Regions Financial Corp (RF) Q1 2019 Earnings Conference Call Transcript
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REGIONS FINANCIAL CORP (NYSE: RF)
Q1 2019 Earnings Conference Call
April 18, 2019, 12:00 p.m. ET

Contents:

  • Prepared Remarks

  • Questions and Answers

  • Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the Regions Financial Corporation's Quarterly Earnings Call. My name is Shelby, and I'll be your operator for today's call. I would like to remind everyone that all participants' phone lines have been placed on listen-only. At the end of the call, there will be a question-and-answer session.

(Operator Instructions). I will now turn the call over to Dana Nolan to begin.

Dana W. Nolan -- Executive Vice President-Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, Shelby. Welcome to Regions' First Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call. John Turner will provide highlights of our financial performance and David Turner will take you through an overview of the quarter. A copy of the slide presentation, as well as our earnings release and earnings supplement are available under the Investor Relations section of regions.com.

Our forward-looking statements disclosure and non-GAAP reconciliations are included in the appendix of today's presentation and within our SEC filings. These cover our presentation materials, prepared comments, as well as the question and answer segment of today's call.

With that, I will now turn the call over to John.

John M. Turner, Jr. -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Dana, and thank you all for joining our call today. Let me begin by saying we are pleased with our first quarter results. The momentum we experienced in the fourth quarter has continued into 2019. We reported earnings from continuing operations of $378 million, delivering solid year-over-year revenue growth, broad-based loan growth and stable, but normalizing asset quality, all while reducing expenses and generating positive operating leverage.

Lines (ph) grew somewhat faster than we anticipated in the quarter, driven in part by increased line utilization by our business customers. We intentionally funded a portion of this incremental loan growth with commercial and corporate treasury deposits and while this was more economical than wholesale borrowings, deposit costs were impacted during the quarter.

We expect loan growth will moderate through the remainder of the year, providing opportunities to optimize our deposit mix. With respect to the economy, we feel good about the health of the consumer and businesses. I've traveled across our footprint in the last few weeks to markets including Tampa, West Palm Beach, Atlanta, Nashville Houston, Greenville and Spartanburg, South Carolina and Mobile, Alabama.