Earnings Labs

Wells Fargo & Company (WFC)

Q2 2008 Earnings Call· Tue, Jul 22, 2008

$81.36

+0.99%

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Transcript

Bob Strickland

Management

Thank you for calling into the Wells Fargo second quarter 2008 earnings review prerecorded call. Before we discuss our second 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 future results of operations and financial conditions, including statements about future credit quality and losses generally, and specifically that we expect higher losses in the home equity portfolio until home prices stabilize, that we believe we can mitigate losses by working with customers who are experiencing financial stress, and that, based on the current interest rate environment, most of our adjustable rate mortgages at Wells Fargo Financial scheduled to reset during the remainder of 2008 will reset at or below their current rate. Forward-looking statements give our expectations about the future. They're not guarantees and results may differ from expectations. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made and we do not undertake any obligation to update them to reflect changes that occur after that date. For a discussion of some of the factors that may cause actual results to differ from expectations, refer to our SEC filings, including the 8K filed today, which includes the press release announcing our second quarter results, and to our most recent annual report on Form 10K and quarterly report on Form 10Q, filed with the SEC and to the information incorporated into those documents. Now I will turn the review over to our Chief Financial Officer, Howard Atkins.

Howard Atkins

Management

Wells Fargo earned a $1.8 billion profit or $0.53 a share in the second quarter. Our credit-related expenses, including a $1.5 billion credit reserve build, were $3 billion in the quarter, up $2.3 billion from a year ago. But nevertheless, we continued to grow our company profitability at a time when many of our peers are losing money and shrinking, we continued to shift our asset portfolio toward lower-risk, higher risk-adjusted return business and, even with 15% annualized linked-quarter growth in earning assets, we increased our capital ratios. Here are some of the metrics that highlight the profitable growth we've achieved year over year and the further strengthening of our balance sheet this quarter: pre-tax pre-provision income up 34%; total revenue up 16%; average earning assets up 20%; average loans up 18%, with consumer loans up 13% and commercial loans up 27percent; fee income up 10%, reflecting continued growth in cross-sell; record retail cross-sell of 5.64 products and record commercial cross-sell of 6.3 products; net retail checking accounts up 5.5%; mortgage servicing of $1.5 trillion, up 7%; mortgage originations of $63 billion and new mortgage applications of $100 billion, almost entirely in agency conforming and government guaranteed mortgages; Wells Trade assets under management up 8%; positive operating leverage, with expenses up only 2% versus 16% revenue growth, resulting in a 51% efficiency ratio; net interest margin of 4.92%, up 23 basis points in the quarter; net interest income up $1.8 billion year-to-date from the first half of 2007, largely offsetting the increase in net charge-offs for the same period even after adjusting charge-offs for the impact of our National Home Equity Group's new charge-off policy; reserves to total loans of 1.88%, the highest this ratio has been in five years; and Tier 1 capital of 8.24%, up 32 basis points…