Huntington Bancshares Incorporated (HBAN) Q1 2019 Earnings Call Transcript
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Huntington Bancshares Incorporated (NASDAQ: HBAN)
Q1 2019 Earnings Call
April 25, 2019, 9:00 a.m. ET

Contents:

  • Prepared Remarks

  • Questions and Answers

  • Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Huntington Bancshares First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

I would now like to turn this conference over to your host Mr. Mark Muth, Director of Investor Relations.

Mark A. Muth -- Director of Investor Relations

Thank you, Danna. Welcome. I'm Mark Muth, Director of Investor Relations for Huntington. Copies of the slides we will be reviewing can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website, www.huntington.com. This call is being recorded and will be available as a rebroadcast starting about one hour from the close of today's call.

Our presenters today are Steve Steinour, Chairman, President and CEO; and Mac McCullough, Chief Financial Officer. Dan Neumeyer, our Chief Credit Officer, will also be participating in the Q&A portion of today's call.

As noted on slide two, today's discussion, including the Q&A period will contain forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on information and assumptions available at this time and are subject to changes, risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ materially. We assume no obligation to update such statements. For a complete discussion of risks and uncertainties, please refer to this slide and material filed with the SEC, including our most recent form 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K filings.

Let me now turn it over to Steve.

Stephen D. Steinour -- Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Mark. And thank you to everyone for joining the call today. As always, we appreciate your interest and support. We had a solid start to the year in the first quarter, reporting net income of $358 million, an increase of 10% from the year-ago quarter. Earnings per common share were $0.32, up 14% from the year-ago quarter. Our profitability ratios remained strong, as our return on tangible common equity was 18% and our return on assets was 1.35%. Average loans increased 6% year-over-year, including a 7% increase in consumer loans and a 5% increase in commercial loans. Average core deposits increased 8% year-over-year, reflecting our intent to fully fund loan growth with core deposits.

We're pleased with our first quarter efficiency ratio of less than 56%, down from 57% the year ago driven by a 5% year-over-year revenue growth as well as expense discipline. Overall, asset quality remained strong as most credit ratios remained near cyclical lows. As we foreshadowed in our remarks at two conferences, during the first quarter, net charge-offs ticked modestly high in this quarter as a result of two unrelated commercial credits. Still, with these two items, net charge-offs were near the low end of our average through-the-cycle target range of 35 basis points to 55 basis points. And as we've noted previously, we expect some quarter-to-quarter volatility given the very low loss on problem loan levels at which we're operating. Our ratios for NPAs, delinquencies and criticized loans all remain very good.