Comerica Incorporated

Hello and welcome to the Comerica second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. You may be placed into question queue at any time by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Kelly Gage, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Kelly.

Thanks, Kevin. Good morning, and welcome to Comerica's second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Participating on this call will be our President, Chairman, and CEO, Kurt Farmer, Chief Financial Officer, Jim Herzog, Chief Credit Officer, Melinda Chausse, and Chief Banking Officer, Peter Sedzik. During this presentation, we will be referring to slides which provide additional details. The presentation slides and our press release are available on the SEC's website, as well as on the investor relations section of our website, Comerica.com. The presentation in this conference call contain forward-looking statements. In that regard, you should be mindful of the risks and uncertainties that can cause actual results to vary materially from expectations. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this presentation, and we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement. Please refer to the safe harbor statement in today's earnings presentation on slide two. Also, the presentation in this conference call will reference non-GAAP measures. In that regard, I direct you to the reconciliation of these measures in the earnings materials that are available on our website, Comerica.com. Now I'll turn the call over to Kurt, who will begin on slide three.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call. Today, we reported second quarter earnings of $206 million, or $1.49 per share, outperforming the first quarter on both a reported and an adjusted basis. Although average loans declined, our targeted focus on responsible growth drove an inflection in balances throughout the quarter. In an uncertain economic and political environment, customer sentiment appeared slightly less optimistic than last quarter. However, a number of our businesses saw positive momentum, and we believe our pipeline supports our growth outlook. As expected, net interest margins started to rebound, and both non-interest income and non-interest expenses improved. Credit quality remained strong, reflecting our proven underwriting disciplines. Being a responsible company is deeply embedded in our culture, and in June we published our 16th Annual Corporate Responsibility Report detailing our commitments to this important topic. We remain proud of our efforts to prioritize our employees and communities. Once again, U.S. News recognized us as one of the best companies to work for, and we were named one of the 50 most community-minded organizations. We feel responsible business is good business, and we take pride in the unique role we play in supporting our markets. Second quarter financial highlights are on slide four. Average loans were impacted by muted first quarter demand, but balances increased consistently throughout the quarter. Our deliberate first quarter reduction in broker time deposits drove a majority of the decline in average deposits. However, we also continue to see pressure on noninterest-bearing balances as we near what we believe may be the peak of the rate cycle. The decline in net interest income reflected both lower-fed deposits and average loans. Charge-offs remained below historical averages at nine basis points, and our loan loss reserves declined modestly. Even excluding the net benefit from lower notable items, both non-interest income and non-interest expenses saw favorable trends. Taxes increased due to higher income and less of a benefit from discrete items, and our estimated CET1 of 11.55% remained above our 10% strategic target. While we remain in an elevated rate environment, we think the favorable customer-related trends coupled with the expected structural benefit to net interest income in coming quarters positions us well. Now I'll turn the call to Jim to review our second quarter financial results in more detail. Jim?