Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

Greetings, and welcome to Huntington Bank Shares 2023 Fourth Quarter Earnings Review. 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 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Tim Stavris, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Welcome, everyone, and good morning. Copies of the slides we will be reviewing today can be found on 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. Brendan Lawler, 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're pleased to announce our fourth quarter results, which Zach will detail later. These results are again supported by our colleagues across the bank who live our purpose every day as we make people's lives better, help businesses thrive, and strengthen the communities we serve. Now on to slide four. There are five key messages we want to leave you with today. First, we are leveraging our position of strength and executing on our strategic growth initiatives. We are well positioned to benefit during times like these. We managed our capital levels to enable us to accelerate initiatives during 2023 and support continued growth. We added key specialty verticals in commercial banking and expanded into the Carolinas. Second, we outperformed on both deposits and loans throughout the year. Our colleagues are acquiring new customers and deepening our existing customer relationships. Importantly, we delivered this growth while effectively managing our deposit beta. Third, we expect to modestly expand net interest income as we manage the challenges of the interest rate cycle and are driving increased fee revenues. Fourth, we are rigorously managing credit across our portfolios consistent with our aggregate moderate to low risk appetite. Credit trends are normalizing as expected, and we continue to believe we will outperform the industry on credit through the cycle. Finally, we remain intently focused on our core strategies. Huntington remained resilient through the events of 2023, emerging as one of the strongest regional banks. We maintained our disciplined execution. and we expect to grow earnings over the course of 2024 and continuing into 2025 and beyond. I will move us on to slide five to recap our performance in 2023. Huntington delivered solid results over the course of the year against a challenging backdrop. While the banking sector faced headwinds early in the year, Huntington emerged as a secular winner, gaining new customers, adding over $3 billion of deposit growth, and further bolstering our capital. We also increased loans by $2.5 billion for the full year, or 2%, while driving capital ratios higher. We expect the pace of loan growth to accelerate in 2024. We added to our revenue base primarily as net interest income increased by 3.3% for the full year. We maintained our leadership in customer satisfaction and digital capabilities, having again been awarded the number one ranking by J.D. Power for both categories. We remained focused on executing our strategies, including growing consumer primary bank relationships by 3%. Additionally, we completed the realignment of business segments. We also delivered on efficiency initiatives, including Operation Accelerate, the Voluntary Retirement Program, staffing efficiencies, business process offshoring, and branch and other real estate consolidations. We were nimble and opportunistic, adding key talent this past year with the addition of three new specialty commercial banking verticals. We also expanded our commercial and regional bank into the Carolinas, adding experienced teams in these attractive and high-growth markets. Additionally, we further strengthened our balance sheet and drove capital ratios higher over the course of the year. We are getting ahead of proposed industry requirements. And finally, credit was managed exceptionally well with full year net charge-offs of 23 basis points. Moving to slide six. Looking ahead to 2024, we have a clear set of objectives. We will leverage our position of strength to increase growth of both deposits and loans. This outlook will result in accelerated revenue growth and is further bolstered by fee opportunities. This posture, coupled with our dynamic balance sheet management and hedging programs, is expected to benefit the revenue and profitability outlook for 2024 and further expand into 2025 and beyond. This aligns with the improving macro backdrop, the higher probability of continued GDP growth, and the avoidance of a hard landing. While we deliver this accelerated growth, we will continue to maintain our aggregate moderate to low risk appetite. Zach, over to you to provide more detail on our financial performance. Thanks, Steve, and good morning, everyone.