Citizens Financial Group, Inc. (CFG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Yes. Great. Good morning to the people in the U.S. Good afternoon to those overseas. I'm Jason Goldberg. I cover the U.S. large cap banks here at Barclays, and thank you for joining what is our Annual Americas Select Conference. This is an event we started as a financial services conference, oh, I would say, close to 20 years ago and kind of more fit to more general conference or so about 10 years ago. Obviously, every year, we would take over 50 somewhat companies over to London to meet with primarily European-based investors. This year, doing a bit differently, going it virtual. I'm very pleased to have with us this morning, Citizens Financial. Citizens is a company that's really participated in this event, I think, every May since its IPO in late 2014 as it spun out of RBS. It's a company that's really made great strides in terms of improving its franchise under the leadership of CEO and Chairman, Bruce Van Saun, who's with us this morning. But it's a company that's really, I think, set itself up nicely for the current environment, but obviously, didn't predict the current environment would happen. But in terms of greatly improving its risk profile over the past several years, greatly improving its product offering, coming up with efficiency programs to better streamline the organization and at the same time, investing in several revenue initiatives that are really bearing fruit and kind of aiding PPNR in an environment where credit costs have obviously been on the rise. With that, let me turn it over to Bruce to tell you a lot more in terms of what's going on with Citizens.

Okay. Thank you very much, Jason, and good day, everyone. I'm really sorry we're not all together in London, and hopefully, this virtual format works out well. I'm just going to run through a few brief slides and then I'll engage in some dialogue and Q&A with Jason. So look forward to that. Let me just, first off, flash up our cautionary language, which you can read at your convenience, and then I'll move right into our executive summary. So there's a few themes, high-level themes that I'd like to focus on today. The first off is that we're really locked in on helping our customers make it through this challenging environment. That includes many dimensions: first off, providing advice and assistance to our customers. We have a significant number of customers that are in various types of loan forbearance. Corporate customers, we're offering flexibility on long terms. We've funded a significant amount of line draws in the first quarter. We've also been a major participant in securing PPP programs funding for our small business customers. And then also, we've been operating effectively our full branch network while also seeing the big investments we've made in our digital platform play out well as we've had a 26% increase in overall digital volumes. We're doing all of this based on a very strong capital liquidity and funding position. We're also very pleased that our PPNR has held up well given some of the diversity that's built into our business model. And then lastly, we're not just focused on the here and now. We're also carrying on and executing well on our longer-term strategic initiatives, and we're also working hard to find some new opportunities. So with that, let's dig in a little deeper on a few topics. First off, let me offer some further comment on the PPP program. So as I mentioned, we've secured about $5 billion in funding for our customers. That's about 45,000 loan applicants. And the profile of our customer base -- I know there's been some controversy over this, but our profile is very, very positive in terms of helping smaller firms. You can see some of the stats on this slide. We estimate that through these efforts, we've helped over 0.5 million people here in the U.S. So I feel really good about that. It took a tremendous effort to actually make that happen. So very pleased with the work ethic. We have people working around the clock. We scaled up the operation from maybe 25 people to well over 1,000. We deployed some of our new technology capabilities, next-gen tech capabilities to really operate in a digital fashion and efficient fashion in terms of accessing the SBA overall back-end program. So also saw some really good across-the-firm collaboration. So very pleased with that effort overall. Just in terms of these loans, they are 0 risk-weighted assets. We have an opportunity to fund those at the Fed, with the borrowing facility that the Fed has set up, and we see that there'll likely be significant forgiveness of these loans in the second half of the year, which will result in maturity or income recognition. Next up, we did take significant actions in Q1 to strengthen our allowance for credit losses. We feel very good about our ability to absorb severe credit losses given the combination of these reserves, our robust PPNR generation and then also our strong CET1 ratio. There's a few comparison benchmarks here at the bottom left, I'd probably focus you on the 2020 BHC coverage. ACL took coverage of severe -- severely adverse losses at 45%, which we feel is a good number, and that we're in very good shape on a relative basis. We did give a fair amount of granular loan detail in -- on our consumer portfolios and then also on the areas of heightened interest in the commercial portfolios with our Q1 earnings materials. We won't repeat that here. You can go back and review that. But in short, I'd say the headline is that we have a well-diversified and a high-quality loan book. You can see in the middle of the page, the bars there that our credit profile is improving year-on-year in both the consumer book and then also in the commercial book, and that's been a consistent effort on our part over the past several years. You can see that our loss rates under the severely adverse, company-run stress scenarios continues to track very well relative to peers. Maintaining a strong capital and liquidity position is of paramount importance in managing through this stress period. We feel that we've been very consistently conservative and prudent in this regard. You can see our CET1 ratio remains strong even after funding a significant number of line draws in Q1 and also putting aside significant reserves. We did make the decision that we will cease repurchases through the end of the year, and we look at this at -- our dividend is secured through the various stressful scenarios, even more stressful scenarios than what we modeled currently. We also feel very comfortable with our liquidity position. We continue to expand our contingent liquidity. You can see we have over $60 billion now available in contingent liquidity. And we have a really strong retail franchise in terms of our customer deposits. So again, feel very good. I would add also that our deposit inflows continue at a good clip through Q2. So one of our strategic objectives has been to build out a stronger and more diversified business model. This has obvious financial benefits, but it also allows us to better serve our customers and deepen relationships. Just kind of running through the highlights on this page, in consumer, that we've had some really nice innovation. We've innovated in education refinance. We've innovated into merchant finance point of sale, Citizens Access. We're also building a really strong and excellent mortgage business, and we're, I think, building a nice Wealth Management business. That's a little more work in progress. There's more to do there, but feel good about the progress that we're making in consumer. Similarly, in commercial, we've built out our coverage model and coverage team at the same time that we've invested in our product capabilities. And that's all come together really nicely, and we're gaining market share and continue to see some really solid growth on the commercial side of the house. You can see here that these investments have driven an overall 7% fee growth rate over the past 5 years, and that's really paced by even faster growth in our key growth areas, which you see back in 2015, with 31% of overall revenues, fee revenues. That's now moving up to about half. So really some solid progress. Now key to our ability to deliver positive operating leverage, which has allowed us to improve our return on equity, historically, has been the TOP programs that we have developed, and executed on over, kind of every year since I've been here, TOP 6 being the most recent. TOP 6 is probably double the size, maybe triple the size of what we've been able to do on an annual basis. We did say this would be a 2-year program because it involves more complexity, more investing. Many of the other year's programs were I'd say, more tactical than easier to execute on. But the good news here is that we're largely on track and executing very well across the breadth of this program, both the transformational side of it as well as the traditional elements. We are holding back on some of the reduction in force that was contemplated in the program given the COVID-19 situation currently. We should move forward there later in the year, but there are other expense offsets that are going to keep us on track for this year. We've also unveiled several strategic initiatives over the past few months and our philosophy here at Citizens is to keep making those investments, not to pause, but look to drive top line growth and come out of this period stronger relative to our peers. So you can see the 3 main initiatives that we had described starting in the middle of 2019: expanding Citizens Access; integrating our digital offerings for a great new platform for small business customers; and then also reinventing the payment experience at point of sale, both with merchants and an initiative aimed at merchants and then an initiative aimed directly at consumers and purchasers. I'd say the top and the bottom of those are progressing very well and I think are even more relevant today. So we feel good about those. The offering for small business, given all the work that's been burned into PPP, is pushed out a little bit, but we still think that's very exciting, even -- and maybe even creates results and some additional opportunities coming out of what we've seen with small businesses and the need for better information and tools to manage their cash flow in other aspects of their business. In addition to those initiatives, we've also been working on our strategy process that typically, we refresh the strategy in the middle of the year. We're trying to step back from what's happening in the environment, how's the world changing, what is changing and how folks are going to want a bank going forward and what new opportunities does that create for Citizens Bank. So I think it's a perfect opportunity for an organization that's nimble and innovative like Citizens, really, to make some additional investments and pivot and really capture some of those opportunities. So stay tuned. I really don't have a lot to say on those initiatives at this point, but we will in the coming months. So to sum up, we are highly pleased with how we've risen to the occasion, in dealing with the challenges associated with the current environment. We also are very confident in our ability to continue to build a great top-performing bank over time. So as I said, I'll be brief, and I'll stop there. And I'm happy to have a dialogue, Jason, and start with some Q&A with you.

Thanks, Bruce. I appreciate that. For those listening in, you could either -- I think there's a way to submit questions via the platform you're viewing the presentation on. Otherwise, you could feel free to e-mail questions to me at [email protected], and I'll try and read those out. Bruce, as we kind of wait for questions from the audience, maybe I'll kick it off with some but -- it's been about 4 weeks since you've had your earnings conference call. Just maybe just kind of maybe provide us an update in terms of what you're seeing, hearing from your consumer and commercial customers as this PPP program takes hold, as consumers get their checks from the IRS, as the changes to kind of the unemployment benefits kick in and as these stay-at-home orders I think in some areas become a bit stricter, some are beginning to get more relaxed. Just kind of maybe update in kind of what you're seeing or hearing from your, I guess, your consumers as well as commercial customers.

Sure. Well, I'd say at about the time we did the call, Jason, it appeared that there was probably more negative sentiment about whether it was, in fact, possible to have a V-shaped recovery and more and more folks were talking about U-shaped or L-shaped, and there was a -- just general pessimism about these lockdowns and the impact it was having on the economy. I do think that as we've gone forward from there, now that we're getting towards the middle of May, there seems to be a little more optimism. You're starting to see a groundswell for opening up the economy. I think there's a recognition of the damage that the lockdowns have done to many individuals, small businesses, and we seem to have achieved some of the initial health objectives of flattening the curve. So I think we're hopeful that we'll practice a safe strategy around reopening, social distancing, wearing masks, trust the people to do the right thing. And so if we end up coming back, I think certain parts of the country will come back faster than others, but you could see a fairly robust recovery still is possible in the second half of the year. So I think the next 30 days really bears watching. I do think the government stimulus programs are having the desired effect. It's helped bridge people to individual checks, have helped bridge people as they get through this tough period and have interruption to their cash flow. And the PPP program, I think, was a godsend for many firms. There's still, I think, some wrinkles to work out in terms of forgiveness and how to spend the money and how to achieve the forgiveness that we have a lot of folks focused on right now. But I think the overall thrust of the program was sound and is having a positive effect. There's another program that has been designed, the Main Street Lending facility, that hasn't been fully launched at this point. There's been a lot of input from the banking industry with the Federal Reserve Bank and Treasury about how to make that program more attractive. We'll wait and see the take-up on that program. I do think the markets have gradually stabilized and started to open up for issuance, starting with investment-grade issuers, and then even now, some of the better non-investment grade names are able to issue. So much of the work that the Fed has done in trying to calm and stabilize the financial markets is also having a very solid effect. So we're seeing, I think less concern about liquidity and solvency by companies. I think they're able to access the markets, many companies. They have these government programs. They have their revolving credit agreements with banks, which they drew down relatively early, and you've now seen that really tailing off and starting to see some repayments there. So overall, and you can watch the equity markets, the equity markets are pointing upwards. And that's usually a leading indicator that the sentiment, I think, is shifting to positive. It doesn't mean that we can't have another leg down here, but anyway, it feels a bit better now than it did probably in mid-April.

Helpful. Before we go to the next question, for those on the line, if you look at your computer screen, right above where it says Barclays, there is a kind of text message kind of box. If you click on that, there's a place to send in your question. Bruce, on one of the slides, you showed your loan loss reserve or allowance for loan losses relative to kind of different Fed stress case scenarios. And looking on that metric, you look to be kind of relatively more reserved than peers, which is a positive. I guess you kind of mentioned 45% of your 2020 submission. When we kind of think about second quarter, third quarter results, where do you think that number could go to? How do you think about size and the allowance kind of relative to different economic scenarios? And then kind of how are you going out with forecasting kind of the risks inherent in your loan book

Yes. So I'll start with the last question, Jason. So how do we monitor the loan book. But I'd start with the corporate side, where, very early days, we did kind of circling of the wagons, and we identified the roughly 20% of the customer base that was going to have a material impact on their business and their cash flows from COVID-19, and we did a very detailed cash burn analysis. So we had folks working around the clock to do that. We used some great tools, artificial intelligence tools, to help us get that done in a timely basis. And so I think that allowed us to get out and talk to those customers in a proactive way, to monitor their situation, to look for opportunities to bridge them to the -- through the rough patch until we get back to calmer waters. And so I think we haven't seen a lot of surprises, having invested in that work early on, and I think we've had good dialogue with all those companies. Similarly, on the consumer portfolios, we monitor the delinquency trends very carefully. We look at loan forbearance and folks' ability to repay when we come out of the other side and the forbearance period ends. And so we had, I think, gym-ed up a very strong team and effort to stay on top of that as well. I'd say it's not clear yet where the reserve has to go in Q2. A lot will depend on the macro environment and some of the things I've discussed earlier about how fast we recover and what the outlook looks like for the second half of the year. I would say that in the big picture sense, we have plenty of capital to put aside additional reserve if that's what it takes. So effectively, boosting your ACL, simply moving capital out CET1, and putting it aside, it's still capital that's available to absorb loan losses. And so I think you have to look at the 2 combined. We have a strong ACL-to-loan ratio that I think matches up well with where we see the risks. And then we also have a very strong capital ratio that allows us to add to those reserves if necessary.

That's helpful. And I guess you kind of mentioned comfort with the dividend even in a kind of a more adverse scenario than you're expecting. I mean the market has you, I think, at a 7-ish percent type yield. So there's -- I think some concern there. I guess, what gives you confidence in kind of putting that statement on the slide?

Well, I think it's our modeling, Jason, and our confidence and overall, the quality of the credit portfolio and how we've grown the loan book. The market has us trading at 0.7 or whatever of tangible book, which would maybe, take a different view of that. But the market's not always accurate in terms of where it prices stocks. So we believe that, certainly, our book value was good and the stock should be trading higher. And that the dividend, through various scenarios, when we run our CET1 ratios down even in very severe scenarios, we still stay above 8 -- in that 8 to 8.5 range even with the full dividend in place. So I think things would have to get really, really bad for us to have to take a hard look at the dividend.

No, again, that's helpful. I guess you kind of mentioned kind of some of these forbearance and deferral programs. I know it's kind of in the early days of these programs. There's some concern that's -- kind of it's going to push off and prolong some of the issues that banks will inevitably experience. I guess given you've been through a bunch of different environments, I guess what's your thought in terms of how effective those programs can be and ultimately, to our consumers' or corporate's stability to kind of catch up and make call on those credits?

Yes. Look, I think that key right now is just to make sure that folks make it through this period and then how fast the economy comes back and how fast people regain their jobs and employment and income levels, still TBD. But certainly, we want to support those customers and help them bridge the period and then work something out at the back end. So if it means that we have to extend the life of a loan and not force folks to catch up all in one fell swoop and they're just getting back into the labor force, those are the kind of things that we'll have to look at. So I do think the regulators and policymakers in Washington have encouraged banks to take that posture. They're not requiring TDR reporting on these modifications because this is a unique circumstance, and through no fault of their own, people are out of work. They hope to get back to work, and then they -- a lot of these were very solid customers who had a perfect payment history. And so we don't want them to become a casualty of something that they had no control over. So we'll continue to take that positive view and work with borrowers, whether they're companies or whether they're individuals.

And I guess, maybe last on credit and lending. In your remarks, you mentioned you're kind of positive on the PPP program. I guess, kind of reading the newspapers and the media, it's gotten, I guess, more negative reviews. Can you talk to kind of your experience with that program, kind of what it's done for your small business customers and how you see that playing out?

Yes. Jason, I'd say you have to kind of step back and look at things big picture and say that the administration wanted to get a significant amount of funds to small businesses in a very as short as possible a period of time as they could. And the rails that they decided, the vehicle to do that was the SBA. $350 billion, I think, is more than 10 years of loans that the SBA has issued, and they did it in 2 weeks, which is fairly miraculous. The systems really aren't built for that. But I do think that the banks work very, very hard to gear up to make that happen. So it was painful for everybody involved, for the SBA, for us, for customers anxious about getting the money. So it wasn't a perfect process. But if you step back and look at the net result, $350 billion was out the door and then the second round of $310 billion, I think 2/3 of that is already out the door. And most of the demand has been met for those loans. So anyway, I'd say if you just look at achieving the result, I think the result was met, which is positive. And I do think many of these customers, as I said before, they needed a bridge to -- through no fault of their own, having to close their businesses and then hopefully getting to open those businesses in a reasonably short period of time, how do we keep the lights on? How can we keep folks employed? And this program effectively allows them to do that. The program, I think, very smartly, was designed as grants rather than loans at the end of the day. So the small businesses don't need more debt piled on them. They need an equity infusion, which the owner typically doesn't have. So I think the country made a decision to invest in the small businesses, which are higher -- have over 50% of the payrolls in the country to keep the lights on in those businesses, keep them going, which will protect employment longer term. So I think that's really -- when you step back and look at the program, that's what's involved, and I feel really, really positive that the banking industry stepped up and rose to the occasion here.

Helpful. Maybe let me shift gears. You talked a bit about your TOP 6 transformation program. 2/3 is expenses, 1/3 revenues. Obviously, expense cuts or efficiencies are a good idea in the current backdrop. I guess, any thought to kind of pulling back on some of those revenue initiatives, the spendings to get the [ revolutions ] going in the current backdrop? Or was it kind of, forge ahead and now is our time to kind of continue to invest and try to take share in the long run?

Well, I'd say in the tactical program at TOP 6, there's some revenue initiatives that probably will have a pause. We won't be fully investing because customers aren't in a position to engage the same way they work. So they'll -- in addition to delaying some of the reduction in force actions, you'll see some slippage also in revenue time lines there, but that's really just linked to the current environment. The strategic initiatives that we have run in parallel with TOP 6, basically TOP 6 efficiencies are allowing us to fund some of those high-level initiatives. I really think it would be the wrong thing to do -- to pause, those. It might save a few pennies of EPS, which banks -- stocks really aren't trading on a few pennies of EPS. I think the important thing here is that we have -- for example, with our national digital bank, Citizens Access, we have a lead relative -- we're the leader of the regional banks in our peer group there. With the platform, we've stood up. The world is moving more to digital, it would be the wrong thing not to invest and take this to the next level as we have on the drawing board. So right now, we're looking at dropping the next bundle. So in addition to savings accounts, we can offer primary checking accounts. We can offer business savings accounts. We can offer mortgages, performing mortgages. So there's a number of things that we want to put on that platform to really expand the reach and the breadth, and get deeper relationships with customers across the country. So I think when you step back and look at things, the world has changed. I think those initiatives are even more important and timely, and so we're going to keep investing.

Helpful. You mentioned some of the second quarter saves going to be deferred until late in the year but kind of offset by other expense actions. Can you just maybe flesh out what you meant by that?

Well, I think at this point, some of the reductions in force, I think most banks are kind of working with a full employment concept, that you'll have some turnover and you might not replace turnover, but actually force exits because you're changing your business model. It wouldn't be appropriate to do that while we're living in the pandemic and lockdown is raging and labor markets are a bit dumbed up. So we're just, I think, being -- just doing the right thing is where we're focused. If that delays some savings, let's say, from Q2 to Q3 or to later in the year, then we have to meet our trajectory for the year, we have to go out and look for some other things. And the environment, the COVID-19 situation also creates some inherent savings, which we're achieving through reduced travel and through reduced marketing spend on certain products where we've tightened our risk appetite. And so we're basically balancing kind of doing the right thing with achieving some savings in other areas.

No. That makes sense. Maybe shift gears to the fee side. Obviously, the current banks are up, should bode well for kind of mortgage banking activities. You had the first mortgage acquisition a couple of years ago. Can you maybe talk to kind of what you're seeing on the mortgage front? You guys have done a good job in terms of building out some of your capital markets capabilities. I suspect some areas are doing better than others against the current backdrop. Maybe you can flesh out in terms of what you're seeing there?

Yes. Sure. So I have to say, it's sometimes better to be lucky than good, but I think we are a little bit of both with the timing of that mortgage acquisition. But we wanted to achieve -- if we fundamentally wanted to be in the mortgage business because it's an important product for our customers, then we have to be in it in a way that achieves scale and proper economics. So we went out and did the acquisition in May of '18. We brought in a fellow, Eric Schuppenhauer, to run that business, who's got a great background, and we worked very hard to digitize the business, the front end, to work on more straight-through processing so the business could be highly efficient. And lo and behold, when the Fed started cutting rates last year and the refi boom kicked off, we were in a perfect position to gain market share, to keep up with the volumes. And so I think you can see from Q3, Q4, Q1, we've had a huge upsurge in our revenues, and the banks have come back. I think some of the nonbanks in the mortgage space have been put on their heels, which has allowed banks to regain some market share. So I feel really good about how that business is positioned, how we've diversified the revenue sources in that business, we've done a good job of hedging the MSR asset. Hats off to John Woods and Dave Lindenauer there. And so I think the outlook for the rest of the year in mortgage continues to be favorable. And so that's certainly one in the win column. Some of the other fee categories, capital markets, we were basically ripping the cover off the ball in the first quarter before the COVID-19 started to have an impact. That said, we would have had a $63 million quarter, but we took a $20 million mark on our fairly modest trading positions that we have, which would have been a record quarter for us. We're seeing some signs of life, that the markets are coming back a bit in second quarter but it certainly won't be at the levels that we were expecting going into the year. But I think you'll see that build over the remainder of the year. We have invested in M&A capability, and I think we had a good first quarter. I think we'll see a little loss here, but then you'll probably see some more transactions pick up later in the year as well. Another area, the commercial side, has been very, very strong. It's been our FX and interest rate hedging business, we've got a great team there. We've got great technology, great insights into how companies can hedge their risks. We've been gaining market share against other banks, including the biggest banks. So I feel that, that area offers promise both in Q2 and the rest of the year. So those would be -- to me, be the bright spots. Offsetting that, we've seen a significant drop in activity in some of the transaction-sensitive revenue areas, service charges on deposit accounts. Card fees will be down significantly in the second quarter as folks are just not spending money, not getting out and spending money. So again, in the second half of the year, depending on how fast the economy comes back, we can see a nice bounce back there. So one of the things we've been talking with investors and analysts about is that we have some nice diversification. So if mortgage is kind of leading the way, if mortgage stays a little bit then some of these other areas should come back and should continue to keep our fees at fairly robust levels.

And maybe shift gears to just net interest margin. Clearly, it's a low interest rate environment. Obviously, the Fed cut in March, you've seen LIBOR come in more progressive recently. You've been successful in the past, kind of lowering deposit costs. Just maybe talk to how much further room you have there. You've also we've been somewhat successful with some of these balance sheet optimization initiatives. And if this low interest rate environment persists for a while or even gets more challenged, how do you go about managing the margin?

Yes. So I think if you watch the deposit side of the equation, I think we've been very good and crisp in terms of our execution in lowering deposit pricing for the last several quarters. I think there's still obviously some opportunities there. The Fed is pumping a lot of liquidity into the system. That cash ends up on bank's balance sheet so I think we can be more selective in terms of how we price on the deposit side and not worry about the LDR or funding loans. I think you'll see after the line draws, you'll see fairly tepid loan demand for a while until the economy starts to reopen. So I think all of that liquidity and funding position are in really good shape, and I think we'll have opportunities to continue to price down on the deposit side. On the loan side, we benefited in the first quarter from a fairly wide LIBOR-OIS spread which has -- as all the markets are normalizing, has started to come back and normalize . So that certainly will be a headwind into Q2. And I think most analysts, including yourself, Jason, have a fairly significant drop in the NIM in Q2, which hopefully is offset by the material loan growth coming from areas such as line draws and then also the PPP program. We do also continue to see the opportunities for volume growth on the consumer side and some of the rate-sensitive areas such as mortgage, where there's going to still be lots of refinancing. And then also Education Refinance Loans, which, again, offer an excellent opportunity for a borrower to cut their overall borrowing costs. So we should see some pockets where we do achieve some nice loan growth on the consumer side.

We've got a couple of minutes left. I guess, there was an article in Barrons over the weekend, about the regional bank consolidation that listed some potential consolidation plays. One of your neighboring banks is expected to generate a large gain this week from the sale of one of its equity interests. You mentioned your stock trading at 0.6, 0.7x. But just how do you think about bank consolidation in the current backdrop and kind of how does Citizens fit in?

Look, I think we've done a really good job of getting this bank back on its feet and back into the pack and having a high level of innovation and strong team and an excellent plan. I don't think that the stock is reflecting that at this point when the market's in a risk-off mode. So I think the bank is a good size to compete effectively. I think we can be nimble and flexible and beat some of the bigger banks to the punch at this size. So I still think we can operate very effectively at our current size. When companies -- when Barrons is trying for a little titillation and runs screens on what could come next, it's not a surprise that we would show up on a list like that given we're a really strong, well-positioned bank with a lot going for us. We're trading below tangible book, and we still have a reasonably high ROE if you put aside the credit reserve build that we took in the first quarter. So there's a lot to like with Citizens and with our stock. But I think at this point, we feel very confident that we can continue to execute on our own and have a bright future for the bank and for its shareholders and stakeholders.

I think that's a perfect way to end it. Bruce, I really thank you on joining us. I really hope to do this again next May, but in London. And stay safe and be well.

Okay. Thanks, Jason. Appreciate it.

Thank you.