Comerica Incorporated (NYSE:CMA) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Comerica Incorporated (NYSE:CMA) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript April 18, 2024

Comerica Incorporated isn't one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Greetings, and welcome to the Comerica First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host Kelly Gage, Director of Investor Relations. Thank you.. Please go ahead.

Kelly Gage: Thanks Donna. Good morning and welcome to Comerica's first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Participating on this call will be our President, Chairman and CEO, Curt Farmer; Chief Financial Officer, Jim Herzog; Chief Credit Officer, Melinda Chausse; and Chief Banking Officer, Peter Sefzik. During this presentation, we will be referring to slides which will provide additional details. The presentation slides and our press release are available on the SEC's website as well as the Investor Relations section of our website, comerica.com. This conference call contains forward-looking statements and in that regard, you should be mindful of the risks and uncertainties that can cause actual results to vary materially from expectations.

Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this presentation and we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Please refer to the Safe Harbor statement in today's earnings presentation on Slide 2, which is incorporated into this call as well as the SEC filings for factors that can cause actual results to differ. Also, this conference call will reference non-GAAP measures. And in that regard, I direct you to the reconciliation of these measures in the earnings materials that are available on our website, comerica.com. With that, I'll turn the call to Curt. We'll begin on Slide 3.

Curt Farmer: Thank you, Kelly. Good morning everyone. Thank you for joining our call. Today we reported first quarter earnings of $138 million or $0.98 per share. Although loan demand remained muted, we continue to see improvement in customer sentiment, translating into increased pipelines and signaling opportunities for growth. Our historically strong deposit franchise demonstrated resilience as deposits outperform expectations and normal seasonal patterns. These favorable trends enable continued normalization of our liquidity position, as we reduce wholesale funding by over $5 billion throughout the quarter. In fact, over the last four quarters, we repaid almost $12 billion in wholesale funding, while preserving significant available capacity.