Regions Financial Corporation

Good morning, and welcome to the Region Financial Corporation's quarterly earnings call. My name is Chris, 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. 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 second quarter earnings call. John and David will provide high-level commentary regarding our results. Earning 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 $534 million, resulting in earnings per share of 59 cents. On an adjusted basis, earnings were $538 million, or 60 cents per share. We delivered pre-tax, pre-provision income of $832 million, a 14% increase year over year. And we generated a return on tangible common equity, of 19%. We are very proud of our second quarter performance as we continue to reap the benefits of the investments we've made across our businesses and the successful execution of our strategic plans. We continue to grow average deposits during the second quarter and are growing accounts across consumer checking, small business, and wealth management. In fact, we grew consumer deposits across every one of our eight priority markets. Our focus on growing consumer checking accounts and the core operating accounts of a business has driven more than 30% organic growth in total average deposits over the last five years, among the most in our peer set. While average loans remained stable during the quarter, we grew ending loans in both the consumer and corporate bank. Corporate client sentiment has improved since the first part of April, and notably, Consistent with the execution of our strategic plans, we've added over 300 new commercial relationships across our wholesale business year to date. Pipelines within our small and middle market businesses in particular continue to grow. Our consumers also remain healthy. Debit and credit spend continue to increase modestly versus the prior year. During the quarter, we generated modest growth in average consumer credit card, and home equity lines or credit balances. Importantly, consumer credit quality remains strong. Asset quality metrics are improving, and payment rates on our consumer credit card remain above pre-pandemic levels. We also had a lot of success growing and diversifying our fee revenue. Treasury management revenue is up 8% year-to-date, while the total number of clients served has increased 10%. We see continued opportunity to grow clients within our existing customer base, especially as we focus on our priority markets and further expansion of our treasury management services into the small business sector. Wealth management continues to be a good story for us, generating another quarter of record fee income while representing a steady source of revenue attributable to both strong client acquisition and good revenue diversification. Since 2018, wealth management revenue has grown at more than an 8% compounded annual growth rate. Further, Regions was recently recognized in Global Private Bankers 2025 Innovation Awards as the best trust services by a private bank and best wealth planning execution. Since 2019, capital markets revenue has grown at a 14% compounded annual growth rate. driven by a combination of organic activities and strategic acquisitions. We continue to make progress on investments to modernize our core technology platforms. We've begun rolling out a new native mobile app in just the past few weeks, and we're planning to upgrade our commercial loan system to a new cloud platform in the coming months. We plan to begin running pilots on our new cloud-based deposit system beginning in late 2026, with full conversion anticipated in 2027. Once completed, we expect to be one of the first regional banks in the country on a truly modern core platform. So as you can see, we continue to focus on growth across our businesses as evidenced by our overall financial performance. Our dedication to driving shareholder value has resulted in the highest returns on tangible common equity over the last four years compared to our peer group. and we're on track to make it a fifth year in a row. We have also delivered top quartile EPS growth over the last five and 10 year periods. And importantly, over the last six years, we've increased our dividend at a 10 plus percent compounded annual growth rate, the highest among our peers. We announced another 6% increase in the common dividend earlier this week. And notably, over the last 10 years, we have bought back more stock on a relative basis than any of our peers. All of this has contributed to top quartile total shareholder returns over the last three, five, and 10 years. Finally, we think the ability to grow tangible book value plus dividends should be closely correlated to stock price. We've delivered top quartile performance on this metric over the last three and five year periods. In conclusion, We're very proud of our second quarter results. Our strong performance is attributable to our 20,000 plus associates and their commitment to keep our customers at the center of everything we do and their focus on executing our plan. As a result, we expect this momentum to carry into the second half of 2025 and beyond, providing a real opportunity to continue to grow and deliver the same kind of results that we've delivered in recent years. With that, I'll hand it over to David to provide some highlights regarding the quarter.