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Earnings Calls: 
Merrill Lynch Fourth Quarter Earnings Call
Author: Maclintosh Kuhlengisa
123jump.com
Last Update: 2:38 AM EST January 19 2008


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The financial services firm reported a net loss of $10.3 billion, or $12.01 per share, down from net income of $2.2 billion, or $2.41 per share in the prior year as a result of declines in net revenues due to a weaker business environment and net write-downs. The firm raised an additional $12.8 billion from long term investors to buffer its equity base and is now well capitalized, both at the parent level and at the regulated subsidiary level.


Investors Question and Answers

 
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Sequential Earnings Growth | Quarterly Earnings by Year | Quarterly Earnings Growth by Year

Source: Company filings    Q1:March  Q2:June  Q3:September  Q4:December
 
John A. Thain: On the structured credit side, that will be dramatically reduced. On the leveraged finance area, we are already in a very good spot but we will add where it makes sense exposure to the leverage finance area.

Roger Freeman (Lehman Brothers): Can you talk a little bit to the hedges that you have around the $30 billion of gross exposures still on in CDOs, ABS CDOs?

Nelson Chai: Where the book is marked right now reflects as at as best we could where we think those positions were. We triangulated around a bunch of different modeling assumptions and a lot of obviously external metrics to come up with what we thought was the right range, if you will.

Roger Freeman (Lehman Brothers): Were there any assets sold off during the quarter?

John A. Thain: There were a few but very small, although the ones that we did sell were right around where they were marked.

Roger Freeman (Lehman Brothers): What is the game plan for reducing exposures over time?

If the market becomes more liquid as we get into the first quarter we can sell more of them but focusing on the gross number without giving credit to the hedges is not the right way to look at it because we do have $23 billion of shorts, plus we also have a short in our trading book. And the net exposure is still dramatically reduced from where it was at the third quarter.

Roger Freeman (Lehman Brothers): At what level are you carrying any ACA hedges at this point?

John A. Thain: We are reserving against ACA dollar for dollar, so it I s 100% reserved.

Roger Freeman (Lehman Brothers): Is there a charge related to the acceleration of the stock vesting? And how much is that?

Nelson Chai: That would have been small, about $183 million. We had to take the accrual based on where we were going to pay people across the business franchises, with the exception of parts of our fixed income business, the businesses had record years and so we needed to compensate people for a lot of reasons, including retention accordingly.

Roger Freeman (Lehman Brothers): How much was the stock/cash mix this year compared to last year in bonuses?

John A. Thain: The mix on the bonus part was approximately 60-40.

Mike Mayo (Deutsche Bank): Any thoughts about further changes in the business mix?

John A. Thain: The only other specific asset that we have is our 20% stake in Bloomberg, which we carry at zero and we are not looking to sell that.

Mike Mayo (Deutsche Bank): How comfortable are you with the $18 billion portfolio in commercial real estate?

John A. Thain: Any commercial real estate portfolio is sensitive to overall economic environment but given where we are, given the types of properties that they are, given the structure of those deals, we are very comfortable that these things are conservatively marked.

Prashant Bhatia (Citigroup): Can you give any sensitivity to the cumulative loss assumptions?

John A. Thain: It is very dependent on the vintage of the mortgages deal structure on a name-by-name basis. The 16% to 21% was intended to give you the average range that we are looking at.

Prashant Bhatia (Citigroup): What percentage of the $20 billion in write-downs would you say is a write-down to reflect a market environment that exists today?

Nelson Chai: It is reflective of the book at the end of December. The market was a lot less liquid for these types of instruments and there is a little bit of that built in.
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