💰How Are the Investment Banks Doing?💰

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Greenhill & Co. Inc. ($GHL) reported Q3 earnings earlier his week and, well, they weren’t great. The company had $87mm of revenue for the quarter (flat YOY) and $194.3mm in revenue year-to-date. The latter is down 26% on the back of a poor first half. 

Why the poor performance? The company largely blamed “a very low level of activity in European M&A.” It then asked the analyst community to deploy some Pym Particles and take a time travel trip back to rosier times: 2016-2018. The company’s earnings presentation listed (a) fee paying clients and (b) $1mm+ clients for each of those years but, curiously, did not disclose those numbers for 2019.

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Despite the lack of transparency, the firm is nevertheless “[s]till expecting solid full year revenue performance,” particularly with its capital advisory business. Curious how that works. 🤔

As for restructuring, the firm touted its expanded team and noted….


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💰How are the Investment Banks Doing?(Long Chapter 15s?)💰

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On Sunday, we wrote about the stellar earnings reports from Evercore Inc. ($EVR) and Houlihan Lokey ($HLI). Are they outliers?

Apparently…no.

PJT Partners Inc. ($PJT) reported earnings this week and they, too, knocked it out of the park. The firm reported a 28% increase in revenues YOY ($167mm) and a 35% increase in advisory revenue ($133mm). These guys are killing it. Regarding the restructuring team, CEO Paul Taubman said:

Revenues grew significantly in the second quarter compared to the prior year and are ahead of last year’s levels for the six-month period. Our Restructuring business maintained its leadership position, ranking Number One in US and global completed restructurings for the first half of 2019. Our outlook for the full year remains essentially unchanged, notwithstanding near record low interest rates, historically low default rates and extremely benign credit conditions, we expect restructuring revenues for the full year to be flat to only modestly down. Despite this muted macro backdrop, we are working on an increased number of Restructuring mandates, which should serve us well entering 2020.

In addition to pounding his chest, Mr. Taubman provided some market commentary as well — particularly with respect to the notion that all of the “dry powder” in the market will impact M&A and distressed situations and Europe:


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💰How are the Investment Banks Doing?(Long Increasing Fees?)💰

Evercore Inc. ($EVR) reported earnings this week and, well, inflation exists somewhere. The company increased adjusted revenue by 18% YOY to $535.8mm. Net income increased by nearly $18mm. The bank reported a decline in the number and dollar volume of its deals but…BUT…numbers nevertheless improved thanks to a strong move in investment banking advisory fees (up 22% YOY). With 81 earned fees of $1mm or more compared to 85 last year, the company appears to be adding clients and raising fees. Because the bank doesn’t delineate restructuring revenues separate and apart from other advisory services, it’s unclear to what degree restructuring is adding or detracting from performance — from either a deal volume or fee perspective. 

Houlihan Lokey ($HLI) also reported earnings; it notched a 14% revenue increase YOY ($250mm) and a 44% net income increase. Financial restructuring revenues increased 57%! Surprisingly, however, the bank noted that “[r]evenue increased primarily as a result of an increase in the number of closed transactions, partially offset by a reduction in the average transaction fee.” Curious. 


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💰The United States Trustee (Long Perverse Incentives).💰

The Wall Street Journal reports that the UST fund is approximately 75% short of its funding goal for the year.* Currently, the fund gets fed by quarterly fees paid by bankrupt companies with over $1mm in operating expenses. As with all things bankruptcy, the new federal law mandating the fee increase has a number of holes in it. Consequently, various cases implicating the law are winding their way through the courts.


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🏦How are the Investment Banks Doing? Part I.🏦

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There was a barrage of earnings over the last two weeks and they can sometimes be a bellwether of things to come for the economy so we figured we’d dig in. Here’s what we learned…

Evercore Inc. ($EVR) was among the first investment banks to report Q1 ‘19 earnings back in late April (though the Q was only filed on May 2) and, man, they came out of the gate fast and furious on the earnings call with all kinds of braggadocious talk about being fourth highest in global advisory revenue in ‘18, and how they’re kicking a$$ and taking names in ‘19 already, etc. Only then, however, to say that YOY results were down. Hahaha. Totally buried the lede. Revenues were $419.8mm, down 10% YOY. Investment banking fees were down 14%. This despite 59 fees greater than $1mm, as compared to 53 in the year ago period.

Regarding, M&A volume and Europe:

…if you look at the M&A environment generally the dollar volume of announced transactions in the first quarter was down mid teens and the number of announced transactions globally was down in the high 20s. In Europe there was actually a little bit more pronounced. The interesting thing is if one looks at our backlogs they're not really consistent with the announced activities in the first quarter and to be completely blunt about is we expect this year could be a pretty good year. We certainly don't see anything in our dialogues with clients that suggests that it won't be.

Some EVR-specific highlights include (i) increased emphasis on “liability management” as a source of revenue generation and (ii) in turn, no increased emphasis on coverage of smaller cap companies (like certain competitor banks). EVR says that is not a focus: the focus is on bigger deals or deals with “high quality companies that may not be big.” In other words, they don’t want quals for quals sake. They want to get paid. And get paid well.

Specifically relating to restructuring, this is what EVR had to say:

…our advisory revenues last year were up in every category including restructuring notwithstanding the fact that default levels are at almost all time lows. So I think we've been able – we've added talent in the restructuring area. We think we are well positioned to capitalize on a pickup of activity when that inevitably happens. But other than relatively isolated sector activity like retail or like we saw in energy two or three years ago, there certainly is no broad scale pick up in distressed companies at this point in time.

No sh*t. Though it does seem like things have picked up a notch, no?

*****

Greenhill & Co. Inc. ($GHL) reported only $51.2mm of revenue, down 42% on a “dearth of large completions and generally slower deal activity,” and a “decline in EU revenue” more than offsetting increases in other regions. Noticing a Euro-centric theme here?


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