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Goldman Sachs 2024 U.S. Financial Services Conference

Dec 11, 2024

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

I've been given instructions by Steve to make it quick. So we're pleased to have Huntington here once again. While most banks have been operating in the defensive position, Huntington's been out on the offense, expanding across the Southeast, Texas in several new verticals. Here to tell us more about the road ahead is Chairman, President, CEO Steve Steinour. Also joining us is CFO Zach Wasserman. Hopefully, I didn't put us to sleep, Steve, and Steve's gonna make some prepared remarks, and then we'll get into Q and A.

Steve Steinour
Chairman, President, and CEO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

Thank you very much, Ryan. Great to be here again, along with Zach. We're very pleased to share the update on our accomplishments and progress on growth initiatives, but also our outlook. So following my brief presentation, we'll get into a Q and A and have some fun there. Before we get started, please review slide two, which applies to the forward-looking statements we'll make today. Now, turning to slide three, there are four key messages - four key messages. First, we're delivering peer-leading organic growth. And this is the result of sustained production from existing businesses, our core businesses, as we refer to them, as well as increasing contributions from a variety of new initiatives. Second, our teams are executing with discipline as we manage through a dynamic rate environment.

We are implementing our down beta action plan and have driven down overall cost of deposits by 29 basis points since July. Third. My team has managed to move a slide on me, so. Third, we continue to proactively manage credit in line with our aggregate moderate to low risk appetite. And this has resulted in top quartile performance and net charge-offs, supported by peer-leading top quartile, allowance for credit losses. Fourth, our actions have positioned Huntington to capture the benefit of sustained momentum as we wrap up 2024, with accelerating trends taking us into 2025. We will grow revenue in 2025, and we expect record net interest income. And this revenue growth, along with the disciplined expense management and continued investment in additional growth opportunities, should set up a robust PPNR expansion into 2025 and beyond.

Now, turning to slide four, 2024 will be remembered as an important year for us as we delivered on our organic growth initiatives, resulting with loan and deposit growth that we're at the top of the peer group, leading the peer group. Now, these results were supported by our intentional positioning entering 2024 with robust liquidity and capital, along with strong credit, which collectively allowed us to lean into growth while many others were pulling back. The investments we made over the course of the year in new teams and capabilities are delivering results, collectively tracking at or above our initial business case expectations, at or above, and we're confident this organic growth outperformance will sustain into 2025 and beyond as we see multi-year runways for growth in these initiatives, so let me recap a couple of highlights from the year.

We continue to grow primary bank relationships, or PBRs, across the company, with consumer PBRs increasing 2% year over year and business banking PBRs increasing 4% year over year. Now, recall this growth of customers is occurring in an industry backdrop that reflects many banks not showing an ability to grow and expand customers. We invested across our payments capabilities, including launching new card products as well as bringing in-house merchant acquiring capabilities. We continued to expand other fee businesses, including wealth management, where revenues increased 18% year over year and households increased by 7% year over year. Importantly, we also maintained our conservative positional capital, driving the capital ratios higher over the course of the year and improved our loan-to-deposit ratio, even as we sustained peer-leading loan growth. Credit performance, as I mentioned, continues to be top quartile.

Moving to slide five, as I noted, we launched a substantial number of new organic growth initiatives in 2024. Both our core and these new initiatives are performing exceptionally well. As an example, we've added over 60 bankers across North and South Carolina. We've got 200 colleagues. We've been in North and South Carolina for more than a decade, over 200 total colleagues, but we added 60 over the last year. We've also staffed out Dallas and Houston with commercial banking offices and added 20 new commercial bankers in the Texas market. That's in addition to about 200 that we also have in that market where we've been for more than a decade. We added dedicated bankers with expertise across these six new vertical commercial businesses, and that's in addition to the numbers I just referenced.

So these new initiatives are continuing to build momentum as teams onboard and ramp up. Year to date, these new initiatives have contributed 35% of our overall net loan growth, excluding the commercial real estate balances, with just increasing results, increasing growth percentage, into the fourth quarter. Turning to slide six, our loan and deposit growth continues to outpace both peers and the industry. In the last year, we've outperformed both peer median loan and deposit rates by roughly six percentage points, six percentage points of outperformance. We view this tremendous execution as reflective of early stages of this growth narrative. Again, our investments are not mature, and the core is performing very, very well. In fact, quarter to date, through the end of November, average loans have increased by $3.1 billion, and average deposit balances have increased by $2.1 billion.

Both of these stats are a testament to the hard work and capabilities of our colleagues, and they are differentiating results. Turning to slide seven, we continue to drive net interest income on a dollar basis higher over time as a result of the sustained loan growth and dynamically managing net interest margin. For the fourth quarter, we now expect modestly higher net interest income compared to the third quarter, and this positive change is largely reflected from the execution of our down beta action plans, which are performing better than our modeled expectations. We continue the monthly trend of lower total cost of deposits sequentially, as November cost of deposits was 10 basis points lower compared to October and represents, again, 29 basis points of decline, since July.

Turning to slide eight, we're growing our value-added fee businesses or revenues in our core, and we have numerous strategies in place to grow the payments, wealth management, and capital markets businesses. Our focus has yielded strong results: 12% year-over-year fee income growth in the third quarter, while driving the percentage of fees to total revenues by 3% to 28% in 2024. We are very focused on deposit pricing, even as we continue to drive deposit balance growth higher. Now, turning to slide nine. We are now several years into our branch network optimization and expansion strategy. We're getting good results there. We've crafted a differentiated strategy, bringing the best of our local, our branch, and our digital channels to support new customer acquisitions.

Our teams are very organized and reacting locally with marketing support and part of the overall strategy, and these new branch expansions are doing well, and there's also a plan to refresh branches as well. A number, several hundred branches will be refreshed in the coming years. Now, our strategy is to optimize the network to capture the highest growth opportunities, and in the last three years, we've opened 23 new branches in high-density areas. We are also expanding our presence in markets in and around Denver. You can see that on the slide, where we've recently opened four new branches. In the next five years, we plan to open 93 new branches, including the 55 that we previously announced in North and South Carolina, the six regions there, and finally, we're continuing to refresh branches as a high priority.

So the overall distribution will be in very good shape for the years ahead. Turning to slide 10, our proactive credit management approach has delivered really exceptional results. I'm very pleased with where we are. Net charge-offs have been relatively stable for the last four quarters, delivering top quartile performance. Our allowance for credit losses is clearly top quartile. We believe we've got a trend established in our CRE class, declining over the last couple of quarters. So the aggregate credit outlook continues to improve. And the portfolio has been purposefully constructed, and with discipline managed over the years. We're about 44% consumer. Most of that consumer book is secured. It's, you know, 95% prime, super prime, and 95% secured. So it's a very rock-solid portfolio.

In our commercial portfolio, we've diversified across both industries and geographies in a very disciplined way. Our CRE concentration I touched on earlier, this is the lowest in our peer group, 9% of total loans. Our reserve coverage is top at 4.4%. We feel good about our CRE exposure and the performance of that book, but we also have, we think, a robust level of reserves allocated against it, just in case. Turning to slide 11. Just to recap here for a moment, we are clearly building a very powerful organic engine that you see in the results for 2024. We're optimistic about 2025. Our growth has been peer-leading, as I mentioned earlier. The investments in these new markets and new verticals are not mature. They will continue to produce for us for years.

They're ahead of their initial business cases, and clearly, we're acquiring and deepening customer relationships across the board. We've really been decisive in acting on our down beta plan. You see that in the results. I think they may be peer-leading as well, and that's at a time where we're still growing deposits. We're driving net interest income higher while managing our NIM and preserving asset sensitivity, intentionally preserving asset sensitivity. Our fee revenues continue to be a top priority. They're performing well in payments, wealth, and capital markets, and on the expense front, we're continuing to invest in the business. We're managing the core expense down, very disciplined management of the core so we can increase the amount we've put into investments in these different initiatives, technology, marketing, and other areas as well. We're committed to driving positive operating leverage in 2025.

We've had positive operating leverage 10 of the last 12 years, as an example, that will continue as we go forward. And obviously, we're maintaining our disciplined focus on credit. We are, as a management team and board, we're one of the top shareholders. And this is a core discipline within the company. So, as we look at 2025 and beyond, it's with great excitement. We expect to drive profitability in 2025 and beyond. And so with that, let's turn it over to you, Ryan, and we'll get into a Q&A. Thank you.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Great. Thank you for the in-depth presentation, Steve. So maybe, Steve, since the last time we've heard from you, obviously a lot of things, there's been a lot of change, particularly on the political side, presumably a more business-friendly environment.

As you think about the next year, maybe start off on, you know, talking about how you think the bank is positioned for the environment we're about to enter. Obviously, there's tons of good things going on at the company, as you just articulated.

Steve Steinour
Chairman, President, and CEO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

Yeah. Thank you, Ryan. First, the core is performing well. I would relate that back to the second quarter of 2023. You know, we didn't choose to shrink or take an RWA diet. We thought we had great liquidity, peer-leading liquidity, and strong capital, strong reserves. We chose to play offense, your word from the intro. With that, we have been building momentum and building, and you see this in the results in terms of, you know, core execution around revenue. We've been investing in the businesses, including the backroom tech, marketing, etc., risk, as I mentioned. So we are continuing. It's almost like a snowball. We're gaining speed. We're gaining momentum as we go forward.

And these investments, you know, Texas, North and South Carolina, three of the fastest-growing states in the country, we're really bullish about where we are with the colleagues we have. We have great colleagues who've joined us in those markets. And they're performing well ahead of expectations. These new verticals that we've added are doing well. And at the same time, we're investing in revenue-producing areas of the core and wealth and some of our regional banking areas like Chicago, etc. So I think Zach and the team have got us really well-positioned for the foreseeable future, not just 2025. We should be able to grow. We've been very disciplined over the last decade and a half that we'll continue, and we expect of ourselves that we will outperform.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Just maybe as a follow-up, I know it's obviously early days. You've put up really good results thus far in the fourth quarter. Maybe just talk a little bit about, Steve, when you're out in the markets. What are you hearing from clients? How are they thinking about their business and their ability to invest post-election?

Steve Steinour
Chairman, President, and CEO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

There's clearly been a change post-election. There's much more optimism. I was with 16 of them, I think, Monday night, all of them more optimistic. A number of them already talking about things that they're doing, order books strengthening, investments they're prepared to make. Some are bringing back employees they had furloughed. So there's a very significant change. I've rarely seen, and Mike, I think the last one might have been when Reagan took office, that you just had this momentum shift that's palpable. And so it makes me very optimistic for all of us in 2025 and beyond. And we still have a lot of stimulus behind us too.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Mm-hmm.

Zach Wasserman
CFO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

You know, funds are not—they're committed but not spent. So this should be a longer runway, I believe.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

So you talked about peer-leading loan growth. You know, it sounds like you're tracking now above the high end of what the original guidance had been. Pipelines have been really, really strong, I think you had said. I mean, Zach, you gave an interesting slide here on slide five, just decomposing the growth. Can you maybe just talk about, you know, how you're seeing such strong growth in a period where the industry is not? And, you know, can you maybe just talk about, as you not only think about the fourth quarter but into next year, how you think about the evolution of these things: core growth, growth from new initiatives, and, you know, obviously, there's been some headwinds on CRE that's starting to abate.

Steve Steinour
Chairman, President, and CEO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

Yeah. Yeah. Well, again, we were intentional about looking to expand when others, not all, but many others, were looking to restrain growth or even reduce growth for capital or liquidity or both. So that has given us some momentum. And to some extent, our activities are momentum-oriented. And we have it. And the incremental investments we've made through the third quarter, our new loan production, about 35% of it was from these different new initiatives. That will increase as they mature. And you know, we traditionally would have thought we'd do one and a half, two times GDP. We now think we're more likely to do three-ish, because of the new initiatives. They're not working from a base where they have amortization or runoff. They're all ground up. So it's a great place to play from.

As I said, we have momentum. I think we just chose to take a different pathway than some others. It is proving, fortunately for us, to have been a sound decision. I believe that will carry forward for a number of years. I also want to make sure you—we're clear. We're going to continue to invest. We like this equation of trying to drive our core expense down and increase the amount of investment capacity. We will make those investments while delivering core positive operating leverage or positive operating leverage. We will, I think we're on a flywheel.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Yeah.

Steve Steinour
Chairman, President, and CEO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

And we're going to continue that.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Steve, maybe to just, or maybe Zach.

Steve Steinour
Chairman, President, and CEO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

You don't have to put Zach in the game.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

You know, Zach was saying.

I already asked the question.

I didn't want to interrupt him. Maybe to put a finer point on the point that Steve made.

Zach Wasserman
CFO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

Sure.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Obviously, positive operating leverage is, you know, the end goal for the company. Steve highlighted 10 of 12 years. You guys have been able to deliver it.

Zach Wasserman
CFO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

Yep.

Steve Steinour
Chairman, President, and CEO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

How do you think about the balance in terms of investment versus growth? And, you know, you had been talking about, you know, 2025 being a year where we could see a little bit of expense relief.

Zach Wasserman
CFO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

Mm-hmm.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Given the top-line growth prospects, is that no longer the case?

Zach Wasserman
CFO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

Yeah. It's a great question, Ryan. Let me, I'll sort of address how we think about expense management generally and then come back to the specifics. You know, to us, there's two core principles that are really critical. One, Steve mentioned, drive for positive operating leverage. That's, it's a core element of our business model. We think it's absolutely achievable over the long range. And so actively calibrating the growth rate of revenue, growth rate of expenses relative to revenues is a core element. I do think as we go, you know, 10 of 12 years positive operating leverage, 2024 was not one of them.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Mm-hmm.

Zach Wasserman
CFO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

Right? And so I do think 2024 will, 2025 will be. I think we expect to see solid positive operating leverage, acceleration of revenues, and an even faster acceleration of profitability. I think it's going to be a really solid profit year for sure. You know, the other core principle of, of operating expenses, is, is what Steve mentioned. I'll just elaborate on it. Continual re-engineering of the baseline operating expenses. Think on the order of $50-$70 million a year sustainably for the last four years. And I see that same growth rate through the end of the decade, that same, that same ability to continue to re-engineer. And there's a number of levers, and we could unpack that. But we, we were really executing on that well.

That enables us then to funnel more of the expenses into the offensive expense categories, the investments, tech dev, marketing, new people adds to build new businesses. I mean, over the last five years, we've more than quadrupled tech dev. To give you a sense, this year, in 2024, expense growth around 4.5% in total. Within that number, investments up 25%. That's what's fueling the competitive success. By the way, if you look historically, that CAGR wasn't too different.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Mm-hmm.

Zach Wasserman
CFO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

And so, you know, ultimately, the way we think about it is we want to be judged on how are we driving ROI on those investments. Are we getting the returns? And I will tell you that the results we're seeing are pretty manifest evidence that we are. So that's the model. You know, we'll see. We'll give guidance on the specific categories as we come into early next year. But I'm expecting a pretty solid operating leverage and profit growth that year next year.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Spending a minute on deposits. I mean, you know, a message we've been hearing at the conference has been, strong deposit growth in the near term. Maybe customers are sitting on a little bit of extra cash. But you guys have massively outperformed the industry in terms of deposits.

Zach Wasserman
CFO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

Yep.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

You know, maybe just talk a little bit about how you see not only do you see deposit growth, how do you see where the deposit growth is coming from? I think 2024 was about a lot of consumer. You had been talking about commercial.

Zach Wasserman
CFO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

Yep.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

So how are you feeling about deposit growth, and what do you see as the driver of it in 2024?

Zach Wasserman
CFO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

You know, I'm feeling terrific about deposit growth. I will tell you, there's just so much momentum right now in our activities. You know, we entered the year thinking deposit growth for 2024 would be within a range of 2%-4%. By the middle of the year, we had increased, we had pulled that growth rate up to the top end of that range. We'll now exit north of that. We are beating the plan on deposits, to be clear, and what that is setting up, by the way, likewise, by the way, beating the plan on loan growth. You know, expect to exit the year of loan growth between 5% and 6% growth year over year. That's better than our original expectations.

What that has set up in combination is even as loan growth has accelerated, the fact that we've been beating deposit growth so solidly throughout the last two years, but certainly this year also, has allowed us to bring down the loan-to-deposit ratio, which now enables us to push the lever on down beta with a lot of confidence and conviction. Even as we continue to beat the deposit plan, I will tell you, as we came into Q4, our expectation was that deposits in sequential growth would be about flat. As we just showed in the slide, we're up $2 billion. The team is really firing, and I don't see that stopping. We're expecting to see solid deposit growth next year, even with very strong loan growth, core funding the business as we go into next year as well.

You know, if I talk about where it's coming from, consumer was a major engine of growth for us in the, in late 2023 into early 2024. What we've seen over the course of the second half of 2024 is commercial really coming online.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Mm-hmm.

Zach Wasserman
CFO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

This is in the core, but also in some of the new initiatives. We've got a mortgage servicing vertical that's gathering a lot of deposits and also an escrow and homeowners association vertical that's doing really well too, so those should continue to ramp up.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

So, Zach, maybe let's just spend one minute on NII. You guys, you and Steve were talking about record NII into 2025. I think you talked about improving in the first half, accelerating the back half.

Zach Wasserman
CFO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

Yep.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Obviously, a lot of things have moved around. Maybe just talk about your degree of confidence in, in terms of what you've laid out. And I think you've given some color on, you know, the net interest margin. Can you maybe just talk about some of the moving pieces?

Zach Wasserman
CFO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

You got it.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

As we think about it, you know, with changing and shifting rate and growth environment for the bank?

Zach Wasserman
CFO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

Sure. Absolutely. NIM is looking like it's going to come in pretty strong for Q4, basically flat in NIM for Q4, whereas our original expectation might have seen a little bit of pressure just given the assumption of pretty rapid rate reductions. We've actually managed it to be relatively flat, which is a very strong outcome. As Steve noted, his prepared remarks, essentially mainly driven by outperformance in beta, but also benefiting from asset yields as well, value of the curve a bit higher. You know, as we go out into 2025, I'm expecting a relatively stable NIM, and really to drive that record NII through loan growth and really to see a fundamental, growth-driven picture driving record NII in 2025. You know, as you go out longer term into 2026 and 2027, I'm expecting continual upward drift in the NIM.

That's really driven mainly from just the assumption of a gradual restoration of an upward sloping yield curve.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Yep.

Zach Wasserman
CFO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

But I think things are shaping up, you know, quite well to floor the NIM and to really power revenue through growth.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Maybe one or two quick questions, Zach, before we go back over to Steve, in terms of, you know, you guys put some color in on the fourth quarter.

Zach Wasserman
CFO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

Yep.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

But, you know, outstanding loan growth, better deposit growth, NII, you know, to, you know, be potentially modestly up.

Zach Wasserman
CFO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

Yep.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

You know, there's a slide in there, where you talked about fee income, where, you know, we took out the ruler to see it looks like it's going to be pretty robust. So can you maybe just put a finer point on all the pieces that you wanted to highlight for the fourth quarter? Obviously, maybe wrap in how you're feeling about why you saw so much better success on deposit repricing.

Zach Wasserman
CFO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

You got it. So, I'll just tick down sort of guidance points on Q4 for you. We see loans ending the year growing roughly 5%-6% on average year over year in the fourth quarter. That's better than planned. I see deposits likewise growing about 5%-6% year over year in the fourth quarter, better than the original plan. Net interest income dollars, you know, if you'd asked me in October, I would have seen. I think I said at the earnings call, maybe $15-$20 million lower. By the BAAB conference in November, I was saying roughly flat. I now see it actually higher. I see another quarter of net interest income dollar growth into the fourth quarter, modest, but growing. Fee revenues are performing exceptionally well. You know, third quarter growth year over year was 12%.

Our guidance for Q4 originally in October was 8%-9%. I now see us beating that level. We expect to see very strong performance across wealth management, payments, but in particular, capital markets is going to have a very strong quarter. Record quarter for capital markets is our expectation for the fourth quarter. You know, on credit, I think, as Steve mentioned, we see a lot of stability. We're sort of seeing charge-offs be very stable. You know, what that stable charge-off and delinquency path and the kind of improving and gradual clarity around the economic environment has allowed us to do is to gradually reduce credit reserves over the last three quarters. So I would expect if that trend continues, there's probably an opportunity there.

And then just lastly, on expenses, to see roughly $20 million higher expenses, mainly driven by revenue-driven comp, right? We're just, we're outperforming on revenues, both, both in the spread and fee business. So we'll see a little bit of additional expenses there. And, the stock has performed so well that we're seeing some reset in terms of stock-based comp, true- ups. But, but net, net, pro-positive PP&R for sure relative to the original guide.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

One small follow-up. You highlighted deposit costs down 29 basis points from the peak. You had one of the more conservative expectations in terms of the ability to reprice deposits down. It's gotten a little bit more upbeat last quarter. But curious, relative to your expectations, what has, you know, what have you been able to execute in a more aggressive fashion, and how does that set you up for the rest of the easing cycle?

Zach Wasserman
CFO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

Yeah. Thanks for that question, Ryan. It's a good one. You know, look, I think what we're seeing right now is just very strong execution on the down beta action plan. And fundamentally, it's driven by two things. The fact that our loan-to-deposit ratio came down, like I mentioned earlier, and just the deposit gathering being so much better than the original budget and teams are just executing so well, it really enables us to be forceful. You know, as we prepared for the down rate environment in June, July, and then began really executing into the August, September period, we focused on four things: reducing the concentration of CDs in acquisition mix, reducing significantly the duration of time deposits, actually reducing backbook pricing.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Mm-hmm.

Zach Wasserman
CFO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

Which we have done now twice, and then lastly, actually reducing our deposit pricing within the competitive sphere in the markets in which we operate. All of those things are really working, and the team are effectively sort of beating plan on every one of those elements. That's what's really performing well. I'll tell you, behind the scenes, something we don't talk about a lot, but is really powerful. Over the last several years, we've put in a considerable investment into data and technology that enables us to be very granular about price elasticity discernment of various segments and the kind of marketing effectiveness to really go out and new primary bank relationships that bring the deposits, and so all of that system is really working.

It's giving us a lot of confidence in our overall beta guidance as we go into next year. Still see that plan being able to be affected. And ultimately, it's a key contributor to sort of keeping that NIM nice and stable as we go into next year.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Maybe to shift gears, you guys have had really strong capital. You've taken a conservative approach, but, you know, maybe holding a little dry powder for a lot of loan growth has not been a bad decision. Maybe Steve, just talk about the capital priorities from here. And maybe, Zach, for you, now that you guys are seeing such robust loan growth, you know, had talked about reinstating the buyback at some point, does it maybe make sense to hold a little extra dry powder in lieu of the strong loan growth that's happening? It's likely it sounds like it's going to continue.

Steve Steinour
Chairman, President, and CEO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

So I'll start, pass to you, Zach. First of all, we want to keep the company positioned with strong capital, strong reserves, strong capital, which is part of the overall, aggregate moderate to low risk profile for the company. Having said that, our capital priority has always been organic growth. That hasn't changed in 15 years. We're delivering it now at an exceptional level. And we, you know, we like what we see for the foreseeable future, not just '25, that we believe we can continue to do this. There'll be some additional investment along the way. There may be some newer things that we do. We announced Chris Wood joining us to be part of our capital markets sponsor group, to lead that activity just this past Monday.

There'll be other investments, and there'll be scaling of some of the additional, some of the existing investments that we do going forward. But we really like the orientation of the company around organic growth and believe we've got it better locked in, and better managed than any time in my 15 years with the company. Zach?

Zach Wasserman
CFO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

Yeah. Look, just tacking on to what Steve said, you know, the plan for capital over the last two years, and it's continued this year, is to really do two things. Firstly, and most importantly, deploy internal capital generation into high-return loan growth. That is the most value-creating place that we can put the capital, and we're thrilled that we're seeing everything that we expected: an acceleration of loan growth, really solid marginal return on capital, and economics there, and by the way, coming through with all of the fee businesses and deposit gathering as well, so that's the top priority, but even as we did that, also drive capital higher, right, and if you think about where we landed for Q3, CET1 was 10.4%, a really strong capital level. We also look at adjusted CET1, inclusive of AOCI.

That was 8.9%. You know, the objective was to drive that adjusted capital ratio up into a 9%-10% operating range. And, you know, I think, obviously, kind of depending on where long-term interest rates are, the AOCI market, you know, changes around a little bit. So that we could cross into Q4. It could be early next year. We'll see. It's, I think, just a matter of quarters away at this point. And then once we got into that range, we would consider a more normalized distribution of capital, including share repurchases. That continues to be the view. With that being said, the top priority is always loan growth, right? And so, you know, I would expect, you know, any share repurchases to be modest. But, you know, it's a healthy thing to have that in a mix.

I think we're pretty close to getting back to that period.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Steve, given all the organic growth that you're experiencing right now, that seems like the highest and best use of capital. But you guys have had a lot of success within organic use of capital, you know, FirstMerit, TCF, Capstone as examples. You know, where does that fall on the priority list, if at all? And, you know, given that the markets are a little bit more upbeat about we could see M&A coming back, do you foresee Huntington at some point participating in that?

Steve Steinour
Chairman, President, and CEO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

Well, I think it's a better M&A environment that we're going into. Having said that, it's not going to be like, I don't think, a light switch in the first quarter. You got to get, you know, the appointees in place. Now for us, we've always looked at acquisition as an option with Macquarie technical finance, the two bank deals you referenced plus Capstone. And it is, you know, you look back at TCF, 45% expense takeout, bulked us up in Michigan and Chicago, two new great markets, Twin Cities, Colorado. Great businesses, you know, scale in equipment finance, number five, six, four, something like that. Number two in distribution finance. These were and with cultures that were said, these are community banks, and we think of ourselves largely that way.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Yep.

Steve Steinour
Chairman, President, and CEO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

The culture. So it just was a really compelling strategic fit. I think it's paid huge dividends for us. But we've done two in 15 years. Now, we look all the time. We think about it all the time. But the priority is and will remain organic growth. If there's something compelling, maybe, but it's got to be compelling. You know, right price, got to stand the risk, the culture, all of it has to line up, or we're just, we don't need it.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Yeah.

Steve Steinour
Chairman, President, and CEO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

We need to drive the organic growth at the levels we're talking about or even more.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Yeah. You talked about the first quarter. You know, maybe as a preview for all those who have, you know, February 6th marked down on their calendars, you know, Huntington's going to be hosting an Investor Day. You know, last time you laid out some PPNR goals, you laid out ROTCE targets. Any color on what the focus of this year's event is going to be? And you know, maybe you expect we update any targets or anything like that?

Steve Steinour
Chairman, President, and CEO, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

We will update targets. We'll do a little bit of sharing about how did we perform versus what we said. You know, we're in a different scale now. TCF is absorbed, these new initiatives. The company's operating at a different orbit. We really want to share that. We're excited to do this. We look forward to being with all of you on February 6th. You know, we'll be a lot deeper in each of the revenue segments, in terms of the plans now with a view towards 2030, that we'll share.

Ryan Nash
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Great. Well, we are out of time. So please join me in thanking the Huntington team.

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