HBAN · Huntington Bancshares Incorporated

Banks - Regional · mkt cap $32.9B · calls: Q1 FY2026 vs Q4 FY2025

37.0 conviction · conf-adj 37

conf –

enthusiasm:21.0 · trend:8 · quantifies:0 · impact:0 · under_radar:5 · credibility:0 · business_impact:4 · disruption:0 · commitment:-4 · confirmation:3

Enthusiasm latest 7 / prev 5 (rising)

AI enthusiasm is rising because management moved from describing AI as part of digital and technology investment to a “comprehensive enterprise-wide AI program” with five named application areas. The thesis is mostly bottom-line oriented: productivity, expense efficiency, operating leverage, software delivery, process transformation, and colleague tools, with future customer-facing use cases. Credibility is moderate because management says AI is already contributing, but gives no AI-specific revenue, cost, headcount, margin, or productivity figure.

PAST (realized)

Q1 FY2026 | Zachary Wasserman: "we have a comprehensive enterprise-wide AI program underway that is gaining momentum and already contributing to productivity and efficiency across the company."
Q4 FY2025 | Zachary Wasserman: "Driving cost savings, driving productivity, driving a better customer experience in lots of different ways, and of course more efficient technology engineering."

CURRENT (now)

Q1 FY2026 | Zachary Wasserman: "We're applying AI in 5 key areas."
Q1 FY2026 | Zachary Wasserman: "The first is in technology, where we're rapidly improving the software delivery life cycle."
Q1 FY2026 | Zachary Wasserman: "The second is in agentic process transformation. We're driving efficiencies in major processes throughout the company."
Q1 FY2026 | Zachary Wasserman: "The fourth is in colleague productivity and training, where we're expanding significantly the tool set for our colleagues and increasing their readiness to deploy AI in their day-to-day work."
Q4 FY2025 | Zachary Wasserman: "if you just move to AI, absolutely there's significant investment happening in AI."
Q4 FY2025 | Zachary Wasserman: "And we're seeing use cases across the organization really exponentially increase at this point."
Q4 FY2025 | Stephen Steinour: "And then on what Zach referenced, digital and technology, the AI was included in that."

FORWARD (guidance)

Q1 FY2026 | Zachary Wasserman: "The third is in customer-facing use cases, where we're identifying opportunities to embed AI into key products and services going forward."
Q1 FY2026 | Zachary Wasserman: "And lastly is in our data and platforms to support future customer-facing capabilities."
Q1 FY2026 | Zachary Wasserman: "This investment and activity is disciplined, focused on generating real operating outcomes, and we see AI as an increasingly important enabler of expense efficiency and operating leverage over time."
Q1 FY2026 | Zachary Wasserman: "And so we're leaning into that, and we'll see incremental benefit here."

TRACK RECORD — PROMISE vs DELIVERY

—/100 (no quantified promises) no-quantified-promises 6 calls reviewed

Across all six calls, Huntington made no quantified AI promise pairing a number with a timeframe; AI appears only in Q1 FY2026 as a qualitative 'enterprise-wide AI program' across five focus areas (software delivery, agentic process automation, customer-facing use cases, colleague productivity, data platforms), framed as an efficiency enabler 'over time' with no AI-specific metric or date. Financial targets like 290bps operating leverage and 18-19% ROTCE by 2027 are attributed to partnership synergies and fee growth, not AI.

PRICED-IN (REFINED)

MEDIUM

Est. revisions rising · Fwd P/E 15.2 · EV/Sales 4.1x

AI claim maps to Cards And Payment Processing Revenue, Service Charges Revenue, Trust And Investment Management Services Revenue

Analyst ratings show some upward migration since January, with strong-sell counts falling to zero and holds declining, while forward EPS and revenue estimates rise across successive fiscal years; price targets are not clearly being raised, which tempers the revision signal. Valuation is not deeply cheap at 15.2x forward EPS and 4.1x EV/sales, but P/B below 1.0 and TTM P/E near 13.7x keep it from looking rich for a regional bank. AI benefits would most plausibly show up in payments, service charges, and trust/investment management lines rather than total revenue. Rising estimates make the AI thesis more priced-in, but the still-reasonable valuation supports a medium rather than high verdict.

COVERAGE — ENTHUSIASM TRAJECTORY + CATALYSTS

1Q4 FY20241Q1 FY20251Q2 FY20251Q3 FY20252Q4 FY20252Q1 FY2026

AI enthusiasm across 6 calls — trend → flat

AI never became a substantive business driver; later calls added vague fintech, digital, and platform language without AI-specific economics.

RECENT AI CATALYSTS & NEWS

BUSINESS IMPACT - QUALITATIVE MATERIALITY

6/10 qualitative impact moderate medium-term · soft evidence

Where AI matters: expense efficiency, software delivery, process automation

Huntington has moved beyond generic AI talk to an enterprise-wide program spanning software delivery, agentic process transformation, colleague tools, and future customer-facing use cases. The upside is credible as operating leverage and productivity for a regional bank, but it remains unquantified and mostly cost/workflow-oriented rather than a proven revenue or product transformation.

Caveats: No AI-specific cost, EPS, headcount, or productivity target disclosed; Benefits may be absorbed by compliance, model risk, cybersecurity, and implementation costs; Customer-facing use cases are still framed as future opportunities; Regional bank differentiation from AI may be limited if peers deploy similar tools

AI DISRUPTION / CANNIBALIZATION RISK tailwind · 2/10

AI does not directly commoditize Huntington's core deposit-taking, lending, risk management, and regulated banking franchise. It may raise the digital service bar and help fintech competitors, but the core revenue model is not structurally automated away by AI.

OPTIONS / MARKET STRUCTURE

option liquidity: good

ATM IV

—

TYPICAL BID-ASK

—

OPEN INTEREST

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proxy inputs — dollar-ADV $391M · beta 0.98 · px $16.23

source: proxy (no options chain on FMP)
FMP /stable/ exposes no options-chain endpoint on this key, so ATM IV, bid-ask spread and open interest are unavailable. Liquidity below is a PROXY from dollar-ADV, beta and price level (a stand-in for option depth), not measured option-market data.

CONFIRMATION — INSIDERS · 13F · LANGUAGE

Mixed — insiders selling, institutions adding, management language 1/10 hedged.

INSIDERS selling 2 open-market sell(s) vs 7 buy(s) — net distribution

INSTITUTIONS (13F) adding as of 2026-03-31: 188 new / 129 closed positions; 740 increased / 251 reduced; institutional ownership +16.25pp; +53 net 13F holders

MGMT LANGUAGE 1/10 hedged No substantive AI, machine learning, or automation discussion tied to Huntington’s own business drivers.

VERBATIM AI QUOTES

“we have a comprehensive enterprise-wide AI program underway that is gaining momentum and already contributing to productivity and efficiency across the company.”
— Zachary Wasserman, Q1 FY2026

“We're applying AI in 5 key areas.”
— Zachary Wasserman, Q1 FY2026

“The first is in technology, where we're rapidly improving the software delivery life cycle.”
— Zachary Wasserman, Q1 FY2026

“The second is in agentic process transformation. We're driving efficiencies in major processes throughout the company.”
— Zachary Wasserman, Q1 FY2026

“The third is in customer-facing use cases, where we're identifying opportunities to embed AI into key products and services going forward.”
— Zachary Wasserman, Q1 FY2026

“The fourth is in colleague productivity and training, where we're expanding significantly the tool set for our colleagues and increasing their readiness to deploy AI in their day-to-day work.”
— Zachary Wasserman, Q1 FY2026

“And lastly is in our data and platforms to support future customer-facing capabilities.”
— Zachary Wasserman, Q1 FY2026

“This investment and activity is disciplined, focused on generating real operating outcomes, and we see AI as an increasingly important enabler of expense efficiency and operating leverage over time.”
— Zachary Wasserman, Q1 FY2026

“What we're seeing is very encouraging momentum, particularly in agentic process transformation.”
— Zachary Wasserman, Q1 FY2026

“And so we're leaning into that, and we'll see incremental benefit here.”
— Zachary Wasserman, Q1 FY2026

“Zach, in your comments on the investment spend, just now, you didn't mention AI. Is there any AI-related investment spend in there?”
— Manan Gosalia, Q4 FY2025

“if you just move to AI, absolutely there's significant investment happening in AI.”
— Zachary Wasserman, Q4 FY2025

“I wouldn't characterize the nature of the driver of our investment growth as because of AI certainly, is growing along with those other investments as well.”
— Zachary Wasserman, Q4 FY2025

“And we're seeing use cases across the organization really exponentially increase at this point.”
— Zachary Wasserman, Q4 FY2025

“Driving cost savings, driving productivity, driving a better customer experience in lots of different ways, and of course more efficient technology engineering.”
— Zachary Wasserman, Q4 FY2025

“And then on what Zach referenced, digital and technology, the AI was included in that.”
— Stephen Steinour, Q4 FY2025

ANALYST QUESTIONS ON AI

Q (Q1 FY2026, L. Erika Penala): Zach, maybe if you could just further unpack the incremental cost actions. I heard you loud and clear that you're -- you would always modulate the expense outlook to reflect the revenue environment. But I'm wondering if sort of what the cost savings that you identified incrementally are.
A: The baseline kind of tuning action that we did for expenses was about $50 million. And generally, what we look at when we do those kind of things is twofold. One, can we accelerate our efficiency programs? And frankly, we are. What we're seeing is very encouraging momentum, particularly in agentic process transformation. And so we're leaning into that, and we'll see incremental benefit here.

Q (Q4 FY2025, Manan Gosalia): Zach, in your comments on the investment spend, just now, you didn't mention AI. Is there any AI-related investment spend in there?
A: if you just move to AI, absolutely there's significant investment happening in AI. I wouldn't characterize the nature of the driver of our investment growth as because of AI certainly, is growing along with those other investments as well. And we're seeing use cases across the organization really exponentially increase at this point. Driving cost savings, driving productivity, driving a better customer experience in lots of different ways, and of course more efficient technology engineering.