Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Charles Scharf: Sure. What I was trying to say in those remarks was the impact on rising rates is continuing to impact customers on a period-over-period basis, and we would expect that to continue, but it’s not accelerating. It’s much more linear than exponential. And the fact that it’s much more linear is actually a very helpful thing because that gives people — that’s just — that’s a more orderly transition to a slower growth economy and gives consumers a chance. It shows that they’re adjusting their spending patterns and saving patterns and borrowing patterns to adjust for the reality of higher rates. And on your second question, we would anticipate that we would continue to see deterioration in those metrics continue after the Fed stops raising rates, for a period just because of the amount of time that it takes those things to filter through the economy more broadly. So, hopefully, that was helpful.

Ebrahim Poonawala : That’s helpful. And just a quick follow-up. I think you mentioned earlier around commercial real estate. Like are you seeing any stress? There some discussion around the ability of these loans to get refied given the move in rates we’ve seen over the last year. Any steps within the CRE book? And anything just in terms of home state, a lot of negative headlines around San Francisco. Would love to your perspective on that, too.

Mike Santomassimo : It’s Mike. I’ll try to take that and Charlie can add if he needs. When you look at the — and you’re really getting at the office, I think, space more than anything there. There’s certainly more stress in the office space than there was a quarter or two or three quarters ago. And I think you’re seeing that. Now, it hasn’t translated into lost content at this point. And so, we’re keeping a careful eye on it. And I think it is — as you look at where you see it most, it is in older, lower-class properties. And over 80% of our portfolio is in Class A space. And so, we feel like the quality of it’s pretty good, but we will see some stress as we go through here. So far, it’s been pretty idiosyncratic in terms of individual buildings and individual places.

But we are very watchful on cities like San Francisco, like Los Angeles, like Washington, D.C., where you’re seeing lease rates overall be much lower than other cities across the country. And so, certainly, those are markets that we’re keeping a pretty close eye on and making sure we’re being proactive with our borrowers to make sure we’re thinking way ahead of any maturities or extensions, options that need to get put in place to help manage through it.

Operator: The next question comes from Erika Najarian of UBS. Your line is open.

Erika Najarian : Hi. Good afternoon. Just one more clarification question, if I may, on net interest income. You know, Mike, your underlying assumptions to your NII outlook in terms of low to mid-single-digit loan growth, moderate declines in deposit balances in the first half and stabilizing, it doesn’t feel very different from what consensus had been assuming to get to 51.5 billion for ’23, which is clearly higher than what’s implied by your outlook. So, I’m wondering if I could reask Ken’s question, what deposit betas, what terminal deposit betas, what range of expectations are you baking into that 49.5 billion forecast? And did you make a significant amount of conservatism as you think about your NII outlook? And I’m asking that question because one of your peer CEOs said their 74 billion outlook was not conservative. So, I think that given the outlook versus consensus expectations, I did have to reask that question here.

Mike Santomassimo : Yes. No, look, it’s

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