Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. This call is being recorded. Your line will be muted for the duration of the call. We will now go live to the presentation. The presentation is available on JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s website. Please refer to the disclaimer in the back concerning forward-looking statements. Please standby. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, and Chief Financial Officer, Jeremy Barnum. Mr. Barnum, please go ahead.

Thank you very much, and good morning, everyone. This quarter, the firm reported net income of $15 billion, EPS of $5.24 on revenue of $45.7 billion, with an ROGCE of 21%. These results included an income tax benefit of $774 million, which we describe in more detail in the earnings press release. On the next page, we have some more detail. The firm reported revenue of $45.7 billion, down $5.3 billion or 10% year on year. And IIX Markets was down $185 million or 1%, driven by the impact of lower rates and deposit margin compression, higher revolving balances in the card, as well as the impact of securities activity including from prior quarters. And IRX markets was down $6.3 billion or 31%, and excluding the net gain related to Visa shares, and net investment securities losses in the prior year, was up $1 billion or 8% driven by higher asset management fees, higher auto lease income, higher investment banking fees, and higher payment fees. And markets revenue was up $1.1 billion or 15%. Expenses of $23.8 billion were up $66 million and excluding last year's Visa stock contribution from the Farnes Foundation, was up $1.1 billion or 5% primarily driven by compensation, higher brokerage and distribution fees, as well as higher auto lease depreciation. And credit costs were $2.8 billion with net charge-offs $2.4 billion and a net reserve build of $439 million. The build was driven by new lending activity largely offset by a decrease in the probabilities that we attached to the adverse scenarios and the allowance estimation. Onto the balance sheet on page three. We ended the quarter with a CET1 ratio of 15%, down 40 basis points versus the prior quarter. As net income was more than offset by capital distributions and higher RWA. This quarter's higher RWA is primarily driven by an increase in wholesale lending across both CIB markets and banking, an increase in other markets activity as well as an increase in card loans. As you know, we completed CCR a couple weeks ago. With the current rules, our indicative SCB is scored at 2.5% and goes into effect 4/3/25. Our new SCB also reflects the board's intention to increase the dividend to $1.50 per share in the third quarter. Now let's go to our businesses starting with CCB. CCB reported net income of $5.2 billion on revenue of $18.8 billion was up 6% year on year. In banking and wealth management, revenue was up 3% largely driven by growth in wealth management revenue with deposit NII relatively flat. Average deposits were down 1% year on year and flat sequentially. Fund investment assets were up 14% year on year, driven by market performance and continued healthy flows into managed products. In home lending, revenue was down 5% year on year, predominantly driven by lower NII. Turning to card services and auto, revenue was up 15% year on year, predominantly driven by card NII and higher revolving balances, as well as higher operating lease income and auto. Card outstandings were up 9% due to strong account acquisition. And auto originations were up 5% driven by higher lease volume. Expenses of $9.9 billion were up 5% year on year largely driven by growth in technology and auto lease depreciation. Product costs were $2.1 billion reflecting net charge-offs of $2.1 billion, relatively flat year on year in line with expectations. Next, the commercial and investment bank. CIB reported net income of $6.7 billion on revenue of $19.5 billion which was up 9% year on year. IV fees were up 7% year on year continuing to rank number one with wallet share of 8.9%. Advisory fees were up 8%, benefiting from increased sponsor activity. Underwriting fees were up 12%, primarily driven by a few large deals. In equity underwriting, fees were down 6% year on year. Our pipeline remains robust and the outlook along with the market is notably more upbeat. Payments revenue was up 3% year on year, excluding equity investments, driven by higher deposit balances and fee growth compression. Funding revenue was down 6% year on year reflecting higher losses on hedges. Moving to markets, total revenue was up 15% year on year. Fixed income was up 14% with improved performance in overseas and emerging markets, rates commodities. This was partially offset by fewer opportunities in securitized products and fixed income financing. Equities was up 15%, continuing to see strong performance across products, most notably in derivatives. Security services revenue was up 12% year on year, driven by higher deposit balances and fee growth. Expenses of $9.6 billion were up 5% year on year driven by higher compensation, workers, and technology expense, partially offset by lower legal expense. Average banking and payments loans were down 2% year on year and up 2% quarter on quarter with sequential growth primarily driven by new loans with larger corporates. Average client deposits were up 16% year on year and up 5% sequentially, reflecting increased activity across payments and security services. Finally, we product costs were $696 million driven by builds in our C and I portfolio, including new lending activity downgrades to a handful of names, partially offset by the scenario probability adjustment I mentioned up front. Turning to asset and wealth management to complete our lines of business, AWM reported net income of $1.5 billion with a pre-tax margin of 34%. Revenue of $5.8 billion was up 10% year on year, driven by growth in management fees on strong net inflows and higher average market levels, as well as higher brokerage activity and higher deposit balances. Expenses of $3.7 billion were up 5% year on year, driven by higher compensation including revenue related compensation, and continued growth in our private banking and advisory teams as well as higher distribution fees. Long-term net inflows were $31 billion for the quarter, led by fixed income and equities. In liquidity, we saw net inflows of $5 billion AUM of $4.3 trillion was up 18% year on year and client assets of $6.4 trillion were up 19% year on year driven by continued net inflows and higher market levels. Finally, loans were up 7% year on year and 3% quarter on quarter, deposits were up 9% year on year and 2% sequentially. Turning to corporate. The firm reported net income of $1.7 billion and includes the tax item I mentioned upfront. Revenue was $1.5 billion for the quarter. NII was $1.5 billion down $875 million year on year, and IR was a net gain of $49 million up $148 million year on year, excluding the prior year's Fiserv related gain. Expenses of $547 million were down $32 million year on year, excluding the foundation contributions from the prior year that I mentioned. To finish up, I'll touch on the outlook. You'll recall that at Investor Day, I made a couple of comments previewing the potential evolution of the outlook. So now let me formalize that and give you updated guidance. First, we now expect NII ex markets to be approximately $92 billion with the increase driven by changes in the forward curve and strong deposit growth in payments, security services, as well as balance growth in card. Portal NII guidance is now about $95.5 billion implying $3.5 billion of markets NII. Second, on adjusted expense, we now expect it to be about $95.5 billion primarily driven by the impact of the weaker dollar, which is largely bottom line neutral. And finally, credit we continue to expect the card net charge-off rate to be approximately 3.6%. So reflecting on the quarter, while the environment remains extremely dynamic, in many ways navigating uncertainty is the norm for both us and our clients. And we're now happy to take your questions, so let's open the line for Q&A.

Our first question will come from Christopher McGratty with QBW. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks so much. Relative to three months ago, there's a lot of optimism on financial deregulation and really going to break in the bank's favor. I'm interested if you agree, number one, with this optimism and anything specifically you could point to. And secondarily, on capital, I'm interested in what's on or off the table in terms of uses of capital, what do you need to see from the macro regulatory, and how should we be thinking about the timing? Thank you.

Let me take the second part of that first. So, you know, we have our centered capital hierarchy. That we recite a lot in. I don't want to bore you by reciting it again. But I think it's important because it does serve as a guide in this context. Right? So, know, we deploy our capital against organic and inorganic growth. And we ensure a sustainable dividend. With what's left, we do buybacks. And so we've talked about how excess capital's earnings in store. You saw this quarter that we actually had some financial resource usage that came through and actually meant that, despite keeping the buybacks relatively constant, and having organic capital generation be relatively constant, CET1 ratio dropped a little bit as a function of increased usage. Organically. Showing up in our WA expansion. So, know, we're doing what we want to do, but, clearly, it is a big amount of excess, and that does mean that everything is on the table as it always is. And that includes potentially inorganic things. Now, obviously, you know, that needs to be done carefully. I think you know, acquisitions have a high bar both financially strategically, and importantly, in some cases, culturally. We also need to think carefully about, you know, things that work outside the regulated perimeter might not work inside the regulated perimeter as well. We have learned some lessons. We don't want to overlearn those lessons. But, you know, in the end, you know, sometimes we lean in a little more, sometimes we lean in a little less. But we wouldn't be doing our jobs if we weren't thinking about it. I don't particularly think, other than fundamentally whether things are permissible or not, that the regulatory environment right now particularly shapes our thinking on that front. Could you say a broader point on regulations? You know, I think it is very important that the regulators step back and look at the big picture now. It's not just one thing. So none of these happened yet. I think they should be looking at all these things. But if you look at SOR, GCP, CCAR, Basel III, FSRT, the overlap, the duplication. I actually believe that you can make the system simpler, cheaper, more effective, more transparent, and safer. And the things like Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic did not need to happen if you just modify some things and you create more liquidity, more loans, a safer system. And that's really what they should be looking at. Not just SLR. You know? And so I'm hoping that over time they do that. And the second area that I think is even maybe more important, is they should answer the question, what do they actually want in our public markets versus our private markets, etcetera? We've gone from eight thousand public companies for about, like, twenty five years ago to four thousand today. That's that's happened overseas. Public markets overseas have gotten smaller and smaller. Obviously, I'm not against private credit. Private credit's growing. And how do you really want to structure this? And why is it happening? Is that a good thing for America? And so I just find it's time that they take a step back. There's been, you know, I hear sometimes from some pundits that there's been a relaxing of rules and regulations. Absolutely not. There's been nothing but increasing them for the better part of fifteen years. They should take a deep breath step back, look at the system and answer the question, how can we make it better and stronger for the economy for all involved? Yeah. And maybe you sort of gone a bit long here, but just to spend and go into a little bit of detail there. I I will note that, you know, the Vice Chairman gave a speech on her vision having come into the seat for, you know, ongoing work regulation. And I think it's a speech that's pretty comprehensive and lays out some of what Jamie is saying in terms of, like, the to do list. I think at the margin, we do understand the desire to sort of knock some things off the to do list that have been on it for a long time and clearly need to be addressed like SLR. But, you know, at the same time that happens, the holistic review done properly across not only capital but also liquidity resolution, etcetera. Is clearly quite important. More narrowly in the near term, I think we continue to feel very strongly that of all the things that are out there, one of the worst is GSEV. In the sense of both the original gold plating sort of deep conceptual flaws in the framework itself, and the failure to recalibrate it for growth since it was put into effect. I think one of the things that's maybe a little bit under discussed there is the extent to which it specifically creates strong disincentives for American banks to be strong and globally competitive. And that seems to me the exact opposite of what we want. So that's really one of the ones that that needs to get attacked pretty aggressively, I would say.

Appreciate all the color. If I could ask on the follow-up, the inorganic comments. I'm interested in capital allocation between your businesses, where you think if that were to present an opportunity, which businesses would most likely be the use of that capital? Thanks.

I mean, we've talked about that a little bit over time. Obviously, we're not on a methanol constrained right now. So I mean, in addition to the fact that capital isn't the only financial resource that we need to allocate, I would say the larger point is that any good franchise business that makes sense from a risk perspective and clears the cost of equity is gonna get done. You know, within reason subject to obvious caveats. So Inorganic, it's a good discipline to always be looking. I wouldn't have high expectations that will be how I use a lot of capital. And I think it's a very big plus when we grow organically in every business we're in without having to stretch.

Thank you. Next, we will go to the line of Betsy Graseck from Morgan Stanley. You may proceed.

Hi. Good morning. So two questions. First on the RWA utilization via organic as you described. I wanted to understand in wholesale lending where you highlighted, you know, the CIB was a driver of much of this. Could you speak to the drivers of those drivers? In other words, is it private credit? Is it M and A financing? Is it inventory? What are you seeing in the market here that you're delivering on that's raising that lending profile?

It's all of the above. That's we are the Switzerland financing. We do everything, and you know, we saw a lot of activity come in late in the quarter.

Okay. Oh, great. Alright. Thank you. And then Jamie, you've there's been a lot of discussion around stablecoin. How Stablecoin is going to be impacting banks. And I believe you have an opinion on this. Would love to hear if you could highlight how JPM is thinking about utilizing, leveraging, competing with Stablecoin and how the JPM deposit token feeds into all of this as well. Thank you.

So deposit token is effectively the same. You're moving money by token. You could pay interest. JPMorgan deposit and Stablecoins, we're going to be involved in both JPMorgan deposit coin and Stablecoins to understand and to be good at it.

We don't know exactly those. I think they're real, but I don't know why you'd want a stablecoin as opposed to just the payment. And but I do think you have fintech. You know, these guys are very smart. They're trying to figure out a way to, you know, create bank accounts and get the payment systems and reward programs and we have to be cognizant of that. The way to be cognizant is to be involved. So we're we're gonna be in it and learning a lot and playing.

Okay. Super. And then separately on the topic of open banking, I think that's on hold right now with the CFPB. On hold right now. But just wanted to understand, does this hold period give you an opportunity to change how your pricing for your open banking and fintech relationships here.

So this is very important. So if we get pricing per second, we are in favor of the cut of the customer. So we think the customer has the right to if they wanna share their information, we ask people to do is what do they do they actually know it's being shared? What is actually being shared? Should be everything. It should be what their customer wants. It should have a time limit because some of these things went on for years. It should not be remarked or resold to third parties. And so we're kind of in favor of that done properly. And then the payment is just know, cost a lot of money instead of the APIs and stuff like that to run the system protection. So that we just think it should be done and done right. And that's the main part. It's not like you can't do it. The last thing is, is a liability shift. I mean, I don't think JPMorgan should be responsible if you've given your bank passcode to third parties market and do a whole bunch of stuff with it, and then you get scammed or fraud through them. They should be responsible. And we want real clarity about that. And if you see today, you know, a lot of these scams and frauds, you know, run through third party social media and stuff like that. There should be a little more responsibility on their part so we could all do a better job for the customer. That's why.

Excellent. Okay. Thank you so much for that.

Thanks.

Thank you. Next, we will go to the line of Steven Alexopoulos from TD Cowen. You may proceed.

Hey, good morning, everyone. I wanted to start, Jeremy, going back to your comments on inorganic things being on the table, terms of use of excess capital. So when I look at the company, you're the largest US bank by assets. You're also the largest in terms of the data you see every day. And you may or may not have seen that Apple is looking at possibly there's chatter getting in today. I gave more by looking at a company such as a Perplexity. I'm just thinking out loud here. Would it make sense for JPMorgan to consider acquiring an LLM, right, the last two quarters of buybacks or about the last valuation round for Perplexity? Right? I'm thinking of you guys, you could become the LLM for the financial services industry. What are your thoughts on this?

We use LLMs; we're gonna be agnostic about that too. There's no reason for us to own one. At least we can't figure out why that would make sense.

Yeah. And I wouldn't say, well, we will use it, and we will obviously be an important in using our data to help our customers. Yeah. And on the question of inorganic deployment, I would sort of blend my comments with Jamie's. In the end, I'm just asserting that of course we need to look at inorganic opportunities. And, of course, that's a question that comes up given our core nine SaaS capital position. But Jamie said clearly that he doesn't think that's particularly likely or some of the reasons that you emphasize it's not easy to imagine a deal that would actually make sense.

We do a lot of small ones, by the way, which you've seen.

Yeah. Okay. And then going back Jamie, to your answer to Betsy's question on the tokenized deposit. I get it how that makes sense in terms of the customers that are inside your walled garden, but it doesn't help that much in terms of dealing with customers outside of your garden. What's holding up you guys and the other banks getting together to issue something joint, you know, similar somewhat to what you've done with Zelle? Prevent these stablecoin companies like Circle from coming in, offering a more convenient solution to your customers. That's a great question. I believe that remains a question. Without an answer.

Well, as you can go, raising a very important point about interoperability of Stablecoins and deposits and movement of money and what problem you're trying to solve. But you're raising a great points. You can assume we're thinking about all that.

Fair enough. Thanks for taking my questions.

Thank you. Next, we will go to the line of Ebrahim Poonawala from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. You may proceed.

Good morning. It almost sounds like a fintech and AI call. But maybe just switching gears, I think, Jamie, your comments in the press release give us a sense like when we think about middle market businesses in the U. S. What's the state of play there when we think about interest rates? Tariffs, consumer spending slowing, should we be concerned in terms of credit quality looking out six, nine, twelve months? Just what's your take based on all the data that we all look at?

You can ask about the data, but very importantly, we love the middle market business. You know, it drives a lot of business. We've built, I think, five hundred bankers in the innovation economy, which is kind of new to what Silicon Valley Bank used to do and things like that. We still have a huge addressable market in the middle market business. We provide not just lending, that can be leveraged lending, direct lending, but payment services, custody services, asset management services, and FX services. So we're gonna grow that business regardless of how we predict the environment is gonna be in the next six to nine months.

Got it. And I guess just as a follow on, go ahead, Jeremy.

No. Go ahead. Ask your follow-up.

You know, and I was just wondering in terms of your sense of just the state of play, the health of the balance sheets of these customers, and also if you can expand that into the consumer any areas of stress from a credit quality perspective that you are beginning to get more concerned today versus three or six months ago?

Yeah. Right. Okay. Because that's what I was gonna try to clarify. This wasn't sure if you were doing consumer wholesale or both. So let’s do consumer quickly. I think we talk about this every quarter. It's obviously a very important question. Look at it very closely. It obviously matters a lot for us as a company. But we continue to struggle to see signs of weakness. We just, you know, the consumer basically seems to be fine. Now, you know, a few things are true. Like, if you look at indicators of stress, surprisingly, you see a little bit more stress in the lower-income bands than you see in the higher-income bands. But that's always true. That's pretty much definitionally true. And nothing there is outlined with our expectations. Our delinquency rates are also in line with expectations. You saw that we kept net charge-off guidance unchanged. So all of that looks kinda fine. And, you know, to be honest, as we've said before, fundamentally, while there are nuances around the edges, credit is primarily about the labor market. And in a world with a 4.1% unemployment rate, it’s just gonna be hard, especially in our portfolio, to see a lot of risk. Now, it is true that if you look at not our data, but, you know, the government's data, I think I was looking at this the other day, like, the first half real consumer spending of this year versus the second half of last year is down. Now it's still positive. It's still growing, but it's down. So it's kinda consistent with the sort of soft landing narrative, which is also consistent with the sort of GDP outlook that our economists are publishing. Our own data looked sort of in nominal terms on a cohort basis actually shows spending up a little bit over the same period. So it's kind of the same narrative of things being fine with different signals pointing in slightly different directions, but nothing particularly concerning.

That was helpful. And would you say the same about commercial?

I mean, basically, yes. You know, you see some idiosyncratic things here and there. And on the point of tariffs, I guess, obviously, you recall the slide that we did on Investor Day, kind of highlighting that different sectors are going to have different experiences as a function of their margins, their sense of input cost, their amount of pricing power, their amount of leverage, and where the rules actually land. But, you know, people are obviously getting some time to adjust. And we're watching it very closely. So we'll see.

That's all. Thank you.

Thanks.

Thank you. Our next question comes from John McDonald with Truist Securities. Line is open.

Jeremy, quick follow-up on the consumer credit, broader comments taken there. But in terms of the NPAs, the non accruals in consumers seem to have a bit of a jump. Is there something technical there or maybe just talk to that?

Yeah. Thanks for that, John. I'm glad to get a chance to clarify this. There is something technical which has to do with customers in the home lending customers in the LA area using our forbearance, you know, availability as a result of the wildfires. So that is resulting in an uptick in the non-performing. But when you think about land value and the insurance there, the actual loss expectation is de minimis, I would say. So we always do that for customers when they have a real difficult time. So that's what's driving that one.

Okay. Great. And wanted to ask for some more color on retail deposits. Maybe in the context of Mary Anne's presentation from Investor Day, you remind us of what's given you incremental confidence in seeing some improvement in deposit margin kind of producing that mid to upper single-digit deposit growth that Mary Anne talked about.

Yeah. Sure. So think what you're referring to is a slide where Marian talked about kind of the potential 6% consumer deposit growth, you know, next year. And, you know, that's a nice number. And as you've written, you know, that would produce some nice revenue consequences, all else being equal. The way I think about that number is to kind of build it up step by step. So you start with, you know, in general, the consumer deposit base in the system has grown probably slightly above normal GDP. A thing that's been true for us recently is that as a result of our market position and our pricing choices, we've probably lost a little bit of share during the rate-hiking cycle sort of in isolation from yield-seeking flows. The yield-seeking flows having abated a little bit that relative headwind is kind of behind us or increasingly behind us, and you've got some core growth reasserting itself. You saw us call out the growth in net new accounts and consumer checking this quarter, and that's one of the key drivers. And then as you know well, you look at the franchise, we kind of have, number one, ongoing expansion. Number two, seasoning of the old expansion. And number three, deepening in the core markets. When you put all that together and you look at sort of the history of the growth, macro environment, etcetera. How you get to that type of 6% number. Now, obviously, things could change quite dramatically produce a different number among other things. Recall that Mary Anne's slide also talked about a stress scenario with lower rates, which perhaps somewhat unintuitively would produce actually higher growth as a result of even less yield you can flow and a higher consumer savings rate. But the flip side of that is also true, which is an unexpectedly high-rate environment would probably lead to lower balance growth all else equal. Consumer. So we like to say, you know, those are all else being equal type numbers, but all else is never equal.

Got it. Great. Thank you.

Thanks a lot, John.

Thank you. Next, we will go the line of Mike Mayo with Wells Fargo.

Hey, Jeremy. Can you talk about why commercial loan growth was much stronger in the second quarter? And any strength by geography? And Jamie, can you address what regulators could do to potentially have banks lend more in the future consistent with what the treasury secretary said is fiscal is his goal. Thanks.

Yeah. Thanks, Mike. So on loan growth, as you know, useful to sort of break this down between what I would think of as, like, relationship lending, that kind of drives the whole franchise, and then we sometimes look at maybe as an indicator of the health of the corporate sector, in some sense, and people like to look at it as a read across for the smaller banks, etcetera. That part of the franchise remains fine, but sort of muted as you know, customers have access to capital markets and repurchase utilization is sort of flattish in general. But as I noted previously, and as you see coming through the IPP performance, there was just quite a bit of deal activity in the second half of the quarter, a lot of which is well known and public. And some of that is on our balance sheet, and we're very happy to have it there. And just to answer your question, Mike, you know, some of the I'm gonna go and give you some things that you can actually do. So think you should do them and reduce risk in the system. I'm only gonna talk about how they increase lending for second. So g SIFI inhibits if you look at it, both a little bit of lending and a little bit of market making. LCR inhibits both because it's a very rigid way of looking at a bank balance sheet. It doesn't really give you credit for potential access to window and things like that. CCAR, in some cases, inhibit people; we talk about CCAR-ness. But, you know, there's a lot of CCAR-ness from small business loans and stuff like that where people kind of hold that back a little bit because it creates too much volatility. And CCAR Capital the FSRT, the fundamental book. So all the when you look at all these things, you could I think you could create more lending, more liquidity, more flexibility, and reduce the risk in the system. And also, just CET, just capital usage, etcetera. So, and they're reducing the risk of the system. I think also make it friendlier for community banks. You know, which we do want to do. And so if you look at, like, total loans to deposits, they used to be a hundred percent. They're now seventy percent. Okay? And that's a huge difference. It took place over, you know, ten or fifteen years, and know, can you get that back to eighty-five percent and have the banking system be just safe and sound? Absolutely.

You didn't mention the cost to make a loan. Is there a potential for streamlining there?

Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And I put securitizations in that category. Okay. We need a more active securitization market and all these things reduce the actual cost of making loan. I pointed out in the past that mortgages probably cost thirty or forty or fifty basis points more because of excessive securitization, origination, and servicing requirements. Those could be changed and would dramatically help mortgages, particularly for low-income individuals. And we've just have failed to do it for ten years. It wouldn't create any additional risk. And I could show you data that shows that.

And and last one, when you say inorganic growth, you buy a private credit firm? Is that something you can at least consider?

I would say it's not high on my list because we can do it ourselves. And, you know, buying people and compensation plans, and, you know, I also think, you know, you may have seen peak private credit a little bit. I don't know that. But, you know, we're we already do it. So I, you know, if it was the right people, the right price, the right shoe, we should look at it. I think, Mike, you should always be open-minded when people come to you with something you hadn't thought about before. You just get smarter by looking at these things.

Actually, I can't believe what I'm calling.

What? Peak peak peak private credit. I can't leave on those three words. What do you mean by peak private credit?

Oh, I've mentioned that credit spreads are very low.

It's grown dramatically over time. And, you know, you have to pay up a lot for it. You know, I'm not saying it's not gonna grow some more, but I've just, just, I would have a slight reluctance depending on who it was. But you might, now your bankers might come to us with something tomorrow that we just hadn't thought about that is a complete natural fit for us. Natural fit being product, people, and culture.

Sorry. Jeremy?

No. I was literally gonna say what Jamie just said. So we're good.

Alright. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we will go to the line of Erika Najarian with UBS. You may proceed.

Hey, good morning. Jamie and Jeremy, you've talked about simplifying the regulatory construct. And it seems like, you know, based on the progress so far, you know, we'll mostly get there, particularly, you know, with Basel three Endgame and G SIB, which impacts you so much. And to that end, if we do get a more simplified regulatory construct that addresses both the capital and liquidity constraints, does that move up JPMorgan's natural ROTC? You know, you talk seventeen percent through the cycle a lot. You know, obviously, you know, perhaps we would optimize the denominator why wouldn't that be additive to your natural ROTC or does this get passed back on to, you know, your clients in terms of pricing?

In a competitive world, it is a rational thing that and when it applies to all the competitors, that everyone's just gonna make a lot more money and keep it as opposed to compete in the marketplace. Hope people to have a, you know, good competitive position relative to everybody else. But, no, I don't think you should automatically say it's gonna increase your returns. Remember Jeff Bezos says your margin is my opportunity. That would be a huge opportunity for fintech, private credit, you know, alternative players, etcetera. So you have to be a little careful to think that would happen. I think it's a good thing for the system, though.

Exactly. And as we always say, Erica, right, like, the market's very competitive and the returns are high. And you know this, but I would just refer you to the slide that I delivered in Investor Day about how, you know, in some cases, it makes a, you know, all of a sequel compared to buying back shares at these prices doing healthy, well underwritten, compelling franchise business a fourteen percent return, we're definitely supposed to do that, actually. And if we do a lot of that, it will dilute down the weighted average ROTC of the company in ways that are nonetheless clearly accretive to shareholders.

Jeremy showed you a little bit about business units that earn high returns to low returns. Now they should do the lower term ones because they fit hand in glove with other stuff. If you didn't do, you might lose the other. But there are some businesses out there with very high returns that we just grow we deploy capital by adding bankers or branches or products, not directly by deploying capital. So just think of branches. You know, that that does our private banking or things like that.

Yep. For sure. And I think that's a big discussion point with investors in terms of talking about actually the EPS gains rather than just ROTCE improvement. And the second question I had is, you mentioned and clearly, we saw it in the numbers a late in the quarter pickup in activity levels. And I'm wondering as we think about sentiment and what this means for the second half, is it you know, did activity levels pick up because it felt like we were taking extreme outcomes from tariff policy off the table? You know, is it the the tax bill certainty? I guess I'm just wondering, has some of the issues that prevented activity levels or really stunted it in April and early May have those fully been taken out of your clients thinking as we think about the second half of the year and activity levels continuing from here?

So Jeremy, you might want to, I just answered the question by saying honestly, we don't know. You know? And you've seen how rapidly both pipelines can grow and shrink. And so I’m always a little cautious to guess what that's gonna be. But, you know, if it continues this way, yeah, you have really active buckets.

Yeah. And my version of that, Erica, would be to say that, you know, you talked about certain material risk getting taken completely off the table, and that's clearly not true. Right? The all the tail risks are all still there. Quite prominently, and many cases in the daily news flow. Maybe at the margin, the tails are a little bit less fat right now. I think it's also true that in terms of our what the things that we've said about our investment banking pipeline have been consistently quite cautious in a certain point. When you have the type of outperformance that you have this quarter, starts to make your cautiousness seem less credible. So we wanted to take a hard look at ourselves and say, what do we really think it's like, yeah. The Zendesk is better. But as Jamie says, like, that can change overnight, and there are a lot of risks I do think that extending the tax bill for businesses to know, you know, what their taxes were gonna be is a positive going forward. And that does reduce the risk that the bill didn't get done. Also think when it comes to tariffs, I think the initial liberation date is now there's more, you know, talk. There's more things getting done. A couple have been announced. A couple have been delayed. That reduces that risk a little bit. And hopefully, they'll get done. So there is there's still risk out there, but I am hopeful some of these frameworks are completed soon. At least before August first.

Alright. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, we will go to the line of Jim Mitchell with Seaport Global Securities. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe just on Jeremy, if I look at your ten Q and ten ks rate sensitivity disclosures, it looks like you guys have done a lot to reduce your asset sensitivity to the short end of the curve. So can you talk about what you've been doing to change the positioning of the balance sheet, whether extending duration or hedges, and is there more you can do to decent the balance sheet before rate cuts begin to kick in as, I guess, the markets expect later this year? Thanks.

Yeah. Before you before he goes on, the market expected is always never what happens. Fair enough. Alright. So it's a good question, Jim. But, yeah. As Jamie points out, just remember that, you know, the extent that the market is sufficient, which maybe it's not, but you can’t really hedge ahead of cuts that are already priced in. Right? So that’s what I’m saying out loud. But, I mean, you can decrease volatility, but it's just a question of now or later. But having said that, on the question of decreasing volatility, we did, in fact, add some duration this quarter. You know, with the usual mix of instruments and strategies, but primarily in the front end of the yield curve, which was designed to essentially balance out the tails a little bit so that we were a little bit less exposed to a classic recessionary type scenario with much lower rates. Exchange for accepting a little bit less good outcomes in, like, higher rate scenarios, at least narrowly through the lens of NII. As we've talked about a little bit over time, though, I like the way you framed it in terms of, like, having the capacity. And I think the way to think about it there is this: you know, in general, it's almost impossible to get your asset sensitivity, your actual asset sensitivity down to zero, because you wind up constrained by other things. So, know, we're in the quarter, and we're okay with where we are right now.

Okay. Thanks. And maybe just one more on the regulatory front. I think regulators look at reducing the SLR as a way to encourage banks or open up an avenue to expand your balance sheets into lower risk assets. Do you see that? Is it really just a supply issue or how do you think about the demand supply dynamic and is there really opportunities for you to grow? I would imagine, I guess, with an SLR not being constrained, maybe it's better returns in lower-margin areas. Just your thoughts.

Yeah. It's a good question. You may recall I actually got a version of this question at Investor Day. So I'll more or less repeat my answer here, which is that as we know, fixing SLR has been on the list for a long time. It behaved very much not the way it was designed in the moment of big QE when it became binding and had bad impacts on the system. It's the opposite of what we want with these back stock measures. And so, you know, we don't want regulators to need to make, you know, unusual corrections amid a crisis. It's just not the right way to run the railroad. I think everyone has agreed on that for a long time. And in that context, it's been sort of disappointing that, you know, something as obvious as this has taken as long as this to get fixed. But it's a good sign that it's now out there. And, you know, we certainly support the proposal. There are some nuances that comment had been requested, but at a high level, it's a good proposal. It's the right thing to do. And it's the right thing to do from the perspective of the resilience of the system for the next time we've got that type of expansion and the size of the system that could make it binding in the wrong way for the wrong reasons. But yeah, as you know, and as we've said, we're not really bound by it. I think other actors in the market may be a little bit more bound by it. Are also some nuances about impacts on portfolio activity, which I would expect to be very small versus the impact on low-risk intermediation in the market-making businesses, which maybe where you would hope to see the effect. So it's a good thing. Hopefully, it will help. Obviously, it's pretty fully priced in at this point, so I don't think you're gonna see a big pop one or the other as a function of eventually being finalized because I think everyone's assuming that it will go end up in its current form.

Alright. Thanks for the call.

Thanks.

Thank you. Next, we will go to the line of Ken Utsen from Autonomous. You may proceed.

Thanks. Good morning. Question is, I just wanted to ask you about the recent South fits in strategically with the, you know, with the competitive landscape on card and your and your growth opportunity.

Yeah. Sure. So me dispense with the question of how it's going for. So far, going fine. We're happy. In terms of strategic aspects of this and the competitive landscape, I think the way we think about this is as a normal course refresh of one of our important products. And the way that all of our products get refreshed periodically. Obviously, this is a relatively high-profile product. Many of us have the card. We see the ads everywhere. So, you know, it, it sort of punches above its weight in that respect in terms of visibility. Terms of the competitive landscape, I think, I think that we feel really great about is the dramatic increase in the customer value proposition associated with the card. And in particular, one of the things that we look at is the ratio of the customer value to the annual fee, which is clearly market-leading at this point. So I've got a lot of comments that people they're from friends of my kids and stuff like that that man, you can reuse the car, but they have to keep it for the Guadia Lounge. That's the value added.

On the trading side, just wondering just wondering how much the strong results this quarter the quarter changed a lot from April to June. And I'm just wondering, you know, how much do you think that was environmental? Has it calmed down at all? And also, how much is just your ability to kind of use the balance sheet to boost results also, you know, could that make it more sustainable regardless of what the environment is doing? Thanks a lot.

Good question. I honestly think it's kind of all of the above. Basically. No question that the tone shifted. Obviously, a shift in the investment banking. I think I personally was a little bit surprised by the resilience of the market's revenues in the second half of the quarter because I was sort of expecting a little bit of an offset between the two. It was not surprised. K. There you have it. But, you know, it's not like I thought it would do badly, but sort of did quite well in the volatility in the first half of the quarter, and then it got quiet. But despite that, we still did nicely. And I think the point actually sort of to your question is that, yes, we are seeing opportunities to deploy capital and other resources. And, yeah, maybe at the margin, that does contribute a little bit to durability. You know? We talk we've talked over time about the market's revenues and the dramatic increase obviously, twenty nineteen is a long time ago at this point, and expect those revenues to grow with GDP anyway. But we worried a lot in certain moments about the revenues dropping back to some old run rate, and then we kind of stopped worrying about that. And now it's gone up to new highs, so maybe we should be worried again. But a thing I like to remind myself of to your point is that all the revenues have gone up a lot. The resource usage has also gone up a lot. So we are deploying a lot of capital and other resources in this business, and we're earning good returns on it, but the revenue growth is not coming for free. So it's, you know, it's us running the place, basically.

Thank you, Jeremy.

Thank you. Next, we will go the line of Matt O'Connor with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Good morning from regional banks, you've got some major stock on the line. I don't know if we're gonna be able to hear you. I just wanted to ask about any pressure from commercial and corporate customers to try to offset the tariff impact from regional banks that pointed to deposit pricing pressure on the commercial side and if you're seeing any signs of that or more broadly speaking. Thank you.

I think if I heard the question correctly, you were asked if the tariff pressure would pressure on loans or different? The answer is no. The answer is no. Yeah.

Okay. Thank you. I wish we could say more about it.

No. I mean, no. Yeah. There's always pressure in some of those. I mean, it's a competitive market. Right? There is ongoing our deposits are very, very competitive and there are always pricing conversations as there should be. Hard to know in any given moment what's driving it, but I haven't heard anything to support the tariff-linked narrative.

Thank you. Next, we will go to the line of Glenn Shore with Evercore. Your line is open.

Hi. Thanks. Just two quick follow-ups. On the conversation about the noticeably upbeat robust pipelines, I know we've been here before and markets can give us and take it away, but there is a time value in there, meaning corporates and, more importantly, sponsors need to get stuff done. There is a ton of dry powder. So I'm I'm curious if that if there's a higher level of confidence, meaning if the market doesn't take from us is it really happening this time? We've been, you know, kind of waiting for these pipelines to come through and fuller force for a couple of years now. Does it feel more as long as the markets doesn't take the rug out from under us?

I think the shift rates sponsor owned companies from IPO. Their company is going public. They're in the pipeline. They want to go public, etcetera. Sponsors are still, at least from what I can tell, you know, anecdotally, still reluctant to use the public markets. There may obviously be more of it, but it hasn't been a mountain of stuff coming out.

Yeah. I think that's right. In the IPO space, at least for now. But I have heard some things to support some elements of your narrative plan. The effect of the you know, there is pressure to kinda recycle capital and get things done. And, you know, yeah, sure. After the initial shock of tariff policy changes, everyone kinda went on hold. But as we noted in our comments a few times today, at a certain moment, you just have to move on with life. And it does feel like some of that is happening just because you can't delay forever. I hear you. The follow-up on the capital conversation, obviously impressive to see big returns on even higher capital basis. But there's more to come. And I think Trend is your friend on Dreg. So so the question is, you keep making a lot of money, your capital base keeps rising. You've talked about arresting the growth of CET1 in the past. But I guess my blunt question is, is there any valuation limitation towards that arresting of CET1?

I want to say a couple of things and then I want to clarify and ask what your question was. So first, on arresting the growth, what I actually said, not to nitpick on you, but I said arresting the growth of excess capital, which I agree is reasonable to interpret. Keeping a roughly constant CET1. As it happens, this quarter, you know, you see the CET1 actually dropping about forty basis points, and that was in no small part a function of significant late-quarter growth in RWA usage, which we were frankly, like, very happy to see. In fact. So that's all to the good in some sense. Now the other part of your question you just repeat it. I wanna make sure I understand it.

I'm just curious if there's a valuation limitation to the thinking. Mean meaning as valuation goes up, you're just gonna do you keep buying back stock? Meaning, when we go back to a moment of reducing buybacks and starting to build again if the stock gets even more expensive? Mean, I think that's the question for the boss. But don't know.

I guess we always reserve the right to do whatever we want on buybacks. Basically. We reserve the right. We're not gonna tell you, but, obviously, a stock price. I mean, I don't like buying back the stock at almost three times tangible book. Well, no one's gonna convince me that's a brilliant thing to do. But it is wise to use our balance sheet for customers, which we're doing, and we can may possibly do more. And it is probably wise to not increase the excess capital anymore since we have plenty and it's gonna be going up in. But I look, I'm completely convinced that if you take out of your mindset twelve months, we will use the capital wisely for shareholders. Oh, we do.

Alright. Thank you.

Thanks, Glenn. The best way is organic growth, which I wouldn't rule out to be fine more ways to grow, you know, clients, basically.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Gerard Cassidy with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Hi, Jeremy. Hi, Jamie. I'd like to circle back to the return on tangible common equity topic that you guys have discussed. Obviously, you had a very strong number this quarter, twenty percent when you adjusted for the one-time effect. And you go back to your Investor Day and you pointed out seventeen percent is what, you know, the targeted level is. And if we turn back the clock, and go back to twenty twenty, you had the same seventeen percent goal for the ROTCE, but your CET one ratio back then was guided excuse me, guidance was eleven point five percent to twelve percent. So my question is, has the business for you folks changed so much that now it's just inherently a more profitable business? Or are there some one-time not one-time items, sorry. There are some tailwinds that are artificially, I hate to use that word, but are they inflating the ROTCE which is why, you know, you guys are very cautious about lifting that goal from seventeen percent?

Hey, Ben. Jerry can answer this question. Really be an important point. The value to shareholders is that we cannot just earn seventy percent ROTC but that we can reinvest money at seventy percent ROTC. That's the value. If you're just gonna earn seventy percent, you're a bond. Then you will trade, you know, three times tangible book. But that's it for the rest of your life. And so the goal is to find opportunities to grow and expand your credit, which we are doing. If you look at it, we are doing that with branches and bankers and internationally and, mean, look at the mid-cap business we're doing in Europe is, you know, it's been great. Innovation economy has been great. The we're gaining share in a lot of places. Chase Gold Management, you know, we end up with the private bank, the international private, those payment systems, we're we're investing in all those things to grow our franchises and that's the best way to use your capital. And forget the timetable of that. That is the best way to use it.

Yeah. And, Gerard, I guess on your other question, it's an interesting question. I don't think the answer is really knowable. And I feel like it's kind of all of the above. And let me say what I mean. Like, on the one hand, think if you look at the current market environment, it's hard to imagine a set of conditions that would be any better for us. Right? Rates are at a good level for us. Deal activity is high. Capital markets are very strong. Consumer credit is excellent, wholesale credit is excellent. Wealth management, asset management, mean, you know, essentially, every part of the company is firing. We're essentially firing on all cylinders in some very minor exceptions of certain businesses that are extremely rate sensitive, like home lending, where they're still doing a great job in what is a very tough market. So when you see that, you're like, well, that's not normal. You know? Normally, you would have some pockets doing a little better, some pockets doing a little worse. And that's part of what makes you think that, know, some aspects of this are maybe not sustainable. On the other hand, it's also true that core elements of the strategy are working very well. And we've been investing for a long time very successfully in kind of leaning in even in moments where from the outside, there wasn't that much appetite for us to be investing in all the things that Jamie's talking about. Some of those investments in various ways are paying off. So I hear you. I hear you. You have all of our major bank competitors are back and rolling and expanding. You have the fintech folks who were quite capable and quite smart. You wanna take big chunks of your business. Everything we do is kinda competitive around the world. But the notion that somehow we're not gonna do it of competitors, you know, I it protects JPMorgan Chase, and we don't get complacent, we don't get arrogant, we don't get pure we we keep on realizing we keep on finding that you gotta have to fight for it every day. And so we're quite cautious to just declare victory, like, somehow you know, we're entitled to these returns forever. Also pointed out, you could compound at seventy percent, because I had Jeremy do this number one point, you compounded seventy percent for twenty years, you probably would have a good chunk of the GDP of the United States of America. Forty years maybe or Yeah. I always have to go put new batteries in my age so I'll see when you ask another question.

Alright. Yeah. Jeremy, I'm glad you're still using HP twelve c. That's that's good. Just as a follow-up, Jeremy, you touched on through going through seventy two before you, but it's not true because can we not do that?

Just as a quick follow-up, Jeremy, In the markets comment that you made, you said that there were fewer opportunities than secured ties products and fixed income financing. Can you expand upon that or give us any color? Thank you. Yeah. Sure. I mean, it's just normal to first markets business. Those businesses are doing great, but like, the margin, you know, in the second half of the quarter, stuff was a little quieter relative to emerging markets and the macro space, which was a little bit better. Thank you. Nothing nothing to do, Matt.

Thank you.

Thank you. We have no further question.

Thanks very much. Thank you.

Thank you all for participating in today's conference. You may disconnect at this time and have a great rest of your day.