WAL - Western Alliance Bancorporation (WAL) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

2024-01-26 16:18:05 ET

Western Alliance Bancorporation (WAL)

Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call

January 26, 2024 12:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Miles Pondelik - Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development

Ken Vecchione - President and Chief Executive Officer

Dale Gibbons - Chief Financial Officer

Tim Bruckner - Chief Banking Officer

Conference Call Participants

Casey Haire - Jefferies

Steven Alexopoulos - J.P. Morgan

Ebrahim Poonawala - Bank of America

Matthew Clark - Piper Sandler

Chris McGratty - KBW

Bernard von-Gizycki - Deutsche Bank

Ben Gerlinger - Citi

Brody Preston - UBS

Andrew Terrell - Stephens

David Smith - Autonomous

Presentation

Operator

Good day, everyone. Welcome to Western Alliance Bancorporation's Fourth Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. You may also view the presentation today via webcast through the Company's website at www.westernalliancebancorporation.com.

I would now like to turn the call over to Miles Pondelik, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Please go ahead.

Miles Pondelik

Thank you, and welcome to Western Alliance Bank's fourth quarter 2023 conference call. Our speakers today are Ken Vecchione, President and Chief Executive Officer; Dale Gibbons, Chief Financial Officer; and Tim Bruckner, Chief Banking Officer will join for Q&A.

Before I hand the call over to Ken, please note that today's presentation contains forward-looking statements which are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. Except as required by law, the Company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements. For more complete discussion of the risks and uncertainties that cause the actual results to differ materially from any forward-looking statements, please refer to the Company's SEC filings, including the Form 8-K filed yesterday, which are available on the Company's website.

Now, for opening remarks, I'd like to turn the call over to Ken Vecchione.

Ken Vecchione

Thank you, Miles, and good morning, everyone. I'll make some brief comments about our fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings before turning the call over to Dale, who will review our financial results in more detail. After I discuss our 2024 outlook, Tim Bruckner will join us as usual for Q&A.

Western Alliance's diversified national commercial business strategy continued to drive strong momentum in the fourth quarter, as we generated earnings per share of $1.33 or $1.91 excluding $0.58 of one-time notable items. The quarter featured both healthy balance sheet growth, and additional balance sheet repositioning actions to further optimize our funding base.

Looking past these notable items which Dale will explain shortly, highlights for the quarter included solid loan and deposit growth, ongoing capital and liquidity accumulation, and continued stable asset quality. Deposit growth of $1 billion allowed us to continue to selectively reduce debt and borrowings. In Q4, we fully repaid $1.3 billion of advances from the Bank Term Funding Program, as well as a $300 million 6.5% AmeriHome Senior Notes, which were not replaced with new borrowings....

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