Citigroup, Inc.

Hello, and welcome to Citi's First Quarter 2019 Earnings Review with Chief Executive Officer, Mike Carbet, and Chief Financial Officer, Mark Mason, CFO. Today's call will be hosted by Susan Kendall, Head of Citi Investor Relations. We ask that you please hold all questions until the completion of the former remarks, at which time you will be given instructions for the question and answer session. Also, as a reminder, This conference is being recorded today. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. Ms. Kendall, you may begin.

Thank you, Natalia. Good morning, and thank you all for joining us. On our call today, our CEO, Mike Corbett, will speak first, and Mark Mason, our CFO, will take you through the earnings presentation, which is available for download on our website, Citigroup.com. Afterwards, we'll be happy to take questions. Before we get started, I would like to remind you that today's presentation may contain forward-looking statements, which are based on management's current expectations and are subject to uncertainty and changes in circumstances. Actual results in capital and other financial conditions may differ materially from these statements due to a variety of factors, including the precautionary statements referenced in our discussion today and those included in our SEC filings, including, without limitation, the risk factors section of our 2018 Form 10-K. With that said, let me turn it over to Mike.

Thank you, Susan, and good morning, everyone. This morning we reported earnings of $4.7 billion for the first quarter of 2019. Our earnings per share of $1.87 are up 11% from a year ago. We continue to make progress against our financial targets and strategic priorities. First, in regards to improving our return on capital, our return on tangible common equity rose to 11.9%, up 50 basis points from a year ago. We had positive operating leverage and improved our efficiency for the 10th straight quarter. And we had strong growth in both loans and deposits in our core businesses. In our global consumer bank, we had underlying revenue growth and positive operating leverage in every region, excluding the Hilton gain last year. Total revenues grew 4% on flat expenses. We grew our operating margin by 8%. and credit costs remain broadly in line with our expectations, driving double-digit EBIT growth. In North America, we saw strong underlying growth of 5% in our branded cards portfolio and 3% growth in retail services. We saw deposit growth in retail banking and introduced new products to support our branch-light digital heavy strategy in the U.S. In Mexico, we had 5% underlying growth and while Asia grew at a slower rate due to a very strong prior year in investment revenues, loan and deposit growth remained solid. Our institutional clients group also performed well. In our steady accrual-type businesses, such as Treasury and Trade Solutions and Security Services, overall revenues were up 7% in constant dollars. We also had a 20% increase in investment banking, where we have steadily been gaining share among our target clients. Fixed income did rebound from the fourth quarter with modest year-over-year growth, while equities was impacted by a weaker environment. We continued to execute against our second goal in regards to improving the return of capital to our shareholders. During the quarter, we returned over $5 billion in the form of buybacks and dividends. We repurchased 66 million common shares in the quarter and have reduced our shares outstanding by 9 percent from a year ago. We believe we're on track to reach the commitment we made at Investor Day of returning at least $60 billion to our shareholders over the three CCAR cycles ending next year, subject, of course, to regulatory approval. We recently completed our 2018-2019 CCAR submission to the Federal Reserve, which is the third tranche of that commitment. When we entered the year, we talked about the need for us to be flexible to meet a range of operating environments given the way 2018 ended. We have multiple levers at our disposal, including expenses, balance sheet, and continued credit discipline. I think we used them correctly, and now the environment seems to be normalizing. While GDP growth does appear to be slowing somewhat, we still see good consumer and corporate engagement. We'll continue to focus on serving our clients and finding opportunities to deepen our relationships across our consumer and institutional businesses. We remain committed to executing our strategy and to meeting our financial targets. As you know, we pride ourselves on having a deep bench, and last week we called on that depth when we selected new leadership who helped drive our firm forward in light of Jamie Faris's retirement. Haku Ibarra, Carrie Lathrop, Andy Morton, Mary McNiff, and Jessica Roos all have decades of experience at our firm. I also think that change at the top is healthy and creates opportunities to do things differently and shows that we take our talent and succession planning seriously. Now I'll turn it over to Mark, then we'd be happy to take your questions. Mark.