Regions Financial Corporation (NYSE:RF) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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David Turner: Yes. Ken, let me add to that. Embedded in the service charges is treasury management and treasury management has had a fantastic year. If you look at the fourth quarter for treasury management, we were up 7% fourth quarter of €˜22 to fourth quarter €˜21. If you look at the entire year, we were up 9% in TM. So, that’s been a positive to us that’s helped bolster that downward trend of service charges due to all the account changes that we’ve made and will be a strength for us going into 2023 and gives us confidence, as John mentioned, that we can meet the 550 in service charges for the year.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Matt O’Connor with Deutsche Bank.

Matt O’Connor: Just a big picture strategic question. Obviously, you’ve done an amazing job growing the interest income and getting the rate call right. It seems like 3 for 3 here. But I guess the flip side is the kind of revenue mix has become more dependent on rates and the balance sheet, right, as we think about the fee composition. So, anyway, long story short, the question is what strategic opportunities do you have to grow the fee revenues and maybe something that’s more from an acquisition point of view to accelerate that?

John Turner: Well, we’ve been, as you know, active making nonbank acquisitions, particularly adding to our capital markets capabilities. And we’re pleased with — despite the fact that we had a bit of a soft quarter in the fourth quarter, really pleased with the contribution that those capital markets investments are making to help us continue to strengthen relationships with customers and grow noninterest revenues up pretty dramatically over the last 6 or 7 years. Likewise, we are excited about the investments we’ve made on the consumer side. Whether it be the acquisition of Ascentium Capital; which is part of our Corporate Banking group; interbank, which gives us a chance to grow loans to homeowners, mortgage servicing rights that we’ve acquired, which have been helpful.

And then, in the wealth space, we’ve made some acquisitions that have been modestly incremental helpful to us, and we continue to look for opportunities there as well. So, we are, I think, positioning ourselves as we continue to accrete capital to making additional investments as we see those opportunities arise, we’re consistently looking. And I think you can look for us to continue to try to build on the investments that we’ve already made.

David Turner: Yes. Matt, let me add that — so the fact that we’ve been able to grow NII is actually a positive thing. We recognize it does lower the percentage of noninterest revenue as a total. But we’re very proud of the fact that we’ve been able to manage our balance sheet in this manner. More importantly, we’re trying to take the volatility out of that line item. And so, if you look at our ability to hedge, we’re locking in what we believe to be a very strong margin range of $3.60 to $3.90 over time, regardless of what the rate environment does. And so that gives us a lot of stability there. And if that means we have higher NII and the percentage of NIR is a bit lower than it’s historically been, we’re okay with that. To John’s point, we are going to look to use our capital for some nonbank acquisitions like you have seen us do, nothing too big, but just to bolster the NIR stream to make us more resilient in just about any environment that we have.

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