily consisting of tax true-ups related to the sale of our Louisiana and Mississippi businesses and transaction costs in connection with our announced Ohio gas LDC sale. In addition, it removes $0.02 related to our temporary generation units as these units are no longer part of our rate-regulated business. These strong results give us confidence in meeting our positively revised 2025 non-GAAP EPS guidance of $1.75 to $1.77. Now taking a closer look at the drivers of our third quarter earnings. Growth and rate recovery when netted with depreciation and other taxes were a favorable variance of $0.07 when compared to the same quarter of last year. This positive variance underscores the strength of our interim capital tracker mechanisms, which continue to support the efficient recovery of our investments. We expect these tailwinds to continue driving earnings through the remainder of the year. During the quarter, we filed for our second set of interim capital recovery trackers at Houston Electric, the TCOS and DCRF mechanisms, which support the timely recovery of transmission and distribution investments, respectively. Our TCOS filing, which included a $15 million annual revenue requirement increase was approved and reflected in customer rates on October 10. Our DCRF filing, which includes a $55 million annual revenue increase is on the PUCT open meeting agenda for later today with updated rates expected to take effect in December. Weather and usage were $0.01 favorable when compared to the comparable quarter last year, driven by fewer outages across our Houston Electric service territory related to storm activity. O&M was $0.12 favorable compared to the third quarter of 2024. This significant improvement in O&M is primarily driven by last August vegetation management and other storm-related costs, where we spent approximately $100 million to accelerate work and improve customer outcomes. Additionally, we had $0.03 of favorability in other, which is primarily driven by an income tax remeasurement. This reflects our continued efforts to optimize our tax structure to align with the evolving composition of our portfolio, which after the closing of our Ohio transaction, will skew more heavily towards Texas. These favorable drivers were partially offset by $0.04 of higher interest expense and financing costs, primarily due to incremental debt issuances since the third quarter of 2024. Next, I'll go through the details of our recently announced Ohio gas LDC sale. As many of you may have seen earlier this week, we announced the sale of our Ohio gas LDC, which is expected to generate gross sale proceeds of approximately $2.62 billion, garnering a multiple of nearly 1.9x 2024 year-end rate base. We anticipate total net proceeds of roughly $2.4 billion after taxes and transaction costs. This is an outstanding outcome. This result exceeds what was contemplated in our financing plans, underscoring the conservative approach we take to our planning process. As such, the transaction will be accretive to both our plan and alternative financing sources. In the near term, these proceeds will serve to further strengthen our balance sheet. And over the long term, as Jason alluded to, this transaction will allow for greater financing flexibility and may enable us to fund incremental capital investments with less equity than the 47% rule of thumb we provided at our September investor update. Transaction proceeds will be redeployed into higher growth jurisdictions to support near-term capital investments in our Texas Electric and Gas businesses. Notably, after the close of this transaction, Texas will represent 70% of our investment portfolio. In connection with the transaction, we will enter into a 1-year seller's note with a 6.5% annual coupon, which will help support earnings in 2027. As a reminder, last quarter, we announced an increase to our 2025 investment plan as we continue to make targeted system enhancements. These incremental investments will help partially offset the loss of Ohio investments upon the close of the sale. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026, aligning with our financing plans and long-term value creation goals. Next, I'll touch on our capital investment plan execution through the third quarter, as shown here on Slide 7. For the quarter, we are right on track to meet our positively revised 2025 capital investment target of $5.3 billion. In the third quarter, we invested $1.3 billion of base work for the benefit of our customers and communities, which, combined with the $2.4 billion we invested in the first half of the year, represents approximately 70% of our total year target. In short, we remain well positioned to achieve our investment targets for 2025. Now moving to an update on our balance sheet and credit metrics. As of the end of the quarter, our trailing 12 months adjusted FFO to debt ratio based on the Moody's rating methodology was 14% when removing transitory storm-related impacts. We anticipate these credit metrics could be further improved by early next year as we expect to issue securitization bonds in connection with Hurricane Barrel in the first quarter of 2026. We continue to target 100 to 150 basis points above our Moody's downgrade threshold of 13% as we remain laser-focused on efficiently financing our robust capital investment plan. Earlier this month, we once again illustrated our commitment to a strong balance sheet through our $700 million junior subordinated note issuance, which provides 50% equity credit. Our common equity guide through 2030 remains unchanged at $2.75 billion. As a reminder, we have derisked over $1 billion of these equity needs through the forward sales we executed earlier this year, and we do not anticipate common equity needs beyond those forward sales from now through 2027. We believe we are well positioned to execute the remainder of the year and beyond, and we are reaffirming our 2025 non-GAAP EPS guidance range of $1.75 to $1.77, which equates to 9% growth at the midpoint from our delivered 2024 non-GAAP EPS of $1.62. Additionally, we are also reiterating our 2026 non-GAAP earnings guidance we initiated a few weeks ago at our investor update from the midpoint of our new and higher 2025 range. For 2026, we are targeting at least the midpoint of $1.89 to $1.91. At the midpoint, this would represent an 8% increase over the midpoint of our 2025 non-GAAP EPS guidance range. Looking ahead, we expect to grow non-GAAP EPS at the mid- to high end of our 7% to 9% range from 2026 through 2028. After 2028, we will target growing earnings annually at 7% to 9% through 2035. We look forward to executing our plan that delivers on the most diverse growth drivers in the country, fueling economic development for years to come. And with that, I'll now turn the call back over to Jason. Jason Wells: Thank you, Chris. I'm proud of the team's continued execution over the past quarter and the results that firmly put us on track to deliver our guidance this year. This management team will work to not only execute the ambitious targets we set forth in our new industry-leading 10-year plan, but we will also work to enhance the plan for the benefit of all of our stakeholders. Ben Vallejo: Thanks, Jason. Operator, I'd now like to turn it over to Q&A. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Nick Campanella of Barclays. Nicholas Campanella: I just wanted to ask, Chris, you talked a little bit about it in your prepared remarks on balance sheet capacity here from the Ohio transaction. How are you kind of viewing it on like an FFO to debt improvement basis versus the plan? You mentioned financing maybe less than the 47% equity assumption. Is that now 30% or 15%? Is there any kind of way to further quantify that? Christopher Foster: Sure. Nick, if I could just maybe take a step back. And as you look at the transaction, there's really a couple of things going on. One is, over time, you've seen us continue down this path of increasing really the focus on the portfolio where we're reducing also earnings and cash lag where we can. So maybe that kind of goes to your FFO to debt point. As you look at the total outcome as we do sources and uses, you'll probably see us initially step into reducing the OpCo debt that's there. So that's roughly $800 million if you base it on a year-end '26 rate base of $1.6 billion. And then as we look at our plan overall, you're probably looking on the order of $400 million of benefit net to plan. So ultimately, what this puts us in a position to do, as you can imagine, is we'll evaluate both the improvement to the balance sheet here in the near term. And then as we go forward, it could allow us to deploy additional CapEx to the plan in an accretive way. Nicholas Campanella: Okay. Great. Appreciate it. And then just maybe on the deal, just any update on how local feedback has been on the ground and reception to the deal from state leadership since it was announced? Jason Wells: Yes. Nick, it's Jason. Reception has been great so far, very supportive. Don't anticipate any challenges and obviously going to work with our counterparty to successfully transition this business and continue the track record of great service in Ohio. Operator: Our next question is from Steve Fleishman with Wolfe Research. Steven Fleishman: Just maybe, Jason or Chris, more color on the sales growth in Texas, which obviously that's very strong. Just what sectors are driving the industrial sales so much higher this year? Jason Wells: Steve, thanks for the question. I think the throughput growth quarter-over-quarter, year-over-year really reflects the diversity of drivers that we have here in the Greater Houston area. We've already connected this year alone over 0.5 gig of data center activity. Much of that is on the transmission sort of industrial rate side. We continue to see very strong demand from energy, refining, processing and exports. And I think what we really saw as a differentiator this quarter was the increase in activity at the Port of Houston. It's the largest port by waterborne tonnage in the world. And we saw about an 18% increase quarter-over-quarter in exports. So it's really just a diversity of drivers. This isn't growth that we're anticipating coming down the line. This is growth across a number of different industries that we're experiencing today. Steven Fleishman: Okay. Great. That's helpful. And then just any update on prospects of data center activity in Indiana. And I don't know if you want to share any thoughts on how you're feeling about the regulatory environment in Indiana. I know you don't have any cases there right now, but just thoughts there. Jason Wells: Yes. We continue to actively work on data center opportunities in Indiana and feel well positioned to deliver on that. As we've talked about in the past, I think we're pretty uniquely positioned in the fact that we've got excess capacity today in the system that allows us to move quickly. It's an area that is very constructive, both from a cost of and availability of land, water, et cetera. And we've just brought online our simple cycle plant that was built to be easily converted to combined cycle that would allow us to efficiently increase the level of capacity available. So we continue to feel good about the prospects of bringing data center activity to Southwest Indiana. Stepping back on kind of a broader basis, we are all focused on affordability of our service up there. We, like many of the other Indiana utilities had a fairly significant step-up in rates last year as a result of a long-term trend of closing some very old generating facilities. As we project forward, though, we don't -- we see our rates growing in line with inflation over the remainder of this decade. We've taken some steps to help kind of mitigate the impact. We've canceled about $1 billion of renewable projects and we'll push out the retirement of our third and final coal facility a few more years. And so I think at the end of the day, we, like other utilities, are taking proactive steps to make sure that we moderate the pace of rate increases, but working constructively to bring economic development activity to the state. And I think that's very much aligned with the state leadership goals. Operator: Our next question is from Jeremy Tonet with JPMorgan Securities. Jeremy Tonet: Chris, thanks for the comments there on the asset sale. I was just wondering if you might be able to expand a little bit more. It sounds like a nice credit accretive properties to the final deal terms versus expectations. I'm just wondering if you could expand a bit more, I guess, on whether you see this being accretive to the earnings over time or any thoughts on that side? Christopher Foster: Sure. I think, Jeremy, a couple of ways to look at this. We do see it as directly beneficial to the financing plan, as I mentioned, and helpful from an earnings standpoint, too. A thing to keep in mind is, as we looked at the sale here of Ohio specifically from a -- as we reallocate spend, we're going to be in a situation where we're experiencing 25% to 30% less cash lag just on a historical basis. So I think that's certainly helpful as well. Going forward, we'll be putting those dollars to work, as Jason mentioned, certainly heavily in our Texas Gas and Electric business, including in a set of Texas gas projects that we're excited about really for years to come, where it really is a great business, as you know, coming out of the rate case last year there. So I think well positioned both financing-wise and from an earnings standpoint. Keep in mind, I alluded to this in my prepared remarks, but I would just emphasize here, too, as we're stepping into making sure that we were managing any otherwise earnings impact, we've already deployed about $500 million this year that we expressed in our plan. And keep in mind, as I mentioned earlier, this is about $1.6 billion of year-end '26 rate base. So you should assume that we're also going to accelerate another roughly $1 billion in 2026. That means that here, we're going to fully replace that rate base by the beginning of 2027. So overall, positions us well going forward. Jeremy Tonet: That's very helpful. And just one more, I guess, on the seller's note as you guys are receiving in the deal as far as how you think about how that helps facilitate the plan and what value, I guess, that brings to CenterPoint here being able to layer that in and how that allows you, I guess, to manage earnings going forward, but it sounds like the capital plan, as you said, really is a big offset there. Christopher Foster: Yes. Certainly, from a capital allocation plan, we've been prefunding thoughtfully. What I would say on the seller note is it's a pretty straightforward instrument there where we'll have that opportunity for the second year to 2027, having that 6.5% coupon associated with it on just over $1 billion. And so it allows us, again, to have good clarity. It also settles on a quarterly basis, I think, which is nice, too. So there's no real lag there. So straightforward instrument, one that it's a helpful component of the plan as well. Operator: Our last question comes from the line of Julien Dumoulin-Smith with Jefferies. Julien Dumoulin-Smith: Jason, quickly, a couple of things to follow up on. First off, I know you alluded to it a few weeks ago here, but how do you think about the AMI and rollout and the time line on that front? I mean, certainly, it seems like this is a multiyear project here. But certainly, within the scope of the 5-year plan, how do you think about the cadence of that rolling in? When do we start to get some visibility around that and contributions? Jason Wells: Yes, Julien, thanks for the question. This next generation of AMI investments really will start to fold into the plan in '26. Maybe taking a step back for a second, as we released the new $65 billion 10-year CapEx plan we identified more than $10 billion of upside. I would consider one of these projects as one of the upside opportunities to that plan. I think coming back to the timing, the most important thing that we can do is run a pilot in '26 to prove the use case and benefits for our customers. And then I would really look at that once we have that pilot in hand, making a filing with the PUCT and really starting to kind of work this project in earnest beginning in 2027 and beyond. I think there are very real benefits for our customers. As we've talked about in the past, when we experienced Winter Storm Uri, because of the generation of meters we had at the time, we could not use those meters for load shed-related activities. Instead, we had to shed load at the circuit level. This next generation of smart meters would allow us to do that at the home and I think would allow us to be much more targeted and allow for even more rolling of power if an event like Winter Storm Uri was to occur again. So a number of benefits to our customers. We need to prove those out with a pilot in '26 and then look towards more fulsome deployment beginning in '27. Julien Dumoulin-Smith: Excellent. And then if I could pivot in a slightly different direction, obviously, kudos on the transaction here. The other item, if I were to think about like what's not in terms of included in the formal guidance on cash flows is mobile gen. I perceive that the economics and price points there continue to improve as evidenced maybe by some of the folks out there like Fermi talking about this. But how would you characterize today where you are around that and the opportunities that exist more in the longer term, obviously, is that it's less committed in terms of the existing units and your exposure to some of that improved market pricing? Jason Wells: Yes. There's really 2 aspects to that, Julien. There's first, we've got what we call medium-sized units, just a little bit larger than 5 megawatts a piece, 5 units, 5 megawatts a piece that currently we have the ability to market and are actively doing that. The market for those units remains very strong and would be a potential cash flow tailwind to the plan. On a larger basis, we have 15 units that are roughly kind of call them, 30 megawatts a piece that are now actively supporting the grid outside of San Antonio until either kind of late '26, early '27 at the latest, at which time then we'll be able to remarket those units. As you said, the market remains strong. If anything, it is improving modestly. That will become a cash flow tailwind when we can release those units from the support of the ERCOT grid in San Antonio and remarket those again probably likely around spring of '27. So we continue to work with brokers, third parties to keep a pulse on the market and think about how we can kind of derisk and take advantage of this growth. But obviously, more to come here as the quarters unfold and as we get closer to those -- the release of those units. Julien Dumoulin-Smith: Excellent. Sorry, nothing to, but one final detail here. HB4384, right? So that's -- your peers in the state, your peer gas utilities in the state have been talking a good bit about this. I know that you all in the interim have talked up even more gas investments in your plan a few weeks ago. Is the scope of the contribution from that legislation fully included in the plan? And to what extent is there anything else that we should be considering here given your expanded investment in gas in recent weeks? Jason Wells: Yes. We think that was a very constructive piece of legislation to help sort of reduce regulatory lag. What I would say is the benefit of that legislation is incorporated in the plan that we released with respect to the investments that we have identified as we continue to look at enhancing the plan, and we've alluded to the $10 billion plus outside, there is opportunity as we fold gas-related capital in that the plan could be enhanced further with the benefit of that legislation. So partially in the plan has the opportunity to be improved as we fold more capital in. Ben Vallejo: Thanks, Jason. Operator, this concludes our call. Thank you all for joining. Operator: This concludes CenterPoint Energy's Third Quarter 202 Earnings Conference Call. Thank you for your participation.
Operator: Good morning, and welcome to Lazard's Third Quarter and First 9 Months 2025 Earnings Conference Call. This call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I will turn the call over to Alexandra Deignan, Lazard's Head of Investor Relations and Treasury. Please go ahead. Alexandra Deignan: Good morning, and welcome to Lazard's earnings call for the third quarter and first 9 months of 2025. I'm Alexandra Deignan, Head of Investor Relations and Treasury. In addition to today's audio comments, we have posted our earnings release on our website. A replay of this call will also be available on our website later today. Before we begin, let me remind you that we may make forward-looking statements about our business and performance. There are important factors that could cause our actual results, level of activity, performance, achievements or other events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, those factors discussed in the company's SEC filings, which you can access on our website. Lazard assumes no responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of these forward-looking statements and assumes no duty to update them. Please note that unless we state otherwise, all financial measures we discuss today are non-GAAP adjusted financial measures. We believe that these non-GAAP financial measures are meaningful when evaluating the company's performance. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the comparable GAAP measures is provided in our earnings release and investor presentation. Hosting our call today are Peter Orxzag, Lazard's Chief Executive Officer and Chairman; and Mary Ann Betsch, Lazard's Chief Financial Officer. I'll now turn the call over to Peter. Peter Orszag: Thank you, Ale, and thank you to everyone for joining today's call. We are pleased to report another quarter of strong results, reflecting an ongoing focus on our clients and continued momentum behind our long-term growth strategy. For the first 9 months of the year, total firm-wide revenue was $2.1 billion, including record financial advisory revenue of $1.3 billion. Financial Advisory was active during the third quarter with strength in M&A across health care, industrials and consumer and retail in restructuring and liability management and in primary and secondary fundraising. Our recruiting efforts have resulted in 20 new MDs joining Lazard so far this year with world-class talent attracted to our premier brand and our vision for the future. Overall, financial advisory performance has demonstrated how our commercial and collegial approach is producing results by capturing new business opportunities. Looking ahead, we see an increasingly constructive environment for advisory activity, which I will discuss later. In Asset Management, it is now clear that 2025 is an inflection point for the business. For the first 9 months of the year, revenue totaled $827 million. And in the third quarter, revenue was up 8% year-over-year. Improved investment performance, our increased focus on key products and strategies and more favorable market conditions have resulted in record gross inflows for the third quarter and for the first 9 months of the year. Year-to-date, we have achieved net positive flows of $1.6 billion with total AUM up 17%. We look forward to welcoming Chris Hogbin as our CEO of Lazard Asset Management in December, helping to further accelerate our progress and evolve this business for future growth. Let me now turn the call over to Mary Ann to provide further details on the quarter's results, and then I'll share more on our outlook and the successful execution of our long-term growth strategy, Lazard 2030. Mary Betsch: Thank you, Peter. Today, we've reported record third quarter firm-wide revenue of $725 million, up 12% from the same time last year, driven by activity across both our businesses. Financial Advisory revenue totaled $422 million, up 14% from 1 year ago. Lazard participated in several marquee transactions during the third quarter, reflecting collaboration across banking teams and the strength of our global franchise. Completed transactions include Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals $6.7 billion combination with Endo Pharmaceuticals, Ferrero's $3.1 billion acquisition of W.K. Kellogg, Altice France's landmark agreement with creditors and Sixth Street on its investment together with a consortium led by William Chisholm to acquire a majority controlling interest in the Boston Celtics in a deal valued at $6.1 billion. Recently announced transactions include Keurig Dr. Pepper's $23 billion acquisition of JDE Peet's and planned subsequent separation into 2 independent companies and Caithness Energy on multiple transactions, including the $3.8 billion sale of assets to Talen Energy. In addition, corporate restructuring assignments include company roles with Anthology, CityFibre and Saks Global. We also engaged in several private equity assignments, including advising Norvestor on a continuation fund, advising on the closing of Nexus Capital Management Fund IV and Pacific Avenues Fund II and advising on capital structure and capital raises for Morrisons and Tennant Holdings. Turning to Asset Management. For the third quarter, revenue was $294 million, up 8% compared to the third quarter last year and up 10% on a sequential basis. Management fees for the third quarter increased 6% compared to the third quarter last year and increased 8% sequentially. Incentive fees were $9 million in the third quarter compared to $3 million in the third quarter last year. Average AUM for the third quarter of $257 billion was 5% higher than the third quarter of 2024 and up 8% on a sequential basis. As of September 30, we reported AUM of $265 billion, 7% higher than both September 2024 and June 2025. During the quarter, we had market appreciation of $12 billion and net inflows of $4.6 billion, partially offset by foreign exchange depreciation of $400 million. We see ongoing client engagement and demand across our investment platforms, particularly with our quantitative and emerging market strategies. Illustrative examples of this include $3 billion from a Korean institution into Global Equity Advantage, $1 billion from a U.S. public fund into international Equity Advantage and $1 billion from a U.S. financial intermediary client into emerging markets equity. In addition, we received over $1 billion from a Netherlands-based client for a custom U.S. equity mandate and approximately $900 million from a U.S. institutional investor into international quality growth. Now turning to expenses. For the third quarter of 2025, our compensation expense was $475 million, resulting in a ratio of 65.5% compared to 66% for the third quarter 1 year ago. Our noncompensation expense for the third quarter was $149 million, equating to a ratio of 20.5% compared to 21.4% for the third quarter last year. We are maintaining a disciplined approach to our expenses, while investing to support long-term growth. This includes substantially expanding our team of financial advisory managing directors and opening new offices in the Middle East and Northern Europe this year. It also includes the build-out of our ETF business in asset management with 6 strategies launched in 2025 and more to come. Shifting to taxes. Our effective tax rate for the third quarter was 21.4% compared to 32.5% for the third quarter of 2024. As an update to our tax guidance, we currently expect our full year 2025 effective tax rate to be around 20%. Turning to capital allocation. In the third quarter of 2025, we returned $60 million to shareholders, including a quarterly dividend of $47 million. In addition, yesterday, we declared a quarterly dividend of $0.50 per share. Now I'll turn the call back to Peter. Peter Orszag: Thank you, Mary Ann. Firm-wide client engagement remains strong. While the U.S. government shutdown may temporarily affect the timing of deal approvals among other potential effects, we see an increasingly improving environment for financial advisory activity. In any moment of turbulence, there is also a substantial opportunity for our clients as they navigate shifting geopolitical and macroeconomic landscapes as well as advances in AI. Demand for M&A continues to increase, while restructuring and liability management activity also remains strong as businesses reposition to address evolving market conditions. Our expanded connectivity to private capital positions us well as private equity comes back on to the playing field and demand remains robust for secondary and continuation funds. This is occurring across all our major geographies, including the United States and Europe as well as now the Middle East, further underscoring the diversification of our business. We are also making steady progress toward our long-term growth goals. We remain on track this year to achieve or exceed our 2030 objective of expanding our team of financial advisory MDs by 10 to 15 net per year with significant hiring already this year. On productivity, we achieved average revenue per MD of $8.6 million during 2024, 1 year ahead of schedule. And since then, average revenue per MD has increased to almost $9 million. We remain confident in our ability to continue raising productivity, including beyond our 2028 goal of average revenue per MD of $10 million through our focus on mandate selection, our disciplined fee structure, the quality of our managing directors and our ongoing emphasis on a commercial and collegial culture. Turning to asset management. We have made significant strides in sharpening our focus on the areas of the market, where active management is most likely to add value to clients, leading to improved flows this year. Active management plays a particularly valuable role for clients, where information is imperfect and where technology can be applied to generate excess returns. This includes quantitatively driven strategies, emerging markets and customized solutions that are not readily available in the broader market. These strategies have delivered significant outperformance this year and represent especially promising future growth opportunities. At the same time, and as we have emphasized before, our sub-advised funds associated with U.S. multi-manager mandates have different dynamics from the rest of our asset management business. These funds have disproportionately contributed to outflows over the past few years, which we have more than offset in 2025 due to our focus on the areas of the business that represent growth opportunities. With 97% of our asset management revenue already outside of this sub-advised category, our prospects going forward are strong as our efforts to strategically reposition the business take hold. Looking forward, we believe that we can also expand our range of offerings to reach new clients, including through active ETFs. In the third quarter, we launched 2 new active ETFs, the Lazard U.S. Systematic Small Cap and listed infrastructure ETFs, bringing our total to 6 in the United States. Our ETF platform is off to a solid start as we bring our leading strategies to more investors with further global expansion in the coming months. In addition, we are excited to welcome Chris Hogbin as CEO of Lazard Asset Management later this year. His collaborative leadership style and experience in building and growing a global asset management business will help us to meet clients' evolving needs and accelerate progress toward our long-term strategy. Across Lazard, we are focused on key differentiators that support our ability to deliver for our clients and shareholders. Lazard has long been recognized for our unique combination of insight into business and geopolitical trends. Building on the success of our world-class geopolitical advisory group, we are honored that Erik Kurilla, retired Four-star U.S. Army General and former Commander of U.S. Central Command, has joined Lazard as a senior adviser. His expertise is particularly valuable given client interest and ongoing developments in the Middle East and our expansion in that area of the world. Clients turn to Lazard for the most sophisticated advice and investment solutions, and we succeed with the unrivaled collective intellectual capital of our firm. With AI, we have the capability to meaningfully scale this capital, while reinforcing the importance of client relationships. Helping to further advance our efforts, we are pleased that Dmitry Shevelenko, Chief Business Officer of Perplexity, has joined Lazard's Board of Directors. She is already contributing to our efforts to become the leading AI-enabled independent financial services firm. Finally, as I've recently completed 2 years as CEO, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on our progress to date and the road ahead. In pursuit of our long-term growth strategy, we set forth several objectives in Financial Advisory to boost revenue by increasing average productivity per MD and by expanding our team of managing directors and in asset management to achieve a more balanced flow picture this year by strengthening our research platform and by focusing our distribution efforts on key products and strategies. We are successfully executing against our plan in achieving these objectives as demonstrated again this quarter. We continue to evaluate our overall success across 3 dimensions: relevance, revenue and returns. Our goals remain consistent to double firm-wide revenue from 2023 to 2030 and deliver an average annual shareholder return of at least 10% to 15% per year over that same period. While early results are quite promising, what I am most proud of is the degree of cultural change across the firm. Building on our long-standing commitment to excellence, we have meaningfully raised our ambitions and our collaborative approach. We have also transformed our Managing Director group in Financial Advisory through hiring and promotions and with heightened expectations for commercial outcomes and collegial behavior. At Lazard, we are playing to win and playing to win together. We are only at the start of realizing the sustained advantage that our reenergized culture creates, and we are confident that our success in creating very strong organizational health will increasingly pay off in results as we move forward. This early success and momentum are the result of our colleagues' dedication to our clients and commitment to realizing this vision for our future. And to them, I extend my appreciation and respect. Now we'll open the call to questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] We'll take our first question from Alex Bond with KBW. Alexander Bond: Peter, maybe just to start on the hiring environment. It seems like the backdrop and your competition for senior talent appears to be relatively high at the moment. And you've noted that you expect to be at or near the high end of your targeted net MD addition range for the year. Can you just walk us through how you're thinking about balancing bringing on strong talent, who can add to the revenue base while also considering how that impacts the ultimate level of comp leverage moving forward? And then also curious how talent retention fits into this narrative, just given your peers also remain active on the hiring front as well. Peter Orszag: Sure. So we've had a lot of success bringing people on to the platform. I think there's a sense of a reenergized Lazard and a lot of excitement about our momentum in key areas like industrials, health care, the Nordics, Middle East, FIG, private equity coverage among many others. And the quality of the people that we're attracting, if you look not only at their personal trajectory, but also where they're coming from is very high. So we're excited about that. With regard to the opposite direction, we've had very, very few regrettable departures and I'd say the state of our Managing Director pool is very strong. We just completed an internal survey as 1 example, and the MD engagement scores on the financial advisory side are extremely high, which, again, I think speaks to the organizational health point that I made. With regard to comp leverage, the reason that we're out hiring these people is because we believe that they'll not only lead to growth over time, but also to helping to continue to raise our productivity per MD. And that then speaks to the comp leverage point because I want to reemphasize something I've made -- point I've made many times before. A substantial amount of comp leverage comes from raising productivity per MD. And the reason for that, in turn, is that the non-MD expense associated with a more productive partner is not that different from the non-MD expense compensation associated with a less productive MD partner. So as you raise productivity per MD, you get a substantial amount of operating leverage because the non-MD compensation declines as a share of revenue and you get the operating leverage there. So we're bringing on to the platform people that we believe are going to be super productive moving forward. We've added a significant amount of diligence to our hiring process, that increases our confidence about that. And if you look at the early results of some of the people that we've been hiring over the past couple of years, that seems to be paying off. So comp leverage over time because the folks we're bringing on are going to help contribute to raising productivity. That is one of the factors that gives me confidence to say that as we move past 2028, we're going to continue raising our productivity per MD aspirations. And I think, for example, something in the range of $12.5 million by 2030 is imminently achievable. Alexander Bond: Great. That's helpful. And maybe just switching gears for my next question, but maybe if you can just speak to the recent success you've had driving that inflows in the Asset Management unit. And to the extent these recent inflows are being driven by new client wins. I mean it sounds like the geographic distribution here, there's a pretty good mix. And then also curious as to your confidence level in achieving net neutral flows for the year now that we're a decent way into the fourth quarter. Peter Orszag: Sure. So on the first part of the question, the flows are -- again, it's a bit of -- we've got to be clear about it on a gross basis, significant inflows into the part that I'm going to talk about and then ongoing outflows from the sub-advised accounts that I mentioned in the script, with regard to where the inflows are coming from, they are disproportionately in areas of the business that we're very excited about the kind of go forward on, our quantitative and systematic strategies, emerging market equities, customized solutions, global listed infrastructure and other examples like that. And also among European investors, our sustainable products are areas of interest. With regard to the geographic mix there is also increasingly play towards diversification outside of the United States. And so the vast majority, 80% to 95% of our current one, but not funded mandates are for products and strategies outside the U.S. and among clients that are also geographically outside of the United States. So to your point, yes, the global footprint that we have, both on the product side and on the distribution side is beneficial. With regard to the year as a whole, I had put forward the flat flows or net zero flows as a stretch goal. I think many of the people on this call may have been skeptical that, that was even remotely possible. And again, therefore, I think the year-to-date results are particularly striking, given that there was -- there had been so much skepticism. As we approach the end of the year, obviously, we are increasingly looking to actually hit that bogey. We'll have to see. But I think, again, I'll just go back to year-to-date, things look very good, and we continue to win new mandates, including 2 that I got notified about this morning. So we will see that everything looks very positive in terms of the overall flow picture right now, especially in those products and strategies that I was highlighting. And that is the second point I want to make, which is what's happening here is that even while the net number is positive, we're also seeing a significant transformation of the business towards those areas that we think are the most promising on a sustainable basis over time. Highlight again quant areas of equities, where there are more information in perfections and therefore active management is more likely to have some sort of edge emerging market equities is a great example of that. And then customized solutions, where it's just harder to put together the portfolio that clients are looking for on their own. So overall net positive, but also we're losing -- or we're seeing outflows in the large sub-advised accounts, and we're seeing disproportionate inflows into those new areas of the business. So under the surface, there's also a shift towards those products and strategies where we have a high degree of confidence that the theory of the case for active management makes a lot of sense. Operator: Our next question will come from Jim Mitchell with Seaport Global Securities. James Mitchell: Maybe just a follow-up on some of those -- that discussion there first on the Asset Management business. You talked about record gross inflows. Are you seeing any change in the trends in gross outflows, I guess, not just within the sub-advisory group, but just more broadly because I think if you look at the trends that you guys disclosed, your gross outflows have still been relatively high. You're seeing any improvement there? Peter Orszag: Yes. Gross outflows are lower than they were last year. And again, they're disproportionately accounted for by the sub-advised accounts. So if you were to do a net flow picture outside of subadvised accounts, the trajectory looks even more promising, and I think that may be an important way to consider things given that 97% of our revenue is outside of that category. So that might be a paradigm that's worth continuing to highlight on a going-forward basis. James Mitchell: Okay. And then -- and just maybe when you think about Asset Management and the turnaround there, you have a lot of momentum, obviously, assuming the markets hold up, especially heading into next year, it seems like you have more operating leverage and comp leverage in that business. So does that lower the bar on the Advisory side to carry the weight to get to that 60%? So just how are you thinking more positively about getting to that 60% in the intermediate term? Just any thoughts on getting to that goal? Peter Orszag: I am quite confident that we will see operating leverage kick in further in 2026 and so that we'll make progress on reducing the comp ratio. I don't want to attach a particular timetable because that's obviously dependent on a variety of factors. So let me just unpack some of the things that will lead to operating leverage over time. 1 is that ongoing improvement in productivity per MD that I mentioned. Part of that also is the mechanic -- almost mechanical or arithmetic kind of effects of what's been happening with our big step-up in hiring because when we hire people, there's a temporary ramp that kind of artificially depresses productivity per MD or raises the comp ratio either way you want to look at it because they're getting used to the platform and what have you, as they mature that affect flip sign or kind of attenuates. And so there's almost a mechanical uplift in productivity that we expect to be occurring as we move through time, even at a higher hiring rate because these are all sort of transition effects as we've moved to a much more aggressive hiring stance over the past couple of years. On the Asset side of the business, there will be operating leverage that comes from these inflows, but also from a lot of care and attention that we're paying to what I would call scale for strategy. So if you wanted to highlight the big -- obviously, there are many things that go into operating leverage, but to simplify it on the Advisory side of the business, a lot of operating leverage comes from revenue per MD. And on the Asset side of the business, a lot of operating leverage comes from scale per strategy, not overall scale, but scale for strategy. So, those are the types of metrics that we're looking at to produce operating leverage. Obviously, lots of other things go into it in terms of the ability for us to find further efficiencies in many of our processes because of artificial intelligence and other factors, but those are 2 big drivers on each side of the business. Operator: Our next question will come from Brennan Hawken with BMO Capital Markets. Brennan Hawken: First, Peter, I'll definitely caught to it. I was one of the doubters in you guys getting and turning around the flows as quickly as you did. So no question there, just tip of the cap. Peter Orszag: Thank you for that, much appreciated. Brennan Hawken: You're welcome. I'm impressed with how well it's gone. And you still have leadership inbound. So actually, I'll turn it into a question. I know we've got new leadership coming in December. When do you think it's realistic for the analyst and investor community to hear Chris' plans for the business? I know he's not started yet, but I also, I'm sure about executive of that caliber I doubt he didn't start hatching plans, when going through the whole hiring process and interviewing process. So how long do you think it will be before we'll get an idea or at least a framework of what he's thinking? Peter Orszag: I think it will be relatively fast. We do want him to find his way around the hallways and what have you. But to your point, he's a very experienced leader in the space, so comes into this with that advantage. And I think has a very good sense of our business and the opportunities for it. So to be specific, let's say, January, maybe or at least January or February, when we want to get past our fourth quarter results, but sometime in that time frame, it's not going to be 6 months. Brennan Hawken: Right. Okay. We'll call it at some point in the first quarter. Peter Orszag: Okay, that's great. We're happy to set up the appropriate kinds of discussions. Brennan Hawken: Perfect. Okay. And then thinking about Advisory, right? So you've done a lot of changes. You've spoken to bringing up the productivity number and the productivity numbers that improved really quite well under the new strategic direction. And so all that's really encouraging. I'm guessing this might have changed how we think about the mix within Advisory. So can you give us maybe like a high-level sense of the major buckets within Advisory. And if you want to talk about it on like an LTM basis or like how it's been trending recently versus maybe historical levels, like how does it break down in between like M&A, PCA, like there is a Private Capital Advisory business, your Restructuring business, the major buckets that you would break it into. How does that break down versus the history? And has that changed a lot? Peter Orszag: Yes. And we -- I'd note a couple differences relative to history, while we're doing this. 1 is M&A versus non-M&A. Over the past year or so, it's been kind of 60-40 M&A, non-M&A, in this quarter. And I think this is a precursor of things to come. The mix is actually closer to 50-50, not quite M&A, non-M&A, as we've seen increasing growth in some of the other Advisory Services. And the second piece of this is the mix between public company and private capital, where we are also trending towards a much more balanced mix than was the case historically for Lazard. This quarter was a little bit off from that. We had a little bit more tilt towards public companies, but that's just because quarters bounce around a bit. So bottom line is, I think you should expect a significant amount of growth, not only in the M&A part of our business, but as we built out our Fundraising business, Restructuring and Liability management, those are trending more towards approaching half of the business. And I think that's a reasonable medium-term objective, while maintaining our strength in the core M&A product across the globe. Operator: Our next question will come from Brendan O'Brien with Wolfe Research. Brendan O'Brien: I guess just following up on one of your remarks you just made, Peter, on the Restructuring business. Concerns on the credit outlook you've been building in recent weeks following comments made by one of the big banks on 2 of the recent defaults, however at the same time, the Fed as well as other central banks have begun to lower rates, which should help to alleviate the stresses put on corporate balance sheets. So it would be great to get your perspective around whether your Restructuring business is seeing any signs of building stress at this juncture? And how you're thinking about the outlook for the business given these puts and takes? Peter Orszag: Sure. Let me make a few comments on this, just unpack it a little bit. First, we do not view the recent examples of bankruptcies that have gotten a lot of press attention as a canary in the coal mine for broader problems in Private Credit. We are advising on one of those situations now, and so I'll be careful about going into too much detail, but I think that's the broad conclusion. There are -- it's clear Private credit has grown very rapidly. It would make a lot of sense and one should expect that at some point, there will be wobbles in that market even as it remains a more permanent part of the financing environment. I just don't think that these recent cases are a symbol or a signal of that wobble at this point. So that's the first point. Second point is, there has been a quite notable change that should affect the timing of Restructuring and Liability Management or the correlation of the covariance between Restructuring and Liability Management and other Advisory Services, especially M&A. Historically, as you know, it was pretty much always the case that when Restructuring and Liability Management was booming, M&A was weaker and vice versa. What changed over the past decade or even 2 decades is a massive increase in the dispersion across firms and their performance. So if you as one example, if you take return on invested capital as a metric of firm performance and look at the 90th or 95th percentile of firms versus the 50 or 15th or the 25th, you just see this explosion that looks like when those income inequality charts, a lot of growth at the top kind of stagnant in the middle and then declines at the bottom. And that wider dispersion I think, needs to feed into thinking about the cycle because as corporate performance becomes more varied you can have the coexistence of a very strong incentive for M&A, but also a lot of Restructuring and Liability Management activity occurring. And the reason for that is pretty simple, which is, as actually research out of Stanford shows, one of the motivations for M&A is that the top-performing firms believe they can buy the lower-performing firms and improve their internal operations and productivity through better management, basically. And as the degree of dispersion goes up, that incentive gets stronger. So that's one of the vectors for M&A activity. But at the same time, as you have more firms down at the bottom that are struggling, you've got ongoing Restructuring and Liability Management. So we just think that this is a -- there's a change in the environment, where both of these things could increasingly occur or could coexist to a degree that may not have been the case historically. Finally, I'd say one area, where I probably vary from the conventional wisdom somewhat is I still think the markets are being -- just coming back to your point about rates. I think the markets are being a bit too optimistic about the probability of more than one additional rate cut from the Federal Reserve over the next couple of months, the next few months. We can talk about why that is, in my opinion. But the consequence, if I were right, of rates remaining a bit higher, at least at the short end of the curve would be probably more impactful or have more impact on the Restructuring and Liability Management world than on M&A. Rates are one input into M&A, but I think a kind of secondary tertiary one, they have a bit more effect on the Restructuring and Liability Management side of the equation. Brendan O'Brien: That's a really helpful response. Peter. I mean for my follow-up, I just want to touch on Europe a bit. The expectation last quarter was that the pickup in M&A activity would be largely driven by the U.S., which the data suggests has largely played out that way. However, at the same time, it does seem like trends in Europe has been quite strong as well. So I was just hoping you could unpack what you're seeing in Europe relative to the U.S., if there's any notable divergences, and how you think those 2 fee pools will track relative to each other over the near to intermediate term? Peter Orszag: Yes. Look, for the quarter, we saw a bit more of a tilt towards Europe in the revenue mix this quarter. These will bounce around a bit for us. One of the benefits of having a really strong franchise, both in the United States and Europe is that we can kind of surf to, wherever the activity is the hottest, if you will. With regard to Europe specifically, I think the most important thing to realize is people often conflate the macro with -- I don't want to call it the micro, but I'll call it the micro. There are lots of phenomenal European companies. And even against the backdrop of a bit more challenging macroeconomic situation, which in turn reflects political polarization in a lot of countries that we could talk about, there's a lot of interest among European companies to do something and a lot of strength in the corporate sector. And as an example, there's been a lot of attention paid to the political turmoil in France. Most CAP 40 companies only have a very small share of their activity inside of France. And so the question is, how can you still have such ongoing activity out of the French market even while there's the backdrop of political drama, and I think the short answer is that many French companies are global, and they are affected by what's happening in France, but it's not the only thing affecting their outlook. Final thing I'll say is for the M&A cycle as a whole, the next stage of this developing is the return of private equity in M&A, in particular. And so that applies to Europe also. I think the question is at what point and we think this will increasingly play out in 2026, will demand from LPs for liquidity, not be fully satisfied only by secondary/continuation funds, but require M&A by the Private Equity houses. Our sense is that, that's going to be increasingly relevant in 2026. And our expanded connectivity to those sources of Private Capital will -- the investments that we have been making in our coverage efforts will increasingly pay off therefore in 2026. Operator: Our next question will come from Ryan Kenny with Morgan Stanley. Ryan Kenny: Want to follow-up on the earlier comment that the U.S. government shutdown could impact some deals. Could you impact which pieces of Advisory are impacted? And how quickly after the shutdown is lifted, can these deals move forward? Peter Orszag: Sure. Look, many deals require either some combination of SEC approval or Department of Justice and FTC approval. So anything that requires those approvals or other agencies that don't fall into the kind of essential part of the government component -- could be affected by timing. We think that any backlog that builds up from that will be cleared relatively quickly, matters of weeks, not months after the government fully reopened. And I would also note that if the government shutdown were to continue for a significant period of time, the administration always has the ability to alter its definition of what's essential and what's not. And I would imagine that if something were to start to affect the macro economy in a quite material way, for example, not clearing important transactions, they may want to reexplore that boundary. So in past government shutdowns, we haven't really seen a very substantial effect because of the kind of catch-up being quite quick, and that's what we would anticipate this time too. Ryan Kenny: And then separately on non-comp, different topic. Any color how we should think about the trajectory here? You mentioned your ambitions to be a leader in AI. Is there an upfront investments been needed to get there? Peter Orszag: The upfront investments in AI are, I think, modest relative to the scale of other expenditures and the returns are so high that I don't think you should be focused on the upfront investments as a material mover of the non-comp component, but more broadly. Mary Ann, if you want to come in on non-comp trajectories. Mary Betsch: Sure. So. I would just maintain the guidance from last quarter, which is we're still expecting a high single-digit increase in dollars year-over-year, high single-digit percentage year-over-year, but in the dollars, not the ratio. And that's driven by the same factors we've been talking about. So continued investments in technology, ongoing increases in business development, some FX headwinds and then asset servicing fees, which are higher as our AUM has grown. So those are the drivers of the increase there. Operator: Our next question will come from James Yaro with Goldman Sachs. James Yaro: Maybe just could you help us think a little bit in more detail on the secondary's outlook from here? We've seen a very strong CAGR in this business over the past 3 to 4 years. Is anything slowing down there perhaps this year and more recently? Peter Orszag: No. I mean that's a pretty simple answer. No. The trends there are -- the tailwinds are very strong, and we see this continuing. I think some people have incorrectly assumed that as M&A and the IPO market reopens that the secondaries business will be negatively affected. We don't really see it that way. We see the kind of artificial priming of the pump from other exit strategies being kind of temporarily harder to do -- as only doing that priming the pump for this asset class, if you will. And I think we expect and most market participants expect that this will be a permanent part of the environment going forward. And when you look at the penetration rate of this products or this vector, among private equity funds is still relatively modest. So there's tons of room to grow, and that's what we're experiencing in real time in terms of client engagement. So we don't see any deceleration at least in our business and don't expect it, if anything, the opposite. James Yaro: Okay. Great. You were very clear about where you expect inflows and outflows to come from in Asset Management. Perhaps you could just comment on the fee rates on these outflows and inflows. And I guess, just more broadly, how we should think about your fee rate in Asset Management trending going forward? Peter Orszag: Well, as you will have seen, there was a small increase in the average fee rate in the quarter. I think that's because -- well, mechanically, because the things that are flowing in have higher fees than the things that are flowing out. And going forward, we don't anticipate any material change one way or another in the average fee rate. Obviously, the specifics will depend a little bit on exactly, where the inflows come from among those products and strategies that I was describing as being where we're experiencing the most growth. But I think a reasonable expectation is roughly flat, at least for the near term. Operator: This concludes the Q&A portion of today's call, and it also concludes Lazard's third quarter and first 9 months 2025 earnings conference call. You may now disconnect.