Okay, thanks everybody for joining us this afternoon. I do have a disclosure to read, then we'll get into it. For important disclosures, please see Morgan Stanley Research Disclosure website at morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. The taking of photographs and the use of recording devices is also not allowed. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to your Morgan Stanley representative. Well, with that, thank you so much for joining us today, Mike Maguire, CFO of Truist Financial Corporation. Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate everything to get here. You know, we've had the smoke, we've had so many things going on, so I know it's been not the easiest thing to get up to New York. I appreciate your time. You've been in the CFO role now for about, I think it's nine months. Is that right? Feels like longer, I think that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's been an interesting couple of months for any bank CFO, but you've had an even bigger plate of activity given the MOE has been shifting from integration to execution. You had the minority stake sale of Truist Insurance Holdings. Maybe you could give us a sense as to how you're thinking about, "Look, here's some top wins you've had in the early days. Yeah. give us a sense as to how you're thinking about the levers that, you know, drive the businesses and the EPS over the next couple of years. I know. Well, thanks, and glad to be here, and thanks again. Thanks again for having us. Look, I mean, as I think about the first nine months, and you hit a couple of the highlights, the insurance holdings transaction obviously was a labor of love, but I think a really strategic opportunity for our company to realize, and that's been so far so good. Really pleased by the outcome there. The insurance company really well positioned to continue to grow, to continue to acquire businesses. It has its own currency now, with which it can continue to recruit and retain our top producers. Thrilled by that work. At a conference just before sort of the March Madness all began, I actually spent a little bit of time talking about some work that we've been working on throughout the first several months of my CFO-ship, which included just doing an analysis of the KPIs that we think were most important and that were most highly correlated with TSR. We revealed those KPIs, and you should expect to see more of that in our reporting. We're making sure that we're again focusing on the right metrics and then making sure that we're connecting that to things like executive compensation and the like. That's another body of work that I've been pleased with. Obviously, just managing through the month of March and April was a feat. It was really great to see our team in action, working really well together, the speed, the readiness. I was impressed by that and very pleased by how the team came together. In terms of, you know, the drivers of the business and kind of where I'm focused, I think there's a couple of things. I mean, I think, you know, one thing that Bill, you know, has been talking about recently, and I've been doing the same, is just this concept of really focusing on our core and simplifying our focus. You know, we believe Truist has just an outsized opportunity given the markets that we serve, the market structure, our share in those markets, the capabilities that we can deliver to clients. Our sort of deposit gathering, you know, fortress as we think about it, coupled with a really nice, diverse and locally delivered, but, you know, really kind of universally served, wholesale client base. I think about the retail banking business's ability to create a really. The commercial banking's business ability to create a really nice, diverse funding profile. To be able to put those, put that liquidity back to work in small businesses, in middle-market businesses, in corporate and investment banking clients, to deliver those advisory services, whether it be wealth or banking or insurance. We're really focused on that core portfolio within our business. Of course, we have, you know, a number of what I'll think of as, you know, more complementary businesses. You've heard us talk about our indirect auto business, our correspondent mortgage business, some of our other, I'll call them, off-the-edge businesses, which, again, are still important to us, but probably a little less, a little less core in our focus and how we prioritize our investment and focus in terms of driving earnings. Just going forward, top three things on your to-do list from here? You know, where I'm spending my time right now is, you know, focusing on funding. We'll probably talk more about that today, making sure that we're making smart decisions around the trade-offs, around retaining client relationships. Very focused on RWA optimization. You've probably heard a little bit about that today, certainly over the last several months, as the capital spectrum is evolving with policy guidelines changing and the like. I'd say probably the last would be, you know, more fully serving our existing clients, making sure. You've heard us talk about Integrated Relationship Management, or IRM, which is just doing a better job of more fully covering our existing clients. We think we've got more opportunity in our existing markets with our existing clients, more fully serving them than just about anything else out there. I spend quite a bit of time talking to our business leaders to make sure that we're very focused on execution there. Okay, great. Now we'll just move from high-level strategy to the near-term second quarter. Yeah. Give us, if you could, an update on what you're seeing now that we're about, what? 2/3 of the way through, maybe a little bit more. Yeah. Yeah, no, happy to. You know, at another industry conference in the last week or so, our CEO, Bill Rogers, made a reference to some revenue pressure in the second quarter. Just to maybe put a finer point on that, you know, as we sit here today, our expectation is that the top-line revenue is likely to decline sort of in the 3% area during the quarter. That's largely driven by a lot of the factors you've heard us talk about so far this year. You know, remixing, based on disintermediation of the DDA balances into higher, you know, yielding products. Betas continue to, you know, to perform a little worse than our expectations. You know, Bill mentioned a week or so ago that on a sort of spot basis, so currently, we're at around a 43% cumulative beta. You know, our expectation is sort of a mid to high 40 betas in the cards, that's taking a toll as well in the second quarter. You know, as we think about that and just as we're giving guidance around Q2, thought we'd also just check in and give you a sense for sort of the full year outlook on revenue as well. For a lot of the same factors, you know, be it mix, be it pricing, and also I think as we think about, you know, building a little bit of capital, being more disciplined around RWA, focus and pricing, and we'll talk about some of the puts and takes there. A little bit more pressure on the top line for the full year as well. We had previously discussed sort of a 5%-7% top line guide for the year. We're probably looking around the 3% area for the full year as well. 3%? Up. Up. Okay. meaning 8%-10%. No? You're saying you're at 3% revenue growth. No. No. Yeah, 3% revenue growth year-over-year. Right. Up. Versus Versus five to seven. Versus 5%-7%. Got it. Yeah. Okay. Your 3% for the quarter is Q on Q. That's what you're referring to? 3% down is Q on Q. Right. Full year is 3% up, year-over-year. Up, year on year. Okay, just want to make sure we know our threes. Thank you for clarifying. Yeah. Anything on the expense side to talk about at all? Just our focus on bending that curve, right? I mean, you've heard us talk quite a bit about expenses, and we've, you know, did some reorganizing of various businesses in the 1Q and talked about, for example, at LightStream. We talked about discontinuing a middle market sales and trading business we had in the investment bank. A good examples, I think, of us just sort of reevaluating what's truly important and part of where we're going as Truist and what's not, and what's maybe marginally profitable. We're focused on the things you would expect us to be focused on, things like FTE trend, things like travel expense, just everything that we're doing. Spending calories, you know, thoughtfully. As well, just as we think about the businesses that we're investing in, it's not just about where we're growing, it's also about where we're saying no more often. That's another thing if I was going to add a fourth item to my agenda, is just making sure that we're assessing the trade-offs in a very practical way, and we need to be able to say yes for the things that matter. For us, that's investing in our wholesale payments capabilities, you know, our client experiences with our core clients. That might mean that we, you know, aren't in a position to invest in some of these businesses that perhaps have, you know, nice to haves, but not need to haves, to improve the business. As it relates to expenses, very focused on bending that curve in 2023 and as important as anything, also preparing ourselves for 2024. The integration is behind you now, right? It is. I mean, we completed our I'd say the bulk of our technical and branding conversion Presidents' Day weekend last year. We celebrated our first anniversary of the technical conversion. There are still a few little nits and nats out there. The team probably wouldn't want me describing it that way, we still have our credit card issuer issuing platform conversion to do, which is happening in various phases and going quite well. We're one brand out in the market. All of our core applications and processing systems have been converted, and that's been great. That's when Bill's talked a lot about, you know, about that pivot and really focusing on the windshield versus the rearview mirror or being distracted and just the amount of time that teammates were spending training or learning new systems or operating two systems. All that's behind us now. I think that was probably a lot of what was fueling our optimism as we exited 22 and came into 23. Obviously, you know, like a lot of others in the industry, you know, the funding dynamics have created some more, you know, headwinds than we would have expected when we came into the year, but we think we're managing those well too. To my earlier point, you know, really being thoughtful about how we're managing pricing and margin and balances and the like, it just requires more intensity right now. On that topic, on net interest margin, I mean, you've got today's environment with... which sounds like a little more intensity on the deposit pricing side. Yeah. Maybe you could just give us a little bit of color on how you're seeing that, you know, non-interest-bearing deposit shift, if at all? Sure. Then, help us understand how you're thinking about protecting them in the event that, you know, the Fed starts to cut rates at some point. Yeah. On the DDA mix, it's interesting, we've sort of been batting this one around now for a couple of quarters now, I feel like as a group. You know, we pre-COVID, we were in, call it, high 20s area. You know, again, albeit that's, you know, after a low, no rate environment for quite some time. During the peak of stimulus, our DDAs represented about 35% of our total deposits, and we started to see that remix happen in the H2 of last year. I think we actually ended the year at closer to 34%, the 1Q at 32%. At the time, you know, we had an expectation, okay, maybe this sort of, you know, continues to remix at 1% or so a quarter. You know, as we were thinking about, is there a floor? Maybe we said, "Hey, maybe it's sort of pre-COVID levels, high 20s." I think our thinking on that has evolved a bit. As we think about it now, you know, and you go back to 405 and you look at, you know, kind of a pro forma SunTrust, BB&T, you would have seen sort of a high teens. You know, our latest thinking on this, and again, it's hard to, it's hard to be entirely precise here, but maybe it's a mid-to-high 20s for. You know, we do a lot of work on this. You know, we analyze the account balances and behaviors of the customers, both on the retail and the wholesale side. We look at average payments per month, trended, adjusted for seasonality, and we try to get a sense for, you know, what the excess balances might be and whether or not there's, you know, a model that can be built to predict this type of, this type of composition over time. It's not obvious because there's a pretty wide disparity in how people, you know, run their lives and run their businesses. The good news for us is the bulk of these accounts are truly operating accounts, right? These are how people are living their lives. They're using Zelle, they're on Bill Pay, it's their direct deposit. On the business side, you know, more than 80% have a loan product as well, or a payments product, and they just aren't seeking that efficient frontier of excess balance. I think very, very difficult to know what that answer is. As we sit here today, you know, I think, you know, mid-20s to, you know, approaching high 20s is probably our best calculus. Okay. At a, you know, this quarter, a little slightly faster speed to get there than prior. I think March, you know, and April presented a bit of a pulse out there, around the betas and the remixing. I think whether it was on Main Street or whether you were a CFO of a not-for-profit or a mid-sized company, there was just a lot more awareness around rates, what you're getting paid, where you're banking, the like, which, we certainly believe would have driven a little bit of an acceleration in some of that behavior. Whether that sort of, you know, slows down a bit throughout the H2 of the year, we'll see. I think we have, you know, maybe we'll see a rate hike as early as this week or July. I think there's increasing speculation that cuts are less likely this year. If we stay higher for longer, that mix is going to be, you know, continue to be a challenge and betas will continue, we think, to be higher and higher. I think you actually asked a question I didn't answer. That's why I'm writing these down. You mentioned rates and, if we do eventually get cuts, and we think we will, how we're positioned to manage that. You know, we did, you know, really starting during the second, I think maybe last summer, did start to prepare the company to be positioned for a lower rate environment. We started putting on forward-starting receivers and managed our interest rate liability position to be close to neutral, you know, barely liability sensitive. We do feel well prepared for those cuts when they come. All right, great. Yeah. Maybe we could flip to growth outlook here. Sure ... and talk a little bit about, balance sheet growth and where you're leaning in. Perhaps, you know, starting on the loan side. Yeah. You know, especially C&I, it seems like, you know, that block is frankly not been growing as fast as I would have thought, given how good the credit quality has been. Yeah. Just give us a sense of what you're thinking there. The credit quality in C&I continues to be excellent. You know, we're not seeing softness there. We've been asked a lot of questions about that throughout the course of the day. Maybe seeing a little bit more conservatism, some less expansionary type of behavior, which is reducing demand in the C&I space. We're seeing that across the middle market businesses as well as, even in the, in some of the corporate space. We're still very focused on our C&I customers. I will say one caveat to that, I think this is industry wide, is we are applying much more discipline around returns, right? The cost of capital for the sector, for Truist, the cost of funding is higher than it was three months ago, six months ago, 12 months ago. With the backdrop of the new capital policies and the likelihood that OCI will no longer be an opt-out. Mm. I think there's just a renewed focus on making sure that we're, again, sort of, investing in, you know, our calories in the right place. You know, just, you know, looking at loan-only relationships a little bit differently, making sure that, you know, we've got a really good, you know, opportunity to, on a loan-only basis, it needs to return. Otherwise, we're looking at relationship profitability. Look, that's our model, right? That's kind of where I started with where we're focused as Truist. In our- a lot of our markets, which again, are some of the fastest growing, most attractive demographics in the country, you know, there's a ton of great opportunity. We've got leading market share in these markets. Our ability to find 1,000 paths to yes, in terms of extending capital and credit, that's on us. We work very, very hard on that. What I mean by that is, you know, if we've got a middle-market customer that's a loan-only relationship, you know, if they renew next week, odds are that rate's going to be higher than maybe they expected, or certainly higher than it's been over the last couple of years. The good news is we have so many other ways that we can serve the client to make that relationship work for us and to make it work for the client. That's a real focus for us. Look, C&I think all things equal, is a place where we are always leaning in. It's a big part of our franchise. But that's definitely a more balanced opportunity than it would have been, say, for example, in Q3 and Q4 last year, where we saw, you know, really pretty significant growth. ... Right. Okay. Yeah. Part of the reason for asking is just you mentioned a little bit earlier about capital, new capital rules. Yeah -coming in, and I noticed that last week you issued some senior unsecured debt, right? Yes. Yep. That was in size around $3 billion. Was that right? 3.25%, yeah. Three and a quarter billion. At that, just wondering what the, what the rationale was. Yeah -for the debt issuance, did it have anything to do with funding growth, or was it more around some of the regulatory outlook that you might have? It's probably more the latter and just, you know, managing the balance sheet. You know, as a, we're going to be a regular way issuer in the unsecured market. You know, we've told our credit investors that we're probably an $8 billion-$10 billion a year type of issuer. We did $3 billion in the 1Q and went out for benchmark size last week and had just a really great day in the market and ended up with a, you know, many multiples oversubscribed deal. We're really pleased with that outcome. That was not a signal of, you know, funding outside loan growth. That was more a liabilities management exercise. As you know, you know, the likelihood of an LTD requirement or TLAC, we think is very, very likely, and so we issued that at the HoldCo, so that would be TLAC or LTD eligible. You know, again, and we feel like we'll be very well positioned in short order to comply with whatever guidelines come out as it relates to that. The other question, you know, I've been getting, I'm sure you've been getting as well, is what's the path for and the timeframe for the path to, for Truist to get to that next level of bank category? Oh, yeah. That $700 billion. You know, you're currently at $575 billion- Yeah. Right? It seems like a ways, but just wanted to get your sense as to how quickly you think you'd get there. Yeah, I mean, I think hard to speculate on. You know, it's funny because, you know, this concept of cliffs and these different levels, that's all evolving right now because so many of the implications of even becoming, for example, a Category II institution, are being pulled forward and being pulled lower. It certainly was on our radar, you know, call it pre-March. You know, having good readiness and thinking about how you approach that line and whether there's an efficient frontier. We were having all those conversations and we, you know, as a Category III, we have a modified LCR, and, you know, again, we wouldn't have had, you know, OCI be deducted from CET1. You know, all that, all that's changed. We're probably spending less of our time now thinking about, like, that $700 billion line and more thinking about readiness for sort of this new regime of policy, you know, Basel and all that comes with it, and do feel very well prepared for that. The last question on capital, that I have actually has to do with Truist Insurance Holdings, because I've gotten this question around the. Mm. -associated with Truist Insurance Holdings. Maybe you can give us a sense as to whether or not that's something that you would suggest makes sense or not. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, thanks for asking. We've actually gotten a lot of questions about this privately. You know, you'll recall that we did, we created a preferred stock structure when we sold the minority stake, a 20% stake of the common stock to Stone Point. We actually sold roughly 13% of the basis, so we actually pushed the basis in the preferred into the common. The short answer, without, you know, giving a long speech about taxes and accounting, is that we couldn't simply refinance or sell the preferred to create capital, right? We would. The basis is, the capital basis is in the common. If we were, for example, to do a transaction that resulted in us no longer owning the majority, there would be a significant acceleration of capital increase. I'll point people, those of you who have more of an interest in that topic, we did provide some incremental disclosure. I think it got a little bit lost in the chaos, but at a another industry conference just before the events of the weekend of March, whatever it is, 8th, 9th, we provided some incremental disclosure around the technicals of that structure. Okay, great. Yeah. Well, I do want to turn to fees. Sure. It's a obviously, important line item for you. You've got many different businesses that are driving fee growth and composition. I think there was a recent comment that fee income remains below potential. Could you give us a sense as to what you're thinking about with regard to driving growth in the various fee lines? Yeah. You've got, you know, five, six really key lines there. Yeah. It is below potential- Mm. That's a huge focus for us. That was my number three on our list, right? Sort of circling these core businesses with these advisory capabilities, in many cases, whether it be wealth or insurance or banking and other. Maybe just to tick through them, we talked a little bit about insurance already. Obviously, that's a, you know, widely admired, very successful, well-run business. You know, a global business, in many respects. John and the team are doing a great job. You know, we had a little slower organic growth earlier this year, and some people asked us some questions about that, but we still believe that's a high single-digit organic growth business. You know, we've got a diverse business there. We're both in the retail and the wholesale side of things. You know, as we think about sort of that 1Q performance and it being a little sluggish relative to sort of what I just described, some of that was related to our, the P&C market. You know, we have a business called AmRisc that's in the casualty business, and so there have been some, a little bit of noise in some of those markets. The backdrop is actually still quite good for the insurance brokerage industry. So long as we've got a hard, you know, pricing market and an increasingly complex environment where people need to, you know, manage risk. We feel really good about that business. As well, by the way, I'll just note its ability to continue to grow inorganically. You know, now that it has an independent capital structure, the ability for the insurance company to either attract teams of producers, or acquire businesses that are either entrepreneur-owned or private equity-backed companies, are the degree of difficulty to do those deals is much lower now. Feeling good about that. Also, by the way, a big opportunity to continue to penetrate our wholesale client base and retail client base. I mean, everybody that we serve with a banking product needs insurance, and that's like what we talk about with John, and we're doing a great job and trying to do better. Investment banking has been a really important business for us. We've been a consistent investor. For us, that's a really nice midcap and increasingly, you know, larger midcap, even small, large cap advisory business. It's full service. We think we do a great job there. We've been really focused on talent. We acquired a ton of talent over the last couple of years. We actually, a lot of the bones of this business were built during the Great Financial Crisis, where we hired really much more of a focus on product and platform, debt capital markets, equity capital markets. Now we're really focused on industry captains and teams, in many cases, from other large cap or midcap full service platforms that want to come do it at Truist, that are a good cultural fit for us and really want to deliver the whole firm. We're seeing some of the benefit of that as well. Feel really well positioned. You know, we think we're taking share in that market. It's been a tough market the last, you know, several quarters, but we still have a good pipeline, and feel good about the prospects for our investment banking business. Wealth has been a great business for us, too. You know, Joe and his team are doing a great job. We did do a lot of acquihires last year in our wealth business. Excuse me. We've slowed that down a little bit this year, and we're allowing some of those teams to season and improve their productivity, and so we're seeing that, and so feel good about that. It's a really stable business for us. We're doing a really nice job, integrating the coverage of our commercial banking, investment banking, and wealth management teams. You know, they're covering teams as packs. We're getting great feedback from clients on that and getting great feedback as well from teammates about, you know, our ability to drive more business. What am I leaving out? You know, on the mortgage side, obviously, you know, some industry dynamics have that business. You know, mortgage banking comes down, but, you know, a bit cyclical and we'll see where we go. Right. Not as much refi as there used to be. No. A little bit. A little bit. Okay. just wanted to, you know, bring it full circle here with regard to operating leverage then. Yeah Really, we've talked through drivers of top line, and we touched a little bit on expense, efforts. Yeah that you've got underway. Maybe you could help us understand how you're looking to deliver the positive operating leverage here over the medium term, and talk about the puts and takes on. Yeah on the pros there. I think it's gonna have to. I'll do it in order of importance, and there are actually, there's one and one A, or however you want to think about it, but and we talked about it a little bit. On the revenue side, we absolutely have to deliver the full firm and do a better job, more fully serving our clients in franchise. I, there's probably not a more important sort of theme, narrative, push, focus by Bill, by all of our executive leaders, to make sure that we harmonize and choreograph our coverage. Again, whether it be on a more, from a more digital perspective on the retail side, delivering timely offers to clients that are good fits, making it easier to do business with us, you know, to moving over to the commercial bank and making sure that we're, you know, delivering the full firm, you know, being sort of timely with our advice, client first, all those things. This seems like basic blocking and tackling, and that's the good news, right? Because we're committed to executing, and we're going to do a great job there. That's the big revenue opportunity for Truist, and that's going to be a significant component of our ability to drive positive operating leverage in the medium and long term, which, by the way, we're committed to doing. On the expense side, we've got to be, you know, hyper-vigilant. You know, if you remember back in, like, maybe it was in January when we were reporting fourth-quarter earnings, we talked about 2023, and there were a lot of structural impediments to managing expense. Some of it was, you know, run rate acquisitions we had acquired, FDIC premium, we had increased our minimum wage, and so on and so forth. We still face those same factors in 2023, but we're taking action, making the tough choices, the trade-offs, focusing on FTE, focusing on the things we've talked about to bend that curve in 2023, and not doing it in a way that's sort of short-term focused. Making sure that we're doing that in a way that's ensuring that we're well prepared from a structural perspective in 2024 and beyond. Very, very focused on it. I assure you, all of you, that we, you know, are committed to delivering the positive operating leverage. It's just it's harder right... Yeah in this environment where the NII is not as helpful as it had been. Correct. Your fees are obviously doing great, you're investing more. Little bit. It's a little bit more of a comp-heavy line there to do that. I just pause and see if there's any questions in the room at all from anybody. Okay. We've had a somewhat shy audience today. I think it's Monday. Huh? Yeah, maybe Tuesday we'll have more questions coming through. Yeah. One of the other things that we've been talking a bit about with everybody is the tech strategy and in particular, is there something that AI can deliver to you know, enhancing the operating leverage from here, not in. Yeah You know, a one-year basis, but three, five-year basis. Is that something that resonates with you or is that too science fiction? No, I mean, look, I mean, I think technology and automation and I'll maybe incorporate AI into that to some extent, it's gonna be an important part of our story, you know, going forward. I mean, we have to again, I, you know, better onboarding is gonna be done digitally. More self-service is gonna be done digitally. AI can actually have a hand in self-service. Some of these, you know, beyond the chatbot-type virtual assistants. You know, you know, thinking about how we develop models and how we document models and back-test models, AI has a hand in that. So I think AI is one of those enabling technologies, like many others out there, that are gonna be ultimately, you know, in hindsight, really important. I'm not sure I'm as caught up in the, you know, step functional, you know, you know, blow your mind science fiction contributions. Mm, mm. that AI is gonna have in the short term, but it's absolutely gonna be a part of our business, and we've got teams engaging against it, sort of in our innovation center. You know, a lot of our vendors, all today, and for years frankly, have been leveraging AI to create efficiency. I do think it's part of the story. As you think about tech and the tech budget. Mm-hmm. as a% of expenses, does that grow over time, or are you at a point where you're saying, "You know what? In our post, MOE environment. Yeah We're able to bend the cost curve there as well? Yeah, we'll have to see. I mean, the, there are still some really big foundational, you know, initiatives that are happening in the banking industry that do consume a lot of investment. You know, foundational and incremental data capabilities, you know, cyber threat. I mean, you name it, there's some big projects that are out there. I would say this, you know, as Truist, you know, our capacity, like, the overall size of the investment pool that we have, you know, is bigger than it's ever been. A higher proportion of it is focused on sort of innovation and growth and clients than it's ever been before. I think over time, it would be reasonable to expect that the, you know, its share of total expense should decline. I mean, again, we have to get some of that efficiency. Mm-hmm. We're still working through... I mean, again, we just did our conversion a year ago. You know, it wasn't perfect, right? There are still places where we're seeing manual processes or where we're seeing opportunities to improve. We're getting after that stuff. That's another part of the expense initiatives that we're focused on, you know, for the H2 of this year and for next year, is, like, really getting after some of the automation opportunities. That, you know, sometimes takes a little more imagination and a little more courage. We're focused on facing that now. Well, I did visit the innovation center. That's right. down in Charlotte. What was it? In November. Yeah. It's very impressive, organization with, you know, the real-time activities that's happening and the teams that are delivering new products to your clients. Really, it's impressive. Yeah, no, thank you. That was a fun visit, I remember. All right, great! Well, Mike, thanks so much for your time today. Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you. I appreciate it.