Regions Financial Corporation

Good morning and welcome to the region's financial corporations quarterly earnings call. My name is Chris 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 one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. I will now turn the call over to Dana Nolan to begin.

Thank you, Chris. Welcome to region's first quarter earnings call. John and David will provide high-level commentary regarding our results. Earnings documents, which include our forward-looking statement disclaimer and non-GAAP reconciliations, are available in the investor relations section of our website. These disclosures cover our presentation materials, today's prepared remarks, and Q&A. I will now turn the call over to John.

Thank you, Dana, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining our call today. Earlier this morning, we reported strong quarterly earnings of $465 million, resulting in earnings per share of 51 cents and adjusted earnings of $487 million and adjusted earnings per share of 54 cents. We delivered pre-tax, pre-provision income of $745 million. a 21 percent increase year-over-year, and we generated a return on tangible common equity of 18 percent. We're pleased with our performance and believe we are well prepared to face the current market uncertainty. At Regions, we remain committed to our longstanding strategic priorities of soundness, profitability, and growth. These priorities support our ability to generate consistent, sustainable, long-term performance. They're also the foundation underpinning our decade-long plus journey to transform our bank. Over the last 10-plus years, we have strengthened our soundness through enhancements to our interest rate risk, credit risk, and capital and liquidity management frameworks, while fortifying our operational and compliance practices to support growth. We meaningfully improved our profitability through diversifying our revenue streams, focusing on appropriate risk-adjusted returns and disciplined expense management. And over the last five years, we have generated top quartile organic loan and deposit growth while continuing to make investments in talent, technology, products, and services to further grow our business. These efforts have contributed to significant improvement in our return on tangible common equity. In 2015, Our return was in the bottom quartile. In each of the last four years, we delivered the highest return on tangible common equity among our peers. Additionally, we've generated top quartile earnings per share growth in over both a five and 10 year period. Our de-risking efforts and best in class hedging program have contributed to a strong capital position. This is evident in the most recent CCAR stress test results, as our projected post-stress capital degradation was well below the peer median. And our pre-tax, pre-provision income coverage of projected stress losses was the highest among our peers. We believe our robust capital balances and strong organic capital generation position us well to perform across an array of potential economic conditions. Our enviable footprint provides us with both a low-cost and granular core deposit base, as well as favorable growth opportunities from our high growth priority markets. This benefit, coupled with our proven strategic plan and experienced team with a record of successful execution, leads us to feel good about our positioning for 2025 and beyond. With respect to 2025, our outlook for unemployment has increased. and there is an expectation for pronounced slowdown in GDP growth. But at present, our base case does not include a recession. Our clients remain optimistic that the economy will improve, but current conditions have created uncertainty, which has caused many of our clients to delay investments. Importantly, we remain well-positioned to generate consistent results and support our clients regardless of the market backdrop and economic conditions. With that, I'll hand it over to David to provide some highlights regarding the quarter.