Bank of America Corporation

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Bank of America earnings announcement. At this time, I'd like to turn the program over to Lee McIntyre. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Catherine. Good morning. Welcome. Thank you for joining the call to review our first quarter results. I trust everybody has had a chance to review our earnings release documents. They are available, including the earnings presentation that we'll be referring to during this call. on the investor relations section of the bankofamerica.com website. I'm going to turn the call over to CEO Brian Moynihan and Alistair Borthwick, our CFO, to discuss the quarter. But before I do, let me just remind you that we may make forward-looking statements and refer to non-GAAP financial measures during this call. Our forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and assumptions. and subject to risks and uncertainties. Factors that might cause those actual results to materially differ from those expectations are detailed in our earnings materials and the SEC filings that are available on our website. Information about the non-GAAP financial measures, including reconciliations to US GAAP, can also be found in our earnings materials, and those are available on our website. So with that, We'll turn it over to Brian. Thank you.

Good morning, and thank all of you for joining us. I'm starting on slide two of the materials. Your company produced one of its highest core EPS earnings numbers in a challenge operating environment in the first quarter. Simply put, we navigate that environment well. The preparedness and strength of Bank of America and the trust of our clients reflects a decade-long responsible growth model. and relationship nature of our franchise. During quarter one, importantly, our organic growth engine continued to perform. Let me first summarize some points, and I'll turn over to Alistair to take you through the details of the quarter. If you go to slide two of the materials, Bank of America delivered strong earnings, growing EPS 18% over first quarter 22. Every business segment performed well. We grew clients and accounts organically and at a strong pace. We delivered our seventh straight quarter of operating leverage, led by a 13% year-over-year revenue growth. We further strengthened our balance sheet, with our CET1 ratio increasing to 11.4%. Regulatory capital ended at the highest nominal level in our history at $184 billion. We maintained strong liquidity. We ended the quarter with more than $900 billion in global liquidity sources. We earned good returns for you as our shareholders, with a return on tangible common equity of 17% and 107 basis points return on average assets. Tangible value per share grew 9% year over year. We did this as the economy slowed. And remember, our research team continues to predict a shallow recession that will occur beginning in the quarter three of 2023. It's interesting, we look at our consumer behavior, payments by consumer continues to drive the U.S. economy. We've seen debit and credit card spending at about 6% year-over-year growth pace. A little slower, but still healthy. But remember, card spending represents less than a quarter of how consumers pay for things out of their accounts at Bank of America. Overall, payments from our customers' accounts across all sources are up 9% year-over-year for March as a month. Year-to-date, they're up about 8% for the quarter. After slowing the back half at 22 a bit, we saw the pace of payments pick back up in quarter one, especially in the latter parts of the quarter. Consumers' financial positions remain generally healthy. They are employed with generally higher wages, continue to have strong account balances, and have good access to credit. As you think through all the tightening actions of the Fed, The flows to alternative yielding assets, investments, and the disruption of the past quarter. Our deposits continue to perform well, ending the quarter at $1.91 trillion. If you think about it, that's about the same balance as we had in mid-October of 2022. So we've seen these balances stabilize and remain 34% above they were prior to the pandemic. The team has managed well during these periods while remaining focused on the things we can control to drive value through our franchise. I thank them for a very strong quarter, near record earnings with strong returns. Let me turn the call over to Alastair to walk through the details of the quarter.