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

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Gerard Cassidy: It does, yes. Then as a follow-up, and I don’t mean to be too acute, but I’ve had a few people ask me. If I look at your 1Q and full year €˜23 NII guide, does — is the — the fourth quarter appears lower than the first quarter. So, maybe could you just talk about kind of the trajectory of NII as you think about it today?

David Turner: Well, we’ve given you a guide for the year of 13% to 15% up. We’ve also given you a guide from the fourth quarter to the first quarter growth of 1% to 3%. Now obviously, there’s more pressure as after the Fed stops raising rates for a quarter or two, you’re going to see deposit costs continue — they lag. So, you’re going to continue to see pressure after that. It’s going to affect everybody in the industry that way. And so, you’ll see that decline at some point quarter-over-quarter during the year. So, that’s why it’s harder just to extrapolate fourth quarter, but we’ll see where the Fed goes. Our guidance is predicated on the December 4. If that changes, then we’ll come back and update our outlook. But that gives you enough information to be able to model and do your sensitivities. But yes, there will be some declines in NII based on the forwards sometime during 2023.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Dave Rochester with Compass Point.

Dave Rochester: I had a follow-up on capital. You guys had a nice bump up in ratios this quarter. And just given the loan growth outlook you’re talking about, it seems like you’ll be at the top end of that target range for CET1 by the end of 1Q. I know the buyback hasn’t been a big priority for you recently. But at what point do you think that it might make sense to turn back on?

David Turner: Yes. So, as we think of capital allocation, before I get there, let me point out one thing. We do have the impact of the regulatory change that will hit us in this first quarter as everybody. That’s about 10 basis points working the other way, so. But your question is broader, how do we think about capital allocation, including repurchases. So first off, we want to use our capital to support our loan growth. We want to pay a dividend in the 35% to 45% range. We’ve been at the low end of that. So, we would like to operate over time, at least in the middle of that. We want to use some of our capital for nonbank acquisitions, in particular, to bolster our noninterest revenue as we discussed. I forgot who asked that question.

And then, the kind of we use the share repurchase as the toggle, will keep our capital where we want it to be, which we said would be at the upper end of our range of 9.75%. We just think that’s prudent with uncertainty overly negatively affect our return. So, if we go meaningfully over that, we could turn on share repurchases and we’ll just have to see how that — the capital generation should be very strong in 2023. And we should have enough to do all things I mentioned. And if we can’t put our capital to work doing a nonbank acquisition, then we’ll give it back to the shareholders.

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