Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

Greetings, and welcome to the Huntington Bank Share's third quarter earnings 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'd now like to turn the conference over to your host, Tim Sedabris, Director of Investor Relations.

Thank you, Operator. Welcome, everyone, and good morning. Copies of the slides we will be referencing today can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website, www.huntington.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, risk, and uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ materially. We assume no obligation to update such statements. For a complete discussion of risk and uncertainties, please refer to this slide and material filed with the SEC, 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 and welcome. Thank you for joining the call today. We are extremely pleased to announce our third quarter results, which reflected adjusted net income of $575 million and represented another quarter of record earnings for the company. We continue to execute on our plan for 2022, and the business is performing very well despite macroeconomic uncertainties. We are seeing sustained demand from customers across the footprint, which is reflected in the robust pipelines and our growth trends. We are closely monitoring economic developments and continue to believe we are operating from a position of strength as we head into the fourth quarter and 2023. Now on to slide four. First, the performance in the third quarter was exceptional. With our third consecutive quarter of record PPNR, Loan growth continued to be broad-based, and combined with the benefit from higher interest rates, net interest income again expanded at a double-digit rate from the prior quarter, and fee income also expanded sequentially. As a result of these factors, adjusted PPNR increased by 14% in the quarter. This performance was driven by execution of our revenue-producing initiatives and reflected our continued discipline expense management. Second, we delivered another quarter of sequential growth in average deposits driven by commercial. Third, we were pleased to drive double-digit annualized loan growth again this quarter. With this robust loan momentum and continued pipeline strength, we are optimizing asset growth at the margin to maximize the return profile as we enter the fourth quarter. Fourth, we are increasing our revenue and profitability guidance to incorporate the recent rate curve outlook. Zach will provide you with more details on that later. Finally, we are positioned very well for potential economic uncertainty. With balance sheet strength, including higher capital levels and a reserve profile that is near the top of the peer group. Additionally, our profitability and return on capital outlook is expected to continue to support further building capital ratios. This places Huntington in the position of strength with an outlook that will continue to be guided by our disciplined approach to customer selection and our aggregate moderate to low risk appetite through the cycle. On slide five, let me share more details on our third quarter performance. As I mentioned earlier, we reported record net income, which reflects our earnings power and ability to generate sustained top tier returns. We have positioned the company to benefit from higher interest rates with our asset sensitivity, and we continue to grow our fee-income businesses. This level of robust revenue supports our continued investment in key strategic initiatives which will sustain growth. Importantly, we remain committed to our disciplined expense management and guided by our commitment to positive operating leverage. Finally, as we've previously delivered on the TCF Integration Program and cost savings, We remain focused on driving the incremental revenue opportunities from the acquisition. Let me provide a few updates on our progress today. We've added over 60 revenue-producing colleagues in Minnesota and Colorado to support wealth management, business banking, middle market, and specialty banking. The commercial teams in the Twin Cities and Denver are continuing to gain traction, adding new customers and building pipelines. In addition to the expanding middle market teams, we are seeing accelerated loan growth in some of our specialty areas, such as healthcare and asset-based lending, where we have recently closed a handful of sizable new relationships in Colorado as a function of our expertise and local presence. We are also driving increased productivity from the acquired branches, where we have grown primary banking relationships nearly every month since conversion. We believe this demonstrates relationship deepening and a positive reception to the Huntington product offerings. Our business banking expansion in Minnesota and Colorado is also showing substantial momentum. We're pleased to have already achieved a top three ranking or better for SBA lending, which were startups in both markets. The launch of wealth management in the Twin Cities continues to track better than our initial projections. The team has been fully built out, and we are pleased with the caliber of talent we were able to add in this market. While it's still early, the team is already contributing to relationship growth. Building pipelines reflect a significant customer opportunity, even against a difficult market backdrop. Based on early successes we are seeing in the Twin Cities, we've expanded the wealth management business to Denver with key hires added during the third quarter. In our asset finance business, which includes equipment finance and distribution finance, which was formerly known as inventory finance, our teams continue to capitalize on the opportunities to harness the combined scale to better serve our customers. The business is significantly benefiting from that scale, driving increased momentum in client acquisition and deepening of existing relationships. We are now the fifth largest bank-owned equipment finance platform in the U.S., an increase from number seven only a year ago. These initiatives are ongoing, and we expect them to be a significant contributor to our growth over the longer term. We look forward to our investor day next month, where we can spend more time on our overall business strategies, as well as how these TCF revenue synergies factor into our consolidated outlook. Zach, over to you to provide more detail on our financial performance.