Discover Financial Services

Good morning. My name is Todd, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the fourth quarter 2023 Discover Financial Services earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question at that time, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you should need operator assistance, please press star zero. Thank you. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Eric Wasserstrom, Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome to this morning's call. I'll begin on slide two of our earnings presentation, which you can find in the financial section of our Investor Relations website, investorrelations.discover.com. Our discussion today contains certain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially. Please refer to our notices regarding forward-looking statements that appear in our fourth quarter 2023 earnings press release and presentation. Our call today will include remarks from our interim CEO, John Owen, and John Green, our chief financial officer. After we conclude our formal comments, there'll be time for a question and answer session. During the Q&A session, we request that you ask one question followed by one follow-up question. After your follow-up question, please return to the queue. Now it's my pleasure to turn the call over to John.

Thank you, Eric, and thanks to our listeners for joining today's call. 2023 was a year of significant change for Discover, and we believe the actions we've taken position the company to continue driving strong, long-term performance. When I stepped into the interim CEO role, I had three priorities. My top priority was to advance our culture of compliance, and we have made meaningful strides in our corporate governance and risk management capabilities. That said, this is a journey that will take time and continued investments over the coming years to further enhance our compliance and risk management capabilities. My second priority is to continue delivering a great customer experience at every touch point, which we do by providing our customer with award-winning service and products. I'd like to thank our 20,000 employees for delivering a great customer experience to help our customers achieve a brighter financial future. In 2023, we were recognized for the first time as one of Fortune 100's best companies to work for. This award adds to our accolade for working parents, women, people with disabilities, and members of the LGBTQ plus community, and we're proud to be an inclusive workplace. My third priority is to sustain our strong financial performance. We reported net income of $2.9 billion for full year 2023. and earnings per share of $11.26. This makes 2023 the third best year for EPS performance in our history. In delivering these results, we achieved several important milestones. We exceeded $100 billion in CARB receivables, grew deposits by 21% year over year, successfully launched our cashback debit account on a national scale, and we announced our intent to exit the private student lending business. On December the 11th, we announced a new leadership, and we're excited to have Michael Rhodes joining us for our incoming chief executive officer. Michael is an experienced leader with a deep background in the financial services industry. He has managed all aspects of a consumer banking business with deep experience in the credit card space, payments, online and mobile banking, and served as group head of innovation and technology. His appointment marks the conclusion of a rigorous search process and we look forward to Michael's arrival. When Michael arrives, I will return to my prior role on Discover's board of directors. In conclusion, I'm proud of the progress we made in 2023. Our integrated digital banking model, resilient financial performance, and maturing risk management and compliance capabilities positioned Discover well for 2024 and beyond. With that, I'll now turn the call over to John Green. review our fourth quarter 2023 financial results in more detail and provide some perspective on 2024.