Truist Financial Corporation (NYSE:TFC) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Bill Rogers: And then not to minimize the focus because, I mean, it’s acute, but just also remember, 75% of this portfolio is sitting in our markets, so we’re sort of a net in migration market. So while they’re dealing with current tenants, people are consolidating their office space, all that’s happening, we’re experiencing that with all of our bars. We also have markets in which there’s a lot of in migration, so there’s also more new tenants and more opportunities. And it’s idiosyncratic, you’ve got to be in the right building, the Class A, the opportunities and our portfolio arcs to Class A and end market migration market. So again, not to minimize it, but we got — we have some better opportunities from that side.

Mike Maguire: Very good, Bill.

Gerard Cassidy: One more question, Bill. Yes. Just as a quick follow-up. Mike, when you look at the AOCI burn down, what would accelerate that in terms from an interest rate standpoint, the forward curve is looking for some short-term interest rate cuts early next year. What would bring that number down even faster from an interest rate environment standpoint, what would you have to see?

Mike Maguire: Well, a couple of. I think the positive catalyst even away from rates would be, I guess, in connection with rates would be speeds increasing in terms of the actual cash flow profile. But if you’re looking at the rates, we would need to see the long end rally and we’d actually need to see a parallel benefit from mortgage spreads as well. So some of the, for example, rate rally you saw even from the end of the quarter to this to where we are 20, 30 basis points on the 10-year. If mortgage spreads don’t come with it, it can lag a bit. But that would be the — and Gerard thanks for the question because what we tried to lay out on the right-hand part of that slide, frankly, was a pretty conservative burn-down analysis based on today’s speeds, which are quite slow and with no benefit from yield curve normalization.

Gerard Cassidy: Thank you.

Operator: We have time for one more question from Matt O’Connor with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Matthew O’Connor: Hi. Thanks for squeezing me in. Just one more on costs here. I guess how are you thinking about organizing the effort in terms of who’s kind of taking responsibility for running it? Are you thinking about bringing in any outside consultants to get kind of a fresh perspective? Or talk about the organization of it. Thank you.

Bill Rogers: Matt, maybe at its simplest form, it’s me in terms of sort of who’s responsible, but our executive leadership team, and we’ve got a really good focus on this. We’ve got — and by the way, we have different third parties helping us with different elements, so they’re not an Uber approach because I actually think we need to own it. It needs to be part of the work that we do as a leadership team. But we have a variety of consultants looking on specific areas, so they may be focused on or consolidation of a specific technology or an outsourcing of a particular thing, so they exist as part of the process. But this is an overall leadership team, sleeves rolled up, everybody is in it. Not only line of business up, but most importantly, enterprise across where I think the real efficiencies are achieved and are more permanent as we think about the company.

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