U.S. Bancorp

Welcome to the U.S. Bancorp fourth quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Following a review of the results, there will be a formal question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star then one on your phone. If you wish to withdraw your question, please press star then one again. This call will be recorded and available for replay beginning today at approximately 11 a.m. Central Time. I will now turn the conference over to George Anderson, Director of Investor Relations for U.S. Bancorp.

Thank you, Julianne, and good morning, everyone. In our boardroom today, I'm joined by our Chief Executive Officer, Gunjan Ketia, and Vice Chair and CFO, John Stern. In a moment, Gunjan and John will be referencing a slide presentation together with their prepared remarks. A copy of the presentation, our press release, and supplemental analyst schedules can be found on our website at ir.usbank.com. Please note 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 earnings presentation, our press release, and in reports on file at the SEC. Following our prepared remarks, Gunjan and John will be happy to take any questions that you have. I will now turn the call over to Gunjan.

Thank you, George, and good morning, everyone. I will begin on slide three. This quarter, we delivered strong earnings per share of $1.26. an increase of approximately 18% year over year on an adjusted basis. Net interest income this quarter increased 3.3% year over year, supported by strong consumer deposit growth. Fee revenue grew 7.6% year over year, with broad-based strength across most of our fee businesses. For both the fourth quarter, of 7.4 and 28.7 billion dollars respectively. More specifically in the fourth quarter, total net revenue grew 5.1% and we delivered meaningful positive operating leverage of 440 basis points as adjusted. John will provide more details on our financial performance in his opening remarks. Moving to slide four. A clear focus this year has been on restoring investor confidence in our ability to deliver strong and more consistent financial results. For the second consecutive quarter, more focused execution on our three key priorities resulted in us operating within all of our medium-term target ranges. On slide five, we highlight steady progress against our expense management priorities. Four signature productivity programs have helped us deliver nine straight quarters of largely stable expenses. This has meaningfully contributed to our ability to deliver positive operating leverage of 370 basis points for the full year of 2025. Our expense initiatives continue to generate sustainable productivity in our operations and will remain foundational disciplines going forward. In 2026, we will make strategic investments necessary to drive our growth, particularly in technology, sales, and marketing. As such, we expect revenue growth to be a stronger driver of continued positive operating leverage for the year. Slide six highlights a strong fee growth and improving mix For the full year, fee income represented 42% of total net revenues for the company and grew 6.7% year over year. A highly diversified mix of fee revenue businesses is a core differentiator for our franchise. Our organic growth strategy has focused on the principle of interconnected product solutions that have created unique value propositions and deeper relationships that are 15 million clients. In 26, we will remain highly focused on executing the initiatives that we launched in 2025. In addition, we are excited to close on our acquisition of BTIG and capture the considerable revenue synergies offered by that combination. On slide seven, we recap the strategic rationale for this bolt-on acquisition. We've had a 10-year partnership with BTIG and have completed 350 deals or more together in that timeframe. Last week, after we announced, I heard from many of our clients who applauded this next step in our partnership, which gives us confidence around the cultural fit between our two organizations and our ability to build an extraordinary capital markets franchise together. that can support an even broader array of client needs. We look forward to updating you on our progress there at a future analyst conference. Let me turn to slide eight. We briefly spotlight our global fund services business, which generated strong fee revenue growth for the company this year. GFS is a highly capital efficient business that serves our institutional clients in particular private capital and asset managers across the US and Europe. The products offered by GFS attract high quality operational deposits, money market assets under management, and capital markets business such as foreign exchange. BTIG capabilities will further support growth in this business. As you can see from the chart on the left, GFS total net revenue has grown at a healthy 11% CAGR since 2021 and grew at 12% in 2025. We have some unique product capabilities for startup and first-time ETFs and have onboarded nearly half of all new U.S. ETF launches in 2025. The underlying drivers of performance within this business are continuing to gain momentum as ETFs stay in favor with investors for their cost efficiency and recent favorable regulatory changes. And we continue to innovate in areas like digital assets and derivative-based ETF products. Moving to slide nine, our payments transformation is a strategic and long-term priority for the company. Today, a payments product is oftentimes the first and the most frequent engagement with clients, especially with Gen Z. Embedded, interconnected payments capabilities are fundamental to retaining, deepening, and growing our future client franchise. The chart on the left shows the steady strengthening of growth rates for our payments businesses as we execute our transformation. With our payments leadership team now fully in place, we have hit a stride on execution. In 26, we expect to sustain momentum on our transformation and add additional focus on the small business segment for both card and merchant. Turning to slide 10, net interest income and margin are both improving. We delivered record consumer deposits this quarter. The effectiveness of products like BankSmartly, more sophisticated pricing capabilities, and a significant overhaul of skills, training, digital tools, and incentives, together with investments in our branches, drove our performance. Additionally, commercial real estate loans also showed modest growth after 11 quarters of decline. Today, our balance sheet is poised for continued NII growth. On the loan side, we will drive commercial and credit card loans to deepen client relationships. On the deposit side, we'll drive consumer and operational deposits to improve our funding mix. Turning to slide 11. Operating within our medium-term target ranges has resulted in industry-leading EPS growth as adjusted in 2025, even with more modest buybacks as compared with the industry. Let me now turn the call over to John, who will take you through more details of the quarter.