Fifth Third Bancorp (FITB) Q1 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending March 31, 2022

April 19, 2022 10:00 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

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Operator

00:04 Good morning. My name is Emma, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Fifth Third Bancorp First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]

00:35 Chris Doll, Director of Investor Relations, you may begin your conference.

Chris Doll

00:42 Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us. Today, we'll be discussing our financial results for the first quarter of 2022.

00:48 Please review the cautionary statements on our materials, which can be found in our earnings release and presentation. These materials contain reconciliations to non-GAAP measures, along with information pertaining to the use of non-GAAP measures, as well as forward-looking statements about Fifth Third's performance. We undertake no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this call.

01:09 This morning, I'm joined by our Chairman and CEO, Greg Carmichael; President, Tim Spence; CFO, Jamie Leonard; and Chief Credit Officer, Richard Stein. Following prepared remarks by Greg, Tim and Jamie, we will open the call up for questions.

01:23 Let me turn the call over now to Greg for his comments.

Greg Carmichael

01:27 Thanks, Chris, and thank all of you for joining us. Earlier today, we reported first quarter net income of $494 million or $0.68 per share. Our reported EPS included a negative $0.02 impact from the Visa total return swap, the mark-to-market impact over to AvidXchange Holdings.

01:43 Excluding these items, adjusted first quarter earnings were $0.70 per share. During the quarter, we generated strong loan growth, including average C&I growth of up 8%, excluding PPP. We grew core deposits once again with strength in consumer transaction deposits of 4% reflecting our success in generating quality household growth, which increased 3% on a year-over-year basis.

02:09 We also took advantage of attractive market entry points for deploying our excess cash that grew our securities portfolio by approximately $5 billion on an average basis. As a result of our interest-earning asset growth, net interest income increased 1% sequentially, excluding PPP. We had yet another quarter of benign credit quality, reflecting our disciplined approach to client selection and underwriting, which resulted in near record low charge-offs of just 12 basis points. In addition to our muted credit losses, NPA remained stable, our commercial criticized assets continued to improve.