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Huntington Bancshares Incorporated (HBAN)

Q4 2009 Earnings Call· Fri, Jan 22, 2010

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Courtney. I will be your conference operator. At this time I would like to welcome everyone to the Huntington fourth quarter earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks there will be a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions) Thank you. Mr. Jay Gould, you may begin your conference.

Jay Gould

Management

Thank you, Courtney and welcome everyone. I am Jay Gould, Director of Investor Relations for Huntington. Copies of the slides can be we will be reviewing to be found on our website, www.huntington.com and as is our custom this call is being recorded and will be available as a rebroadcast starting about one hour from the close to call. Please call the investor relations department at 614-480-5676 for more information on how to access these recordings or playback, or should you have difficulty getting a copy of the slides. Slides two through four, notes several aspects of the basis of today’s presentation. I encourage you to read these, but let me point out one key disclosure. This presentation contains both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures, and where we believe it’s helpful to understanding Huntington’s results of operations or financial position. Where non-GAAP financial measures are used the comparable GAAP financial measures as well as the reconciliation to the comparable GAAP financial measure can be found in the slide presentation in its appendix in the press release and the quarterly financial review supplements to today’s earnings press release or in the related Form 8-K filed earlier today, all of these can be find on our website. Turning to slide five, today’s discussion including the Q-and-A period, may contain forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on information and assumptions available at this time and are subject to changes and risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ materially. We assume no obligation to update such statements. For a complete discussion of the risks and uncertainties, please refer to this slide and materials filed with the SEC including our most recent Forms 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K filings. Now, turning to today’s presentation, as noted on slide six, participating today are Steve Steinour, our Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; Don Kimble, Senior Executive Vice President and CFO; and Tim Barber, Senior Vice President of Credit Risk Management. Also present for the Q-and-A session is Dan Neumeyer, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Credit Officer; and Randy Stickler, Senior Executive Vice President of Commercial Real Estate. Let’s get started by turning to slide nine and Steve Steinour. Steve.

Steve Steinour

Management

Thank you, Jay, and welcome everyone. First, a word introduction, I am pleased to introduce Randy stickler to you he joined us in March of last year it came to us from Charter One bank, State of Ohio President. He has over 25 years of commercial banking experience, most of it in commercial real estate businesses at various banks. He’s been very busy this past year. He’s been instrumental in the significant progress we’ve made in reviewing and addressing the issues in our commercial real estate portfolios. So welcome Randy. 2009 will go down as one of the most challenging years facing the industry at Huntington in decades. A lot of difficult decisions needed to be made and as a result our performance was disappointing from a credit quality and earnings performance standpoint. However, I’m convinced that we’re entering a brand New Year in 2010 in many respects. A much stronger company with underlying momentum that will result in significantly improved performance. There are recent signs that the economic environment is stabilizing, yet it remains uncertain and even fragile. Nevertheless, sometime during 2010 we expect to return to quarterly profitability. Our colleagues are working hard to make that happen with the objective of getting there as soon as possible. Decisions in the fourth quarter were important to this end, and I hope that our remarks will give you the same confidence that we have in achieving this goal. I’ll begin with a review of our fourth quarter performance highlights. Don will follow with a detailed overview of our financial performance. Tim will provide an update on credit and review of our commercial real estate portfolio. I’ll then return with some 2010 outlook comments and what I hope our investors will take away from today’s presentation. Let’s begin, turning to slide…

Don Kimble

Management

Thanks, Steve. Going on slide 11, our net loss for the fourth quarter was $369 7 million, or $0.56 a share. Two significant items impact with the quarters are low. First, we recognize $73.6 million or $0.07 per share gain or redemption of subordinated notes. We completed a tender offer early in the fourth quarter redeeming $371 million of then outstanding coordinated debt. The gain represents the discount paid on the tender and the impact of closing out the related interest rate swap. Second we had a $12 million or $0.02 per share benefit from recognition of certainly previously deferred tax valuation allowances. Slide 12 provides a summary of quarterly earnings trends. Many of the performance metrics we discussed later in the presentation so let’s move on. On slide 13 we provide an overview of our pretax pre-provision income performance. We believe this metric is useful that being underlying operating performance. We calculate this metric by starting with the pretax earnings and excluding three items. Provision for credit losses, security gains and losses, and amortization of intangibles we also adjusted for certain significant items including the gain resulting from this quarter’s subordinated debt tender offer. On this basis, our pretax pre-provision income for the third quarter was $242.1 million, up $4.9 million or 2% from prior quarter. This improvement clearly reflects to the management actions taken to the New Year and we continue to look for additional opportunities to improve our core operating performance. Slide 14 provides a trend of our net interest income and our margin. During the fourth quarter our fully tax equivalent net interest income increased by $9.6 million reflecting a one basis point decrease in our net interest margin and a $1.3 billion increase in our average earning asset base. The margin chain reflected and favorable…

Tim Barber

Management

Thanks, Don. Turning to slide 21, our total net charge-offs were $88.8 million or 25% higher in the fourth quarter, compared to the third quarter with substantial changes in the composition. Total commercial net charge-offs were $129.8 million higher in the quarter as both the C&I and commercial real estate portfolio showed increases. In the consumer portfolio, there were no portfolio actions this quarter contributing to the significant decrease from the prior quarter. We saw elevated levels of losses as a result sister economic conditions. However, it is important to note that we continued to see a reduction in early stage delinquencies despite historically difficult fourth quarter timeframe. As we considered our asset quality trends and drivers, the commercial real estate portfolio remains the most stressed and our primary concern. Within the commercial real estate portfolio, the single family home builders and the retail projects remain the two highest risk segments, generating the bulk of the credit losses. Of the $258 million of commercial real estate charge-offs in the quarter, 73% were associated with these two segments. The retail portfolio alone comprised nearly 50% of the commercial real estate charge-offs. Both of these portfolio segments continued to show stress as we work with the borrowers in resolving the credit issues. While historically we have viewed the single family builder portfolio as the highest risk segment, we believe that we have substantially addressed that exposure at this point. Based on the sum total of our activity over the last two and a half years, we do not expect any material future credit impact from this portfolio segment. The $41 million increase in C&I net charge-offs was primarily associated with losses on four large C&I relationships. The four borrowers represent different industries, but all were significantly impacted by the difficult economic environment…

Steve Steinour

Management

Thank you, Tim. Turning to slide 32, let me share with you my expectations about 2010’s performance. First, we still do not believe there’ll be any significant economic turnaround this year. We do see signs of stabilization, and a key assumption for our current outlook comments is that the economy stabilizes at or near the current level throughout the year. With that in mind, we expect net charge-offs and provision expense will be meaningfully below 2009 levels. For us, 2009 is the peak year. Our allowance for credit losses is expected the decline on an absolute basis from its year-end level, reflecting the utilization of existing reserves for elevated inherent losses. We expect our net interest margin will improve from its 3.19% level in the fourth quarter. We anticipate strong growth in core deposits as we grow our retail and business customer bases as well as increase cross sell performance to existing customers. Loan growth is expected to be flat up to slightly. On one hand, we expect increases in C&I and certain consumer segments as customer confidence improves. However, commercial real estate loans are expected to continue to decline. Fee income will continue to be flat to slightly down. However, we expect growth in asset management as well as brokerage and insurance revenues offset in part by declines in NSF overdraft fees. Expenses are expected to increase reflecting the investment in growth and implementation of key strategic initiatives. We believe this set of expectations will return to us quarterly profitable performance sometime during the year. Let me use the next slide to provide some perspective on slide 33, we show the quarterly improvement in pre-tax, pre-provision performance. It also shows that we’re targeting the continued improvement, $275 million in the third quarter. This is an aggressive target for sure,…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Dave Rochester - FBR Capital Markets.

Dave Rochester - FBR Capital Markets

Analyst

My first question is on the CRE portfolio. It sounds like you’re very comfortable now with the write-downs on the single family homebuilder portfolio. You’re talking about continued stress in the CRE portion for 2010. Can you talk about the degree of flexibility or cushion you factored into your reserve on this portfolio that’s giving you comfort that the reserve builds are behind you? Is that 20% mark on the retail basically factor in further declines in values and increased frequency if we kind of bump along the bottom in stabilization?

Tim Barber

Management

Dave, this is Tim. I think the credit mark is designed to convey exactly that. We have looked at the retail portfolio very, very closely. We take a forward looking view of things such as an example factor that into the values we use. At the end of the day, we believe we’re comfortable or we have sufficiently addressed tissues at that 20% credit mark.

Dave Rochester - FBR Capital Markets

Analyst

Then just a quick follow-up on the reserve level itself. You talked about on an absolute basis declining. Should we see something like that occurring as early as the first quarter, or is that more like a second half type of event?

Steve Steinour

Management

No, I think second half. To give you a little more guidance that decline is modest. We’re not going to get to profitability off some significant reserve recapture Dave, but we spent a lot of time throughout the year going through these portfolios. We spent a lot of time, particularly in the fourth quarter, looking at the trend and other information and projecting, I think as most people do a continue soft commercial real-estate market intent. We think we’ve gotten ourselves in a reasonable and prudent level with the reserve build.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Bob Patten - Morgan Keegan.

Bob Patten - Morgan Keegan

Analyst

So along the same lines, on the non-core CRE portfolio, we have a 27% mark. Now, obviously we’re going to slowly try to exit this portfolio. You may have to induce, bigger marks are do you get sales done or do get deals done. How did you come to the 27% number?

Don Kimble

Management

The 27% is an aggregation of the entire portfolio. So, there’s a portion of that 40 plus percent credit mark. There’s a portion of that’s below 27. I think it’s important to talk a little bit about what’s in there. Within the non-core is a significant amount of what we call investment real estate loans that tend to be smaller commercial loans doesn’t mean that they’re core performers. It just means that’s not businesses that were going engage in going forward. So there’s a real mix in that portfolio, and from an aggregate level, the 27% makes a lot of sense to us, incorporate what we see today as well as what we think is going to happen in the coming months.

Steve Steinour

Management

There was a tremendous effort in scrubbing this book-to-break it core/non-core and a lot of sensitivity analysis. So we’ve got a lot of confidence around the core. These are identified customers. Randy, why don’t you just comment briefly about that if you would, so will you get a sense of how we’re viewing this.

Randy Stickler

Analyst

Should, Steve. I’d be happy to. As you can imagine, I’ve got a passion about this the core and non-core development, was an ongoing process that not only engage the business segment but included credit administration, risk, and policy. We looked at the core portfolio, just to give you some metrics of that. On average they’ve been customers of this bank for well over a decade. I have nearly 30 years in the business. Whenever we address some of the sensitivity issues that Steve mentioned, if you look at this portfolio on a performing basis, and use a 7%, 25 year amortization, on average this portfolio has over a 130 debt service cover. We have on each and every borrower global cash flows on their business. We actually have verified the cash of the guarantor 95 plus percent of this book does have guarantors. We have operating level cash flows, and even with this, what we believe to be good portfolio of commercial real estate, we have an ongoing review process that we look at a portion if not all of these loans on a rolling monthly basis. So, we have an ongoing prudent process to be sure that we are identifying in the early stages any risk that maybe portfolio. So that was a rigorous process that brought to us these conclusions, and we’re very comfortable with where we sit today.

Steve Steinour

Management

Thank you. I would say, last year we were almost in the firehouse stage for much of the year, absorbing, and I think many of you use the catch a falling knife analogy. We’ve caught it we’ve got a tight grip on it, a consequence that is calendar year shifting into a value maximization out of what might be thought of as a triage and maybe even a bit of a dumping approach.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Matthew O’Connor - Deutsche Bank. Matthew O’Connor - Deutsche Bank: If I could follow up on the positive net interest margin outlook, looking at the liability side of things it seems like there’s a lot of room to reprice your core CDs. I think they’re costing you north of 3% and there are still some higher cost broke up CDs that I seem to be running off. So, I’m just wondering, given flexibility overtime on the liability side, can you give us a sense of the magnitude of the margin expansion that you’re expecting here?

Don Kimble

Management

Thanks, Matt. As for as the margin expansion, I think that we will see the benefit of that deposit book repricing that our average going on rate for time deposits is right around 1%. That clearly is a lift coming from that. I think our greater opportunity, as for as the deposit base, is continuing to see the positive mix change that we’re generating here. As you’ve noted, our time deposit balances are going down. We’re seeing very strong growth in the core transaction type accounts and we’ve been underweighted in that historically compared to what we think the industry is performing at. So that clearly will add additional margin benefit for us and historically we’ve talked about that being upwards of 20 to 25 basis points just for the lift from the deposit mix change. I think that kind of gives you a ballpark range. Matthew O’Connor - Deutsche Bank: Just separately, the inflows into non-performer were down sharply quarter-to-quarter. Is there, do you think this level is sustainable, or could it tick up a little? I guess is there anything unusual that made the number so low?

Tim Barber

Management

In the third quarter, we tried to really proactively identify what we saw possibly emerging. We think we did that. That contributed in part, maybe large part, to the fourth quarter slowdown, but we don’t see that as a one quarter phenomenon. Our early on view of the first quarter is encouraging in that and in other respects.

Steve Steinour

Management

Matt, I would add that we didn’t change the focus on early identification, 35% of them are still current. 50% of them are less than 90 days past due. So the decrease was not a function of a change in treatment in any way.

Tim Barber

Management

The bulk of the reduction, again, was cash payment. So is fundamentally it reflects our efforts to direct activity and resolution of credit.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Brian Foran - Goldman Sachs.

Brian Foran - Goldman Sachs

Analyst

I’m sorry, if I missed this at the beginning, but a lot of banks were putting excess liquidity to work over the past three or five months. Did you kind of walk through why you were carrying the excess liquidity?

Tim Barber

Management

We’ve continued to carry the excess liquidity just because of deposit growth we’ve experienced throughout the last quarter. Our core deposits are up $1.3 billion from third quarter to fourth quarter, and that’s resulted in a net increase to our earning asset base. So we think that’s a distinguishing factor compared to some of our competitors is that with their shrinking balance sheet, they probably showed a wider expansion of their margin. If we would have just kept our balance sheet flat and not had that deposit growth, our margins, in instead of 319, would have been a 326. We think it’s prudent for us to continue to focus on growing core deposit relationships and we’ll continue to focus on that going forward.

Tim Barber

Management

We shared earlier strategically that we believe we can take the balance sheet and do a deposit funded balance sheet, and we’re making progress in that regard with core deposits.

Brian Foran - Goldman Sachs

Analyst

If I could follow up you kind of touched on it, but if I translate just on the excess liquidity point, the margin point you’re making to net interest income dollars. Are you going to be rolling off kind of limited spread securities, and therefore margin goes up, but all else equal, net interest income isn’t really affected, or is this a case where you’re going to be take excess liquidity and remixing it into higher yield loans or securities?

Tim Barber

Management

One, we think the net interest income will continue to improve over the next several quarters and we think that could be a key driver for us to get to the $275 million pre-tax, pre-provision levels. I think that they were trying to position the balance sheet in such a way right now so that we’re investing the proceeds from our deposit growth in fairly short dated or variable rate securities, so that as rates do start to tick up we’re better position he’d to be able to leverage that increase in rate. The other thing that we do have available at some point in time, this is that we are going to start to see the loan side of the balance sheet start to pick up again. We saw a little built of that with the indirect although our pipeline is very strong on the commercial, the C&I book and so we think that will also provide incremental lift compared to what we’re seeing now as far as 230 type of investment yield on new asset purchases there. The asset mix, as question is one of the bigger opportunities for us. We’re very, very liquid.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Scott Siefers - Sandler O’Neill. Scott Siefers - Sandler O’Neill: Just on the guidance, you gave a lot of good detail on the expense expectations, for example. I guess I was a bit surprised that almost all of the guidance for the higher pre-provision earnings comes from the revenue side, and there’s no real expectation for lower expenses. I guess I’m just curious what type of flexibility or contingency plans you guys would have on the cost side to help you meet the pre provision earnings goal if the revenue side doesn’t pan out?

Tim Barber

Management

Your question would reflect the answer. If we’re not getting the revenue, we’ll dial back the expenses, but the expense build reflect an intent to invest on a multiyear basis to deliver a strategic plan that has a number of different growth dimensions, and has a ramp up that doesn’t entirely come through in our outlook for 2010, but if we need to adjust it, we will, Scott.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Ken Zerbe - Morgan Stanley.

Ken Zerbe - Morgan Stanley

Analyst

My first question is I was hoping could you just explain specifically again what exactly changed with the reserving methodology. Really, I’m just trying to understand, what was it about fourth quarter that you were not doing in third quarter? Did you see any incremental deterioration? Really, I’m just trying to get at, if you go through this sort of annual reviews, are we going to see another big reserve build at some point in the future?

Tim Barber

Management

We went through, what I would call our annual review of the process. I think that was clearly colored this quarter by the market, and in particular, the commercial real estate market, how we’re thinking about it. We also were faced with thinking about changes in our asset quality conditions. Our non-performers were down $500 million of inflow is a significant number. Our criticized loan levels continue to increase, albeit at a slower rate. So as we thought about all of those factors combined, we felt it was prudent to increase the reserve. I provided the breakdown in the comments, and I’m happy to go back through that if would you like a fair amount of it had to do with commercial real estate, both in terms of the severity side of the equation as well as the timeframe over which we’re seeing losses. We also incorporated a more substantial judgmental portion to the reserve, specifically enhanced our economic reserve modeling portion of that and then the last piece was what I would call a normal or very regular change in our consumer reserve factors. That’s something that we have been doing for well over five years now, and there have been both a positive and negative moves over the course of that five year period.

Ken Zerbe - Morgan Stanley

Analyst

Is there any explicit assumptions about you would need to see, basically you’d have to hit your guidance of lower NPLs or reduction in classifieds in order to make sure that the reserve is adequate or if you see sort of ongoing NPL inflows at reduced levels, but still elevated levels, that that would require additional reserve build?

Tim Barber

Management

We’ve got a series of benchmarks that we’ve put together that provide an overall view of the adequacy going forward. Certainly, changes in non-accruing loans are one of those, but it is not the only one. As you mentioned the quality, if I can use that term in conjunction with non-accruing loans, would have a significant impact on how we think about the reserve level going forward.

Steve Steinour

Management

Ken, as rather the consequence of the review activity monthly, there’s a shared conclusion that we have turned the corner, we have expectations of improvement, and to be prudent about potential or ongoing degradation. We’re suggesting that reserve recapture would be modest in the course of ‘10, even though our expectation is that we’ll be able to demonstrate meaningful improvement throughout the year.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Erika Penala - UBS.

Erika Penala - UBS

Analyst

I apologize if I missed this, but when you comb through your commercial real estate portfolio and stress tested it, did you stress test debt service coverage ratio for higher interest rate?

Don Kimble

Management

Yes, we used a 7% fixed.

Erika Penala - UBS

Analyst

Could you explain that?

Don Kimble

Management

What we looked at was from a permanent market, if it did exist today, we felt that the normalized rate would be at a 7% constant, so we did that with a 25 year end, which would take your constant into the low 8 and with that it would have a 130 debt service covered. Whenever we would look at the contractual rate, which if we reflect back to 12 months to 24 months, whenever it was a very aggressive pricing markets, and these loans were based upon LIBOR, maybe a spread as low as 200 over LIBOR that contractual rate, the actual debt service coverage goes up into the 140’s. So the note rate that they’re paying us has a better coverage than what we would have used with the 7%, so we raised it to the 7% to give some cushion to know if we’ve had the ability to take the loan out. So, that was kind of the margin and even with 27%, we still feel that we have adequate debt service covered with that 1.3.

Erika Penala - UBS

Analyst

I know it’s hard to generalize, given the different asset classes within the portfolio, but the 1 to 3 debt service coverage, what does that assume in terms of forward rent?

Steve Steinour

Management

What we would do, we always are constantly reappraising as required, and we will use those appraises and look at the rents and as we looking going forward the rents that we’re seeing are downward there is no doubt about that. So as we model those and we go forward and we put together the pro forma cash flow, we generally take those rents down.

Erika Penala - UBS

Analyst

Just a quick question, following up with Matt’s question. On the margin guidance, what are you assuming in terms of the underlying interest rate environment?

Tim Barber

Management

Our base underlying assumption includes the forward curve and so it assumes basically the short earned of the curve stays fairly flat until the end of the year. I think there’s a 25 basis point increase in the third or fourth quarter, but we’re not assuming essential any significant lift coming from. That we tend to manage our interest rate risk position essentially we possibly can.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Ken Usdin - Banc of America.

Ken Usdin - Banc of America

Analyst

One question on capital, Steve, hearing your comments that if you really good about where your capital levels are to with stand any type of adverse scenario, I’m just wondering, can you give us some understanding kind of where you expect capital to live what you’re going to be managing to over the longer term?

Steve Steinour

Management

First of all, we’re comfortable work with where we are. We’re expecting at some point there’s going to be some regulatory guidance that emerges in 10. We think we’re prudent with where we are and we expect to turning to profitability, be generating capital. So that is the basis for the current position.

Ken Usdin - Banc of America

Analyst

So we just to have wait and see on what the real ratios are before you can actually set us?

Steve Steinour

Management

We can, but we don’t think we’re not convinced we’d be outside of any ranges to begin with and we certainly that wouldn’t expect to be meaningfully outside.

Ken Usdin - Banc of America

Analyst

With regards to the DTA as you get to that point where you do expect profitability, what needs to occur to be able to recapture the rest of the portion of the DTA that’s currently excluded from your regulatory ratios?

Steve Steinour

Management

The regulatory calculations get a little complex, but essentially will take about a four quarter process before you start to see some of that benefit return, but it’s really utilization of the reserves that are established that’s could create some of the reduction in that DTA disallowance.

Ken Usdin - Banc of America

Analyst

So that would still be a ways away.

Steve Steinour

Management

That’s correct.

Operator

Operator

Your final question comes from Jeff Davis - FTN Capital.

Jeff Davis - FTN Capital

Analyst

Steve, the FDIC presumably is going to ramp up closures in Michigan. I know you’ve done one deal up there. What’s your interest in expanding your footprint and depository base up the FDIC?

Steve Steinour

Management

Jeff, as we’ve said before, we would opportunistically look at acquiring with assisted transactions and possibly a variety of flavors, but it’s really important to us. Our primary focus is getting to profitability, executing our strategic plan, driving the core. We’re not feeling any pressure to do another little deal in Michigan or for that matter anywhere else and there’s a distraction factor doing these little things. I don’t mean to be demeaning in terms of any acquisition.

Jay Gould

Management

Everybody, this is Jay Gould. I apologize for the couple of people that were still in the queue. If you have those questions, please bring them to my attention, and I’ll sit down with you, or Don, or whomever we need to get together, but we have another time commitment coming right upon us. So, thanks for your participating. We’ll appreciate your interest Huntington. We’ll talk to you later. Good bye.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.