Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman may have best summed up Wall Street's hopes for a new tax law that cost firms billions late last year.
"We expect an immediate, positive impact to our financial results in 2018," he told investors on an earnings call Thursday morning. It may have helped, of course, that Morgan Stanley's bottom line was crimped the least of any of the five biggest banks, with the Republican tax break costing just $990 million.
Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, by contrast, paid $22 billion and $4.4 billion respectively, and Goldman said it would slow the pace of stock buybacks, a pivotal concern for investors who have chafed as regulations imposed after the 2008 financial crisis curbed payouts.
Gorman discussed no such plans for Morgan Stanley, highlighting a corporate tax rate that may drop as low as 22 percent next year from a previous level of 31 percent and the Federal Reserve's approval for the bank to return as much as $7 billion to investors via dividends and stock buybacks through the end of June.
"We've sort of labored under a pretty high global tax rate," Gorman said. "There aren't many institutions that are operating with 32 percent or above global tax rates. Certainly, there aren't many U.S. institutions. So, we are a clear beneficiary of this."
Lawmakers have said the lower taxes will enable corporations to invest more in U.S. growth, despite initial requirements that they mark down the value of some assets and pay a one-time levy of as much as 15.5 percent on overseas holdings, and Wall Street executives from JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon to Bank of America's Brian Moynihan have predicted economic benefits.
Morgan Stanley's Gorman, for his part, is also optimistic that a Republican-led federal government will modify bank regulations regarding capital payouts to investors in a way that provides "some relief."
Excluding the charge related to the tax bill, which required Morgan Stanley to lower the value of tax breaks related to previous operating losses that it's allowed to claim in later years, earnings of 84 cents a share topped the 64-cent average estimate from analysts surveyed by FactSet.
Competitors were forced to take similar actions, since those losses are worth less under the new tax law's top rate of 21 percent than the 35 percent levy in place previously.
Morgan Stanley's net income, include the $990 million tax charge, fell 69 percent to $516 million, in the three months through December. Firmwide revenue increased 5 percent, to $9.5 billion.
The bank's shares climbed 0.6 percent to $55.70 in New York trading early Thursday afternoon. Morgan Stanley previously gained 26 percent to $55.35 in the 12 months through Wednesday, outpacing both the S&P 500 and Goldman Sachs.
