Citigroup, Inc.

Hello, and welcome to Citi's third quarter 2026 earnings call. Today's call will be hosted by Margo Pillich, head of Citi Strategy, M&A, and 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. Ms. Pillich, you may begin.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, and thank you all for joining our third quarter 2026 earnings call. I am joined today by our chair and chief executive officer, Jane Fraser, and our chief financial officer, Gonzalo Lucchetti. 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 expectations 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 earnings materials as well as in our SEC filings. And with that, I'll turn it over to Jane.

Thank you, Marco, and good morning to everyone. This morning we reported net income of $5.2 billion for the third quarter, with an EPS of $2.85 and an ROTCE of 11.5%. Our returns improved meaningfully in services, banking, wealth, and U.S. consumer cards. Thank you for watching. As previously shared, we pulled some of our planned investments and severance into this quarter. We remain very intentional around our expenses and our investments in talent and technology. Even with this pull forward, we delivered positive operating leverage, holding expense growth to 3%, excluding last year's notable item. Thank you for joining us. We continue to lead through innovation, bringing new real-time capabilities to our clients with the launch of Citi Token services in the UAE and Japan and the introduction of Custody Plus. Assets under custody and administration grew by 16% and we are laser focused on winning and onboarding further new mandates. In markets, revenues were up 6%. Equities revenues were up 14%, driven by our performance in Prime and in Asia, where we have been investing to gain share. FIC was up 4%. Rates was pressured by the trading environment, but we saw good growth in FX and spread products, both stable revenue streams. In banking, revenues were up 6%. We performed particularly well in ECM, where we played meaningful roles in the six largest transactions of the quarter, including leading SK Hynix, the largest ever IPO of an Asian-based issuer. and in Leverage Finance, we led SoftBank's $11 billion high yield offering, the largest ever of its kind. I am proud of these wins and how our client relationships and bankers, including the new talent we have attracted, allowed us to land these mandates. As you have seen this quarter, we are continuing to invest responsibly in high quality talent to build on our strengths and fill identified gaps in our franchise. Wealth's performance continues to steadily improve, with growth across all three businesses. ROTCE was over 14%, significantly higher than last year. We brought in $38 billion in net new investment assets this quarter, up over 100% from a year ago. We continue to launch new offerings such as Premium Boost to deepen client relationships and are seeing strong uptake of our wealth offering by our retail bank clients. In U.S. consumer cards, revenues were flat as a result of higher partner payments. At the same time, our general purpose portfolio drove 6% growth in total average loans. We are increasing investment in this business, both through our deep relationships with key partners and differentiated rewards for our customers, as you saw with the acquisition of Card. With returns of over 21% in the quarter, this is already a very attractive business, and the benefits of our investments will continue to scale over time. In legacy franchises, we closed on the sale of a 1.4% equity stake of Banamex, bringing the total amount divested so far to 49%. We're now busy preparing for Banamex's deconsolidation from Citi next year. The IPO would happen after that, when market conditions allow, and when the usual regulatory requirements are met. At that point, our international consumer divestitures will be nearly complete. Turning to capital. We returned over $4 billion to our shareholders this quarter, including $3 billion in share buybacks. We have also utilized about 900 million of our disallowed DTAs so far this year, slightly above the path we discussed at Investor Day in May. Our tangible book value per share rose 6% to $101.59, and our CET1 ratio stood at 12.8% and remains about 120 basis points above our current regulatory minimum. Now, I know that the opportunities and risks that AI presents are on everyone's mind. Our transformation has modernized our core technology platform, giving us the foundation we need to implement AI firm-wide. As I've said before, we're approaching AI through four lenses. How it can help us grow, how we can deploy it to operate more efficiently, how we can teach our people to use these new capabilities, and how we can strengthen our defenses given the enhanced threat environment we and our clients face. I've talked frequently in the past about what we're doing on the first three, and we're excited about the top-line benefits and the efficiencies we're delivering. and the many opportunities to do more for our clients. But let me spend a minute on the fourth lens. Our cyber defense strategy is about being on the front foot, about moving fast and retaining trust. We don't wait for risks to happen. We're constantly preparing and improving our defenses. We're in the business of managing risk every day and this is no different. We've been hardening our systems and running challenging and disruptive scenarios to stress test our defenses and our responses. We then modify our playbooks based on what we've learned so we're ready before an event occurs, not after. We're focused on our resilience and working with our peers and regulators on reducing systemic risk, even as we deploy AI to improve the performance of our firm. Finally, on the macro environment, conditions did soften a bit during the third quarter, and while various headwinds, most recently higher energy prices and tighter monetary policies, have been challenging, The global economy has held up remarkably well. In the US, whilst much has been made of the AI boom, the consumer is still driving much of the growth, the labour market is stable, and companies remain active. Our near-term economic outlook remains positive. China is seeing similar benefits from AI but without the consumer spend needed for balance growth and so their economy leans heavily on exports. And Europe remains structurally challenged. That backdrop is exactly why clients are leaning on our network. They're engaged and they are healthy, as you will see from our credit numbers. They're open to strategic opportunities whilst being keenly aware that there could be more disruptions ahead. Our focus is on delivering our network and providing the intellectual firepower to help them compete more effectively, raise capital or manage their supply chains. They know we will be at their side, no matter what environment they face. This quarter was another proof point of our consistent execution and delivery in the face of a dynamic environment. In terms of the journey ahead, as you know, we expect to exceed this year's ROTCE target of 10-11%, even as we pull forward the investments to support our near-term target of 11-13%. But these are simply the next waypoints on our path to reach 14-15% in a sustainable manner, which we will do. With that, let me turn it to Gonzalo, and then we will both be delighted to take your questions.