Regions Financial Corporation

Good morning and welcome to the Region's Financial Corporation's quarterly earnings call. My name is Angie and I will be your operator for today's call. I would like to remind everyone that all participant phone lines have been placed on listen only. At the end of the call, there will be a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. I would now like to turn the call over to Dana Nolan to begin.

Thank you, Angie. Welcome to Regions fourth quarter 2018 earnings conference call. John Turner will provide highlights of our full year financial performance and David Turner will take you through an overview of the quarter. A copy of the slide presentation as well as our earnings release and earnings supplement are available under the investor relations section of regions.com. Our forward-looking statements disclosure and non-GAAP reconciliations are included in the appendix of today's presentation and within our FCC filings. These cover our presentation materials, prepared comments, as well as the question and answer segment of today's call. With that, I will now turn the call over to John.

Thank you, Dana. Good morning, and thank you for joining our call today. Let me begin by saying we are very pleased with our fourth quarter and full year 2018 results. we reported record full-year earnings from continuing operations of $1.5 billion, reflecting an increase of 28% compared to the prior year. Importantly, we grew loans, net interest income, non-interest income, and households. We delivered positive operating leverage and markedly improved efficiency. Of note, adjusted pre-tax, pre-provision income increased to its highest level in over a decade. David will cover the details in a moment, but I'm very proud to announce we effectively achieved all of our 2018 targets, as well as our long-term targets laid out at Investor Day in 2015. We achieved these targets despite a market backdrop that was significantly different than we anticipated. It's important to note our financial accomplishments took place against a backdrop of substantial transformation for the company. In 2018, we successfully navigated significant leadership changes and undertook one of the most significant organizational realignments in the company's history. With most of the organizational changes behind us, we have intensified our focus on building a culture of continuous improvement, improvements which reflect our efforts to make banking easier for our customers and associates, accelerate revenue growth, and drive greater efficiency and effectiveness. These efforts include investments in technology, where we've expanded the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning. As of year end, we rolled out Zelle, giving our customers industry-leading person-to-person payments capabilities. We also rolled out our new e-signature platform, completing our first end-to-end fully digital consumer loan closings. With respect to markets, recent volatility has only heightened our focus on the fundamentals of our business, and things that we can control, providing customers with quality advice, guidance, and financial solutions while maintaining appropriate risk-adjusted returns and unwavering credit discipline. On that note, recent credit quality continues to reflect a relatively strong economy and is performing within our stated risk appetite. Total non-performing criticized and troubled debt restructured loans all continued to decline in the fourth quarter while net charge-offs increased. The increase in net charge-offs is driven by higher consumer net charge-offs attributable to fourth quarter seasonality, continued normalization, and an expected increase associated with growth in consumer indirect categories. As we talk to our customers, they feel good about their businesses and remain encouraged about their outlook for 2019. On the retail side, consumer sentiment is also positive as unemployment remains low and wages continue to increase. As we enter 2019 and our next three-year strategic planning period, our goal is to generate consistent and sustainable long-term performance. We achieved meaningful progress over the past year as we worked to create a more efficient and effective organization. We have a variety of work streams still in progress and believe we're only beginning to realize the benefits that will ultimately be derived from our efforts. With that, I'll now turn it over to David.