Zions Bancorporation, National Association (NASDAQ:ZION) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Dave Rochester with Compass Point. Please proceed with your question.

David Rochester: Back on the NII guide, what are you guys factoring in for deposit flows and beta and the bottom for the DDA mix and the timing of that, if you have got any thoughts around your base case there?

Paul Burdiss: Yes. I don’t have the slide number in front of me. But in the interest sensitivity slide, in the materials, you will see that we actually provided an expectation of continued increase in deposit rates, Slide 15 of the earnings materials. You can see there in the latent sensitivity that, that outlook, that kind of minus 2% outlook in latent sensitivity provides a total deposit beta of 50%, kind of accumulating over time throughout the next year. That is, say, if interest rates stop rising, we are continuing — we’re expecting in that outlook for deposit rates to continue increasing marginally.

David Rochester: And in terms of DDA mix, where do you think that bottoms and when? That would be great.

Paul Burdiss: Yes. That’s a little more difficult to predict. But what I will say is that sort of all-in funding beta includes further migration of non-interest bearing demand into interest-bearing deposits. So, therefore, my expectation is that we will continue to see some DDA migration, but that’s all incorporated into our outlook.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of John Pancari with Evercore ISI.

John Pancari: Good afternoon. Actually I want to ask a question on the loan growth front believe or not. It looks like the — I know your loan growth outlook is stable. Wondering if there could be upside to that. We are seeing some other banks that are below the $100 billion Basal III threshold that they are able to — acknowledging they are able to step-up and gain some share as some of the bigger banks are all busy with their RWA diets and balance sheet optimization. So I mean, would you think that maybe there could be an opportunity to pick up some quality loan growth here that you otherwise wouldn’t have had the opportunity to, or opportunity to gain share and perhaps that loan growth outlook might be a bit conservative?

Harris Simmons: John, I’ll jump in. It’s Harris. I’ve always believed loan growth is the trickiest thing possible to try and forecast because it — it’s so dependent on payoffs and rate and everything else. But I — there may be some. I don’t think we may even have some differences of opinions around the table about where we think loan growth is headed. I think none of us think it’s going to be that we’re going to see anything much, but there could be some. But we’re also — we also just note that during the third quarter, it was pretty weak. I think it’s — I mean, very recently we’ve seen a little bit of pick-up, but it’s — you can’t make much out of a very short period of time in terms of trying to extrapolate that very far. So that’s why we’ve got it kind of stable. It probably represents kind of the mean of where we’re all kind of prognosticating around here.

Scott McLean: John, this is Scott. I would just add to that I think, whatever pulling back the global banks are doing, I don’t know that it’s producing a granular sort of benefit in the marketplace. And particularly when you think about the size of our clients and the size of their books to the extent they’re pulling back on really large commitments, that’s not necessarily where we play. But I would just say to Harris’ comment, I think our loan flatness right now is more indicative of just the customer base and being cautious and compared to where they were 2, 3, 4 quarters ago when we were seeing historic loan growth coming out of the pandemic.