Wells Fargo & Company (WFC)
Q3 2009 Earnings Call Transcript
October 21, 2009 8:30 a.m. ET

Executives

Bob Strickland - Director, Investor Relations
Howard I. Atkins - Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Presentation

Bob Strickland

Hello. This is Bob Strickland. Thank you for participating in the Wells Fargo third quarter 2009 earnings review pre-recorded call. Before we discuss our third quarter results we need to make the standard securities law disclosure.

In this call we will make forward-looking statements about specific income statement and balance sheet items and other measures of our future financial results and conditions, including statements about future non-accruals, loss content and cash flows from the legacy Wachovia impaired, non-impaired loan portfolios, expected credit losses and credit performance generally and in specific loan portfolios, the adequacy of our allowance for credit losses, future levels of nonperforming assets, future levels of capital, the timing and amount of expected merger one-time expenses, cost savings and business and revenue synergies related to the Wachovia merger and other initiatives, and our ability to generate revenue growth and earnings.

These forward-looking statements are based on our expectations and they are not guarantees of future performance. They speak only as of the date they are made and we do not undertake to update them to reflect changes that occur after that date. Actual results may differ materially from expectations due to a number of factors, including our ability to successfully integrate Wachovia and realize the expected cost savings and benefits from the merger.

There is no assurance that our allowance for credit losses will be adequate to cover future credit losses, especially if credit markets, housing prices and unemployment do not stabilize or improve.

For a discussion of factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from expectations, refer to our SEC filings including the Form 8-K filed today which includes the press release announcing our third quarter results, and our first and second quarter 10-Q’s and our 2008 annual report on Form 10-K, each available on the SEC’s website at sec.gov.

In this call we will also discuss our Tier 1 common equity and related capital ratio, as well as pre-tax, pre-provision profit. For more information about these measures refer to our third quarter earnings press release which is accessible on our website, wellsfargo.com, by clicking on About Us, then Investor Relations, then Quarterly Earnings. We’ve also posted on our website a third quarter 2009 supplement that provides additional information on our loan portfolios and businesses.

I will now turn the call over to CFO, Howard Atkins.

Howard I. Atkins

Thanks, Bob. I have a lot of ground to cover in my comments. So I want to give you up front the three key author’s messages about our third quarter. First, we continued to generate earnings and capital at a record rate in the third quarter despite cyclically elevated credit costs.

The main reason is that our diversified business model continued to generate very strong revenue as it has in other environments. Quarterly revenue net of expenses was once again in this quarter more than double our quarterly net charge-offs, a positive margin of $5.7 billion. We have increased shareholders equity by $23 billion since the merger and have exceeded the SCAP requirement by a wide margin.

Second, Wachovia is already additive to Wells Fargo’s earnings and capital growth, earlier and better than originally anticipated. Revenue synergies have been significant, expense savings from the consolidation are on track for $5 billion annually by the end of 2011, and we now expect substantially lower merger and integration costs.

Credit costs in the aggregate are in line with our expectations at the time of the merger with cumulative Pick-a-Pay losses now expected to be less than originally projected.
And third, we are seeing signs of stability in our credit portfolio and based on our current economic outlook, we expect credit losses to peak in 2010 with consumer losses potentially peaking in the first half of the year and gradually declining as the year progresses.

We have substantially less exposure to credit cards than our peers with large national credit card portfolios, well, we do have large exposure in commercial and commercial real estate, we are comfortable with how the legacy Wells Fargo portfolios were underwritten and are performing and we’ve previously written down the Wachovia portfolios at the close of that acquisition late last year.

Now let me elaborate on these three points. First, Wells Fargo once again achieved record earnings in the third quarter despite elevated credit costs. Our $3.2 billion net income was our third record quarter in a row. We’ve earned more than $3 billion in each quarter so far in 2009.

Our year-to-date earnings in 2009 were a record $9.5 billion, up 75% from a year ago, indicating our company’s ability to absorb higher credit costs over the cycle and after deducting preferred and common dividends, cumulative retained earnings so far this year were $6.9 billion. The main reason we are generating capital internally at a very fast rate.