U.S. Bancorp

Welcome to U.S. Bancorp's fourth quarter 2019 earnings conference call. Following a review of the results by Andy Cesari, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and Terry Dolan, U.S. Bancorp's Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer, there will be a formal question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your touchtone phone and press the pound key to withdraw. This call will be recorded and available for replay beginning today at approximately 12 o'clock p.m. Eastern through Wednesday, January 22nd at 12 midnight Eastern. I'll now turn the conference call over to Jen Thompson, Director of Investor Relations for U.S. Bancorp.

Thank you, James, and good morning to everyone who has joined our call. Andy Cesari and Terry Dolan are here with me today to review U.S. Bancorp's fourth quarter results and to answer your questions. Andy and Terry will be referencing a slide presentation during their prepared remarks. A copy of the slide presentation, as well as our earnings release and supplemental analyst schedules, are available on our website at usbankers.com. I would like to remind you that any forward-looking statements made during today's call are subject to risk and uncertainty. Factors that could materially change our current forward-looking assumptions are described on page two of today's presentation in our press release, and in our Form 10-K and subsequent reports on file with the SEC. I'll now turn the call over to Andy.

Thanks, Jen, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call. Following our prepared reports, Terry and I will take your questions. I'll begin on slide three. We reported earnings per share of $0.90, which included $0.18 per share of notable items, which Terry will discuss in more detail in a few moments. Excluding these notable items, we reported earnings per share of $1.08 for the quarter. Loan growth was driven by new client wins and deepening relationships across all our loan portfolios, and we delivered very strong deposit growth. We continue to see strong account and volume growth across our two businesses. Credit quality was stable, and our book value per share increased 6.7% from a year ago. In November, we received approval from the Federal Reserve for an incremental share repurchase plan authorizing repurchasers up to $2.5 billion of common stock in addition to our existing authorization of $3 billion. In the fourth quarter, we returned $2.9 billion of our earnings to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. As indicated on slide four, digital uptake trends remain strong. We are significantly wrapping up the launch of our DIY digital experiences that will continue to drive more and more customer interactions, both on and off the mobile app, as well as higher digital transaction volumes. Slide 5 provides key performance metrics. On a core basis, we delivered an 18.1% return on tangible common equity in the fourth quarter. For the full year, our core return on tangible common equity was 18.8%. Now I'll turn it over to Terry to provide detail on the quarter as well as forward-looking guidance.