Associated Banc-Corp (NYSE:ASB) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Andrew Harmening: Just a quick piggyback on that. I mean just the unemployment rate in the State of Wisconsin is 2.4%. People are working. And when they work, they typically pay, especially if they’re prime and super prime customers. So we watch closely the unemployment figures and delinquencies. And the delinquency on Page 15 actually shows a little bump up, but what it doesn’t speak to is that we had on a syndicated credit on the upstream, there is an administrative mix up or slip or slowdown that stopped the payment from coming to us. That accounted for about 3 basis points. And so that’s already been rectified in July. So essentially, our delinquencies are flat.

Jon Arfstrom: Okay. That’s helpful. Thank you very much, guys.

Andrew Harmening: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Brody Preston with UBS. Please proceed with your question.

BrodyPreston: Hi. Good evening, everyone. Thanks for taking the questions. Just a follow-up, just what you just mentioned on the syndicated credit, was that what drove the increase in the commercial and business lending nonaccruals as well? Or is that something different?

Patrick Ahern: Not that one particular situation. The situation Andy just talked about was just tied to the delinquency. The nonaccrual that was actually one other deal. It’s a one-off transaction that we recognized in the quarter. We’re not seeing anything from a trend standpoint in the commercial book that would lead us to any other concerns going into Q3.

BrodyPreston: Got it. Okay. And I did want to follow up on the $300 million of mass affluent deposit growth. I just wanted to ask if you had a sense for kind of what deposit categories that growth went into. You had good customer CD growth. So I just wanted to know if it was kind of like leading with CDs or anything – any detail you can give us there?

Andrew Harmening: I don’t have the immediate breakout, but since a lot of it came from existing customers that had checking accounts, it’s going to be an interest-bearing deposit accounts and the money that came in. So whether that is money market savings or CD, it would be largely in those categories.

BrodyPreston: Got it. Okay. And I did want to follow up. And maybe just ask again on Scott’s question from earlier on the NII guidance. I mean just the math would dictate that if I take the low end of your NII guide, it implies that you need to earn $521 million in NII in the back half of the year, which is about $260 million to $261 million per quarter, just doing the simple math. And so it implies a step up, but the margin, it doesn’t sound like we’re willing to call a bottom. The NIBs we’re not willing to say that they won’t go down anymore. I guess I’m just – I’m struggling with the NII guidance just a little bit in light of those two issues. So any additional color you could provide around maybe the average earning asset base that’s in your assumption or what could actually cause the back half of the year to exhibit the growth you need to hit the low end of the guidance would really be appreciated.

Derek Meyer: Yes. I was looking at the – it’s the 6% to 8% earning asset growth that we talked about and then margins similar to what we’ve been looking at.

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