Bank of America CEO ‘still feels good’ about Q4 NII guidance

Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Financial Services Conference, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan stated, according to a transcript: “Well, if you think about the fourth quarter, we still feel good about the NII guidance, $14 billion, which was what we said. We feel good — the big issue on expenses, the FDIC resolution came through. So that’s $2.1 billion to $2.2 billion, slightly higher than the original estimates, but that’s just due to the math of the calculation in our expense of 15.6. So that sort of brings the total expense base to 17.7 to 17.8 depending on where the FDIC settles in. So we hit to 15.6, we feel good about. When you think about things like the investment banking, the fee pool looks to be down 10% to 15%. And we’ll be at about $1 billion in fees this quarter is our best estimate now, which puts us just down low single digits, which outperforms the industry. And we’ve been doing that. Frankly, we’ve been gaining share in that business and Matthew and the team — Matthew Koder and the team have done a good job. On the markets and trading, now we’re this late in the quarter, you can look at it and say, it looks like we’ll be up low single digits year-over-year, which is good performance by Jim and team, probably the best fourth quarter we ever had. It still has a seasonality from third quarter, but they’ve done a good job. And I think the other thing that we’re just trying to get people sort of on par with us is the — these tax deals. So we have been a major financier of renewable energy. So 10, 15, some percentage of all the renewables sits on our balance sheet tax equity, and that’s what we’ve been doing to drive that business. And so the benefits have been coming through a tax line all year, but what happens in the fourth quarter, you get a ramp up of the deals that closed because everybody rushed to get stuff closed by year-end. And that looks like it would be $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion of negative other income, which is like rise in other years, but it’s a big change from the third quarter. I’m just trying to get people straight there. There’s always confusion about it. So where are the tax benefits? The tax benefits, you take a more pro rata, and that comes in all at once just by when the deal is closed. So those are 4, 5 major things. And the company’s around while everything else, those are pretty much in par with what we said.”