Call Start: 09:00 January 1, 0000 10:05 AM ET

Webster Financial Corporation (NYSE:WBS)

Q1 2022 Earnings Conference Call

April 28, 2022, 9:00 AM ET

Company Participants

John Ciulla – Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

Alan Herman – Director, Investor Relations

Glenn MacInnes – Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Chris McGratty – KBW

Casey Haire – Jefferies

Alex Larong – JPMorgan

Brock Vandervliet – UBS

Jared Shaw – Wells Fargo Securities

David Tamberrino – Wedbush Securities

Matthew Breese – Stephens Incorporated

Laurie Hunsicker – Compass Point

Jon Arfstrom – RBC Capital Markets

Operator

Good morning. Welcome to the Webster Financial Corporation's First Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to introduce Webster's Director of Investor Relations, Alan Herman, to introduce the call, Mr. Herman, please go ahead.

Alan Herman

Good morning. Before we begin our remarks, I want to remind you that the comments made by management may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and are subject to the safe harbor rules. Please review the forward-looking disclaimer and safe harbor language in today's press release and presentation, for more information about risks and uncertainties which may affect us. The presentation accompanying management's remarks can be found on the company's Investor Relations site at wbst.com. I will now turn it over to Webster Financial CEO, John Ciulla.

John Ciulla

Thanks a lot, everyone. Good morning everyone. And thank you for joining us for our first quarter earnings call. It was an eventful quarter as we closed our merger of equals with Sterling executed on our integration plan and announced and completed the acquisition of Bend Financial, all while continuing to generate solid performance in our underlying businesses. I'll begin with some high level remarks on the macro environment. Our performance for the first quarter of '22 and I'll provide a quick update on the merger. I will turn it over to Glenn after that to review our financials, the financial effects of the merger, and to provide our outlook for full year 2022. Despite uncertainty in the macroeconomic environment driven by war in Ukraine, supply chain, labor market challenges in the lingering impact of COVID and some of you may have seen that 1.4% surprising GDP contraction this morning, we feel that the underlying strength in economic activity remained strong. Demand for debt financing and continued confidence among our clients is prevalent, and our base case continues to call for solid economic growth, rising interest rates, and positive trending in loan demand over the next 6 to 8 quarters. We're very pleased with our performance in Q1. Our reported net income was a loss of $20 million, and EPS was a loss of $0.14.