Truist Financial Corporation (NYSE:TFC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Bill Rogers: Yes, Mike, I mean, I think, one, I respect the question, but I think you’ve got to respect that as it relates to specific market rumors or speculation, I just can’t comment on that. But I can comment on the fact that we really like the insurance business. And we’ve been in the insurance business for a long time. Just celebrated its 100th year anniversary. So that was sort of cool. We’ve been supporting the insurance business from acquisitions. So they have been able to grow both, I think, very competitively from organic and inorganic basis, but it’s also a consolidating business. We want to make sure that we’re always providing the right level of support for that insurance business to continue to grow and continue to be really valuable contribution for our shareholders.

Mike Mayo: Alright. Thank you.

Operator: We will go next to Ken Usdin with Jefferies. Your line is open.

Ken Usdin: Thanks. Good morning. Just wondering if you can provide us a little breakdown detail between €“ inside your revenue growth guide for the year, just generally speaking, what are you expecting for NII versus fees? And what rate curve are you using in your NII forecast?

Mike Maguire: Ken, it’s Mike. I’ll take that one. I guess starting with the last question on the rate curve. Our outlook is that we will see two rate hikes in the first quarter, 25 a piece in February and March and see a policy rate stable until November, where we would expect a cut, which obviously, at the end of the year, probably doesn’t have much of an impact on our NII perspective. Breaking revenue for the year into two components. From an NII perspective, the way I’d think about it is we obviously had really strong growth in 2022. The second half, in particular, also had very nice margin expansion. So we have a really nice exit velocity from an NII perspective. We believe we have a little bit of asset sensitivity left.

So we do have the opportunity to realize some of the upside of the hikes in the first quarter and we will have, as Bill mentioned, slowing loan growth. But those two factors combined, we think, give us a stable outlook for Q1 NII. And then for the rest of the year, that we believe we will stay relatively stable, some pressure on the NIMs offset by some modest amount of loan growth. On a year-over-year basis, just given the average loan growth that we would expect that will be, we think, a very nice growth. And frankly, we will drive the majority of the growth potential in the revenue guide. From a fee perspective, I think a couple of puts and a few takes. We expect to continue to have good performance from the insurance business, which is growing nicely on an organic basis as well as realizing the full benefit of the acquisitions that we completed in 2022.

Our investment banking business, we believe, has some potential to benefit from improvements in market conditions, probably more likely in the second half than the first half. And then I think we will have a little bit of pressure. We would expect there to be pressure on the on the residential mortgage business as well as the service charges and overdraft fees on deposits.

Ken Usdin: Okay. Great. And then a follow-up on deposits, 27% cumulative interest-bearing deposit beta through the fourth quarter. You guys were in the mid-30s last time. I don’t think yet you’ve given us an idea of what you think the cumulative could be this cycle, any views on that at this point in terms of the direction and the endpoint? Thank you.