Fifth Third Bancorp

Good day. Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Fifth Third Bancorp Fourth Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press the star 1 on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press the star 0. Thank you. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr. Chris Dahl, Director of Investor Relations. Sir, please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Today, we'll be discussing our financial results for the fourth 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 of non-GAAP measures, along with information pertaining to the use of non-GAAP measures. as well as forward-looking statements about Fifth Earth's performance. We undertake no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this call. This morning, I'm joined by our CEO, Greg Carmichael, President Tim Spence, CFO Jamie Leonard, and Chief Credit Officer Richard Stein. Following prepared remarks by Greg and Jamie, we will open the call for questions. Let me turn over the call now to Greg for his comments.

Thanks, Chris, and thank all of you for joining us this morning. Earlier today, we reported full-year net income of $2.8 billion, or $3.73 per share. We delivered strong financial results throughout the year, while fully supporting our customers, our communities, and our employees. We generated a full-year adjusted ROTCE, excluding AOCI, of 19%. Additionally, excluding the provision benefit and excess of charge-offs, our ROTCE exceeded 16% and improved more than 130 basis points from last year, driven by record financial results throughout the franchise. We generated record revenue of nearly $8 billion in 2021. which increased 4% compared to 2020, highlighted by strength in commercial, retail, and wealth and asset management. Our performance was led by record-adjusted fee revenue, which increased 8%. That interest income was stable compared to last year, despite the continued environmental headwinds, as we have been disciplined deploying excess cash. Full-year adjusted expenses increased just 2.5% compared to last year, reflecting disciplined expense management throughout the company. As a result of our strong financial performance, we achieved positive operating leverage, excluding security gains and losses, and generated an adjusted efficiency ratio below 60%. Credit quality remains strong, with historically low full-year net charge-offs of just 16 basis points. Additionally, non-performing loans and criticized assets continued to improve throughout the year, including the fourth quarter. Our credit results demonstrate our disciplined client selection, conservative underwriting, and continued benefits from fiscal and monetary government stimulus programs. For the fourth quarter, we reported an income of $662 million, or 90 cents per share. Our reported EPS included a negative 3 cent impact from the items shown on page 2 of our release. Excluding these items, adjusted fourth quarter earnings or $0.93 per share. Our quarterly financial results reflected strong momentum in most of our businesses, which led to improved revenues compared to the third quarter. We generated record commercial banking revenue, record treasury management revenue, and record wealth and asset management revenue in the quarter. We expect the positive momentum in our businesses to carry forward into 2022 and beyond. In our commercial business, record low production of $8.2 billion increased approximately 50% sequentially, with record performances in both corporate banking and middle market. Despite the ongoing challenges we were hearing from our customers, including supply chain constraints and labor shortages, production was broad-based across our regions and verticals. From a regional middle market perspective, we generated strong production this year in several markets, including Chicago, the Carolinas, Indiana, Georgia, and our expansion markets. From an industry vertical perspective, healthcare, renewables, retail, technology, and financial institutions all continued to outperform. As a result of our record production and record new quality relationships, we generated C&I loan growth excluding PPP of 7% on an average basis or 11% on a period-end basis compared to last quarter. The acceleration of commercial loan growth at the end of 2021, our strong pipeline, new commitment growth, production anticipated from provide, and continued investments in capabilities and talent will all support accelerated loan growth in 2022. In our retail business, we once again generated consistent peer-leading consumer household growth in excess of 3% year-over-year, highlighted by our Chicago and Southeast markets. We continue to add households in every region, reflecting the ongoing success of Momentum Banking, as well as our branch expansion and digital initiatives. Our success throughout our retail business comes down to three factors. First, we are generating smart scale in our local markets. This quarter, we opened 18 banking centers in our key Southeast MSAs, while consolidating four locations throughout our footprint. We have also closed an additional 40 locations in the month of January, primarily in legacy markets. We will continue to leverage our geospatial analytics to optimize our overall branch network while taking into account evolving customer preferences. We continue to target a branch network allocation of approximately 35% in the southeast by 2025. Second, we offer differentiated products and services like Momentum Banking, which includes features that enable customers to avoid overdraft fees and get access to short-term liquidity when needed. I'd like to point out, with respect to punitive fees, we have been the lowest among peers with significant consumer banking operations for several quarters. And third, we are delivering an outstanding customer experience as shown by leading third-party surveys. We have improved from the bottom quartile five years ago to top quartile today. We are recognized as the number one bank out of the top 25 banks for taking care of our customers during the pandemic. Our balance sheet earnings power remained very strong. Last night, to support continued acceleration of our growth and profitability, we announced the acquisition of Dividend Finance, a leading fintech point-of-sale consumer lender providing solutions for the highly attractive and growing renewable energy industry. They have strong relationships with a robust contract network, offer sales and project management solutions through a state-of-the-art technology platform. They have a customer footprint focused on prime and super prime borrowers. They have a coast-to-coast footprint with targeted growth initiatives in the southeast. By financing consumer renewable energy solutions, combined with our existing leadership in providing renewable solutions to commercial clients since 2012, we are supporting the country's transition to a more sustainable economy and furthering our ESG leadership position among peers. As the only bank among peers to earn a leadership score from CDP for three consecutive years, we are intensely focused on leading the transition to a sustainable future. Our focus has been recognized by several prominent ESG providers, including MSCI, which recently gave us a three-notch rating upgrade. Whether it's our sustained peer-leading household growth, top quartile key metrics, balance sheet management, or strong diversified fee revenues, we have established a track record of doing what we say we are going to do. Our execution ultimately produces superior, consistent, and sustainable financial performance. Across all of our businesses, our strategic priorities are unchanged. We remain focused on leveraging technology to accelerate our digital transformation, investing to drive growth and profitability, expanding market share in key geographies, and maintaining discipline throughout the company. Before turning it over to Jamie to discuss our financial results and our current outlook, I'd like to once again thank our employees. I very much appreciate the way you have continued to root us into the occasion to support our customers, communities, and each other. It was because of our frontline employees that we were able to keep more than 99% of our branches open since the onset of the pandemic. We gave a special bonus to these employees on the quarter in recognition of their extraordinary and ongoing efforts to provide essential banking services for our customers. This marks the second time during the pandemic that we have recognized the work of our frontline employees through our special bonus. In summary, we believe our strong and highly asset-sensitive balance sheet, diversified revenues, and continued focus on discipline and management throughout the company will serve us well this year and beyond. We expect to generate positive operating leverage, again, for the full year in 2022, without adjusting for PPP or other known headwinds. We remain focused on growing strong relationships and managing the balance sheet with a through-the-cycle perspective to generate sustainable, long-term value for our stakeholders and maintain our position as a top-performing regional bank. With that, I'll turn it over to Jamie to discuss our financial results and our current outlook.