Huntington Bancshares at Barclays Conference: Strategic Growth and Expansion

On Monday, 08 September 2025, Huntington Bancshares (NASDAQ:HBAN) presented at the Barclays 23rd Annual Global Financial Services Conference. The discussion, led by CFO Zach Wasserman and Brant Standridge, Head of Consumer and Regional Banking, highlighted the company’s strong Q3 performance and strategic expansion plans. While Huntington reported impressive loan and deposit growth, the bank also emphasized its focus on organic growth and disciplined risk management.

Key Takeaways

• Huntington reported $2.3 billion in net loan growth quarter-to-date.
• The Net Interest Margin (NIM) is trending around 3.10% for Q3 and Q4, with expectations of growth into 2026 and 2027.
• Expansion into North and South Carolina and Texas, supported by the Veritex acquisition, is a key growth strategy.
• The bank is focused on organic growth, with strategic acquisitions complementing this approach.
• Huntington plans to reinvest cost savings into digital technology and marketing initiatives.

Financial Results

• Cumulative loan growth through Q2 was 7.9%, significantly outpacing peers.
• Q3 net loan growth stands at $2.3 billion as of last month.
• NIM is expected to remain at 3.10% for Q3 and Q4, with future increases anticipated.
• Q3 fee revenues are projected to be approximately $550 million.
• Payments, wealth management, and capital markets saw an 11% year-over-year growth in Q2.
• Expense growth is forecasted at 5% to 6% for the year, with revenue growth surpassing this rate.
• Full-year loan growth is expected to reach the high end of the 6% to 8% range.

Operational Updates

• Huntington’s growth strategy prioritizes organic initiatives in both core and new markets.
• The bank has opened 55 branches in North and South Carolina, with three already operational.
• The Veritex acquisition is a catalyst for growth in Texas, particularly in Dallas and Houston.
• Digital channels accounted for 51% of new consumer household acquisitions last quarter.
• A new brand campaign has been launched to boost awareness in new markets.

Future Outlook

• Huntington anticipates NIM to increase into 2026 and 2027.
• The bank targets 1% to 2% sequential loan growth on a quarterly basis through 2026.
• Net Interest Income (NII) is expected to grow sequentially into Q3 and Q4, continuing into 2026.
• Fee income is projected to rise by 4% to 6% for the year.
• The bank expects sustainable high single-digit to low double-digit growth in tangible book value per share through the decade’s end.
• Share repurchases are anticipated to resume post-Veritex acquisition.

Q&A Highlights

• Credit quality remains strong with low consumer utilization rates.
• The Veritex acquisition is seen as beneficial, with clear expense and revenue synergies.
• Huntington’s primary focus is on organic growth, with acquisitions being selective.
• The wealth business has doubled over the last five years, with plans to double again in the next five years.

For a detailed insight into Huntington Bancshares’ strategies and financial performance, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - Barclays 23rd Annual Global Financial Services Conference:

Jason, Host, Barclays: Let me just join you, Vancannah’s comments from earlier, just welcoming everyone to our 23rd annual Global Financial Services Conference. I’m very pleased you could all make it. I can’t miss this opportunity. In the back is our kind of updated marketing deck and posters, so please make sure to grab them at some point over the next three days. We’re very pleased to have kicking off our kind of company sections, Huntington Bancshares, to start it off from the company of Zach Wasserman, Chief Financial Officer, Brant Standridge, who runs Consumer and Regional Banking. They’re going to start off with a few prepared remarks. I’m not sure if you saw they posted some slides early this morning, and then we’re going to jump right into Q&A. As they kind of come up here, I’d just like to put up the first ARS question.

What we’re going to have throughout the three days in the conference, and we’ve done this every year since 2012, is just put up questions in front of you. You should have kind of clickers. They look like the 1998 BlackBerrys. To answer these, we’ll compile the data, publish it at the end. The first question is the same for every company. What is your current position in the shares? And then you characterize your positioning. We look at how that evolved over time, as well as kind of rank the banks at the end, it’s pretty neat. Throughout our conversation, we’re going to pull up questions to kind of poll the audience and kind of get management’s reactions when appropriate, kind of in real time, to the extent that it maybe differs from the current market view is.

I’ll pull up there, hand it over to these guys, and then we’ll be back.

Zach Wasserman, Chief Financial Officer, Huntington Bancshares: Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Thank you, Jason and Barclays, for hosting us. I am pleased to share an update on Huntington’s accomplishments in the third quarter and detail our progress toward our goals that we articulated at our Investor Day in February. Before we get started, please review slide two and three, which apply to forward-looking statements we will make today. Beginning on slide four, there are four key messages I want to share with you today. First, we continue to execute on our growth strategy, which remains primarily oriented toward organic initiatives in both our core and new markets. To accomplish this, we implement a proven playbook that enables us to deliver national-scale products and capabilities in a localized manner in our regions with outstanding results. Second, we’re driving strong profit growth from our combination of revenue expansion and positive operating leverage.

Third, strong credit quality remains a hallmark of Huntington. Our growth is occurring within our longstanding risk framework. Fourth, we are well positioned for outperformance through a range of economic conditions and interest rate environments by virtue of our disciplined approach to capital, liquidity, and credit management. Moving on to slide five, over the past five quarters, we’ve consistently delivered peer-leading loan and deposit growth, and we’ve expanded our key fee income streams while delivering positive operating leverage. Through the second quarter of this year, cumulative loan growth was 7.9%, or seven percentage points better than the peer median. In fact, quarter-to-date loan growth is tracking even better than we had expected, with $2.3 billion of net loan growth as of the end of last month.

NIM in Q3 is also performing very well and above our prior expectations, now trending at around 310 basis points or even higher for the third quarter and around a similar level for the fourth quarter. Our balance sheet remains relatively neutral to changes in the interest rate environment, and we expect NIM not only to trend with a stable trend in the back half of this year, but to then rise into 2026 and 2027, mainly driven by continued benefits from fixed asset repricing and the general upward sloping nature of the yield curve and how it’s evolving. This asset growth and resilient NIM is translating into strong spread revenue growth, and we expect this momentum to continue through the rest of the year and into 2026. We are also advancing a key priority by expanding our payments, wealth, and capital markets fee businesses.

These areas are growing robustly, powering solid overall fee income expansion. We are accomplishing this while sustaining positive operating leverage. We remain focused on our expense management approach, which is centered on delivering positive operating leverage supported by sustained re-engineering of baseline operating costs that creates outsized capacity to invest in revenue growth initiatives. We are on pace to deliver stronger operating leverage in 2025 than we had originally anticipated coming into this year. Turning to slide six, since 2023, our core franchise has been the engine that drives our growth. We are relentless in focus on growing primary bank customers, deepening our relationships with them over time, and continuing to win in the markets in which we have a strong legacy presence.

Within our core over the last two years, we have substantially increased our corporate, middle market, and consumer customers while expanding the breadth of the value-added services we provide them in areas like payments, wealth management, and capital markets. This success is evidenced in our outstanding consumer and business banking household growth and peer-leading loan and deposit growth. This operating and financial performance has enabled us to pursue strategic expansion opportunities from a position of strength. I would like to invite now Brant up to the stage to discuss our model for new market growth.

Brant Standridge, Runs Consumer and Regional Banking, Huntington Bancshares: Thank you, Zach, and Jason. Thank you so much for having us. Turning to slide seven, as Zach just articulated, our position of strength allows us to opportunistically invest in new initiatives. These initiatives take two forms. First, we’ve intentionally grown by adding several new national verticals. This expansion has increased the breadth of expertise available to our existing customers and expanded our reach to new markets and customers. Second, we’ve entered new geographies, notably North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas. As we entered these new geographies, we’ve leveraged the foundation created through our national specialty verticals and added locally focused teams, starting with middle market and regional banking. We believe local colleagues with local relationships integrated with national expertise are valued by customers. I want to take a moment and double-click over the next few slides into our unique and differentiated regional banking business model.

Turning to slide eight, the essential component of our approach is what we have fashioned our regional bank model to deliver. Local relationships, leveraging local relationships, this value proposition is a powerful competitive differentiator. While many banks have shifted towards specialty or vertical alignment, we’ve distinguished ourselves by delivering the full Huntington franchise through our trusted local bankers, creating a more holistic and personalized customer experience. In early 2023, we enhanced our local approach and combined our business bank with the lower middle market, creating a new regional bank segment that covers all business customers under $50 million in revenue, which, as you all know, make up the large majority of businesses in a market. Bottom line, we have the products and expertise of a large national bank, but deliver those through local relationships as an integrated team with the service and attention of a local community bank.

Turning to slide nine, leading this effort, we’ve assigned regional presidents for our 12 regions and empowered them with the enhanced decision-making capabilities and comprehensive P&L accountability. The regional president is responsible for integrating all the lines of business located within a region. This model brings us closer to the customer, differentiates us through greater focus on local, and creates alignment that enables us to go to market as one Huntington team, bringing all the key products and services to bear in a highly coordinated manner for each of our customers. We’ve also continued to invest in building deeper expertise across specialty verticals. These national commercial specialty verticals and our local teams complement each other. The expertise that the specialty teams provide enhances our value to locally managed customers, and the scale of our local teams creates a deeper market opportunity for our specialties.

Turning to slide 10, when we’re establishing a new regional market, we have a two-phase approach. We lead the expansion with our commercial bank and specialty business lines, recruiting talented bankers and credit risk leaders with long tenure and deep local relationships. This approach ensures we have a good client selection aligned to our risk parameters. It also creates an investment profile that drives a quick path to profitability. In fact, we achieve profitability within the first year of both our middle market launches in North Carolina and South Carolina, as well as Texas. Our success with our commercial and specialty business builds the local leadership and brand recognition that supports the opportunity to further expand with the rollout of the complete Huntington franchise, including our consumer business and the build-out of a branch network.

Turning to slide 11, perhaps the most powerful feature of this model is the fact that we’ve successfully implemented it across our regions at scale. This has proven to be a value proposition for our customers across all geographies. The proof points are everywhere. Across our footprint, we’re seeing solid continued growth in established core markets where we have deeply embedded local presence and enjoy high density. We’ve also driven excellent share gains with the newer core markets that came to us in the TCF acquisition and where we continue to expand rapidly and capture the revenue growth synergies we had expected. As we have discussed, we are driving excellent early results from the growth initiatives in our expansion markets. In North Carolina and South Carolina, our model has created a foundation from which we have launched our full franchise.

We’ve already opened the first three of the 55 branches we plan to open, and our early results are very promising. In Texas, our local middle market initiative has been doing exceptionally well. The acquisition of Veritex lines up perfectly with our focus on Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston. It significantly advances our build-out in those markets and provides a springboard for accelerating growth in Texas over the next several years. Importantly, the regional bank model that I described earlier makes it seamless for us to integrate Veritex into Huntington. We will create two new regions in Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston, and our operating approach there will be aligned to the way we go to market in other Huntington geographies.

Turning to slide 12 and to wrap up, we, as a management team, have been relentlessly focused on driving growth in both core and expansion markets, scaling our commercial verticals, and deepening customer relationships. Our regional banking model enables us to deliver national capabilities locally, and our disciplined approach ensures we’re building a durable, high-performing franchise that is managed within our aggregate moderate to low risk appetite and existing credit policies. We are energized by the opportunities ahead and confident in our ability to deliver sustained value for our customers, colleagues, and shareholders. Let me turn it to Jason for Q&A.

Jason, Host, Barclays: Thanks, guys. Pretty informative. Maybe we could just start big picture. You mentioned kind of this unique model you have. Just maybe talk to kind of what’s different about your model that allows you to outgrow peers. You showed that loan growth chart. Clearly, you’ve outpaced the industry. At the same time, your credit quality metrics have been probably better than the industry. Maybe just talking to that and I guess how comfortable can we be that you’re putting on this loan growth and we’re not going to see degradation looking out?

Zach Wasserman, Chief Financial Officer, Huntington Bancshares: Sure. I’ll kick that off and then Brant will tack on. I think first and foremost, it starts in the foundational way that we run the business, which is to always be in a position of strength. From a credit perspective, having a very intentionally diversified portfolio, very rigorous upfront client selection, and an ongoing portfolio management approach. Secondly, in terms of liquidity, to make the foundational core deposit engine a critical element of the strategy and always focus on the strength of the liquidity, having the highest insured deposit level of any large bank, having one of the best liquidity profiles of any large bank, and then capital to always ensure that we’ve got the capital to support our customers and then capture new growth opportunities.

We augment that with a rigor and a discipline with how we manage the company where we’re holding accountability, having a strong line of sight to how these new initiatives are going. Lastly, as we’ve said all along, we’re focused on driving strong performance in the core. When we have opportunistically the opportunity to capture a new growth opportunity, we only do that when we know that the team is ready to execute, when they’ve got deep local knowledge and expertise of that segment of the geography, and when we’re prepared to execute in that business the same as we execute across the rest of our business.

Brant Standridge, Runs Consumer and Regional Banking, Huntington Bancshares: Jason, that’s a great question. It starts with the right bankers. This model really allows the bankers who’ve supported relationships for many years to continue to be the central point for those relationships. That’s frankly very attractive to those senior bankers. In each of these markets that we’ve entered with these new initiatives, we’ve done so with very, very experienced bankers who know their customers and know the markets. We’ve also been able to attract very senior local credit professionals. Those credit professionals, supported through our more central credit organization, know the market and know the individual customers, and allow us to manage risk within our stated risk appetite.

Those things combined really give us a lot of confidence that we can continue to grow with this model, but do so in a way that is very prudent and in keeping with where our company has been for many, many years.

Jason, Host, Barclays: I guess, Brant, you touched on it in your presentation, but last year at this conference, you guys kind of announced for the first time your expansion to the Carolinas with branches. Just maybe update us further on your progress there.

Brant Standridge, Runs Consumer and Regional Banking, Huntington Bancshares: Oh, it’s going quite well. The branch build-out has been so very successful. We’ve opened, as I mentioned earlier, the first three of those locations. We have a couple more opening this year. We’ve actually secured the vast majority of the sites already. We’ll have a very large and significant opening year next year. We’ve also continued to build out the entire franchise. We’ve added capabilities from a mortgage and home lending perspective. We’ve added capabilities from a wealth perspective. We’ve expanded the size of the regional banking platforms there. The reception that we’ve received from the market has been quite positive. It is a clear symbol to the market that we’re there to invest and that we’ll be there.

When you combine that with the work that we’ve been doing from a marketing perspective to share the Huntington story with the marketplace, we’re very pleased with our progress thus far.

Jason, Host, Barclays: Maybe we put up the next ARS question. It’s just thoughts on the audience’s thoughts on the Veritex acquisition. Brant, maybe I’ll just ask you, just how does that deal kind of fit into the broader picture of Huntington’s kind of growth strategy? Does it prohibit you from doing additional deals? What’s your thoughts on this strategy? Is an early foreclosure still on the table?

Brant Standridge, Runs Consumer and Regional Banking, Huntington Bancshares: We remain very, very committed that our primary strategy is organic growth. When you look at Texas, and obviously this group knows how important that market is, how fast it’s growing, and also how significant and large it is, the acquisition of Veritex really is a springboard for our organic growth in the state of Texas. As I mentioned earlier, we had already launched there from a middle market perspective. We’ve had a number of our specialty businesses that have been in Texas for a number of years. Veritex now gives us a significant share in the Dallas market, a real foothold in the Houston market, a list of really fantastic customers that we can now bring the entire franchise to. We view it really as a springboard for what would be a very strong organic opportunity in Texas.

Jason, Host, Barclays: I guess foreclosure seemed, I guess, one of the announcements seemed kind of quick relative to what maybe we saw in other administrations. Just your thoughts around that.

Brant Standridge, Runs Consumer and Regional Banking, Huntington Bancshares: We feel confident that we could potentially have an early foreclosure.

Jason, Host, Barclays: Sounds good. I guess you mentioned marketing in your kind of other answer. I was maybe a couple of weeks ago, Huntington put out an announcement, basically a brand relaunch, so to speak. How does that fit into the strategy? How do you measure that? Any kind of early signs of success?

Brant Standridge, Runs Consumer and Regional Banking, Huntington Bancshares: Interestingly, we shared this at Investor Day, but one of the things the company’s developed over really the last decade is a strong capability in performance or acquisition marketing. In fact, last quarter, 51% of our new consumer households are acquired digitally, and a lot of that’s driven through marketing. That marketing is most successful in the places where we have high levels of awareness. One of the things that we’ve been doing over the last couple of years is how do we expand our awareness in markets that were newer, like Colorado, like Chicago, like Minnesota, and now like the new expansion markets. We’re doing more with broad reach marketing. Just last year, we made the announcement that we would name the Cleveland Browns Stadium. That was obviously a small investment in our broader reach marketing.

We’ve done a number of things in North Carolina and South Carolina and also Colorado to expand our awareness there in ways that are very unique to the market. We had not updated our visual identity in 14 years, and there was an opportunity for us to do that. We added the word bank to our name as we think about expanding into newer markets. We also have launched a new brand campaign that is shot in a very modularized fashion. This allows us to take the same spot and make it much, much more local, which is not only just central to our strategy, but an advantage from a marketing perspective. We’ve begun to see really positive early results from that. Our aided and unaided awareness in Colorado and Chicago and the Carolinas has climbed steadily, and that translates into a significant growth in acquisition.

The month of July for us was the best month from an acquisition that we’ve had in our consumer acquisition in over 10 years. We’re really pleased with the work that we’re doing and how our marketing efforts are really translating into more customers.

Jason, Host, Barclays: All right, Zach, now we have to get into the financials. Maybe I usually don’t start here, but I’m going to start with expenses just because more recently that’s kind of been a big topic on investors’ minds. We talked about branch expansion. We talked about rebranding, organic growth. Obviously, all that does require expenses. Can you talk about just how you intend to kind of further scale organic investments? You’ve talked about positive operating leverage a bit at Investor Day and other forums. Just how you’re thinking about that, particularly as we enter kind of the 2026 budgeting season.

Zach Wasserman, Chief Financial Officer, Huntington Bancshares: Sure. It’s an area that we spend a lot of time focusing on. The model for our expense management approach is very clear and foundational to the way we operate the company. First and foremost, as I noted in my prepared remarks, we drive for systematic re-engineering, ongoing sustainable reductions in baseline operating costs. Over the last five years, we’ve taken out each year roughly 1% incremental out of the cost base through automation and a lot of other foundational re-engineering capabilities. That allows us to, second, plow that back into investments. If you think about the offensive categories of expenses, digital technology development, marketing of the nature that Brant Standridge just highlighted, and then the ability to add new people to go and drive these new growth initiatives, that is an incredibly foundational capability.

Third, we manage the total amount of expenses, both the baseline and these investments, to be growing less than revenue. The last five years is a great, the last three years have been a great example of that. We’ve been growing overall expenses at about 5%, less than the growth rate of revenue, but investments within that are growing between 20% and 25%. When you see 10% revenue growth, there’s a linkage to that that makes a lot of sense. Ultimately, what we want to do is drive sustainable expansion and positive operating leverage and really support the profit engine of the business. This year is a great example. As I noted, now we’re seeing faster revenue growth this year, but also wider operating margin, even as investments are also somewhat higher as we stand today versus our original budget.

Jason, Host, Barclays: I guess you talked about in July 5% to 6% expense growth for this year.

Zach Wasserman, Chief Financial Officer, Huntington Bancshares: Yes, very, very confident in that. I think we’ll see revenue growth, obviously, well north of that.

Jason, Host, Barclays: All right. We talked about loan growth a bit. You showed certainly good average loan growth quarter to date. I guess better than the guidance you gave last quarter. I think we were thinking 1% growth. You talked for third quarter now, it’s closer to 2%. Maybe just talk about kind of your expectations in the back half of the year into 2026 loan growth.

Zach Wasserman, Chief Financial Officer, Huntington Bancshares: Loan growth continues to be powerfully solid and sustained expansion. It’s quite broad-based. Through the first half of the year, we saw about 60% of the growth from our core businesses, 40% from a lot of the new initiatives that Brant Standridge highlighted during his presentation. That’s where we’re continuing to see that mix of power into Q3, somewhere between 1.5% and 2.0% sequential growth into the third quarter. Pipelines for the fourth quarter continue to look very good. Q4 is typically a seasonal high for Huntington Bancshares in terms of loan production, and everything seems to be shaping up to see another solid amount of sequential growth into Q4. We’re not giving formal guidance for 2026 at this point, but my working assumption is somewhere between 1% and 2% sequential growth on a quarterly basis as we go into next year.

Jason, Host, Barclays: Interesting, because your guidance, I guess, for loan growth for the full year in July was 6% to 8%. You’ve already done 7% if I just take through August, and you’re looking for more growth into the fourth quarter.

Zach Wasserman, Chief Financial Officer, Huntington Bancshares: Clearly, Jason, we’re setting ourselves up to be able to increase guidance as we go into our earnings call. Stay tuned. In all seriousness, it’s performing quite well. I think we’ll be sort of at the high end, if not above those ranges.

Jason, Host, Barclays: When you look at kind of the loan growth relative to the guidance, any particular pockets of surprising strength?

Brant Standridge, Runs Consumer and Regional Banking, Huntington Bancshares: No, I mean, it’s across the board. We’re seeing in our core markets, the capabilities that we’ve built with the national specialties allow us to do more for our existing customers. The new initiatives, whether it’s the national expansion of some of these verticals or the new geographies in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas, really provide a significant growth opportunity as well. We believe we can continue to grow substantially with the capabilities we’ve continued to build. It’s broad-based across the board.

Jason, Host, Barclays: Maybe shift gears to NIM. You know, Zach, you mentioned, I think, 3.10% for the third quarter. When we last spoke in July, you were saying 3.08% to 3.10%. A little bit better than that. Maybe just talk to how you’re thinking about funding costs, deposit betas. The Fed, I’m told, is going to cut next week. Just kind of, you know, where do you see the NIM playing out?

Zach Wasserman, Chief Financial Officer, Huntington Bancshares: Yeah. I think, as I noted, seeing a very strong performance in NIM for the third quarter, coming in about the same as last quarter, which was 3.11, somewhere between 3.10 and 3.11 this quarter. We see about that same result again in Q4, then rising NIMs into 2026, rising further into 2027. It’s setting up to have a nice continued margin expansion for us. In the near term, the primary source of outperformance relative to even our own internal thinking for this quarter has been deposit pricing. The teams are performing exceptionally well, continuing to drive out costs of funding, even as we also continue to grow deposits. We’ll see deposits grow this quarter and feel pretty good about how the deposit growth trend will trend over the next number of quarters as well. We’re seeing very strong fundamental performance across the board, which is supporting that.

If you think about the kind of the longer-term trajectory of NIM and that upward bias toward it, as I noted earlier, fixed asset repricing, we continue to benefit from. We’re seeing something between 8 and 9 basis points of year-over-year improvement in NIM this year from fixed asset repricing. That should continue on with additional benefits into 2026, additional benefits into 2027. The general steepening of the yield curve certainly is helpful for us as well.

Jason, Host, Barclays: Got it. We just skipped to the fourth ARS question. After a little bit, you could put up the answer. I guess shifting gears, or maybe not shifting gears, let’s stay here. We talked about loan growth. We talked about deposit growth. We talked about net interest margin. Obviously, bringing it all together, we get to net interest income. Maybe just help us kind of frame it. I did some quick math, but I’d love to get yours. Just how do you see NII shaping up in the second half of the year? Maybe elaborate a bit. I don’t know if the Fed goes 25 basis points next week. Someone told me 50. Just how the rate environment influences that.

Zach Wasserman, Chief Financial Officer, Huntington Bancshares: We do expect to see some sequential growth in NII dollars into the third quarter. We should see further growth into the fourth. As we go into next year, expecting to see a very solid continued revenue growth profile from net interest income as we go into 2026. Feel quite good about how that is shaping up. We’ve positioned the balance sheet to be effectively asset neutral right now. That was very intentional in order to maintain this stability in the face of what is clearly an uncertain environment. If we start to see some Fed rate reductions, we think we’re very well placed to be able to capture that in terms of additional lower deposit costs, even as we continue to power deposit growth from here.

Jason, Host, Barclays: I guess in the earnings call in July, you mentioned flat NII in Q3. Now we’re saying up NII in Q3, up again in Q4. I think at one point you’re talking up 8% to 9% for the year. You kind of keep on raising that as well.

Zach Wasserman, Chief Financial Officer, Huntington Bancshares: Again, we will reset guidance more formally when we come to our earnings call in October. My expectations will be at the high end of that range, if not above that range, as we relook.

Jason, Host, Barclays: Thanks. Fee income has been a big focus of Huntington for the last several years. Just maybe how you think about fee income growth from here. I’d love you to touch on payments, wealth management, capital markets. That’s certainly.

Zach Wasserman, Chief Financial Officer, Huntington Bancshares: You put a lot of investments there.

Brant Standridge, Runs Consumer and Regional Banking, Huntington Bancshares: Jason, I can start. There are three areas, three primary areas that we’ve been focused on: wealth, capital markets, and payments. You mentioned the three. Obviously, there’s bringing those capabilities to our existing installed customer base. Deepening those relationships with wealth capabilities, capital markets capabilities, and payments capabilities has been and is proving to be a really great opportunity for us. There are businesses specifically that we’ve been investing intentionally in. A disproportionate amount of that investment that Zach described, we’ve been pulling out of our operating expenses, goes to those three businesses. As a result of that, we’re seeing very strong growth in each of the three. I’ll highlight specifically our wealth business. That’s a business that’s doubled over the last five years. We announced at Investor Day we would intend to double it again over the next five years.

We have the number of advisory customers actually growing double digits. We’re seeing AUM grow double digits, and we would see that continuing. We’re very bullish about the opportunity in those three and other areas of fee revenue, and we’ll continue to disproportionately invest there.

Zach Wasserman, Chief Financial Officer, Huntington Bancshares: Maybe I’ll just double-click into that. For the third quarter, seeing fee revenues essentially spot on our initial guidance in the quarter around $550 million on a core basis. As Brant noted, the real power drivers of that are our payments, wealth management, and capital markets. Those businesses collectively in the second quarter grew 11% year over year in terms of revenue growth. That’s about the profile that we’re expecting from them over the next several years.

Jason, Host, Barclays: Fees up 4% to 6% for the year. Still feel good about that.

Zach Wasserman, Chief Financial Officer, Huntington Bancshares: Feel great about that.

Jason, Host, Barclays: Maybe to touch on credit quality for a second. You talked about it earlier, but just as you look out, any particular areas of concern that you’re raising an eye on? Consumer data has maybe been a little bit soft. There’s this tariff impact starting to hurt or affect the commercial side. Just maybe kind of talk to what you’re seeing, hearing from your customers.

Brant Standridge, Runs Consumer and Regional Banking, Huntington Bancshares: We still see credit quality as being quite strong. The consumer still is, our consumer is still quite strong. We’re seeing utilization rates that are still low. A number of our consumer-focused businesses, like our auto finance business, have had very strong summer months. We also see payments data that would say that our payments activity through debit has slowed slightly, but is still looking very good. We’ve been very focused on continuing to enhance our risk and underwriting in our small business area because that’s an area that was impacted by rising rates. We’ve seen that continue to stabilize, and I think we’ll potentially see some improvement there. Overall, we feel very good about where we are from a credit quality perspective, and we obviously manage that quite tightly and have been for a number of years.

Jason, Host, Barclays: Got it. Maybe capital. Just, I guess, how do we think about trajectory of capital ratios going forward? You talked about loan growth. You talked about organic expansion. Just, you know, Huntington has not bought back stock in quite a while. How do you think about potential share repurchase in the future?

Zach Wasserman, Chief Financial Officer, Huntington Bancshares: Yeah, great question. I’ll take that one. You know, from a capital perspective, as we’ve noted on a number of prior occasions, we are primarily managing toward the adjusted CET1 ratio inclusive of AOCI. We have a target operating range for that metric of between 9% and 10%. As of last quarter, we were right at 9%, and that’s been growing steadily over the last two years. Our expectations will continue to see that metric rise, and we will drive that up into the middle of that operating range. What we’re obviously very fortunate is we’ve got a top-tier return on capital, which is allowing us to power and fund the high-return loan growth that we’re seeing come through and that we’re continuing to project out for quite a long time to come here, while also driving capital ratios higher and supporting a terrific dividend.

The expectation that we have is once we get through the Veritex acquisition, the opportunity to get back to more programmatic share repurchases will be there. Fundamentally, the model is working very well from our perspective. If you take a step back, management and the board is a top 10 shareholder of the company. Our interests are very much aligned. The way we really like the way the value creation model is setting up, we’re seeing high single-digit to low double-digit sustainable growth in tangible book value per share. As we noted on our Investor Day, we expect to see that level of growth in tangible book value per share through the end of the decade. Last quarter was 16% year-over-year growth in tangible book value per share. Very strong fundamental growth. Coupling that with a top-tier and growing return, we think is a really winning model for shareholder returns.

Jason, Host, Barclays: Early 2026 would maybe be a good guess, you know.

Zach Wasserman, Chief Financial Officer, Huntington Bancshares: I think what we said is when we get through the Veritex acquisition, there could be some modest share repurchases this year, but I think more programmatic and normal amount as we go into next year.

Jason, Host, Barclays: Makes sense. Makes sense. I guess on Veritex, I think when it was announced, a lot of people understood the strategic rationale of it, with any dealers, obviously, interest creation risk and other risks. The financial impact seemed, I guess, very little, at least on the surface. As you spent a bit more time going through it and just kind of any updated thoughts in terms of creation, dilution, expense save opportunities, revenue synergies, and just maybe you know update us a few more months in.

Brant Standridge, Runs Consumer and Regional Banking, Huntington Bancshares: I think two months in, we’re even more encouraged about the strategic opportunity that Veritex offers. We believed in due diligence that the Veritex team had very good customers, and as we’ve dug in, that’s been obviously confirmed. We feel great about our opportunity to expand the relationships of their existing relationships. We also feel great about the people because ultimately, at the end of the day, local colleagues with local relationships. We’ve been able to work through the org structure and approach with all of the folks and feel great about where that has landed. That would be the second large component. Lastly, in working through this, we have a very good line of sight into the cost savings that we had projected as a part of the transaction. Two months in, we’re feeling very good about where we are.

Jason, Host, Barclays: Any questions from the audience? I see one in the front row. You just shout it out. I’ll repeat it.

Unidentified speaker: If I understand you, it’s founded over the years, but it’s grown for the.

Brant Standridge, Runs Consumer and Regional Banking, Huntington Bancshares: Yeah, we like the fact that you had a founder who’s been in the market in Texas for 40 years. We like the fact that you had bankers that were very experienced and tenured, and many of them had operated under a large bank credit organization and so had a good understanding of what would be required of us. We actually like where their retail locations are, even though the organization has not been retail focused. Veritex also brings a substantial amount of brand opportunity to us. Their locations are well placed. Their signage is well placed. It really creates an opportunity for us to expand the awareness of the Huntington brand in the market. All of those things were quite attractive.

In the due diligence, we had the opportunity to take a look at the customer base and the sponsors, and would it be folks that would fit into our customers that would fit into our credit appetite? We were very encouraged by that. All of those things, frankly, made it quite attractive. They also have a lot of density in Dallas. Dallas now becomes a top five city for Huntington. It makes Texas a top three state. Having an opportunity like that that has density in a very, very important strategic market made it quite attractive to us.

Zach Wasserman, Chief Financial Officer, Huntington Bancshares: I would just tack on to that. I mean, just such not only a clear line of sight to the expense synergies, but also very well-defined revenue synergy opportunities. If you go back to the presentation, you know one of the things we tried to do in this morning’s materials was to show just how well now, three years on, we continue to power revenue synergies from the TCF acquisition, the same confidence we’ve got now here. If you think about rolling out our whole consumer franchise into those branch locations that Brant just mentioned, the ability to bring our value-added fee services and really penetrate treasury management, capital markets, wealth into their really high-quality commercial customer base. Then just the added heft and weight that we’ll have in the market, we believe will produce a meaningful lift in our own larger corporate commercial lending and deposit gathering activities.

I think it’s really, it’s a home run for us. As Brant said, we think the springboard that that will drive for long-term revenue growth in one of the most attractive states in the country is certainly going to be pretty exciting.

Brant Standridge, Runs Consumer and Regional Banking, Huntington Bancshares: I’ll add one more point. Another component of it that was encouraging to us is the operating model that you’ve heard me describe. That operating model really makes the integration of Veritex very, very much possible. It also is what creates the opportunity and the springboard for the future. Being able to take that customer base and those individuals and integrate them into a locally empowered model, but then also bring the expertise of the national specialties to their customer base, we viewed as a really great opportunity.

Zach Wasserman, Chief Financial Officer, Huntington Bancshares: Great.

Jason, Host, Barclays: Brant.

Unidentified speaker: Even that, the Fed will stay back in the market for another acquisition relatively quickly.

Brant Standridge, Runs Consumer and Regional Banking, Huntington Bancshares: Our focus has and will be at our top priority to be organic growth. Obviously, these types of events are episodic. It’s a higher hurdle for us from a financial, strategic, and cultural component. Our focus is really on organic.

Jason, Host, Barclays: On that note, please join me in thanking Zach Wasserman and Brant Standridge for their time today.

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