Kelly S. King
Analyst · Deutsche Bank
Thank you, Tamera, and good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining our call. We recognize you all have a busy morning, so thanks for being with us. We're very pleased to have a chance to talk to you about our quarter. We think it's a very strong quarter. In fact, it's the best quarter we've had in 3 years. So we're pretty pleased. I'm on Slide 3 if you're following along. Cover a few highlights. So net income available to shareholders totaled $366 million, which is up 74.3% versus third quarter of '10. EPS was $0.52, up 73.3% versus Q3 '10. And if you look at versus Q2, we made $0.44, so it's up an annualized 72%, so very strong. And I would just point out with regard to earnings in general, as a highlight, that we did start in the third quarter an expense and revenue optimization process. We're basically -- we're asking all of our business leaders to reconceptualize their businesses, recognize, and we think we're in for a relatively protracted period of somewhat slow growth in the overall economy. And so we're really taking a hard look at our revenues and expenses and -- but more from a conceptualization point of view versus an absolute cut perspective. So we're pretty optimistic about what that will do in future periods with regard to earnings improvement. Taking a look at revenues. We're very pleased that tax equivalent net interest income totaled $1.5 billion. It was up 18.3% versus our second quarter. Now that was substantially influenced by a substantial increase in securities, and we did have some headwinds on the fee income side. We did have some OTTI negative impact. We had about a $37 million loss and write-down on loans held for sale, which we think is kind of onetime cleanup. We did have a typical seasonal insurance decline, which we see every time this quarter, but it's pretty significant. And we did have a meaningful FDIC loss share, negative. But remember, that's more than offset in net interest income. So some headwinds on the fee side, but some very strong underlying fee income business performances as well. So if you look at total revenues, second to third annualized, if you exclude OTTI and loss on held for sale, which we consider to be unusual, it would be up annualized about 3.5%, so pretty strong in this environment. We did again produce positive operating leverage. And as I've mentioned to you before, we continue to selectively hire revenue producers, so we continue to invest in our revenue production and feel relatively pretty good about it. Credit quality. Was just another great quarter. Clarke can talk to you in more detail about it, but in the highlight perspective, OREO, NPLs, performer TDRs, NPL inflows, watch list loans and charge-offs all declined, so it was another great quarter. NPAs I'm very pleased to say decreased 11.5%, and NPA inflows decreased 12.1%, both stronger than we had originally given guidance on. We had relatively strong loan growth given the environment we're in. Average total loan growth was 4.3% versus Q2. If you look at average loan growth, excluding ADC and covered and other acquired portfolios, it was a very strong 7.4%. So we feel really good about that, and it was broad-based and with the faster pace of fast quarter. And so we're seeing good, strong loan growth in C&I, Direct Retail, specialized lending and mortgage. I'll give you a little detail on that. And right now we're seeing no signs of slowing, so our outlook is positive with regard to our loan book. Deposits just continue to be phenomenal with noninterest-bearing deposits increasing $1.2 billion, or 21.8%, in the third. Average total deposits increased $8.6 billion, or 32%, so we're still seeing a flight of deposits into the banking system and certainly the stronger banks from a quality perspective. If you look on Slide 4. We do have 3 unusual items I just wanted to mention to you. So I said we did have some loan in write-downs, losses in write-downs in our NPA held for sale. Remember, we've been working that down over the last year. We got a small amount left in there, so we did take a cleanup mark on that. We expect that portfolio to be basically gone within the next month or 2. But it was a pretax negative $37 million, which was negative $0.03. We sold a leverage lease during the quarter, which produces a pretax $16 million loss in other income, but we also had a $32 million positive tax effect. Substantially, most of that was on the -- a positive effect on the seller of the lease. There was some small additional independent true-ups, but that was a positive $0.02. And then this -- we had some other than temporary impairment on some securities, which was $39 million pretax, or a negative $0.03 on EPS. We do not expect much of any of that in the fourth. We just took a pretty aggressive position with regard to that in the third. On the fifth slide. Just a little more commentary for you on our balance sheet. And I want you to use [ph] this time to think about our strategies in terms of kind of our community bank strategy, our corporate strategy and our Special Lending business strategy. So in the community bank, we are really focused and have been for the last 3 years on our diversification strategy. Recall, we told you 3 years ago that we wanted to become less dependent on real estate and relatively more dependent on C&I and also on the liability side, less dependent on CDs and more dependent on low-cost transaction accounts. We continue to execute, I think, in a superb fashion on that. But, for example, in the third quarter, new production in the community bank was 85% C&I, 15% CRE. Direct Retail is a nice positive story in the turn, 5.9% annualized growth in the period. This is after 2 years of declines. In fact, September was our best production month since 2008. It's broad-based. We're getting a lot of growth in first lien. This is $50,000, $100,000 first mortgage loan for people who refinanced in small balance loans or doing home improvements, that type of thing. Our wealth strategy is really kicking in, getting nice growth there, as is our small business strategy. So we feel really good about our retail growth going forward. Mortgage is beginning to have yet another ramp-up in terms of these slow interest rates, and mortgage applications were up 87% compared to the second. And our production, which, of course, as you know, lags application, was also strong, $5.5 billion in the third versus $3.9 billion in the second. So nice production in the third and likely to produce nice production in the fourth. Deposits, as I indicate, continue to do really well. You'll recall that in the last couple of quarters, we talked to you about transitioning from free checking into what we call Bright Banking. So we're seeing strong growth in checking, money market, CDs. Now I will point out that some of our growth in CDs is due to our focus on improving our Basel liquidity. But, in general, we're gaining more active accounts, more fully banked primary relationships relative to the free checking days. So while you might not open as many accounts, you open more full long-term relationship-oriented accounts, which are more profitable, so that's a very successful strategy. And our Specialized Lending is just, frankly, doing great. You recall over the last, it's really several years, we've invested very heavily in building those businesses. These businesses are small-ticket consumer finance, insurance premium finance, commercial equipment and mortgage, prime and nonprime auto and mortgage warehouse lending. What I like about it is it's very diversified. So all areas grew. Quality is at record levels in the businesses. Part of that is the markets themselves are actually doing pretty well, but a lot of it is we've done some really good tightening in terms of our underwriting and overall risk management processes. It's a very diversified portfolio in 2 regards: By type, as I just described, and by market. So while we're having strong growth in there, I'm very pleased about it because it's a very diversified asset area to be growing. And then I told you in the past, we have a very unique market opportunity in the Corporate Banking area. Recall that we have not been except in the last couple of years really focused on large corporate or what you would call middle market. And a lot of the large corporate middle market players have kind of gone away, and so we are finding that there's a really pretty strong appetite out there for a high-quality, highly rated name like BB&T in the space. And so -- but we're really having some great numbers there. But we have not changed our methodology. We have not changed our approach in terms of underwriting or selection. We remain middle market-focused, very relationship-based. We're not just out buying syndicated tranches with no relationships. We avoid leveraged sponsored lending. We have strict hold limits. And even with that, our end-of-period balance has increased 16.4% compared with second quarter, and 48% over Q3 '10. So nice ramp-up but a very diversified portfolio. We are, frankly, getting some benefit from some European fallout from the way they're pulling away from high-quality credits because of their own capital issues. And we continue to add lending personnel in that area because it's a very strong success area for us. That's also creating a lot of our deposit growth at the same time, so it's broad-based relationship again. So I want to re-emphasize that our underwriting and hold positions have not changed. And while we see some of that going on in the industry, we are very disciplined about that, and we are not going to sacrifice quality for growth. Overall, you can make that same commentary with regard to our lower relative risk profile in general. Though as you know, our values-driven culture drives our focus on all of our businesses. So there's been no change in our risk appetite. We have minimal exposure to European banks, no sovereign exposure. In fact, I consider that to be virtually irrelevant for us just because of the nature of who we are. We operate a very conservative mortgage operation. And so while that's had a lot of notoriety, it's not a big issue for us on the negative side. It's a pretty big issue on the positive side. Recent vintage credits are very high quality. And again, we continue to focus on granularity. So we're very, overall, very disciplined about our growth strategy, and therefore, we feel good about the asset numbers. A little more detail on that, as you look in Slide 6. So in addition to our corporate strong performance, we also have broad-based loan growth. You can see there C&I, in general, was up 7.5%, sales finance is up 2.8%, revolving credit 7.5%, residential mortgage 11%. Specialized lending, as I referred to, is very strong, 30.8%. We get some seasonality in that now. So some quarters, it's up strong, in some quarters not quite as much. So this is a pretty strong quarter. And while a low number, I'm very pleased with this Direct Retail, 3.6%, because that's a bit like an annuity because once it turns positive, it kind of tends to stay positive for quite a long cycle. So 7.4% excluding ADC and covered loans, and obviously, we've got a big run-off in ADC, 48%, which is exactly on strategy. The covered loans are predictably declining, so incorporating all of that, 4.3%, which is, we think, strong. We did gain momentum in growth. So end-of-period loans were up $1.3 billion, annualized $5.1 billion. Our pipelines remain robust. We continue to focus on high-quality granular portfolios. And so we are raising our guidance slightly. We see loan growth in the 4% to 6% range, contingent on how the economy does. Now I will tell you that we believe that we are moving market share. When we talk -- when I talk to our producers out there, with fairly strong loan growth, I ask them if the economy is growing that fast, and they quickly say no, that about 80% of what we're booking is moving market share. So the economy is still not growing at a very fast pace because uncertainty is still really high out there coming out of all the negative leadership from Washington, primarily. I will say on a positive, however, that we believe when we get positive leadership out of Washington, we believe, at least in our markets, and we think in general, that businesses are poised to invest, and therefore, we're poised for much better growth. I really think we've got pent-up opportunity in this market, and when we get more positive leadership coming out of Washington, I believe we'll see it happen, probably happen pretty quickly. If you look at Page 7. Just a little bit of color with regard to deposits. We really feel good about our overall absolute growth in deposits, especially given that we keep a tight focus on managing our margin particularly with regard to costs. So our costs went down from 0.72% to 0.65%, second to third. Given strong loan growth, I think that's very good. TDA was up a very strong 21.8%. Interest checking, 14.4%, money market 28.1% and CD is a very strong 63.6%, but I want to reinforce again, part of that was some particular emphasis on public funds and large corporate deposits, which are stable deposit relationships, but you won't expect to see that kind of on a quarter-to-quarter basis. So in spite of that focus, we grew CDs, and in spite of the fact that our -- had a 25 basis points decrease in cost. And we're not taking long rate exposure because our average CD maturity is 15 months. So we are expecting deposit growth to moderate somewhat in the fourth relative to the third because it of this focus on Basel III liquidity but still a very strong long-term performance in our deposit area. Let me turn it to Clarke now to give you some color with regard to the credit area, and then Daryl will give you some color with regard to a number of other areas. Clarke?