Comerica Incorporated (CMA) CEO Curt Farmer on Q1 2022 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

Comerica Incorporated (NYSE:CMA) Q1 2022 Earnings Conference Call April 20, 2022 8:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Darlene Persons - Director of IR

Curt Farmer - President, Chairman and CEO

Jim Herzog - CFO

Peter Sefzik - Executive Director of Commercial Bank

Melinda Chausse - Chief Credit Officer

Conference Call Participants

Bill Carcache - Wolfe Research

Jon Arfstrom - RBC Capital Markets

John Pancari - Evercore ISI

Ebrahim Poonawala - Bank of America

Scott Siefers - Piper Sander

Steven Alexopoulos - JPMorgan

Ken Usdin - Jefferies

Jennifer Demba - Truist Securities

Peter Winter - Wedbush Securities

Chris McGratty - KBW

Gary Tenner - D.A. Davidson

Brian Foran - Autonomous

Steve Moss - B. Riley Securities

Michael Rose - Raymond James

Ryan Nash - Goldman Sachs

Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Comerica Bank First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Darlene Persons, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Darlene Persons

Thank you, Mary. Good morning, and welcome to Comerica's first 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

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call.

The economy in the first quarter was relatively strong despite the surge of COVID cases in January and the war in Ukraine. On the whole, our customers are in good shape, and they remain cautiously optimistic about the future. Loan growth in the first quarter was solid, and exceeded our expectations in several businesses. Compared to the first quarter last year, general middle market average loans were up 16%, excluding PPP loans, and large corporate loans were up 20%.