Huntington Bancshares continues to
Net income for the fourth quarter totaled $530 million, up from $243 million in the comparable period of 2023, the Columbus, Ohio-based bank said Friday. Full-year 2024 net income of $1.94 billion eased from 2023's $1.95 billion.
On an earnings-per-share basis, fourth-quarter profit totaled 34 cents a share, beating the consensus estimate of 31 cents a share, according to Zacks Investment Research.
"We delivered exceptional fourth-quarter results, highlighted by record fee income, accelerated loan growth and sustained deposit gathering," Steinour said in a press release. "Our results reflect the success of our core businesses and investments in new geographies and commercial verticals."
Declaring it would
The company's stock price has trended upward since it made the first expansion announcement. Shares were trading at $16.82 midday Friday, down slightly from Thursday's closing price but up 37% from a year ago. "I think investors … really appreciated that you invested when everyone else was battening down the hatches," Erica Najarian, who covers Huntington for UBS, said on Huntington's earnings conference call.
Huntington has also made substantial investments in its legacy Midwestern markets over the past 18 months, according to Steinour. "We've added several hundred relationship managers and business generators," he said on the call.
Huntington completed its most recent whole bank acquisition, of the Detroit-based TCF Financial Corp., in June 2021. It acquired the Boston-based investment bank Capstone Partners in June 2022. Steinour said the company would consider a prospective deal "if it made sense" but added the results it is generating from its new markets and businesses make organic growth the top priority.
"We really like this equation," Steinour said on the call with analysts. "We believe we have significant core opportunities for growth, as well as with these new investments and we're very focused on that. The business is performing exceptionally well."
The Pittsburgh-based PNC Financial Service Group, which announced a major de novo expansion push in 2024, said Thursday that it too was beginning to realize a
Full-year net interest income — the cash Huntington generated from its core lending activities — totaled $5.4 billion. Though that result was down 2% from 2023, it still topped the guidance Huntington issued in June. At that time, Huntington envisioned a decline of as much as 4%.
"It felt like the first half [of 2024], in retrospect, was slow," Steinour told American Banker on Friday. "The second half started to pick up, and certainly there's been a confidence change post-election. … It's all coming together, our investments are coming together and driving the outputs we would like, but at the end of the second quarter, it did feel a little slow."
For 2025, Huntington is predicting overall net interest income will set a company record, increasing 4% to 6% over the 2024 level.
Huntington's fee-income business lines drove a third consecutive quarterly increase in noninterest income, driven by spikes in payments, wealth management and capital markets revenues. Capital markets revenue for the three months ended Dec. 31 totaled a record $120 million, up 70% from the same period in 2023. "When you think about that up 70%, that's reflective of a very different M&A market," Steinour said. "It felt like things were stalled or were very slow in the first half of last year then sort of sprang back."
Full-year noninterest income totaled $2 billion, which amounted to 28% of total revenues, up from 26% in 2023.
Huntington reported quarterly growth in both loans and deposits. Average loans of $128.2 billion was up 6% from the fourth quarter of 2023. Average loans were up $3.7 billion or 3% from the quarter ended Sept. 30, with about a third of the production coming from the new markets and business lines.
Average deposits totaled $159.4 billion, a 7% increase over the Dec. 31, 2023, level. Huntington is projecting average deposit growth of 3% to 5% and average loan growth of 5% to 7% in 2025.
While Huntington experienced a modest year-over-year jump in nonpeforming assets, fourth-quarter net charge-offs were $97 million or 0.30% of average loans and leases, level with the same period in 2023. At the same time, criticized assets declined for a third consecutive quarter. "We're in a position of confidence around credit quality going forward," Steinour said.
