John Stumpf, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Jim. Good morning and Happy New Year to everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We just completed another outstanding year at Wells Fargo. We generated record earnings, produced strong deposit and loan growth, grew the number of customers we served, improved credit quality, enhanced our strong risk management practices, strengthened our capital and liquidity levels, and rewarded our shareholders by increasing our dividend and buying back more shares.
Our achievements during 2014 demonstrated the benefit of our diversified business model and our continued focus on the real economy. Let me share just some of our accomplishments during the past year. We generated earnings of $23 billion and earnings per share of $4.10, both up 5% from the prior year.
We grew both revenue and pretax pre-provision profit. We had strong broad-based loan growth. Our core loan portfolio increased by $60 billion, or 8%. Our deposit franchise continued to generate strong consumer and balanced growth with total deposits up $89 billion, or 8%. And we grew the number of primary consumer checking customers by 5.2%.
Our credit performance continued to be very strong with net charge offs [inaudible 3:11]down $1.6 billion, and our net charge off ratio declining to just 35 basis points for the year. Our capital levels increased even as we returned more capital to shareholders. We returned $12.5 billion to our stockholders through dividends and net share repurchases, up 74% from a year ago.
While we serve our customers throughout the world, 97% of our revenue comes from the United States, and there have been many signs of strength in the US economy. GDP growth accelerated during 2014 and may be even stronger in 2015. Last year was the strongest year of job growth in 15 years and December was the 50th consecutive month of job creation, unprecedented in the US history. Consumer confidence is at its highest level since the peak of the last economic expansion. Home ownership remains an aspiration for most Americans and recent developments such as the announced reduction in FHA premiums, GSE clarification on re-purchase rules and changes in GSE lending guidelines should provide some benefit to the housing market where affordability remains attractive.
While lower oil prices have created volatility in the financial markets, – America as a whole is a net consumer of energy – and American households will benefit from the decline in energy prices, which is positive for the US economy. I believe the improvement in the economy, the strength of our balance sheet, the diversity of our businesses and the continued commitment of our team members to meet our planned [inaudible 05:02] customers’ financial needs will provide Wells Fargo with many opportunities in the year ahead. John Shrewsberry, our Chief Financial Officer will now provide more details on our 4th Quarter results. John.
John Shrewsberry, Chief Financial Officer
Thank you John and good morning everyone. My comments will follow the presentation included in the quarterly supplement starting on page 2. John and I will then answer your questions. Wells Fargo had another strong quarter, earning $5.7 billion and $1.02 in EPS in the 4th Quarter. Our results included continued strong loan and deposit growth that was diversified across our businesses – and credit quality continued to reflect the benefit of our ongoing risk discipline.
Our capital levels remain strong, even as we returned $3.9 billion to the shareholders in the 4th Quarter through common stock dividends and net share re purchases. Slide 3 highlights our strong full-year results that John discussed at the beginning of the call, including increased revenue in pre-tax, pre-provisioned profit, strong loan and deposit growth, higher earnings and increasing our net payout ratio to 57%.
Page 4 highlights our revenue diversification and the balance between spread and fee income in the fourth-quarter. The benefit of our diversified business model is that we have over 90 businesses that performed differently based on interest rates and the economic environment. While the balance between spread and fee income has remained consistent over time, the drivers of fee income have varied. For example, over the past five years mortgage banking as a share of total fee income has been as high as 28%, but, because of the decline in mortgage refinancing activity, mortgage banking fees have declined as expected and represented 15% of fee income in the 4th Quarter. However other businesses have benefited from current market conditions. Our trust and investment fees have steadily increased over the past five years and were 36% to fee income in the fourth-quarter. These examples demonstrate the benefit of our diversification and how our business mix enables us to focus on meeting our customers’ financial needs while maintaining our risk discipline.
