Bank of America Corporation
Q2 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 14 Jul 2021

[Operator:]

Good day everyone and welcome to the Bank of America 2nd Quarter Earnings announcement. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, you will have the opportunity to ask questions during the question-and-answer session. Please note today's call is being recorded and it is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Lee McEntire. Please go ahead.

[Lee McEntire:]

Thank you, Catherine. Good morning. Thank you for joining the call to review our 2nd Quarter results. Hopefully you've had a chance to review our earnings release documents. As usual they're available, including the Earnings Presentation that we'll be referring to during the call on our Investor Relations section of the bankofamerica.com website. I'm gonna first turn the call over to our CEO, Brian Moynihan for some opening comments, and then Paul Donofrio, our CFO will cover the details of the quarter.

[Brian Moynihan:]

Good morning. And thank all of you for joining us, and thank you, Lee. Today, Bank of America reported $9.2 billion in after-tax net income, or $1.03 per diluted shares. These results included a few items worth highlighting, and I'm on page 2, ahead of Paul going through the details. First, as asset quality continued to improve and economy continued to recover, we released $2.2 billion of credit reserves established in the first half of last year. The idea that a Company with our credit quality and other industry participants would be releasing reserves this quarter is not new news. But the reality is the BAC -- we're seeing credit quality levels that are very strong. Net charge-offs fell to 25 year-low as a %age of loans, not just raw $ amount. Let me mention a few items I don't believe were industry-wide expected at BAC. We recorded a $2 billion positive income tax adjustment following last month's enactment of an increase in U.K. corporate income tax rate to 25%. This required a remeasurement of our deferred tax assets, which just reverses the write-downs from previous years when the tax rates were lower. In addition, our expense level included two things I would note. These add up to about $800 million. With our strong results and the tax benefit, we took the opportunity to pre-fund $500 million to our charitable foundation. This accelerates our planned funding for not only the rest of this year, but the next year as well. This is not new money, just utilizing some of the tax benefit to cover future expense. We also recorded roughly $300 million of expense associated with processing transactional card claims related to state unemployment benefits. This represents, to a large degree, a catch-up as we move through claim by backlogs. Away from these, IOC produced another quarter of solid earnings and showed evidence of good client activity in an economy that continue to recover from the pandemic. Now, as we all know, the healthcare crisis has shown improvement and economy has recovered. Progress on vaccinations along with the continued support of fiscal monetary policy has promoted a full and speedy recovery and return to economic health. We, like others, are reopening our facilities and we're seeing more products being sold by our teammates, in addition to the continued digital engagement at very high level.

[Paul Donofrio:]

Thanks, Brian. Hello, everyone. I'm starting on Slide 7. As I have done in the past few quarters, the majority of my comments -- or excuse me, my comparisons will be relative to the prior quarter rather than year-over-year, given the pandemic. Since Brian already covered a lot of the income statements, I will just add a couple of comments on revenue and returns. Revenue was down 6% from Q1. The decline was driven by lower sales and trading results, that more than offset solid consumer and wealth management revenue, which was a result of higher card income and AUMPs. It is also worth noting that while investment banking fees were down from a record Q1 level, they remained strong at more than 2 billion in Q2. Lastly, when comparing revenue against the prior year quarter, remember Q2'20 included a $704 million gain on the sale of some mortgage loans. With respect to returns, our return on tangible common equity was 20% and ROA was 123 basis points, both benefiting from the positive tax adjustment and sizable reserve relief. Moving to Slide 8. Balance sheet expanded 60 billion versus Q1, to a little more than 3 trillion in total assets. The positive growth of 24 billion supported 16 billion of loan growth, while the combination of market-based funding and long-term debt issuance supported expansion of the balance sheet in global markets. Other notable movements in the balance sheet included a continued deployment of excess cash into securities. Securities increased 83 billion while cash declined 66 billion. Driven by the additional deposit growth, our liquidity portfolio remained above 1 trillion or 1/3rd of the balance sheet. Shareholders' equity increased $3 billion, as earnings outpaced Capital distribution. Capital distributions of $5.8 billion were limited to the average of earnings in the previous four quarters per regulatory guidelines, and were well below the $9 billion earned in the quarter. With respect to regulatory ratios, consistent with Q1 standardized remained the binding approach for us and was down a little less than 30 basis points from Q1. While the CET1 ratio declined 30 basis points in Q1, it remained 200 basis points above our minimum requirement of 9.5%, which translates into a $31 billion capital cushion. While book value rose 3 billion, regulatory capital was up 1 billion as the $2 billion tax adjustment did not benefit CET1 capital.

[Operator:]

We'll take our first question from Glenn Schorr with Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

[Glenn Schorr:]

Hi, thanks very much. Wondered if we could contextualize that -- your loan growth inflection conversation. I heard you on cards and auto contributing to the modest pickup on period-end loans. So I'm wondering what confidence level you have of that continue in the second half will be card auto or will middle market, M&A, or anything else start contributing and then maybe most importantly, do you think 2022 could be a normalish loan growth year, say low to mid single-digits, like you had been running. Thanks.

[Brian Moynihan:]

Hi, Glenn. I think if you look across all the businesses, on an inferior basis, have loan growth, which bodes well. The usage online is still low. And so that is still running in the low 30s, which is about a 1,000 basis points on average lower in the banking segment. But what you see underneath that is that even business banking, which is the segment from 5-50 million, is net growing finally, and it was the most affected by the PPP runoff. And the runoff in PPP in the quarter was about $6 billion, $7 billion or something like that. We impulse basically flat average balances, that included. We overcame that. So we feel good as you look across the things. So what you really see is your net card production, that could pre-pandemic, you see gross card production basically about 90% of pre-pandemic. You'd see autos, which will pick back up as inventories become available. And a real driver on the consumer side is mortgages. We've basically been holding our own right now. And that was different than, frankly, on the refi side, we lost some balances through the last several quarters. And on the commercial side, it's really line usage, honestly can't go any lower. Maybe can, but theoretically you can't because it's been stuck here for a good four or five quarters with the activity. But the auto dealer line usage, which is net side the house, for example, is very low than it traditionally is. So we expect those to pick back up, but the key is we're actually producing more customers and more clients even at a low usage and the loans are starting to grow.

[Glenn Schorr:]

Sounds like we got a shot. Thanks.

[Brian Moynihan:]

Yup.

[Glenn Schorr:]

Maybe a very similar question on expenses and then I'll be done. You noted that there's some COVID expenses still in there. But excluding the two one-time as you've called out, we're still in the low 14s. It sounds like low 57 billion range for the year is okay. Should -- we've been asking this question every year, any one of us have. Should '22 to be materially different than '21, given how you're able to fund a lot of the investments internally?

[Paul Donofrio:]

So Glenn, this is Paul. We're not providing specific '22 expense outlook, but I will offer the following thoughts which I think answer your question. So our rough estimate for the Fourth Quarter expense is a range of low $14 billion. I think if you add to that the seasonal higher payroll tax, approximately $350 million in Q1, plus add in 1% inflationary costs that we've talked about now for many quarters. Remember, if we do nothing, cost would grow by 3% or 4%, but we're driving that lower every year and quarter through OpEx, SIM and other initiatives. But if you take the 4Q expense, you have to have seasonal payroll tax, that 1%, that's a good base, I think. And then from there, adjust based upon whatever assumption you want to make around higher revenue expectations in areas that are closely linked to compensation exchange fees. I think if you do that math, you'll have a pretty good number.

[Glenn Schorr:]

Thank you Paul, appreciate it.

[Operator:]

We'll take our next question from Matthew O'Connor with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

[Matthew O'Connor:]

Good morning. I know in recent quarters I've been asking about just a thought process on how you deploy liquidity in securities, and look, it's been the right call because you were buying what felt like low rates. But rates have gone down again. But I just want to circle back on, what is the thought process you had alluded to, potentially deploying more liquidity in the coming weeks. And I guess just step back and it seems like your loans are starting to grow, deposit growth starting to flow. And again, you know, rates have tipped down again. So why lock in, kind of 10-year duration at these levels, with that as a backdrop?

[Brian Moynihan:]

Matt, I'll let Paul hit it more specifically. But one of the things that we just have to always keep minding, and you've touched on, is that deposits have crossed $1.9 trillion and the loans are 900 and change. And that difference has got to be put to work. And the route is we generate $80 billion deposit growth. And we got to put it to work, and that's what we do. And so we're not tied in a market of betting or in a way, we just sort of deploy when we're sure it's really going to be there. And so -- and that's been our strategy. And yes, we put them to work and it turned out to be, in the aftermath, a good thing. And I think frankly, I'd rather have a higher rate structure if that is a long-term earning for the Company, but I'll let Paul talk about redeploying.

[Paul Donofrio:]

Yeah. I don't know what specifics you're looking for, but I would echo some of Brian's comments. I think we've been very balanced. We -- if you look at the results compared to other banks, we've maintained our NII for the last few quarters here. Recall the bottom in the Third Quarter. But at the same time we were doing that, we still are reserving significant liquidity. We have a lot of dry powder as we sit here today, and more deposits are coming.

[Matthew O'Connor:]

Should we just think about it loans plus securities will basically equal deposits? If the loan growth is modest, you keep growing deposits, there's this cloud in the security is regardless of rates?

[Brian Moynihan:]

Yes. They got to take out. We do have to keep straight cash, obviously, that we showed you. But that's generally the way to think about it. And the debate is, do you remember, we hedged a lot of the stuff that we bought just to protect ourselves a little bit. But that's the simple way to think about it. In the bank side balance sheet that's a simple way to about, but obviously the securities firms different.

[Paul Donofrio:]

I'll Just reiterate. Like you said, we're going to get deposits. It's going to fund loan growth. Whatever's left over will probably go in securities, but then we still have a bunch of excess liquidity. So that can be deployed as well, either in the near-term or long-term, depending on how we balance liquidity against capital and earnings.

[Brian Moynihan:]

In text, you're going back to Glenn's question, Matt. One thing is we can't take advantage of this, our extreme efficiency in the consumer business with the rate structure. And so anything got downIndiscernible. The pushing towards a 100 -- 120 basis points of deposits because of the growing core-checking customers at a more rapid pace than we've grown in a while. So consistently quarter-after-quarter-after-quarter, that's going to stick to our rifts if you don't pay anything for it. And as rates rise, it will drive the efficiency. But we just haven't had a chance to take advantage of it, frankly because of the rate spike.

[Matthew O'Connor:]

Okay, got it. That's helpful. Thank you.

[Operator:]

We'll take our next question from Mike Mayo with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

[Michael Mayo:]

Hi. I'm stuck on slide 17 with the digital usage. So I guess you have a record number of digital users, 70%, you highlighted digital sales of 26% year-over-year. Where aspirationally do you want that to go and what can be the impact on headcount and expenses? And it's the same question I asked before, we have best -in-class digital cost of deposits and the consumer is the lowest in the industry, but doesn't translate to the overall firm. So I'm just trying to connect the dots from your great digital usage to better efficiency and also get some sense of your aspirations on the digital side.

[Brian Moynihan:]

So Mike, to answer this last question. It's sort of that question, which is the consumer side doesn't get the advantage until you get the summary structure on the short end, especially. And so all that investment though, it'd be like we're having the same conversation we had in '16, before rates rose early. When's this going to pay off and then it exploded and paid off. And we expect that to happen again as the economy normalizes. And we are taking good advantage of that as you well know, prior to the pandemic. And so, let me back up on digital products and usage. The key strategies we've been engaged on is beyond a consumer and Paul hit some of the wealth management pieces, you can see them. And so when we're talking about the digital things, we're actually showing it by each segment ; for the growth and the wealth management cycle for external usage i.e. customers and internal, is extremely important in using Erica internally as a method of artificial intelligence-based natural language processing that helps to make people more efficient in the commercial segment of all managers. So we don't have -- our aspiration is just to follow and push the clients at the same time. And that always has a benefit, and that's why over the last decade, we're down 40,000 people in the retail network, to give you a sense and -- of where it goes. We have some internal plans, we have an idea, but we are -- we don't go out and say that because frankly, it happens piece by piece by piece. And honest ly at $2500 -- 2500 FTE reduction in the quarter, is in part due to the consumer efficiencies picking back in once they got through PPP process and things like that.

[Paul Donofrio:]

And that reduction of headcount you all both factor in the increase in headcount at the front office. So we're getting a reduction overall. If you go back pre-pandemic or if you look at this quarter, but at the same time you're seeing a mix shift. We're adding more people out there talking to customers across the platform and we have less people in support in the back-office.

[Michael Mayo:]

Okay. Just one follow-up on that aspirational question. When you stripped out and you don't normalize everything, rates and everything else you want to do, how much more do you think you can lower unit cost over the next several years, and what would be the main technology driver for that?

[Brian Moynihan:]

The --?they're? basically 3 ways. One, that it's all going to show up in headcount, and so we expect that the consumer cost of deposit is gone from 350 basis points probably 10, 12 years ago, to 120. And so we'd expect to keep driving that down, and that's going to be driven by everything we just talked about. When you get to revenue-related compensation of wealth manager business, that's up $0.5 billion from this quarter '19 probably or something like that. And that's a good thing because we make money, but that will be more driven by its production capabilities and things like that. There's basically buildings and how many do you need and how many people -- that's driven by how many people and how much you pay our teammates, who are talented and drive the business. That's driven by how many people, and we just had a -- we had been working our way down in headcount and it then froze because of all the work we had to do around the pandemic-related programs. But now, it's dropped by 1% in the quarter, and that's where -- that's where it pays back.

[Michael Mayo:]

Great. Alright. Thank you.

[Operator:]

Our next question is from Betsy Graseck with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

[Brian Moynihan:]

Good morning, Betsy.

[Betsy Graseck:]

Hi, good morning. Great slide on Slide 5. Really love it. Thanks for all the detail. I just wanted to dig in on card a little bit. There has been some discussion around how spend is up a lot, as you indicated as well. and how much of that spend is likely to be translating into revolving versus transactor. You're giving us the daily, clearly, we can see that here on the slide, but it would be helpful to understand what you're seeing in the guts of the machine. And has it revolved or started to pick up, or does this loan growth that you've shown on the slide reflect just the increased spend in transactor paydown rates are similar to what they've been over the past few months?

[Brian Moynihan:]

So the revolver piece is starting to move forward, but it is down obviously significant pre-pandemic. The transactor piece is higher. Well you want people to use the card to get revenue and you saw that in the fee line to get revenue from the usage and also get revenue from the loans. The loans are obviously the better part of the equation, but you have to realize, we have about round numbers, same number of cards outstanding. There's $25 billion less balances, which people didn't get any different. They just have more cash. And so they paid off the credit cards, which is a completely responsible thing for them to do. And when they can get out and spend more money, which is starting to happen, I think you'll see them use these light, short-term purchase. So I don't think -- yeah, the pay rate is up, but I don't think it's a fundamental difference of behavior, it's just the opportunity to use the cards or activity has been limited coming into this quarter when we finally saw things open. We'll see where it goes, but it's -- the good news is it's going a different direction, and had been leading up an entry point about Slide 5. And the good news is the people are high credit quality, so that means that the nettage fee risk-adjusted margin, i.e, that margin from cards minus the charge-offs, is actually closer than what people think because the card charge-offs are dropped by 3, 400 million a quarter.

[Betsy Graseck:]

Okay, Brian. That's -- yeah. No, that's great. That leads into the followup, which is relating to your reserve ratio on card. I think the way we're calculating is around 8.5 or 8.8% at this stage. Give us a sense as to how you're thinking about that trajectory here, given that the environment has been improving, what should we expect on reserves going forward?

[Brian Moynihan:]

Go ahead, Paul.

[Paul Donofrio:]

I'll answer the question this way

[Betsy Graseck:]

Right. And could you even be below CECL Day 1 because the environment is so good right now?

[Paul Donofrio:]

You could easily be below CECL Day 1. I mean, as you know, it just depends at the moment you are setting your reserve, what your mix is, what are your card balances and what is your view of the future. And our view of the future is a more benign environment than it was in CECL Day 1, then by definition, you'd end up with lower reserves.

[Brian Moynihan:]

And that's the point of page 6, Betsy, really goes to your question on card specifically.

[Betsy Graseck:]

Okay. Thanks very much.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Steven Chubak with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

[Steven Chubak:]

Hi. Good morning.

[Paul Donofrio:]

Morning, Steven.

[Steven Chubak:]

So Paul, it was certainly encouraging to hear that there's still a path to the billion-$ improvement in that NII exit rate that you cited, just giving some of the long-game pressures since you gave that guidance. I was hoping you could just help us unpack some of the component pieces, given it's a meaningful step-up versus what we saw in the most recent quarter. And maybe just thinking about it in 3 buckets

[Paul Donofrio:]

So I would say that it's -- it's about half loan growth. Well, first back out, we have an extra day. Okay. Back that out, and as we sit here today, it will be roughly half loan growth and half premium M reduction. Having said that, it's a challenge given that the fact the rates have fallen, it's a challenge. It's hard to get there. And so we've always had the opportunity to deploy a little more liquidity as we think about this going forward.

[Steven Chubak:]

Understood. At least the premium amount ultimately will come. It's just a question of timing there, so. But I understand that that could at least impact where it shakes out by the end of the year. The other thing I wanted to get a better sense of, Paul, is just on the capital comments that you made earlier. You noted that you're at 11.5%, 200 bps above your minimum. Just curious if you can give us some sense as to where you plan on operating on a steady-state basis, how much cushion you want to retain. And just given the strength of your excess capital position, how should we be thinking about the pace or cadence of the buyback for the next 4 quarters?

[Brian Moynihan:]

Obviously, we're allowed to do it, so that's the change, and at a level that allows us to move capital off the balance sheets that are constrained by the average of earnings which was through this quarter, so it will move up. But I think we try to operate 50 basis points above the minimum speedos have target because there's volatility??? RSR of 59. We've got 90 basis points of cushion and we want to operate 50 basis points there, the 9.5-10, etc. You should expect us not immediately to be moving towards that over time. And then as this goes through the periods, the question will be what's the ultimate G-SIB level that we have to maintain in the future and things like that. But we're -- we can move at pace now. And we couldn't before because we were -- it was constraint to your dividend plus your buybacks could only equal your earnings. And we're a Company that went into this crisis with a lot more excess capital, and we are a Company that came out of this crisis with a lot more excess capital. And there are thicker exams during this crisis as we had the lowest losses and stayed below the 250 FTE. So off we go. But as you know, the constraints, you gotta go the lowest constraints, and that's 50 basis points and you should expect us to stay above that. But right now, that's a lot up the sky.

[Steven Chubak:]

If I could just squeeze in one more, sorry, just gotten a bunch of questions on the global market's loan growth, which is a pretty eye-popping number. And so you can just unpack the opportunity that you're seeing within that segment, and whether there's further runway for continued growth just given how significant of an uptick we saw in the most recent quarter?

[Paul Donofrio:]

Yeah, sure. We did that activity, the loan growth was led by Global Markets. But we did see it across the platform, including in the market in other areas. In global markets, we just look for opportunities to use some of our liquidity in a more constructive way than maybe buying more securities. And it was across a number of different types of opportunities and clients, but about I would say $6 billion-ish of it went into our decision to hold some CLOs in loan form. Now we concentrated those holding in AAA and AA tranches instead of distributing the securities to investors. And we think that activity is very consistent with our plans to allocate more balance sheet to customers in global markets. Having said all that, say no people concentrate on CLO exposure, our CLO exposure is still extremely low relative to our peers.

[Steven Chubak:]

Fair enough. Thanks for accommodating the additional question.

[Operator:]

Our next question is from Ken Usdin with Jefferies, please go ahead.

[Kenneth Usdin:]

Thanks. Good morning. If I could just go further on the commercial loan topic. As you start to see a little bit better demand aside from PPP across whether it's corporate, which you just talked about, commercial small business, what is your sense from the customer base of where it's potentially coming back the most and where the most holdbacks are because customers still have tons of excess liquidity to get through before they borrow?

[Paul Donofrio:]

Well, look, if you look at Global Banking this quarter, middle market was driven by food products, commercial services, and suppliers and diversified wholesalers. Obviously, you've still got some industries that are affected by the pandemic, and so they really haven't started to recover yet. If you look at our commercial committed exposures. By the way, they grew $30 billion quarter-over-quarter. We're now above the $1 trillion pre-pandemic level. But people are -- people are getting ready to borrow more. As Brian noted, the revolver utilization is still at historic lows, but we would expect that to move up as the economy improves. And then in global markets as I mentioned, there were a lot of opportunities in mortgage warehouse lending, subscription facilities, asset-backed securitization. There's lots of opportunities there to put more balance sheet to work.

[Kenneth Usdin:]

Thanks, Paul. And as a follow-up, on that point about the utility being low, but customers are readying themselves. I think as an industry we've been waiting for that for a couple of quarters now. What's that trigger point where you think we will start to see or it'll cause the line usage to actually start moving. It's been flat for now a good -- a good few quarters as we ready for it.

[Paul Donofrio:]

I think it's going to be inventory build across various industries.

[Brian Moynihan:]

And you're seeing trade finance kick up.

[Paul Donofrio:]

Yeah.

[Brian Moynihan:]

The trade finance flows and the trade flows that we have have been kicking up and kicking up, which means at some point, people are building inventories to meet the customer demand as we talked.

[Paul Donofrio:]

Some of that inventory building has been hampered by trucking and ocean liner and just, getting logistics. I think working out some kinks there, you could start to see it.

[Kenneth Usdin:]

And do you have any line of sight as when you talk to your customers about any easing up of those supply chain constraints as we anticipate that?

[Brian Moynihan:]

Getting better but still I've learned a lot more about ports than I ever thought I'd learn from my customers. But it's getting better. It's getting better, but it's going to take a while. I mean, you've already talked about the ship that we all talked about, we all know, but you're talking about basics and so it's getting better, but it really comes down to the operations of ports efficiently and the impact of the virus on employees in those ports and having people to work and unload the ships and things like that. It's a pretty drilled out analysis they have, but the reality is, it's still constraining, but it's getting incrementally better, but it'll take another 6 months in most our segments. At the end of the year, it will all be better. We'll see that.

[Kenneth Usdin:]

Okay.

[Paul Donofrio:]

As you think about own growth, and you start modeling it, just remember with utilization down close to 10%? At 45 billion up.

[Brian Moynihan:]

From last year.

[Paul Donofrio:]

Yeah. That's $45 billion alon. That's growth.

[Kenneth Usdin:]

Right. Right. That's the opportunity set is just how quickly could that be a loaded spring? Right?

[Paul Donofrio:]

Yeah.

[Kenneth Usdin:]

Okay. Thank you very much.

[Operator:]

Our next question is from Gerard Cassidy with RBC. Please go ahead.

[Gerard Cassidy:]

Good morning, guys. How are you?

[Paul Donofrio:]

Hi, Gerard? How are you?

[Gerard Cassidy:]

Good. Paul, can you share with us, when I look at your average earning balance sheet in your supplement and you give us the yield of the average earning assets, and I think it declined to a 179 basis points. Can you share with us one -- what's the difference between what you're reporting and what you're putting on each quarter of new earning assets? is there a 20-basis point difference, 10 - Basis points difference? And if we assume rates don't change, when does that gap disappear? Because what you're putting on is equal to what you're actually earning.

[Paul Donofrio:]

Yeah. Well, again, I'll talk about when we take our liquidity, which again, we've got a lot of excess liquidity, and we deploy that into a security. We're picking up -- well, in the Second Quarter, we picked up on a blended basis between mortgages and treasuries, which were roughly 50-50 purchases. We picked up about 170 basis points relative to cash. But when you look at a security that's rolling off and being replaced, the rolling off it's 250, and ended up being replaced at 210. Now you could do the same math -- I did it with securities. You could do the same math with a loan. Pick your loan category, whether it's a card or a commercial loan or, it's going to just depend on the yields.

[Gerard Cassidy:]

Very good. And coming back, I think you pointed out that the asset sensitivity of the balance sheet is still intact. A 100 basis point parallel shift is -- leaves still about an $8 billion increase in net interest revenue. Can you share with us what weighs more heavily on that number? Is it the short end of the curve going up? Is it 70% of that increase comes from the short end going up versus the long end?

[Paul Donofrio:]

Correct. It's approximately 70% for the short end.

[Gerard Cassidy:]

Very good, Okay. Appreciate it. Thank you.

[Operator:]

And we'll go to Charles Peabody with Portales. Your line is open.

[Charles Peabody:]

Yeah. I wanted to focus on your card operations for 2 reasons

[Brian Moynihan:]

If you're talking about interest income, yeah. If you look at the stuff us up on our Page 8, the 1.876 billion is the card interest income for the Second Quarter of '21. But that's --

[Charles Peabody:]

I was using your -- the net income.

[Brian Moynihan:]

The net income, we don't have a card segment launch. Yeah, we don't report a card segment because it goes there, goes in the fee line, It it goes in expense.

[Charles Peabody:]

But if you look at your line of business reporting, you do have a consumer lending versus deposit. And the consumer lending is primarily cards, if I understand it correctly.

[Brian Moynihan:]

No. It's got mortgage loans and vehicles and -- yeah, it's all lending products. So -- if you got a fifth question, we got Lee to --

[Charles Peabody:]

Okay. The question is, if I assume 2019 kind data in terms of margins, in terms of gross yield, and I assume high single-digit growth in loans in 2022, because of the substantial reserve release Fiscal year versus what probably would be less next year, I see a fairly substantial decline in your card business as a line of business, as a profit business. And so I'm trying to get a sense, am I right that there's a delay? Even if the balances Price up, there's a delay to the improved profitability of that product line.

[Brian Moynihan:]

Because there's less reserve. Last year, it was hurt by reserve build. This year benefit by reserve releases. Then next year --

[Charles Peabody:]

Right.

[Brian Moynihan:]

-- that benefit comes out, that's the Company'sIndiscernible.

[Charles Peabody:]

And not only that, but you have to reserve as you're putting on loans. And so you get less benefit day 1 versus day 100.

[Paul Donofrio:]

Yeah. But remember we've got -- I think it was -- somebody asked an earlier question before. We reserved on loans now 200 basis points higher than where we were CECL day 1. As loans grow, you can eat into that reserve.

[Charles Peabody:]

Right. And I estimated you probably have about 1 billion to 1.5 billion of excess reserves in your cards if you go back to day 1 CECL. And so you're going to plead some of that back in over the second half of this year, which means you have maybe 0.5 billion to a billion next year.

[Paul Donofrio:]

Hey, Charlie. So why don't we take this offline and you and I can go through this afterwards. I see where you're headed.

[Charles Peabody:]

Okay. I'll share my model with you Lee because I think it's an important hole that has to be filled next year.

[Paul Donofrio:]

Yes. What I'd also just add though, just while everybody is on the line, is just remember our charge-offs are running significantly lower. In addition -- forget about all the reserving against the balance.

[Charles Peabody:]

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

[Paul Donofrio:]

Yeah. Okay. But I'll get with you after this call.

[Charles Peabody:]

All right. Thanks.

[Operator:]

And it appears we have no further questions. I'll return the floor to Brian Moynihan for closing remarks.

[Brian Moynihan:]

Thank you all for joining us. Once again, in the quarter, our customers are seeing good growth opportunities in the recovering economy. Deposits continue to grow, 80 billion in the quarter, loan balances stabilize and grow on a period -end basis for the quarter. Even though we're coming in PPP runoff, asset quality is that 25-year percentage loss laws, not just $ amount. The solid earnings continued this quarter. We -- the important thing is we're seeing increased activity by our customer base, whether it's sales of all the different products, whether it's the reopening the branches and more appointments that lead to sales, whether it's our face-to-face meetings or cormecial businesses. So that holds us in good stead and helps answer the question about how NII grows in the Second-half of the year. And so -- and then on top of all that, this quarter is the first quarter in many that we've been able to -- forever that we've been able to go back and actually use the excess capital based on our earnings power and our board's discretion. You should expect us to get back in the share buyback game. Thank you, and we will return that capital to you, and we look forward to talk to you next quarter.

[Operator:]

We'll conclude today's program. Thanks for your participation. You may now disconnect.