Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

Greetings, and welcome to the Huntington Bank Shares 2024 Third Quarter Earnings Review. At this time, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The 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. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Tim Sotabris, 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 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. 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 are very pleased to report outstanding results for the third quarter, which Zach will detail later. 2024 continues to be a dynamic year, and our year-to-date results demonstrate Huntington's strength and consistent performance. These strong results reflect the dedication of our nearly 20,000 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 onto slide four. There are five key messages we want to share with you today. First, we are driving accelerated loan growth along with sustained deposit growth. These results are supported by our core businesses, as well as the successful execution of new initiatives, including expanded geographies and commercial banking verticals. Second, we are actively executing our down beta playbook as the market enters a declining Fed rate cycle. We are dynamically managing the balance sheet and coupled with our growth outlook, we expect to deliver record net interest income in 2025. Third, we continue to drive fee revenues higher with sustained momentum across our three major focus areas, payments, wealth management, and capital markets. Fourth, our credit performance remained strong during the quarter with stable net charge-offs as well as lower non-performing and criticized assets. This is a direct result of our consistent, disciplined credit management and our aggregate moderate to low risk appetite. Finally, our performance during the quarter set the foundation for continued organic growth and increased profitability into 2025 and beyond. I will move us on to slide five to recap our performance. We delivered accelerated loan growth in the quarter with average balances growing by 3% from a year ago. End of period loans increased at a 6.3% annualized rate. Average deposit growth continued at a robust pace, increasing by $8.3 billion, or 5.6% over the past year. We drove capital ratios higher again, with adjusted common equity Tier 1 of 8.9%. This benefited both from capital accretion from earnings, as well as reduced AOCI. Our fee revenue strategies are delivering, with gap fee income increasing by 3% year-over-year. On an adjusted basis, core fee revenues demonstrated robust growth, increasing by 12% from a year ago, driven by payments, wealth management, and capital markets. We are sustaining momentum in the growth of primary bank customer relationships. As we continue to acquire new customers across the footprint, consumer PBRs have increased by 2%, and business banking PBRs have increased by 4% year over year. We have delivered PBR growth consistently with year-over-year increases for over a dozen consecutive quarters. We have continued to invest across the company to drive sustained organic growth. Last month, we were pleased to announce our full franchise and branch expansion into the Carolinas. This builds upon the success of our earlier investments in the commercial and regional banking teams over the past year. These markets represent some of the most attractive geographies nationally, given their size and growth characteristics. We've hired well-established colleagues with local expertise in these markets, and the results today are tracking much better than our initial business case. We've also invested substantially in our payments businesses, particularly in treasury management, including bringing in-house our merchant acquiring capabilities. The merchant acquiring business completed its final testing phase in September and implemented its full commercial launch in early October. The opportunity within merchant is substantial. And when at scale, we expect it will add one percentage point to overall fee revenue growth. Credit trends overall are holding up very well, supported by our long track record of disciplined client selection. Our consumer portfolios are constructed around prime and super prime exposures. Within these portfolios, consumer delinquency rates remain stable. We are continuing to see sound fundamentals from our commercial customers. They've managed this rate cycle and inflationary change as well with stable revenue and profitability trends. Overall, our customers continue to show strength and resiliency, which supports a constructive outlook for sustained organic growth. We exited the third quarter with robust production levels in September and with momentum that is carried into the fourth quarter. As an example, our regional banking group posted record loan production, ex PPP, in the third quarter. Heading into the fourth quarter, late stage commercial pipelines at quarter end are up 68% from a year ago. Our teams are actively implementing our down beta action plans. Fee revenue growth was robust in the third quarter, and we have confidence in our many initiatives, including merchant acquiring, as well as the outlook for capital markets and advisory revenues given strong pipelines as we enter the fourth quarter. We are maintaining disciplined expense management while continuing to invest. The additional efficiency actions we took in the third quarter will support our ability to sustain investment into revenue-producing initiatives into 2025. Credit remains a hallmark of Huntington with stable charge-offs and improved non-performing and criticized assets. In closing, we have confidence in our ability to sustain our organic growth outlook as we finish the year and move into 2025. Zach, over to you to provide more detail on our financial performance.