Alerus Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:ALRS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Alan Villalon: And Nate, just to kind of clarify one last thing here in terms of our NII, if you think about the cadence here, hopefully, it troughed somewhere midyear, but we do expect our NII to start growing again in the back half of the year, especially in the fourth quarter. And I would say the same thing about our margin as well.

Nathan Race: And in the back half of this year, does that contemplate just a bit on pause you actually see some growth lift potential to Fed test rates just given the index deposits repricing lower? Maybe quicker than loans are pricing lower. .

Alan Villalon: Yes. Yes. Definitely.

Nathan Race: Okay. Helpful. And then maybe just turning to the income outside of mortgage. I would love to get your guys’ updated thoughts on just kind of expectations for 2023 in terms of just overall kind of wealth management, RBMS revenue growth, assuming equity markets kind of stabilized, and we don’t see much more valuation pressures from here with some of the initiatives that you guys are you’re taking in terms of driving more durable kind of less market sensitivity within the business. Are you guys in growth in the segment year, again, assuming more stable equity markets this year? .

Jim Collins: I’ll take that one, Nathan. Yes. The simple answer is yes. If everything stabilizes going forward with the additional focus that we’ve done with line of business in that group, along with our current product set and our long-standing initiatives that we have put in place with the wealth group, we plan for additional growth. ‘m just going to also piggyback off of that to we did see record production in both our wealth and retirement business in 2022. And we expect those tailwinds from all the strong efforts from the teams in those segments to continue forward into 2023 as well.

Nathan Race: Okay. Great. And then maybe one last one for Katie. I would be curious to kind of get your updated thoughts on the acquisition landscape going forward. I mean at your lessons to bank deals to some at this point and maybe there’s more of a focus on impairment platform augmentation, or just kind of any thoughts on what you’re seeing in the landscape in those arenas. .

Katie Lorenson: Sure. Yes. So retirement benefits, fee income acquisition is always a high priority for us, consistently building the pipeline, networking, building relationships across those landscapes. On the banking side, we’re obviously having great success in lifting out talent. And so that’s where we’re focused. But working on building partnerships and relationships across that network also.

Nathan Race: Okay. Great. And I’m sorry, if I could just ask one more just on kind of reserve outlook from here. I appreciate the guidance in terms of the CECL impact in the first quarter, but perhaps absent that — is it fair to expect provisioning can be pretty negligible, just given you’re still a fairly robust reserve level as a percent of loans and obviously a great coverage on NPLs as well. So just any kind of thoughts on reserve apart from just some impact in the first quarter from here?

Karen Bohn: Sure, Nate. This is Karen. Yes, I think that characterization is accurate. Of course, with the switch to CECL, what’s happening in the macro environment matters now that we’re somewhat forecast dependent. So — but certainly, we don’t see anything early in the year that would cause me to think we’re going to have volatility outside of those macroeconomic factors.

Nathan Race: Okay. Great. And is there anything of note that there will be increase in criticized loans in the quarter.

Karen Bohn: Yes. That increase was the result of a downgrade of one commercial relationship. That client is experiencing some stress, which we believe to be temporary, and we are working with them as they improve their results in 2023.