Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

Greetings and welcome to Huntington Bank Shares' third quarter earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Tim Sedabris, Director of Investor Relations. Please proceed.

Thank you, LaTanya. Welcome, everyone, and good morning. Copies of the slides we will be reviewing today can be found in the investor relations section of our website, www.honeyton.com. As a reminder, this call is being recorded, and a replay will be available starting about one hour from the close of the call. Our presenters today are Steve Steinauer, chairman, president, and CEO, and Zach Wasserman, chief financial officer. Rich Pohle, chief credit officer, will join us for the Q&A. As noted on slide two, today's discussion, including the Q&A portion, will contain forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on information and assumptions available at this time and are subject to changes, risks, and uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ materially. We assume no obligation to update such statements. For complete discussion of risks and uncertainties, please refer to this slide and material filed with the FCC, including our most recent forms 10-K, 10-Q, and 8-K filings. Let me now turn it over to Steve. Thanks, Tim.

Good morning, everyone. I'm very pleased with our third quarter. We delivered good core performance and made enormous progress with the TCF integration. Let me begin on slide three. Thanks to the hard work of our colleagues, we're on track to complete the TCF integration as planned and deliver the resulting deal economics. This combination adds scale, density, new markets, and new specialty businesses. At the core of Huntington, we are a purpose-driven company with a vision to build the leading people-first digitally-powered bank in the nation. We remain focused on our core objectives to drive organic growth and to deliver sustainable top quartile financial performance. On slide four, our third quarter performance has included a full quarter benefit from TCF and record total revenue. We deliver good growth in fee income, that low growth excluding PPP, and improving credit metrics. Just over a week ago, we successfully completed the conversion of TCF to Huntington Systems and we now offer an integrated set of products, capabilities, and experiences to our customers. As a result of the great efforts of our colleagues, we were able to complete the conversion in just 10 months since the announcement of the transaction. We've completed most of the actions to drive our targeted cost synergies and are on track to deliver all of the announced cost reductions. With the conversion behind us, we're now able to focus thousands of colleagues on new business development activities to close out the year strong and carry that momentum into 22. We are investing in these revenue-producing colleagues as well as new capabilities in the expanded markets. We're seeing substantial momentum in many of our initiatives, including targeted areas of fee revenue generation like wealth and capital markets, as well as cards and payments. Both consumer and commercial loan production continue to be robust, and commercial pipelines are up over 30% from a year ago, and new production activity has nearly doubled. Additionally, we were pleased to be ranked number one nationally for the SBA 7a lending by volume, marking the fourth consecutive year we've been recognized in the top spot. As the recovery continues, we will dynamically manage our overall expense base and look for ways to drive incremental efficiencies across the bank. We intend to self-fund the investment capacity necessary for strategic initiatives that will drive additional revenue growth in the years ahead. Our strategy is centered on supporting customers banking where and when they want and meeting them through their preferred channel. As part of that strategy, we are continually optimizing our distribution network. We will be consolidating 62 branches in the first quarter of 22, equal to 6% of the combined branch network. And these are in addition to the 188 branch closures announced as part of the TCF transaction. Importantly, we will continue to retain the number one share of branches in both Ohio and Michigan. In addition to branch consolidations, we are continuing to diligently optimize roles and resources within the bank. We're committed to delivering positive operating leverage as we did annually for a decade leading up to 21. Finally, on the capital front, We accelerated our share repurchase in the quarter as well as announced an increase to the quarterly dividend. These actions demonstrate our confidence in the performance and outlook for Huntington as well as our commitment to our shareholders to actively manage our capital levels. Slide five provides an update on the TCF integration. When we announced the transaction, we saw strong potential for expense synergies as we leveraged the benefits of scale but to also drive additional organic growth. And today, I can say that we're even more excited about the revenue opportunities in front of us. The combination of new growth markets and increased density, the addition of more than 1.5 million customers, and expanded specialty capabilities collectively set up our future revenue growth. Let me share a couple of the most compelling aspects. In middle market and mid-corporate banking, we're now bringing greater scale in Chicago and Milwaukee in addition to new capabilities in the Twin Cities and Denver with expanded coverage and product offerings. We're already gaining traction with early wins, including capital markets and treasury management fees. In consumer and business banking, we're deploying Huntington's capabilities, products, and services across the entire customer base following conversions. Combined with our Fair Play philosophy, this will greatly enhance the customer experience, and as we've demonstrated previously, will accelerate customer acquisition and improve retention. And with Huntington's digital and competitive product set, we will deepen our customer relationships. Additionally, we are bringing award-winning SBA lending platform and growing our wealth and private banking customer base in our newly expanded markets. Our investments are well-timed as we're seeing continued robust economic recovery in our footprint. Our regions have seen economic activity expand year-to-date faster than the national average, as well as higher labor force participation. We see a unique moment in time to capitalize on these revenue opportunities as our local economies continue to perform very well. We are entering a new era at Huntington with momentum, We look forward to growth in the years ahead. Jack, over to you to provide more detail on our financial performance. Thanks, Steve, and good morning, everyone.