F.N.B. Corporation (NYSE:FNB) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Kelly Motta: No, I really appreciate all the color. Thank you so much. Maybe a last question for me, switching back to the balance sheet is on deposits. It seems like if I’m reading your prepared commentary correctly, some of the kind of qualification to NII to the lower half of the range has to do with what you’re seeing on the deposit flow side. So can you remind me the seasonality you have with deposits? And is there any color you can provide as to the cadence of what you’re thinking about in terms of customer deposit growth to get to that low single-digit range that you reiterated?

Vince Delie: I think, first of all, I — there is an extreme amount of seasonality within the deposit portfolio. So it’s kind of difficult to look at the first quarter and draw conclusions between the outflows and inflows there recurring throughout the quarter. And really, it starts to build now. So we’re starting to see considerable inflows. The demand deposits were pretty steady at about 29%, I think, right, on a quarter-over basis. So imagine that’s the core of our profitability. It’s basically maintaining those non-interest-bearing deposits. What’s happened over the last few quarters is we’ve seen some of the higher-priced deposit categories moving into CDs or moving into something with a little bit of term within the customer base.

So that’s eroded a little bit of the net interest income, right? We saw that happen. That’s not surprising. You can see it in the escalation of the data. I believe that over time, throughout this year, we should be able to manage the non-interest-bearing deposit balances in that range and grow the other categories without sacrificing margin because we’ve seen some lower pricing stick in the marketplace. We have to be as hot on the pricing. So I think that should help us as we move through the rest of the year and then also the inflows that occur in many instances, even with the municipal deposits which is the truth for just about all of them. We don’t do those transactions with municipalities to just get balances. We kind of have a rule here where we have to be the primary disbursement bank for those entities.

And what ends up happening is the increased activity with ACH activity and wire activity and the movement of increasing the amount of free balances grow to cover those services. So that’s part of what happens over the course of the next three quarters as well. So anyway, Vince, I don’t know if you want to add anything on the timing perspective.

Vince Calabrese: We commented on it kind of troughs in mid-February and builds through October, November is kind of that — the cadence of that. That’s all I would add.

Kelly Motta: Thank you so much. I appreciate the color. I’ll step back.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Next in line, we have Nick Lorenzoni from Stephens. Please go ahead with your question.

Nick Lorenzoni : Good morning, guys. Filling in for Russell Gunther. I just had a quick question with regard to your office portfolio. I appreciate the color in the deck. I was wondering if you could provide some additional detail on the geographic breakdown, including specific office exposure in your DC and Baltimore markets.

Gary Guerrieri: Yes. In terms of the exposure in DC, we have substantially one transaction in the DC market. We had a few on top of that over the last year. We’ve been able to move those off the balance sheet just in the normal course of refinance at other institutions. So we only have one transaction there, and it’s a transaction is a $20 million loan. And that’s a market that we saw quite a while ago that we felt was extremely overheated. So we were very cautious going into that market. And we’re pleased with where we sit today with very, very little exposure there.

Nick Lorenzoni : Okay, great. Thank you for taking my question.

Operator: And our next question comes from Brian Martin from Janney Montgomery. Please go ahead with your question.

Brian Martin : Hey, good morning. Just a couple, maybe, Gary, just one for you on the credit side. Just in terms of overall trends in criticized and classified levels, can you give any broad characterization of how trends went this quarter just before we see the 10-Q filing, just on kind of how those trends were for the whole portfolio rather than just a specific bucket?

Gary Guerrieri: Yes. In terms of the criticized trends, they were up slightly less than that, less than 7 or 8 credits in the criticized. We got a couple move into the substandard. I touched on one of them earlier, Brian. Those credits basically were from just some slight softer performance. We’re very aggressive in moving those type of credits into a special mention category, which was primarily where the movement was. And we don’t have any concerns with any of those credits that moved into there from a loss perspective. Long-term customers, just a little softer performance. And so we build a little bit of reserve against that software performance. We expect that to turn around over the next 6 to 12, 18 months in terms of those particular movements.

Vince Delie: And Brian, I have a tremendous amount of confidence in Gary and his team, I can tell you. As we look at the portfolio, Gary’s on top of the credits, his people are on top of the credit the line looks at these credits and they downgrade them if it’s necessary very quickly. That’s different than what you’ll find in other companies. So you’re going to see movement. I think it’s positive because it keeps us well reserved relative to risk. So I think as you look over long periods of time, and Gary has been in the seat for a long time and we go back to long as I can see, at least 14,15 years. Maybe longer. [Indiscernible] I’m 15. I’m getting old. It’s 15 years so you were there 15 years. Yes, we’re all fiber. So we’ve got a long track record to look at.