Northern Trust (NTRS) Q1 2026 Earnings Transcript

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Tue, April 21, 2026 astatine 10:03 AM CDT 34 min read

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Tuesday, April 21, 2026, astatine 9 a.m. ET

• Chairman and Chief Executive Officer — Michael Gerard O’Grady

• Chief Financial Officer — David W. Fox

• Head of Investor Relations — Jennifer Childe

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Michael Gerard O’Grady: Thank you, Jennifer. Let maine articulation successful welcoming you to our archetypal 4th 2026 net call. We are disconnected to a beardown commencement successful 2026, reflecting our quality to capitalize connected a constructive marketplace and complaint situation portion continuing to beforehand our One Northern Trust strategical priorities. Against this backdrop, archetypal 4th spot fees accrued 11%, nett involvement income grew 15%, and full gross roseate 14%, each twelvemonth implicit year. While continuing to put successful cardinal maturation initiatives, we generated much than 700 ground points of affirmative operating leverage, driving our pretax borderline up astir 500 ground points to 32% and fueling EPS maturation of 43%.

Return connected mean communal equity reached 17.4%, which is astatine the higher extremity of our caller medium-term people range. And we returned $510 cardinal to shareholders, representing a full payout ratio of 100%. This included $359 cardinal successful stock repurchases successful the archetypal quarter, contributing to a 5% simplification successful stock number arsenic compared to the erstwhile year. These results corroborate that our One Northern Trust strategy is driving dependable betterment successful integrated growth, accordant ratio gains, and resiliency successful a volatile environment. AI is progressively embedded successful however we operate, enabling our teams to present much worth with greater consistency and speed.

Moving forward, we are accelerating its deployment successful ways that volition further beforehand our strategy and fiscal objectives. We are applying AI not lone to thrust incremental efficiency, but besides to standard cognition and expertise portion maintaining the resilience, governance, and lawsuit assurance that specify our franchise. Our AI strategy is anchored successful 3 outcomes: hyper-personalization, AI-generated alpha, and infinite scalability. Together, these outcomes absorption concern wherever it matters the most, enhancing the lawsuit experience, improving determination quality, and expanding operating leverage. Hyper-personalization allows america to determination toward highly contextual, tailored engagement. A tangible illustration is our One Wealth assistant, which integrates the Northern Trust Institute insights straight into workflows.

With aboriginal enhancements, this volition equip our wealthiness absorption advisors with real-time, client-specific context, connecting marketplace insights, portfolio considerations, and lawsuit objectives to enactment much informed, high-touch conversations with velocity astatine scale. AI-generated alpha focuses connected strengthening concern outcomes done faster synthesis of accusation and generating deeper insight. Within plus management, AI-assisted probe and merchandise operation tools are enabling teams to process importantly larger structured and unstructured information sets, place patterns much quickly, and trial scenarios much efficiently. This enhances some concern decision-making and operational execution, supporting stronger lawsuit outcomes without adding complexity. Infinite scalability is simply a cardinal operator of operating leverage.