Discover Financial Services (DFS) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Discover Financial Services (NYSE:DFS) Q3 2022 Earnings Conference Call October 25, 2022 9:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Eric Wasserstrom – Head-Investor Relations

Roger Hochschild – Chief Executive Officer

John Greene – Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Ryan Nash – Goldman Sachs

Moshe Orenbuch – Credit Suisse

Sanjay Sakhrani – KBW

John Hecht – Jefferies

John Pancari – Evercore

Betsy Graseck – Morgan Stanley

Robert Napoli – William Blair

Don Fandetti – Wells Fargo

Mihir Bhatia – Bank of America

Rick Shane – JPMorgan

Bill Carcache – Wolfe Research

Kevin Barker – Piper Sandler

Mark DeVries – Barclays

Bill Ryan – Seaport Research Partners

Dominick Gabriele – Oppenheimer

Operator

Good morning. My name is Katie, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Third Quarter 2022 Discover Financial Services Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. [Operator Instructions]

I will now turn the call over to Mr. Eric Wasserstrom, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Eric Wasserstrom

Thank you, Katie and good morning everyone. Welcome to today’s call. I’ll begin on Slide 2 of our earnings presentation, which you can find in the financial section of our Investor Relations website, investorrelations.discover.com.

Our discussion today contains certain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties and that may cause actual results to differ materially. Please refer to our notices regarding forward-looking statements that appear in our third quarter’s earnings release, press release and presentation.

Our call today will include remarks from our CEO, Roger Hochschild; and John Greene, our Chief Financial Officer. After we conclude our formal comments, there will be time for a question-and-answer session. During the Q&A session, you will be permitted to ask one question followed by one follow-up question. After your follow-up question, please return to the queue.

Now, it’s my pleasure to turn the call over to Roger.

Roger Hochschild

Thanks, Eric and thanks to our listeners for joining today’s call. I’m very pleased with our results this quarter. Against a fluid macroeconomic backdrop, we generate strong financial performance while continuing to advance our strategic priorities.

Let’s start with a summary on Slide 3. For the third quarter, we reported net income of $1 billion after tax or $3.54 per share. Over the past three months, as Fed policy has become more restrictive, it has made fears of a recession more acute. Against this backdrop, the key narratives of the third quarter results are the strength of our balance sheet and the quality of our earnings.