Earnings Labs

Huntington Bancshares Incorporated (HBANL)

Q1 2020 Earnings Call· Thu, Apr 23, 2020

$25.48

-0.20%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.
Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Huntington Bancshares First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mark Muth, Director of Investor Relations.

Mark Muth

Analyst

Thanks Cheryl. Welcome. I'm Mark Muth, Director of Investor Relations for Huntington. Copies of the slides, we'll be reviewing, can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website, www.huntington.com. The call is being recorded and will be available for replay starting at about one hour from the close of the call.Our presenters today are Steve Steinour, Chairman, President and CEO; Zach Wasserman, Chief Financial Officer; and Rich Pohle, Chief Credit Officer. As noted on Slide 2, 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 the material filed with the SEC, including our most recent forms 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K filings. Let me now turn it over to Steve, where he'll start on Slide 3.

Steve Steinour

Analyst

Thanks Mark, and thank you to everyone for joining the call today. Before we begin, I'd like to express my sympathies to those of you who've lost family members or friends who've been directly impacted by the virus.We’ll open the day with an overview of how we've reacted to the onset of the pandemic, both the challenges it has created as well as the opportunities. The pandemic has caused unprecedented disruption around the world. Extreme market volatility is all through the global economic landscape, the virus has changed the way we live our daily lives. Changed how business is conducted in the short term, probably the long term as well.For Huntington, I believe our purpose and our deeply rooted culture are an extraordinary asset. Our purpose of looking out for people has guided our planning and responses to the pandemic. From the beginning, we’ve recognized the pandemic is first and foremost public health crisis. Therefore, our priority has always been the safety and wellbeing of our colleagues and our customers.Many of our colleagues are on the frontlines with our customers every day and it's challenged us to serve our customers in new ways. To ensure their safety in our branches we moved early to drive through only, but then person meetings by appointment. We’ve closed all in store branches and traditional branches which did not have a drive through.For most other colleagues, we implemented a work from home policy and now have more than 80% of our colleagues working remotely. This is possible because of the commitment and flexibility of our colleagues and because of the tremendous work by our technology teams to keep everyone connected and productive. We've benefited from the diligent work performed by our business continuity planning teams over the years.We've also increased our communication with colleagues,…

Zach Wasserman

Analyst

Thanks Steve, and good morning everyone. Slide 4, provides the highlights for the 2020 first quarter. Clearly, results were significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. While our underlying earnings momentum was strong, first quarter results included provision for credit losses of $441 million over 3.5 times net charge offs recognized during the quarter.This was driven by the severely weakened economic outlook compared to the fourth quarter of 2019. Rich will go into more detail regarding the drivers of the increase in our provision shortly, but now let's turn to Slide 5 to review our pretax pre-provisioned earnings.Year-over-year pretax pre-provision earnings growth was 2%. We believe this is strong performance in light of the challenges of the interest rate environment and the rapid decline in short-term rates year-to-date.Total revenue increased 1% versus the year ago quarter as growth in fee income more than offset modest pressure on spread revenues, specifically robust mortgage banking income growth of 176% and 50% growth in capital markets fees drove the 42 million or 13% year-over-year growth in non-interest income.FTE net interest income decreased $33 million or 4% year-over-year as 25 basis points of NIM compression overwhelmed 3% growth in average earning assets. On a linked quarter basis the NIM expanded two basis points, as we continue to be pleased with the results of our hedging program and our diligent efforts to reduce our deposit costs.I would like to call your attention to two slides in the appendix that provide important additional information regarding our efforts in these two areas to support the margin.Slide 28 summarizes the hedging actions we've taken to reduce the unfavorable impacts of interest rate volatility and lower interest rate environment. We continuously monitor and prudently refine our interest rate risk management as the interest rate environment, balance sheet mix and other…

Rich Pohle

Analyst

Thanks, Zach. Before I provide details on the performance of the first quarter, I wanted to elaborate on the comments Steve touched on at the beginning of the call. Slide 10 details some of these decisions we have made and credit risk management enhancements we have implemented.In 2017, we heightened our underwriting standards for leverage lending. Since we drafted our leverage lending policy in 2015, we have used a conservative senior leverage multiple of 2.5 times to qualify as a leverage loan for our borrowers with less than $500 million of revenues. Also in 2017, we began leveraging the underwriting infrastructure and standards of our auto finance business, the RV and marine portfolio that was expanded through the FirstMerit acquisition. We call that our indirect auto and floorplan dealer – dealer floorplan portfolios are among the best-performing in defense.We've prepared for the eventual economic downturn, we adjusted our healthcare portfolio by curtailing new construction originations in the long-term care segment. Our healthcare construction portfolio is now down 60% from where it was in 2016.Over the past couple of years, we have continued to refine our credit underwriting, consistent with our aggregate moderate-to-low risk appetite. We have increased FICO score cuts across our HELOC and Herman Green books and held our commercial businesses to higher standards with respect to credit policy exceptions. So we enter the current credit environment with a portfolio that has been continually fine-tuned over the last several years.Slide 11 illustrates the relative rankings of model cumulative loan losses for Huntington and our peers and the Federal Reserve's severely adverse scenarios of the DFAST exercise. As Steve has mentioned over time, this is the only true comparison of credit risk across the sector that we know of, and it provides us independent validation of the credit risk management…

Zach Wasserman

Analyst

Thank you, Rich. As Steve mentioned earlier, we have withdrawn our 2020 full year guidance. Historically, we have refrained from providing quarterly guidance as it implies a much shorter time horizon than we manage the company. That said, we want to provide you as much insight into key business trends as we can. So we will focus on where we can frame realistic expectations, therefore, Slide 17 provides comments on the second quarter.Starting with loans, the $3.2 billion of commercial line draws we saw in March and into early April, will drive average commercial loans 4% to 5% higher over the near term, excluding any impact of the $6 billion of SBA PPP loans and any additional SBA PPP loans made in the next phase. We currently expect the majority of commercial line draws to remain outstanding for the next several months. The duration of the PPP loans is uncertain, but we expect a large majority of them to be forgiven and to come off the sheet quickly.We expect consumer loans to be flat to modestly lower. The auto portfolio, and to a lesser extent, the RV/marine portfolio is expected to reduce as vehicle sales activity declines. We expect the pre-existing trend of runoff in home equity to continue, and we expect the residential mortgage portfolio to be flat to modestly higher in the second quarter, as a robust level of refinancing activity acts as a governor on growth.We expect average core deposits to increase 2% to 3% linked quarter. Similar to our expectations for commercial loans, we expect the recent influx of commercial deposits, again excluding the impact of PPP, to remain on the balance sheet through the second quarter. We expect average consumer core deposits to be flat to slightly higher as slowing customer deposit acquisition is offset…

Mark Muth

Analyst

Thanks, Zach. Sherry, we will now take questions. We ask, as a courtesy to your peers, each person ask only one question and one related follow-up. If that person has any additional questions, he or she can add themselves back into the queue. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Erika Najarian with Bank of America. Please proceed.

Erika Najarian

Analyst

Hi. Good morning. Thank you.

Steve Steinour

Analyst

Hi, Erika.

Erika Najarian

Analyst

Hi. My first question is for Rich. I'm wondering if you could give us a sense on – of how your allowance was allocated by loan category, please.

Rich Pohle

Analyst

Yes. By loan category, I mean, we've got – the consumer was about $144 million and commercial was $261 million to get to the 2.05% total allowance. That's the breakdown that we've got for that.

Erika Najarian

Analyst

Got it.

Rich Pohle

Analyst

I think, Erika, you have to – the challenge that we have with the allowance in this quarter is the models really weren't trained for this, right? And so we had the severe decline in the economic scenario and then the government stimulus that is forthcoming but really hasn't shown up yet at the end of the first quarter. So there's a lot of judgment that went into setting the provision this quarter or various economic models that came out throughout the month of March. We did look at a number of factors when we set the provisions. We believe that we've got the coverage ratio at the end of the quarter where we want them.

Erika Najarian

Analyst

Got it. And my follow-up question is, I appreciate the detail on reserves relative to DFAST losses. When I look at the fed-run tests and even your company-run tests from 2018, it seems like there's a pretty significant contribution still from commercial real estate. And I'm wondering, as we think about how future charge-offs in this type of recession can play out for Huntington, what are sort of model biases in the stress test model, and I guess, I'm leading the question a little bit by referring to commercial real estate, that might distort how we're thinking about what can actually be incurred in terms of charge-offs.In other words, is – what part of the stress test is very backward-looking in terms of historical losses in CRE? And what part of the stress tests, obviously, unemployment is one play, seems to be not severe enough?

Rich Pohle

Analyst

So as it relates to – I think you hit the nail on the head, the DFAST numbers are backwards looking. So the fundamental change that has transpired over this company since the last downturn has been remarkable. And I would say that commercial real estate is probably the one area where we are so fundamentally different today than we were going back. I mean we had close to 5,000 customers on the commercial real estate side going into the last downturn. We have about 300 today. So there's a clear focus on Tier-1 sponsors, Tier-2 sponsors, institutional sponsors.And so we're really focused on knowing the developer in not only the projects that we're financing but the projects that might be financed somewhere else to make sure that we're not overextended there. We also – from a percentage of capital standpoint, we're over 200% of capital going into the last downturn. We're under 100% of capital today and with very strict limits on various supplements within the commercial real estate space. So I think that's the biggest one.As it relates to some of the other things, clearly, unemployment is going to be a big driver of losses on the consumer side. I think the DFAST results there have been very consistent over time, and our consumer charge-offs in the DFAST scenarios have been at the top of our peer group. So I feel very good about where we stand in a lot of the consumer categories relative to the DFAST results from 2020.

Steve Steinour

Analyst

Erika, I might add. This is Steve. The joblessness or unemployment levels in Ohio and Michigan were double digit when we made the changes to the consumer lending policies, and the models that we have used subsequently have that base in them. So I think 10.3% in Ohio and 14-and-a-fraction percent in Michigan. So that has drove us to a super prime level of origination. We use our prop score, but the equivalent FICOs you've seen quarterly for 10 years, and we will attack the book.So we believe we've got a very sound consumer loan portfolio and the performance expectations around that will be, we believe, supported through this cycle, notwithstanding higher unemployment and somewhat higher losses. And we've been talking for several quarters about oil and gas as an outsized exposure for us in terms of risk of loss, clearly outside of our aggregate moderate-to-low appetite. And we've also shared that we expect to address that substantially early this year, having started to do that last year.So these are all – these oil and gas credits are all SNCCs. Our losses from what we can tell are coming – we're taking earlier than – certainly earlier than required, including the non-accrual decisions. And I think we're frankly going to be slightly ahead or ahead of others in the industry in that regard.

Erika Najarian

Analyst

Thank you, Steve.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Scott Siefers with Piper Sandler. Please proceed.

Scott Siefers

Analyst

Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking the question. Great. I was hoping for maybe a little more detail on the overall modifications and deferrals. Definitely get the number of customers, but maybe if there are some dollars of total modifications in both the consumer and commercial portfolios?

Rich Pohle

Analyst

I'm happy to answer that for you, Scott. It's Rich. Yes, on the consumer side, it's about $2 billion of deferrals that we've processed. We also have made some deferrals for some of the mortgages that we're servicing agent on. But for our book, it's about $2 billion. On the commercial side, it's about $6 billion, but I would say half of that is in our auto floorplan dealerships, and we're counting the curtailments in that number. And most of what we're doing in the auto floorplan space is more curtailment than payment deferral. Clearly, we need the cars to be on the lots a little bit longer than they have been historically, just given the current environment.So if you – digging into some of the other areas where we've provided deferrals on the commercial real estate and the hospitality space, and retail is one other area on the commercial side. And then in the franchise restaurant space, we've also been active with deferrals.

Scott Siefers

Analyst

Okay. That's perfect. Thank you. And then just on sort of those latter points you made. Maybe if we exclude the floorplan because that makes plenty of sense logically, but in the remaining commercial deferrals, do you have a sense for how much of those deferrals, you would say, are kind of necessary or needed versus how much is customers sort of taking advantage of kind of insurance in this environment?

Rich Pohle

Analyst

I would say that the commercial real estate deferrals are needed for the most part. The hotel occupancy rates, given where they are, I felt like I was the only one in the hotel I was at last night. So I think anecdotally, that's a need. I think the cash crunch in commercial real estate is real.We generally did not have a high bar on proving that you needed it. Part of our looking out for customers is being there when they need us. And so our thought was if you're asking for a deferral, we're generally going to give it to you, but I haven't come back and scientifically determined who really needed it and who didn't. I would just point that commercial real estate is probably the area that needed it most.

Scott Siefers

Analyst

Yes.

Steve Steinour

Analyst

And of the $6 billion floorplan was – I mean $3 billion of the $6 billion, Scott. So – and many of the showrooms just frankly aren't open, so understandable there.

Scott Siefers

Analyst

Yes.

Steve Steinour

Analyst

We take a slightly different view on the consumer side, just to share with you. We actually – the fact that they've asked for deferrals, we take it as a good sign that they intend to stay in the residents or keep the car or other things. With the rapid increase in unemployment, these indications are actually positive from our perspective versus 2008, 2009 when it was hard to communicate with customers. They tended to let houses go. I think the nature of this health crisis will be much more likelihood to protect the house than we would've seen in that prior cycle.

Scott Siefers

Analyst

Yes. Okay.

Rich Pohle

Analyst

The other thing I just point you to is at the time of the deferral, 98% of our consumer and even a higher number of our commercial customers were current. So it wasn't as though this was kind of the delinquent customers reaching out for our help. These are good customers that needed the assistance.

Scott Siefers

Analyst

Yes. Okay. Thank you, guys, very much. I appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from John Pancari with Evercore ISI. Please proceed.

John Pancari

Analyst

Good morning.

Steve Steinour

Analyst

Good morning, John.

John Pancari

Analyst

I appreciate the color you just gave regarding the prior – the stress test and the changes in your business mix over time, and how that can impact your through-cycle losses. I was just wondering if you could maybe, therefore, help us think about what a fair through-cycle loss level would be, given your current mix and given what you're looking at now in terms of your assessment of the economic outlook? I know it's tough, but we want to try to get a better idea of what we're looking at.And then separately, I know on Slide 11, you point to the reserve being 42% of the 2018 to really adverse DFAST, but you also indicated that the April data is pointing to – or did point to worsening. What do you think the incremental reserve additions could go to here? Where do you think an appropriate relative percentage of DFAST is likely fair here? Thanks.

Rich Pohle

Analyst

Hey, John, I'm going to be challenged to answer both of your questions. And I think as it relates through-the-cycle losses, I think the challenge that we all face is just the uncertainty that we're dealing with right now as to how long this is going to last and what the new behaviors are coming out of this. We feel good about the book going into it. On the consumer side, we – very good credit quality there. We have pointed out on the commercial side that we're going to have likely elevated charge-offs in oil and gas. Beyond that, it's really hard to come up with a forecast for charge-offs through the cycle here.

Steve Steinour

Analyst

So John, we're hoping to get a better view this quarter if this return-to-work status changes. Right now, next week, Ohio looks like it's going to implement on May 1. Michigan, following that, middle of May. And as these industries start spooling up again, we'll get a better sense of what the recovery might look like. But I think this is going to be dynamic, and best case would be to have a view of this quarter. I think it's more likely going to be third or fourth quarter before we really understand what the growth rates could be to come off what will be this very challenging moment of time and the sustainability of these businesses, and ultimately, how they're going to repay us.

Rich Pohle

Analyst

Yes. So as it relates to what you might see in the second quarter, we're clearly going to probably snap that line at the end of the quarter. We'll take a look at all the new scenarios, we'll look at the impact of the stimulus. Like I mentioned, a lot of that is just kind of reaching the businesses and customers now. There'll be a lot more data that we'll have at the end of the second quarter to decide what the provision expense would be for the quarter. It's going to be just really tough to estimate that right now.

John Pancari

Analyst

Okay. That's helpful. Thanks for the color. And then you indicated, Zach, in your prepared remarks that you expect to sustain the dividend. Can you just give us your thought process around that? And does that incorporate the updated data that you see coming in now post the quarter? And just your thought process around the sustainability. Thanks.

Zach Wasserman

Analyst

Our intention is to maintain the dividend at the current level. We think that we've got the right capital levels to support that, and we'll continue to monitor it and model, but we think it's the appropriate and sustainable level for now.

John Pancari

Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Zach Wasserman

Analyst

Welcome. Thanks, John.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Steven Alexopoulos with JPMorgan. Please proceed.

Steven Alexopoulos

Analyst

Good morning, everyone.

Steve Steinour

Analyst

Hey, Steve.

Steven Alexopoulos

Analyst

So to start, just to follow-up on Erika's and John's question around DFAST. I think what a lot of us are struggling with is that when we look at CECL, it's supposed to look at lifetime losses. The global economy is basically shut down. And I think we're trying to understand, if you look at that framework and you're coming up with a reserve that's only 40% of DFAST losses, it seems really low. And I think we're trying to get at isn't a large reserve build again coming? Like how do we reconcile the framework of what's going on in the economy and the size of the reserve versus your own internal stress tests?

Rich Pohle

Analyst

Steve it’s Rich. I think think DFAST and CECL are really two different exercises. You can try to link them together, but there are fundamental differences in the assumptions for each. The DFAST scenario, the severely adverse is a deep scenario that continues for an extended period of time, and it also assumes that you're continuing to make loans during that period. There are all sorts of dynamics that go into that. CECL on the other hand is you're looking at something that is reasonable, supportable over a period of time that eventually returns to the mean. And so you're running in a scenario that we'll have a two or three year life and then there's a reversion to the mean on that. And it's also assuming you don't make another loan.So while I think the CECL to DFAST comparison is a good data point. I also don't think you can necessarily draw too much from it, conclusion wise.

Steven Alexopoulos

Analyst

Okay, that’s fair. And just for a follow-up, so if we look at Slide 14, the COVID-impacted sectors, I'm surprised you're not calling out some of your auto exposures, I think about floorplan or RV. Are you not expecting to see material decline in revenues for these sectors, right particularly auto.

Zach Wasserman

Analyst

Yes. I mean we've talked about auto. We feel that there is going to be a short-term impact to auto. We don't necessarily think it's going to fall under the same category as hotels and some of the other areas where it could just be a protracted longer impact. I think, ultimately, people are going to get out and buy cars, probably at a reduced level. But we don't see the impact to auto and, to a lesser extent, RV that we do with some of the other ones that we've got in here.

Steve Steinour

Analyst

The floorplan, Steven, are to dealers that have multiple flags. In the 2008, 2009, 2010 cycle, we didn't have a delinquency. The strategy is consistent. These are very strong, typically multi-generation family dealerships that have enormous wealth created over that time and dealers that we believe will be very supportive to the extent they need to. Part of our underwriting also looks at coverage ratio service and parts to fix charge, and most of these are really strong in that regard.

Rich Pohle

Analyst

Just a piggyback on that – obviously, we did do a deep dive on the auto portfolio, even though it's not listed here. And from a liquidity standpoint, we feel the book is in very good shape.

Steve Steinour

Analyst

We didn't have a charge-off in auto within, don't know, two decades in what we've originated, and we certainly have a lot of conviction going forward in the quality of that book.

Steven Alexopoulos

Analyst

Fair enough, thanks for taking my questions.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Ken Zerbe with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed.

Ken Zerbe

Analyst

Hey, thanks. I guess just a real quick question, in terms of the energy portfolio, I heard – if I heard correctly, it was a 20% reserve you have against this portfolio. There's other banks that we heard, like yesterday, has just over a 2% reserve in their energy portfolio. Can you just talk about the characteristics of your energy loans and how it might be different from some of the other banks that you would need such a materially higher reserve on this portfolio? Thanks.

Zach Wasserman

Analyst

Ken, well, as we all know, these are all SNCCs. So there's good company in the credits that we're in. So I don't know that it's necessarily so much that our portfolio is any worse off than others. I think as Steve has mentioned, we've been very proactive in recognizing the risks that we see in this book, and we have taken losses in this book over the last five quarters that are pretty significant. And it's reasonable to assume that we're going to have further losses.So when you see the headlines around the big banks starting to form SPEs to take ownership of these credits rather than go through a liquidation process, I think it tells you where the industry is heading in terms of dealing with troubled situations here. So we looked at our book, and we feel that the long-term fundamentals, particularly for natural gas are still not strong. And I think we've sized the reserve around this, taking into account where we see long term prices, not so much on where they are today but longer term.And just the fact that there is a lack of capital markets activity in this space right now is completely different than what transpired in the last downturn. So we think it's appropriate to put higher levels of reserves here, and we'll continue to review it as we go through the spring borrowing base redeterminations and kind of size that reserve going forward.

Steve Steinour

Analyst

And we think this is much more like the early mid-'80s where beginning with Penn Square in 1983, the industry got clobbered and stayed in a tough shape for four or five years. And so we're just trying to be realistic with that view as to what we think the likely outcomes are for this portfolio. And certainly, we've seen subsequent price deterioration as a result of OPEC and Russian issues on the oil side. There's some spillover that's benefited gas in the short term, but these are going to be longer-term workouts. You're going to see a lot of these companies combined. We do think the SPE is the way to go, as we did in the mid-80s.I happen to have direct experience with this in that time frame, and it leads me and, I think, us as a consequence to be clear-eyed about what to expect in the future. And perhaps a bit conservative relative to some others, but we'll see that over time.

Ken Zerbe

Analyst

Got it. Okay, that’s helpful. And then just my follow-up question. If I heard right, I think you said you expected elevated provisions for the next several quarters. Can you just talk more – it's more of a conceptual question. But as I guess – we would think that CECL should clearly front-end load a lot of the provision expense, but I get there's a lot of uncertainty out there. Can you just talk about that dynamic, which is how much can you really front load for your reserve build versus like when we get to, say, fourth quarter, are you still maintaining a really high reserve even if – and provision expense even if the economy is not weakening at that point? It seems that provision should be a lot lower by fourth quarter, if I'm not mistaken.

Zach Wasserman

Analyst

The whole concept around CECL is that you are recognizing the losses today on the book that you have today, right? So in a perfect world, if you had perfect foresight into what the economic variables were and they didn't change, you wouldn't have to make any further adjustments. But clearly, we're in a very dynamic market where the economic assumptions that we have to use for the life of a loan are going to materially change over the next several quarters, and that's what's going to drive the additions, or down the road, hopefully, the release of reserves under the CECL methodology.

Steve Steinour

Analyst

I think, Ken, it's – we're in a downdraft moment. But as we reopen in these different states, we'll start to get a floor and stabilization and the resiliency and recovery. And that could very well happen in the time frames you mentioned based on the fiscal stimulus. We'll be part of that, the banking industry, Huntington will as well. And for the sake of the country, it's great to see the industry in such good shape.So I think we've got a moment here, a quarter or so, a couple of quarters, where things are a bit uncertain, but I think the picture will clarify in the foreseeable future. And that clarity will give us the basis to have more confidence in projections and sharing those with you collectively. And I think it will lead us to a position where having been intentionally conservative will see a better day on the horizon where I hope there'll be some reserve recovery.

Ken Zerbe

Analyst

Alright, great thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Ken Usdin with Jefferies. Please proceed.

Ken Usdin

Analyst

Hey, thanks a lot guys. One question on the capital front. So you're right in the middle of that 9.5% CET1, 9% to 10% zone that you enjoy. Do you want to try to stay around that? And also, how does TCE, if at all, come into your thought process around maintaining capital ratios?

Zach Wasserman

Analyst

Yes, this is Zach, I will take this one. So our CET1 for Q1 ended at just about 9.5%. Our goal was to be in the high end of the 9%to 10% range over time. And I would expect continued growth in capital towards the year-end, that's the plan and intention at this point. I think the fact that we mentioned we paused on share repurchases for the time being and for the foreseeable future will be a major driver of that. And we continue to model, as you might imagine, the numerable scenarios around where the year could play out here. But the expectation is sort of continually rising towards the year-end.So it high end of the potential range. So it on CET1, You talked about TCE. TCE ended at just about 7.5%. I think that 7.52%. And likewise, our goal was to be in the somewhat higher than that level. So I expect that ratio to trend higher throughout the year as well. We think about both of the metrics, to be honest. We look at both of them just as much internally as each other. And CET1 is a critical regulatory measure. It's also very comparable across banks. And so it's helpful, I think, for us and for you to understand the relative position. TCE is a key governor, though, as well.And particularly in the last downturn when capital was precious, that measure loomed large. And so we're conscious that both matter, and we factor both into our decisions. I think that said, as I look at the trajectory in both of them, they're pretty similar shapes. And I would expect both to be rising modestly toward the back half of this year.

Ken Usdin

Analyst

Okay, got it. And just a follow-up on the auto and RV/Marine side. Just in terms of the growth outlook, you generally mentioned it in terms of your outlook on the consumer side. And we noticed that the loan originations in the first quarter $1.6 billion in auto, probably the lowest we've seen in a long time. Do you have a way of helping us understand given the uncertainly, albeit, just what you expect volume growth to traject like in auto and RV/Marine?

Zach Wasserman

Analyst

I mean we really don't have a great view on it kind of longer term in the year. That's why we tried to realistically give you what Q2 will look like. And we do expect a continued modest downdrafts in auto, just given the dynamics we've been talking about before about auto dealerships being largely shuttered and therefore, sales activity being lower. It really will depend on the pace of the recovery and what it looks like to see to what degree we start to see regrowth sequentially quarter-to-quarter in the back half of the year.From a RV/Marine perspective, I think we're expecting less downdraft because that portfolio was always very, very super prime, very focused on the regions where that was a key lifestyle purchase for people, and it's a relatively smaller book, too. So I think probably expect more flattish to down-ish there, but we're also watching that pretty carefully. I think you didn't ask, but on the residential mortgage side, we expect continued robust demand, as you might expect, and essentially pretty flat growth there, just given that demand offsetting portfolio runoff as we redo their mortgages off us.

Ken Usdin

Analyst

Got it. Appreciate it Zach, thank you.

Operator

Operator

We have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Steve for closing remarks.

Steve Steinour

Analyst

Thank you all. We've talked a lot today about the pandemic. We reviewed the resulting economic challenges. Perhaps most importantly, what we don't know yet. So I'd like to ask you to take a step back, and I'll offer you some perspective. Having been in this industry for four decades, I've seen uncertainty before. And while this pandemic and the elevated concern it brings is very different than any prior periods in my career, we will get through this as a country. The one thing we know from history is Americans are resilient at the core. We as a nation, I believe, have much better days ahead. We're going to learn and adapt, as we have in the past, and build stronger, more nimble organizations as a result. This will be a time of change and innovation resulting in growth, and I believe Huntington is well positioned to move forward. We will emerge stronger and better as a result of the hard work of our colleagues and their concern for our customers. Their commitment can be clearly seen in the way they quickly reoriented to new working arrangements, responded to customer needs and, of course, helped the businesses in our local communities through the SBA PPP program. Their unwavering commitment to our purpose has been inspiring, and I'm proud of what our colleagues stand for and the ways they've looked out for our customers.As I reminded you frequently in the past, our colleagues, along with our Board, are among the largest shareholders of Huntington, collectively among the 10 largest. This is – the challenges we face today are exactly why we changed our compensation plans in 2010 to make sure we are aligned with long-term shareholders. Preparing for times like this is also why we took actions enumerated on Slide 10, amongst others, to position Huntington to outperform through this cycle.I remain confident about our long-term prospects as we manage through this challenging environment. With that, I want to thank you very much for your interest in Huntington. Have a great day. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time and thank you for your participation.