Huntington Bancshares Inc (HBAN) — Q2 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

Thanks Joe. Welcome. I'm Mark Muth, Director of Investor Relations for Huntington. Copies of the slides we'll be reviewing can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website, www.huntington.com. This call is being recorded and will be available as a rebroadcast starting about one hour from the close of the call.

Thanks Mark and happy birthday. Welcome everyone. Slide 3 provides an overview of Huntington with our top 0.5 bank holding company with $175 billion in total assets. The TCF acquisition expanded our leadership position and equity in Michigan both through scale and markets such as Chicago and added new growth markets in the Twin Cities, Denver, and Milwaukee. Importantly, we have the number one branch share within our footprint, which allows us to leverage our brands, convenience, and digital channels to continue to efficiently grow the customer base. Huntington brings expanded tariff capabilities to these markets and through the TCF customer base, including middle-market and corporate banking with specialty verticals, treasury management, capital markets, trusted investment, and insurance products in addition to our number one in the nation SBA lending program. So we're excited by the opportunity to introduce our fair play approach and leading digital offerings to our customers in these markets. Over the past several years, we've been pleased by the number of independent affirmations of the superior customer service. Our colleagues provide the customer-centered products and services we've introduced just last month. JD Power announced it's been ranked highest in customer satisfaction among regional banks for our mobile app for the third consecutive year. Additionally, we were ranked first in our region for consumer banking customer satisfaction. Now these are important affirmations of the considerable investments we've made in our culture and digital technology. Slide four provides an overview of Hikes and strategy to build the leading people-first digitally powered bank in the nation. Huntington is a purpose-driven company and organic growth and sustainable top quartile financial performance remain core tenets of our strategic vision. The acquisition of TCF is additive on both fronts, as it supports continued organic growth opportunities and allows us to leverage the incremental scale to drive efficiencies and deliver top quartile financial returns.

Thanks, Steve and good morning, everyone. Slide 7 provides the highlights for the second quarter, which includes closing the TCF transaction, delivering strong new loan production, and maintaining solid credit quality as well as robust liquidity and capital positions. On a fully reported basis, including all impacted the acquisition, we reported a net loss for common share of $0.05. For the second quarter, earnings were impacted by acquisition expenses of $269 million. And the so-called CECL double counts provision expense of $294 million earnings per common share adjusted for these notable items were positive $0.35 per share. Thank you, Zach. We will now take questions. As a courtesy to your peers, each person asked one question and one related follow-up, and then if that person has any additional questions, he or she can add themselves back into the queue. Thank you.

Good Morning guys. Thanks for taking the question. So I think one of the main issues over the past few months has been the higher expense guides and a couple of those. Now that TCF is in the mix, it's a little tougher to tell exactly what's going on from sort of the standalone Huntington basis. I wonder if you could just speak or provide some color on how we can feel confident that sort of that guide that you offered earlier in the year about Huntington's stand-alone growth indeed peaking and will normalize from here. How does that play out? What should we be watching for from the outside to understand the expense control, etc.?

Great question, Scott. This is Zach. I'll address that. There are two main points to consider. First, on the underlying Huntington basis, we are currently executing our previous plan, which involved higher expenses in the first half of the year due to our investments. We expect to lower that growth rate to the low single digits in the second half. We are fully on track with this plan, and all forecasts for standalone Huntington prior to the acquisition closing in mid-June support this, showing overall expense growth coming in slightly lower than expected. Our outlook on expense growth remains consistent with what we've previously shared. Secondly, the cost synergies from the TCF acquisition are progressing as planned. As noted, branch rationalization is underway, systems conversion is scheduled, and personnel decisions have been finalized. We've made substantial progress with vendor conversions and real estate consolidations. Most of the cost savings from the TCF acquisition will be realized in 2022, with the full benefit reflected in the latter half of the year. Looking ahead to 2023, aside from any one-time costs, which may create some organic fluctuations, we anticipate a noticeable increase in Q3 as we take on the complete TCF expense base. From that point onward, we expect a steady decrease in expenses each quarter as synergies are achieved, with no significant reductions anticipated during this period.

Okay, perfect. It seems like expenses will decline starting in the fourth quarter. Also, Zach, you mentioned the margin reaching the two nineties beginning in the third quarter. Could you clarify what that includes? I apologize if I missed it while taking notes, but does it account for PPP forgiveness fees, purchase accounting benefits, and so on?

It does include the dynamics we see around PPP, which move around in single digits on a quarter-to-quarter basis. But it doesn't include the benefit of PAA will be a couple basis points of benefit. So it's not overly significant. I think PAA gives you a sentence. It's three basis points in Q3 and a negative two to 22. So it's relatively small on PAA. So really the core underlying NIM will be in the two nineties.

Perfect. Okay, good. Thank you guys very much.

All right. Great. Thanks. Good morning. In terms of loans, obviously it's kind of hard to see the core loan growth just given the merger with TCF this quarter. Can you just talk about, I guess what was sort of that underlying growth in loans? And I'm also kind of curious, I know you guys sound pretty positive about the growth outlook in the second half of the year for loan balances, but how does that play out in the near term just given supply chain constraints and generally weaker overall industry growth? I mean, is your positive outlook more weighted towards the fourth quarter than the three healers? It pretty split between the two?

Yeah. Great question. Kind of all this is that I'll take it just a couple of things I would share with you one to answer your question about kind of the underlying Huntington growth. And I will call caveat out to say that we're, we're deeply integrating the businesses at this point. So over time it'll be more and more difficult for us to kind of segregate in this way, but generally what we were seeing was consumer growth kind of close to 1% and commercial growth just slightly less than flat. So overall it was pretty flat, particularly when you strip out the decline of PPP quarter-to-quarter. Going forward, the more importantly, I think the two dynamics that we've been seeing, we tried to kind of illustrate it in the prepared remarks, continue to be very much think the thing to focus on. Firstly, new production is quite strong at, or better than our plan, know on the consumer side, surprising Canadian strength in mortgage and auto and then on the commercial side record calling activity, driving pipelines up both sequentially from Q1. And I would also say very, very healthy growth versus 2019. And so that's giving us a lot of confidence in where new production is going. And it's really just a question of watching therefore the second factor, which is the impacts from the elevated liquidity in the system and supply chain issues on existing line utilization. And so I think the net outcome of this from what we're seeing is probably about 1% additional growth pressure in the back half of this year. And whereas at the beginning of the year, I guided for one to 3% loan growth and then by June at the Morgan Stanley conference that we were talking about sort of the low end of that range, my expectation now is sort of roughly flat average in the second half of the year with growth really starting to rebound as we get out into 2022 and go forward. I think there's some pretty clear sides, Rocky wisdom here. I think on the places where their supply chains are really pressuring inventory utilization and auto, and it certainly in the new TCF acquired inventory finance book, we're seeing OEM production increase and our clients want to use these lines. So I think over the course of 2022 and 2023, we'll see that $5 billion to $6 billion come back. And the new production really shows no signs of slowing down at this point. So, and the new production really shows no signs of slowing down at this point. So we're bullish about the future. And I think that throughout the course of 2022 you see those conditions.

All right. Perfect. And then just as an up question dock on the NIM, the 10 basis point increase the second and three Q, how much of that is driven just simply by the addition of TCF and all the purchase counting kind of issues versus the balance sheet optimization or management initiatives that you guys talked about?

Sequentially much of it is driven by the TCF acquisition, but I think over time, the balance sheet optimization program is providing a great floor for us and really contributing to what would have otherwise been yield curve impacts pushing it lower. So that's probably the best answer I can give you.

Hey, good morning, everyone. Let's start for you, Zach. So there's obviously a lot going on this quarter. Well, we look at the $0.35 of adjusted EPS. Is that a run rate that you can grow from?

Yeah, I think the outlook we've got for earnings is good. Given the TCF synergies coming in clearly, it's going to be a noisy couple quarters here just with closing the acquisition, but our expectations will continue to drive forward very much according to the expectation we've done going all the way back to December of last year.

Okay. That's helpful. And then in terms of staying on offense, right over the last few quarters, you guys have discussed increasing the pace of investment, right? New hires, and we know M&A deals are quite distracting, right? When you're trying to put two companies together, are you able to keep that momentum on offense? If you really need to turn the focus internal to make sure this integration goes as seamlessly as possible?

We've been doing both all along. The court has been executing really well. We still have some good products just launched last month on the consumer side. And I think what Zach earlier subject to the reduction in line utilizations and floor plan rates, the pipelines have been good and we're closing at or above budget. So we've come into this quarter strong in comparison to the 2019 where we had a more normalized comparison. So we like what we see in the core, and we're at the same time, really doing a break teams are doing a great job on the integration where we're either on schedule or schedule, and we've been able to make some really good decisions around the talent within TCF combined to make Huntington a stronger company. So they're pleased with what we see, lot of work yet to do, but we're moving rapidly. And by the end of October, the branch consolidations are done. The major systems conversions are done. And we’re to enter '22 substantially set, which is probably close to a record time with a June closing for the TCF transaction. Really like what we see. We're confident about both being able to deliver the core. We're very focused on that as well as get the economics of the integration.

Just a question, a couple of questions, one talk to us a little bit on the consumer side. Like you've done a lot Steve, since taking over in terms of making it a very consumer-friendly bank I guess to me two things, one, the competitive pressure that you're seeing from either the fintechs or the Neo banks around consumer fees and how you're thinking about it, where do you see the most risk? And do you see a particular risk to TCF deposit customer base, which seems to be the target for some of these banks that are coming up with different texts and Neo banks? Thank you.

We've been focused on the consumer side since 2009. We launched fair play in 2010, and we've had a series of feature function benefits starting with 24-hour grades off the Astro street checking product. That's been a core product, and we build out the product lines. We've continued to innovate over the last decade, all day deposit and more recently, safety zone a year ago at this time and different things. So we're disrupting ourselves against the game plan of trying to be the premier consumer bank in our footprint. And I think we were achieving that. I think in the last nine years, we've had 60, 80 power number ones in consumer bank. In our footprint, you have the three mobile apps in a row like what we're seeing, we're not done. We have some really interesting ideas that we'll be working on through this year and well into next to further distinguish and provide growth opportunities for us. Now, in the context of TCF, I see a fair blanket thanking philosophy just as a huge advantage for that customer base. And I think from the early reaction of our new colleagues from TCF and the branches, they're wildly enthusiastic, and I think the customer base will be as well. I see that as a big growth opportunity for us, including our capacity across process. So the operating processes, procedures, etc., we have complemented by our Fairplay products and this emphasis and focus on customer service, I think, is going to make our combination incredibly powerful on the consumer side. I'm very bullish there and we were competing with the larger banks in our footprint for years. It's actually made us better. So we'll look forward to continuing to adapt and innovate and get growth in the consumer banking business.

That's helpful to you. Thank you. And this is a follow up, I think the other side of Steve's question, you have been relatively acquisitive over the last few years, as you get through the TCF integration over the next few quarters, just talk to us in terms of need for M&A, he didn't tell me the scale or expanding geography is like, is any of that a priority over the medium term or not?

The focus is on completely this integration. Well, the reason the economics were better and driving before and that’s the focus. So we're really grateful and pleased with the talented new colleagues we have joining us. There's a training natural absorption that will go on over the next year or so. And again, that's where we're focused.

Hi. I'm just thinking over the next couple of quarters. I mean, it's always tough with these deals to figure out what's really going on. What clearly have the benefit of your qualitative comments? And you've been very clear that you're upbeat on what's going on so far, but if you put yourself in our shoes for the next 6 to 9 months, and you're kind of picking up the financial separate quarter, are there two or three things that you would say, look, these are the, you should watch for these three metrics and this kind of what's, what's going to be good? And this is what would be the benchmark you should really focus on for the next six to nine months. Basically, I pick up the third quarter financials and I'm trying to figure out are things going well, what would be the two or three things you would really key in on?

Yeah, it's a great question. This is Zach. I can I fully understand it. And frankly, internally what we're very much focused on ensuring we have visibility as well what I'm watching. Because I think the same things you should have, which is this sequential loan growth from where we stand today. As I mentioned, I think it will be somewhat flattish here in the back half of the year, but I do think that conditions will be improving, but will be watching that line utilization that drag, that it added goes away will kind of reveal the underlying strength in the new production. Well, I think the driver has that's sort of point 1. Point 2 is that as we talked about, our expectation is in the two nineties. I think that'll move potentially based on the pace of the deposit runoff and that kind of 18 basis points of elevated liquidity drag coming off. I have confidence that our forecasts are with a lot of actions and specific plans to drive it, but I think that's the thing I would watch. Secondly, third, we haven't talked about it a lot here, but fees are a real bright spot for us in terms of the focus areas for our strategy and the growth that is driving principally in those four areas. I mentioned in my comments, cart on payments, debit, and the commercial card business card, just on fire, treasury management continuing to track forward very, very well. Our capital markets business growing very nicely year over year and sequentially, and then wealth and investments, which we're seeing record sales activity, really strong revenue growth as well. So I watched those very carefully. And then I think lastly, the expenses. I think we've got a question earlier about the trajectory of expenses. I do think it'll pop up just from a calendarization perspective into the third quarter, as we have a full quarter of TCF, but then you'll see it every quarter take it down on a nominal basis over the next few quarters, as our synergies are realized, and kind of wave by way of basis. And then getting to that run rate level of performance that are in our medium-term targets as we get into the second half of '22. And as we certainly go into the full year of '23, so that's our operating plan. And that's certainly what I would urge you to stay focused on as well. Additionally, the credit profile will continue to improve. We've tried to be conservative with both our marks and our use of discretion or not pool as it relates to the new TCF portfolio. And you'll see, you'll see an improvement on credit class, NPA, NPL net charge offs as well.

That's really great. I appreciate all the detail from both of them.

Good morning. I was just wondering if you could help us out a little bit on next quarters expenses, make sure we're all kind of in the range of the same starting point as you put TCF together with H1 for the full quarter?

I hate to give so overly precise guidance, but implication X-one timers will pop up a couple of $100 million. This is the run rate into next quarter. So around $1 billion of runway expenses X-one timers and then started to tick down from there.

Good job. Thanks for letting me sneak in a question for you back on Steve on the EPS question. It sounds like you're pretty optimistic on credit. Can you give us some idea of what you're thinking in terms of provisioning as well? Are we still in this reserve reduction credit improvement mode for the company, or are there any nuances in terms of how you've marked TCF and what you see on credit where we're going to flip back to a positive provision?

Hey Jon, it's Zach. Let me take that. So from my standpoint, we've been releasing reserves now for two quarters, and within that we're seeing the positive impacts on the economy, and our product metrics are continuing to improve with the TCF mark. We spent a lot of time on that. We feel we have it absolutely right. And so we would not expect to have to build reserves from here. We continue to expect the economy to improve, and our credit metrics, as Steve just mentioned, we also expect to see reductions in credit class and NPAs and charge offs continuing a downward trend. So if all of that holds true, I would expect to see continued releases looking forward.

Okay, good. Steve, when does Fairplay come into the TCF markets and what kind of impact do you expect that to have?

John, we'll be introducing Huntington products when we do the conversion on Columbus Day. And I think that will be the moment where with some advertising or marketing, along with the highly engaged new colleagues from TCF, we'll be able to really make that case with what we're talking about here. We have to get through the conversion and settle it down. Usually takes a couple of weeks, but we had such great products in comparison that they're very, our branch colleagues are, they're very enthusiastic. And so it's an exciting moment for us. We will translate that into our customer base, and we'll be launching marketing campaigns in advance to sort of set up the momentum that we hope to deliver. Number one, when we announced the TCF deal, we talked about the expense takeout, the half the equation, but we were optimistic about the revenue potential in this, and it's not been sized. It wasn't sized for discussion that it's not today, but it's looking really good, and we have a great group of new colleagues that will be able to deliver this. So we're very optimistic about our future together.

Okay. You kind of had on what I wanted to ask also, but do you have any early revenue synergy examples that you can share? I know you don't want to size it, but any examples so far?

Well, I'm doing a lot of calling, and so the vignettes that I'm picking up from customers, our customers, TCF customers, even prospects, are very, very encouraging. We've never – we have a much broader set of products and services than TCF. So when we're sitting around talking about what we can do, like I think it was yesterday with a very large middle market company, and they're asking us questions on a detailed basis about the venue. TCF just didn't have those products and capabilities. And so being able to introduce those into a discussion looks very, very promising. I think there'll be a 40-year relationship removed from one of our competitors. So again, this combination has a lot of potential, and the breadth of our products and services, both on the business or commercial side of the service side are very encouraging. This is to tack onto that one to me, if I think about the synergies, I'm equally bullish and opposite, you just isn't. I was thinking about them sort of in a few major buckets, there's the sort of deepening engagement with products, commercial capital markets, treasury management, our card and commercial card, or payments businesses in consumer, all the things that Steve just referenced in terms of elevated level of share of wallet given the stronger products and an accelerated acquisition with the particularly the digital capabilities. And then lastly, geographic opportunity for us to expand it to the new, big markets: Denver, Minneapolis, deepening into a lot of the markets that we exist today, I think already beginning to hire staff and really start to penetrate those markets to big three buckets that I'm seeing. So we're moving fairly quickly just to pick up on Zach so we can emanate this a little bit. We're ahead of the hiring that we had at the pro-forma on our commercial or wealth and business as well as in a couple of those new markets, and the power of the combination in terms of just the sheer magnitude of what we have in Michigan and Chicago is very, very exciting to us. So a lot of work to do in front of us. That's where we're focused on driving organic growth and getting this integration in great shape, but we like what we see.

Okay. Thanks a lot. Very helpful. And, and Mark congrats and thanks over the years. I appreciate it.

Good morning guys. Just, can you remind us on your medium-term goals for ROE and efficiency ratio, just what your timeframe is for that, and then also, how do you contemplate what rates and credit you build into that?

Yeah, this is Zach. I'll take that one. Great question. I appreciate the opportunity to elaborate and be more specific. So medium term for us, it was really kind of the next four to eight quarters. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks and in a few questions, I think you'll see that the deal economics sort of accrue very substantially into '22, and they'll kind of build over the course of the year where the run rate is particularly the second half of the year will be very much evidence of that. And then the full year '23 should very much be those metrics. And so that's our focus. So back half '22 to '23 and I think the credit environment that we're visioning and the part in is continued tracking forward of benefits as rich just noted in this answer just a few moments ago that probably will rubber that some incremental reserve releases here mainly in the back half of '21, I would expect. And then on the forward yield curve basis, really just planning on the Ford yield curve as it exists today. So you can see that too still represents a constructive environment, particularly as you get kind of through '22 and into the course of '23 but really on a NIM basis that will manifest itself into the two nineties, which is my forecast sort of what would that entire period.

Got it. And then just one follow-up on the merger saves, so with the conversions finalizing in October, is it fair to say that we'll get full run rate saves in Q1, and then on top of that, like, how do you feel just about your original cost save forecast? Do you see any potential upside and if there were to be upside, do you expect to let that fall? Or could you reinvest some of it? Thanks guys.

Yeah, good, good. It's a good additional question in terms of the cost. They are still very much on track to deliver what we committed and that's the number we're really aiming for. And it's not, it's not sort of a perfect step down of costs as you sort of alluded potentially as a form of your question, really, there was sort of thinking about traunches of cost reductions. That'll begin as I mentioned in the fourth quarter and start to kind of each quarter thereafter drive incremental benefits on a quarter-to-quarter basis. Really by the second half of the year, you'll sort of see the full totality of it. There's a few pieces that will carry forward in terms of additional execution into the early part of next year. So we'll see a steady reduction in expenses for starting for Q4 and then continuing for about four or five quarters thereafter.

Oh, hi. I just wanted to circle back to that three Q expense number and definitely recognize you mentioned you're not trying to give point guidance, but now I'll ask you about point guidance to make sure I'm not misinterpreting. So you're saying start with a billion and then add a couple hundred million. So, so something like $1.2 billion, $1.25 billion, but with a wide range is I just want to make sure like?

No, well, let me clarify. Let me clarify. I think I would be looking at the numbers. It's roughly a $250 million higher quarter-to-quarter on a growth rate, just a nominal basis from Q2 and Q3. That's just the sort of quarter realization if you will, of the full quarter of TCF run rate expenses before many of the synergies started to take place. So precisely roughly $250 million quarter-to-quarter hiring in expenses, X-one timers into Q3.

And the base that's higher off of is roughly $1 billion even, or what what's $250 million higher than what?

Yeah, the numbers I'm looking at $800 million. I'm not sure that the numbers you're looking at, and you can take it offline to help you clarify more precisely.

That's a good way to think about it. I appreciate that. I was about to plug in a number that was about 20% too high in my model.

Thanks. Good morning. I wanted to follow up on the outlook for loan growth to be flat in the second half but improving in 2022. I want to ask if you could tie that outlook in with what's implicit in that outlook relative to the commentary you had around labor force shortages continuing, and just to the extent that the expectation is that that's going to improve as we look to the fall and beyond as extended unemployment benefits for Barrett and other stimulus sort of a bait, is that sort of the expectation that's contributing to that, or maybe just some color on what's implicit in that outlook?

This is Steve. Bill, the environment is changing and getting better. We hope that employment, which is the top concern for businesses in our area, will improve since they are struggling to find enough labor. We believe that changes in benefits will encourage more employment and eventually lead to higher growth rates and financing requirements. However, this correlation isn't immediate and will take some time to materialize. We anticipate seeing these effects in the fourth quarter, but with the reduction in ten-year rates, we also expect to see some prepayment in parts of our portfolio. We are trying to take all these factors into account along with the guidance from Zack. Currently, we are not optimistic about significant improvements in line utilizations this year, which marks a shift from our outlook at the end of the first quarter.

Understood. And I wanted to follow up on some of the commentary on the auto side of the business and ask if you could give some color on your discussions with your dealer clients, in terms of what you're hearing and hearing from them around their appetite for keeping floor plan levels lower versus history, even the supply chain issues are resolved. How are you guys thinking about the possibility that we could end up below historical levels of inventory?

Well, it reminds me of 2010 and 2011, when the bankruptcy occurred and inventories were drawn down and that's like everybody's going to keep floor levels lower than the car companies are going to be more judicious and try and get pricing versus volume. That lasted for a couple of quarters, but there is a volume share game that history has shown that the OEMs want. They have the ability to push delivery. It's not just the dealers pulling it. So, we believe over time, the floor plan inventories will essentially get back to where they were. A lot of the dealers, particularly in this low rate environment, would love to have a lot more inventory, and they're getting deliveries and in a good percentage of the cases, they're all those are pre-sold. So they're on the last very briefly, and they're still phenomenal where people come in thinking they know what they want, but they're there once they experience the next version of, or, or the additional features that are available in the car that there's a sales process and generally a selection that still has some physical components. So at Sonic, I think the dealers will be essentially in the position they were back in '18 and '19 over time though. I don't think that's a '21, and it may not even fully be in '22, but by '23, we think that should normalize, assuming that the pandemic stays under control.

Thank you, Steve. That's helpful.

Well, we typically make dividend decisions in the fourth quarter. It's a board decision. We'll be rerunning models now with TCF data and look at that on our priority, send that changed organic growth dividends and all of the use at this point. That's about as far as I can go at this point. So Joe's next question? Well, thank you all for your interest in Huntington. We continue to execute our core strategies as you heard earlier, and I'm confident we'll drive both near-term and long-term returns for our shareholders. We're all patient committed to deliver the economics and the recently closed TCF acquisition, while the organic growth will be driven by our investments remains intact. So we're optimistic about the opportunities in front of us, confident in our ability to capitalize on the improving economic recovery. I believe the disciplined execution of our strategy will drive top quartile financial performance over the medium and long term. And we clearly build a strong foundation of enterprise risk management and a deeply embedded stock ownership mentality, which aligns our board management colleagues with our shareholders. So thank you for your support and interest in Huntington. Have a great day.