Huntington Bancshares (NASDAQ:HBAN) reported third-quarter financial results on Thursday. The transcript from the company’s third-quarter earnings call has been provided below.
This transcript is brought to you by Benzinga APIs. For real-time access to our entire catalog, please visit https://www.benzinga.com/apis/ for a consultation.
Access the full call at https://event.choruscall.com/mediaframe/webcast.html?webcastid=qU2WhfHS
Summary
Huntington Bancshares reported solid operating performance in Q3 2026, driven by strong commercial pipelines and consumer spending trends.
The company anticipates 2027 EPS to grow by over 20% from 2025, with a ROTCE increase to 17-18%.
Strategic expansion continues, with significant growth in new markets such as Texas and the South, supported by partnerships and value-added fee businesses.
Loan growth was led by commercial categories, particularly in C&I lending, though some areas like commercial real estate and auto loans saw reduced activity due to competitive pressures.
Deposits grew approximately $500 million, maintaining a strong funding profile with moderated deposit cost increases.
Noninterest expense remained flat sequentially, and the company completed its Cadence expense synergy actions.
Management expects stable net interest margin into Q4 and plans to continue significant share repurchase programs, having completed $460 million year-to-date.
The company maintains a moderate-to-low risk appetite with strong credit performance and robust liquidity coverage.
Huntington Bancshares remains focused on achieving substantial long-term shareholder value through disciplined execution and strategic growth.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Greetings and welcome to the Huntington Bancshares third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press Star 0 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Eric Wasterscham, Director of Investor Relations.
Eric Wasterscham (Director of Investor Relations)
Thanks, Christine, and good morning everyone. Thanks for joining us for our third quarter call. Our speakers for our presentation today are Steve Steinour, Chairman and CEO, Brant Standridge, President, and Zach Wasserman, Chief Financial Officer. Unfortunately, Zach has become ill very unexpectedly, although I did speak with him a little while ago and he’s sounding quite good. But he will not be participating in the Q&A portion of today’s call, so I will be joining in his stead.
And also joining us for Q&A will be our Chief Credit Officer, Brendan Lawler. Earnings documents which include our forward-looking statements, disclaimer and non-GAAP information and copies of the slides we’ll be referencing are available on the Investor Relations section of our website which is www.ir.huntington.com. As a reminder, this call is being recorded and a replay will be available starting about one hour after the close of the call. With that, let me now turn it over to Steve.
Steve Steinour (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
Thanks, Eric. Good morning and thank you for joining us. Starting on Slide 3. We delivered solid operating performance in the third quarter, reflecting continued execution across our core businesses and the benefits of our investments and recent partnerships. The operating environment is generally constructive, evidenced by strong commercial pipelines and solid consumer spending trends. And our expectation is that conditions for the rest of this year and next remain supportive of healthy levels of customer activity, although higher interest rates and elevated prices for energy and other inputs could dampen growth in the future years or potentially further exacerbate the K-shaped nature of the consumer economy.
In the midst of this, our teams continue to acquire and deepen relationships across the bank. While macroeconomic conditions may change, our strategy has not. We remain disciplined in maximizing our risk-adjusted returns, optimizing the balance sheet, realizing expense efficiencies and continuing to invest for long-term growth. There are four key messages I’d like to leave you with. First, Huntington is a strategically well-positioned national franchise with substantial scale in markets expected to grow above the national average, a leading national commercial bank and has a broad set of value-added fee businesses.
These capabilities support sustained organic growth and earnings expansion. Second, we are delivering solid operating performance in a fluid environment. Our C&I growth remains very strong driven by the continued expansion of our national commercial strategy, and we’ve made prudent decisions to protect credit performance and returns by scaling back in certain asset classes where risk-adjusted pricing has compressed to levels we don’t consider to be rational.
This has impacted the growth of certain loan portfolios but supported our return on tangible common equity. Third, our partnerships continue to perform very well, cost synergies have been achieved as planned, revenue synergies are tracking and the partnerships are expanding our ability to acquire customers and deepen relationships across Texas and the South. And fourth, our aggregate moderate-to-low risk appetite remains fundamental to how we operate, our liquidity position remains robust, credit performance remains top tier, and we are allocating capital only where opportunities meet our risk-adjusted return hurdles.
Together, these capabilities and our focused execution support revenue and earnings growth, improving returns, tangible book value growth and substantial long-term shareholder value creation. Slide 4 shows our expectations for the drivers of value creation over this year and next. We expect 2027 EPS to grow more than 20% from 2025 while steadily increasing ROTCE into the 17 to 18% range. We expect tangible book value per share to increase by more than 10% from the 2025 level, reflecting continued earnings generation and disciplined capital management. We’ve completed approximately $460 million of share repurchases year to date. We continue to expect to return substantial capital to our shareholders over the next several quarters.
These outcomes reflect the strength of our core franchise, continued growth in our value-added fee businesses, partner synergies, operating efficiency and disciplined capital management. Let me now turn the call over to Brant Standridge. As you are all probably aware, Brant was recently elevated to the role of President of Huntington and now has responsibility for all of our revenue-generating segments. Brant.
Brant Standridge (President)
Thank you, Steve. Let’s turn to slide 5. As we’ve outlined on previous calls, we have developed a differentiated operating model that combines the power of a local, relationship-focused geographic banking model with the expertise and scale of a national commercial business. We’ve now expanded the geographic model across 21 states while continuing to grow our commercial business nationally. The combination of these two models has led to achieving substantial scale with $191 billion in loans and $225 billion in deposits.
We are taking a similar approach with geography, having combined Midwest leadership with meaningful and growing scale in Texas and the South. We are now present in 12 of the top 25 fastest-growing MSAs in the country, positioning us squarely in some of the nation’s most attractive markets. Our value-added capabilities have broadened across a full range of services including an expansive payments suite, a comprehensive wealth and private banking platform, and a full-service capital markets business.
Our commercial bank brings a specialized ecosystem of capabilities serving customers across all 50 states. These capabilities, combined with deep industry expertise across specialized verticals, create a differentiated growth opportunity and help us expand customer relationships across the company. Across all elements of the company, we operate with an aggregate moderate to low risk appetite. This combination of operating scale and risk management discipline is what enables us to sustain strong, balanced growth.
The differentiated capabilities that we continue to build across our major business lines support our long-term competitive advantage. Let me share some examples with you. Turning to slide 6, our culture remains a competitive advantage. It is what allows us to attract and retain top talent. Our people are the drivers of innovation and execution across the bank. We’re investing in capabilities that will help shape the future of the bank and allow us to remain an essential partner to our customers. At Money20/20 earlier this week, we announced the 1866 Studio, our new agentic small business operating system. This adds to our already compelling value proposition for small businesses.
In addition, we’ve built functionalities that meet our customers’ critical needs such as family and team banking and AI-powered savings goal functionality. We are also investing to expand our commercial capabilities. As an example, we have substantially increased our capabilities in asset-backed finance and securitization, putting our ability to distribute assets and support customer needs on par with industry leaders. Our focus on innovation continues to gain external recognition; we offer a leading digital experience as the top-rated mobile banking app among regional bank peers, and we continue to win awards for our collaboration with some of the nation’s leading fintechs, such as our partnership with Oqtane. Perhaps most significantly, we continue to earn customer recognition for service, satisfaction, and trust—elements that form the core of successful relationships with our customers.
Turning to slide 7, so how do we achieve the financial objectives that we have outlined and continue to create sustainable growth? To be clear, we have our heads down and we are laser-focused on five growth drivers. First, growing share across our core banking markets while selectively investing in new growth markets. Our differentiated operating model—it works and is driving significant share gains in our legacy markets. Introducing this model in our new markets from Texas through the Carolinas has created an enhanced platform for growth from a consumer and small business perspective.
Our digital deposit acquisition capabilities have already created an opportunity for growth across Texas and the South. Second, we are driving scale and growth through our national commercial banking expansion; our industry ecosystem approach, our national reach, and our specialized expertise enhance our value proposition to commercial customers in our banking footprint and across the country. We have been and we will continue to invest in people and capabilities that expand our reach.
Third, we will leverage expanded capabilities in payments, wealth, and capital markets to deepen customer relationships. Our integrated approach to sales and servicing, which we call Optimal Customer Relationship, provides an opportunity to increase the depth and importance of our relationship to our customers. Our geographic expansion and the growth of our national commercial businesses significantly increase the scale of the opportunity set to deploy these capabilities.
Fourth, we will maintain balance sheet growth aligned to our aggregate moderate to low risk appetite. This is grounded in our emphasis on primary customer relationships, disciplined pricing, rigorous client selection, and intentional capital allocation. And finally, we will continue to drive efficiency and sustained investment in growth. We are consistently re-engineering our baseline expenses, which helps fund the investments that drive our competitive advantage and sustain our long-term growth.
Turning to slide 8, let me give some examples of how this quarter’s results capture these priorities. In our legacy banking markets, we grew loans by 6% and deposits by 3% year over year—levels that substantially outpace economic expansion in these regions. This growth reflects the effectiveness of the execution of our differentiated approach. In our newer geographies where our business is much smaller, such as the Carolinas, our organic deposit and loan growth was substantial at 50% and 40% year over year.
Our national commercial businesses also continued to provide substantial growth. As an example, our Corporate and Specialty Banking delivered $11 billion of year-over-year loan growth and $9 billion of year-over-year deposit growth, demonstrating the magnitude of the growth opportunity and the advantages of our ecosystem-based approach and deep industry expertise. The investments we’ve made in our value-added fee services also continue to pay off.
Our debt and equity capital markets businesses, which have only just achieved full staffing and scale, grew revenues 35% year to date. In Wealth, our focus on household acquisition and the expansion of our private banking and high net worth capabilities has generated a 28% growth in net flows, and in Payments, we continue to provide capabilities to our corporate customer base, helping to drive our treasury management revenue growth of 42% year over year.
We have maintained disciplined balance sheet growth in line with our aggregate moderate to low risk appetite. Our securities portfolio has an average duration of 3.3 years, a decrease of 21% from the prior year, enabling us to protect our capital position in a rising rate environment. Our credit losses remain low, with year-to-date net charge-offs of 27 basis points, and our liquidity coverage remains robust with an unmodified LCR ratio of 111%. We delivered these outcomes while sustaining flat core operating expenses on a sequential basis, with a similar expectation for flat in Q4.
Nonetheless, we continue to invest, with our total investment dollars up 25% year over year, including meaningful increases in technology and marketing. In summary, customer acquisition and relationship deepening continue to drive sustainable growth and attractive risk-adjusted returns. Now let me turn it over to Zach to walk you through the financial performance for the period.
Zachary Wasserman, CFA (Chief Financial Officer)
Thank you, Brant, and good morning, everyone. Our third quarter results reflect continued execution against the strategic priorities Brant just outlined and the expected financial outlook we provided in September. Let’s review the principal drivers in more detail on the following slides. Turning to Slide 9, loan activity was led by commercial categories and overall origination volumes improved as the quarter progressed, consistent with the comments we made in September. As a result, period-end loan balances increased 1.1%, while on an average basis loans were lower by 4/10 of 1% from the prior period. Expanding on the trends for a moment, the growth was driven by C&I lending with strong contributions from corporate and specialty banking, asset finance, and middle market banking.
These gains were partially offset by lower balances in commercial real estate, auto loans, and residential mortgages. We also saw a normal seasonal decline in distribution finance balances. We remained disciplined in our underwriting criteria and pricing, which reduced near-term production but supported growth in relationships that met our risk-adjusted return hurdles. Customer demand appears solid across the broader bank, and we expect sequential growth in the fourth quarter.
Turning to Slide 10, average deposits increased approximately $500 million, or 0.2% on an end-of-period basis. Deposit growth approximately equaled loan growth, consistent with our objective of core funding. The balance sheet growth continued to be driven by customer acquisition and deepening of primary bank relationships. Consumer PBRs increased 4%, business banking PBRs increased 5%, and commercial PBRs increased 7% year over year. Our overall cost of deposits was 190 basis points, an increase of 2 basis points from the prior quarter.
Importantly, the pace of deposit cost increases moderated significantly compared to the second quarter. Continued balance sheet optimization efforts helped improve our funding mix and offset impacts from the higher rate environment. We remain focused on full relationship economics, growing core deposits, and managing pricing at the customer and local market level. These actions support profitable growth while maintaining our strong funding profile.
Turning to Slide 11, net interest income was approximately $2.1 billion, an increase of $18 million, or 0.9%, from the prior quarter and 37% from the prior year. Net interest margin increased four basis points to 3.25%, reflecting higher asset yields, lower average Fed cash, as well as continued optimization of our interest-bearing liabilities. These benefits were partially offset by lower purchase accounting accretion as we expected and a modest hedge drag.
We continued to optimize funding mix and liquidity across the bank, contributing to improved margin performance and supporting NIM expansion during the quarter as we had previously guided. Looking ahead, we expect net interest margin to remain relatively stable into the fourth quarter. Turning to Slide 12, our strong fee revenue performed in line with the expectations we outlined in September and remains an important source of diversified capital. Light earnings growth value added fee revenues increased more than 15% year over year on a reported basis inclusive of the Veritex and Cadence partnerships. Sustained investments to build capabilities in our core areas of fee growth are driving substantial underlying momentum in the key drivers of long-term growth.
As you can see from the metrics on the right side of the slide, we are seeing increased treasury management penetration, growth in card payment volumes, increased merchant services adoption, expanding wealth relationships, and higher capital markets engagement. At the same time, we are deepening existing relationships and winning larger fee opportunities across the bank. We remain focused on driving fee growth that outpaces balance sheet growth and increases the mix of fee revenues over time.
Moving to expenses on Slide 13, noninterest expense was $1.7 billion, essentially flat on a linked-quarter basis while delivering 120 basis points of positive operating leverage on a trailing four-quarter basis. We completed the Cadence expense synergy actions during the quarter with the full run-rate benefit beginning in the fourth quarter. We are also executing our expense reengineering initiatives across the bank, and we expect to reengineer approximately 1.5% of our baseline expenses this year, creating additional capacity to invest in growth while delivering strong operating leverage.
Looking ahead, we expect to deliver equal to or greater than 100 basis points of positive operating leverage in 2026 on a full-year basis. Turning to Slide 14, our capital management priorities remain unchanged. Our top priority remains supporting high-return organic growth. Next, we support a strong dividend yield, and finally we deploy excess capital where it creates the greatest value for shareholders, including our programmatic share repurchase program. Reported CET1 ended the quarter at 10.1%, adjusted CET1 was 8.9%. Capital generation remains strong and continues to support growth, investment, and shareholder returns.
Year to date we’ve repurchased approximately $460 million of common stock, including $100 million during the third quarter and $50 million thus far in Q4. Tangible book value per share was $9.47, representing a 10% compound annual growth rate over the past three years and reflecting strong value creation. We continue to expect Basel III implementation to be favorable to our capital position and currently estimate approximately 70 to 80 basis points of additional CET1 through risk-weighted asset relief.
Taken together, these factors provide additional capital flexibility while supporting growth and shareholder returns. Slide 15 summarizes how disciplined management of growth, expenses, capital, and integration execution creates shareholder value. Importantly, our underlying earnings power drove 7% tangible book value per share growth in Q3 before shareholder distributions. That performance enabled us to sustain a 4% plus dividend yield and repurchase 6 million shares during the quarter. The business continues to generate very strong returns on capital. Adjusted return on tangible common equity was 16.6% for the quarter and 16.5% on a trailing four-quarter basis.
We continue to expect ROTCE to trend to the 17 to 18% range in 2027 and to 18% plus over the longer term. Turning to Slide 16, credit performance including delinquency and criticized classification was consistent with our expectations. Net charge-offs were 31 basis points, an increase of 6 basis points from the prior quarter, primarily reflecting one idiosyncratic commercial credit charge-off. We continued to expect full-year net charge-offs to finish near the low end of our 25 to 35 basis point guidance range. The allowance for credit losses ended the quarter at 1.75%, providing strong coverage relative to projected charge-offs.
Criticized assets increased to 4.26% from 4.18% in the prior quarter and have remained relatively stable over the past four quarters. As we continue to risk rate and actively manage the acquired portfolios, the nonperforming asset ratio increased to 90 basis points from 85 basis points. As we stated last quarter, NPAs are elevated due to increases in government-guaranteed loan categories, of which have very low loss content. Our disciplined underwriting standards, portfolio management efforts, and aggregate moderate to low risk appetite continue to position us well to sustain top-tier credit performance over time.
Turning to Slide 17, this slide provides additional context for Huntington Bancshares’ reserve position. As noted, we maintain robust reserve coverage, and our reserve build has been one of the largest in the peer group over the past year. Taken together, these metrics reinforce our confidence in the strength of the balance sheet, the quality of the portfolio, and the adequacy of our reserve position, supported by a lower pace of loan growth and continued improvement in the portfolio mix, including the reduction of our CRE concentration.
Turning to our guidance on Slide 18, given where we are in the year, I’ll provide some color on what we’re expecting for Q4, which modestly influences a few of the line items of the full-year outlook. Customer activity remains solid, our value-added fee businesses continue to perform well, and partner cost and revenue synergies are being delivered as expected. Our loan growth remains on track to achieve about a 6% organic growth rate, or approximately 36% on a reported basis.
And as I noted earlier, we expect NIM to be approximately flat in Q4. These two factors support our full-year NII growth expectation of approximately 35%. We remain focused on match funding our asset growth and optimizing our deposit mix. Based on the Q3 results, we now expect full-year deposit growth of about 32.5%. Fee income continues to be a powerful driver for us. We expect to generate fourth quarter fee revenue of approximately $750 million, plus or minus the normal variability around an estimate at this point in the quarter. This level indicates a full-year growth rate of approximately 31%. We’re executing our expense reengineering initiatives while investing in high-return growth opportunities across the bank. We expect core expenses to be flat in Q4 versus the Q3 level.
Credit performance remains consistent with our expectations, with full-year net charge-offs anticipated in the lower end of our 25 to 35 basis point guidance range. Looking ahead, we’re tracking to our 2027 EPS guidance of $1.75 to $1.83, concluding on Slide 19. Our operating model represents a flywheel of value creation that enables us to drive strong earnings power and value over time. With that, we’ll conclude our prepared remarks and move to Q&A.
OPERATOR
At this time, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment please while we poll for questions.
Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Erika Najarian with UBS. Please proceed with your question.
Erika Najarian (Analyst)
Yes, hi, thank you for taking my question. And Zach, I hope you feel better if you’re listening. My first question is, you know, thank you for ripping the proverbial band-aid off in terms of, you know, earlier resetting the guidance at a September conference. I guess a two-part question because clearly the stock at $15 relative to the $1.75 to $1.83 is less than 10 times, and so I think what the market is asking and what the question that investors have is, in terms of that track ’27, number one, are we done with the cuts?
Obviously there’s the economy and there’s rates, but are we done with the cuts? Within that question, what was, other than the rate path, what did you not quite get right when you first set the ’27 bogey?
Steve Steinour (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
Erika, thanks for the question. I’ll start, and I’ll turn it over shortly to Eric. First, we’re quite confident in the earnings outlook. Eric will give you a couple of different ways to look at it in a minute. Second, in terms of what we didn’t get right, I believe we’re in a very different interest rate environment, very different inflation environment. And we’re in a much different competitive environment. You’ve seen us pull back in a number of areas that we referenced in the second quarter call. I think Brant referenced indirect auto and home mortgage. As to when we came into the year, we talked about wanting to adjust our commercial real estate exposure over a couple of years. That’s happening much faster than we would have projected, reflecting a competitive environment that is more significant this year than we’ve seen.
And you’re seeing it in deposit pricing and in other ways as well. But those would be the primary factors in terms of needing to make the adjustment we did. At a recent conference, Eric, let me turn it to you in terms of layering in the outlook for next year. Sure.
Eric Wasterscham (Director of Investor Relations)
Thank you, Steve. And hello, Erika. So, I mean, I think just to pick up on the tail end of Steve’s comments, you know, coming into the year, the expectation I think was for rate cuts, and it was looking at that point to be a very benign kind of competitive environment. And what you’ve seen is now the opposite. You’ve seen rate hikes and a real intensification around competition in a few ways. And certainly that’s the environment that we’re extrapolating into next year.
We expect no diminution in the overall competitive environment. And so that characterizes how we’re thinking about our guidance from here. Maybe just to do sort of a mathematical bridge. If I look at the consensus for this year, it looks like it’s about $1.54 and for next year it’s $1.76. So that’s a 22 cent delta. So how do we bridge the 22 cents? I think there’s effectively three components to that. The first is we expect to realize about $150 million of incremental cost synergies as we anniversary the run-rate benefits that we’ve achieved in terms of the Cadence synergies late this year.
So that’s about $0.06 of delta and our share repurchase program is about $0.02. So if I take 22 less 8 that gets me to $0.14 of core earnings growth on a basis of $1.54. That’s about an 8 to 9% growth rate which is imminently achievable for us certainly relative to our history. But maybe one way to pressure test that, Erika, might be to look at the low end of the guidance next year and see if that still hangs together. So what are we saying? We’re saying 6% loan growth which we’re tracking to currently and expect to continue and flat NIMs. That would tell you NII of about 6% plus a percentage point or two of fee income generation would get you to revs of 7.8%. An operating leverage of 300 basis points. If you back out to the 150 that I just mentioned and just take the low end of our secular expectation of 100 basis points, you’re looking at PPNR growth we think next year of 9 to 10%.
So we feel very, very confident about delivering the 1.75 to 1.83 next year.
Steve Steinour (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
Erika, thanks for the question. I’m sure it was on the minds of most.
Erika Najarian (Analyst)
Thank you. And Eric, that was a good bridge and sort of a follow-up question maybe for both Steve and Brant. On the CRE side, were there just deals and relationships in your new markets that didn’t quite pass the Huntington test in terms of the pressure from this, or was it the rate environment? And as we think about the PPNR growth of 9 to 10%, did you sort of pressure test that against your conservatism vis-à-vis how you think of growth?
Brant Standridge (President)
We, the answer is yes to the second question, and there was a fair amount of refinance activity, as you suggested, tied to a rate expectation. So we saw a fair amount of flow, frankly much more than we expected in the month of July and August, into Fannie/Freddie. Some of it went to debt funds. I would characterize that as loans that would be a low pass or criticized on the CRE side. The debt funds were offering more flexibility than the perceived posture of us. But most of it went Freddie/Fannie, and it wasn’t the new partnerships. The majority of it came out of the existing franchise. Again, good rate hike anticipation and an opportunity to lock in, particularly in the Freddie/Fannie stuff, at that time. Now, going forward with rates up, the activity will slow, and that’s in our expectation and outlook for ’27. The area we’ve been most focused on is the amount of construction commitments, and that significantly reduced during the quarter, about 8% for commercial real estate construction commitments.
So over the course of the next couple of years those commitments will continue but at a much more modest level, and we’ll manage it on that basis. And we see this as just a risk management strategy on our part.
OPERATOR
Got it. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of John Arfstrom with RBC. Please proceed with your question.
Steve Steinour (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
Morning, John.
John Arfstrom (Analyst)
Thanks. Good morning. Hey, good morning. Just a follow-up on some of these comments about lending. Steve, you’re flagging a more competitive, less rational environment. What changes that in your view? And you’re lagging the H.8 data a little bit. I’m assuming you’re not happy with that. But what, what in your mind is the right pace of loan growth for your company given all the new markets?
Steve Steinour (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
Well, and Brant can come into this too, giving us new responsibilities. But we’re, you know, we’re long term in our approach and we’re going to maintain our aggregate moderate to low risk appetite. We’ve all been talking about a K-shaped economy that’s getting more stressed with rising rates and an expectation of further rate rises. Our own view, at least my view, is that rates are going to be up, stay up for a while at higher levels. So with that, that will put pressure on pricing commercial real estate and elsewhere, and that will have, over time, a dampening effect.
And I don’t know when that may occur, but having been around this for four and a half decades, I’m a little more cautious perhaps than some of my peers at this moment. I don’t see a tipping point. I don’t think this is a ’26, ’27 event, but there’s just so much volatility in the markets today, and I don’t recall the amount of challenges that we’re seeing globally at any time in my career. So naturally we’re going to be sensitive to that in terms of how much volume we want to add.
Additionally, with the competition, we’re just seeing areas where we’re just not getting risk-adjusted returns and rather have capital and return it to shareholders than put it out at what we think would be very low returns, in some cases not even meeting our minimum expectations. So, John, not calling for a downturn, but just trying to be cautious as we tighten up here with 17 years of recovery behind us. Brant, what do you want to add?
Brant Standridge (President)
Yeah, John, I would just add a couple of things. One, to reiterate Steve’s point, auto and specifically resi are two places that margins have gotten much tighter. Obviously in the case of resi, demand a little lower because of interest rates. But our pullback really reflects more of capital allocation discipline versus a change in the ultimate business. And just from a Q3 perspective, I would say loan balances were pretty much as we said and as we expected.
But we’re also still tracking towards our guide for the full year, 2026, which, as you know, would imply a strong fourth quarter. And you see the momentum for that strong fourth quarter in the end-of-period balances at the end of the quarter. Pipelines remain strong, in fact, in a number of our commercial businesses, the largest pipelines we’ve seen. And so we feel confident about our ability to grow into the fourth quarter and also achieve the guidance that we’ve outlined for growth in 2027.
And we are assuming that those competitive pressures that we’re feeling in those two businesses continue into 2027. Should that change and should that become more attractive, then we have obviously upside opportunity there. But we’re assuming that that will continue for the full year next year.
John Arfstrom (Analyst)
Right. Okay. And I guess the follow-up on that, I think what you’re saying is it’s just a competitive issue, it’s not a credit issue. And Steve, you’re not seeing anything from a credit point of view that’s going to change your appetite. Is that fair?
Steve Steinour (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
That’s correct, John. You know, we’re making a strategic credit capital allocation in terms of commercial real estate to adjust here, which we expect to continue to do over time. But the other businesses are doing very well. And in terms of both real estate and indirect auto lending, that’s just pricing and return, the capital allocation issue Brant referenced. We don’t change our underwriting. We haven’t changed it in 17 years. You see the quarterly stats on the consumer side.
So if it gets back to where the returns are adequate, then we’ll open it up.
John Arfstrom (Analyst)
All right, thank you very much.
Steve Steinour (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
Thank you.
OPERATOR
Our next question comes from the line of Ken Houston with Autonomous Research. Please proceed with your question.
Ken Houston (Analyst)
Hey, thanks. Good morning. Just another follow-up on the bridge to ’27. Just because there’s a gap in belief between the PPNR and the EPS. You know, it’s hard to look this far out, but since you did on the walk, what does your outlook for credit look like in that? And maybe even just help us with tax rate? And could the buybacks be bigger even than what you’ve outlined as your expectation?
Brendan
Thanks, Ken. This is Brendan. I’ll start with the credit outlook and Eric can chip in at the end here. You know, we continue to feel very confident in the construct, in our execution around the credit portfolio. We’ve had very stable and strong performance for the last year. We have, through nine months this year, we’re at 27 basis points of charge-offs, in the low end of our guided range, and we feel really good about the overall composition of the portfolio and we expect that to continue into ’27. And so where I sit today, I think credit is a very stable part of the portfolio and feel pretty good about how that sets us up for ’27.
Eric, do you have anything?
Eric Wasterscham (Director of Investor Relations)
So I think, Ken, you are very politely asking whether reserve release is part of our story for next year. And let’s just say unambiguously that it does not contemplate any reserve release in 2027. I think our expectation is that we will be building reserves as our portfolio grows.
Ken Houston (Analyst)
Okay. And then should we just expect similar tax rate to continue? And then you guys have articulated the buyback, so I assume that that’s the path that you’d expect to continue on.
Eric Wasterscham (Director of Investor Relations)
Yeah. Tax rate, I mean, no anticipated changes to our statutory, for sure. You know, in terms of share repurchases, our expectation is that between this year and next year to carry out a repurchase program of about $1.8 to $1.9 billion. You saw us do the 100 million in the third. We’ve done 50 so far in the fourth. And it is our goal to continue to execute against that plan while also accreting capital higher, based largely on our very attractive return profile, which is nearly 17% ROTC.
Yeah. Okay, thank you.
OPERATOR
Our next question comes from the line of John Pancary with Evercore ISI. Please proceed with your question.
John Pancary (Analyst at Evercore ISI)
Morning. All right. I appreciate all the discussion around competition and everything. Maybe if you could kind of talk about how, what’s that interpreted on the personnel side. Maybe if you could update us on the banker retention of the Texas acquisitions and relationship retention and competitive pressures there. Have you been able to retain the bankers that you anticipated now that you’ve integrated the deals, or has that impacted at all your pricing strategy in those markets?
Brant Standridge (President)
John, this is Brant. I’ll take that question. And first of all, I would say as it relates to retention of both customers and bankers, it’s within the expectations that we set at the beginning of this. One of the things that we put a tremendous amount of focus on during the process leading up to the announcement was the identification of the leadership and the retention of the leadership. In fact, as we’ve described, we were able to bring several hundred leaders under the tent before the announcement so that they were sure about what their future looked like.
And we were intentional about how to approach retention of those individuals. And I would say we’ve been very successful at retaining the top leadership within the Huntington Bancshares organization. And then that’s translated to achieving our expectations from a banker perspective. As it relates to customers, there’s, you know, anytime you go through this, they’re obviously going to be customers that may not fit the new organization, but none of that has been outside of our appetite. And we continue to see really significant opportunity in these new markets. And in fact, you know, at Barclays, we shared that our expectations for revenue synergies were actually higher than what we had originally committed.
So in short, John, we’re feeling positive about where we are and very, very optimistic about the opportunities that these markets present to the company.
Steve Steinour (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
And John, we’re continuing to invest and build out capabilities in a variety of these markets and in different business lines. Brant, do you want to pick up on that in terms of some of the wealth and commercial capital markets?
Brant Standridge (President)
Yeah, absolutely. So, John, you go back to your question about pricing and how do we think about it. One of the biggest revenue synergies is just the optimization of the Huntington Bancshares deposit portfolio. And we continue to be in line with our expectations there. And you know, as you saw in our relative performance from a deposit perspective, I think our results this quarter reflect the opportunity that that has presented. As it relates to the revenue synergies, bringing other capabilities of the company into these new markets is still a big opportunity. So whether that is in the payments area, where you saw from our prepared remarks, we continue to have very strong growth and specifically very strong commercial growth, or whether that’s in wealth management, where we continue to experience growth not just in the new franchise but in the core franchise, that is still an opportunity.
We are adding resources as we speak in those markets. And then in our capital markets business, the capabilities that we bring to the table for the new Huntington Bancshares customer base is substantial, and that business overall is doing quite well. First and second quarter were both record quarters. If you look at the year-over-year performance in the capital markets business, it’s very strong. So we’re, as I said, very optimistic about our opportunity across really the South and Texas and what this partnership presents for us.
Steve Steinour (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
John, we expect to continue to invest, add to the teams, build further our capabilities to deliver locally in Texas and the South as we go forward. We’ve had some great recruiting throughout the year, particularly on the commercial side and wealth businesses, and that will continue amongst the various businesses through ’27 and probably beyond.
Brant Standridge (President)
I’ll start with that and then Eric can pick up on the beta component. First of all, just from a competitive environment related to funding and deposits, I would say it’s relatively stable since September. It’s still very competitive but we believe rational. We look at deposit pricing across more than 50 rate regions and we continue to optimize the pricing market by market. Where we have seen more pressure is really on CD pricing. We’re seeing some aggressive action in CD pricing if you look at pricing across our different geographies.
I think overall the Midwest is still the most competitive market we’re in if you just look at pure cost of a new deposit dollar, but more competitive really in MMA, and we’re seeing some pressure in Texas and the Southeast from a CD perspective. We continue to think about pricing at both the market level, a product level, a customer level, and then the opportunity. I mentioned earlier on continuing to optimize the Huntington Bancshares portfolio. Our focus has been and will continue to be on generating new primary checking households. The vast majority of our deposit production actually comes from those checking households. And then clearly adding checking households adds to the non-interest-bearing component of our deposit base.
And we’re seeing some excellent success as we’ve introduced digital across the Southeast and Texas. We actually see total production of checking households year over year up 35% for the company. And that’s comparing the Huntington Bancshares history, the Veritex history, and the Huntington Bancshares history to us. I would also share — and you saw this on page six of our deck, or sorry page eight of our deck — what we’re seeing with growth in the deposit verticals as we built out specialty in the commercial businesses.
We’re still seeing really strong growth in our commercial deposit verticals, which provide another opportunity. And then lastly, just deposit balance production overall, business and consumer for the company, because of the addition of the new geographies, up 26% year over year. So the new geographies, the new capabilities in commercial, the opportunity that we have to optimize in the Huntington Bancshares footprint combined with that long-term focus on primary households give us confidence, really, as we go forward from a funding perspective.
Eric Wasterscham (Director of Investor Relations)
John, just to pick up on Brant’s comments there. Of course, our overall objective is to core-fund the organization, and you saw that this quarter with loan growth of about $2 billion and deposit growth of 2.2, so really achieving the strategic objective of. As it relates specifically to beta, as I indicated, we are not anticipating any form of abatement in the competitive environment. And so embedded in our expectation is a beta of around 50 to 60%. And I guess the question is, you know, how well grounded is that expectation? And I would say there’s a few things that give us some view that that is a well pressure-tested figure. First, of course, it is in fact what we’re experiencing in the marketplace currently at this very high level of rational but high level of competitive intensity.
Secondly, intuitively you would anticipate that that would be higher than prior upcycles. And so when we look back at the last upcycle, which was ’22 to ’24, our up beta was around 45%. So that does seem to substantiate that 50 to 60 is well grounded in a different and more competitive environment. And then lastly, of course, I was very interested to understand where we were relative to our peer set. Most of our peers, either in their discussion on their quarter or when I did the arithmetic on their numbers, generally look to be around 40 to 60%.
And I would anticipate that we would be at the higher end of the range given the specific complexion of our deposit base. So the net-net of that is that we feel that that 60 is a very well-grounded figure.
OPERATOR
Our next question comes from the line of Manon Gosalia with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.
Eric Wasterscham (Director of Investor Relations)
Hey, Manon. Are you there? Yeah, now we can. Sorry, go ahead.
Manon Gosalia (Analyst)
Hi, can you hear me? Yeah, I wanted to dig in a little bit more on the resiliency of the C&I loan. As you think about the demand from here and what might happen if rates rise further, where do you expect the demand to come from and where do you expect the growth to come from? Is it more from new geographies and new hires and share gains? Or is there also better demand coming because of AI, even though rates might move higher?
Brant Standridge (President)
Yeah, Manon, this is Brant. I’ll take that question. First of all, just from an environment perspective, I would say the environment for commercial customers is still constructive. We see strong engagement from our customers. Their outlook is generally positive heading into ’26 and ’27. We’re still seeing customers pursue growth opportunities. We’re still seeing customers execute on a number of strategic initiatives. And I would say CapEx spending is still strong.
And as a result of that, our pipelines are still healthy, well diversified, and frankly, just given a number of the factors, some of the strongest that we’ve seen, and as I stated earlier in John’s question, you see that in the growth in our end-of-period balances and the momentum that we’re carrying into the fourth quarter. As it relates to your question of, you know, where does that come from in the future? Is it geography or is it new verticals? Where is it? It’s really both. And that is the beauty of the opportunity that we have in front of us, is that we have multiple potential growth levers that gives us the flexibility to pull back in businesses like Auto and Resi, where the yields aren’t as we would like, and still grow the balance sheet at a level that’s very acceptable.
But we still have a lot of opportunity both in our core footprint where we’re growing, and also in the new geographies with what I would call our core geographic banking model. But then we have the expansion of a national commercial bank that’s in its early innings still. We have a number of our specialty verticals that are really beginning to gain traction. You see that in the growth that we outlined year over year, and we expect that to continue.
And so given the number of kind of broad-based opportunities we have, that’s how we feel confident in our ability to continue to grow at the guidance that we provided.
Steve Steinour (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
Manon, I’ll just add we’re the third or fourth largest bank equipment finance company. And the Build Back Better has accelerated depreciation and other tax attributes that are inducing investment. And we’re just very well positioned to pick up on that on the equipment finance side. So our asset finance business is looking very good and strong going into the fourth quarter as it has historically. Got it.
Manon Gosalia (Analyst)
Very, very helpful. And maybe just to follow up on the NIM side. So you know, you spoke about all the benefits you have on the deposit side. The curve is better, so you should be getting some more backlog repricing as well, and you’re getting strong loan growth. So I guess you spoke about stable NIM, but is there a higher likelihood of NIM expanding from here given that rates are moving higher and the long end of the curve is up?
Eric Wasterscham (Director of Investor Relations)
Yeah. Thanks, Manon. It’s Eric. I would say that we’re definitely anchoring our expectations in stable NIM. We are, to your point, modestly asset-sensitive, and that does benefit us in an environment like the current one where you’re seeing steepening. But I think as we think ahead, you know, we expect fairly significant benefit from fixed asset repricing. But to the conversation that we just had, I think we’re also taking a very conservative posture as it relates to our expectations around deposit costs.
Deposit costs.
Zachary Wasserman, CFA (Chief Financial Officer)
We are addressing both through all of the mechanisms that Brant has described as well as the optimization that we’re doing across the cadence footprint, which, of course, is one of the opportunities that we identified at the time of that partnership. And so I think, really, to the extent that there is upside, it’s going to be a function of the shape of the curve and the changes in the competitive environment. But those are not our baseline expectation.
And so we remain anchored to a flat outlook from here at a level that, relative to our history, is very robust. Three and a quarter.
OPERATOR
Our next question comes from the line of Scott Seifers with TD Cowen. Please proceed with your question.
Scott Seifers (Analyst)
Morning, guys. Thanks for taking the question. So I definitely appreciate you guys addressing all these topics on the competitive environment. And I guess I’d say, it looks like based on what we see in the third quarter numbers specifically and some of the discussion here this morning, you’re kind of having some success resolving those concerns. But one of the most frequent things I hear is there’s just sort of some skepticism around the competitive argument given that others seem to be impacted much less so than you all, with kind of the exception being how much faster you all have grown in the last couple of years.
I guess just at a very top level or philosophically, in light of all you’ve said and what we can start to see in the numbers, can you sort of level set where Huntington strives to play from here as either leader, middle of the pack, or laggard on pricing, both on loans and deposits?
Brant Standridge (President)
Scott, I can start with that. I mean, what we want to do with our customers is exchange value for value. That’s how we would ultimately think about it. And we obviously look at the decisions that we make from a deposit perspective and how we optimize funding within the company with the objective of creating the appropriate NIM and funding cost for the company. But we also look at that from the perspective of the value of an overall relationship of the customers that that represents.
As it relates to asset pricing, we are very conscious of using the capital appropriately, and where we find that we can’t achieve an appropriate return on our capital, we’ve chosen to take less volume. And that’s ultimately what you’ve seen happen over the course of the last six months, specifically in auto and, to a lesser degree, in resi mortgage. We want to create returns and ultimately a return on tangible at the levels that we’ve described. And being disciplined about how we price deposits and funding and then being disciplined about how we allocate capital on the asset side of the sheet is an important part of that equation.
Zachary Wasserman, CFA (Chief Financial Officer)
Scott, maybe just to pick up on the last tail end of your question about how it’s reflected in the numbers, in an environment that Brant has described and what we’re doing in terms of being very rational around risk-adjusted return, we’re growing organically at 6% and are generating a nearly 17% ROTCE, where our peers are growing 7. That does not seem to me like a significant difference with respect to overall production; it could be relative to our history where we have massively outperformed the industry in terms of growth.
Scott Seifers (Analyst)
Yeah, and that’s a good point, and I appreciate that. Maybe as a follow-on, was hoping—and maybe Eric, best for you—just on the fee expectations. Anytime there’s a tweak, even small, only a few weeks after the prior one, it always generates a bunch of questions. So I mean I think I have a sense for what might have changed in the last few weeks, but what kind of caused the tweak lower for the full-year fee guide? And then maybe you can sort of walk through the puts and takes you see to get to that sort of 750-ish number implicit for the fourth quarter.
Zachary Wasserman, CFA (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah. So look, I mean, the fee story continues to be a really, really strong one for us. You know, we came into this year, as a reminder, thinking on a reported basis we would be somewhere between 26.5% and 29.5% growth, and now we think we’re going to be at 31. So there’s been significant outperformance on fees really across all areas of our strategic fee categories, but particularly capital markets, which has been an outstanding story for us. You know, at Barclays we said we would be around 730, and we came in just a little bit underneath that, of course the primary delta being the massive move higher in rates over the course of the quarter, which impacted some of our capital markets activity and, to a lesser extent, mortgage banking.
But as we think about the fourth quarter and the 750, recognizing that it’s still a little earlier in the quarter, you know, we see several things contributing. First, capital markets continue to be strong. The underlying dynamics there are very healthy. We continue to gain more customers across our corporate footprint and our attachment rates are improving. Payments had an extremely strong quarter—this quarter it was 3% sequential growth rate. So that’s obviously annualizing to a 12% rate, somewhat above the secular expectation that we have of high single digit. And wealth: this quarter we had 9% household growth and, on an organic basis, 14% assets under management growth. So again, I think all of the key strategic levers continue to work at a very significant level. So, you know, we’ve got pretty strong view on the 31, notwithstanding all the fluidity in the rate and competitive environment.
Scott Seifers (Analyst)
Yeah, perfect. All right, thank you for all the color. Thank you.
Steve Steinour (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
Let me close with three thoughts. I know we’ve gone over a little bit. Thank you, Christina, as well—I interrupted you to do the wrap here. First, we think we’re very strategically well positioned with substantial scale in high-growth markets that we weren’t present in a year ago. And our value-added fees are showing the investment and the returns we wanted to achieve. Second, we’re disciplined in our execution and it’s driving solid operating performance in a changing environment.
Third, our partner integrations are delivering. We’ve got the cost synergies—they’re fully achieved. Our revenue synergies are tracking ahead of original expectations. The partnerships are certainly expanding our growth runway across Texas and the South. And we’re achieving all this while adhering to our aggregate moderate-to-low risk appetite. And you see that in some of the areas we’re actually pulling back because we can’t get the return for the risk.
Huntington Bancshares today is a stronger, broader, and more capable company with an experienced management team that’s been supplemented by the partnerships and the other investments we’ve made. We are very focused on execution and achieving or beating our objectives. Our outlook reflects the environment we see today and we remain confident in our ability to deliver substantial long-term shareholder value, including the EPS estimates for ’27. Finally, I want to thank our more than 25,000 colleagues for everything they’re doing in a year of substantial change within the company.
Their efforts to strengthen and bolster us are deeply appreciated. So thank you for your interest in the company. Have a great day, everybody.
OPERATOR
This concludes today’s conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company’s SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants’ and analysts’ statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.
Recent Comments