Discover Financial Services F3Q09 (Qtr End 08/31/09) Earnings Call Transcript

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2009-09-18 04:36:12.0

Tags: Asset, Discover Financial Services, Asset Price, Call Transcript, Earnings, Asset Management, Marketing Research, Operational Planning, Business Operations, Marketing, Seeking Alpha

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator instructions) And your first question will come from the line of Bill Carcache with Fox-Pitt. Please proceed.

Bill Carcache – Fox-Pitt

Good morning. Can you talk a bit about operating expenses? And you mentioned higher marketing expectations in the fourth quarter. And so should we expect that number to creep back up and kind of back to maybe the levels in the first couple quarters, or any kind of guidance you can share on what we can expect for expenses as we look ahead?

Roy Guthrie

Sure, Bill. Yes, I think the -- I guess I would guide you to -- I mean, it’s -- we actually have somewhat of a seasonal low here and expect for seasonal spending to reinvigorate. Both David and I sort of referenced that. And I guide you probably not to something that would reference the run rate we saw in the first three quarters, but also not being as low as you see here in the fourth. So somewhere in between those two on the marketing line and to expect to see continued improvement across the board on everything else.

Bill Carcache – Fox-Pitt

Okay. And can you talk about your decision to stop charging over-the-limit fees and how you thought about the cost versus the benefits of continuing to charge them? Just kind of share your thought process on that?

David Nelms

Well, I would say that we felt like it would be a lot of work and not a lot of people would opt in the pay of fee. And so we felt like the simpler thing was simply to stop charging the fee.

Bill Carcache – Fox-Pitt

Okay. And finally, one more if I may. Can you talk about any differences in credit performance by geographic region, maybe any place where you are seeing delinquencies rise or notable differences in performance?

David Nelms

I would say that we are continuing to see a correlation between unemployment by area and asset price changes -- housing asset price changes by area and loan losses by area.

Bill Carcache – Fox-Pitt

Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

And your next question will come from the line of David Hochstim with Buckingham Research Group. Please proceed.

David Hochstim – Buckingham Research Group

Thanks. Roy, I wonder if you can just clarify what we should think of as the likely dollar impact from the implementation of FAS 166 and 167, and the IO strip could be written up again then in the fourth quarter and then written off December 1st?

 

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