Huntington Bancshares Incorporated (HBAN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Next is Huntington Bank, ticker HBAN, as most know. Huntington is a purpose-driven company whose vision is to be the leading people-first, digitally powered bank. The company is based in Columbus, Ohio. Assets, $187 billion; about 1,000 branches; market cap today, $14 billion. The stock trades about 1.3x tangible book value. Last quarter's adjusted ROTCE right around 20%. And Huntington's medium-term financial targets include generating a positive operating leverage with PPNR growth of 6% to 9% and an ROTCE ex. AOCI of about 17% to 19%. With us today representing the company are Brant Standridge and Zach Wasserman. Brant is Senior Executive Vice President and President of Consumer and Regional Banking. He's responsible for Huntington's personal, private and business banking portfolio. And before joining Huntington, Brant served as Chief Retail Community Banking Officer at Truist. And then on my left, Zach is Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. He leads the company's finance, strategic planning, M&A, investor relations, treasury, tax and accounting functions. And then prior to joining Huntington in 2019, Zach worked at Visa as their CFO of North America. We'll start with a 15-minute presentation, and then we'll move to Q&A.

All right. Well, good morning, everyone. And Terry and Pat, thank you so much for hosting us. And for all of you who are in the room and for those joining on the line, thank you for your interest in Huntington. I'm very pleased today to share an update on the Consumer and Regional Banking segment. This update does reflect the realignment we completed earlier this year. Before we get started, please review Slide 2, which applies to the forward-looking statements we'll make today. After my prepared remarks, we'll turn it back over to Terry, and Zach and I will join him in Q&A. Our discussion topics today. We'll provide you with a view into the strategic initiatives that are driving us to our vision of becoming the leading people-first, digitally powered bank. It is our people who truly make the difference. We take great pride in the dedication of our colleagues who have played a pivotal role in both acquiring new customers and growing primary banking relationships. Today, we'll describe, first -- you'll see on the far left of the slide -- how this success is instrumental in the steady growth of our core deposit base. Second, we will highlight how we are further enhancing our customers' relationships through our digital innovations and engaging engagement strategies. Third, I will provide an update on our regional banking model that was deployed earlier this year. And lastly, we'll review the efforts to enhance our efficiency and how we're focused on maximizing our customers' engagement to yield positive outcomes. I want to start with what's most important, which is our approach to business. At Huntington, our purpose is in the center of everything we do. Our purpose creates the foundation for the culture we have built. And I know you all who were at Investor Day last year heard every speaker talk about the importance of culture. In the consumer and regional bank, our colleagues live our purpose every day and truly embrace our vision to be the country's leading people-first, digitally powered bank. Turning to Slide 5. I want to spend just a moment on an overview of our Consumer and Regional Banking segment, which today serves retail and business banking customers across 11 states, leads the nation in providing SBA loans, has a growing national finance business, a comprehensive wealth business, and the third largest bank-owned insurance agency, in addition to a nationwide consumer finance business. We represent 70% of Huntington's total deposits and well over 3 million checking households. Importantly, with over $40 billion in deposits in excess of loans, we provide funding for other areas of the bank that could be growing faster. This slide provides you with a view of the 5 primary businesses that operate under the consumer and regional banking umbrella, and we'll spend just a moment starting on the left-hand side of the slide. Our retail banking team serves customers through our over 1,000 branches in across 11 states and comprises $77 billion or just over 50% of Huntington's total deposits. We want to ensure seamless access to our experienced colleagues with a focus on delivering best-in-class service, enhanced products and digital capabilities to drive a differentiated customer experience. Our regional banking includes our business banking, SBA and practice finance capabilities, serving the needs of lower, middle market businesses, both in the footprint as well as nationally. Wealth Management, you'll see in the center of the page, which was recently created as a part of our realignment in March, combines our retail brokerage business with our private bank. And now we have a full service solution for our entire customer base. In Consumer Finance, we have consolidated all consumer lending under Rich Porrello. I know many of you may likely know Rich. Rich has overseen our vehicle finance business, including auto and RV, marine, and now has added home lending and other consumer lending. Finally, on the right-hand side, you'll see our insurance group, which is a scale provider of commercial P&C, employee benefits and personal lines. This group delivers over $70 million of annual revenue and is ranked the third largest bank-owned insurance agency nationally. Slide 7 we shared at Investor Day last fall you all may remember. This slide highlights our strategic ambition, which is centered on 5 primary objectives. At the heart of this ambition is our sustained, innovative and distinctive approach to products, built on a foundation that was established a number of years ago of fair play. Our aspiration for small-and medium-sized businesses is to be the business bank of choice, and we do that by leveraging our top-ranked SBA program. Our enhanced local model and the complementary expertise we have built, we believe to be scalable and has the potential to be applied to new verticals and also new markets. Our customers' needs, as you all know, continue to evolve, and we are evolving alongside them. We're building enhanced capabilities to provide advice and insights to customers and our unified advisory strategy for wealth management is a great example of that, where this -- where there is a substantial opportunity, we believe, to deepen relationships and position ourselves to benefit from the largest wealth transfer in many generations. Our customer satisfaction has been recognized with numerous JD Power awards. However, we're not holding steady. We continue to believe that maximizing engagement with our customers, coupled with leading customer service will drive strong acquisition and retention rates. Increasingly, customers are looking for an integrated experience across both branch and digital, and our playbook leverages the strengths of both. Slide 8. With a brand that people trust and a track record of leading customer satisfaction, we have a tremendous track record of leading customer acquisition growth. And you'll see that highlighted on the left-hand side of the slide. You can see our customer expansion over the last number of years, and that has been bolstered by acquisition, but very strong growth. In fact, since our Investor Day, we have added approximately 100,000 checking households on a net basis, and we are delivering this year over 3% primary bank customer growth. Turning to Slide 9. The primary result of sustained customer growth is the expansion of the deposit relationship, and ultimately, deposit balances. Total consumer deposits have increased over $4 billion this year, growing 6%. Huntington's deposit growth has outperformed the peer median by over 10 percentage points and have been able to do that since the fourth quarter. As we've highlighted, Huntington has been a leader for many years in disruptive product innovation, and we're continuing our efforts to that end. One of the new initiatives we're working on today is related to what we will call the customer value exchange. We recognize many products and services have been lost in a sea of sameness. While we have maintained success at acquiring and deepening customers, we're developing a slate of new features to continue to differentiate from the pack, which is absolutely a journey. This initiative has the potential to further accelerate deposit growth and customer acquisition, and over time, we believe bring new revenue streams to the bank. Slide 10. Let me move into a few of the digital-led efforts to deepen relationships. We benefit from a substantial monthly digital activity, with our customer base totaling over 80 million monthly digital interactions. Yet deposit wallet share of digitally acquired customers is only 1/3 of the level of customers acquired through the branches. This is an industry-wide dynamic. I know you all are aware of that. The key to closing this gap is driving best-in-class digital engagement from the moment an account is opened through the entire customer life cycle. We're creating even tighter linkages and innovating the digital customer experience to bring the same strength and relationship expansion we've seen in our branch channel to our digitally acquired customers. Over a multiyear period, we believe this can result in a 19% increase in core deposit balances and a 30% increase in loan balance. Slide 11 highlights a few of our recent efforts in digital deepening. The Huntington marketplace aims to provide a frictionless digital shopping experience on a mobile device and via the web within the customer interface in order to support expanded product and service offerings. Launched in September of 2022, we were already seeing that 11% of total deposit account originations began through this channel, supporting our deepening efforts in a significant way with our existing customers. Activation Zone, you'll see in the center of the slide, supports the deepening of new accounts with added services such as direct deposit, bill pay and other services to provide the customer with value-added options and the potential to further strengthen this account relationship. Advisor Connect, on the far right, supports the advisory efforts I mentioned previously, pairing the best of digital with human connection. It allows customers to reach out and connect digitally with a wealth management adviser that is paired with them based on their areas of interest. A substantial portion of what our customers want is some level of guidance or confirmation for their approach. Advisor Connect provides a digital-led referral channel to our experienced wealth management colleagues, connecting our customers to an individual, an expert at just the right time. Slide 12 provides an overview of our integrated and community-focused approach across consumer and regional banking. As I mentioned earlier, in March, we've enhanced our regional banking group, providing greater empowerment to our regional presidents and aligning resources locally with a common goal of maximizing the collective impact of the team. We've aligned leadership and incentives across all lines of business to build a strong local advantage in our existing geographies. This, combined with our strong national footprint and expertise in business segments such as SBA, Practice Finance and others, allows our bankers to offer a differentiated customer experience. These changes have also led to cost efficiencies -- and I'll talk about that in the Q&A -- as we've streamlined our management to support our 11 regions. We've successfully deployed this model in our acquired growth markets, and we intend to redeploy and scale this model in attractive new geographies as well. As I mentioned, we believe the local approach is a differentiator, consistent with our purpose, and it is absolutely authentic to the Huntington brand. Slide 13 demonstrates a few of the compelling results we've seen from our customer engagement efforts. We're focused on capturing the untapped revenue synergies from our everyday interactions and are already seeing solid growth through a volatile market. I want to mention a few. Primary bank customer relationships have increased over 3% year-over-year, over 100,000, as I mentioned earlier. And advisory relationships are growing 17% year-over-year. We're excited to continue to capture the opportunities and are confident in our ability to win. So in closing, there are 5 key messages I want to leave you with today. First, we have a premier franchise serving the needs of consumers and businesses across our footprint and nationally. This has -- this franchise has been consistently recognized through our leading rankings in customer service, digital capabilities and trust from our customers. Second, this business directly aligns with the organization's top priorities: delivering a granular and low-cost deposit base as well as supporting the acquisition and deepening of primary bank customer relationships. These primary bank relationships form the foundation for further expansion of our many fee revenue strategies, including payments and wealth. Third, local matters at Huntington and is a key differentiator. We have doubled down on local since I joined earlier this year. We believe that local bankers with decision capabilities support a customer-first approach and deepen our connection to local communities. Our regional structure covers markets across 11 states, including the Twin Cities and Denver, which were added through the TCF acquisition. This local presence brings the full power of Huntington to each market and is a key factor driving our strength in consumer and business banking. Fourth, we have developed leading national businesses with expertise such as our #1 nationally ranked SBA program, Practice Finance capabilities as well as our auto, RV, marine and recently launched powersports initiative. These businesses operate beyond the footprint, with SBA and Practice Finance covering 20 states and auto finance operating in 33 states, and both have grown substantially over the last 2 years. Fifth and finally, the differentiation we have delivered over the past decade through our fair play approach as well as our best-in-class service and best-in-class digital capabilities continue to pay dividends. We intend to continue that leadership with sustained innovation over the years to come. So with that being said, let me turn it over to Terry for the Q&A session.

Thank you, Brant. I'll give you a moment to catch your breath and I'll start with a question for Zach. Q3 was a busy earnings season for the sector and HBAN delivered a good quarter in spite of the challenging environment. You shared an outlook for Q4 as well as some early thoughts on 2024. Are there any key highlights you want to open with as a follow-up to the recent earnings season?

Absolutely, Terry. Thank you. And great to be with you all this morning. A few things I would say. One, Huntington continues to operate from a position of strength. Our capital is in the top of the peer group. Liquidity is exceptionally strong. Credit continues to perform very, very well. And the team is executing very, very effectively. And we're delivering the metrics that we've committed to do. As I mentioned, and I think Brant also alluded to, growing capital from here continues to be a top priority, and we're continuing to be focused on driving capital higher over the coming quarters. Deposits also continued to grow, as Brant said, and we're expecting to see deposit growth into the fourth quarter and into 2024. Credit continues to perform very, very well, at the low end of our long-term through-the-cycle charge-off range and very much in keeping with our expectations. As we've been discussing for a while, our expectation was that the interest rate environment would likely trend higher than the forward yield curve and then higher for a longer environment, and we've been positioning the company to benefit from that. We've seen significant NIM expansion over the course of this rate cycle. And our outlook for Q4 was increased in terms of net interest income and NIM. Likewise, for 2024. And we expect to see NII dollar growth in 2024 for the full year. And lastly, on expenses. We continue to be very focused on driving core efficiencies in the baseline of our expense base, even as we also continue to reinvest in the growth strategies that Brant just discussed amongst others. And as well, importantly, we want to make sure that we're positioning the company to be able to take advantage of opportunities that come up through the disruption in the banking environment here over the course of this period; and importantly, to quickly get in front of and build the capabilities that we need to address critical risk management capabilities like data and automation, and to get ahead of coming regulatory requirements like, for example, Basel III. And so that's the posture that we're on right now. I'm sure we can extend on that in other questions, but those are the headlines.

Great. And a question for Brant. You mentioned this earlier, the new organizational structure. Can you provide further details regarding your strategic goals and vision for the new structure? How is this going to drive revenue and what major milestones and achievements are you targeting for the next 1 to 3 years?

Terry, a really great question. First of all, it's based on the premise that we believe local matters and that local can be a differentiator. It's also based on the premise that we're going to put the customer in the center of everything we do. We're going to put the communities that we serve in the center of everything we do. We have aligned all of our business units around these 11 geographies. So every unit that serves a consumer customer, a wealth customer or a regional banking or middle market banking customer, they're all aligned regionally. Their structure is aligned regionally. Their goals and incentives are aligned on the performance. And frankly, their accountability to the profit and loss of that geography is also aligned regionally. We believe that, that will ensure that we have a team that's focused on the impact that they can make in the market. And from a milestone perspective, we believe that will lead to greater growth through that differentiation. In addition, we believe it will drive a number of the fee revenue businesses that we've been focused on. So we've talked a lot about our wealth opportunity. That tight integration between the wealth business and the other businesses that I've described, we believe will help us accelerate the growth of that organization. So we're 6 months into it now approximately. It's going very, very well. We've been able to make what was a fairly massive change with really no customer disruption. And now our teams are taking advantage of this new partnership to really make and take Huntington to the next level in these individual markets for our individual customers.

Maybe a follow-up there. What KPIs should investors follow to track the success as they talked about?

So number 1, I shared this in the presentation, we should be very focused on household growth. Clearly, growing our customer base is an important part of being able to do many things, including create a diversified revenue streams, but it's central to our deposit growth as well. So growing primary customers, and we're very excited to have added 1,000 -- 100,000 new primary customers in the last 12 months. Second, we're watching very closely the growth of advisory households. Obviously, when you're looking at AUM and the value of AUM, it moves with the market, but what we can really drive is how many new customers we're serving through our advisory business and wealth. So we've added, as I shared earlier, 17,000 -- or we've added 17% more advisory households in the last number of months or the last year. We're very focused on our payments components of our business. We have a very attractive and debit card business. We watch spend very closely there. But we have a card business that's our customer base under penetrated. And so that's something that we're watching very, very closely. So those would be some examples, Terry.

Moving over to Zach. On the topic of capital, what do you see as the right CET1 ratio? And how do you balance the pace of loan growth with that capital build outlook? And at what capital level would you consider repurchasing shares? I think at the queue that was just filed implied no activity through maybe '24, but just expand on that, if you could.

Sure. Absolutely. So within the company, we managed 2 key capital metrics, tangible common equity, which we've always been very focused on and importantly, taking significant actions to hedge the securities portfolio to really protect tangible capital as well as common equity Tier 1 on the regulatory side. We've now fully transitioned formerly within Huntington to manage CET1 on an adjusted basis, inclusive of AOCI. And on that basis, as of the third quarter, capital was 8.0%, so 8%. Our target operating range for CET1 is 9% to 10%. So that's the objective that we have is to drive that 8% adjusted CET1 into the 9% to 10% range solidly within that range. And we believe we'll be able to do that, essentially driven by organic capital generation earnings power is really the driver of that. Our expectation is to not repurchase any shares during the course of 2023 or 2024 at this point in order to accomplish that objective. And the pace and the direction of interest rates will clearly affect the nature of AOCI recapture, but really the prime driver of capital build from here is organic, and that's the game plan. In terms of loan growth optimization, last Q4, we were growing loans at about 10%. As of the third quarter, year-over-year loan growth was 3%. So we've intentionally brought down the pace of loan growth so as to allow capital to accrete more quickly and really to allow us as well to rigorously optimize where that loan growth is coming with the highest returns with the best support of NIM, and that's been one of the things that's also contributed to the asset re-pricing and NIM improved outlook that we shared as well. So that's the plan at this point. As we get through 2024, we'll certainly assess the outlook for capital distributions into 25%. But at this point, we think that's the best balance to continue to make sure the company is operating the most strong and effective way as possible.

And maybe another question for you, Zach. Could you just provide a double click onto your expense outlook which calls for 4% expense growth next year? Can you elaborate on the areas you see the need to invest? And what initiatives kind of makeup that expense mix and growth?

Yes. It's a great question. It's something that -- it's a really important topic that we've discussed quite a bit, both with you and with our owners and also internally, driving efficiency in the baseline core OpEx of the company is a critical priority. It's something we spend a lot of time and focus on, and it's one of our key long-term objectives of Terry, as you noted earlier in the presentation. And if you take a step back, the last 2 years have shown quite a bit of proof points around us doing that. Just over a year ago, we fully delivered $500 million of run rate saves coming out of the TCF acquisition. This time last year, in late 2022, as we were anticipating the operating environment for '23, we knew it was going to be a challenging environment, and we set up another series of proactive actions, including accelerating some of the long-term reengineering programs that we have like our retail branch optimization program, like a program we call Operation Accelerate, which reengineers core customer-facing processes. And we added on to that a series of other initiatives in the first quarter of 2023, like a voluntary retirement program, like a consolidation of our business segments that Brant alluded to earlier to drive a low level of expense growth. Just this past quarter, we announced another set of proactive actions, including accelerating business process off shoring, driving efficiencies in a number of areas in the business where we expect to see slightly less growth going forward and capturing some corporate real estate sales. And all of that is in mind toward keeping that baseline low. And so if you look at Q3 of '23 versus Q3 of '24, we've seen 2.4% growth in underlying core expense growth, even as the portion of that overall expense base that represents investments in tech and marketing and selecting new additions of personnel, that investment category has been growing almost 20%, which is really fueling the competitive success and the ability to execute that Brant alluded to many of the aspects of. And so that discipline is incredibly important to us. As we think about 2024, it's all about balance. How can we ensure on one hand, in the short term, we know that revenue growth is going to be somewhat challenged over the next several quarters, growing off of extremely strong revenue growth in the back half of '22 and into early '23. And so we clearly want to keep expense growth running low. But over the longer term, we want to make sure that we're not, a, cutting too deeply into the productive muscle of the company and really in any way damaging the franchise. But even more importantly, not losing momentum on the really exceptional execution that's going on right now. And importantly, as I said being ready to capture on one hand, incremental growth opportunities that come from this environment. An example, we hired a great new funds finance team that came from one of the banks that was under some challenges this year, and there'll be more opportunities like that, that come up. And we want to make sure that we can quickly get ahead and invest now to address some of the critical capabilities that we saw really being necessary in the environment. I mean if you think about the lessons learned from SVB, there were many of them. One, though that was really important was that this company went bankrupt in a matter of days. And so the ability to have incredibly robust data capabilities, automated control, intraday balance sheet management capabilities. Those are really foundational and we're going to invest now and ensure that we've got those enhanced capabilities as well as getting ahead of Basel III and other kind of new coming regulations. And so that will lift that roughly 2.5% underlying core run rate up to about 4% for the course of 2024. We think this is a time-bounded program. We'll be able to quickly get through those capabilities to be able to bring the expense run rate back down again. And all of us with the mine tour, as I said, and really making sure the company is as vibrant and powerfully able to compete in one of the top regional banks in the country as we have been in the past.

Over to Brant. Can you provide additional color on the innovative products HBAN has invested in to enhance the customer experience? And how do you think about continued product innovation from here?

So I think about product innovation as a journey. We've been on a fantastic journey since 2009 with this concept of Fair Play, and the results from an acquisition perspective reflect that. And there have been many product innovations that have taken place all in the theme of Fair Play. We have just spent the last 1.5 years going through a similar process and evaluating how have the needs of our customers changed, and what does the next evolution of Fair Play look like for the company? And so as I mentioned earlier in the presentation, we believe there will be a number of product innovations and enhancements that you'll see on our road map going forward. And the company is well-equipped to continue on that journey of innovation. The digital capabilities that I mentioned earlier, I'll mention 2 of them and highlight them again. I do believe are important for our customers. Marketplace, we believe to be a very important enhancement for our customers. It's a place that they can go. And as this evolves, they'll have a very curated experience that will bring capabilities to them very specific to that individual. Advisor Connect is established today to connect a customer who is looking for advisory to a wealth professional and make that digital physical connection that we think is really important. However, that capability is a capability that we intend to expand to many other places in our business, where a consumer may be looking for some specialized advice and need an individual within the company or a person within the company and we can make that connection through the digital channel. Advisor Connect actually matches up the adviser with the individual based on their own needs and interest. It's very customized. So those are 2, we think fantastic innovations. We'll continue to build on those. And we'll also continue on this journey of continuously adding and meeting the evolving needs of our customers that will be taking place forever.

As a follow-up, can you talk about the build-out of it payments?

Yes, absolutely. We've been focused on a number of things, both consumer and business. From a business perspective, we're obviously very focused on our treasury capabilities, how do we support our commercial customers and their ability to acquire their information from us as well as move money, manage their ARAP, those are all big components of what we're working to do from a treasury perspective within payments. Our card business is a substantial opportunity for us. We have a very small number of our consumer customers and business customers that have Huntington cards and it presents a big opportunity. We launched just a little over a year ago, a cashback card that leads the market. We'll have a new product launch coming in 2024. So that presents a large payment opportunity for the company. We also have acquired some payment capabilities that are very unique to Huntington. We acquired a company that we now call ChoicePay that helps match up individuals or organizations that are making payments across a wide distribution of consumers and gives them the flexibility to choose how to make that payment in the way that's best for the consumer and then manages the administration associated with that. So those are some examples of the work we're doing with payments. It is clearly a big opportunity for the company. It is at the center of what being primary to your customers' means and a place that we're disproportionately investing.

And we'll pause now and see if there's any questions in the audience and just remind everybody to please ask one question or one follow-up.

Manan Gosalia of Morgan Stanley. Zach, a lot of your peers have spoken about keeping expenses flat next year. You've spoken in detail on what's going into the 4% expense growth guide for next year. But can you talk about how much of the expense increase is stable stakes that you think everyone will need to do? How much of that is Huntington specific? Maybe there's some catch-up expense there that you need to do? And how much is truly opportunistic given the areas that you're investing in?

Yes, terrific question. And as I noted, I would really like to emphasize this, we really recognize that our approach is different than many in the industry. And we thought long and hard about that and it's all about trying to create balance and manage the company for medium- to long-term value creation. And that's the objective. If you think about the extra roughly 150 basis points of growth that I talked about, the underlying core is around 2.5%, seeing now 4%. I won't get it to overly amount of detail around that we're still only in November. We're talking about 2024 guidance at this point. But I would say the majority of it relates to risk management and regulatory readiness capabilities. I do think that Huntington was always operating from a very rigorous position of strength. And I think the metrics show that in terms of incredibly strong liquidity, capital and credit. And so I don't believe that there's something overly particularly unique about Huntington in the situation. And I would say that most large regional banks will see the same needs that we do over time. The question, I think, is around pacing, how quickly do organizations want to address those things. And in our view, what's critical is to quickly get through this build, A, so we can bring the expense growth back down again, which is important, clearly. But secondly, that the next few quarters will clearly be a slog. But we think as we get out into the back half of '24 and you start to look into '25 and beyond, we want to be just as front-footed than as we have been in the past and be able to really capture those opportunities. So that's most of it. I would say though, and I think Brant alluded to this a little bit, and I highlighted it too. There will be opportunities for us to capture disruption in the market. I think we feel and I think the sense we're getting from others in the industry is that there is a view that Huntington is, in fact, operating very well right now from a position of strength, and we're seeing the opportunity to bring talent to bring opportunities to the company. I mentioned the funds finance team, and I believe that there will be more of those opportunities. And so some of that growth is our expectation around that also. Great question. Thank you for asking it.

Other questions?

Ken Usdin from Jefferies. Wondering, Zach, you talked about capital in a good spot with or without AFCI. And you guys have not been "in as much as maybe some other peers." But there seems also to be just an industry under current about just a real pullback in demand, especially from corporate, small business customers. So I wonder if you can just kind of talk through that across the businesses. And to kind of what are you looking for? Have you changed what you're looking for in terms of new loan production? Or is it really just like the end demand has just pulled way back from the customers...

It's terrific question, Ken. Well, it's a 2-parter. I'll open that up, and then Brant can really double click on it. Just big picture, I would say we continue to see demand. I would say there is absolutely a higher degree of caution on the part of high-quality corporate borrowers now than there had been several quarters ago. And yet there also continues to be economic growth, as we know, opportunities for businesses to expand. And certainly, I think a sense that Huntington is absolutely in the market, providing capital and hence, we're getting good client selection. I think we saw a bit of seasonality into the third quarter with our distribution finance business, which does have seasonality to it. And so I think that's a business that we'll expect to see growth into the fourth quarter. And secularly, we're seeing a nice growth there. Corporate specialty is also a really important area. We've been investing and growing into expertise and advice capabilities within the corporate space, and we're seeing nice now come through and pull through around that. Maybe, Brant, why don't you explain a little bit?

Yes, absolutely. Great question. First of all, if you look at the commercial dealer space, where we obviously provide floor plan financing and other financing dealers across the country. That's a space that continues to be very active, and we see growth. Our SBA and Regional Banking as well as our Practice Finance continues to be robust. The pipelines are robust. We're seeing robust production and growth. We're also seeing, as Zach alluded to and Scott Kleinman, who runs our commercial bank in corporate specialty and also middle market, we continue to see growth opportunities there as well. In the consumer areas, our auto and our RV marine businesses continue to be strong. We're actually seeing very strong production, but we're also getting much higher yields, which is very positive, and those are shorter duration fixed rate assets that are positive for the company. From a consumer perspective, our HELOC portfolios are probably a little softer just given their attachment to variable rates. And so there is some impact there from a customer perspective. And then as you all know, the mortgage business, specifically, the portfolio mortgage business is clearly softer now. Our mortgage volumes are very similar to what the industry is forecasting this year. And we're seeing that stabilize but down from last year.

I think we're about to wrap it up. So please join me in thanking Huntington. And I also want to point out that lunch will be served just on your left as you exit the room. Thank you.