Company: HBAN
Filing Date: 2025-10-28
Form Type: 425
Source: 0001140361-25-039508
Chunk: 9

Company: HUNTINGTON BANCSHARES INC /MD/
Filing Date: 2025-10-28
Form: 425
Chunk 9
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 know you said meet or exceed, but can you just talk through your level of confidence there? Zachary J. Wasserman CFO & Senior EVP Yes. Great question, Jon. And we think the cost synergies, as I noted in the prepared remarks, are very achievable. We have a strong line of sight to it. The diligence process that both Brant and Steve highlighted was extraordinarily rigorous and not only went into a deep, deep review of things that would call out potential risk, but more importantly, to drive the action plan for us to really execute not only the cost synergies, but of course, the integration and importantly, the growth synergies that will come from this. So we've got strong line of sight to this. The categories of cost synergy achievement are what you'd expect from a large combination like this, tech platform efficiencies, of course, org efficiencies that come from these kind of combinations and a number of other sources of scale and benefits of automation on the Huntington side. So strong confidence we'll meet them. History is a guide and TCF is a great example. We exceeded these. And so certainly, we will endeavor to do that as well. Jon Glenn Arfstrom RBC Capital Markets, Research Division Yes. Okay. And then key drivers of the 200 basis point lift in the combined return expectations of the company, is that just Cadence? Are there other drivers? Is it revenue synergies? Can you just help us understand that big lift in return objectives? Zachary J. Wasserman CFO & Senior EVP It's another good one. And the short answer is, none of the financial projections that we provided here today include any degree of revenue synergies. We do believe we'll see quite strong revenue synergies and that will be even more earnings power and revenue lift. But to be clear, none of these projections include that at this time. The main driver to the return on capital improvement is the efficiency opportunity that the cost synergies would represent. We think there'll be meaningful lift in efficiency, improvement in ROA. All of that will translate into 200 basis points of return on capital. One thing I would note is we are assuming in that, that the gross benefit of the efficiency is more than just 200 basis points of ROTCE improvement. But we also intend to plow back, as I noted in my prepared remarks, a fair amount of that into investments. And the net of that will be 200 basis points of ROTCE, which if you go back, Jon,