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Truist Financial (TFC) Gains 1.1% on Expense Saving Program

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Shares of Truist Financial (TFC - Free Report) gained 1.1% following the announcement of its strategic expense saving program. At the Barclays Financial Services Conference, the company stated that the program will result in approximately $750 million of gross savings (excluding one-time severance charges), to be realized over 12 to 18 months.

As part of this program, TFC is planning "sizable reductions" in the workforce through consolidation of redundant/similar functions, geographical simplification of operations and business restructuring. These efforts have already commenced this quarter and will continue till the first quarter of 2024 and are expected to lead to roughly $300 million of cost savings.

Truist Financial CEO Bill Rogers said, “Other cost savings initiatives include aggressively managing third-party spend, further reducing our corporate real estate footprint and rationalizing tech spend.” These will, in aggregate, result in almost $450 million in expense savings.

Driven partially by these initiatives, the company expects adjusted non-interest expenses in 2024 to be relatively stable or rise nearly 1%.

Further, Rogers noted that adjusted non-interest expense guidance for the third quarter and full-year 2023 remain unchanged. Truist Financial anticipates current-quarter adjusted expenses to be flat or down 1% sequentially and for the full year, the metric to grow almost 7%.

Also, Truist Financial’s revenue projections for the ongoing quarter and year remain the same. In the third quarter 2023, tax-equivalent revenues are expected to decline 4% sequentially, while the metric is likely to rise 1-2% this year.

Regional banks, including TFC, Comerica (CMA - Free Report) and KeyCorp (KEY - Free Report) , have been grappling with a challenging operating backdrop as the Federal Reserve aggressively raised the interest rates to control inflation. The failure of three large banks earlier this year sparked turmoil in the industry, which resulted in a huge deposit flight.

Though the situation has somewhat improved, ambiguity over the Fed’s path of interest rates and probable economic slowdown continue to be major headwinds. These have also led banks like Truist Financial, CMA and KEY to set aside a substantial amount for potential bad loans and significantly dented banks’ net income in the first six months of 2023.

Even for the current quarter, banks are likely to build reserves to tide over delinquent loans. For 2023, Truist Financial expects the net charge-off (NCO) ratio to be 40-50 basis points (bps). Last year, the NCO ratio was 27 bps.

Shares of TFC have plunged 30% so far this year compared with the industry’s fall of 7.3%.
 

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Currently, Truist Financial carries a Zacks Rank of 5 (Strong Sell).

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.


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