Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

Hello, and welcome to the Huntington Bank Shares first quarter earnings call. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. You may be placed into question queue at any time by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Tim Sedobris, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Tim.

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 turn it over to Steve.

Thanks, Tim. Good morning, everyone, and welcome. Thank you for joining the call today. We are pleased to announce our first quarter results, which Zach will detail later. Again, these results are supported by our colleagues who live our purpose every day as we make people's lives better, help businesses thrive, and strengthen the communities we serve. Now onto slide four. There are five key messages we want to leave you with today. First, we are executing our organic growth strategies and leveraging our position of strength. As planned and managed over the years, our liquidity and capital metrics are top tier. Second, we delivered loan growth in the quarter and expect the pace to accelerate over the remainder of the year. Our teams are acquiring new customers and relationships in both commercial and consumer categories. We are maintaining our momentum and deposit gathering with a well-managed beta. Third, we expect to drive sequential increases in net interest income and fee revenues from the level reported in the first quarter, supported by accelerating loan growth coupled with effective balance sheet management. Fourth, we continue to rigorously manage credit consistent with our aggregate moderate to low risk appetite. Finally, we are positioned to power earnings expansion over the course of the year and into 2025. Our investments are delivering results, and the underlying core is performing well. I will move us on to slide five to recap our performance. We delivered loan growth with balances growing by $1.6 billion from a year ago and have grown by a 4% CAGR over the past two years. This pace reflects our intentional optimization efforts last year, and we believe we are positioned to accelerate growth over the course of 2024 and carrying into 2025. Deposit balance is also increased, growing $7.9 billion, or 5.5%, over the past year. Capital remains strong, with reported common equity Tier 1 of 10.2% and adjusted common equity Tier 1 of 8.5%, inclusive of AOCI. Liquidity remains top tier, with coverage of uninsured deposits of 205%, a peer-leading level. Credit quality was stable as debt charge-offs improved by one basis point from the fourth quarter to 30 basis points. We are sustaining momentum and growth of our primary bank relationships, with consumer and business increasing by 2% and 4% respectively year-over-year. We continue to seize opportunities to add talented bankers. Over the past two quarters, we've added teams in the Carolinas and Texas. We've also launched new commercial specialty verticals, including Fund Finance, Healthcare ABL, and Native American Financial Services. The momentum we have across our markets, coupled with our strong culture, continues to attract great banking talent to Huntington. We expect to add additional colleagues and capabilities as we move through the year. We have clear objectives for 2024, focused on executing our organic growth strategies. This should result in accelerated loan growth, sustained deposit growth, and expanded fee revenue streams. Coupled with our expense outlook, we expect to see PPNR expanding over the course of the year and into 2025. The macro environment is conducive to growth, with customer demand holding up well in a resilient and stable economy. The addition of new markets and bankers is supporting expanding loan pipelines with late-stage commercial pipelines ending the quarter at the highest level in over a year. Zach, over to you to provide more detail on our financial performance.