U.S. Bancorp (USB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay. So good morning, everybody. We're going to get started with the next presentation. Delighted to have U.S. Bancorp with us this morning. We have both President and CEO, Gunjan Kedia. You're, I guess, approaching your first year or close to the first year as CEO.

8 months.

8 months. I guess April, yes. And John Stern, CFO, who's known -- well known to everyone. And I guess you're close to 3 years of CFO.

Getting there.

And being very regular attendee at the conference. This is Gunjan's first time. Delighted to have you here for what I hope will be the first of many presentations.

So I thought I'll start off with your strategic priorities. And I think it's fair to say you've been very consistent and very clear around your strategic priorities over the course of the last 8 months, which are focusing on expenses, organic growth and payments transformation. Can you perhaps give us a scorecard on the progress you feel you have made on those priorities? And as you think about 2026, are those still the priorities that you're focused on?

Thank you, Richard, and it's a pleasure to be here to talk to you. So you remember last year at Investor Day, we articulated some firm commitments on our medium-term targets, financial targets. So these 3 priorities were our strategies to get there. The first was expenses where we have exceeded our expectations. We are now 8 quarters of flattish expenses. They have contributed very well to our positive operating leverage and our efficiency ratio is in a stronger place. So good marks there. The second was organic growth. We had set for ourselves a mid-single-digit fee targets and high return metrics and the fees have done very, very well this year. So good marks there. On NII, we are really focusing on deposits for consumers and operational deposits and wholesale. It's a mix story. And on loans, we are focusing on C&I and credit cards, which is also high returns and better relationship products. So good progress, but more work to do. And I would say our biggest longest priority is the payments transformation, most upside, but just a little bit more of a runway. So good early progress, but again, more work to do.

Okay. So we're going to get into all of that. So I think it's a great place to start. But before we do that, maybe you can talk a little bit about the state of the economy. Your payment business, I think, gives you some pretty unique and interesting insights into spend trends. So what have you been seeing over the fourth quarter? Is there anything that stands out to you? And maybe you can talk through what you're seeing from a balance sheet perspective across both Consumers and Corporates? And then just more broadly, how you're thinking about the trajectory of the economy heading into next year?

I'll think the messages have not shifted in the last few months. The facts are stronger than the sentiment for both Consumer and Corporates. On Consumer, delinquencies are good, credit is good. Spend is healthy, holiday season is shaping up nicely. The sentiment though is bleaker than it's been in a long time, although just recently, we've seen slight upticks in both jobs and sentiment. So maybe that's a future improvement, but the numbers are good. On Corporates, it's a much better sentiment than April time frame for Corporates. If I unpack the AI trade and the M&A-driven loan appetite, it's still, I would say, cautiously optimistic, but the trends haven't shifted materially over the last few months.

And then just briefly, I guess it's, what is it, 8 months as well since Liberation Day. Any updated thoughts around the impact of tariffs at all in terms of Corporates and impact that's had?

Across the board, the narrative we hear from our clients is it's not a positive, but they have strategies and initiatives to mitigate the impact. It's not consequential to most companies.

Okay. Okay. So John, maybe turning to you. Can you just give us some high-level thoughts on the quarter? Has anything changed from the guidance that you provided Q3? That would be helpful just to get that out of the way.

Well, thanks, Richard. Good morning, and good morning, everyone. As far as it looks for the fourth quarter, I'll start with the net interest income. It's coming in as expected. We had talked about relative stability between the third and the fourth quarter on a linked-quarter basis with a bias for upside. I would continue to say that we have a bias for the upside on the net interest income side of the equation. As it relates to fees, we're at -- we said that $3 billion -- approximately $3 billion would be our fee level for the fourth quarter. Here, I would also say we have a bias for upside as well. We've seen a nice strength in our capital markets area in Impact Finance, which as you know, is in our other revenue categories. We highlighted that last quarter. So it has been very strong for us. And then really no change in terms of expenses. We continue to expect 1% to 1.5% linked quarter growth on expenses and positive operating leverage of at least 200 basis points. So no change there.

Okay. And then the bias to the upside on NII, is there anything specific that's driving that? Is that better loan growth, better deposit pricing, asset repricing? Is there anything specific?

It's a little bit of everything. I mean, loan growth has been good. Deposit pricing well behaved. So it's just a little bit of everything that's kind of calling for that sort of bias.

Okay. Okay. So maybe we can talk about fee income. Obviously, very, very important revenue line for you. You're obviously more skewed to fees than many of your peers. And I think the good news is you really are on track for solid growth in the fee line this year. Maybe we can talk about the 3 fee pillars, so payments, trust and capital markets and consumer fees and how you're thinking about the trajectory of those line items going into next year?

Well, we are very proud of our fee mix, and we are very committed to being a very high fee mix business model. It creates very enduring return characteristics for the bank and just earnings stability. The first is we're very committed to that. What's been exceptionally positive for us is the mix within the fee categories. So trust and investment fees have become a very large part of our fee growth, and that's wealth, asset management, where we are more than $0.5 trillion in AUM and our Investment Services business where we have some very unique properties like Corporate Trust. So they will continue in 2026 to be a very steady, reliable source of recurring fee revenue. The second is capital markets, Richard. This is where we are most leaning in for growth. We are introducing product capabilities at a very fast clip. And the rationale there is simply we have a very large balance sheet that's already deployed and the capital markets fee revenue comes with it. So we are building out the product capabilities, and there, we expect double-digit growth to drive that line item. The third is payments. Now payments is deeply strategic to us. It is very differentiating, and we are committed to bringing a healthier growth rate, and it's still a very large category for us, and I suspect will be larger over time. The final category is consumer fees. This is mortgage and overdraft type of fees. These are volatile fees. There's regulatory pressure on these fees. So we are committed to these businesses, but I would expect them to be a smaller part. So what we are crafting here from a business model standpoint are 4 significant pillars of fees that work beautifully together from a diversification standpoint.

Okay. So let's talk about the Payment business because it's obviously a very, I think, important part of the investment thesis, very important business for you. You talked about maintaining margins in the business as well as accelerating growth. Three priorities, and I think it would be really helpful just to spend a little bit of time on each. So embedded payments, differentiated distribution and industry prioritization, I think, are the priorities you've talked about. So maybe you can talk a little bit about those initiatives, but also talk about whether or not we should expect to see an inflection point in the revenue growth momentum in the Payment business for next year?

Thank you, Richard. It's a very important strategy for us. So if I could just back up for a second and give you a sense of what we're seeing in consumer behavior, which is what is anchoring our deep commitment to double down on payments. When you see your own children and you see the Gen Z and the younger audience, we observe them interacting with the financial system first through a payment product. They are doing a P2P payment when they go out for dinner or a credit card well before they engage in a traditional checking account. So we believe our Payments business is a future client acquisition model where the engagement from a wedge product standpoint is with payments. So that -- so it's a very strategic commitment to the business that's well beyond the fact that it's a large business that drives earnings. So on the merchant, which is about 6% to 7% of our revenue, very important for our small business franchise. And as you know, where goes small business goes to American economy. So here, their priorities are for us to have refocused quite sharply on 5 verticals, and we are building out the product set with what we call tech-led or embedded payments because that's where the value creation is, and that's how you maintain the high returns. This pure acquiring business, which is how we started has become very thin margin with the electronic platforms. So 5 verticals, very deep value proposition, software-led transformation. The second part of that transformation is owning our own distribution. We are very partner heavy. And the partners' M&A and their changes in strategy have a disproportionate impact on our business. So we have materially started enhancing our own salespeople, our own marketing. We've re-shift the branding of Elavon. So we'll see the shift of direct versus partner distribution shift. We are about 1/3 of our way there. And we've already started to see the slight uptick in the growth rates, and we expect that to continue over time. We have said mid-single digits for the merchant business in the medium-term targets, although we understand this industry offers us headroom, but we are building out a very attractive, very enduring business model there. The second part, which is the bigger part of our Payments business is the card business, card issuing business, very, very attractive business. It has long been a source of loan growth for us. And if you look at the HA data over a very long period, you will realize that our product set is actually maintaining or gaining market share on the loan side. What's new about our strategies there is an introduction of a whole new set of products that are attractive to the transactor segment. So they tend to be a more affluent segment, so that drives fee growth. So the strategy is that it's leveraging Union Bank. We inherited a very attractive affluent Consumer and Small business footprint in California. So it really lends a headroom to our card business. And then the third is partnerships. We have a very unique property called Elan. About 1,300 financial institutions and smaller banks run their card programs on our. And I think we have not fully leveraged that yet. And last year, we introduced some extraordinarily good technology on Elan, and it has gotten sort of the customer experience to a highly, highly attractive level. So we will see growth there. So very intuitive, very differentiated strategies there. But as you know, in the card, we are seeing leading indicators of growth today in acquired clients sold but uninstalled business. And it just takes 12 to 18 months for the upfront rewards to dissipate and for it to show up in revenue. So to your question, I don't think it will be an inflection in 2026. If we do our job right, you will see a steady uptick in growth rates as we see these vintages start to show up in revenue.

And then the inflection would be in out years, so '27 and beyond...

Towards the end of '26 and '27, we'll see the growth rates to our aspiration.

Okay. All right. That's great. So let's talk about net interest income and the balance sheet. Loan growth has been very, very healthy. I think you mentioned upfront that there's a strategic shift towards high-yielding loan categories. Maybe you can talk through what you're seeing in terms of loan demand in the fourth quarter, talk about pipelines heading into 2026. And are there any areas that you are expecting an inflection in terms of loan growth for next year?

Yes. If I think about loan growth for us, as I mentioned, I think the -- our growth will be very much in line with where the industry is at this particular juncture. Where we've seen strength is really in the commercial side of the equation and in card, that's really where our focus has been, rightly so because a little bit higher in terms of yield and also we can leverage the balance sheet from a relationship standpoint. So we feel very good about that. As I look into 2026, I think we'll continue to see the strength in those particular areas of card and commercial loans. I also would say, though, that commercial real estate, the paydowns are starting to dissipate a bit. We've had 10 straight quarters of decline in commercial real estate. I think we'll have slight growth actually in the fourth quarter, and we'll probably see some positive tailwinds coming to us, which is all favorable. The commercial real estate clients are all very similar on the commercial side. It's a lot of relationships. There's a lot of products that we sell to them in terms of utilizing our balance sheet and some of the fee categories that Gunjan just highlighted.

Just as a quick follow-on on loan growth. I mean, obviously, a lot of debate around what's going to happen with interest rates in 2026. I mean how much is how much of a driver could lower rates be to incremental demand in some of those categories like commercial real estate next year?

Yes. I was going to add certainly for commercial real estate, the interest rate inflection will matter quite a lot. But I was going to add a point to the C&I growth. What we have observed is our treasury management capabilities have become really strong with some of the digital investments. So one of the reasons we have seen such strong C&I growth, above market C&I growth is because we are just able to have a return characteristics for each client that's driving operational deposits, that's driving treasury management fees. And that gives you sort of the ability to do more with C&I loans. It's a very important part of our interconnected bank strategy. But John, I don't think we would see the C&I loan inflecting that much with interest rates.

Yes, I would agree. I think the bigger drivers are economic certainty, business outcomes and opportunities that they have, that sort of thing. I would -- rates are kind of more of a marginal type of decision.

And just one other question on loan growth, which is that the OCC has rescinded the rules around levered lending. Does that in any way create additional opportunities for USB that you wouldn't have thought about previously? Does that...

That change really isn't material to our business model. The -- our lending standards are actually inside of that -- where the OCC and FDIC have been traditionally. The one benefit is that operationally, it will be easier for us to process because every time you onboard a loan, you have to look at OCC and FDIC and Fed and then our own internal. So it will be much more streamlined and consistent for us to just look at our model, which is going to be the binding constraint.

Okay. Okay. So let's talk about balance sheet repositioning. You talked about repositioning the balance sheet so that you're better positioned for NII growth. So maybe you can talk through some of the measures that you've taken around that and maybe what's left to do. But then as a follow-on, I think it would be just helpful to get an update on how you're thinking about the 3% net interest margin target by 2027. Is that still the right target just given all the different moving pieces? And then what sort of progress should we expect to see towards the 3% in 2026?

Sure. So maybe just starting on the balance sheet changes that we've been making. It's really been a multiyear journey. And in some cases, you're never done like remodeling a home. You're just always working on it and working on the deposit side, we've been very intentional about growing the consumer base. We've been very intentional about reducing higher cost deposits that are nonoperational and being more front-footed with operational type deposits on the institutional and commercial side of the equation. On the loan side, I talked about the mix a little bit already. But what I would add is that we've also been strategic in selling some portfolios, particularly mortgage over the last couple of years. And then investment portfolio, we found some opportunities where there's some -- perhaps some low liquidity or things that we haven't cared to have in our portfolio to sell that to gain a better yield. And as long as there's a good payback, that's an opportunity that we tend to look at as well. All that is to say, we do these things, and that will be all beneficial to us from a spread and margin perspective as we think about that over time. And the -- your question about net interest margin, yes, we definitely see a path to that 3% in 2027. And it's the combination of the things I just mentioned plus fixed asset repricing. And the final point I would just make is the curve is starting to be more beneficial. For the longest time, we've been talking about the SOFR to 5-year being inverted, and it's actually pretty flat right now. And so that has moved and that will be a benefit to us over time if it continues to steepen.

Okay. So maybe let's stick with the balance sheet. Let's talk about the funding. So I'm really interested to get your updated thoughts on the competitive environment for deposits, especially in the context of the fact that it does feel like there are a number of banks that are leaning into balance sheet growth heading into next year. So have you seen a change in the competitive environment for either consumer or commercial deposits? And look, what are your updated thoughts around deposit betas over the course of the rate cycle and around the upcoming rate cuts that the market is expecting for next year?

Sure. So on the deposit side, I'd say it's always competitive and different markets have different dynamics, certainly. But what we're focused on is the mix shift that I talked about, making sure we're looking at consumer deposits and operational deposits on the institutional and commercial side. I think what's important for us is we've been really focused on building out our tool set to price appropriately. That's something that's modeling in different type of capabilities that we've just continually enhanced. And we've done a lot, but we still have more to do. And that's going to help us over the long period of time. In terms of where we are in terms of the current market, I think as rate cuts occur, today is obviously a big day for the market, a rate cut is very likely to occur. We're not seeing anything that's unique about this cut versus the one last one or the one prior to that, I would also say rotation is slowing down. And if there is rotation, it's actually less of an impact because now rates have come down. So any rotation that occurs is actually less harmful in that sense. And I would just say that we're just very much focused on pricing and outperforming our peers from a beta standpoint.

Richard, I'll add one thing around deposit behavior. We have been observing the performance of this must be product suite for us, where you have both credit card and deposits together and your deposit volumes give you loyalty points on credit cards. I can't tell you whether you're affluent or not, well, people love their loyalty program and they love to maximize that. The attachment rates when you have something unique, are much higher on consumer deposits. So if we showed some data last time even on how our consumer deposit as a percentage of total is increasing. So we would say it is as competitive as always, but the name of the game is not just pricing. You have to bring some unique value propositions, and we are very focused on unique value propositions.

Okay. Okay. So you mentioned operating leverage as one of the initiatives and expenses. And I think, look, you've had -- I think it's 8 quarters now of flattish expenses, even though the business has grown, that's obviously driven quite considerable operating leverage. So a couple of questions. The first is, how are you thinking about the trade-off between driving operating leverage from here versus investment spend? Maybe you can talk a little bit about the efficiency agenda from here, what that looks like, where you see the greatest opportunity. And then the third thing is you talked about the $2.5 billion level of investment spend. Is that still the right number as you think about next year, just given some of the shifts in the competitive landscape?

I'll start and then you add on investments. So Richard, the way you're asking the question implies the trade-off, and I do not think of it as a trade-off between expenses and investments. And I'm just going to say that very bluntly. Remember, our history has had 5 years of increasing investments to a level that is appropriate for our aspirations and our business unit. That is what created sort of an expense drag in the last 5 years. We are now stabilizing that. And we have these 4 signature productivity programs that are really harvesting the benefit of spending that $5-ish billion on all kind of platforms. So I would say that we are very comfortable with the level of investment we are at now. It will sustain the growth aspirations we have. And going into 2026, I would expect that our expense programs will become more, what I call foundational discipline type of efforts and will -- and growth and revenue growth will contribute more to the positive operating leverage.

What I would add, you mentioned our $2.5 billion budget that we utilize for technology, whether it's capital expenditures or how we want to make sure we keep the systems going and things like that. We've been pretty steady at that $2.5 billion. But what I would say is that $2.5 billion goes a lot further today than it did 2 or 3 years ago simply because the efficiency of programming with different tools that you have in terms of AI or how we can write code more simpler, we can come to market, so to speak, much faster from a technology standpoint. So we really think that the $2.5 billion right now is the appropriate level for us.

Okay. So maybe we can segue and talk a little bit about cryptocurrency, very popular theme at this conference. And I know it's early days, but I do think you've been ahead of the curve in investing in this and actually talking about it. So I'm very curious to get some of your updated thoughts around client interest and adoption. How you're thinking about the longer-term opportunity set? And then the other thing I'll just kind of weave in there is, look, tokenization seems to be coming up more and more. So the extent to which you think that is something that you're focused on, I'd be interested in hearing any thoughts you have on that as well.

Well, thank you for asking. And let me just say we are also learning. So I do not want to sort of proclaim an answer here. But we see enough money, enough investment, enough energy, enough changes in the regulatory landscape that we have stood up an organizational unit called digital assets and money movement. It's being led by a very experienced and veteran payments executive. So clearly, we are taking it very seriously, both as an opportunity and as a disruptive force in the industry. There are 2 big areas of use cases that are have momentum. The first is around capital markets. So this is custody of assets that are new like cryptocurrency, stablecoins. That is very clear to us from a business model standpoint. We have the product capabilities. We were the first very early to adopt cryptocurrency custody before regulatory changes shut that down, and it was very easy to refresh all of that. Where we are seeing real revenue growth and real client demand is coming to us in the formation of new ETFs that are all using that structure to invest in this space. And we have probably been awarded an extremely large percentage of the new ETF formation. They bring operational deposits with it. So there's real revenue, real momentum on the capital market side of the stablecoin cryptocurrency. On that as a new payments vehicle, it's very experimental. And I cannot point to a single client, either consumer or corporate that has actually shown some real demand, but 100% of them have shown curiosity. So we have lots of pilots going with some of our large corporate clients that are not public, where we're just sort of using our system to just see if we can do a transaction. We did our first blockchain trade finance contract. We just did a pilot issuance on the Stellar network. So all of this to say, we are getting -- working with the trades to be ready to onboard and offboard stable currency through the traditional banking system, experiment with multiple forms of potentially issuing our own stablecoin and certainly being ready if the use cases take off.

I was just going to ask on the use cases on the Corporate side, is one of the biggest use cases cross-border payments? Is that where you're seeing most of the interest?

That's where I'm seeing most of the narrative. It is true that some of the large corporates that have cross-border payments to underdeveloped economies, they have been able to extract efficiencies in different forms. So this is small ticket cross-border type of payments. And as you know, that's not a business we are in very much. It's a very complex market structure type of question. So Richard, I would say that all disruptive technologies feel sort of less relevant in the really near term. That could be very consequential in the fullness. It's worth developing the capabilities. And my simple rule of thumb in prioritizing investments is if you can see a unique value to a customer, you should lean into it because eventually, the friction gets sorted out if there's real customer value.

Okay. So let's talk about credit. Is there anything that you've seen of note in terms of early delinquencies? Are there any portfolios you're monitoring more closely today? And then it would also be helpful just to get an update on how you're thinking about NDFI. Obviously, it was a huge focus a few months ago. Have you seen anything since then? And do you think what happened back in October is indicative of growing stress upstream in C&I portfolios?

Yes. Broadly speaking, I would say credit is very much as expected. There are not a lot of things -- I mean, we look at the portfolios quite a bit, especially with some of the noise that you just mentioned, but we feel like those things are very isolated at this point. We've looked at a number of our different portfolios. I mean, delinquencies are coming in as expected. I would say that we also -- commercial real estate office is kind of running its course at this particular juncture. And we're seeing the typical seasonality in our consumer credit card type products that you would expect. The NDFI page was really helpful, I think, for the market because for us, it expressed -- well, the point we wanted to get across was there's a lot of different portfolios in it. It's not just one bucket of loans, right? There's multiple different businesses that we support and we underwrite for many, many years, decades, in fact, in some of these areas. So we wanted to highlight that and show that this is an area where we have very strong credit underwriting and very strong discipline. There's not a lot of leverage lending, as I just mentioned with our -- the HLT feedback that you just mentioned. We don't underwrite subprime. I mean it's all these things. We don't -- we have very little exposure to BDCs directly. So these are the things that we think are very important when we think about the credit quality of that NDFI portfolio.

Okay. So let's talk about capital. Your CET1 is 10.9%. You said CAT II won't happen until 2027 at the earliest. Is 10% still the right target? And what would it take for you to step up buybacks from the current levels?

Yes. So right now, we're at 9.2% excluding -- or including AOCI into our capital. We've talked about approximately 10% being that level. Right now, that's the appropriate level, maybe Basel III or some of these other rules as they come out, that makes us examine that, and we'll update you as that comes to fruition. But at this particular juncture, we are very much focused on being on the last lap of capital build to getting to that level and very much as we get into '26, growing and picking up our pace in terms of buybacks to get to more of that 75% area of total payout. That's part of our capital policy that we've been very -- obviously very vocal about and transparent about.

And then M&A, another very popular theme at the conference. Maybe you can just talk through about the potential for nonbank acquisitions or bolt-on deals that make -- that could make sense for you and how you're thinking about really redeployment of capital into nonorganic growth, if that is something that you're spending a lot of time on.

Richard, the bolt-on acquisitions are attractive to us, and we look at them all the time. They -- we generally see them in the payments or the institutional part of the business, not so much consumer wealth. And they tend to be sort of small easy-to-consume deals that strengthen our product set. So we're always open for sort of bolt-on like acquisitions. For the rest, we are very excited about the momentum we have on the organic side. It's very real. It has momentum. And as John said, we are very focused on getting to a very healthy level of CAT II capital and to support our clients' needs. That's where the focus is.

Okay. So we've got a few minutes left. So 2 questions. The first is maybe we can talk about your medium-term targets, high teens ROTCE efficiency ratio in the high 50s. You're operating within the ranges. What would it take for you to operate towards the higher end of those ranges?

Sure. So we're very much focused on the organic growth and the priorities that Gunjan has laid out. So you think about organic growth, expense management and payments transformation and underneath that, a number of different projects and initiatives. So if we focus on that and we execute on that, that's going to give us that consistency and the higher performance. And if we do that, we have high confidence that we get to the higher end of those ranges. So those are the -- that's really the drive of what we have and the focus we have right now internally inside the company.

So to be clear, you think you can get to the higher end without any real change in terms of economic activity or the growth rate or the rate environment based on the initiatives that you currently have?

Yes, that's right. I mean we feel we're going to do our thing. The economy is going to move and zig and zag and that's fine, but we have our strategies and we want to execute.

Okay. So a couple of minutes left, 8 months, as you said. I rounded it up to a year, it is 8 months. I know you've spent a lot of time with investors, which I think is greatly appreciated, by the way. I am very curious as to where you see the biggest disconnects. When you talk to investors about either the concerns they have or around the investment case for USB relative to what you now think 8 months into the job. What do you think is most misunderstood?

Richard, thank you for asking the question. It's, first of all, been just a privilege to lead a very classy organization. It's an exceptional franchise. When I talk to investors, and I have spoken to many of them at in depth, they do get the attractiveness of the business model, especially the fee intensity, the diversification within the fees and the risk management discipline and the long-term stewardship mindset that the organization has. The lingering question marks are around our ability to execute consistently and deliver bottom line financial results consistently. So we are very proud of the progress we have made quickly towards the medium-term targets. And I expect that as we execute and deliver consistent, attractive, impressive EPS growth, we will restore investor confidence and bring back some of the luster and the valuation that this business model and this name rightfully deserves. So our focus is consistency and execution.

Okay. I think that's a great place to end it on. So thank you so much for joining us. I very much hope you come back and join us next year.

It's a pleasure.