Zions Bancorporation, National Association Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Participants

Corporate Executives

• James Abbott, Senior Vice President, Director of Investor Relations
• Harris Simmons, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
• Paul Burdiss, Chief Financial Officer
• Michael Morris, Executive Vice President and Chief Credit Officer
• Scott McLean, President and Chief Operating Officer

Analysts

• Manan Gosalia, Morgan Stanley
• Dave Rochester, Compass Point
• John Pancari, Evercore ISI
• Brad Milsaps, Piper Sandler Companies
• Ken Usdin, Jefferies Financial Group Inc.
• Ebrahim Poonawala, Bank of America Co.
• Brandon King, Truist Securities
• Chris McGratty, KBW
• Steven Alexopoulos, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Presentation

[Operator]

Greetings and welcome to Zions Bancorp Q1 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Director of Investor Relations, James Abbott. Thank you, James, you may begin.

[James Abbott, Senior Vice President, Director of Investor Relations at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Thank you, Alicia, and good evening. We welcome you to this conference call to discuss our 2023 first quarter earnings.

I would like to remind you that during this call, we will be making forward-looking statements, although actual results may differ materially. We encourage you to review the disclaimer in the press release or the slide deck on Slide two dealing with forward-looking information and the presentation of non-GAAP measures which applies equally to statements made during this call. A copy of the earnings release as well as the slide deck are available at zionsbancorporation.com.

For our agenda today, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Harris Simmons, will provide opening remarks. Following Harris' comments, Paul Burdiss, our Chief Financial Officer, will review our financial results. Included in Paul's comments will be a more in-depth discussion about our deposits and capital than is customary in an earnings call. But we want to be responsive to the questions we have received over the past several weeks. Following Paul's comments, we've asked Michael Morris, our Chief Credit Officer, to discuss credit quality generally but to do an in-depth discussion about our commercial real-estate portfolio and specifically our office commercial real estate portfolio. Also with us today include -- our guests include Scott McLean, President and Chief Operating Officer, and Keith Maio, Chief Risk Officer.

After our prepared remarks, we will hold a question-and-answer session. We anticipate that the duration of this call will be one hour. I will now turn the time over to Harris Simmons.

[Harris Simmons, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Thanks very much, James. And welcome to all of you. I'd like to begin by offering just a few brief thoughts about the current environment and a topic or two that have been in focus by investors and the analyst community in recent weeks. Some of the idiosyncratic structural features that led to the recent domestic bank failures are well known to most of -- all of you. That should cause all of us I think just really think more holistically about how we think about banks' balance sheets and business models. It's particularly odd in my view that thoughtful observers would assess the strength of any bank by examining its capital through the soda straw of tangible common equity or tangible common equity adjusted for HTM marks without considering the economic value and the sustainability of all of the components of the bank's balance sheet and its business model. Doing so is myopic, as a major portion, perhaps the major portion of any bank's value is found in the characteristics of its deposit franchise. Something that short of a recent nod to the percentage of deposits that are insured is hardly mentioned in most analysis.

In the shareholder letter, I wrote in February, well before the disruptions of mid March, I noted that the generally accepted accounting principles, the accounting framework or GAAP framework that we're all familiar with presents on the surface a medley of historic cost and fair-value accounting and some of the distortions relative to economic reality are further amplified by the leverage this necessary component of banking's business model. Applying marks from securities and loans to any bank's capital without approaching the project comprehensively by including the impact to the value of core deposits and other liabilities is an example of what I sometimes refer to as one-hand clapping.

While the events of mid March were disruptive, they were very manageable and in large measure reflected a continuation of a trend as seen in the industry and certainly in our own balance sheet over the past few quarters. We've seen a dramatic rise in deposit balances through the pandemic years, something that had begun to reverse itself as the Fed changed course with its monetary policy. In some respects, it's a case of the Fed give us and the Fed take us away. The deposit trends that we've seen in the latter part of 2022 in the first two months of this year was only modestly accelerated by any concerns generated by the bank failures. And the most valuable part of our deposit base that constitutes the lion's share of our funding was absolutely durable and even saw growth in the latter part of March. Specifically excluding any brokered deposits, we opened over 7,000 net new accounts with balances totaling $629 million between March 7th and March 31st. The acceleration of shift in funding does impact net interest income, though in a manner that we believe will be very manageable and that will work through offset in part with a greater focus on our operating costs in the months ahead.

Finally, a word or two about commercial real estate which is becoming a topic of greater focus as concerns perhaps increase with respect to a possible recession. We embarked on a long-term project to reduce credit risk in our portfolio over a decade ago in the wake of the great financial crisis. One of our objectives was to ensure that CRE was growing at a pace less than that of the remainder of the loan portfolio and we've done that. Commercial real estate has grown at an annual rate of 2.5% over the past decade, a growth rate that's about half that of the rest of the portfolio. It's required us to high grade the clients we work with and the projects we finance. And this meant that we haven't had a surge of growth during a period of very low cap rates. We'll provide additional details about this later in the presentation.

So now turning to Slide four. This is the summary of quarterly financial results showing a linked-quarter comparison with the fourth quarter of 2022. As most of you are aware, there is less net interest income in the first quarter due to two fewer days. Also, noninterest expense experiences seasonality related to higher stock-based compensation and payroll taxes, the combination of which results in materially lower adjusted pre-provision net revenue and compresses the efficiency ratio. As you would expect, those seasonal factors normalize as we move through the year. Our credit quality remains very strong. Loan growth slowed from the last few quarters to a moderate annualized pace of growth. Period-end deposits declined 3.4%, we added $4.5 billion of brokered deposits, which was about 6.5 percentage points of deposits.

Moving to Slide five. Diluted earnings per share was $1.33. As shown on the right side, we accrued $0.06 per share or $9 million for contingency tax reserve related to the treatment of capitalized research and development costs. We made the change due to the outcome of recent tax litigation in the case involving another firm. Nearly half of the linked-quarter decline was due to seasonal factors, while the other elements are primarily explained by the change in funding composition and operating expense, which Paul will discuss in his comments.

Turning to Slide six. Our third quarter adjusted pre-provision net revenue was $341 million. The linked-quarter decline was attributable to the same primary factors I just noted and by comparing to the year-ago quarter and thus removing seasonality as well as normalizing for the effect of PPP loans, the increase was 57% over that year-ago period. With that high-level overview, I'm going to ask Paul Burdiss, our Chief Financial Officer, to provide additional detail related to our financial performance. Paul?

[Paul Burdiss, Chief Financial Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Thank you, Harris, and good evening, everyone. I'll begin with a discussion of the components of PPNR, approximately 80% of our revenue is from the balance sheet through net interest income. Page seven is an overview of net interest income and the net interest margin. The chart on the left shows the recent five-quarter trend for both net interest income on the bars and the net interest margin in the white boxes lost ground in the first-quarter for the first time [Technical Issue] The right-hand side of the chart shows the linked-quarter effect of certain items on the net interest margin, higher rates helped to improve our earning asset yield by 40 basis points, as we saw more depositor sensitivity to the higher interest-rate environment. We increased the roll rate on overall -- we've increased the rate on overall deposits by 50 basis points relative to the fourth quarter. Our borrowed funds also increased, which when combined with the higher-cost of deposits increased the total cost of interest-bearing funds by 95 basis points. This degree of core deposit sensitivity therefore resulted in a 55 basis-point contraction in our interest-rate spread. However, over 40% of our earning assets are funded with non-interest bearing sources of funds. The 50 basis-point contraction in interest-rate spread was therefore partially offset by an increase of 35 basis-points in the value of non-interest bearing funds in a higher-rate environment. These factors combined to produce a 20 basis-point contraction in the net interest margin in the first quarter when compared to the fourth quarter. I'll say more about recent trends in balance sheet yields in just a few minutes.

Moving on to noninterest income and revenue on Page eight. Customer-related noninterest income was $151 million, a decrease of 1% versus the prior quarter and flat to the prior year. As we noted last quarter, we modified our non sufficient funds and overdraft fee practices near the beginning of the third quarter of 2022, which has reduced our noninterest income by about $3 million per quarter. Improvement in treasury management fees has allowed us to make-up some of that lost revenue. Our outlook for customer-related noninterest income for the first quarter of 2024 is moderately increasing relative to the first quarter of 2023.

On the right-side of the page, revenue, which is the sum of net interest income and customer-related noninterest income is shown. Revenue grew by 19% from a year ago and when excluding PPP revenue, it grew by 24% over the same-period. Noninterest expense on Page nine increased 9% from the prior quarter to $512 million. The base period, the fourth quarter of 2022 was positively impacted by an incentive compensation reversal of $8 million. While the first quarter of 2023 included seasonal items such as stock-based compensation for retirement-eligible employees and payroll taxes of $24 million, the cost of FDIC insurance was also up $4 million versus the fourth quarter, while expenses were up in the first quarter, you can see on this page that our efficiency ratio improved by nearly six percentage points when compared to the same quarter one year ago. Our outlook for adjusted noninterest expense is now stable, as we expect expenses in the first-quarter of next year to be flat to the first-quarter of 2023.

Page 10 highlights trends in our loans and deposits over the past year. The rate of growth in loans slowed in the first quarter as seen in the period-end numbers as opposed to the average shown on this page. Our expectation is that loans will increase slightly in the first quarter of 2024 when compared to the first quarter of 2023. Deposits have continued to the trend we reported throughout 2022. As I will discuss in a few minutes, there is a market difference in the sensitivity of larger uninsured deposits when compared to smaller insured deposits. Larger depositors are more sensitive to higher rates and as we have moved deeper into the interest rate cycle, deposit repricing betas have accelerated. As discussed in our last earnings call, we have become more aggressive on deposit rates, which we expect will help to attract some of the larger balances that have moved off-balance sheet in search of higher yields.

For the quarter, our cost of total deposits increased to 47 basis-points, up from 20 basis-points in the prior quarter. At the end of the quarter, the spot cost of total deposits was 90 basis-points with interest-bearing deposits yielding 1.63%. Our deposit beta at the end-of-the quarter was 18% when compared to the fourth quarter of 2021. These changes when combined with the continued improvement in loan yields resulted in an estimated net interest margin of about 3% point in time at the end of the first quarter. I will provide additional details on the composition and performance of our deposit portfolio over the next few pages.

Beginning with Page 11. As shown here, commercial deposits are about one-half of our deposits with consumer deposits contributing about one-third total deposits and brokered [indecipherable] deposits, rounding out the portfolio. Not surprisingly, due to deposit size, two-thirds of our commercial deposits are not insured. However, over 60% of those deposits are tied to the bank through operating account relationships, due to the operational nature of these deposits, we view these deposits as being less rate-sensitive than other large deposits.

Page 12, provides a view of changes in deposit balances in the first-quarter when compared to the prior quarter-end by balanced here. As we have observed over the past year, deposit size and activity are key drivers of deposit sensitivity. We believe that recent changes in deposit pricing will provide a compelling on-balance sheet option, particularly for large deposits.

Page 13 shows the deposit portfolio by FDIC insurance status. The chart on the left shows, we reported a notable increase in uninsured deposits throughout 2020 and 2021 and has been previously reported those deposits have been falling back toward historical levels. Likewise, our loan-to-deposit ratio on the right-side of the page, it's moving to be in-line with the pre pandemic level. Since the end of 2019, total deposits are up 21%, and are up 18%, excluding brokered deposits. Page 14 compared the total amount of uninsured deposits where we have observed more depositor sensitivity to the aggregate amount of secured and available sources of funds. As shown here, the current level of demonstrated sources of funds handily exceeds the entire volume of uninsured deposits. I will preemptively respond to an expected question, we did not access the Federal Reserve discount window nor the new bank term funding program in the first-quarter, except for an operational test of the BTFP consisting of a $1 million overnight advance.

Moving to page 15, our investment portfolio exits primarily to be ready source of funds to facilitate client-driven balance sheet changes. On this page, we show our securities and money market investment portfolios over the last five quarters. The size of the investment portfolio declined versus the previous quarter, but as a percent of earning assets, it remains larger than it was immediately preceding the pandemic. This portfolio has behaved as expected. The principal and prepayment related cash flows were just over $800 million in the first-quarter. With this predictable portfolio of cash flow, we anticipate that money market and investment securities balances combined will continue to decline over the near-term, which will in turn create a source of funds for the rest of the balance sheet. Perhaps more importantly, the composition of the investment portfolio allows us to secure funding without the need to sell any of the investment securities. This was achieved primarily through a mechanism, known as the General Collateral Financing or GCF Repo. In this very deep and liquid market, high-quality collateral is pledged and program participants exchange funds anonymously through a third-party clearing and guaranteeing settlement, meaning that the value of the collateral is recognized by all as the sole component of risk assessment.

The duration of the investment portfolio is virtually unchanged from the same prior year period at 4.1 years currently versus 4.0 years a year-ago. This duration helps to manage the inherent interest-rate mismatch between loans and deposits with loan durations estimated to be 1.8 years and the larger deposit portfolio duration estimated to be 2.9 years, fixed-rate term investments are required to bring balance sheet -- to bring balance to asset and liability durations and thus protect the economic value of shareholders' equity.

Page 16 provides information about our interest-rate sensitivity. As a reminder, we have been using the terms latent interest-rate sensitivity and emergent interest-rate sensitivity to describe the effects on net interest income of rate changes that have occurred as well as those have yet to occur, as implied by the shape of the yield curve. Importantly, the balance sheet is assumed to remain unchanged in size in these descriptions. Regarding latent sensitivity, the in-place yield curve as of March 31, which was notably more inverted than the curve at December 31, will work through our net interest income over time. The difference from the prior-period disclosures of latent sensitivity in addition to the shape of the yield curve is the accelerated funding cost beta, which we discussed on last quarter's call. These factors are model to result in a net interest income decline of nearly 7% in the first-quarter of 2024 when compared to the first-quarter of 2023.

Regarding emergent sensitivity, if the March 31st 2023 forward path of interest rates were to materialize and using a stable size balance sheet, the emergent sensitivity measure indicates a decline in net interest income of an additional 1% in the first-quarter of 2024 when compared to the first-quarter of 2023. With respect to our traditional interest-rate risk disclosures, our estimated interest-rate sensitivity to a 100 basis-point parallel interest-rate shock using a same sized balance sheet has increased by about one percentage point from the fourth quarter. As the composition of the balance sheet changes, we actively manage our interest-rate risk through changes in the investment portfolio or through our cash-flow swaps. We have recently begun to reduce asset duration through the unwinding of interest-rate swaps. As a reminder, this traditional interest-rate risk disclosure represent a parallel and instantaneous shock while the latent and emergent views reflect the prevailing yield curve at March 31st.

Our outlook for net interest income for the first-quarter of 2024 relative to the first-quarter of 2023 is moderately decreasing. More immediately, we expect the recent acceleration of deposit repricing beta and balance sheet changes to reduce net interest income by about 7% in the second quarter when compared to the first quarter. On page 17, we quantify the value of the investment portfolio in managing our interest-rate risk. On the left-hand side of the page, the dark-blue bars show our reported net interest income at-risk measures while the light-blue bars show what net interest income at-risk would be if we did not actively manage interest-rate risk through our investment portfolio and interest-rate swaps, as the bars indicate the difference in the plus 100 -- I'm sorry, plus and minus 200 basis-point parallel shock would move from 13% to 39%, an even larger impact on the risk to economic value of equity due to changes in interest rates can be seen on the right-hand chart. Reported EVE at-risk would move from two percentage point differential to a 49% difference without the moderating impact of our fixed-rate securities and interest-rate swap position. This demonstrates the value of assessing -- this demonstrates the value of assessing the balance sheet holistically rather than through the partial view previously described by Harris.

Our loss-absorbing capital position is shown on Page 18, we believe that our capital position is aligned with the balance sheet and operating risk of the bank, the CET1 ratio continued to grow in the first-quarter to 9.9%, this compares well to a very low-level of ongoing net charge-offs. As the macroeconomic environment has become more uncertain, we do not expect to repurchase shares in the second quarter. Our goal continues to be to maintain a CET1 ratio slightly above peer median, while managing to a below average-risk profile.

Page 19 provides an illustrative outlook for accumulated other comprehensive loss. The unrealized loss associated with the investment portfolio and cash flow interest-rate swaps will reverse as these portfolios pay-down and mature. These changes are expected to approve -- improve the other -- the accumulated other comprehensive loss position by nearly $1 billion by the end of 2024, all things equal, this would add 110 basis-points to the common equity ratio and would add just under $7 to book-value per common share.

I will now turn the call over to Michael Morris, our Chief Credit Officer, for a discussion of credit, and in particular, commercial real estate. Michael?

[Michael Morris, Executive Vice President and Chief Credit Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Thanks, Paul. And hello to all those on the line. I'll begin on Slide 20 with an overview of our credit quality. We're pleased to report another quarter of improved problem loans as measured by classified loans. Such loans declined to 1.6% of total loans. Nonperforming assets increased slightly, but it was off a very low-base. And as Harris noted earlier, we're happy to be able to report today that we had no net charge-offs in the quarter -- in the first-quarter. Nevertheless, due primarily to an increase in the probability of a recession in the quantitative models that we use for setting the allowance along with additional dollars added to the qualitative allowance. For the commercial real-estate office segment, the allowance for credit-loss increased 7% to nearly $680 million or 1.21% of loans as a coverage ratio. Looking back over a longer period as the Federal Reserve began to increase interest rates, we've increased the allowance by 32%, while net charge-offs have remained very low, and while classified loans have decreased 21%.

Turning to Slide 21, there is a significant amount of media coverage of our commercial real-estate and the risk of default and loss on loan portfolios. As Harris said at the outset of the call, not all commercial real-estate loans are created equal. We have been addressing this risk for more than a decade now having reduced CRE to 23% of total loans from 33% at the peak in late 2008. Five years ago, we spent a considerable portion of our Investor Day highlighting our credit risk reduction efforts and three years ago, we told investors at our 2020 Investor Day that we expect it to be in the best quartile of net charge-offs as we go through the next recession. With commercial real-estate being a key element that must perform well to make-good on that expectation. Over the past decade, we've outperformed by a considerable margin the loss rate on both the industry as a whole and our large regional bank peers. Our commercial real-estate portfolio is diversified across geography with the largest concentration in California although if measured on a per-capita basis, our concentration there is actually smaller than many of our other geographies that we're in. Our portfolio is also well-diversified across asset classes and product types with the largest concentration in multifamily. Office CRE is the property type receiving the most attention in the financial media and by investors and so we'll discuss that a little more in detail in a moment.

On Slide 22, we have been tracking our commercial real-estate growth rates relative to peers over time. Since late 2017, we've grown CRE a total of 9%, which compares to inflation of 23% during that same time period. And it is well below the roughly 45% organic increase seen at the media of our peers. In order to engineer the slower-growth, we've employed more rigorous underwriting standards than many of our peers. And we've adhered to our concentration framework.

Turning to Slide 23, We've been presenting this or similar data on the left in the appendix of our slide decks for a number of years, it shows the weighted-average LTV of each of the major asset classes, which is calculated using the current loan amount divided by the most recent appraisal. All the property types have a weighted LTV that is less than 60% loan-to-value. Further, we look at the tail risk within our portfolios, not just LTV tail risk, but other underwriting standards as well such as debt coverage ratio, shown on the bottom, you can see the distribution of LTVs for all term CRE loans with only 1% of CRE loans having an LTV that is greater than 80%. I should note that we watch for layering of risk factors and generally require mitigation of risk if one underwriting element is a bit off the fairway. For example, if the LTV is higher than our normal comfort level, we may require a cash sweep, faster amortization schedule, the greater personal guarantee and so forth. This practice is a major factor in why our loss given non-accrual rates are among the best within our peer group and within the industry.

On the right is a look at one underwriting aspect of our CRE portfolio, the darker blue bar show the LTV distribution using the current loan balance in the most recent appraisal. However, periodically, we run sensitivities and analysis that show the estimated current value by attaching the most recent appraisal to Commercial Property Price Indices and rolling the appraisal forward to show more of a pro-forma or indexed LTV. With the deterioration in office property prices, it's not surprising to see that the light-blue bars have shifted somewhat to the right with an estimated $130 million of office loans in the 80% to 90% category, but none in the 90% or greater category. Not shown on this slide, but on slides 29 and 30 in the appendix, we provide a lot of additional detail in our office portfolio, including important factors such as the median and average size, our allowance coverage relative to office loans as well as criticized office loans, credit tenancy rates, lease expirations by year, loan maturities per year, and other key factors in estimating the probability of loss given default.

In summary, we're comfortable with how we're going to be managing the office exposure and the risk profile of those loans we are expecting some credit-loss. But we think it's very manageable. So, James. I will turn the call back to you.

[James Abbott, Senior Vice President, Director of Investor Relations at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Thanks, Michael. Slide 24 summarizes our financial outlook. Paul mentioned some of these throughout the call, so I'll just briefly summarize the changes in these. The first one is a change in the reduction of loan growth to slightly increasing from moderately increasing. And this simply reflects our expectation that the continued tightening of monetary policy will result in further waning of loan demand.

Secondly, a reduction in our quarterly view of net interest income has changed to moderately decreasing from slightly increasing. Paul elaborated extensively on that, so I won't deliver that. And then thirdly is an improvement in non-interest expense, which we changed to stable from moderately increasing in the previous edition.

This concludes our prepared remarks. As we move to the question-and-answer section of the call, we request that you limit your questions to one primary and one follow-up question to enable other participants to ask questions. And with that, Alicia, if you open the line for questions.

Questions and Answers

[Operator]

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Our first question is from Manan Gosalia with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.

[Manan Gosalia, Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Hi, good afternoon, thanks for taking my question. I was wondering, can you talk a little bit about the trajectory of deposits through the quarter. How much of that decline in deposits was seasonal versus continued runoff of rate-sensitive deposits versus what you specifically saw after March is and I ask because I know you mentioned that a lot of this was -- has mostly accelerated what you would have typically seen in this rate environment anyway, but wanted to get your thoughts overall on the deposit flow through the quarter.

[Harris Simmons, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Yeah, I can I can maybe just offer a little more color to it. We had seen in the fourth quarter roughly $5 billion of -- little over $5 billion in run-off in -- I'm going to speak specifically to non-brokered and non kind of what we call our gold suite product, which is a very wholesale product. So our -- we'd had between September and December just over $5 billion excluding broker deposits, etc, was little over $8 billion in the first-quarter. And so it was a continuation of a trend. Actually, a trend that began back-in June. We've had about $1.8 billion decrease. So it was an accelerating phenomenon as rates were rising. And that's why it's hard to know exactly how to pinpoint how much is due to -- how much was trend and how much was due to the disruption in mid March. But my sense of things is that this was -- it was maybe $3 billion or something like that USD2 billion to USD3 billion that was beyond trend. And furthermore, that probably a fair amount of that will come back as things stabilize and as -- we've had a very low deposit beta and that was deliberate and has contributed to it, because we've done a very liquid position. As we bring that probably a little more into line, I expect that to to slow down.

[Manan Gosalia, Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Got it and then maybe if you can help us with a little more detail on the moderately decreasing guide on NII. Can you help us think through that guidance is from firmed out through. For 1Q 24 on a year-on year basis. But can you help us think through how you're thinking about the trajectory through the course of 2023?

[Paul Burdiss, Chief Financial Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Well there -- yeah, this is Paul there. The main components of course are the kind of continued inversion of the yield curve worse than it was worse ie more inverted in the first-quarter relative to fourth quarter, that was an important change I think. As we think about that. sort of view of latent sensitivity changes in rates as they worked through the work-through the balance sheet. But there was also, as I noted some funding composition changes. So as we look out over the course of the year, I gave some pretty specific I think outlook with respect to what to expect in the second quarter. And then from there, my expectation would be that loan growth and perhaps. Improved deposit flows would improve that over time getting to result next year, that is in the ballpark of what I described.

[Manan Gosalia, Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Got it, thank you.

[Paul Burdiss, Chief Financial Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from Dave Rochester with Compass Point. Please proceed with your question.

[Dave Rochester, Analyst at Compass Point]

Hey, good afternoon guys. Just back on the NII guide. Appreciate it all the details. I just want to run-through real quick, Paul. It sounds like you're saying NII down 7% for 2Q versus 1Q, but when you take a step-back and look at the annual or the Year-over-Year, it sounds like it's a little bit worse than the moderate the mid-single-digit decline that you're talking about 1Q to 1Q so. I just wanted to confirm, you guys are looking for stablish NII from 2Q on until 1Q 24 effectively. Is that correct. And how are you guys [Technical issue] deposits and funding trends in that context?

[Paul Burdiss, Chief Financial Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Okay, yeah, on the first point. I wouldn't characterize the first-quarter of '24 as being worse necessarily than the second-quarter of '23, the way I'm thinking about it, you've got some countervailing influences. One is the continued impact of the inverted curve on net interest income, but on the other side of that. I would expect some balance sheet growth in there as well. And then as it relates to the funding composition, what we have in our model is kind of continued, what's the word I'm looking for, kind of our beta has been so low for so long, as we said in last quarter's call, we expect that beta to catch-up over the course of 2023. And so, incorporated in that outlook, we saw some of that data catch-up here in the first-quarter, we saw it again, sort of at the end-of-the first-quarter, but that sort of beta catch-up if you will, is going to continue throughout 2023, so there is some kind of countervailing trends there, but it ends up in a place that. I would say, kind of that -- that guidance would be roughly similar to where we were -- where we expect to be in the second-quarter. Deposit -- sorry.

[Dave Rochester, Analyst at Compass Point]

I was just saying. I don't mean to confuse it does look like you were saying that the NII in 1Q '24 was going to be potentially higher than what you were looking for in 2Q '23 just given you were talking about, 2Q '23 down 7%, and 1Q '24 only being down roughly 5% effectively versus the quarter you just reported. So it sounds like you're talking about a little bit of an upward trend on the NII. I just wanted to confirm that, that's what you were thinking.

[Paul Burdiss, Chief Financial Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Again that would be related to kind of balance sheet growth in these countervailing trends outside and the kind of upside potential if you will, would be an improvement in the funding mix as we go throughout the year.

[Dave Rochester, Analyst at Compass Point]

Got you and then. I appreciate all the color on the account openings in March and the other details you guys gave. Can you just talk about what your larger operating deposit account customers are doing more broadly post the failures last month. Have you seen much movement on the operating account side, are they holding less funds in their accounts since the turmoil. And then if there's any kind of quarter-to-date 2Q commentary on deposit trends, you can give in terms of up or down, that would certainly be helpful as well. Thanks.

[Scott McLean, President and Chief Operating Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

David, Scott McLean. The second part of that, we just don't provide kind of intra-quarter updates. So we'll stay with that practice. And in terms of larger depositors, there, as we've said, as Paul discussed, there's a certain subset of those larger commercial depositors, where they have well in excess of what they need for just their operating accounts. And some of that money is certainly interest-rate sensitive, it's probably the most interest-rate sensitive. And then secondly, there was just the disruption. So we certainly lost some deposits related to the disruption, but those relationships are really strong and the large customers that I've talked to, Harris talked to, Paul etc, they've seen this before and they understand the strength of the company. So, as Paul said. I think some of those balances will naturally come back particularly after this earnings release. And so it's just a combination of interest-rate sensitivity, and some amount of money certainly did did move because the volatility.

[Dave Rochester, Analyst at Compass Point]

Great, thanks guys.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from John Pancari with Evercore ISI. Please proceed with your question.

[John Pancari, Analyst at Evercore ISI]

Good afternoon.

[James Abbott, Senior Vice President, Director of Investor Relations at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Hi John.

[John Pancari, Analyst at Evercore ISI]

Wanted to see on the -- just a couple of things on your NII outlook, can you just clarify what deposit growth outlook is baked into your NII forecast. And then similarly, what is the noninterest-bearing mix trend that you assume as well. Thanks.

[Paul Burdiss, Chief Financial Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Yeah, we typically don't provide outlook on deposits. But I can say that there embedded in that is a little more deposit attrition, as I said previously. My expectation is with kind of a better, more aggressive pricing as I said in my comments that we could perhaps waive some of these deposits that have moved back -- moved off the balance sheet back on the balance sheet but inherent in the outlook is a little more deposit attrition.

[John Pancari, Analyst at Evercore ISI]

Okay, and then similarly, do you have the ability to help give us some color on the interest-bearing mix change and then can you remind us how you're thinking about the through-cycle deposit beta.

[Paul Burdiss, Chief Financial Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Well, noninterest-bearing mix, we saw -- as you saw in the period-end balances, we did see some run-off kind of period-over-period, on average, noninterest-bearing deposits remain about half of total deposits. But as I think historical trends would indicate, at 50% of deposits, holding noninterest-bearing deposits at 50% of total deposits is a pretty atypical level and so we would expect that to revert over the course of the year. So I'm not going to predict where that goes except to say that I would expect that mix to change over the course of the year. and that Interest-bearing deposits, by the end time we get the end-of-the year. Interest-bearing deposits will exceed noninterest-bearing deposits.

[John Pancari, Analyst at Evercore ISI]

Okay, great, thanks.

[Paul Burdiss, Chief Financial Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

I'm sorry, on deposits beta, our terminal data for interest-bearing deposits is near 50% about 45% for total total funds -- total interest-bearing funds -- sorry, total deposits is about 28%.

[John Pancari, Analyst at Evercore ISI]

Great, thank you.

[Paul Burdiss, Chief Financial Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Okay, thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from Brad Milsaps with Piper Sandler. Please proceed with your question.

[Brad Milsaps, Analyst at Piper Sandler Companies]

Hey, good afternoon and thanks for taking my questions. Paul. I was just curious, the broker deposits that you put on at the end-of-the quarter. I was curious if you could give me a sense of maybe the duration and rate on those and then kind of what would the trade-off be between the deposits you expect to come back to the bank versus the brokered money or short-term borrowings or Fed funds purchased. Just trying to think about maybe what the pickup could be there. I would assume you want to take that funding and maybe reduce some of the wholesale that you brought on, but that may be thinking about it incorrectly. Just wanted to get some additional color.

[Paul Burdiss, Chief Financial Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

So I think that's approximately correct. The way we see broker deposits as kind of another source of wholesale funds really, even though they're called deposits, they're pretty rate-sensitive as you know, and so that's why we make an effort to break those out in our disclosure, so that investors can see sort of clearly core versus brokered deposits. We think that's an important distinction. The maturity profile of those is a laddered profile that goes from kind of three months to 18 months over the course and the rates paid on those are very-very competitive as you would imagine. So my expectation is, if we're successful, bringing in some of the deposits that have recently left the balance sheet due to rate, for example, I believe that we can bring those in at a rate that's lower than those broker deposits. The refinancing advantage there, little hard to predict, it's probably in the 100 of 200 basis-point range. That's a little speculative, but that's kind of how we think about it, it's an alternative source of effectively wholesale borrowing.

[Brad Milsaps, Analyst at Piper Sandler Companies]

Great, thank you. And as my follow-up, you gave a lot of guidance around expenses. You also noted in the deck that you're looking for ways to maybe further reduce expenses, were those already being encompassed in your guide or should I treat that comment as there could be more to come, given the reduced revenue outlook?

[Paul Burdiss, Chief Financial Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

So those are incorporated into the outlook that we provided.

[Brad Milsaps, Analyst at Piper Sandler Companies]

Okay, great, thank you very much.

[Paul Burdiss, Chief Financial Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from Ken Usdin with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

[Ken Usdin, Analyst at Jefferies Financial Group]

Thanks a lot. I just wanted to come back on to the left-side of the balance sheet and you're talking about -- we're talking a lot about the right. So as you think about just like how the adjustments happen on the asset side, just what is your general outlook for what the securities portfolio and the pace of run-off. I know you gave us the AFS pull apart. And then what -- do you have any changes here in terms of just how you look at loan growth in terms of that balancing act between loans and deposits from here? Thanks.

[Paul Burdiss, Chief Financial Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Sure. On securities, as we've been reporting for some time, the duration of that portfolio has been pretty steady at around four years and that's over the course of last year, despite a pretty massive change in interest rates. That portfolio has been cash flowing at about, I'd say, a little over $800 million a quarter, that's been pretty consistent over the last year and that's the level of cash flow that I would expect to continue barring some unforeseen kind of massive drop-in longer-term rates. So that'll -- as you noted. We we provided some level of disclosure around the amortization or the accretion of the accumulated other comprehensive loss that's related to all things. So. It remains a ready source of funds for us. I do not expect to be purchasing any securities and I would expect the portfolio to be running off at kind of that level, certainly over the course of the next year.

[Harris Simmons, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

And on the loan growth, a question that you asked, the last -- if you look at the last four quarters, four or five quarters, we've had, there have been some of the strongest loan growth quarters in our history, and this quarter as compared to the fourth quarter of '22 is running at a rate that is more like what we saw throughout the latter part of 2015 through 2019 and so it's growing mid single-digits. It's a very sustainable rate we think.

[Ken Usdin, Analyst at Jefferies Financial Group]

Okay, just one follow-up and Harris, I know where you stand-on your view of TCE and unrealized losses, but just bigger bigger-picture with a lot of talk about what happens with reregulation here, how do you think the crowd of banks where Zions hangs kind of that former USD50 million to USD1 billion crowd might be treated in terms of potential reregulation of your size type bank.

[Harris Simmons, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Well I don't -- the jury is still out. My hope is, there'll be regulators and Congress and others will come at this really thoughtfully because it has beyond the banking system. It has a lot of implications for for the housing markets, for example. I mean, the third of all the agency mortgage-backed securities are held in the banking system. And if you create -- and then another third is held by the Fed. And if if those two -- that two-thirds of those total holdings are trying to get rid of them. I think it has a lot of implications for the 30-year mortgage and thus for housing. I truly believe that most banks that [indecipherable] more traditionals have their deposits are more kind of insured. They are trying to balance this balancing act between managing earnings at risk creating some stability to the earnings stream and the economic value of equity and to do that. I mean, that's why we put a couple of slides in here showing. If we weren't using some of these tools mortgage-backed securities, swaps, etc, we'd be very asset-sensitive and you'd -- might be good for economic value of equity, but not so much for earnings stability. And so It's -- and I'd also note frankly, a lot of talk about stress tests. The fact of matter is that there is a built -- the stress tests have traditionally, really focused on the more traditional causes of the trouble in the industry, which has been credit-related. And there is a built-in incentive to create duration in those stress tests, so that you have an earning stream during a period of economic weakness. And so all of those are the kinds of things I would hope will be thought through and. Is that there is a balanced view of all of this, because I think the couple of banks really have ignited this -- created this storm hadn't very idiosyncratic and particularly Silicon Valley obviously but very-very idiosyncratic kinds of business models and deposit structures. And we've got to be careful that we don't throw out a lot of babies with the bathwater. So that's kind of how I feel about. I don't know how it's going to get resolved. I expect that there be a lot of discussion and probably some regulation. I think we're probably of a size that if there are sensible about it. I think will also be kind of tapered in. I don't think it will be sudden. There are some very-very large banks. If you go about this with a meat cleaver, you've got some of the largest banks in the country that are going to have to raise 10s upon 10s upon 10s of billions of dollars of capital. I'm not sure the market could even absorb it very well. So just some random thoughts about it.

[Ken Usdin, Analyst at Jefferies Financial Group]

I appreciate your thoughts. Harris.. Thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Ebrahim Poonawala with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

[Ebrahim Poonawala, Analyst at Bank of America]

Good afternoon. Couple of follow-up questions. One, I think you provided the spot cost of deposits at 163 [Phonetic] for interest-bearing deposits. And apologies if I missed it, but can you remind us where you expect terminal deposit betas, if we think that the Fed has maybe one more rate hike to go, where do you think interest-bearing deposits or total deposit cost level out for the bank.

[Paul Burdiss, Chief Financial Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Right. So I won't give you the precise cost, but. I will say, as said previously, we expect the kind of over the cycle, deposit beta and we're going to see some catch-up on this this year to be just under 50% about 45% -- for interest-bearing specifically, which. I think was your question.

[Ebrahim Poonawala, Analyst at Bank of America]

Got it. And do you expect to get there by the end-of-the year?

[Paul Burdiss, Chief Financial Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

I suspect we would, yeah.

[Ebrahim Poonawala, Analyst at Bank of America]

Got it. Just a separate question. So you provided detail on the CRE book, maybe a question for Michael. Just in terms of from your lens when you look at the CRE market, a lot of concern. Do you think that the market is right in focusing on office CRE as probably the most careful area or if rates remain higher for longer, do you worry about this spreading beyond the office subsector?

[Michael Morris, Executive Vice President and Chief Credit Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Well. I do think office is going to be really challenge for quite a few years. And it has a lot to do with remote work optionality and sort of the new model that's developing and how do you rightsize the architecture and the design and the current floor plates. And those tenants who are downsizing. No I think office will continue to be one of the tougher segments in the industry not just in our market. And I don't think it's more of a contagion kind of issue. I don't see the other asset classes being stressed. Because it really has to do with where we work. Industrial has done well, continues to do well. Multifamily may have been oversupplied going into the pandemic. But there isn't a lot of activity over the last three years in multifamily. And if there is, it's starting back up. So I'm not too worried about multifamily. I think supply-and-demand are pretty much in equilibrium. Hospitality will continue to be. I think, underwritten, pretty conservative underwriting guidelines potentially throughout the industry. Homebuilders are coming back. We are certainly concerned about homebuilders last year and the year before. Even though they were setting records for sales, we saw sales really dry up last year, but they're coming back and we feel good about our homebuilder portfolio and potentially the industry. As rates either flatten and plateau or even move down a little bit by the end-of-the year, some of the [Technical Issue] Thank you.

[Ebrahim Poonawala, Analyst at Bank of America]

Got it. Thank you.

[Michael Morris, Executive Vice President and Chief Credit Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from Brandon King with Truist Securities. Please proceed with your question.

[Brandon King, Analyst at Truist Securities]

Hey, good afternoon.

[James Abbott, Senior Vice President, Director of Investor Relations at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Hey Brandon.

[Brandon King, Analyst at Truist Securities]

So I appreciate all the color and details as far as credit quality and all trends. I wanted to get a sense of what you're thinking as far as the cadence of net charge-offs as we progress through the year and as losses normalize from very low levels.

[Harris Simmons, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Well. I think it's going to be -- currently, we -- I don't think there's anything that's looming large on the radar in terms of problems that we can see coming at us, what we see coming at us though is, the Fed's been working at this in terms of trying to slow things to slow demand. I think what we've seen in the regional bank and community bank space probably to have everybody more focused than they had been on liquidity and capital. And that will. I think there is an expectation that that's going to create tighter credit conditions and so you know I think we expect that [indecipherable] there's a higher likelihood of recession. That's why we built reserves during the quarter. And you hope that you're going to get through it pretty good shape. I expect that we will in a relative sense. But it's the reserves are there for events that we think are very you know possible out through the life of these loans. It's our best estimate. I guess kind of almost by definition, that's how we arrive at the number. But in the near-term, we're not seeing anything that's giving us any real concerns. So to the extent it comes. I think it's going to come later in the year and into next year.

[James Abbott, Senior Vice President, Director of Investor Relations at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

I think you can see that pretty clearly on Page 20 of our investor deck.

[Brandon King, Analyst at Truist Securities]

Got it, got it. And is there some normalized net charge-off range that you underwrite to that you kind of keep in mind when your underwriting process?

[Harris Simmons, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

We underwrite to get repaid on every deal, okay, we do, I mean it's obviously, customers run into problems, there are things that are unforeseen that happen. But I am quite serious about the fact that over the last decade-plus we become certainly more careful about concentration limits and about the -- perhaps, particularly in the CRE space. But I think we've always had good underwriting standards. I think if you go back and look at what happened to us in the great financial crisis, it was more about concentrations and it was about underwriting per se. And we had too much land and construction land development, acquisition. That was really where we had the most pain, we have very little of that these days. And so I rather expect we're going to -- in a relative sense. I think we're going to be quite good shape.

[Michael Morris, Executive Vice President and Chief Credit Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Well, we've said before, numerous times that. If you think about a recession, you think about the asset classes that are going to be under the greatest pressure in a recession, a general broad-based recession, you think about consumer. We don't really have any consumer unsecured to speak of by retail paper that kind of thing. We just don't have a lot of construction lending, construction is only 20% of the CRE portfolio as Harris just said there is virtually no land in it. So that's always toxic area and highly leveraged transactions [indecipherable] highly leveraged transactions, we believe our exposure to that is less than peers that Moody's have said that some years ago, they're doing another study on it right now, we believe and we think we'll compare well there too. Those would be three asset classes that would pop-up on most people's radar in terms of potential challenges.

[Brandon King, Analyst at Truist Securities]

Thanks guys.

[Michael Morris, Executive Vice President and Chief Credit Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Thanks, Brandon.

[Harris Simmons, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Thank you, Brandon. Alicia. We are at our time limit. We're just going to see if we can very quickly go through two more questions, just really skipped through them very quickly and so we appreciate everyone's patience for just going over-time just a minute.

[Operator]

Of course, no worries. Our next question comes from Chris McGratty with KBW. Please proceed with your question.

[Chris McGratty, Analyst at KBW]

Great, thanks for squeezing me in. The 110 basis-points of OCI, that's going to come back. Paul over the next seven quarters, that would in essence will take you to around 11. I know you've always said top-end of above peers, we've seen some peers kind of officially bless 11, is that a fair level of capital that you might consider running.

[Paul Burdiss, Chief Financial Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

I think there's maybe two things going on there. As you know, we do not include the AOCI in our regulatory capital. So our CET1 ratio which is at 9.9%, it's not affected by the accretion of the accumulated other comprehensive loss. It's an important distinction. We know that and we managed to regulatory capital, we know that there are those who have been recently looking at tangible common equity. And so the purpose of the slide is for those folks who are focused on tangible common equity to demonstrate that without a whole lot of leaps of faith, we can get to an accretion of about 110 basis-points in that ratio based solely on the continued accretion of that accumulated other comprehensive loss in the capital as the relatively short-duration of our portfolio allows for fairly rapid amortization.

[Chris McGratty, Analyst at KBW]

All right. Thank you.

[Paul Burdiss, Chief Financial Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Steven Alexopoulos. Please proceed with your question -- with JPMorgan.

[Steven Alexopoulos, Analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co.]

Hi, everybody.

[Harris Simmons, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Hi Steve.

[Steven Alexopoulos, Analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co.]

Harris, this one's for you. I wanted to follow-up on your response to Ken's earlier question on new regulation, we basically said that be in signature unique models that your hope that the baby doesn't get thrown out with the bathwater. But if we put regulation aside, when you look at the speed at which deposits moved out of those banks, not to mention the role that social media played, which is a totally separate topic, even though your business is very different than them. Does this change the way you and the board think about managing risk and liquidity?

[Harris Simmons, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Yeah. I mean listen. I think that that's. It's very much a new element. You know, it's not just social media, it's the reduced friction, if you will, and moving money from institution to institution, etc. And so I think that is something that very much needs to be in everybody's calculus as you think about the duration of core deposits. And I think it's hard to figure that out really from Silicon Valley and Signature because they -- for I think all the obvious reasons in terms of the size of their accounts and particularly Silicon Valley with -- you had a few dozen people managing well over half of the deposit base of that company could have been. I think of them as digital puppeteers that really brought that thing down in a moment. I don't think that's how most banks are actually built and so I don't think it's a precursor to what you're going to see with a traditional bank, getting trouble that way. But certainly as you think -- as we think about what is the duration of a core deposits, that's something that we'll be taking into account and I think -- I do think we'll -- it's actually been an useful exercise and looking at where -- which money moved, was it operational, was it insured, yada, yada, yada, and I expect that we and probably others will be going through adjusting the assumptions in all of our models around the duration of funds based upon not just the type, but their attributes as well.

[Paul Burdiss, Chief Financial Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

If I could add to that Harris. So I totally agree with everything that Harris said. I think that we manage liquidity for example, to liquidity stress-testing, and so we've got kind of a massive amount of deposit outflows incorporated into that. I don't know, I agree that we're going to probably change our view of what's at-risk and what's not at-risk, but. I don't think it's going to massively change kind of the end result of the stress-test and the kind of what I would characterize as very strong liquidity management practices are the reason that we've got $38 billion right now of available and untapped sources of liquidity, so I don't know that it's going to change the result much, but it might change the -- might change the analytic.

[Steven Alexopoulos, Analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co.]

Okay. That's helpful, if. I could ask one more bit of an odd ball question but Western Alliance reported earlier and they said on their call they saw a pretty sharp reaction from their depositors as our stock price was under quite a bit of pressure, right in the aftermath of [indecipherable]. I'm curious, if you look at the deposit flows of the individual banks, did you see more of a movement out of Zions Bank because of maybe an association to the holding company at stock versus, say, in our [indecipherable], one of the other banks, where maybe that association was not as strong, or was it fairly universal just wanted [Technical issue]

[Harris Simmons, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

I don't think we saw any -- interesting question, but I don't think we saw any correlation here.

[Steven Alexopoulos, Analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co.]

Okay. Thanks for taking my question.

[Paul Burdiss, Chief Financial Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

The other reality is that;ot of small-business owners, a lot of consumers just don't watch stock prices that much. I mean, what we think of is, being an electric three weeks, a lot of people -- they're just not tuned into it because their bank is opened, their banks are just there, they're handling their transactions, etc. I think we overrate sometimes the level of attentiveness that many businesses and consumers have to what's actually going on in the economy.

[Steven Alexopoulos, Analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co.]

That's good color. Okay.

[Harris Simmons, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Thank you. It's worth -- I'm going to circle back real quickly to a comment earlier around deposits, there was a question about the current level of deposits. I think it's in a kind of Reg FD friendly environment, it's worthwhile to mention the deposits have been relatively flat since the end-of-the quarter, we've seen. I would say Mike characterization, a return to a more operating kind of inflows and outflows. I think that's worthwhile mentioning, given the sort of deposit flows we saw over the course of the quarter.

[James Abbott, Senior Vice President, Director of Investor Relations at Zions Bancorporation, National Association]

Thank you. Thank you all, all of you for your questions. That will conclude our call today. If you do have additional questions, please contact us at the e-mail or phone number listed on our website. We look-forward to connecting with you throughout the coming months. And again, thank you for your interest in Zions Bancorporation. Alicia, this concludes our call.

[Operator]

[Operator Closing Remarks]