First quarter beat, driven in part by strength in its equities trading business. Joining us now for a first on CNBC interview is Bank of America chair and CEO Brian Moynihan. Brian, thank you for taking the time on what is a very busy day for you. Highest quarterly EPS in decades thanks to the Wall Street side of the business. How sustainable is that boost? What point does the volatility that really helped equity trading create a bigger headwind for some of the other businesses you have?
Well, thank you for having me. EPS was up 25% year-over-year, so it was a great quarter. But also, if you listen to what we talked to the shareholders about today, it's across all the businesses that are performing well. So yes, equities was up, but if you think about the $30 plus billion revenue we produced, it came from all the businesses. So the nice news about Bank of America, if that volatility goes away and those revenues flatten out in terms of growth rate, other areas will pick up the slack and grow faster because the dynamics of that probably means somewhere else is doing well. So that's a nice thing about having this very wide-ranging business model from mass market consumers to the wealthiest consumers in the world, small business, large businesses, domestic and global, the markets business, investors of all sizes. And so having that diversity, it allows us to perform in really different types of markets. So we're very pleased with the job the markets team did, up 15 straight quarters year-over-year of growth, this time driven more by equities. We're pleased with that, but on the other hand, whatever comes at us, we're well prepared for.
On the call you announced that you were bumping up your net interest income guidance growth, while your peers either maintained theirs or in one case even lowered it. Why do you feel confident to raise given the macro backdrop, given all the uncertainties out there, flattening yield curve? I know your mix is a little different than some of your peers.
Yeah, the power of our NII is driven by our core deposit franchise, which grew 3% year-over-year. It's the rate paid on deposits because our core operating accounts we're not reaching for funding that others are, meaning paying at the market price and because we don't need the fund. We have $2 trillion in deposits and a trillion two in loans. So that's the core value and that then performs well in any rate environment and continues to perform well. So we had originally 5 to 7% NII growth predicted for this year, which is an outlier on a positive way relative to our peers. And then we moved that to 6 to 8% and in first quarter we actually had nice growth at 9%. So we feel very good about that. Does it depend on strong macro conditions? No, it depends on 2% type of GDP growth, mid-single-digit loan and deposit growth, just bumping along. But the massive repricing of the balance sheet as this engine keeps producing is really something phenomenal to watch. So we just we were up a billion dollars plus in NII year-over-year to give you a sense. It's more than most companies were.
So it sounds like this is a pretty conservative raise then.
Right, well, you raised and I heard some of your colleagues talk before. You can raise whatever parade of difficulties out in the world from the Middle East conflict resolving the inflation prices caused by that. The economists can argue long-term inflation, short-term inflation, whether it should be excluded, included. But the reality is prices go up. You can see that the uncertainty around all that is causing some activity. So you can't ever say the world is perfectly hedged, but right now the cup is performing well, the consumers are spending. The credit quality is very good and improving. And you see that corporate clients actually use their lines a little bit more. So we all face that same uncertainty, but right now the US companies and consumers are doing well and frankly our global companies are doing pretty well.
Do you feel like the consumer is poised to accelerate? I know there were some commentary on that from the call. You know, I hear that and then I see that the net charge-off ratio worsened a little bit since 4Q, although it was improved from a year ago. It does also appear that most of the deposit and loan growth came from the commercial side. So I'm just curious, you know, what you're seeing with regard to the consumer and whether we are indeed at this inflection point.
The consumer delinquencies of all types were down year-over-year and there's a seasonality. Most of our credit quality discussion is driven by the credit card business, which grows in the fourth quarter and then you have a dynamic that it comes down. But if you look first quarter last year to first quarter this year, loan balances grew 3%. Charge-offs were down. Delinquencies are down 5 and 30 and other delinquencies. So the consumer credit quality of our portfolio is actually improving. If you go back and think about the travel of the last five or six years, you know, we saw this massive drop in charge-off rates due to COVID because frankly people didn't have the ability to go out and spend a lot of money and the supplements to income coming from the government. We saw that normalize back up and many of you asked us a year ago or the year or so, you know, when's it going to stop? Well, not only stopped, it's flattened out and actually come down a little bit. So we feel very strongly that the consumer book of Bank of America is very strong and it high FICO's, the loan to value on our entire mortgage portfolio is below 50%. You know, and then our autos are high FICO's and the delinquencies are consistent. So we feel very good about the book. What is going to happen next with consumer will depend upon unemployment. And if you watch the new claims for unemployment, they're basically very low. The unemployment level sits 4.3, 4.4 depending on the month. The blue chip and our own analysts don't predict it to go up a lot. And as long as that's true, the general economy being in good shape and the general consumer being in good shape, but Bank of America indexes to even the higher quality, so we'll be even in a better shape.
Yeah, it sounds like the labor market is what you're focused on, perhaps even a bit more than gas. You had a nice chart about how consumers are spending. That was part of your presentation. You showed that March gas spend was up 16%, but it was still a relatively small component. And I'm just curious if you see the potential if that does go higher from here for some of the tailwinds that the consumers are enjoying right now to start to dissipate.
So if you look at what we showed, to be clear was we showed the spending growth by Bank of America customers from the first quarter of '26 versus the first quarter of '25 was up about 5%. And then we showed on debit and credit card spendings, which is a portion of that spending, you can see the various things up, which was up 6% and the gas for the quarter was up 3%, but for the month was up 16% reflecting the price increases after the conflict started in early March. You know, you expect that to keep going through because gas prices will remain elevated. Now, you have to back away from this and think about what we're talking about. We have a trillion one of money went out of Bank of America consumers' accounts into the economy in the first quarter of '26. That was 5% higher than last year's first quarter. Only 25% of that is in credit and debit card spends and about 7% of that 25% is in gas. And so to all consumers spending it has an impact. But to certain segments it has a bigger impact and that's why you have to be careful extrapolating what the economic aspects will be versus individual aspects. And we are mindful of affordability among individuals, earnings and the impact spending more at the gas pump has on them versus the overall economic impact, which is relatively muted given all the other ways consumers spend money. And as you know, entertainment's up, cruises are up, etc. But what was happening over the last year was gas prices year-over-year by month were going down almost every month and then they spiked back up and the psychology that we'll have to see how it impacts the consumers going forward. It could cause them to think twice about what they're spending. So far it has not.
