July 21, 2025 • 11 mins
It was big week for Huntington Bancshares, which agreed to buy Veritex Holdings for $1.9 billion in stock, expanding its presence in Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston. The acquisition is aimed at accelerating Huntington's organic growth initiatives in high-growth Texas markets. Meanwhile the Ohio-based lender also reported strong quarterly earnings, reflecting growth in loans and deposits, sustained strong revenue and profit growth, as well as continued excellent credit performance
Zach Wasserman, CFO of Huntington Bancshares, explains why Texas is so important to his the company's broader strategy, and also addresses what uncertainty over Federal Reserve policy and leadership mean for the financial sector. Zach speaks with Tim Stenovec, Sonali Basak and Nina Trentmann on Bloomberg Businessweek Daily.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
You're listening to Bloomberg BusinessWeek with Carol Masser and tim
Stenoveek on Bloomberg Radio. Well.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Huntington Bank Shares stock down about one point eight percent
as we speak. The company reported second quarter earnings this morning.
It boosted its net interest income growth forecast for the
full year. Earlier this week, though, the company also agreed
to buy Veritec's holdings for one point nine billion dollars
in stock that expands its presence in Dallas, Fort Worth
and Houston. Back with us is Zach Wasserman, chief financial
(00:37):
officer of Huntington Bank Shares. It's the holding company of
the consumer and business regional bank, Huntington National Bank. It's
got locations in a handful of states, including Ohio, Minnesota,
North and South Carolina and more. Also with us Bloomberg
News Senior editor Nina Trentman. She writes the Bloomberg CFO
Briefing newsletter, which you should sign up for at Bloomberg
dot com slash CFO Dash Briefing. Zach is in Columbus,
(00:59):
Ninah in our Bloomberg studio, Zach, I want to start
just with the deal for Veritex in Texas that will
accelerate your operations in the state. What attracted you to
this bank in particular and to the Texas market.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
You know, we're extraordinarily pleased with the opportunity to partner
with Veritechs, And you know, a couple of things.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
I would say.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
One is the Texas market in particular is incredibly attractive.
As you probably know, it's one of the fastest growing
states in the country. It's the eighth largest economy in
the world if it was a standalone country, and just
the dynamism and the amount of business activity there is
incredibly attractive.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
It's one of the.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Reasons why we launched our own business there more than
a decade ago, and we doubled down with a local
expansion in early twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
But Veritechs also is.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
An incredible platform for us to partner with. They're a
top ten commercial bank in the state, and in particular
focused on the two cities, as you noted before, the
two MSA areas Dallas Fort Worth on one hand and
then Houston and the other hand that.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
We really are focused on.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
So we not only see a great opportunity to combine
our activities but to really build on that.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
One of the things we've talked a lot about is.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
That this is a springboard for us to grow organically,
not only now in the short term, but really over
the longer term in Texas. It'll make Texas our third
largest state, to give you a sense, so we already
will have a very meaningful present presence in that really
great market.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
Zach, can you talk to us a little bit about
how that deal came together. We know, of course many
companies have been looking at deal making this year. Deal
making is actually up compared to the prior year period,
but still, of course there are deals that are not
going through because of terrorists and uncertainty, and how far
did that impact your deal and also how did it
come together?
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Yeah, well, you know, so we have wanted to expand
and sort of continue to grow into Texas for some time,
and we've been therefore evaluating a lot of opportunities to
do that, both organically, you know, as you as you
probably know in North and South Carolina, we've we've just
announced to a pretty significant organic expand and building fifty
five branches and really doubling down building out our whole
(03:04):
franchise there, and so we were looking at opportunities to
do the same thing in Texas and obviously evaluating lots of.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Different ways to do that.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
When we really began to talk with Veritexs and it
came together pretty quickly. The first time we met with
them to discuss a partnership in any specificity was in
mid June, so just about a month ago, and it
evolved quickly for us to see, Wow, these are not
only incredibly strategic opportunities, but the organizations themselves share a
(03:33):
tremendous affinity in terms of culture and mission, which, as
you probably know, that is the sort of secret sauce
to make an acquisition in banking successful. The cultures need
to be aligned, the teams need to work together, and
we saw that there was not only the strategic opportunity,
but the cultures fit and then we were able to
work together to find some of these growth opportunities that
(03:55):
we could capture together. We said, Wow, this is a
partnership that we really should move forward with, and so
on Monday we were really pleased to be ably announce that.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
Just turning to your earnings, talk to us a bit
about the past quarter. We spoke to you at the
end of the last quarter and we're asking you, do
you see any sign any signs of a recession in
your business? How is your business doing? What are you
hearing from clients now that we're three months later, How
does that look?
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Yeah, the Q two results were just phenomenal, and then
they really built strength throughout the quarter. To give you
a sense, loans sequentially grew just under two percent. That's
eight percent year over year. That was at the high
end of our guidance range that we had given earlier.
In the quarter, deposits grew one percent, fees were up
seven percent year on year, spread revenue twelve percent. Ultimately,
(04:42):
we saw pretexts earnings up sixteen percent and rings per
share growing twenty.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Five percent year on year. So it really was a
bang up quarter.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
I will tell you, if you rewind the tape and
you go back to April, I would have told you
we had a lot of momentum. We felt pretty confident
about how things where good would go, but there was
clearly quite a bit of uncertainty in the market, and
the capital markets were pretty volatile.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
You know.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Fast forward to June and we saw strength build throughout
the quarridor loan and customer activity really firmed up, particularly
in mid May and into June, and now the third
quarter is starting out with the bank. We just talked
this morning with our analyst and investor community and we
shared that, you know, through the first couple of weeks
(05:26):
here in July, it's pretty strong actually, So all signs
are pointing toward continued growth and certainly a very encouraging
end of what was to start with a somewhat uncertain environment.
Speaker 5 (05:39):
Zach Shanali Bassak here, thanks for joining us today. You know,
even with a lot of promising information coming out of
this earning season for the biggest banks, for the regional banks,
there seems to have been a pretty muted investor reception
for firms even like yours that have boosted net interest
income guidance. That should be a really good thing. What
(05:59):
are masters telling you in terms of what else they
want to see? Why the mouted reaction, even if things
are looking pretty good.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
You know, it's hard to know what's on the mind
of investors any given time, as I'm sure you know. Well, look,
I think if you take a step back, the regional
bank stocks have expanded a fair amount over the last month,
so I think there's part of that sort of profit
taking activity going on now as results come through, there's
also obviously worries around how will different banks fare under
(06:30):
this fairly wide cone of uncertainty, around where interest rates
are going to go from here? Our rate's going to
stay flat and could they even go higher or could
they go lower. I'll tell you, for our for Huntington's sake,
we have positioned the business to be pretty neutral and
to effectively have the same outcome if we have zero
rate cuts or if as many four rate cuts from here,
(06:52):
and so I think, you know, that's one of the
questions on the mind of analysts. I think another one
is as low growth in the banking industry generally starts
to pick up, which by the way, is an incredibly
healthy sign, but as it happens across the industry broadly,
what will that do to deposit cost competition and the
kind of the benefits of interest rates coming down by
(07:14):
around a percentage point relative to the peak of FED funds,
you know, over the last number of quarters here. So
I suspect those and many other things are on the
mind of analysts, you know. For our part, I'll tell you,
you know, we put our heads down and we run
the business and and I think you know for what
we believe pretty strongly is if we can keep posting that,
you know, teens to hire earnings for share growth and
(07:37):
revenue growth in the high single digits, that ultimately we'll
see the stock prices continue to expand as they have
been for the last several months.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
Zach, you talked about interest rates, which of course is
a nice segue to to our next question. We've seen
increasingly intense devey this week and in recent weeks about
the future of mister Powell is head of the FED,
with the Trump administration asking for ratcod wanting to remove him.
We saw this big excitement earlier this week when The
(08:05):
New York Times reported that Trump had written a letter
and waived that in front of people in Congress. I'm
just wondering for you, as a regional bank CFO. I
know that your ps on Wall Street have expressed their
support for an independent FED earlier this week when they
reported earnings for you as a regional bank CFO, how
does that look?
Speaker 3 (08:27):
You know, what we want is a well functioning monetary system.
We want a predictable and stable environment. We want to
understand that it's a fact based and you know, based
on the kind of fundamentals of the economy in terms
of how the decision making is happening. So far, that
appears to be happening. I personally give the federal lotic credit.
(08:48):
It was a very difficult environment they've been through, and
they seem to have managed through over the last several
years pretty well here and you know, that'll be where
our focus is fundamentally coming back. You know, we run
the business every day, We take the interest rate as
given and we try to optimize around that.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Nina, we're speaking with Zach wassonan chief financial officer of
Huntington Bank Shares. Zach, since you do operate in these
geographies including Texas, Ohio, Minnesota, North and South Carolina and more,
you've got a nice regional view on where there is
strength and weakness. Are you seeing any particular geographical weakness
emerge anywhere?
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Really not, you know, I think pretty broad based growth.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
One of the things we shared today in the earnings
results is that, like we've seen for the last several quarters,
the growth we're seeing is very balanced between what we're
calling our core all of the businesses we've been operating
for for a long time, but also our new initiatives
excuse me, the launches we're doing into North and South Carolina,
into Texas.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Recently we launched our business into South Florida and a number.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Of new commercial specialties, and we're seeing a nice balance
across them. So, you know, kind of across our traditional
Midwest footprint, we're seeing strong growth in Michigan. I was
just up with our Michigan based team earlier this week,
and we're seeing six percent year over year loan growth.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
In that market.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
To give you a sense, in Columbus and in our
central Ohio region where I'm based, we're seeing very strong
economic conditions and a lot of expansion.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
And then of course in.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Some of the new geographies that we've were growing into
North and South Carolina, Texas, Florida, we're seeing a fair
amount of expansion there also, so not really seeing any
areas of weakness. And you know, again, as I noted,
kind of the trend we're seeing month by month here
is firming up pretty well.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Zach.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Thanks for joining us. It's good to see you again.
Happy third quarter. I can't believe we're already there. Hope
you have a good summer and do come back soon
and join us once again. Zach Washerman, Chief financial Officer
of Huntington Bank Shares, is the holding company of the
consumer and business regional bank. Huntington National Bank locations include Ohio, Minnesota,
North Carolina, and more. Stock right now down about two percent.
(11:03):
The company did report results a little earlier in the day.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Also with US.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Bloomberg News Senior editor Nina Trentman. She does write the
Bloomberg CFO Briefing newsletter. You should sign up for a
Bloomberg dot com slash CFO Briefing
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
You're listening to Bloomberg BusinessWeek with Carol Masser and tim
Stenoveek on Bloomberg Radio. Well.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Huntington Bank Shares stock down about one point eight percent
as we speak. The company reported second quarter earnings this morning.
It boosted its net interest income growth forecast for the
full year. Earlier this week, though, the company also agreed
to buy Veritec's holdings for one point nine billion dollars
in stock that expands its presence in Dallas, Fort Worth
and Houston. Back with us is Zach Wasserman, chief financial
(00:37):
officer of Huntington Bank Shares. It's the holding company of
the consumer and business regional bank, Huntington National Bank. It's
got locations in a handful of states, including Ohio, Minnesota,
North and South Carolina and more. Also with us Bloomberg
News Senior editor Nina Trentman. She writes the Bloomberg CFO
Briefing newsletter, which you should sign up for at Bloomberg
dot com slash CFO Dash Briefing. Zach is in Columbus,
(00:59):
Ninah in our Bloomberg studio, Zach, I want to start
just with the deal for Veritex in Texas that will
accelerate your operations in the state. What attracted you to
this bank in particular and to the Texas market.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
You know, we're extraordinarily pleased with the opportunity to partner
with Veritechs, And you know, a couple of things.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
I would say.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
One is the Texas market in particular is incredibly attractive.
As you probably know, it's one of the fastest growing
states in the country. It's the eighth largest economy in
the world if it was a standalone country, and just
the dynamism and the amount of business activity there is
incredibly attractive.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
It's one of the.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Reasons why we launched our own business there more than
a decade ago, and we doubled down with a local
expansion in early twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
But Veritechs also is.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
An incredible platform for us to partner with. They're a
top ten commercial bank in the state, and in particular
focused on the two cities, as you noted before, the
two MSA areas Dallas Fort Worth on one hand and
then Houston and the other hand that.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
We really are focused on.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
So we not only see a great opportunity to combine
our activities but to really build on that.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
One of the things we've talked a lot about is.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
That this is a springboard for us to grow organically,
not only now in the short term, but really over
the longer term in Texas. It'll make Texas our third
largest state, to give you a sense, so we already
will have a very meaningful present presence in that really
great market.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
Zach, can you talk to us a little bit about
how that deal came together. We know, of course many
companies have been looking at deal making this year. Deal
making is actually up compared to the prior year period,
but still, of course there are deals that are not
going through because of terrorists and uncertainty, and how far
did that impact your deal and also how did it
come together?
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Yeah, well, you know, so we have wanted to expand
and sort of continue to grow into Texas for some time,
and we've been therefore evaluating a lot of opportunities to
do that, both organically, you know, as you as you
probably know in North and South Carolina, we've we've just
announced to a pretty significant organic expand and building fifty
five branches and really doubling down building out our whole
(03:04):
franchise there, and so we were looking at opportunities to
do the same thing in Texas and obviously evaluating lots of.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Different ways to do that.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
When we really began to talk with Veritexs and it
came together pretty quickly. The first time we met with
them to discuss a partnership in any specificity was in
mid June, so just about a month ago, and it
evolved quickly for us to see, Wow, these are not
only incredibly strategic opportunities, but the organizations themselves share a
(03:33):
tremendous affinity in terms of culture and mission, which, as
you probably know, that is the sort of secret sauce
to make an acquisition in banking successful. The cultures need
to be aligned, the teams need to work together, and
we saw that there was not only the strategic opportunity,
but the cultures fit and then we were able to
work together to find some of these growth opportunities that
(03:55):
we could capture together. We said, Wow, this is a
partnership that we really should move forward with, and so
on Monday we were really pleased to be ably announce that.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
Just turning to your earnings, talk to us a bit
about the past quarter. We spoke to you at the
end of the last quarter and we're asking you, do
you see any sign any signs of a recession in
your business? How is your business doing? What are you
hearing from clients now that we're three months later, How
does that look?
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Yeah, the Q two results were just phenomenal, and then
they really built strength throughout the quarter. To give you
a sense, loans sequentially grew just under two percent. That's
eight percent year over year. That was at the high
end of our guidance range that we had given earlier.
In the quarter, deposits grew one percent, fees were up
seven percent year on year, spread revenue twelve percent. Ultimately,
(04:42):
we saw pretexts earnings up sixteen percent and rings per
share growing twenty.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Five percent year on year. So it really was a
bang up quarter.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
I will tell you, if you rewind the tape and
you go back to April, I would have told you
we had a lot of momentum. We felt pretty confident
about how things where good would go, but there was
clearly quite a bit of uncertainty in the market, and
the capital markets were pretty volatile.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
You know.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Fast forward to June and we saw strength build throughout
the quarridor loan and customer activity really firmed up, particularly
in mid May and into June, and now the third
quarter is starting out with the bank. We just talked
this morning with our analyst and investor community and we
shared that, you know, through the first couple of weeks
(05:26):
here in July, it's pretty strong actually, So all signs
are pointing toward continued growth and certainly a very encouraging
end of what was to start with a somewhat uncertain environment.
Speaker 5 (05:39):
Zach Shanali Bassak here, thanks for joining us today. You know,
even with a lot of promising information coming out of
this earning season for the biggest banks, for the regional banks,
there seems to have been a pretty muted investor reception
for firms even like yours that have boosted net interest
income guidance. That should be a really good thing. What
(05:59):
are masters telling you in terms of what else they
want to see? Why the mouted reaction, even if things
are looking pretty good.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
You know, it's hard to know what's on the mind
of investors any given time, as I'm sure you know. Well, look,
I think if you take a step back, the regional
bank stocks have expanded a fair amount over the last month,
so I think there's part of that sort of profit
taking activity going on now as results come through, there's
also obviously worries around how will different banks fare under
(06:30):
this fairly wide cone of uncertainty, around where interest rates
are going to go from here? Our rate's going to
stay flat and could they even go higher or could
they go lower. I'll tell you, for our for Huntington's sake,
we have positioned the business to be pretty neutral and
to effectively have the same outcome if we have zero
rate cuts or if as many four rate cuts from here,
(06:52):
and so I think, you know, that's one of the
questions on the mind of analysts. I think another one
is as low growth in the banking industry generally starts
to pick up, which by the way, is an incredibly
healthy sign, but as it happens across the industry broadly,
what will that do to deposit cost competition and the
kind of the benefits of interest rates coming down by
(07:14):
around a percentage point relative to the peak of FED funds,
you know, over the last number of quarters here. So
I suspect those and many other things are on the
mind of analysts, you know. For our part, I'll tell you,
you know, we put our heads down and we run
the business and and I think you know for what
we believe pretty strongly is if we can keep posting that,
you know, teens to hire earnings for share growth and
(07:37):
revenue growth in the high single digits, that ultimately we'll
see the stock prices continue to expand as they have
been for the last several months.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
Zach, you talked about interest rates, which of course is
a nice segue to to our next question. We've seen
increasingly intense devey this week and in recent weeks about
the future of mister Powell is head of the FED,
with the Trump administration asking for ratcod wanting to remove him.
We saw this big excitement earlier this week when The
(08:05):
New York Times reported that Trump had written a letter
and waived that in front of people in Congress. I'm
just wondering for you, as a regional bank CFO. I
know that your ps on Wall Street have expressed their
support for an independent FED earlier this week when they
reported earnings for you as a regional bank CFO, how
does that look?
Speaker 3 (08:27):
You know, what we want is a well functioning monetary system.
We want a predictable and stable environment. We want to
understand that it's a fact based and you know, based
on the kind of fundamentals of the economy in terms
of how the decision making is happening. So far, that
appears to be happening. I personally give the federal lotic credit.
(08:48):
It was a very difficult environment they've been through, and
they seem to have managed through over the last several
years pretty well here and you know, that'll be where
our focus is fundamentally coming back. You know, we run
the business every day, We take the interest rate as
given and we try to optimize around that.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Nina, we're speaking with Zach wassonan chief financial officer of
Huntington Bank Shares. Zach, since you do operate in these
geographies including Texas, Ohio, Minnesota, North and South Carolina and more,
you've got a nice regional view on where there is
strength and weakness. Are you seeing any particular geographical weakness
emerge anywhere?
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Really not, you know, I think pretty broad based growth.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
One of the things we shared today in the earnings
results is that, like we've seen for the last several quarters,
the growth we're seeing is very balanced between what we're
calling our core all of the businesses we've been operating
for for a long time, but also our new initiatives
excuse me, the launches we're doing into North and South Carolina,
into Texas.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Recently we launched our business into South Florida and a number.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Of new commercial specialties, and we're seeing a nice balance
across them. So, you know, kind of across our traditional
Midwest footprint, we're seeing strong growth in Michigan. I was
just up with our Michigan based team earlier this week,
and we're seeing six percent year over year loan growth.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
In that market.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
To give you a sense, in Columbus and in our
central Ohio region where I'm based, we're seeing very strong
economic conditions and a lot of expansion.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
And then of course in.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Some of the new geographies that we've were growing into
North and South Carolina, Texas, Florida, we're seeing a fair
amount of expansion there also, so not really seeing any
areas of weakness. And you know, again, as I noted,
kind of the trend we're seeing month by month here
is firming up pretty well.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Zach.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Thanks for joining us. It's good to see you again.
Happy third quarter. I can't believe we're already there. Hope
you have a good summer and do come back soon
and join us once again. Zach Washerman, Chief financial Officer
of Huntington Bank Shares, is the holding company of the
consumer and business regional bank. Huntington National Bank locations include Ohio, Minnesota,
North Carolina, and more. Stock right now down about two percent.
(11:03):
The company did report results a little earlier in the day.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Also with US.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Bloomberg News Senior editor Nina Trentman. She does write the
Bloomberg CFO Briefing newsletter. You should sign up for a
Bloomberg dot com slash CFO Briefing
Hosts And Creators
Tim Stenovec
Carol Massar
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