Comerica Incorporated (NYSE:CMA) Q3 2023 Earnings Conference Call October 20, 2023 8:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Kelly Gage - Director of Investor Relations

Curt Farmer - President, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Jim Herzog - Chief Financial Officer

Peter Sefzik - Chief Banking Officer

Melinda Chausse - Chief Credit Officer

Conference Call Participants

Jon Arfstrom - RBC Capital Markets

Ebrahim Poonawala - Bank of America

John Pancari - Evercore ISI

Steven Alexopoulos - JPMorgan

Chris McGratty - KBW

Manan Gosalia - Morgan Stanley

Brody Preston - UBS

Ken Usdin - Jefferies

Brandon King - Truist Securities

Peter Winter - D.A. Davidson

Operator

Hello, and welcome to the Comerica Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Kelly Gage, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Kelly.

Kelly Gage

Thanks, Kevin. Good morning, and welcome to Comerica's third quarter 2023 earnings conference call.

Participating on this call will be our President, Chairman and CEO, Curt Farmer; Chief Financial Officer, Jim Herzog; Chief Credit Officer, Melinda Chausse; and Chief Banking Officer, Peter Sefzik.

During this presentation, we will be referring to slides which will provide additional details. The presentation slides and our press release are available on the SEC's website, as well as in the Investor Relations section of our website, comerica.com.

This conference call contains forward-looking statements. And in that regard, you should be mindful of the risks and uncertainties that can cause actual results to vary materially from expectations. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this presentation, and we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Please refer to the safe harbor statement in today's earnings presentation on Slide 2, which is incorporated into this call, as well as our SEC filings for factors that can cause actual results to differ.

Also, this conference call will reference non-GAAP measures. And in that regard, I direct you to the reconciliation of these measures in the earnings materials that are available on our website, comerica.com.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Curt Farmer.

Curt Farmer

Well, thank you, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our call.

Today, we reported third quarter net income of $251 million, or $1.84 per share -- moderation per share, exceeding expectations. [indiscernible] optimization and moderation in customer demand drove the decline in average loans to $54 billion. Successful execution of our targeted deposit strategy grew customer balances, enabling us to repay $5 billion in maturing FHLB advances. Our continued focus on fee income produced another robust quarter, and credit quality remained very strong with modest net charge-offs, following three consecutive quarters of net recoveries.