Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And so as we look forward, I think we’re going to wait and see as we go through our budgeting process and we do a series of scenarios in terms of how things could play out next year and then make that determination. But as Mike said, I think we do separate out the fact that we continue to believe that there are continued opportunities to drive efficiency throughout the company. We’re not going to lose sight of that. And that is separate from how much do we want to spend away from that. And we’ll talk more about that towards the end of the year.

Steven Chubak: Helpful color. Thanks so much for taking my questions.

Operator: Thank you. The next question will come from John Pancari of Evercore ISI. Your line is open, sir.

John Pancari: Good morning. I wanted to see if we can get some of your updated thoughts on buybacks here. CET1 10.7% and you indicated the $4 billion buyback in 2Q when you expect to continue to buyback from here. But obviously Basel III Endgame is a factor and I heard you on — that you’re contemplating buybacks as you look out from here. So could you maybe help frame that for us? What that could mean in terms of the pace of repurchases? Thanks.

Mike Santomassimo: Not really any more than — I think that’s — I think what we said is as much clarity as we want give at this time. I think we are — we have substantial excess capital above the regulatory requirements and regulatory buffers and on top of the level of buffers that we have talked about running at. And so we think that’s prudent given the fact that it’s likely that capital requirements are going up. But the reality — to answer the — just in terms of the timing in terms of the ability to answer the question, from everything that we read is the same thing that you read, it’s likely that we will learn later this month or early next month exactly what the proposal is. And based upon that, it will help us inform exactly how much room we have for buybacks.

But in most of the scenarios that we see, there is room for us to continue the buyback program in a prudent way and still build required capital to whatever levels we’d have to require — to be required to build them at and keep the kind of buffers that we want to keep. So there are bunch of moving pieces here. And so it just doesn’t make to put any more numbers on it until we actually see what those proposals are.

John Pancari: Okay, thank you. That’s helpful. And then separately on the NII side, again, appreciate the updated guide for ‘23 of the 14%. Maybe can you talk about — when you look at the forward curve, what could be the forward curve implications for NII as you look further out into 2024, if we do reach a Fed fund of around 4% implied by the forward curve, how much of a headwind to NII could that be for you? And maybe also if you could just talk about the near-term deposit trajectory. I know you mentioned still continued decline, kind of if you can help frame that, size it up? Thanks.

Mike Santomassimo: Yeah, John, I’m not going to give you much clarity on 2024. But I think the things you should think about obviously are going to be as rate — on the commercial side, rate betas — betas on the way up are pretty high, betas on the way down are pretty high. And the consumer side really hasn’t moved much at this point. And so I do — you sort of have to go into your modeling, looking at each of the components a little bit differently. And as we and I think many others have talked about over time, like once rates peak, there is likely some lag, continued repricing for a while after rates peak. And so you’ve got to think about all how that goes into your model. And then I think as I said in my script, I think we’ve seen pretty consistent performance across deposits over the last couple of quarters.