Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

Greetings and welcome to the Huntington Bank Shares first quarter 2026 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 would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Eric Wasserstrom, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our first quarter call. Our presenters today are Steve Steinauer, Chairman, President, and CEO, and Zach Wasserman, Chief Financial Officer. Brant Stanridge, President of Consumer and Regional Banking, and Brendan Lawler, Chief Credit Officer, will join us for the Q&A. Earnings documents, which include our forward-looking statements disclaimer and non-gap information, and copies of the slides we'll be reviewing, are available on the Investor Relations section of our website, which is www.ir.huntington.com. As a reminder, this call is being recorded and a replay will be available starting about one hour after the close of the call. With that, let me now turn it over to Steve.

Thanks, Eric. Good morning, and thank you for joining us. We delivered an outstanding first quarter by all measures, driven by disciplined execution across the franchise that is translating into strong profitability and returns. The essential question that we, our peers across the industry, and our customers all face in this moment is about the outlook for the economy. So let me open with our perspective. We're operating in a dynamic global environment, with geopolitical developments adding complexity to the outlook. We're watching these factors closely, and currently we characterize conditions across our footprint as remaining consistent with prior quarters. We see broad-based strength across commercial and markets. Our clients are taking a thoughtful, long-term approach to decisions, and we're not seeing any signs of a material shift in underlying demand. The consumer story is a bit more mixed, with middle and upper income consumers continuing to spend in a manner supportive of the overall economy, while lower income households continue to feel pressure from the cumulative impacts of inflation. Importantly, these factors do not change our outlook for performance this year. We delivered a strong first quarter. Pipelines for the second quarter are healthy, and customer activity continues to be steady. What differentiates Huntington in this environment is the flexibility and resilience of our operating model. We are a well-diversified, super-regional bank supported by strong capital, liquidity, and credit fundamentals, and we are well-positioned to perform in a range of scenarios. As we look ahead, we believe the firm is approaching an inflection point where strong core performance, combined with the benefits of our new partnerships, will drive higher returns and accelerate our earnings and tangible book value growth. there are five key messages I'd like to leave with you. First, we operate a differentiated super regional bank model with multiple growth engines, and that model is working exceptionally well. We've continued to invest in strategic areas, including our Carolinas expansion, the build-out of our vertical specialty businesses, partnerships with Cadence and Veritex, and the Janney and TM Capital acquisitions, which will support durable earnings generation for years to come. Second, our core continues to perform very well. Organic growth remains the foundation of our strategy, with strong performance across our businesses and geographies and standout results in value-added fee services, including record capital markets performance in the first quarter. Third, our balance sheet, grounded in our aggregate moderate to lowest appetite, provides us the confidence and flexibility to perform well in an uncertain future. We have very strong liquidity as well as good capital and reserves and remain vigilant in our outlook. Consistent with this, we made the decision to temporarily build additional liquidity, improving our already peer leading liquidity position. Fourth, our partner integrations are on track to deliver expected cost and revenue synergies from Veritex and Cadence, and we remain excited about the extraordinary growth opportunities we continue to see in our core and across Texas and the South. We also successfully integrated the J&E and TM capital acquisition, which became accretive within three months and contributed to a record quarter for our capital markets businesses, reflecting strong execution by the team. And fifth, our earnings power generates significant capital, grows tangible book value, and supports consistent shareholder returns. That strength enables us to reinvest in the franchise while returning excess capital in a value-creating way. We bought back shares in Q1 and continued buying quarter to date. Turning to slide four, on an adjusted basis, we generated 9% earnings per share growth, 36% PPNR growth, and 9% tangible book value growth. Importantly, over the last five quarters, we've consistently delivered ROTCE at the target range we set at our 2025 investor day of 16 to 17% on a rolling 12-month basis. Building on that performance, we raised our ROTCE target to 18% to 19%, driven by expected synergies from our partnerships, growth in high return value-added services, as well as continuing capital return. We remain confident in our ability to deliver that level of profitability in 2027. Slide five highlights the strength of our balance sheet. Our liquidity, capital, and credit profile put us in a position of strength to deliver consistent performance across a wide range of operating environments. Liquidity is a clear point of differentiation. We added cash to our balance sheet this quarter and available contingent liquidity now represents approximately 173% of uninsured deposits. 69% of our total deposits are insured and our unmodified liquidity coverage ratio is 118%. All of these metrics are well above pure median. Capital remains strong. Our adjusted CET1 ratio is well above regulatory minimums and within our 9% to 10% operating range. We expect Basel III Endgame to be beneficial to our regulatory capital position. As you know, we manage credit with rigor and conservativism. Our reserve levels remain well above peers, while net charge-offs continue to trend well below the peer median. Taken together, this balance sheet strength enables consistent performance throughout economic cycles and the ability to selectively capture organic growth opportunities. Turning to slide six, we remain exceptionally focused on disciplined, rigorous execution of the integration of our partnerships, which is proceeding very well. Importantly, our core business continues to perform at a very high level as we execute this integration. Dedicated integration teams are operating with clarity and discipline across three priorities. First, welcoming new colleagues and customers into the franchise. This includes aligning regional leadership, expanding specialty banking and targeted fee capabilities, and successfully onboarding over 6,000 new colleagues and 1.5 million new customers. Second, executing the operational and systems integration is advancing on schedule. The Veritex conversion was completed in the first quarter and we're on track for the Cadence conversion in June. And third and most exciting, we are delivering the expenses and revenue synergies we've committed to. Cost initiatives are tracking on schedule and we're already seeing revenue benefits as customers adopt more of the Huntington platform. particularly through deeper engagement across capital markets and payments, increased card usage, and new consumer account openings. Because of this focus on realizing the synergies combined with the continued outstanding performance of our historical core, we are approaching an inflection point where execution will compound earnings power and higher returns, engaging our flywheel that drives powerful long-term value creation. And with that, I'll turn it to Zach to discuss the quarter's financial results in detail.