Comerica Incorporated (CMA) CEO Curt Farmer on Q2 2022 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

Comerica Incorporated (NYSE:CMA) Q2 2022 Earnings Conference Call July 20, 2022 8:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Darlene Persons - Head of IR

Curt Farmer - Chairman, President and CEO

Jim Herzog - EVP and CFO

Peter Sefzik - EVP, Executive Director, Commercial Bank

Melinda Chausse - EVP and Chief Credit Officer

Conference Call Participants

Scott Siefers - Piper Sandler

Jon Arfstrom - RBC Capital Markets

Steve Alexopoulos - JPMorgan

Ebrahim Poonawala - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Ken Usdin - Jefferies

Christopher McGratty - KBW

John Pancari - Evercore ISI

Jennifer Demba - Truist Securities

Gary Tenner - D.A. Davidson

Steve Moss - B. Riley Securities

Operator

Hello, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Comerica Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Darlene Persons, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Darlene Persons

Thanks, Toni. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Comerica's second quarter 2022 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 Executive Director of our Commercial Bank, Peter Sefzik.

During this presentation, we will be referring to slides, which 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. 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 release on Slide 2, which is incorporated into this call as well as our SEC filings for factors that can cause actual results to differ.

Now I'll turn the call over to Curt, who will begin on Slide 3.

Curt Farmer

Thank you, Darlene. And good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call. Today, we reported first quarter earnings of $261 million, or $1.92 per share, an increase of 40% over the first quarter. Pretax pre-provision net revenue was up 53%, and our ROE increased to 17%. These results reflect the rising rate environment, including prudent actions we have taken to lock in higher rates. In addition, we produced strong loan growth and generated a solid increase in fee income.