Regions Financial Corporation

Good morning, and welcome to the Region's Financial Corporation's quarterly earnings call. My name is Shelby, and I'll 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 will now turn the call over to Dana Nolan to begin.

Thank you, Shelby. Welcome to Region's first quarter 2019 earnings conference call. John Turner will provide highlights of our 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 SEC 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, and thank you all for joining our call today. Let me begin by saying we are pleased with our first quarter results. The momentum we experienced in the fourth quarter has continued into 2019. We reported earnings from continuing operations of $378 million. delivering solid year-over-year revenue growth, broad-based loan growth, and stable but normalizing asset quality, all while reducing expenses and generating positive operating leverage. Loans grew somewhat faster than we anticipated in the quarter, driven in part by increased line utilization by our business customers. We intentionally funded a portion of this incremental loan growth with commercial and corporate treasury deposits, And while this was more economical than wholesale borrowings, deposit costs were impacted during the quarter. We expect loan growth will moderate through the remainder of the year, providing opportunities to optimize our deposit mix. With respect to the economy, we feel good about the health of the consumer and businesses. I've traveled across our footprint in the last few weeks to markets including Tampa, West Palm Beach, Atlanta, Nashville, Houston, Greenville and Spartanburg, South Carolina, and Mobile, Alabama. I've met with clients of varying sizes and industries, and customer sentiment remains positive. Many customers experienced record revenues in 2018 and are expecting even better results in 2019. In general, our clients do not expect a recession in the near term, and neither do we. That being said, we remain focused on building a balance sheet that will position us for consistent and sustainable performance through all phases of the economic cycle. The outlook for the interest rate environment continues to evolve. Clearly, lower rates in the shape of the yield curve makes near-term revenue growth more challenging for the industry. However, as we did over the last four or five years, we will make the necessary changes and adapt to the evolving market conditions. In the meantime, we'll continue to focus on the things we can control, providing customers with the quality financial products and services they need, maintaining appropriate risk-adjusted returns, prudently managing our interest rate sensitivity profile, and effectively controlling expenses while continuing to make investments in technology and talent. Again, we are pleased with our financial results this quarter. Our focus on continuous improvement remains key to to our ability to generate consistent and sustainable long-term performance. With that, I'll now turn the call over to David.