PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. (The)

Greetings and welcome to the PNC Financial Services Group Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. The question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If you would like to ask a question during this time, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star 2 on your telephone keypad. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star 0 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Brian Gill. Thank you, Brian. You may begin.

Well, good morning, and welcome to today's conference call for the PNC Financial Services Group. I am Brian Gill, the Director of Investor Relations for PNC, and participating on this call are PNC's Chairman and CEO, Bill Demchek, and Rob Riley, Executive Vice President and CFO. Today's presentation contains forward-looking information. Cautionary statements about this information, as well as reconciliations of non-GAAP measures, are included in today's earnings release materials, as well as our SEC filings and other investor materials. These are all available on our corporate website, pnc.com, under Investor Relations. These statements speak only as of April 16, 2024, and PNC undertakes no obligation to update them. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Bill.

Thank you, Brian, and good morning, everyone. In the first quarter, we executed well and delivered solid financial results. We generated $1.3 billion in net income, and adjusting for the FDIC Special Assessment, $3.36 per share. Rob will provide details on our results in a moment, but I'll start with a few thoughts. First, we continued to grow our business. In the first quarter, we added new customers across our segments and increased deposits on a spot basis. We're continuing to invest heavily in our franchise to drive growth and gain share, particularly in our retail banking technology platform, our payments businesses, and our expansion markets. To that end, in the first quarter, we announced a multi-year investment of nearly a billion dollars in our branch network to renovate more than 1,200 locations and open new branches in key locations, including Austin, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Miami, and San Antonio. Second, expenses were well managed during the quarter. As we've indicated, expense discipline remains a top priority, and we are on track to maintain stable core expenses in 2024. Third, credit quality remained stable during the quarter. The office portfolio remains an area of focus, but we are adequately reserved overall, and particularly with respect to CRE. We believe our thoughtful approach to managing risk, customer selection, and long-term relationship development will continue to serve us well. And fourth, we continue to build on our strong liquidity and capital position during the quarter, providing us with the financial strength and flexibility to help us support our clients, grow our businesses, and capitalize on future opportunities. In summary, we delivered solid results during the first quarter and positioned ourselves well for the balance of 2024 and beyond. Last month, we launched a brand campaign celebrating our boring approach to banking. Now, obviously, we're using humor in the campaign to have a little fun and grab the public's attention. But inside of that humor is honesty about who we are, how we think about risk, and how we run our company. In short, it is everything we do to be steady and predictable. Finally, I just want to thank our employees for everything they do for our customers, for each other, and for all of our stakeholders. And with that, I'll turn it over to Rob to take you through the quarter.