Zions Bancorporation, National Association (ZION) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay. Thank you for being with us today. Thank you for joining the Zions Bancorporation National Association's 2025 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. Rules of conduct for the meeting have been distributed. The meeting will please come to order. I'm Harris Simmons, Chairman and CEO of the bank. Also participating is Rena Miller, our General Counsel and Secretary of the meeting. Ms. Miller, do you have affidavits of the notice of meeting and mailing of the notices?

Yes, I do.

Thank you. The notice and affidavits will be filed with the minutes. The meeting has been legally called and a quorum is present. In addition to myself, our director nominees who are here today with us are Maria Contreras-Sweet, Gary Crittenden, Suren Gupta, Claire Huang, Vivian Lee, Scott McLean, Edward Murphy, Stephen Quinn, Aaron Skonnard and Barbara Yastine. William Wilcox and Ryan Silvester have been appointed inspectors of election, neither is a nominee for the office of director. The first item of business is the election of directors for a term of 1 year. Shareholder, Todd Harris, will present each of the resolutions. Mr. Harris, would you please state your name and the fact of your stock ownership for the record?

Resolved that the following persons be nominated for director of the bank for a term of 1 year. Maria Contreras-Sweet, Gary L. Crittenden, Suren K. Gupta, Claire A. Huang, Vivian S. Lee, Scott J. McLean, Edward F. Murphy, Stephen D. Quinn, Harris H. Simmons, Aaron B. Skonnard and Barbara A. Yastine.

Okay. Thank you. We'll work on pronunciation later. Do we have a second to the motion?

Second.

All right. The Board recommends voting for these nominees. We are not aware of any shareholders who have complied with the bank's procedures for making any additional nominations. Accordingly, the nominations are closed. The proposal is now open for discussion. Is there any discussion about the nominees. Shareholders who have not yet voted on the nominees may do so by marking an appropriate entry after Item #1 on their ballot. Proposal 2 is to ratify the appointment of Ernst & Young LLP as the bank's independent auditor. Shareholder, Andrea Christoffersen, will present this resolution.

Mr. Chairman, my name is Andrea Christoffersen, I am a shareholder of record. I move the following resolution: Resolved, to ratify the appointment of Ernst & Young LLP as the bank's independent auditors for fiscal 2025.

Okay. Do we have a second.

Second.

The Board recommends a vote for this proposal. The proposal is now open for discussion. Is there any discussion? There being no further discussion, shareholders who have not yet voted or wish to change their vote on this proposal may do so by marking an appropriate entry after Item #2 on their ballot. The next item on the agenda is about on a nonbinding advisory basis to approve the 2024 compensation paid to the bank's executive officers named in the proxy statement. Shareholder Wells Wilkinson will present this resolution.

My name is Wells Wilkinson. I'm a shareholder of record. I move the following resolution resolved that the shareholders hereby approve on a nonbinding basis, the 2024 compensation of the named executive officers as disclosed in the proxy statement pursuant to the compensation disclosures of the SEC, including the compensation discussion and analysis, compensation tables and related material.

Thank you very much. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you. The Board recommends a vote for this proposal. The proposal is now open for discussion. The discussion. There being none, shareholders who have not yet voted or who wish to change their vote on this proposal may do so by marking an appropriate entry after Item #3 on their electronic ballot. Proposal 4 is an advisory vote on the frequency of the bank's future say-on-pay votes on executive compensation. Shareholder, Stephanie Horne Clark will present this resolution.

Mr. Chairman, my name is Stephanie Horne Clark. I am a shareholder of record. Mr. Chairman, I move the following resolution resolved that the frequency option of vote held everyone 2 or 3 years that received the highest number of votes cast in response to the resolution will be frequency recommended by shareholders for the bank to hold its nonbinding shareholder vote to approve executive compensation until the Board's next listed shareholder input on frequency.

Thank you very much. The Board recommends a vote of 1 year for this proposal. The proposal is now open for discussion. Is there any discussion? There being none, shareholders who have not yet voted who wish to change their vote on this proposal may do so by marking an appropriate entry after item #4 on the ballot. I now declare the polls closed. And we'll take the a few moments to just provide a brief overview of our past year's performance. By the time we get to May, it seems a long time ago, but if we -- do you want to just advance to the second slide there. I think for anybody, particularly those who may be participating online, and we appreciate your attendance with us today. We've had really a pretty good year this past year. We have -- this slide is showing just an overview of the franchise we have a relatively unique franchise in the nation's best growth markets with a business that is generally more commercially oriented than many larger banks. It's a business that is highly rated by our customers and very locally oriented in terms of our management structure and our desire to serve local communities and be very involved in them. We also have a business that has strong credit quality and strong fundamentals in terms of the very strong deposit franchise and a focus on serving main street businesses, middle-market businesses and many others, but that's a particular focus of the bank. If you go to the next slide, the performance last year reflected a continued improvement from the results of 2023 where we saw a lot of impact -- negative impact from the failure or the dissolution of several banks with reasonably unique and idiosyncratic business models 2 years ago. This had a lot of adverse impact on our funding costs on our net interest margin. And on our expenses and not least, a substantial tab paid to the FDIC for our share of the cost of the resolution of those failed banks. But we see that in 2024, we had a 15% increase in net income, a 14% increase in earnings per share. Revenue was relatively flat with expenses up about 2%. Revenue being flat as a result of this margin pressure. It resulted in our adjusted pre-provision net revenue actually declining 3%. But we had a much lower provision for loan losses in 2024, which boosted our return on assets from basis points the prior year to 88 basis points in 2024. Our efficiency ratio was higher as a result of this flat revenue, a little higher expense. Charge-offs and credit quality continue to be very strong. It's the real strength of the business, 10 basis points, which is materially better than the average in the industry. If we go to the next slide, looking at earnings growth over the past 5 years, we've actually had earnings growth that approaches the top quartile of the industry going back to the pre pandemic year of 2019 and adjusted return on tangible common equity that's also been strong. If you go to the next slide, please. The deposit franchise, I mentioned, we have average noninterest-bearing deposits as a percentage of total deposits that tends to be higher than the top quartile in the industry. And that's remained so even in the wake of the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and others. It gives us a total deposit cost that is also at the kind of the top quartile of the industry, and that's a great strength of our business. If you go to the next slide, credit quality is reflected in our net loan losses. As noted, it remained very low this past year, continues to be as we move into this year. better than the top quartile. And that's generally been the case over the last decade with sort of an exception back in 2015, '16 kind of area where we had a downturn in oil and gas prices that pressured our credit results in the Texas market. But generally, and you see on the right side of this chart, our credit losses as a percent of loans is much, much better than our peers and that, I think, as we think about the environment we're in today with uncertainty around the impact of tariffs, the possibility of economic recession. We take some comfort in the fact that we have a very strong credit culture that should help us weather that storm if and when it develops quite well. If you go to the next slide, one of the concerns that many investors have had has been around commercial real estate. It's been a concern with regulators with a lot of pressure on the office segment in particular, and some slowing in the multifamily segment and even in industrial real estate, and with interest rates that started rising back in 2022, there was a concern that we might see a lot of stress across the industry in the commercial real estate portfolio. This chart shows that over the past decade, we've grown commercial real estate at a very disciplined rate. We've deliberately held back growing at slower than the rest of our balance sheet. And as a result of that, over the past 5 years, our loss rates in commercial real estate have been very, very close to 0, less than a single basis point relative to the portfolio on average each year. And so that's proven to be a strength for us. If we go to the next slide, showing the composition of that portfolio. About half of it is multifamily and industrial, about $1.8 billion, 13% is office and then a mix of other things. And so while we're seeing some slowing in some of the fundamentals in commercial real estate. We don't see any material loss coming out of that out of that portfolio, although certainly something we watch closely. If you go to the next slide, our capital remains strong. It's about kind of about the median of where our peer group is. That will continue to strengthen as the interest rate, what we call the marks, the depreciation in our securities portfolio. The securities we bought at lower interest rates, and those rates have risen the value of those securities drops. But that -- a lot of those losses are now accreting back into capital over time, and we expect that to continue to strengthen over the next couple of years. And when you compare that capital position to, again, the credit profile of the company with low charge-offs, we think we're in quite good shape for whatever is ahead of us. Finally, I'd just note that we -- on the next slide, we just have a lot of great people in this company, and our customers recognize that. They routinely as they're surveyed by -- as we survey them internally as are surveyed by external publications and research firms, we consistently show as one of the best banks in the industry in terms of the relationships we have with customers, 1 of only 4 banks to have averaged 15 or more Coalition Greenwich Best Bank awards since those were introduced back in 2009, and they do thousands of surveys across the United States, and we've consistently been in the top echelon of those rankings as well as a lot of other local rankings by business journals and local publications. And so I want to thank all of our great people who deliver to our customers every day. It's a great honor to work with all of you. And we're excited about the year ahead. I mean we're deep into it. As I said, there are certainly reasons for concern with respect to for the economy may be headed and without knowing fully the impact of the tariffs, resolution of those tariffs, et cetera, will have. We are trying to stay very, very close to customers. We want to be sure that we're there to help them through challenging times as best we can, and we've done that for a very long time and will for a long time to come. So with that, I'm going to now open the meeting to any shareholder questions and discussion, including any that we have online. Any questions we can answer for anybody. Do we have any questions online? Okay none. All right. So I'm going to ask the secretary then to give the results of voting as contained in the report of the inspectors of election. Ms. Miller, would you provide that report?

Yes. Thanks, Harris. Each of the nominees for director has received over 97% of the votes cast and has been elected a director for a 1-year term. Proposal 2, the resolution to ratify Ernst & Young has been approved by approximately 98% of the votes cast and has passed. Proposal 3, the resolution to approve on a nonbinding basis, the compensation paid to the bank's executive officers has received approximately 95% of the votes cast and has been approved. For Proposal 4, the resolution to recommend the frequency of our say-on-pay votes. The 1-year option has received approximately 93% of the votes cast and will constitute the shareholders' recommendation.

Okay. Thank you very much. There being no further business, the annual meeting is now concluded and a motion for adjournment is in order. Okay? Do we have a second. Thank you very much. The meeting is adjourned. Thank you very much for being with us today.