Fifth Third Bancorp (NASDAQ:FITB) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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James Leonard: 10% on the upside, which is the upside scenario is that the Fed delivers a soft landing, so unemployment stays in the high threes. So 10% in the high threes a baseline at 4.2% peak, and then a downside at 10%, at a 7.8% unemployment.

Michael Mayo: Got it. All right. Thank you.

James Leonard: Yep.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Scott Siefers from Piper Sandler. Your line is open.

Scott Siefers: Good morning everybody. Thank you for taking the question. Jamie, I guess it doesn’t — based on what you said, it doesn’t feel like you would get there anytime soon. But in the past, you talked about sort of the 330 margin floor in the event of low rates. Just curious, given all the sort of the ebbs and flows we’ve had in expectations and just the own — pardon me — the moves you’ve made with your own balance sheet, how are you thinking about that lower bound kind of as we go forward in that 330 level?

James Leonard: Yeah. We feel very good about the ability to have a floor on the NIM at that 330 level and a 200 down scenario should that play out, given all the work we’ve done on the investment portfolio with the bullet locked out cash flows along with being in a fairly sizable net discount position and the duration that we have combined with the fixed rate loan origination platforms with auto, Dividend and Provide, those should all provide yields. And then as we’ve talked in the past, we’ve layered in $15 billion of received fixed swaps that will also provide additional protection from 2025 through 2032. And that may be one other differentiator for us relative to peers is that we’ve been focused more on protecting that downside over a longer period of time and therefore, the duration of our swap book as well as our investment portfolio maybe a little better positioned should that downturn occur at the end of the decade.

Scott Siefers: Perfect. Thank you. And then switching gears just a bit. Maybe some thoughts on kind of the trajectory of fees as we go through the year. You guys always have the seasonality that helps fourth quarter — hurts the first. But it will be, I think a pretty substantial ramp up starting in the 2Q. Just curious, I think you alluded to capital markets kind of normalizing or recovering in the second half of the year. Just maybe your thoughts on main drivers as the year plays out.

James Leonard: Sure. Thanks. When it comes to the fee income, we did say relatively stable over the course of the year and probably is helpful to look at it from two components. The first would be a category I’ll call the factors in our control that do deliver nice growth, both from a strong customer acquisition perspective as well as overall fee generation from a combination of the branch network, our wealth business, the commercial business. That will drive both credit card income as well as wealth and asset management fees in the mid single digit area and top line fee equivalent growth in the treasury management area in the high single digit area given our strong product lineup. From there, transitioning to mortgage, that’s actually going to be the largest growth item for us in 2023.

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