Good morning. Thank you for joining the annual meeting of shareholders of M&T Bank Corporation. I'm René Jones, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of M&T. Our Board of Directors and our Executive Leadership Team are connected virtually, and here in the room with me are Daryl Bible, the Chief Financial Officer of the company, and Marie King, the company's Corporate Secretary. The Inspector of Election, as hereby appointed, is Craig Fischer from the law firm Hodgson Russ LLP. Before we begin our official business, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge two of our longest-serving directors, Bob Brady and Jeff Cunningham, who are not standing for re-election at today's meeting.
As a former Chairman and CEO of Moog, a worldwide manufacturer of control systems and components for aircraft, spacecraft, automated machinery, and medical equipment, Bob Brady's business experience, outside perspective, and wise counsel have been invaluable since he joined us back in 1994, particularly during his tenure as M&T's non-executive vice chairman of the board and its lead independent director. Bob's pragmatism, good judgment, and keen ability to rapidly get to the heart of a matter has helped us successfully navigate a forever-changing business landscape and to continue to deliver for our stakeholders. Jeff Cunningham, the former Chairman and CEO of Premier National Bank, joined us in 2001 following our acquisition of Premier. He brought extensive experience with commercial and investment banking strategy, both domestically and internationally, as well as a deep knowledge of risk management and fiduciary oversight.
Jeff has always embodied the spirit of our board by championing candor and the healthy debate that comes with challenging the status quo to lead us to better understanding and stronger outcomes. We're fortunate that Bob and Jeff will stay close to us, continuing their service as directors of M&T's principal banking subsidiary, M&T Bank. Bob, Jeff, thank you for your dedication and valued decades of service, and for all you've done to help make M&T the company it is today. I would like to call the annual meeting to order. Madam Secretary, do you have a report?
Mr. Jones, I can report that proper notice of this annual meeting has been given to M&T shareholders. I can also report that the Inspector of Election has executed his oath of office.
Thank you. Could the Inspector of Election please advise us as to whether a quorum is present?
Mr. Jones, a quorum is present. Shareholders holding more than a majority of the outstanding shares of common stock of the company are either present at this meeting or represented by proxies.
Thank you, Craig. The annual meeting is now formally convened for the transaction of business. Any shareholder who intends to vote during the meeting online rather than by proxy should follow the instructions provided on the virtual meeting website. Shareholders are also invited to submit questions via the meeting website. We will address as many questions as we can, time permitting. M&T's Corporate Development and Investor Relations Department will respond after the meeting if there are any questions that we are unable to address today. You can also view the meeting agenda and rules of conduct on the meeting website. Now we'll turn to the three proposals that have been presented to shareholders as described in our proxy statement dated March 4, 2025.
The first proposal to be considered is the election of 14 directors for a term of one year and until their successors have been duly elected and qualified.
Mr. Jones, on behalf of the Board of Directors, I nominate for election as directors of the company to hold office until the next annual meeting of shareholders and until their successors have been duly elected and qualified, the persons listed as nominees in the company's proxy statement.
Thanks, Marie. I declare the voting open on the election of directors. The second proposal to be considered is the approval of the 2024 compensation of M&T's named executive officers as described in the proxy statement.
Mr. Jones, on behalf of the Board of Directors, I move for the approval of the 2024 compensation of M&T's named executive officers as set forth in the proxy statement.
Thank you. Voting is now open on the second proposal. The third and final proposal to be considered is the ratification of the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as M&T's independent registered public accounting firm for the year ending December 31st, 2025.
Mr. Jones, on behalf of the Board of Directors, I move for the ratification of the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the independent registered public accounting firm of M&T for the year ending December 31, 2025, as set forth in the proxy statement.
Thank you, Marie. Voting is now open on the third and final proposal. We will now give two additional minutes for voting to be completed on the three proposals, at which point voting will be closed. Shareholders may use this time to submit any final questions on the meeting website, after which question submissions will be closed. As part of the annual meeting, it is customary for me as Chairman to provide a perspective on the state of the bank, highlighting work important to our long-term success. This year, I am very excited to share a conversation that I recently had with Tyré Robinson, M&T's Regional President for Tarrytown, New York, and business banking lead for Tarrytown, Hudson Valley, and Southern Connecticut. We discussed our 2024 results, how our work at M&T impacts small businesses, and our role in driving economic development in the communities that we serve.
Here's that conversation.
Good morning. It's customary during our shareholder meeting for us to spend some time revisiting where we've been, what's the state of the bank, and what are the things that we're working on that we believe are investments that will make the bank stronger in the future. Today, I'm really lucky to have with us Ty ré Robinson, who is Regional President for Tarrytown, New York. I thought maybe the best way to start off is to just tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you get to M&T Bank? Then tell us, what is this role, Regional President of Tarrytown?
René, thank you so much for having me here today. I'm super honored to not only be here as a regional president, but to also represent business banking, which I'm super passionate about. I am somebody who spent my entire life wanting to understand the why behind things, and that curiosity led me into banking and figuring out how to help our customers. Each day, I am in service to not only our colleagues, our communities, but the clients that we serve. The regional president role allows me to be a convener and a connector. I get to work with all different types of stakeholders to really make sure that we're focusing on bringing the bank forward in our communities, but also making sure that we're developing our employees. I would offer it's probably the best role in the bank.
Know not to what you do. René, let's talk about the financial health of the company. How are we doing?
I think we're doing fantastic. Thanks for asking. 2024 was a pretty incredible year. We accomplished a lot. It was the second highest earnings in the history of the company. We had a return on common equity of 14.5%. To put it in context, over the last seven years, that's been about 16%. Really, really strong results over time comparatively. More importantly, we did that while making significant investments in our infrastructure. We've been making investments that we think will pay dividends for the future as we become a larger institution. For example, we've made a significant investment in our general ledger and in our financial systems. We're taking a look at all of our and putting in a new digital platform that will be the baseline for providing digital services to all of our customers.
We're looking at our credit process on an end-to-end basis and making sure that it's more agile, more transparent, and easier for our colleagues to use and faster to extend credit to our customers. It has been a really strong year, really strong financial results, but more importantly, we're making significant investments for the future.
René, Daryl just reported our first quarter earnings. Tell us about it.
Sure. We had a great quarter, off to a good start, which should set us up well for 2025. We had earnings per share growth that was 10%. We grew our tangible book value per share by 12%. Our margin is expanding both year -over -year and quarter -over -quarter. We had about 1% growth in our loans year- over- year, despite the fact that we had been running down some of our commercial real estate that is on our balance sheet. Off to a really good start and excited to see what 2025 brings.
That's incredible. It's so great to hear that we're doing so well. Would love to hear more about the letter to our shareholders and the fundamentals that you often talk about.
Yeah, thanks for bringing that up. Every year, we have to pick a topic for the letter. It's not me. It's actually a collection of people who think about what matters most to us in the current environment. This year, we decided that we would talk about the fundamentals. The backdrop is that everybody's constantly saying that everything is changing. What I would say is that throughout my career, I've been here 33 years. The only constant is the change, although today it's accelerating at quite a faster pace. Despite that change, what matters most and what hasn't really changed in banking are the things that we call the fundamentals. We talked a little bit about managing liquidity.
We talked about allocating your capital correctly, whether that be to the right customers and to the right loans, or whether that be allocating and making investments in your infrastructure. Finally, we talked a lot about transparency. Transparency is the hallmark of risk management. Effectively, we are the risk managers of the community. We're transferring people's deposits and investing them through loans. We really have to have tremendous ability to do risk management. To the extent that we have that capability, that's actually what allows us to extend it to other communities when we grow. If we don't have solid fundamentals, that is a big issue for us. At the bank, we've always invested in that.
If you think about all of our training programs, whether it be the management development training program or any of the other programs that we've had since the early 1980s, they've all been about taking really smart people and teaching them the fundamentals and making sure that amidst all the change, that it's not just a few of us who understand that, but all the way into the branches, that we understand risk management and we understand why it's the hallmark of our ability to be there for our customers. The other reason that we talked about the fundamentals was this feeling that it was sort of a need to convey the idea that there's not two or three financial systems. There's not the regulated and then the unregulated. We actually are all in one large financial system.
Events and issues that arise in one part actually can affect and extend to other parts. We saw that, for example, in the great financial crisis in 2008, where lots of us thought that we did not have any exposure, for example, to mortgages, but our customers did. There was no way to sort of escape that. We had to deal with that problem as a whole. We have talked a little bit about private credit as a really fast-growing thing. It is not that private credit is not good, but how can we encourage others to apply the fundamentals to those markets? How can we keep our eye on that so that we are sort of the risk manager of every aspect for our customers? That was the idea. Hopefully, it resonated with people.
It most certainly did. René, why are the fundamentals so important to our customers?
That's a great question. I think to start off with, you have to understand who we are. Of all of our customers, particularly our commercial customers, over 98% are not publicly traded companies, nor do they access the public debt markets. I think that's principally because they're smaller. If you think about M&T, we operate in a few large cities, but for the most part, we're operating in small towns and mid-tier cities across the 13 states that we cover. By focusing on liquidity, by focusing on allocating our capital really well, and by focusing on being transparent, those are the tenets that have sort of allowed us to be really strong, particularly in times that are really difficult in the environment. Essentially, if we stick to our knitting, then we'll be there for our customers when they need us most.
Let's flip the tables a little bit. You are an expert in our customers and particularly are focused primarily on small businesses. What's it like out there? Why is it so important to us?
It's something that literally wakes me up every morning with a sense of purpose and excitement. It's a reminder of why small businesses are so important. They're the fuel for our economy. Each day that I'm out, I get to see in real time the passion in which our small business clients speak about their business. What we get the opportunity to do each day is to go into the businesses of these owners. We meet them where they are to see in real time the things that matter to them, to see the challenges that they have, but also to help them recognize what the opportunities are. I like to say we fuel their dreams. We help them understand what the possibilities are.
We often say, you do what you do best and let us do what we do best, which is to help you find the tools, the products, and the solutions to really grow your business. Not only are we providing advice and guidance, but we're there when our clients need us and not in a reactive way. We show up every day with really the purpose of making sure that we understand each chapter of that business owner's story. We capture it in a really thoughtful way. We are making sure that we're following up to make sure that, again, they feel supported in all of their needs.
Yeah, it's interesting. Recently, I spent some time with our management trainees, and I had them up in the offices here, and they were excited about testing out our new ice cream machine. One of them asked, well, why do we have an ice cream machine? I said, this is what we do. One of our customers has created a company called Cold Snap, Matt Fonte out of Billerica, Massachusetts. You never get these pictures of what we do until you actually physically go see the customer. One of the things we're trying to do is bring that back in so people who are in the back office can actually experience that. We often talk about the idea that our job is to connect people, capital, and ideas. Recently, we introduced Cold Snap to Rhino Foods, which is up in Burlington, Vermont.
They are the founders of cookie dough ice cream with Ben & Jerry's. We were able to bring the Cold Snap guys together with the Rhino individuals together so they could share ideas.
It is truly fascinating when you think about our institutional knowledge, but the real-time business owners who are out in the field who long for that connection. They long for those meaningful conversations. I love that example of bringing two like-minded businesses together that may have never met before if M&T did not convene and connect them.
Okay, what's your favorite customer story that you have for the last month?
Probably my favorite in my region is Willie McBride. He started as a small Bridgeport electrical company. To see where he is now, I mean, literally, they're financing Amtrak in all the Northeast. We know how important that corridor is. To see where they are now, that's the magic. Another great example, René, is Spotless Linen, located in East Haven, Connecticut. We were able to assist them with financing. That's allowed them to expand in really material ways. They've been able to grow their business in ways such as helping Yale New Haven, as well as the Omni Hotels. It just really does spotlight that even when a business has a small little mustard seed of idea, we're able to help them plant that seed, water that seed, and watch it grow in ways that they never could have imagined.
I love that story. I love both those stories. You know, when I think about it, it seems like what you do for a living is manage clients' complexity.
Yes.
You know, it's not about a particular product or a service. It's about them and what they're trying to do and how can I figure out how to sort out that complexity and make it a little bit simpler for them. Is that a pretty good description?
It's a great description. Any relationship manager that you meet that works at M&T, the word that they're going to constantly bring up is passion. They love what they do. They live this stuff. To them, it's not a job title. They recognize that even when they're not at work, they're always interacting with business owners, and they're always trying to identify who they can bring on next because we believe we can help them in ways that they never thought was possible.
I love that. You know, people ask me all the time, what's the secret sauce to M&T? Really, the answer is our employee base that's really talented, really committed, and who love solving problems for our customers. That's the secret sauce. It's easy to say, but it's hard to replicate. Thank you so much for being here and sharing the stories and for doing such a great job. A big thank you to all of our colleagues out there who are serving our customers. You do a great job, and you're what makes M&T great.
Thank you so much, René.
We are now back. Thank you, Mr. Jones and Ms. Robinson, for the insightful discussion. Let's now turn to the rest of the formal agenda. As we have not received any shareholder questions to present, we can move forward to the inspector of election and his report.
Thank you, Marie. Would the inspector of election now please give his report on the results of the three proposals.
Mr. Jones, I can report that all of the nominees for director were elected, and proposals two and three were approved.
Thank you. This concludes our agenda. While our annual meeting is concluding, our work continues. My colleagues and I remain dedicated to making a difference for our customers and communities. It's a big job, and I know we have the team to do it well. Thank you for watching. There being no objection, the 2025 annual meeting of the shareholders of M&T Bank Corporation is adjourned. Thank you for participating today, and be well.