Fulton Financial Corporation (FULT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Mr. Wagner, we are now ready to start your virtual annual meeting.

Good morning, and welcome to Fulton Financial Corporation's Annual Shareholders Meeting. I'm Phil Wenger, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of your company. So I'm sure you're aware, given the public health guidelines surrounding COVID-19 at the time we scheduled this meeting, we made the decision to have a virtual shareholders meeting as we did in 2020 rather than an in-person one we have traditionally hosted. We appreciate your understanding, and we hope to host the annual meeting in-person next year. If you entered today's meeting using your 16 digit shareholder control number, you will be able to vote your shares until the polls are closed and type in questions to submit online until the management presentation has concluded. I'll be happy to answer those questions at the end of the meeting. Several documents have been posted on this meeting website, including the rules of conduct for today's meeting, the 2021 proxy statement, and our 2020 annual report on Form 10-K. The rules outline the process for asking questions and include information on other matters related to this meeting. As Chairman of this meeting and in accordance with the provisions of the bylaws, I hereby call this virtual annual meeting to order and appoint Daniel R. Stolzer as Secretary of the meeting. The Secretary of the corporation has provided proof that proper notice of the meeting has been given and that a legal quorum is present. The meeting is therefore lawfully convened and we are ready to transact business. The agenda for today's meeting is on the screen and also posted. Please note that if you are a shareholder and have not yet voted or wish to change your vote, you may do so at this time. The polls are open and will remain so for a few more minutes. We have asked James Raitt of American Election Services LLC to serve as judge of election. Mr. Raitt has delivered his oath to the Secretary, and it will be made a part of the minutes. On screen, you can see the Fulton Financial Corporation's Board of Directors, all of whom are participating virtually in today's meeting. As described in the proxy statement, these 14 individuals have been nominated for election to the Board of Directors for a 1-year term. In accordance with the bylaws, I hereby declare the nominations for directors to be closed. At this time, I'd like to recognize Pat Freer, who has been a Director of Fulton Financial Corporation for 25 years, as he retires from the Board. Pat, we thank you for your contributions to our company's success. I'd also like to introduce George Martin, who has joined the Fulton slate of Director Nominees for the first time this year. George is an attorney and managing partner of the Richmond, Virginia Office of McGuireWoods LLP, where he practices construction and commercial real estate law. Welcome, George. In addition to the nomination of the slate of Directors, there are also 2 other proposals outlined in the proxy statement. The first is a nonbinding say-on-pay resolution to approve the compensation of the named executive officers, and the second is the ratification of the appointment of KPMG LLP as the company's independent auditor for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2021. Please be advised that the polls are now closed, and the voting has ended. James Raitt, the judge of election has provided his preliminary report to Dan Stolzer, our Corporate Secretary, and Dan will now report on the vote results.

Thank you, Phil. I'm pleased to report the preliminary results of the voting. The final numbers will be filed on a Form 8-K with the SEC after the meeting has adjourned. We had a quorum for the meeting and approximately 82% of the shares outstanding have voted. All 14 nominees listed in the proxy statement were elected to the Board of Directors for a -- 2021 to 2022 term. Each of the nominees received at least 98% of the votes cast in favor of their election. The nonbinding say-on-pay resolution was approved with approximately 97% of the votes cast for the resolution to approve the compensation of the named executives. The proposal to appoint KPMG LLP as Fulton's independent auditor for this year was also approved with approximately 99% of the votes cast voting for the proposal. Mr. Chairman, that concludes my report for the meeting.

Thank you, Dan. There being no other business that may properly be brought before this meeting, the business portion of today's meeting is now concluded. As I begin my formal results -- my formal remarks, I would like to remind you that we have filed this presentation with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. I encourage you to view our cautionary language regarding forward-looking statements that is seen on screen in more detail. I'd also like to introduce Fulton Financial's senior management team. They are also are participating virtually in today's meeting, and their experience and perspectives have been instrumental in helping the company navigate the challenges we have faced over the past year. Throughout the past year, the prolonged presence of COVID-19 and the continuing low interest rate environment have continued to challenge our company, our nation and the world. But all things considered, 2020 was a good year for Fulton. While it was clearly not as good as we had hoped it would be when we began the year, we were very proud of what we are able to accomplish during these highly unusual times. We are particularly proud that in 2020, we provided 10,000 small businesses and nonprofit organizations with approximately $2 billion in loans through waves 1 and 2 of the small business administrations, Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP. Also in 2020, our deposits grew. We diversified our fee income and overall, our asset quality remains stable, which is encouraging, particularly in these challenging times. We grew loans in both our consumer and commercial lines of business. Our mortgage business had a historically strong year in 2020. Our wealth management business performed beyond our expectations. And as you know, we acquired BenefitWorks, Inc. in the fourth quarter of 2020. Also in the fourth quarter, we announced a plan to strategically reduce our operating expenses, and we expect this action to save $25 million annually. By reinvesting some of these savings, we can continue to accelerate our digital initiatives to support our customers and our team members. We completed a subordinated debt offering in March and a preferred stock offering in October of 2020. And these enabled Fulton to continue to strengthen our company's capital position. We paid a quarterly cash dividend of $0.13 per share throughout all 4 quarters and declared a special cash dividend of $0.04 per share in November, helping to demonstrate to you, the company's shareholders, that we appreciate your investment in Fulton Financial. Now I'll provide an update on our accomplishments in the first quarter of 2021. Our company's performance continued to be solid despite the lingering presence of COVID-19 and the low interest rate environment. In fact, our earnings per share of $0.43 was a quarterly record for us, exceeding our previous record of $0.38 per share in the third quarter of 2020. We were also pleased to be able to increase our quarterly cash dividend by 7.7% over the prior quarter. In the first quarter, loan volume through the Paycheck Protection Program I referenced earlier, surpassed our expectations. In January, as we began to administer wave 3 of this program, we anticipated providing an additional $500 million to $600 million in funding to our small business and nonprofit customers. When the SBA's funding for bank loans was exhausted in early May, Fulton Bank had received approval from the SBA for nearly 6,000 PPP loans totaling just under $700 million in funding during wave 3. It is important to note that the SBA forgives the PPP loans if the business customers meets all qualifications, meaning the customer does not need to repay that loan. The result was that Fulton experienced a more modest rate of loan growth and a decrease in commercial line of credit utilization because customers were able to use the PPP funds to meet their needs. This is another example of how we were able to support our customers in a time of need, this time through the SBA program. The SBA guarantee on the PPP loans has also helped our asset quality, which remains stable. This is always welcome, but it is especially so in this current environment. We continue to grow deposits at a very good pace. Some of this growth was likely due to the continued government stimulus payments. It's important to note that our revenue is diversified. Excluding the impact of security gains recognized in the first quarter, approximately 73% of our revenue was driven by the net interest income, we earn from our loans and deposits, and the other 27% came from our fee-based products and businesses. When one area is under pressure, quite often, the other area -- delivers consistency. In the first quarter, our mortgage business was still booming, and the pipeline remains strong. Fulton Mortgage Company reports that purchase activity represented about 49% of loan originations in the first quarter and refinance accounted for 51%. In addition, our wealth management business continued to grow, and this area of Fulton Financial advisers produced record income during the quarter. You may remember that in March, we announced a restructuring of our balance sheet that reduced our interest rate risk. These actions will help our future financial performance, by meaningfully enhancing our net interest income as we move forward. We anticipate that the plans to reduce operating expenses by $25 million annually will have the positive impact we anticipated. There were expenses associated with both the operating expense reduction effort announced in the fourth quarter of 2020 and the balance sheet restructuring completed in the first quarter of 2021. And therefore, the positive impacts of these initiatives are not expected to be fully realized until future quarters. Here you can see our stock performance as we compare to our peer banks and also to some of the largest banks in the nation. While our stock underperformed for a period of time between January 4 and yesterday, May 24, Fulton stock price has increased 36%. And here, you can see the current recommendations of the 8 analysts who follow our company. As I conclude my remarks, I encourage you to view the press releases and SEC filings we've shared over the past few months for more detail on the items I have discussed today. And on behalf of our entire company, I thank you for your investment in Fulton Financial, your support of the team and your participation in today's meeting. And at this time, the window for submitting questions has closed, I would now be happy to respond to questions that were properly submitted today. Laura Wakeley, Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications Manager, will manage the question queue, if needed. Laura, do we have any questions?

Thank you, Phil. We do not. So I'll turn it back to over to you as Chairman.

Well, thank you, Laura. I will now adjourn the meeting. Thank you all for joining Fulton Financial's virtual annual meeting, and we hope to see you in person next year.

This concludes Fulton Financial's 2021 Shareholder Meeting. Thank you all for joining today. You may now disconnect.