Regions Financial Corporation (NYSE:RF) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Matt O’Connor: Understood. That’s helpful. And then just somewhat related, I’ve been asking a lot of your peers the same question, but you all seem to be building capital kind of well beyond what I would have thought that you would need. And you talked about kind of the upper end to 9.25%, 9.75% CET1, and that’s not new. But I guess the question is, why are you and others potentially all building what seems to be well in excess of what you need for CCAR? Are you anticipating something from CCAR changing? Is there kind of pressure behind the scenes from rating agencies, regulators or are just all the banks deciding on their own to be a little more conservative given the cycle where we are? Thank you.

John Turner: Yes. Well, Matt, we can’t speak for the other banks. I would say for us, it is a bit of an uncertain time. We think there potentially are opportunities to continue to make nonbank acquisitions will arise. We were fortunate enough to make 3 in a short period of time at the end of 2021. And just operating at the upper end of our range gives us some flexibility, and we’d like to continue to maintain that given the uncertain environment that we’re operating in.

David Turner: And if you look at CCAR degradation in capital was one of the lowest of the peer group. So, we don’t need capital to take care of the risk embedded in our balance sheet, it is really opportunistic — opportunities we’re looking for. And frankly, having a little bit more capital doesn’t hurt us from a return standpoint. And we generated over 30% return on tangible common equity. And so, having upper end of the 9.75 won’t impact any meaningful way.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Betsy Graseck with Morgan Stanley.

Betsy Graseck: A couple of questions. One, just on the loan growth outlook, I know you indicated you expect ending balances to be about 4% up year-on-year. Could you give us a sense as to how you’re thinking through the dynamics of which pieces of the loan growth are likely to accelerate, be on the high side, lower side? And then, how much longer that runoff portfolio is going to impact the numbers? Thanks

David Turner: Yes. So, we expect loan growth to slow just with general economy slowing. I think, our growth opportunities will manifest itself in the corporate banking group, commercial and corporate banking, as line utilization likely goes up a bit. I think there will be some opportunities in the real estate. We did have some growth of real estate, primarily multifamily, still happy with that. We do have one of the lowest concentrations of investor real estate compared to the peer group. But we look at utilizing our capital selectively with the right customers, doing the right things, in particular, like I said, multifamily. On the consumer side, our Interbank acquisition we had in the end of €˜21, as John mentioned, is doing well for us.

We look for that to have opportunities to continue to grow. And mortgage, while it’s going to be challenging again in €˜23 because of the rate environment, although it’s settled back a bit, it will give us some opportunity to grow a bit in the consumer side. As you mentioned, we do have some runoff portfolios, our last one — by the time we get to the end of this year, we’re probably not having a discussion about exit portfolios anymore.

John Turner: I would just add, despite the fact that we expect a small business customer to be under some pressure in more challenged economy, we’re seeing real opportunity through the Ascentium Capital platform, making loans to businesses on business essential equipment. We’re able to leverage that platform, which is very specialized in nature through our branch system into our existing customer base and over 35%-plus of our branches in 2022 originated a loan through the Ascentium Capital. We’ll see more of that grow, I think, and again, another opportunity to leverage an acquisition into our existing customer base.

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