Following is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC exclusive interview with Bank of America Chair & CEO Brian Moynihan on CNBC’s “Mad Money” (M-F, 6PM-7PM ET) today, Tuesday, April 19th. Following is a link to video on CNBC.com:
‘Don’t Fight The U.S. Consumer’ – Bank Of America CEO Says Spending Is Healthy Despite Roaring Inflation
JIM CRAMER: Let’s check in with Brian Moynihan, the Chairman and CEO of Bank of America Corp (NYSE:BAC) to get a better read on the quarter and the consumer in America. Mr. Moynihan, welcome back to “Mad Money.”
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BRIAN MOYNIHAN: Hey Jim, how are you? Good to see you again.
CRAMER: My favorite line Brian in this report was when you said you can see the organic growth engine that our company is delivering. Once again, no banks are organic except for yours. Tell us why.
MOYNIHAN: Well, we have a great team and a great franchise and we have great customers who give us more business and tell their friends about us. And so year over year, you saw us grow our deposits 200, more than 200 billion, 240 billion. You saw our loans grow 10%. You saw, you know, we had a downdraft in investment banking fees, but you saw wealth management fees up nice and so we grew revenue, expenses were down, that creates operating leverage and that's off the organic growth engine that’s delivering more accounts. Two hundred plus thousand new customers for the consumer business in the first quarter alone.
CRAMER: What I think's incredible is because of your digital efforts and because of your customer service and who you guys are, this is sticky money. This isn't jumping from one place to another, correct?
MOYNIHAN: Yeah, we have a trillion foreign deposits for people for consumers like you and me, you know, from mass market consumers all the way up to wealthy consumers. 1.4 trillion of our $2 trillion is in that consumer base, about 40% of it’s in checking. People have a lot of money in their checking balance so we can talk about that because of the stimulus payments and everything and higher wages. But the reality is that sticky money and when we saw the repricing of the Fed last time all the way, you know, from the floor zero up to 2%, you know, you can see our pricing go through and even when that went on, we grew our deposit base 5% in the preceding 12 months so we can grow as Fed’s rates rise because the team does a very good job of getting more customers and doing a great job for them and the digital capabilities, the branch capabilities, the wealth management, financial advisors and private bankers. Across the board, they do a great job.
CRAMER: Well, unlike most people who say that, you're actually proud that your people are being paid more. I mean, everyone's so gun shy because of Wall Street saying, wow, they're paying their people too much, I'm worried. That is not the line that you tell people.
MOYNIHAN: Well, we have a great team but if you think about a company like ours where basically a very talented group of 200,000 plus people, a bunch of computers that they use to serve their customers well and their customers can use directly well and and buildings to house them so people are what our company is, and they're the ones that make the computers work and the other ones that do the great job for their customers so we pay them well and we started minimum, starting salaries now $22, full benefits, $10,000 tuition reimbursement, $275 a month per child for childcare credits for people to lower income levels, you know, healthcare that's well taken care of for lower income and higher income people pay more. We do all that because we need those great talented group of people to serve our customers well and our brand score’s now at the highest they've ever been which is a good thing.
CRAMER: Now at the same time you have pretty good data on the strength of the consumer and I love the line dry powder. That can keep us out of recession, can’t it?
MOYNIHAN: I think if you think about it, just a couple of facts. In the first quarter in the month of March ‘22 versus March ’21, the consumers fairly state it has been about 13% more than they did last year. And by the way, there were 7% to 8% more transaction. So even there is inflationary part of pricing that's done so we showed that to the investors yesterday and showed it to the world yesterday. But importantly in the first couple of weeks in April, that number’s moved back to 18% indicating faster spending in the consumers and people say well, it's due to inflation but gasoline expenditures are about 5% of 21% of what people spend in a Bank of America. So that's a trillion dollars almost in the quarter have grown at 13%. The consumers are out there spending. Now, what's driving that is the second part of it and what you mean by dry powder. If you look in the consumer accounts so you take, talked yesterday about two cohorts, customers had 1 to $2,000 in their accounts pre-pandemic, average 1,400 or so. They now have about 3,400 or 3,500 in the account. For people who averaged between two and $5,000 average clear balance in their account, they now have, they average about $3,000. They now have about 12, $13,000 in their account, so they have more money and it's grown every month for the last year, more or less, and the last payment was a year ago and that's just because people are earning more and getting paid more and frankly, there's been a underspending because travel and other things have been hard and now it's going to open up and it’ll keep doing it. That could be inflationary but also gives—
CRAMER: Well, you gave us some unbelievable travel, the travel restaurant spend, recovery. I mean, this these are amazing numbers.
MOYNIHAN: No and they are and I know you're in the restaurant business so hopefully your restaurants are full and and people can't even get a reservation.
CRAMER: They are.
MOYNIHAN: So you're seeing people spend money and that's that's a good thing. Now, the question is is that puts pressure on the Fed but the Fed knows what job they do. They gotta raise rates and bring the inflation down. That's not theoretical and will it be a soft landing or slightly hard landing, but that under, in investing you say, don't fight the Fed. I would always believe in America, don't fight the US consumer. They are a very strong force and you can see them very healthy, their loan balances are down. They have plenty of borrowing capacity and they have plenty of spending capacity.
CRAMER: I love that. Now, when you and I always talk digital when it was nice at the beginning. Now it is an imperative. You know, I spoke to almost, well I’d say I did speak to every CEO or number two at all the big banks and you know what they say? Yeah, Brian got that right. They say Brian got that right. What did they, what did you get right that they all wish they had done?
MOYNIHAN: Well, it just took investment across long periods of time and discipline to do things that people will use and get them to use them. So it doesn't, a whole bunch of wonderful things don't work unless the customer actually gets the benefit, actually uses them to do things. So whether it's the Zelle payments, which now I mean, this is kind of interesting. This quarter, we passed where people sent more transactions on Zelle to send, you know, me to send Jim money as opposed, than wrote checks and wrote checks. So you've seen the crossover finally where that's happening. You think about digital sales. We started building that product by product many years ago, that has ended up with 53% of the sales are digital and by the way, all the branches are open after the pandemic has mitigated. Now, all 4,000 plus branches are open, all those teammates are working hard handling people in the high touch which is critically important but 50% are coming digital so you get a mortgage, a car loan, a card, open a checking account all online and Merrill Edge is growing strong, a lot of online applications. So, what did we do? We invested $3 billion a year for many years in technology and you just had to be investing but you had to keep the discipline of being an innovator to develop feature functionality but being a disciplined person to get get it in a way that customers really would use it. So they would deposit their checks on mobile, they would use Zelle, they would use Merrill Edge not just build functionality for functionality and we’re at 54 million digital users and 40 and 35 million active, you know, literally using it all time or 40 odd million using all the time and it's very strong right now.
CRAMER: Well, one last thing I know there was this New York Times article, “He Quietly Turned Bank of America Around, Can He Do More?” and you don’t even need to do more but I know you will. But one of the things you did was you created this the think small, small business. I saw your small business number, your percentage of market share, I am telling you that ad campaign worked Brian in so many different ways and neither neither one of us ever thought would happened.
MOYNIHAN: The Small Business team does a great job. A woman named Sharon Miller runs that segment and then we have a segment just next bigger than that which is five to $50 million companies and then we have our middle market that Wendy Stewart runs but if you go across that continuum, that small business is 80, $90 billion plus in deposits. It just really grows strong. They do a great job, they’re number one, we're the number one lender to small businesses in the country and Sharon and her team do a great job. And again, that's digital functionality and that's personal functionality. And we got a lot upside there because we just, we bought in our merchant servicing platform, and now we're deploying it. And I just walked into branch the other day near the Boston Marathon where they're setting up and I had some time to kill and I walked in and talked to the person, she was a merchant specialist. She told me she can't wait to get the new equipment to go out and sell and, you know, the teams have great feature functionality, but we still have lots of areas that we can even grow faster in those areas.
CRAMER: Well look, next time you're on, we're going to talk more about what you've done to help the less fortunate which is a nationwide and nationwide thing that I want to bring out from you because that isn't why you do it. But I know who you are. Brian Moynihan, Chairman and CEO of Bank of America. I love seeing you, buddy. Thank you.
MOYNIHAN: Thanks, Jim. Thank you.
