Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

Greetings. Welcome to Huntington Bank Share's fourth quarter earnings call. At this time, all participants are in 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 from your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd now like to turn the conference over to your host, Tim Sadabris, Director of Investor Relations.

Thank you, Operator. 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 at 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, Zach Wasserman, Chief Financial Officer, Rich Pohle, Chief Credit Officer, will join us for the Q&A. Earnings documents, which include our forward-looking statements disclaimer, and non-GAAP information are available on the Investor Relations section of our website. With that, let me now turn it over to Steve.

Thanks, Tim. Good morning, everyone, and welcome. Thank you for joining the call today. We are very pleased to announce our fourth quarter results, which included GAAP net income of $645 million and adjusted net income of $657 million. For the full year, reported GAAP net income was $2.2 billion, and adjusted net income was $2.3 billion. Both results reflect record earnings for Huntington. 2022 marked a year of numerous successes, driven by our team's execution of organic growth initiatives, realization of both expense and revenue synergies from the TCF acquisition, an unwavering focus on credit discipline, and proactive balance sheet management. We ended the year with substantial momentum. clearly the economic environment is becoming increasingly challenging. However, Huntington is better positioned today than at any time since I joined over a dozen years ago. And over those years, we've transformed the risk profile of the bank and remained highly disciplined. We are taking proactive steps now to again position Huntington to outperform. And we enter the year with solid capital levels, top-tier reserves, a growing core deposit base, and strong credit metrics. We continue to see opportunities to grow revenue and profit. Now on to slide four. First, we finished the year with our fourth consecutive quarter of record pre-provision net revenue. This was supported by higher interest income driven by earning asset growth and an expanded net interest margin. Revenue growth has been exceptional over the course of the year, and we intend to protect and grow that revenue base. Second, we delivered broad-based loan growth, XPPP, of 10% year-over-year. As we drove this growth, we also optimized for return while still exceeding our loan growth outlook. One example of this optimization is indirect auto, where our production in the quarter was approximately 15% lower than the prior quarter, while our new loan yields increased by over 100 basis points. Importantly, we continue to grow our deposit base with multiple consecutive quarters of growth. We believe this is a differentiator for Huntington in this environment. It also demonstrates the breadth of our franchise and our colleagues' ability to acquire and deepen primary bank customer relationships. Third, our financial results for the fourth quarter and full year reflect the top tier return profile and we're at or above our medium term targets. These results demonstrate the earnings power of the company and we expect to continue to deliver on these targets. As we intended, we delivered common equity Tier 1 capital to the middle of our 9% to 10% operating range. We are also very pleased to announce a new two-year share repurchase program. Fourth, we ended 22 with strong momentum across the business that we carry into this new year. We remain focused on growth aligned with our risk appetite. Importantly, we have the capital, credit reserves, and strength of balance sheet that give us confidence to continue to deliver on our organic growth priorities. Slide five highlights the tremendous earnings power of the franchise, which has improved sequentially over the course of the year. PPNR is over 60% higher than pre-pandemic levels. Our return on tangible common equity is top tier. We managed our asset sensitivity throughout the year and deliberately positioned the company to benefit from higher interest rates, which resulted in significant revenue growth. We've also been prudent in taking actions to protect this revenue base should we experience lower rates over the next few years. We will continue to be dynamic in this regard with our goal of reducing volatility and creating a tight corridor around the path of spread revenue. At our investor day in November, we shared with you our highly defined set of strategic priorities. We expect these strategies will drive sustained revenue growth and support gains in efficiency over the long term. As you also heard, this management team is a group of experienced operators. To further accelerate the execution of these strategies and support increased efficiency, we will be taking a series of actions during 23 to align our organizational structure with a focus on our critical priorities. We expect these actions will result in new growth and efficiency opportunities. We will share more details on these actions as they're finalized over the course of the first quarter. However, one element will be a voluntary retirement program for our middle and senior management. Overall, I believe this program will be important to support our colleagues and create value for our shareholders. In closing, we are well positioned for continued growth. We have the strategies, the momentum in our businesses to support growth. We also benefit from highly engaged colleagues who have consistently delivered outstanding customer service and are a true differentiator. We have the credit discipline to outperform and remain focused on rigorous expense management, investment prioritization, and capital allocation. We remain committed to our long track record of managing to positive annual operating leverage. and are intently focused on driving shareholder value. Zach, over to you to provide more detail on our financial performance. Thanks, Steve, and good morning, everyone.