Equity Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:EQBK) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Eric Newell: Yes. So the Digital Bank are also brilliant bank, our direct bank channel is a vehicle for us to raise deposits, and that is a market rate, and it helps us focus our efforts in raising deposits in that channel versus our core markets where we do have conversations with our customers on rate, but it reduces the potential cannibalization of deposits and repricing of deposits there.

Terry McEvoy: Okay. Maybe one last one on capital management slide, was it 18; talked about the TCE target at 8.5%, it was 7% at the end of the year. How does that come into play as you think about additional or further buyback activity?

Eric Newell: We €“ management and the board talk about the buyback each time we meet and we take into account our current expectation for the upcoming year. What we’re seeing in the economic and operating environment. In the most recent quarter we did buy back some shares, but not at a pace that we had in earlier quarters, and I think that was due to us wanting to gain some more certainty on our view of 2023. Now that we have that, I think you’ll see us back in the market here in the beginning of the year, and we’re €“ our constrained factor right now is retained earnings. So we want to make sure that we are within a certain percentage, call it, 60% to 70% payout and not higher than that.

Brad Elliott: So said differently, Terry; we look at TCE, but TCE, we look at minus AOCI. So when we’re doing our analysis we are very comfortable that the AOCI is going to come back. And we know it’s going to come back mostly or almost always going to come back by the end of 2025. So we look at it minus that, and so that’s not going to be a restraining factor for us in buying back shares.

Terry McEvoy: Okay. Understood. Thanks for taking my questions and appreciate all the details in the prepared remarks. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. And I’m not showing any further questions at this time. This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.