Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

Greetings and welcome to the Huntington Bancshares third quarter 2026 earnings conference 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.

Thanks, Christine, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us for our third quarter call. Our speakers for our presentation today are Steve Steinour, Chairman and CEO, Brant Standridge, President, and Zach Wasserman, Chief Financial Officer. Unfortunately, Zach has become ill very unexpectedly, although I did speak with him a little while ago and he is sounding quite good. but he will not be participating in the Q&A portion of today's call. So I will be joining in his stead and also joining us for Q&A will be our Chief Credit Officer, Brendan Lawler. Earnings documents which include our forward-looking statements, disclaimer and non-GAAP information and copies of the slides we'll be referencing 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 call. With that, let me now turn it over to Steve.

Thanks, Eric. Good morning and thank you for joining us. Starting on slide three, we delivered solid operating performance in the third quarter, reflecting continued execution across our core businesses and the benefits of our investments and recent partnerships. The operating environment is generally constructive, evidenced by strong commercial pipelines and solid consumer spending trends. and our expectation is that conditions for the rest of this year and next remain supportive of healthy levels of customer activity, although higher interest rates and elevated prices for energy and other inputs could dampen growth in the future years or potentially further exacerbate the case shape of the consumer economy. In the midst of this, our teams continue to acquire and deepen relationships across the bank. While macroeconomic conditions may change, our strategy has not. We remain disciplined in maximizing our risk-adjusted returns, optimizing the balance sheet, realizing expense efficiencies, and continuing to invest for long-term growth. There are four key messages I'd like to leave you with. First, Huntington is a strategically well-positioned national franchise with substantial scale in markets expected to grow above the national average A leading national commercial bank and has a broad set of value added fee businesses. These capabilities support sustained organic growth and earnings expansion. Second, we are delivering solid operating performance in a fluid environment. Our CNI growth remains very strong, driven by the continued expansion of our national commercial strategy. And we've made prudent decisions to protect credit performance and returns by scaling back in certain asset classes where risk-adjusted pricing has compressed to levels we don't consider to be rational. This has impacted the growth of certain loan portfolios but supported our return on tangible common equity. Third, our partnerships continue to perform very well. Cost synergies have been achieved as planned, revenue synergies are tracking, and the partnerships are expanding our ability to acquire customers and deepen relationships across Texas and the South. And fourth, our aggregate moderate to low risk appetite remains fundamental to how we operate. Our liquidity position remains robust, credit performance remains top tier, and we are allocating capital only where opportunities meet our risk-adjusted return hurdles. Together, these capabilities and our focused execution support revenue and earnings growth, improving returns, tangible book value growth, and substantial long-term shareholder value creation. Slide 4 shows our expectations for the drivers of value creation over this year and next. We expect 2027 EPS to grow more than 20% from 2025 while steadily increasing ROTCE into the 17% to 18% range. We expect tangible book value per share to increase by more than 10% from the 2025 level, reflecting continued earnings generation and disciplined capital management. We've completed approximately $460 million of share repurchases year to date. We continue to expect to return substantial capital to our shareholders over the next several quarters. These outcomes reflect the strength of our core franchise, continued growth in our value-added fee businesses, partner synergies, operating efficiency, and disciplined capital management. Let me now turn the call over to Brant Standridge. As you are all probably aware, Brant was recently elevated to the role of President of Huntington and now has responsibility for all of our revenue generating segments.