Loan growth at Zions and Comerica has recently been sluggish, but leaders of the two companies are expecting to see improvement soon.
Bloomberg
Two regional banks — Zions Bancorp. and Comerica — are expressing optimism that loan demand will start to turn around in the back half of the year after a period when high interest rates and economic uncertainty muted the appetite for borrowing.
In their quarterly earnings calls, executives at the two companies laid out the case for bullishness in spite of recent loan trends.
At Salt Lake City, Utah-based Zions, bankers are beginning to hear more about customers' interest in borrowing, though that increase isn't yet translating into loan growth.
During Zions' first-quarter earnings call on Monday, Chief Financial Officer Ryan Richards said that customers' outlook about the economy's resilience is much brighter than it was six to nine months ago.
"Loan demand seems to have turned a corner of sorts this quarter with pipelines recovering somewhat from low levels late last year and improving customer sentiment," said Zions Chairman and CEO Harris Simmons. "Our true success will depend on our ability to grow our customer base, and we continue to place an emphasis on granular growth of small business customers."
The $87 billion-asset bank has been "particularly successful" with a streamlined Small Business Administration program, Simmons said. He added that while the initiative "doesn't immediately contribute meaningfully" to loan growth, Zions gains franchise value and new bank customers.
Richards said that it will take six months for pipeline conversations to filter into real loan growth.
In the first quarter, Zions recorded total loans of $58.1 billion, up 3% year over year. Its net interest income was $586 million, which was down 14% from the previous year, but in line with or better than analysts' estimates.
Depending on how interest rates change this year, Zions projects that net interest income will increase 2.8% in the best case, or decrease 0.5% in the worst case, between the first quarter of 2024 and the same period a year later.
Zions is "off to a good start in 2024," wrote Morningstar analyst Rajiv Bhatia. Credit trends were mostly healthy, he argued, although the bank had more criticized loans.
Zions isn't the only bank planning for a rise in loan demand later this year.
Dallas-based Comerica is projecting a 4%-5% increase in loans between the fourth quarter of 2023 and the same period this year. That would represent a marked improvement from the bank's loan volumes in the earlier parts of this year. For the full year, Comerica expects average loans to decline 3% from 2023.
On the company's recent first-quarter earnings call, CFO James Herzog said that Comerica anticipates broad-based growth in the second half of the year. The bank expects to see an increasing rate of improvement in loan volume from quarter to quarter throughout the year, and then into 2025.
"If you look at the guide that we gave, it implies a pretty significant hockey stick up in the last couple of quarters of the year," Herzog said.
Last quarter, loans at the $79.4 billion-asset company decreased by $1.4 billion to $51.4 billion. During the second quarter, Comerica is expecting average loans to stay flat or decrease by 1% as demand remains soft.
Comerica Chief Banking Officer Peter Sefzik said that the middle-market sector is where the bank is most confident, while small business customers and private banking clients are more sensitive to higher-for-longer interest rates.
"The pipeline has grown, and we really feel like that's going to be an opportunity throughout the year," Sefzik said on the earnings call.
A large portion of the loan books at both Zions and Comerica is tied to commercial real estate— a source of concern throughout the industry as CRE credit quality has started to waver.
The level of criticized loans at both banks rose in the first quarter, but Zions and Comerica executives expressed confidence in their credit management.
Zions is intentionally shifting its mix of loans to moderately decrease its exposure to commercial real estate, Richards said.
"We've actually reduced that intentionally over the last four or five years, so we were ahead of it even before the pandemic," he said. "I think the office [sector] will continue to have some challenges from what we do have, but I think it will be manageable over the near term."
The North Carolina-based bank rolled out a multiyear program to provide loans, investments and philanthropic support to communities in the western part of the state.
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra said the FICO credit-scoring model has drawbacks in price, predictiveness and market competition, and stakeholders should develop a more open-sourced model that uses artificial intelligence.
Analysts say lenders' shares could rally on deregulation, lighter tax burdens and a resurgence of M&A. Declining interest rates and lower loan losses could further bolster bottom lines and attract investor interest.
The contract gives the nation's oldest bank access to more than $3 billion in deposits a month. Comerica, the current administrator, has received a three-year extension of service to help with the transfer.
