Welcome to the Capital One Second Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer period. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Jeff Norris, Senior Vice President of Finance. Sir, you may begin..

Thanks very much, Leanne, and welcome everybody to Capital One's second quarter 2019 earnings conference call. As usual, we are webcasting live over the internet. To access the call on the internet, please log on to Capital One's website at capitalone.com, and follow the links from there.

In addition to the press release and financials, we've included a presentation summarizing our second quarter 2019 results..

Thanks, Jeff. I'll begin tonight with slide three. Capital One earned $1.6 billion or $3.24 per share in the second quarter. Net of adjusting items earnings per share were $3.37.

Adjusting items in the quarter included $54 million of launch and integration costs associated with our Walmart partnership, and $28 million of restructuring charges associated with the exit of certain investing businesses. Slide 13 of our earnings presentation outlines the financial impact of these costs.

In addition to these adjusting items, we sold several small partnership portfolios in the quarter, totaling approximately $1 billion of outstandings, which resulted in a pre-tax impact of $128 million or $0.21 per share, and included a gain on sale of $49 million and an allowance release of $68 million.

This collection of partnerships generated about $160 million in annual revenue. Relative to a year ago, adjusted pre-provision earnings declined 1% with revenue growing 4% offset by non-interest expense growing 9%, which was driven by higher marketing expense in the absence of a non-recurring adjustment to a vendor agreement this time last year.

Provision for credit losses increased 5% driven by a modest increase in charge-offs, coupled with a smaller allowance release in the current quarter compared to the prior year quarter. Let me take a moment to discuss the quarterly movements in our allowance for each of our businesses, which are detailed in table eight of the earnings supplement..

Thank you, Scott. Slide eight summarizes second quarter results for our credit card business. Pre-tax income was relatively flat compared to the second quarter of 2018. Year-over-year, growth in loans and purchase volume drove higher revenue, which was offset by higher non-interest expense.

Credit Card segment results and trends are largely driven by the performance of our domestic card business, which is shown on slide nine..

Thank you, Rich. We'll now start the Q&A session. Remember as a courtesy to other investors and analysts who may wish to ask a question, please limit yourself to one question plus a single follow-up. And if you have any follow-up questions after the Q&A session, the investor relations team will be here and available after the call.

Leanne, please start the Q&A..

Thank you. And we will take our first question fromSanjay Sakhrani with KBW. .

Thanks. First question is on the interest rate environment and the broader market expectations of rate cuts. Scott, could you just talk about how we should think about the NIM trajectory in that backdrop. I know Rich spoke to the pressure from higher deposit funding costs.

But just how you guys expect to manage through that?.

Thanks, Sanjay. So as a reminder, I think we have said this many times that we really don't seek to bet on interest rate movements and we try to maintain a pretty neutral rate position relative to implied forwards.

So from here I would say that a flatter or inverted yield curve is going to be a modest headwind to our NIM, on flip side of that a steeper yield curve is going to be a modest tailwind. As you know, the yield curve flattened in Q2 and long-term swap rates are now down to around 2% and at that level of long-term rates.

The flatter yield curve has created probably a few basis points of headwind to NIM in our full year 2019 net interest margin. So that's a little bit of where I see the interest rates impacting us..

Okay. And then my follow-up question on that partnership loss, was it a matter of misalignment between yourselves and the partner or is it sort of a reflection of a more heightened competitive environment? And maybe Rich, you can just speak to the broader competitive environment while you are at it? Thanks..

So I don’t think there is any big significance to read into this. What I would say is with our digital transformation and where we are going in our card business, we are focusing more on partners that are industry leaders and scale players and we continue to be very excited about the card partnership business.

And of course with Walmart coming on, we have a lot of momentum. We are continuing to build capabilities that differentiate Capital One from other players at auction, so that we can build a growingly valuable partnership business both for ourselves and for the partners who team with us to build their franchise..

Next question, please..

And our next question comes from Don Fandetti with Wells Fargo..

Good evening. Rich, could you talk a little bit about the auto business. Looks like the yields moved up and I know some of the peers that have been reporting recently that are big players in auto lending are talking about rates on new originations being higher than the current portfolio and having arguably some pricing power.

Can you talk a bit about that?.

I don't think we're struck by any significant movement in pricing power. I think we're at a pretty good place competitively in the marketplace.

As you've watched our business and the conversation we have on all of these calls where we’ll really see a bigger opportunity and there will be pretty sizable growth in originations, then the competition comes in either in magnitude and or in some of their practices and we kind of pull back a little bit.

I think we're in a fairly balanced place right now, I'm not struck by a change in the margin opportunity, but if you -- but just sort of the feel of the marketplace, I think there is a -- there is some growth opportunity.

And I think the other thing that we're struck by in Capital One's case at least is the strength of the some of the credit results that we have been seeing. And we're pleased by that..

Okay. And just real quick follow-up, the Fed looks like they're going to cut rates do you think that'll have any impact on the card business from a focus on revolver versus transactors. I know that when rates moved up, you did see some change in behavior..

I don't think -- are you talking about a change in behavior in our customers, or in terms of the focus that we have in our….

Yes, just a change in the focus on revolvers versus transactors. I know when rates moved up there was a little bit of a shift over to revolvers. I didn't know if you thought there would any change from that perspective..

Yeah. Over the whole range of interest rates that we've -- the range of interest rates we've had for the last significant number of years, I don't think it's led to real pivots by us relative to transactors or revolvers.

I think we are very -- as you know, we're leaning into the opportunity at the high end of the marketplace where we're getting a lot of momentum with the franchise that we're building and these are long-term stable, very low attrition, very valuable annuities and we're capitalizing on that opportunity.

And sometimes in our conversations, we talk more about that. But meanwhile on little cat feed, if you will, we continue to just keep plowing ahead very consistently on the revolver side of the business.

And frankly, the growth of -- the continued really strong performance in new originations is not only a top of the market phenomenon, and we continue to have strength across our -- across the transactor and revolver side of the business and this gives rise to growth opportunities as we -- on the revolver side as we grow the -- as customers grow their balances and as we extend higher lines over time..

Next question, please..

And we'll take our next question from Rick Shane with JP Morgan..

Guys, thanks for taking my question this afternoon. Hey, Rich, you spoke about the traction in the spender market.

I am curious, given the strength in labor and wage growth and frankly low gas prices, how you feel about the middle income consumer? And is that an opportunity that perhaps you should have leaned into a little bit harder over the last year? And will you -- is that something -- is it appropriate to lean in now?.

Yes, I think that our -- we've had a very consistent strategy for an extended period for a long time relative to the revolver part of the marketplace, which is, one where in this extended recovery is one that I think continues to post strong credit results. We, if I pull up about, what we -- how things have varied in the last few years.

So, we had a significant growth surge in 2014 through 2016. And we all watch a lot of the metrics that Capital One changed significantly. We saw that -- we saw signs of - some signs of concern in the industry vintage curves, gapping out a bit in 2016. And our own results were consistent with what we saw in the industry.

We pulled back on originations and certainly launched a more conservative approach toward credit lines. Since then, Rick, we have seen -- we’re very pleased with the vintage results that we have seen in 2017, what it looks like 2018.

So, there is certainly a strength there that that we note, and it is that that is leading us to open up a little bit more gradually on the credit line side, which is a contributor to the gradually increasing loan growth. But along the way, we have continued to really go for the opportunity in growing new accounts.

It's been the sort of the -- our lever of -- the lever that we have dialed is how significantly to open the credit lines, and how quickly to move them. The actual origination machine has stayed at a sort of wide open over that period of time, and we're getting particularly strong results in the last 12 months in that..

Got it. Yes look, I understand hindsight. 2020 and it's easy for my seat to say that and objectively we thought the growth surge that you guys experienced in 2014 and 2015 was a big catalyst. It is interesting to sort of think about it moving forward as well..

Yes, the other thing Rick is there, I think if you stand back and look on an absolute like-for-like normalized basis, while 2016 had -- we saw the most impact across the industry in terms of things gaping out.

On an actual like-for-like basis originations keep normalizing a little bit and exact on a like-for-like basis, the credit losses are a little bit higher. Now capital we are very pleased with our vintage, the vintages of our originations and the choices we made on line increases.

With part of that strength comes from the dialing back around the edges that we've had. And the other thing I want to say is that it's not lost on us. We just -- we, America just broke the record for the longest sustained recovery. We are deep into the cycle. And so our biggest focus is on underwriting for resilience.

And -- but in the meantime, we're really pleased with the strength of the originations and we continue to unleash some of that in terms of loan growth on the credit line side..

Next question, please..

And we'll take our next question from Eric Wasserstrom with UBS..

Thanks very much. I just wanted to circle back on the provision explanation for a moment, if I could. I was just looking at the past several quarters worth of the credit loss and provision coverage history. And the losses have gone up at a very moderate pace, a few basis points over the past five, six quarter.

But looks like the coverage has come in a bit with this release in this period and just hoping you could give us a little more color on what drove that change in forward expectation in light of that very moderate decline in asset quality over the same timeframe?.

Well, a couple of things. So in my comments, I mentioned that we've seen very stable credit performance and then an economy that just has continued to really roll forward and it's just a combination of those things honestly as you know in our portfolio, given its size, small moves there can generate $100 million release.

So you think about the release in card a good portion of that was related to the sale of the several of the small partnerships that we talked about and the remainder was just driven by the ongoing strength of credit and the economy. .

Okay. And if I can just follow-up on that point, does that imply some sort of -- I mean, the ongoing strength. I guess I'm trying to understand whether that ongoing strength implies to you that you think credit losses will improve from here or just continue at this sustained pace of small incremental deterioration..

So our viewpoint that is that credit performance that we see is basically flattish and there are number of kind of small effects, offsetting effects, different things that are idiosyncratic about the drivers that make variation off of flat, but on a seasonally adjusted basis things look pretty flattish for us.

As we look at other metrics like delinquency flow rates they look strong, they look stable. We of course do have some continued benefits from growth in that being a good guy quietly in the background and I think overlaid on top of all of that that’s probably underlying a little bit of normalization in the current business.

And I think in our case there kind of these moderate effects are offsetting pretty much to a draw. So I think things are pretty stable and of course we always have to remind ourselves where we are in the cycle. .

Next question, please. .

And we will take our next question from Moshe Orenbuch with Credit Suisse..

Great. Thanks.

I was wondering you mentioned I think for the first time you talked about the growth rate of your branded card portfolio at 4.7% and what had that thing growing at an you alluded to the process that you’ve talked about a few times in terms of kind of seasoning the accounts a little longer before increasing their credit line and maybe if you could, just talk a little more about because we’re kind of approaching about a year since you started adding those accounts.

And so is it reasonable to assume that that 4.7% would be accelerating from here?.

So we pointed out the branded metric because partly there has been some things that have been modestly affecting the metrics in the other direction on the partnership side and also of course a lot of the marketing we’re spending, the franchise we’re building that directly is in service of the branded card business that we’re building.

So you can see -- well basically while we are not giving historical metrics on those things that that branded card metric is also picking up and it is the primary area that is getting the benefit of the significant surge on account originations.

So I think with every passing quarter we’re opening up a little bit more on the credit lines, and hopefully we’ll continue to have strong account originations. And the combination of those two can be a good guy for the growth in our branded card business. .

Got it.

Could you -- I mean, was that number 100 basis points lower if you went back six months?.

Yes, I don't -- we're not going to give the retro numbers, but it has tended to be stronger than the one minus is the branded card in recent periods. And it is growing nicely. .

Yes, Moshe, I believe, last quarter week gave the metric on the call at just a little over four..

Got it, okay. Thanks..

Next question, please..

And we'll take our next question from Ryan Nash with Goldman Sachs. .

Good evening, guys. Rich, the industry was able to significantly lag on the way up on deposit pricing, but you've had a lot of banks building out all sorts of digital deposit taking capability.

So outside of the negative mix shift that Scott talked about, what are your thoughts on banks like Capital One and the industry's ability to reduce deposit pricing on the way down? And I have a follow-up question..

I think it is a great question. I'm not going to often I’ll stick my neck out and make predictions. I think here there's certainly an industrial logic for it. We've seen a few of the direct players, three of the big kind of nine direct players have made a move downward, which is noteworthy.

And I think the choices that are made by each company is going to be very much dependent on their particular situation, what is their need for deposit growth and what other kinds of pressures are they facing.

But I certainly -- I've always thought it's ironic that people talk about deposit betas as if beta is the number that's the same size on the way up and the way down and a lot of people model things with a number called the deposit beta, but the first thing most intuitively is the betas have to be different on the way up and the way down.

And they're going to probably be different for direct players than they will be for regular players. But I'm heartened Ryan by some of the dynamic moves that we're seeing in the marketplace.

But I'm not ready to predict that players will have much movement downward, I think it's going to be harder for -- well certainly the biggest banks don't have anywhere to go because they really didn't chase the rates up regional banks maybe are kind of in between relative to the direct banks and the big banks. But we'll have to monitor this closely.

And your question is a good one. .

If I could ask just one follow-up, so the stock is trading just above 1.15 times tangible book value for a company that's putting up a high-teens return on equity. What do you think the market is missing about the resilience of the business model or the efficiency opportunity, from the digital transformation over the next couple of years? Thanks..

Well, thank you, Ryan. I think that Capital One is in a very great place in terms of the opportunities that we see, headline by the digital opportunity.

And it is very clear inside our company and you're starting to see some manifestations externally that our tech progress is accelerating and the benefits, which extend across a lot of different aspects of the business from speed to market to product quality, customer experience, risk management, operational effectiveness, growth, efficiency, there's a lot of different aspects of it and it's not all going to manifest itself in a big bang, but we feel we can see traction accelerating in many places.

Now, how that translates into valuation, is very much probably related to also how investors feel about a consumer stock and a consumer lending stock at this time in the cycle as well. So, with respect to that side of the business, Ryan, we -- the number one thing that drives our underwriting is not reaching for growth opportunities.

It's a focus on resilience. And I think this served us very well on the last recession we underwrite as if a recession is upon us. And, I, very much like the resilience of the business that we're booking but I think investors still carry concerns about that. And I think that affects valuation.

But if you see a bounce in my step, if you see some -- here the energy in the sort of spit flying passion with which I described this thing. I've been building this company for -- this is the 25th anniversary this year of our IPO in 1994.

And I must say that the period we're in reminds me in many ways of the early days of Capital One with the just some really nice opportunities to differentiate ourselves in the marketplace and to make a real impact on customers and build a franchise. And how that makes its way into valuation is one thing well I'll have to look at.

But the thing that we focus, most importantly is on getting it to make its way into the metrics of earnings and growth and returns themselves..

Next question, please..

And we'll take our next question from Kevin St. Pierre with KSP Research..

Hi. Good evening. Thanks for taking the question. Rich, I believe you had mentioned that the majority of the deposit growth was coming through the Capital One 360 products. Some of the other large banks have incorporated mobile and digital slides into their presentations where they give us statistics on mobile users and transaction.

I was wondering, if there are some successes, some numbers that you could share with us, both on the mobile front and the Capital One cafes, and even some numbers behind the Capital One 360 products?.

Kevin, we -- there's a lot of traction in all the metrics that you mentioned, we haven't -- I think for a certain competitive reasons have not chosen necessarily to lay all of that out. But directionally the growth in mobile users.

The metrics, I've seen at Capital One at the top of the league tables in terms of growth rate of mobile users and dangerously close to the top of the league table in terms of total mobile users, which growth rate and magnitude if they're both at the top that augurs pretty well.

So on the 360 side, of course, there's -- what's sort of unique about Capital One is that we really have sort of two different banks. We're a combination of a local bank and a direct bank. And we've built overtime a strategy that's more of instead of running around with two businesses, it's more of a fusion of the two.

That said, our metrics continue to be sort of a blend of the performance of the two. But what we're really excited about is the power that comes from building a single phase and a single brand and a single franchise that tries to combine the best of what local banking has, but -- and the best of what a more pure digital bank would have.

And we are very pleased with the early results. And we continue to be bullish about the opportunity there..

Just following up on that, and maybe also following up on Ryan's question and commentary.

I think, if you are at the top of the league tables in terms of mobile users mobile growth, and you could potentially show us that, I'd respectfully say that that might solve a little bit of the valuation issue if you can show that you are slugging it out with the big boys punching above your weight on the mobile digital front, I think that could only help.

Just a quick follow-up, maybe if you could speak to the preparations for on-boarding, Walmart, both in terms of servicing -- preparing for servicing the customers, as well as any changes you're planning to the structure of the product..

So, we remain excited and on track, with respect to the launch of the Walmart partnership, and the conversion of the back book, both of which are slated for late third quarter, early fourth quarter. We are working closely with both Walmart and synchrony in this complex conversion, both are being good partners in this conversion.

With respect to products and marketing plans, we're going to -- we have nothing to announce on that. But as you can imagine, we're working very hard. And we look forward to our launch date..

Next question, please..

And our next question comes from Betsy Graseck with Morgan Stanley..

Hi. Two questions, one a little more of a modeling question. But I just wanted to confirm the portfolios that you sold was that at the end of the quarter? I'm just wondering and I think Scott, you mentioned $160 million of annual revenues associated with the portfolio.

And is that in -- is that out of the 2Q run rate, or do we start that from 3Q and maybe you could give us a sense of the expense ratio we should align with that?.

Yes, that was at the end of the quarter. So that run rate is going to start in Q3. And in terms of efficiency, I don't expect that it's going to have any meaningful impact to the overall efficiency ratio. .

Okay, so same efficiency, okay. And then just wanted to hear what your thoughts were with regard to some of the new competitors that are going to be coming in, I mean we've got Goldman and Apple that are planning on launching a car in the next couple of months.

And they've been very vocal about looking to go with a low cost to the consumer solution, no fee and low interest rate. I mean, we'll see what those rates look like when it gets launched, because clearly it's a marketing pitch right now, we don't have any data to back that up. But that's the plan.

So Rich, I was just wondering how you think about that type of new entrant coming in? And, if there was anybody other than Apple, maybe -- or I don't know, maybe it doesn't matter that it's Apple, but just wondering how you think about that? And you mentioned earlier, how you're really underwriting as if a recession is upon us at all points, which makes a lot of sense, and it serves you well, I'm just wondering, do you think that there's any challenge or risk that that could get up ended in a new competitor coming into the market like this?.

Yes, Betsy, it certainly gets our attention when pretty much anything that -- let me start with Apple, anything that Apple does, gets our attention, because they and the other big four consumer tech companies are whether they say it or not are certainly focused on the -- by the way, they don't want to become banks.

They are plenty happy, I think to led banks be banks, they're interested in really controlling the front end of banking, which is really the customer interface, the customer experience, that's where the eyeballs are, that's where the interaction is, that's where the data is. And that's where -- that's the less regulated side of the business as well.

So that certainly, as a general point, always has our attention. And I think the tech companies bring a lot of natural assets to the table and they're certainly have good technology. It also gets their attention and players like Goldman Sachs, build a consumer business.

Because I think Goldman's a great company and they starting from scratch building a consumer business. I think have done a nice job with what they've done. So I think I don't have any predictions to make about this, I think, it's nicely put together with nice marketing. And, I would expect Apple and Goldman to be successful with what they're doing.

As far as we're concerned, we continue to go all in transforming our company from a tech point of view. And that puts us in a position to have great digital customer experience. And I'm very bullish about our opportunity, even as others step up their offerings and their competition. .

Next question, please..

And we'll take our next question from John Hecht with Jeffries..

Afternoon, guys, and thanks for taking my question. Can you guys spoke about being somewhat neutral from a rate environment perspective in terms of the NIM. But then you did highlight that your deposits might reflect a headwind for the remainder of the year.

I wonder, can you give us, I guess, some color around what type of NIM pressure that might reflect and the cadence of that?.

Yes, John, we've been signaling that deposit mix and at least during the period where we were seeing rates rise, even some of the deposit rates were putting some pressure on NIM.

As you can look at our kind of the movement of our NIM quarter over quarter over quarter for a while, you can see that it's been drifting down just a little bit each quarter. And so that's a little -- just to give you a sense of the trajectory there.

I think that, these aren't really significant headwinds, but it's just a pretty much a consistent few basis points every single quarter that we're seeing as pressure..

Okay.

And then, just to -- I guess a follow up, tied to that is, how do we think of -- you had a pretty big growth in deposits during the quarter? How do we think about the overall deposit strategy? What's kind of the maximum in terms of the composition of deposits you'd want for liabilities? And how much mix do we -- should we expect in the 360 product?.

When you think about deposits, we have a relatively high ratio of loan to deposits. So we would love to be able to continue to grow our deposit base. We tried to make sure that we have access to all of the wholesale funding channels that we can. We also take advantage of commercial deposits where they are appropriate for our liquidity profile.

So, when it comes to just where we hope to be on our direct bank deposits and our local bank deposits, and we think that's an opportunity for us to continue to grow. We think we're really well positioned with the products and the digital tools that we have out there in the market.

And so, I would expect that we'll be able to continue to see growth in that area of funding of the bank..

Next question, please..

And our final question this evening comes from John Pancari with Evercore..

Good evening. On the -- on your operating efficiency ratio expectation to reach 42% by 2021.

I know that excludes marketing spend, can you talk about over that period how you think about the trajectory of marketing spend just given the competitive dynamics in the business? Or I guess another way to ask it, you expect that improvement to 42% to improve the total efficiency ratio for the company.

Maybe can you give us an idea the magnitude of improvement in the total ratio that you expect?.

Yeah, John. The reason that we gave our long term guidance on operating efficiency ratio and not total -- I mean, we did give one on total efficiency ratio, but it was less specific than the operating efficiency ratio is because the operating efficiency ratio is there are a lot of dynamics happening in our business.

And in our quest to keep driving down operating efficiency ratios that these effects are, colloquially put baking in the oven. And, what's happening with Walmart and the move to the full revenue share at the end of 2020, for example, that there's an economic change that happens.

And also, that's when we're going to be fully kind of in ramping on the front book of Walmart as well. Then we've got the data center exit, and the timing of that continues to be relatively certain.

And we can see the economics that, by the way, don't just happen automatically the economic benefits, but with tremendous efforts to make sure that they happen, we can see that baking in the oven. And there is some other technology innovation, that is in the works that collectively happened to line up around that time period.

And given that we have been spending a bunch of money on technology, our investors have had a lot of questions about technology, and one of the many benefits of the tech transformation is the opportunity to really significantly improve operating efficiency. We shingled ourselves to that.

The marketing is not something that we would lay out our shingle about what it's going to be wanting two and three years from now, that's very much going to be based on what we see in the market at that time.

And the opportunities we have to build a franchise, how much traction that we are having in the upper end of the marketplace where a lot of the marketing is directly focused. And -- but we also didn't want to just exclude that from the conversation because obviously to investors in the end, total efficiency is the thing that drives the bottom line.

And that's why even with the kind of range of outcomes that can have on the marketing side, our point was that we think total efficiency ratio can significantly improve by 2021..

Okay, great. Thank you. .

Thank you..

Well, thank you everyone for joining us on our conference call today and thank you for your interest in Capital One. Remember the Investor Relations team will be here this evening to answer any further questions you may have. Have a great night..

And that does conclude today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect..