The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. (NYSE:PNC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Rob Reilly: I have to write all that down in terms of your assumptions there. The — I would say in terms of NIM — obviously, we get that question a lot. It’s obviously an outcome. So we don’t guide to it. We don’t necessarily manage to it. I think when you just take a step back, you can see that we finished the quarter and finished the year at 292 — 2.92%. That’s up from all of ’21 where we lived at 2.27%. So that a 65 basis point jump or so, that’s occurred. We don’t expect those kinds of swings going forward. So going forward, we’re now probably more like 5 or 6 basis point swings off of these levels. And that’s sort of the way that I think about it.

Bill Carcache: Got it. Separately, there’s been some concern that we could see the mix of time deposits and non-interest-bearing deposits return not just to pre-COVID levels. But perhaps back to even pre-GFC levels in this environment. Can you speak to that risk, both broadly at the industry level and more specifically as it relates to PNC?

Bill Demchak: I mean, look, we’re in a bit of an unknown environment. We have the Fed going through QT. We have the Fed absorbing deposits through their reverse repo facility. We have, at least in our case, the ability to grow loans. So you could see a scenario where deposits get scarce. We’ve priced some of that that’s in our forward guide in terms of our best look on that, you can draw upside and downside to that kind of to Rob’s point, this coming year and the years after that are — are harder to forecast and model than some of the stability we had pre-COVID. So, we’re doing our best, and you’ve seen our best expectations.

Rob Reilly: Yes, I think that’s right. And in regard to the mix between non-interest-bearing and interest-bearing so far, the shift that has occurred is perfectly consistent with what we’ve seen historically and consistent with our expectations.

Bill Carcache: That’s helpful, Bill and Rob. If I may squeeze in one last one. I wanted to dig in a little bit into your expectation for a weaker economic outlook and mild recession and sort of square that with your reserve rate having been basically unchanged sequentially. So it suggests that most of the reserve build was really growth driven. Maybe if the economic outlook does grow more challenging, consistent with that mild recession scenario, would it be reasonable to expect that your reserve rate could actually hold your current levels? Or would it still likely drift a little bit higher from here? Any thoughts around that would help.

Bill Demchak: Yes. So a lot of moving pieces here, but start with the basic notion that we are fully reserved for the book that we hold today against a forecast that we just — we more heavily weighted the recessionary forecast than we had in the third quarter. And remember, the charge-offs that we took this quarter particularly the lumpier ones, we mentioned one. Those were in a large way already reserved. So our build, right, is actually more than you think. The ratio ends up the same, but we have kind of less — we have lower non-performers inside of that total book as a percentage, maybe think of it that way. In terms of coming to that 17, and then I’d also just to remind you of our — wherever we sit today at 17 both first day CECL to now or what we have now relative to others against the composition of our loan book. We’ve been at this in a fairly — we think correctly, but nonetheless conservative process approach using CECL.

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