Truist Financial Corporation (NYSE:TFC) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Service charges on deposits came down a bit sequentially this quarter. Can you talk about the potential for overdrafts you used to get even [indiscernible] from here?Bill Rogers Yeah. They’re going to continue to get lower like, we instituted our Truist One, which is sort of a big part of the deposit generation and new client acquisition, but it’s also our no overdraft fee accounts. So those will continue to draft lower. And those are in all of our guidance and everything that we talked about. And they’re basically right on path to where we thought they’d be.Blake Netter Thank you.Operator We’ll take our next question from John Pancari with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.John Pancari Good morning.Bill Rogers Hi. Good morning.John Pancari On the — back to the deposit growth expectation, I just want to confirm that on 1% to 2%.

Is that on end-of-period balances and debt for the full year, your expectation? Thanks.Mike Maguire Yeah. That’s a quarterly view. And I’m not sure that’s going to sort of be linear in its progression. If we think about just the impact of qualitative tightening and some of the work that we’ve done and certainly prior to this first quarter was just getting a sense for our share of the easing and how that may impact our share of the tightening.And so that 1% to 2% is reflective of QT continuing on a quarterly basis, and it’s also reflective of, frankly, is the rate environment that we’re in as people continue to assess bank alternative products where perhaps higher rates or investment products are or an alternative, but that’s a quarterly view.John Pancari Okay.

Got it, Mike. Thank you. And then separately, also on the margin and deposit dynamics. Can you maybe talk to us about how you can see this playing out in terms of the net interest margin project progression from here? And then also, what do you expect is a fair through cycle deposit beta. I know you’re currently at 36%. And I want to get your thoughts there. Thanks.Mike Maguire Sure. Maybe just — and we mentioned in our prepared remarks, our net interest margin in the first quarter, we were down on a reported basis, about 8 basis points, and that really had two primary drivers. The first was, we also mentioned that we have a little bit more liquidity on the balance sheet. That was something that we made the decision to do sort of in the abundance of caution.And so while that doesn’t really have an impact on NII because there’s very sort of de minimis negative carry relative to the funding cost there, it did swell the size of the balance sheet a bit.

So the denominator impact drove about 2 basis points of net interest margin decline. And then we also had just the overall funding mix shift, which probably drove the bulk of the rest. There’s also 1 basis point in there for PAA.Those same factors that drove our NIM down 8 basis points in the first quarter exist in the second quarter as well. Perhaps to — and to some extent, in terms of the behaviors, maybe it will be a little bit more modest, but you also have to quarterize some of those impacts. And so our expectation is that NIM probably has downside of another, call it, dozen basis points in the second quarter.As far as the second half, probably have a more stable outlook for the NIM. There’s — we’ve mentioned before that we’ve sort of intentionally approached a more neutral kind of rate sensitivity position, but I think beyond that, it’s really going to depend on some of these other factors.

The betas, the mix that Bill just talked about on the DDA side, whether or not we see credit spreads widen as an example, is a factor two.The beta that we have in our assumption around NII and NIM, you mentioned we’re at 36% today. That until now, we’ve been exceeding our expectations just as the first quarter where we performed a little worse than we expected, our spot data today on a IBD basis is 40%. We expect that to migrate to the low-40s for the full second quarter, and we have a terminal outlook of 44%.John Pancari Got it. Thanks, Mike.Operator Our next question comes from Mike Mayo with Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead.Mike Mayo Hi. I’m not so faster, you are keep pushing the corvette analogy here, but it just looks like the fuel efficiency isn’t quite as good.

I don’t know if you put diesel fuel in the corvette by mistake or what, but you closed 117 branches in the first quarter, so that should be good. You’re getting other merger benefits. You’ve completed the integration phase and you guide for 5% to 7% revenue growth, which is decent, but also 5% to 7% expense growth.And isn’t this the time when you go back to your management team and say, hey, we’re getting more cautious on lending as you indicated. And we need to tighten some of this expense spend. And I get some of the expenses are FDIC and pension, minimum wage, but that’s true at some of your peers, which are looking for positive operating leverage. I know you said positive operating leverage, but then you have 5% to 7% higher both for revenues and expenses.

So just give a little bit more color about the efficiency of Truist as you transition from integration to growth. Thanks.Bill Rogers Right. And Mike, I’m going to spare from the corvette analogies is just try to sort of go right at it. As Mike said, I mean, we’re really — we’re going to continue to focus on positive operating leverage. The revenue guidance is really an NII guidance issue. Our continued focus on insurance, investment banking, all the other things that comprise that, we’re still very confident of. And hopefully, if markets really improve in the second half of the year, might even have some upside.But your point on the expense side is exactly right. I mean, we have call it, 4% or so, sort of embedded in the categories that you talked about.

So the ability to manage in that other component of that. And trust me, every business leader has a positive operating leverage plan, and they are readjusting those plans based on particularly those that have an NII component to their plans and the things that they can do.You saw already this quarter, things that we’re doing that are more reflective of the strategy you talked about the realignment of fixed income, consolidation of LightStream. I mean in the past, these might have been things that sort of would have been off the table. Now they’re firmly on the table like everything else as it relates to expenses. We’ll do more work in the mortgage area, all the things with spans and layers, real estate, digitization, automation, all that is firmly on the table and a clear focus for us as we move into the rest of this year with a keen focus and eye on positive operating leverage.Mike Mayo Okay.

And then one separate question. Do you plan to rebrand LightStream to Truist? And if so, does that mean you’re going to have more of a national branding strategy. And it’s interesting, you’re in the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic with Truist. You go outside the region with the different brands. So I’m just trying to reconcile your brand names.Bill Rogers Yeah. Really sort of same way around actually. So we really — we’re going to eventually wind down the LightStream brand and increase the Truist side of that. We created LightStream for completely different reasons that don’t really exist today as it relates to Truist. So we’ve got this incredible franchise, incredible market, really good digital capabilities.And what we’re doing now is say, let’s bring all those digital capabilities, really fast turnaround times, incredible Net Promoter Scores with LightStream to all the Truist client base.