Regions Financial Corporation (NYSE:RF) Q3 2023 Earnings Conference Call October 20, 2023 10:00 AM ET
Company Participants
John Turner - President, Chief Executive Officer
David Turner - Senior Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer
Dana Nolan - Investor Relations
Conference Call Participants
Scott Siefers - Piper Sandler
Ryan Nash - Goldman Sachs
John Pancari - Evercore
Ebrahim Poonawala - Bank of America
Ken Usdin - Jefferies
Erika Najarian - UBS
Manan Gosalia - Morgan Stanley
Gerard Cassidy - RBC
Operator
Good morning and welcome to the Regions Financial Corporation’s Quarterly Earnings Call. My name is Christine and I will be your operator for today’s call. I would like to remind everyone that all participants online have been placed to listen-only. At the end of the call, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]
I will now turn the call over to Dana Nolan to begin.
Dana Nolan
Thank you, Christine. Welcome to Regions’ third quarter 2023 earnings call. John and David will provide high-level commentary regarding the quarter. Earnings documents, which include our forward-looking statement disclaimer and non-GAAP information are available in the Investor Relations section of our website. These disclosures cover our presentation materials, prepared comments and Q&A.
I will now turn the call over to John.
John Turner
Thank you, Dana, and good morning everyone. We appreciate you joining our call today. Earlier this morning, we reported earnings of $465 million, resulting in earnings per share of $0.49. And while we have some unusual items in our results this quarter, our core performance remains strong, and we continue to have one of the best return on average tangible common equity ratios in our peer group at 21%.
During the quarter we continued to experience elevated levels of check-related fraud. Our third quarter results reflect an incremental $53 million in losses stemming from a second fraud scheme, which also began in the second quarter, but was unknown to us at the time. This scheme manifested itself in delayed returns, and as a result, has had a much longer tail.
After adjusting our countermeasures to identify potential fraud instances more quickly, the volume of new fraud claims has slowed. Although difficult to project, based on what we know today, we expect quarterly fraud losses to come down significantly and to be approximately $25 million in the fourth quarter.
Based upon the increases we are seeing in check fraud across the industry, in fact, based on data we have, we indicate losses are up about 40% year-over-year. We expect future fraud losses to normalize in the $25 million per quarter range in 2024.