Citizens Financial Group, Inc.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Citizens Financial Group first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. My name is Alan, and I'll be your operator today. Currently, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a brief question and answer session. As a reminder, this event is being recorded. Now I'll turn the call over to Kristen Silberberg, Executive Vice President, Investor Relations. Kristen, you may begin. Thank you.

Thank you, Alan. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. First this morning, our Chairman and CEO, Bruce Van Thorn, and CFO, John Woods, will provide an overview of our first quarter results. Brendan Coughlin, Head of Consumer Banking, and Don McCree, Head of Commercial Banking, are also here to provide additional colour. We will be referencing our first quarter earnings presentation located on our Investor Relations website. After the presentation, we will be happy to take questions. Our comments today will include forward-looking statements which are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause our results to differ materially from expectations. These are outlined for your review on page two of the presentation. We also reference non-GAAP financial measures, so it's important to review our GAAP results on page three of the presentation and the reconciliations in the appendix.

With that, I will hand over to you, Bruce. Thanks, Kristen. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining our call today. The first quarter brought many unexpected challenges in the environment. Nonetheless, we proved resilient and adaptable, and we delivered a solid quarter for our stakeholders. We maintained a strong capital, liquidity, and funding position with our CET1 ratio at 10 percent, our TCE ratio at 6.6 percent, and a solid deposit franchise that skews two-thirds consumer. We've seen the churn in the deposit market continue to diminish since the bank failures, with our deposits broadly stable in the month of March. For the quarter, we posted underlying earnings per share of $1.10 and return on tangible equity of 15.8%. Our NII was down 3%, reflecting day count impact, slightly lower earning assets, and a stable net interest margin of 3.3%. non-interest income and non-interest expense came in broadly as expected, both impacted by seasonality. Our credit metrics are also trending as expected, and we built our ACL to loans ratio to 1.47%, which was up four basis points during the quarter, and it's 17 basis points higher than our pro forma day one CECL ACL ratio. We repurchased $400 million in shares during the quarter, which reduced our share count by 1.7%. In our slide deck, we tackle head-on some of the industry issues that investors have been concerned about. I'll let John run through the details, but the headline is that we have strong confidence in our capital, liquidity, and funding position. We have been conservative in maintaining a capital ratio near the top of our peer group, in focusing on a stable consumer-oriented and granular deposit base, and in establishing a prudent credit risk appetite and reserve level. While we have some commercial real estate exposure, we feel good about our diversification, the asset characteristics, and the borrower quality. CRE-criticized assets and workouts will increase during this cycle, but we currently expect losses to be manageable and we've already set aside meaningful reserves. On the regulatory front, it is clear that some changes will occur. Our hope is that the response is thoughtful and appropriate, leaving the bank landscape that has served our country so well intact and even stronger than before. In any case, we anticipate any changes will follow a review and comment process with any revisions likely to be phased in gradually. While much of the past month has been focused on playing strong defense, we continue to play prudent offense by investing in and advancing our strategic initiatives. We will clearly prioritize deposits, deepening, and efficiency initiatives for the balance of 2023. Our New York City metro integration is progressing extremely well, with a successful core conversion of Investors Bank in February and growth metrics that are well ahead of plan. Our outlook for 2023 still shows attractive ROTC for the full year, despite the challenging environment. There's still a great deal of uncertainty, which makes forecasting more difficult, but we remain confident in the strength of our franchise and the ability to weather the storm. We are building a great bank, and we remain excited about our future. Our capital strength and attractive franchise should position us to be nimble and to take advantage of opportunities as they arise. With that, let me turn it over to John to take you through more of the financial details. John?