Zions Bancorporation, National Association (NASDAQ:ZION) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And so that’s all implied in sort of those beta figures that I was referring to. And so, I think from my perspective, the thing to keep an eye on is the behavior of total deposit costs and how that’s affecting net interest income over time. So, we’ve lost, as you know, over $10 billion of demand deposits over the last year. My expectation is that we wouldn’t — under our sort of baseline assumptions, we wouldn’t lose nearly that much over the next year.

Harris Simmons: Absent a lot of further increase in rates.

Paul Burdiss: Yes.

Scott McLean: Hey, John, this is Scott. The slide that Paul just pointed out, Slide 22, it shows, as always, just focus on declining DDA in a period of rising rates, but the demand deposits become worth more also. And I think that’s what that slide depicts. Clearly noninterest-bearing is lower, but they’re worth more than they were a year ago and has very favorable influence. The other thing I would say is that when you look at our mix of DDA, which you’re talking about, the total deposits, through — back two decades now, more than two decades, we’ve always had a competitive advantage in terms of our mix of noninterest-bearing to total deposits, that slide is in the deck, also in the appendix, and — Slide 25. And we don’t anticipate that, that relationship that’s existed for over two decades will change materially in terms of our competitive advantage versus our peers through many different interest rate environments, because it’s clearly a function of our strategy of banking businesses and the type of deposits they have with us, which are small, granular operating accounts that are not as sensitive to interest rate movement.

John Pancari: Great. Thanks, Scott. Appreciate that. Then secondly, just on capital return. I know you indicated no real intention to buy back the stock in the third quarter. Just give us an update, what could change that? What could bring it back in the market for your shares here? Thanks.

Paul Burdiss: I’ll start there. There’s a lot of uncertainty I think including in the regulatory environment around where capital rules are going. And just given the environment and the uncertainty around that, we think it’s prudent to continue to build capital organically. As I noted, our goal is to balance the risk profile with the capital position of the organization. And to the extent the macroeconomic environment becomes more clearer, the capital sort of regulatory rules become more clearer, then it’s possible that you could see us be a little more active. But as it stands, my sort of near-term expectation is that there’s so much uncertainty that my personal expectation is that we wouldn’t be very active in that market.

John Pancari: Great. Thanks for taking my questions.

Paul Burdiss: Okay. Thanks, John.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Steven Alexopoulos with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question.

Steven Alexopoulos: Hi, everybody. I wanted to start, so looking at, one, the growth of broker deposits, and then two, how customer deposits have started returning to the balance sheet, what’s the opportunity to replace some of those broker deposits with lower cost customer funds here?