Fifth Third Bancorp

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q1 2021 Fifth Third Bank Corp Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the secret presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one on your telephone keypad. If you require any further assistance, I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Christal, Director of Investor Relations.

Thank you. Good morning, and thank you, everyone, for joining us. Today, we'll be discussing Fifth Third's financial results for the first quarter of 2021. Please review the cautionary statements in our materials, which can be found in our earnings release and presentation. These materials contain reconciliations to non-GAAP measures, along with information pertaining to the use of non-GAAP measures, as well as forward-looking statements about Fifth Third's performance. We undertake no obligation to, and would not expect to, update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this call. This morning, I'm joined by our CEO, Greg Carmichael, CFO, Jamie Leonard, President Tim Spence, and Chief Credit Officer, Richard Stein. Following prepared remarks by Greg and Jamie, we'll open the call for questions. Let me turn the call over to Greg now for his comments.

Thanks, Chris, and thank all of you for joining us this morning. Hope you are all well and staying healthy. Earlier today, we reported first quarter net income of $694 million for 93 cents per share. We continued our positive momentum from the past several quarters and once again delivered strong financial results in the first quarter. These strong results reflect record commercial banking fee revenue, continued success generating consumer and household growth, and a strong underlying net interest margin. Our performance reflects focused execution on our key strategic priorities. We continue to benefit from the diversification and resilience of our fee-based businesses in retail, mortgage, commercial, and wealth and asset management, which are generating strong results and helping to cushion the impact of lower short-term rates. We have maintained our disciplined client selection and conservative underwriting, which are evident in our credit metrics. Over the quarter, we recorded a benefit in our provision for credit losses, reflecting a stronger economic outlook, as well as historically low net charge-offs, which included improvements in both our commercial and consumer loan portfolios. In addition to muted credit losses, our criticized assets and MPLs also improved sequentially. Non-performing loans decreased 11% from the prior quarter, with NPL inflows at the lowest level since the third quarter of 2019. Our balance sheet earnings power remained very strong. As a result, our robust CET1 ratio further improved to 10.5% this quarter. Our CET1 target remains at 9.5%. As we have stated many times before, we are focused on deploying capital for organic growth opportunities evaluating non-bank opportunities where it fits our strategy, and share repurchases. Based on our current dividend trailing four quarters of net income, we have the capacity to repurchase shares up to $347 million in the second quarter. After that, we have more flexibility in terms of how and when we return capital to shareholders under the SCB framework. Jamie will provide more details on our capital plan. The improved macroeconomic data and outlook are aligned with our strongest overall commercial loan production since before the pandemic. Furthermore, we have seen our pipeline strengthen considerably over the past 90 days with significant strength in manufacturing, renewables, healthcare, and technology, partially offset by immune demand and leisure and hospitality and CRE. Production was offset by elevated payoffs and paydowns, combined with another 1% decline in and line utilization. We are retaining the customer and their core banking relationship as virtually none of our commercial payoffs during the quarter were the result of client attrition. Additionally, paydowns in our corporate bank largely reflected clients tapping the capital markets, where we benefited significantly from additional capital market fees. Given the strong production trends, firming pipeline, and retention of the client relationship, We remain well positioned to take advantage of a more favorable economic backdrop should clients execute their growth plans in the second half of 2021. We will continue to assess the implications of client supply chain constraints as we progress through the year. Consumer employment, savings, and spending trends also remain favorable given the fiscal stimulus, temp demand, and a gradual reopening of the economy throughout our footprint. Despite the overall economic recovery over the past several quarters, I recognize that not everyone in our society has benefited equally. This is why I'm very proud that, in addition to producing strong financial results, we have also continued to take deliberate actions to improve the lives of our customers and the well-being of our communities. I am particularly pleased that we exceeded our five-year, $32 billion commitment to invest in low- and moderate-income communities by more than $9 billion. We also recently announced a $2.8 billion commitment in support of racial equality focused on lending, investing, and financial accessibility. We also announced a new banking product this quarter called Momentum Banking, which competes with the FinTechs and is now our flagship mass market banking offering. Momentum Banking provides customers with equity solutions in our newly enhanced mobile app to help them avoid unnecessary fees including immediate access to funds from digital deposits, short-term on-demand borrowing options, simple goal-based savings targets, free customer access to their paycheck up to two days earlier with a qualifying direct deposit starting in June, and no monthly service fees. In addition, we were honored to once again be named one of the world's most ethical companies by Ethisphere, also reflecting our strong corporate culture and compliance program, and ESG actions. We were one of just five banks globally to receive this accolade this year. We believe our balancing strength, diversified revenues, and continued focus on disciplined expense management will serve us well in 2021 and beyond. We remain committed to generating sustainable long-term value for shareholders and anticipate that we will continue improving our relative performance as a top regional bank. I would like to once again thank our employees. I am very proud of the way you have continually risen to the occasion to support our customers and each other over the past year. You have enabled Fifth Third to continue to be a source of strength for our customers and our communities. With that, I'll turn it over to Jamie to discuss our first quarter results and our current outlook.