Citigroup, Inc.

Hello, and welcome to City's third quarter 2021 earnings review with Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser and Chief Financial Officer Mark Mason. Today's call will be hosted by Jen Landis, Head of City Investor Relations. We ask that you please hold all questions until the completion of the formal 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. Mrs. Landis, you may begin.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and thank you all for joining us. I'd like to remind you that today's presentation, which is available for download on our website, citigroup.com, may contain forward-looking statements which are based on management's current expectation and are subject to uncertainty and changes in circumstances. Actual results may differ materially from these statements due to a variety of factors, including those described in our SEC filing. Before we get started, I'd like to thank Liz Lynn for being such an incredible partner during these last few months. I really enjoyed getting to know the entire city team, and I'm honored to be the next head of investor relations. And I look forward to working with you all. With that, I will turn it over to Jane.

so thank you jen and good morning everyone i'm delighted to join you today so let's kick off the call with what we're seeing from a macro perspective and the tremendous engagement we continue to experience with clients before i give you an update on our results and priorities certainly the recovery from the pandemic continues to drive corporate and consumer confidence i particularly like the robust pipelines we see through the rest of the year and beyond Corporate client sentiment remains very positive with healthy cash flows and liquidity driving M&A activity and deleveraging. And consumer balance sheets remain unusually strong on the back of the increase in consumer net worth during the pandemic. Now, all that said, growth has come off the boiler tad. We're watching three things very closely. The slowdown in China and its impact on global growth. Inflation and supply constraints in labor, materials and energy. And finally, what happens next with the U.S. debt ceiling negotiations? These are also the issues which repeatedly surface in our conversations with clients. So turning to the quarter, we reported net income of $4.6 billion and EPS of $2.15. Embedded in these results is a pre-tax loss related to the sale of our Australia consumer business, which Mark's going to provide the details on. Excluding this transaction, our third quarter revenues would have been up 3% over last year, and our EPS would have been $2.44. In the institutional clients group, we grew revenues by 4% year over year as we continue to see strong client engagement with momentum in investment banking, equity markets and security services, more than offsetting the 16% decline in fixed income markets. I'm very proud to tell you that it was Citi's best M&A quarter and the second best investment banking quarter in a decade. And lending in the ICG grew again this quarter, albeit modestly. We also had a very strong quarter in equity markets with revenues up 40% year over year. So despite that normalization in fixed income versus the pretty extraordinary performance of 2020, overall markets revenues were only down 5% and they were up 11% versus the third quarter of 2019. We continue to successfully execute on our strategy to grow fee revenue across the ICG businesses. For example, while TTS continues to be impacted by interest rate headwinds, our fees this quarter were the highest in a decade. You can also see how our global network uniquely positions us to help our clients navigate the supply chain challenges so many of them are facing, a dynamic that we expect to persist for the near future. Similarly, we drove double-digit fee revenue growth and security services in the private bank, as client assets under custody and assets under management continued their vigorous growth trajectory. In global consumer banking, healthy consumer balance sheets and persistently elevated payment rates did mean that loan growth remained under pressure. The other key drivers are a bit more encouraging, however. U.S. branded cards purchase sales are well above 2019 levels, and acquisitions across branded cards, Mexico, and the Asia hubs are also all now at or above pre-COVID levels. Similarly, we continue to benefit from double-digit growth in deposits and assets under management across the franchise. Let me briefly touch on our U.S. retail strategy. Now, our digital strategy and investments are starting to pay dividends. Digital deposits stand at $19 billion, having grown 26% in the last year. And we see more than two-thirds of our digital deposit balances coming from customers outside of our branch footprint, with about half of those deposits from our cardholders who did not previously have a retail relationship with us. Now, obviously, we were disappointed by Google's decision to discontinue Googleplex, but we learned a lot through the effort, and the vast majority of the investments will be leveraged for our proprietary efforts and future partnerships. So all in all, we ended the quarter with a common equity Tier 1 capital ratio of 11.7% on a standardized basis, and our tangible book value per share increased to $79.07, up over 10% from a year ago. So far this year we've returned close to $11 billion to shareholders through a healthy dividend and share repurchases. We remain committed to returning excess capital over and above the amount necessary to invest in our franchise and to maintain our safety and soundness. So overall, I'm quite pleased with these results given the environment we're operating in. And while we have much work ahead, we're seeing the results of the previous investments that we have made. Now, I'd like to update you on our strategic priorities. Turning to slide three, We've included a page that clearly lays out our top priorities and some of the actions we've taken to date against them. And we're going to share this page with you each quarter to ensure you're up to date on where we are and the milestones and progress along the way. And as you can see, we've been hard at work, acting against the priorities that I've laid out. The transformation, the strategy refresh, and our culture and talent. Now clearly the transformation is our number one priority right now. And key to that transformation is our safety and soundness and addressing the consent orders by modernizing our risk and control environment. During the quarter, we submitted our plans to our regulators and continue to have a constructive dialogue with them as we pivot now firmly towards execution. We're already well underway in the investment in our risk and control environment, and we're really bringing a culture of excellence to this effort, and we are moving with urgency. We also continue to make progress refreshing our strategy. In addition to announcing the sale of our consumer business in Australia, we're deep in the second round of bids for the remaining exit markets. We've begun the work on how these exits will enable us to simplify our operations in Asia and eliminate stranded costs. And we're really looking forward to bringing all the strategy work together for you on Invest Today and presenting our vision for the firm. And as Mark's going to touch on, we've begun executing on many of the decisions that we've already made, including in TTS, wealth, and commercial banking, with investments in front office hires, as well as enhanced digital product and service offerings. And we're already starting to see the impact of these investments emerge through key drivers across these businesses. And finally, turning to culture and talent. We continue to attract high caliber external talent whilst driving towards our diversity goals, ensuring clear accountability and breaking down the silos that have historically impeded our progress as a company. It's a new city. And all of this work has one overarching goal, to responsibly narrow the returns gap with our peers. We will update you with the metrics and milestones that we'll use to hold ourselves accountable so you can hold us accountable to them as well. And with that, let me turn it over to Mark to go through our performance in more detail, and then we will both be delighted to take your questions.