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Earnings Calls: 
Merrill Lynch First Quarter Earnings Call
Author: 123jump.com Staff
123jump.com
Last Update: 8:47 AM EDT April 24 2008


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Despite the quarterly loss, the financial services company’s underlying businesses posted solid results in a difficult market environment. The firm’s $82 billion excess liquidity pool has increased from year-end levels and the entity remains well capitalized. Q1 fiscal 2008 net revenues were $2.9 billion, a decrease of 69% from the prior year period due to net write-downs of $1.5 billion related to the U.S. ABS CDOs.


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
 
Nelson Chai: In the first quarter last year, we had revenue of about $450 million in the Private Equity business and it had to do with mark to market on positions. We have publicly traded companies in that portfolio and because of the market and a few of the larger positions traded down during the quarter, we took the net revenues down $200 million. That is a fairly significant swing if you think on a year-over-year basis. In terms of what our position is, we will evaluate what we think the relative value of each of the positions periodically, which we do, and if we think that it makes sense to exit the positions because the prices are right, we will. Fundamentally we still like the properties we have in our book.

Susan Katzke (Credit Suisse): You said your Private Equity marks were down $200 million year-over-year. Were they still net positive?

Nelson Chai: No. The revenue the year ago would have been a positive $450 million.

Nelson Chai: Revenues in the first quarter this year are down $200 million.

John A. Thain: In terms of the trading revenues in FICC, March was a much more difficult month than January or February. It''s the negative impact of March, which was a significantly more difficult month across the board and so that''s really what impacted the revenues.

James Mitchell (Buckingham Research): Can you talk about what we can think of as a reasonable compensation line going forward from a comparable ratio in a more normalized revenue environment?

John A. Thain: Concerning the comparable line, there''s about $200 million of incremental in this quarter versus the year ago quarter and that had to do with the acceleration of some employee stock. In addition to that, the comparable in the first quarter did include some continued acquisition and related things. We are going to reduce our headcount by 4,000 employees versus the end of the year. As we work forward, obviously the comparable is two metrics: one is the actual number of employees - and you''re seeing the action we''re taking there - and the other is on the discretionary side. That business will continue to be scaled relative to the performance of the business. We therefore don''t give you forward guidance on things, but you can see that we''re going to take the appropriate actions to continue to work through that. As we continue to break down some of the silos in the businesses and operating as one, more opportunity for efficiency will be created.
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