KeyCorp

Good morning and welcome to Key Corp's first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during that time, simply press star 1 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brian Monning, Key Corp Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. I'd like to thank you for joining Key Corp's first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. I'm here with Chris Gorman, our chairman and chief executive officer, Clark Kyatt, our chief financial officer, and Mo Romani, our chief risk officer. As usual, we will reference our earnings presentation slides, which can be found in the investor relations section of the key.com website. In the back of the presentation, you will find our statement on forward-looking disclosures and certain financial measures, including non-GAAP measures. This covers our earnings materials as well as remarks made on this morning's call.

actual results may differ materially from forward-looking statements and those statements speak only as of today april 16 2026 and will not be updated with that i will turn it over to chris thank you brian and good morning everyone our strong first quarter performance demonstrates disciplined execution and significant momentum as we continue to deliver on our commitments we reported first quarter earnings of 44 cents per share up 33% year over year. Return on tangible common equity exceeded 13% as we continue to make significant progress with respect to our goal of 15% plus return on tangible common equity by year end 2027. Revenue grew 10% year over year, with revenue growing more than two times the rate of expenses. Adjusted pre-provision net revenue grew an additional $29 million sequentially, marking the eighth consecutive quarter of adjusted PPNR growth. Net interest margin expanded five basis points sequentially to 2.87% as we remain on track to exceed 3% net interest margin by year end. commercial loan growth was strong and broad-based across industries and geographies, increasing $3.3 billion, or 4% sequentially, on a period-end basis. We continued to be disciplined with respect to funding cost management. Total funding costs declined by 15 basis points during the quarter, with interest-bearing deposit costs decreasing 22 basis points resulting in a cumulative through the cycle down beta of 56%. Asset quality metrics remain strong with a net charge off ratio of just 38 basis points. In addition to improving our return on capital, we remain committed to substantial return of capital to our shareholders. During the quarter, we took advantage of the pullback in regional bank stock prices and repurchased nearly $400 million of common stock, well in excess of the $300 million-plus commitment we made in January. We are also encouraged by the latest Basel III endgame proposal. Our preliminary estimate shows a 100-plus basis point benefit to our marked CET1 ratio under the revised standardized approach if implemented as currently proposed. This would imply a fully phased-in ratio of around 11%, higher than our peers and higher than we believe we need to operate our business in the ordinary course. Our capital position gives us flexibility to continue to lean in aggressively this year and in the coming years to support our clients, to support our own organic growth, and to repurchase our shares. Subject to market conditions, we expect to buy back at least $1.3 billion of our shares in 2026, up from the $1.2 billion we previously communicated. While the macroeconomic environment has continued to be dynamic, we will remain laser focused on managing what we can control, the delivery of our differentiated capabilities, acceleration of new client acquisition, and exceptional service to all our clients. We continue to grow clients. Commercial clients were up 3% and relationship households were up 2% from the prior year in the first quarter. We continue to gain share across our priority fee-based businesses, wealth, investment banking, and commercial payments. In the first quarter, these businesses collectively grew by 12% when compared to the prior year. This past quarter, we raised nearly $47 billion of capital on behalf of our clients, retaining 19% on our balance sheet. Investment banking pipelines continue to remain elevated, up 5% from year end with M&A pipelines at record levels. While we do currently expect investment banking fees to decline in the second quarter compared to the record first quarter given current market conditions, we continue to feel very comfortable that we can grow investment banking fees in the mid single digits for the full year. Commercial loan pipelines also remain very healthy, up nearly 20% from year end, despite the strong pull through in the first quarter. Our massive wealth strategy continues to bring in new households, net flows and client assets to key, reaching 57,000 households and $7.4 billion of total client assets as of March 31st. With a mass affluent household opportunity of 1.15 million customers, we remain less than 10% penetrated, implying a significant runway going forward. We continue to hire frontline bankers. This past quarter, we hired a middle market banking team based in Atlanta and a family office and private capital team based in Kansas City. We also hired talented investment bankers and wealth managers As our differentiated platforms continue to attract top bankers, we will continue to grow our banker ranks, including evaluating team hires and niche. tuck in non bank transaction opportunities as they arise in order to leverage our unique but currently under leveraged platforms. Lastly, we are investing approximately $1 billion in technology this year that will give us new product and service capabilities and deliver better outcomes and experiences for those we serve. As it pertains to AI, we are focused on a few thematic use cases that will enhance client experiences, accelerate credit decisioning, increase technology productivity, and strengthen risk and security monitoring. Given the strong start to the year and the favorable dynamics we are seeing across loans and deposits, we have increased our full-year net interest income and loan guidance while reiterating each of our other financial commitments. While we enjoy strong momentum, we will remain vigilant as it pertains to a wide variety of potential macroeconomic outcomes. Our updated NII guidance assumes a wide range of interest rate scenarios. Additionally, we have added to our already elevated qualitative loan loss reserves this past quarter in order to account for a wider range of potential macroeconomic outcomes. As it pertains to private credit, we have provided additional disclosures this quarter. The summary here is, we continue to be very comfortable with these books of business. Finally, the first quarter was a strong quarter, and our business enjoys a significant amount of momentum. Before turning it over to Clark, I am pleased to announce that Clark has assumed an expanded role to lead our technology and operations organization, in addition to his role as CFO. We look forward to the contributions he will bring to our technology and operations teams at a pivotal and exciting time as we leverage AI to grow our business and better serve our clients. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Clark.