Truist Financial Corporation (NYSE:TFC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Bill Rogers: I don’t want to answer a hypothetical lottery question because we are not lottery ticket buyers. That’s not part of our strategy. I think we have got that’s really based on, can we support our businesses long-term. And can we provide the capital they need to grow. And we are going to use all of our strategies and all of our capabilities to ensure that we are supporting businesses and their growth.

Matt O’Connor: Okay. Thank you.

Bill Rogers: Thanks Matt.

Operator: Our next question comes from John McDonald at Autonomous Research. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

John McDonald: Yes. Hi. Good morning. I was wondering if you could give us some color on how you see credit unfolding for Truist this year and what you have baked into the charge-off guidance that you gave for this year?

Bill Rogers: Yes. Clarke, will you take that?

Clarke Starnes: John, this is Clarke. I will take that one. As you saw, we had 34 basis points in losses in Q4. That reflected primarily seasonality €“ normal seasonality in our consumer segments and a little bit of normalization. And as Mike mentioned, we had lower recoveries in our wholesale areas. So, that’s what the delta was from Q3 to Q4. And then what we are seeing is the consumer segments are normalizing. And also just to remind you all that the whole industry has had anemic wholesale and CRE losses over the last couple of years. So, we are pretty similar to that. So therefore, we would expect losses to return towards the lower range of our long-term loss range of 40 basis points to 60 basis points as we go through €˜23, and it just depends upon how the economy performs. And that’s why you see that reflected in our guidance of 35 bps to 50 bps.

John McDonald: Okay. Thanks Clarke and then for Mike. Mike, on the expense outlook for adjusted expense growth, mid-single digits, how much of that is kind of pulling through acquisitions you added at the end of last year? And how much of that is kind of core expense growth and investments? Thanks.

Mike Maguire: Sure. In €˜23, I believe the annualized M&A impact is $127-or-so million. So, that’s about 1% of that growth. You recall in the guide, we talked about these four components that were €“ where we have quite a bit of visibility into and frankly, not much flexibility, and that’s the pension, the M&A impact, the annualized impact of minimum wage and the FDIC expense. And those components in the aggregate are about 4%. Hope that helps.

John McDonald: Okay. Got it. Yes. That’s great. Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Ebrahim Poonawala at Bank of America. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Ebrahim Poonawala: Good morning.

Bill Rogers: Good morning.

Ebrahim Poonawala: I guess just one follow-up, Bill, on the capital allocation question. One, just given €“ I mean there is obviously a lot of speculation when you talk to investors around the insurance business. Like if you can talk to, given the multiple difference between insurance companies trading at 20x PE, do you still think it makes sense in terms of deploying capital to do more acquisitions on the insurance front as opposed to buying back stock? And on the other hand, I would love to hear how you would think about maybe moving away from that business, but giving up a very defensible revenue stream?