Bank of America Corporation

Hello and welcome everyone joining today's Bank of America earnings announcement. At this time all participants are in a listen only mode. Please note this call is being recorded. We're standing by if you should need any assistance. It is now my pleasure to turn the meeting over to Lee McIntyre. Please go ahead.

Thank you Leo. Good morning. Thank you for joining us to review our fourth quarter results. During the quarter we elected to change the accounting method related to our tax-related equity investments in order to better align our financial statement presentation with the economic and financial impact of those investments. As a result, we filed an 8K on January the 6th and a related mini supplemental package recasting the numbers for the quarters of 2024 and 2025 and the full year of 23 and 24. The primary impact of the accounting change was a reclassification between the income statement line items in our income statement, which had an insignificant impact on net income. Our discussion today is based on those recast numbers. As usual, our earnings release documents are available on the investor relations section of the bankofamerica.com website. Those documents include the earnings presentation that we will make reference to during the call. Brian Moynihan will make some brief comments before turning the call over to Alistair Borthwick, our CFO, to discuss more of the details in the quarter. Let me remind you that we may make forward-looking statements and refer to non-GAAP financial measures during the call. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and assumptions and that are subject to risk and uncertainties. Factors that may cause our actual results to materially differ from expectations are detailed in our earnings materials and SEC filings available on our website. Information about non-GAAP financial measures, including reconciliations to US GAAP, can also be found in our earnings materials and are available on our website. With that, Brian, I'll pass over to you.

Thank you, Lee, and good morning, and thank you for joining us. This morning, Bank of America reported net income of $7.6 billion for the fourth quarter. That is up 12% from the fourth quarter of 2024. Our EPS was 98 cents per share. That's an increase of 18% from the fourth quarter of 2024. We delivered 7% year-over-year revenue growth. This was led by a 10% improvement in net interest income, up to $15.9 billion on an FTE basis. For net interest income, we have delivered each quarter what we laid out across the year and finished a bit stronger than we expected. We grew average loans 8%. We grew average deposits 3%. We delivered 330 basis points operating and leveraging quarter four through continuing discipline expense management. Alistair will take you through the details of the quarter, but first I want to highlight a few things about 2025 to close the year out. I'm working off of slide two in the earnings presentation. Our fourth quarter topped off a strong performance by my teammates at Bank of America for 2025. We delivered on our commitments to shareholders across the year with solid growth across revenue, earnings, and returns. We drove operating leverage and continued robust investments in people, brand, technology, and both our physical and digital networks. Those results reflect the power of our diversified business model and our commitment to drive responsible growth. Some highlights of 2025 you can see here. Revenue was a little over $113 billion, was up 7% year-over-year. We generated 250 basis points of operating leverage for the year. Passive quality was strong, and net charge-offs improved from 2024. We grew net income year-over-year by 13%. In addition, we grew EPS year-over-year to $3.81 by 19%. We also increased our profitability and returns during the year. Return on tangible common equity improved to 128 basis points. Our return on assets improved to 89 basis points. Our results in prudent balance sheet management allowed us to distribute 41% more in capital back to shareholders, more than $30 billion. We grew loans 8% and we grew deposits 3%. Loans outpaced the industry and average deposits now have grown for the 10th consecutive quarter. Our focus on all the markets we serve, whether they're domestic or international, has allowed us to grow our client balances at a faster pace than the industry. Dean described how we do this in the U.S. on our investor day, and we will cover it later in the program. As you look to slide three, we've also highlighted some organic growth highlights for the year and a quarter. We grew net new consumer checking accounts by $608,000 during the year, and that's while maintaining a strong average balance of $9,000 plus. This extended our consecutive quarterly net growth to 28 or seven years straight. We crossed over $6.5 trillion in client balances of investments, deposits, and loans across wealth and consumer banking. Our consumer investment totals reached $600 billion. Similarly, our workplace benefits totals, i.e., 401K balances and related balances, crossed over $600 billion also. It's worth noting that $28 billion of our year-over-year loan growth came through our wealth management clients. Global wealth investment management showed improved nominal profit growth, stronger pre-tax margin improvement, and continued to draw net new assets within a combined consumer of $100 billion during the year. In global banking, average deposits increased $71 billion, up 13%. We saw treasury service fees increase 13% over 24%. and ending loans grew across each line of business year over year, good core customer organic growth driving that. Investment banking saw good activity. For the full year, our investment banking fees were the highest they've been since going back to 2020 in the outside pandemic period recovery. They were 7% higher than the prior year. Fees generated in the second half of 2025 were 25% greater than the first half. What does this show? It showed good momentum by our team. It also showed that our corporate commercial clients settled in during the year after tax policy became clear, tariffs became more understood, and they looked forward and received the benefits of deregulation. Global markets, under Jimmy's leadership, saw continued growth in sales and trading with its 15th consecutive quarter of improvement and drove a record year of nearly $21 billion in sales and trading revenue. In addition to these stats, I commend you to review slides 21, 23, and 25. Those highlight the continued progress of digital deployment and activation statistics for each of our businesses. You should note there the impact of Zelle in the continued uterus growth and also note the impact of Erica, our AI agent, and its use both across our businesses and with our teammates. A couple of high-level comments of what we see in the economy. It was a pretty good, decent environment as we moved through year 2025. Consumer spending grew 5% at $4.5 trillion, grew 5% over the 2024 levels. The cap balances in the consumer business to that broad base of the US consumer were stable through the year. Delinquencies and charge-offs improved in 2025 consumer credit. Unemployment in the market remained stable, and the equity market appreciation benefit those consumers or investors in our Merrill Edge products or in our 401 platforms. Strong consumer health bodes well for a continued improvement in growth in 2026. When you go to our corporate commercial customers, again, as the tax law settled in, the tariffs appeared to be manageable, and deregulation kicked in, they had a pretty good year and good profits, including good credit quality and good money movement activity as we move through the year as they participate in the world economy. Our world-class research team, has the global growth rate for GDP at 3.4% in 2026 and U.S. at 2.6%. Risks remain out there. They always do. But we're encouraged and constructive on the year ahead, so I'll turn it over to Alistair to cover the quarter.