We'll go ahead and get started. So next up we have Regions, we have the full crew, so thank you for being here. First and foremost, David Turner, CFO; Ronnie Smith, head of corporate banking; and Deron Smithy, treasurer. So thank you, thanks, Dana. But maybe just to kick it off, it feels like you just reported earnings not too long ago, but at the same time, the macro outlook than it did a few weeks a month ago. So maybe just start out with what's your view of the world today, where across your customer base are you seeing stress or any sign? I think that, you know, there hasn't been a ton of change in terms of our customer base, and our expectations for what this year was gonna look like, even from a rate. Our markets are still quite robust. We have a lot of migration into the Southeast from other parts of the country, so we're the beneficiaries of that. You know, we said credit's gonna normalize, which means losses will be higher this year than last. We have an outlook of 40-50 basis points for the year. You could see, given quarter, we could be lower than that or higher than that in any given quarter, but 40-50 is kinda the right mark for us. We do see some stress in loan areas. We've talked about office. Yep. Commercial real estate in particular, transportation, senior housing. But Ronnie, you wanna talk a little bit about this? Is your team seeing? Yeah, sure. You know, most of our clients are facing this year with a lot of caution. I see them building excess liquidity, if there is such a thing, to pay down debt and, and waiting on the next event, which would be, really the trigger would be around in. So we see that cautionary approach by our operating companies. But we also see strength in our client base coming out. Goes to infrastructure improvements, and that would be roads, bridges, even colleges, water, sewer-type construction companies supplying those kinda materials. So we, we do see some bright spots that are in the economy at this, at this point as well. David hit several of the close down. Transportation is one of those areas that we saw some weakness developing in 2023 on the lower end of transportation. We to see a little bit more stress move into some of the medium to larger-sized companies. And so we've got our eye on that. It's generally a leading indicator. Goods are being produced and not as many goods are being demanded. So, it gives us a little bit of pause as we face the rest of this year. And what does that mean standpoint, but also to the companies that we do business with as well. We haven't had a lot of loan growth expectations. It was baked into our guidance. Okay. It was picking up in the back half. That has not changed for us. Yes. Again, we just didn't have large expectations for that this year. Do you have enough free? Now, are you still seeing an outsized level of paydowns on loans, or is that kind of leveled off? We've seen a bit of a tick down in. But I wouldn't call it material, but just a slow trend that has moved down just a bit more. I would also, you know, with clients and liquidity, they're working it harder at this point. We supply solutions both on and off balance sheet. Liquidity management. But if I go back and compare our total liquidity management from a business corporate banking perspective, we're near. During the pandemic, even with some of the stimulus that's there. So it shows you that clients are really focused on the lifeblood of their businesses, which is cash. That's what gets you to the other side of the stress that's out there. And so I think it's a healthy, responsible result of what they're faced with. We're pleased with what we're seeing out of our clients at this point. Do you have a sense of, like, what changes that behavior? What gets them excited to invest? Is it rates getting to be the markers that would get them, Yeah, a great question. So there are a lot of moving parts with our clients and a lot of things to be concerned about. Catalyst would be the Fed making a rate cut. I think that there's a lot of idle dollars, liquidity sitting on the sidelines. Some things are being deferred. Some capital acquisition, equipment-type acquisition, is being deferred. But I think if you saw at least the first sign of it be the initial catalyst. The only thing I would have to caution us, and I would say in this room as well, is that with the initial interest rate reduction. Impact of that. It won't happen immediately. And so depending on when that first action is taken, if it is taken sometime this year, there to that over the next several quarters. Got it. And I guess talking about interest rate cuts, David, remind us when we look at your NII action of rate cuts and what's the best case best rate backdrop for Regions in terms of NII? Yeah, I'll start, and then Deron can weigh in. We believe the market 6 cuts at the beginning of the year. We didn't factor that in. We had 4 cuts. Yep. Baked into our guidance. And that, we think starts and call it. You get the benefit of a couple of those. The rest of them will happen so late in the year. Right. Not much benefit. Yeah, we're relatively neutral on short rates. And of rates coming down, that has slowed deposit cost increases. And so our beta, we think, caps out at about 45%. But the other way we're starting to do that right now. So the real challenge for us this year relative to NII is gonna be how well we need to be competitive, but we don't have to lead with the rate. We're shortening tenors in terms of the CDs that we have and our rates from non-interest bearing to interest bearing. Right. We have – there's a chart – I forget what page it's on – that shows you, just looking at pre-pandemic, the people keeping in their checking accounts. Right. Is about where it was pre-pandemic. So we think the shift. What is the shift? From NIB to interest bearing is gonna be very slow. Maybe another 34% of our deposits are non-interest bearing. We think that goes down another point. If we manage those costs, manage promotional rates starting to come down, and shortening the tenor of a CD to five months so that we have a couple bites at the apple will be how we really manage. Deron, you wanna add to that? Yeah, so David covered it well. The only thing I would add is we do have a nice tailwind from repricing of the balance sheet. That has been going on by some of the deposit cost pressures. But as we're seeing, marginal deposit costs begin to flatten out and. Where the Fed is cutting rates, taking rates back closer to more normalized rates, we'll get some shape to the curve. Back to your question about. Yep. We're in a tough environment. Get a little shape to the curve, normalize rates, and that will help us with continued repricing of the balance sheet. Today, we're enjoying $12 billion-$14 billion of both loan originations and renewals as well as securities reinvestment. So that's a nice tailwind. It continues throughout this year. A little more shape to the curve is ideal. That benefit from the repricing. Right. Really starts to overwhelm the deposit cost. Right. Changes, and that's why we cut them out in terms of net interest income and margin in the second quarter and, and then be able to grow from there. Across the country, have you talked about just the magnitude of that in loans plus securities are repricing every quarter? Yeah, so it is $12 billion-$14 billion annually. Annually, okay. Yeah, so roughly four of that. It's pretty well dispersed throughout the year. And that probably has legs going even into next year, I would imagine. Yeah, absolutely. In terms of the backbone. Yeah, well into 2025 and beyond. And David, you mentioned deposits. You're hearing like, I'm hearing mixed messages. It feels like some of the promotional activities come down a little bit post fourth. Competitive is the environment. There are still banks who want to hold onto as much liquidity as possible. Well, I think there's all kinds of stories. Right. One, competition has always been pretty intense. Same thing. So, you know, being a relationship bank is what we think is a competitive advantage in versus deposits. We have a loan-to-deposit ratio that's about 77%, one of the lower ones. And we don't have a lot of loan growth expectations. So. Okay. We have the ability to not have to chase deposits and, you know, significant money center presence. You know, we are the money center bank in those markets. We have the density. And so we have the relationships and our, our deposit in accounts. And, we just don't see that moving a whole lot. And that's why our deposit beta has been over the past two cycles lower today. And, and so we don't have to go out there and compete to keep the balances. Right. We do have to provide top-notch service, and we focus in. Service includes having the technology. Yep. That customers want to have. So if we can continue to make it easy for people to bank with us, we'll keep the deposit balances. We won't have to go check. Have our deposit costs get away from us. And just on that, I think the other sort of legacy of last March was intense focus on liquidity stress testing. You mentioned the 77% loan-to-deposit ratio. Like, do you think about that in terms of a ceiling where you don't want to go above, like, 80% or 85%? A loan-to-deposit ratio as a control. Yep. It kinda just is what it is. Yep. You know, it used to be, I mean, pre-crisis, we were over 100%. Not on my watch at least or Deron's. Mm-hmm. but you know, if you that 77 were to go up a little bit. Yeah. That's not a problem, at all. Do the fundamentals of banking, which is growing consumer checking accounts and growing operating accounts of a business. If you can do that, you're gonna be number one for us. And we call all the other products and services really center around getting those two things. All right. So it may sound like a simplistic question. How do you build? Is it more technology? Is it more branches? We have plenty of branches. Right. We have more than most on a relative basis. We're in a lot of towns. Branches there. We also have to have good technology. We've made a lot of investments in our online and digital offerings. It's still the branch. Right. Now, you may not have been in a branch. A lot of people in the room probably don't go to branches, but people still go there to open up their checking account even though you can do it online. Now, over time, that's gonna shift. Right. It's gonna be more digitally open than there will be in the branch, but not today. So we have to invest in both of these channels. You know, again, if you were to go into a lot of the cities where we have the density. Right. You can't help go down the street without seeing a Regions' green sign in your own checking account. We do a lot in Ronnie's world in terms of, operating accounts of businesses. We stress that. We don't just wanna make you a loan. Right. We'd rather cash flow 'cause you may not have a loan need. But everybody, every business has to have an operating account. Right. So if you can get that, that's the lifeblood of a business or a consumer. And so we've gotta have all those lines in the water. And that'll help grow checking accounts. Just yeah, just an additional comment. Our strategy is clients and prospects with a cash-centric conversation. We've really pressed connectivity back to both clients and prospects. We're a little bit over leading with the conversation, digging in deep to understanding the cash flow of a company. If. Mm-hmm. You'll find a loan need if you get into the details of the banking one-on-one, understand the balance sheet of a client, understand how they're creating cash, what will that mean to them, how can that help. Of stress to another side of stress. And it's really showing up in a lot of our treasury management results as well. We've this past year. Relationship basis of. Mm-hmm. Clients who now have treasury management solutions. And so when we think about strategy, it's not just about, "We would like to have your operator." To create more cash on hand, better cash flow, reduced days receivable. How can we provide solutions. Not being lenders but really focus back into relationship management. And over the past two years that we've really pushed this particular philosophy, it's management world expand and provide us with fee income that's an annuity rather than just a one-time event. Got it. And just one last question, not to date you, but David, you've done this for a long time. There's a healthy debate that if we are in a structurally higher rate backdrop, could the deposit mix of a bank look like 85% CDs. Just how do you think about that when you're thinking about ALCO with the medium term, what the deposit mix looks like for Regions? Well, I think that balances are, Right. Right now, we had about 35% or maybe 40% in the Great Financial Crisis, where liquidity was at a premium. Yep. After and then we came down. I think we were at about 7% on the low watermark. I think you'll see as rates come down, you'll see that starting to value more of having access to their cash versus locking it up over five, six, seven. Okay. Months, whatever the case may be. Don't know exactly where that per where it is right now when things get settled. I've been saying that 10% range. Okay. Got it. Maybe shifting gears, I think. Then just give us a sense of, one, I think, commercial real estate office. I think most people appreciate the risk there. One, talk to you the kind of how you see. A lot of focus on multifamily, Sunbelt States. Just would love your perspective there. Ronnie, won't you take that? Yeah. So I'll start with office because it point. But our office exposure is low relative to any comparison that you would wanna make. We're at about a $1.5 billion against our office portfolio today. We didn't have a charge against that office portfolio during 2023. We do think that we will have charges associated with that business. It's such a sea change in how we think about office today and the demand that that sits in the city. Hopefully, all of you have seen the slides that we have given you with some pretty good detail about the portfolio. So I won't repeat that other than just to this an advantage. We have both in-migration of population and businesses that are moving in as well. The majority of our book is suburban. Helps us. Okay. Additionally, we're only have roughly 100 names that are associated with that book of scrutiny. We have a lot of eyes. First, second, and third lines of defense are taking a very deep dive, not just at a portfolio level but at a very detailed level. Where we've set reserves and where we have tried to make sure that we are accounting for what we think the stresses will be. I'll mention multifamily real quick since you did as well. We can talk about any piece of real estate that you'd like to talk about. But our multifamily book has performed. The process. We are encouraged by the credit quality that we continue to see there. We participated in a national conference just a couple of weeks ago. They were optimistic about what they're seeing in multifamily. There's pressure on single-family housing. And so that's moving that demand is moving more toward solutions at this point. The other thing that we heard that is also encouraging is just the aggressive nature that LifeCos are providing from a term family space. We continue to see that. When you have multifamily that's stuck on your books, and you're in the short position, and they're looking for long-term solutions, that appears to be really good in growing demand on the term side and the takeout for the longer-term solution with multifamily today. Again, Sunbelt helps us. Markets is critically important. Ronnie mentioned we will have some losses in office. Right. We have a 4% reserve there. It's $60-something million on the $1.5 billion. You gotta look at the underlying. Yep. to see how confident you are in that coverage. And so we start with a kind of right around 50%, low 50. We updated those using Green Street. That would give us about. Okay. Say a 75 loan-to-value. And then we shocked that 30%-35% to get to a loan-to-value of. We feel good about that, but there will be some losses. Okay. Which is why we have the reserve of 60. Commercial, I mean, the multifamily, we don't feel like we're gonna have losses there. Right. We feel really good about. Yeah, like I said, all real estate's not the same. Right. You've gotta spend the time to look at the underlying properties. It doesn't sound like you're too worried about this whole notion of this. Multifamily in 2024, 2025, and that is gonna squeeze CRE but and it could be very builder-specific. We do feel like that with the in-migration of the market. Yes, one mitigant to. Okay. The supply that's coming on, being in the right submarkets and seeing the growth trends that occur there, gives us some comfort. We do reserve against that book, as David mentioned. There are always things that happen along the way. But overall, we feel really solid about what we're. Do get rate reductions, in the second half of the year. We that will open up the agency business, which we're very active in. Made a recent acquisition. Of you are aware of that also provides us with additional, term takeout sources. And so we're, we're optimistic about where we stand. All right. That's good to hear. I guess maybe switching gears just around expenses. So guidance for lower expenses year over year. Q1 earnings are coming from where the bank's obviously investing, today. And how should we think about the construct for normalized level of expense growth for Regions? Yeah. So did a job over the last several years controlling our expenses. Right. We will be down just on an absolute basis. But in all fairness, 3% of that is related to $35 billion that we don't. Right. Think will repeat. And so, if you carve that out, you really are flat. Right. So flat, but we still have to give away March 1st. So you'll see that pick up our expense base in the first quarter. The first quarter also has payroll taxes. Yep. It's gonna have had some delays from the fourth quarter that went into the first from a revenue standpoint. So we have incentives there, for 1,000 resets and stuff like that. Right. Our flat is $4.1 billion. You cannot divide by four. Right. think that that's what first quarter's gonna be the high watermark. Right. But we think we'll be at the 4.1. Gotten there. We've had to make investments in things like cyber and consumer compliance and other areas of risk management, and we have to find ways to pay for that. That's our highest cost. You saw some severance in the fourth quarter. You're gonna see some severance in the first quarter, and it's all about how we control. I still think there's a lot of opportunity to leverage technology better than we do today, so we have human capital doing a lot of things that maybe we could. We just, we've gotta get better at that. And because technology costs are not going down like they used to, they're gonna keep going up because of software as a service. It's a different regime that we're all going. We're making investments in our own transformation, in particular, our deposit system. Mm-hmm. that'll be, you know, another three years. And we've done a good job of savings and headcount. We're looking at our own office needs. We're looking at vendor charges. We're at every cost. We have to make the investments. Right. I just mentioned. We can't let our expense base get away from us. We're, we're pretty efficient, but we can be better. We just gotta keep, keep on it. You hired a lot of people. The tech spend you mentioned. When we think about just broader inflation in the economy, like, do you feel good about that it is headed closer to the 2%? We do. You know, we started seeing headcount reductions in the technology industry first. Yep. You're there, cannot possibly be a bank that has gone management this year. Yep. Obviously, we are all having pressure given that, you know, the first half of last year was rising rates, and we all made a lot of money. That can't repeat. The comparisons gonna be pretty tough. We've already said we can't generate positive operating leverage this year. We have a good year, and we can make a lot of money. But I think that we're managing this the best we can. Well, I guess maybe switching to the fee revenue outlook. You mentioned capital markets. Give us a sense of markets for the year, and are things trending better, worse? Yeah. I think capital you wanna talk about capital markets? You want to talk to. You start out. I'll do. Wrap up. He'll, he'll clean it up. Yeah. A little more of an episodic business in terms of revenue. The good news about it is if they don't generate revenue, they don't get paid. So, you know, they had a tough. The rate environment was not helpful. We hope if we get if we start seeing rate reductions, we're gonna see a lot more growth in, in, NIR to 80 range. I think 60 what did we say? 60-80 range each quarter. I-and again, it's not necessarily smooth. We should have. Days that we saw on the fourth. Okay. The rest of NIR, you know, mortgage ought to have a, a bit of a rebound. We're still looking for mortgage servicing. We think interchange is gonna be fine. We do have risk with Durbin. Yep. We've talked about that. If that goes in as presented, because it'll kick in in July. Wealth management will do fine. It's pretty predictable. What am I missing? Is that. Quick comments on our capital markets business. We did add in M&A capabilities with Clearsight that's focused. There's some good activity going on there. Some of that David mentioned was scheduled to close in the fourth quarter that moved over into January. We did see opportunities that moved in, which is what gave us the good start to this first quarter. But our real estate capital markets business is core of what we do. Multifamily that we talked about and the sizable book that we have there, we are seeing some of that activity occur as well. So again, we see some positive can come if rates stay higher longer. And so if we don't see the cuts that we are anticipating in the second half of this year, I do think that that challenge for us as we try to finish the year out. But, again, based on where our forecasts are today, the 60- 80 is something that we feel. Is that business where you want it to be in terms of the people, the verticals that you support, or is there more to go in filling out some of these whole gaps? Yeah. So, solutions for our clients. So our capital markets business is really built around the existing client base that we have. And as we think about the additional advantage of when we make non-bank acquisitions that are in the capital markets group, that's what we're trying to do is to clients that maybe they're receiving elsewhere that we have the capability of bringing on board. And so, and we've been very active in the space over the last. And what we consider bolt-on acquisitions there. Sabal sits within capital markets. I mentioned Clearsight. That That came right after Sabal. BlackArch. The M&A firm. And then affordable housing initially sat within our capital markets space. We've moved that to real estate. But there's a very close tie. Kind of acquisitions that really align strongly with the client base we have. Philosophically, that's what we will look for on a go-forward basis as well. We have our capital numbers kind of where we want them to be. Yep. You know, generating pretty good capital, paying a fair dividend, not a lot of loan growth, which gives us a pot of capital. Use it to do these non-bank acquisitions. Yeah. If they're out there, if we could get the right thing for the right price, you know, and then we use share buy. Is the capital where we are. We're 10.3, 10.3% Common Equity Tier 1. We are looking at the securities book. I think we had mentioned that. Yep. A couple quarters. We can reposition that, take some losses. Yep. Use the capital that way, reposition, take a little bit more duration 'cause we can get compensated for it based on the shape of the curve. So you'll see us do. And kind of, if we can find these acquisitions, would be wonderful. They're just hard to come by. What's the appetite on buybacks? You mentioned it's a toggle. After all, expect you to be a bit more active on buybacks? Well, we have been active. We, we said we're kind of at our number. When we saw the Basel III, well, let me kind of go back. 25.975 in terms of Common Equity Tier 1 for the risk profile that we have. We operated at 9.5 for a long time. Yep. Because of all the uncertainty that was coming, Basel III, we said we're gonna take that closer to 10. Then we changed that to be slightly over. Right. But we're there. We now have seen Basel. But we're close enough for striking distance, and we don't need to let our capital continue to accrete. Right. So we use our capital first to support our business, to grow the loan book. We use it to do non-bank acquisitions. And then thus far, we've just been buying our stock back. So we did that in the fourth quarter to do the securities repositioning. Right. Do a little bit of buyback. But, yeah, we're in the market, you know, 'cause we don't want our capital to get any higher than it is right now. Right. Like, do you think about that as doing it piecemeal so you're not making a big bet at any given time, or? Yeah. It's not. You shouldn't expect a big splash. But you shouldn't also. We're playing. Right. We'll pick and choose what makes sense for us based on the facts and circumstances that exist in any particular quarter. So it would again buy your stock back, then you look at the math on securities repositioning or buying stock back. Right. To have a securities repositioning gets you paid back pretty. It's far superior than a buyback. But you can't wreck your quarterly income either. Right. You gotta, you gotta be reasonable about it. So, you know, that's how we think. Does sooner rather than later, does that influence how you think about that? Like, does that add to the urgency of doing some of that or not? Well, I think that, you know, cutting sooner, a bit more money. A little bit. But it's really the shape of the curve and the reinvestment opportunities. And so we're starting to get a little more shape to the curve and being able to get compensated appropriately for the duration. Duration from where we are right now. Yeah. Just a hair. But you wanna add to that? No, I think that's well said. I mean, our balance sheet is positioned where we want it today, but we're always making, you know, portfolio management shifts, if you will, in just managing the balance sheet. And so if we think about securities ourselves an opportunity to do some of that reshaping of the portfolio to meet our longer-term needs and not being restricted by the fact we're at a loss. Right. As David said, when you look at the financial metrics in that use of capital, they're superior, far superior to buying back your shares. If you think about your capital position as being fully loaded for AOCI, all of those losses are already reflected in capital. Mm-hmm. Now you can improve the forward. It's accretive to tangible book value. It's accretive to EPS. It's accretive to. Returns. to returns. And so we think it's a good use of capital. Measured way. Got it. And maybe just, Deron, sticking with you in terms of one of the reasons for the securities book is adding liquidity. And when we think, I think, the ROL, how are you thinking about just liquidity management differently today versus maybe a year ago? Yeah. Well, I think we all learned a lot during the post-SVB and the other failures, first and foremost, is that money can move really fast. And. Yep. Certainly with the use of digital technology. Whether there's noise out there in the system right or wrong, it can also feed on itself because of the use of social media and those. Waiting on the Fed to tell us where we need to manage liquidity. We're evaluating that in the context of our own experiences and taking those learnings and incorporating that into stress testing. And so we've already made some enhancements to that. Also, one of the things we learned is the insured portfolios in a stressful period. So FDIC insurance or the level of insured really does matter. And so but it also means portion, either the non-operational piece in Ronnie's world or the retail dollars that are over the insured level. Right. Have a greater risk of runoff. So we've set more than 100% coverage of uninsured things like that. Right. So those are new elements to our internal liquidity stress testing framework that we think is bolstered. Coming down the pike from a regulatory standpoint. Makes sense. And I think the other thing on the funding side, not that I think you mentioned you have no outstanding that Federal Home Loan Bank. Reforms at the FHLB and how banks can use them. At the same time, when I talk to folks in the Treasury and policymakers, I think they want banks to tap into. Like, is that doable? Like, I think a couple things. The FHL, the Federal Home Loan Banks, have done a good job of providing normal operations. What we learned, though, is if you have the kind of cash needs. Right. That we saw in March, they're not, they're not going. Only entity that can give you that kind of cash is the federal government. And so, you know, that tells you also to post collateral early. And they've done so. We test a discount window every year. Always have. Just make sure the pipes are working. But there was a stigma that was put on it. And, of course, it was just a lot of discussion about. Yeah. You being weak if you had to use a discount window. Now we're trying to undo all that. We need everybody, including policymakers, to help us there because that's the best place to go. And, you know, I think that using that as kind of right answer. Use what we have. But if in times of stress, when you need that, they need to be there. And we need to have post the collateral and get it worked out. Yeah. I don't have anything to add. I know we have one minute. Just wanted to see if anyone in the audience had a question. If you do, raise your hand. If you look at the Regions franchise, again, going back all the way to GFC, like, John and you have kind of repositioned the balance sheet, the business a fair bit since then. When we think about just the investment proposition, the competitiveness of the bank, are there any areas that you think are underappreciated among investors or, or, or what, what's in store? We have a fixation on return on tangible common equity. It's one of our key performance measures. That's how we're compensated in a pretty large way. Number of years. So the risk-weighted assets that some are going on now, we've done that. Mm-hmm. We had to because if you go back to 2015, 2016, we were not very good. That, I don't think people appreciate. They hear us talk about our deposit base. I don't think people really appreciate what that means and the granularity. And you look at the average consumer checking account balance of $5,000 or $6,000, that money's, you know, direct deposit comes in. Keeps repeating. And so, that is, you gotta have diversification of your balance sheet. But it's true with the deposits. Right. We saw that in March. We have 5 million accounts. Silicon Valley had, call it, 33,000. Average balance there was. Account balance, average was $18,000 in the checking accounts. Right. At five or six. So that matters. And that's why our deposit costs are so low. But that's also why we have branches all over the place. Contrast. And I think, you know, our return on capital's been among the highest, leveraging the deposit base. And that's been a huge. Right. where a lot of migration. So we're poised to do well. 2024 - 2023 is gonna be tough. But wait till 2025. Right. It's gonna be fabulous. And so before and get through it. Right. On that fabulous note, thank you so much. All right. Thank you.