First Commonwealth Financial Corporation (NYSE:FCF) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Jim Reske: No.

Mike Price: None.

Daniel Cardenas: Okay. Great. That’s all I have. Thanks, guys.

Mike Price: Thank you, Dan.

Operator: Our next question comes from Matthew Breese with Stephens, Inc.

Matthew Breese: Good afternoon, everybody.

Mike Price: Hi, Matt.

Matthew Breese: So I wanted to go back to the deposit discussion. I — Jim, I think, I heard you say that you would like to equally fund loan growth with deposits implying that the loan-to-deposit ratio can stay sub-100%, is that accurate?

Jim Reske: Yeah. Look over the long-term. Over the long-term that’s definitely our goal.

Matthew Breese: Okay. And that leads to my next question really, which is we are standing today with 33% non-interest-bearing deposits that compares to pre-COVID levels or I think closer to maybe 25%, Fed funds is obviously very different from that point in time. I am just curious what is structurally different about the non-interest-bearing deposit composition that — should we expect it to stay at this elevated level versus where it was pre-COVID?

Mike Price: I think it will certainly stay at an elevated level compared to this year. I think it will certainly stay at an elevated level with the composition between business and consumer. I think clearly we have an opportunity to leverage a broad business customer base and gather more deposits. And we do that unusually through our branch network. A lot of banks the branch manager does not go out and make calls on small business and in our bank they are rewarded to not only do that, but to bring in core deposits and businesses that grow. So I think that’s fundamentally a little different certainly than our bigger bank rather than sisters and it’s you need to get customers and not just customers that borrow from you, Jane. I mean, this has been your forte and your drumbeat for the last four years or five years. Do you want to add to that?

Jane Grebenc: The only thing that I would add is, our loan portfolio, particularly on the commercial side, looks very different than it did four years, five years, six years ago. The loan portfolio today is overwhelmingly direct clients with whom we have direct relationships and with those clients we expect a depository relationship and it’s made all the difference in the world.

Mike Price: Does that help, Matt?

Matthew Breese: Got it. Yeah. Very helpful. Maybe just as a follow-up. As we look at the book today versus pre-COVID just as a reference point. Are you capturing more client wallet share or are you seeing similar granularity, but over more accounts?

Jane Grebenc: We are capturing better wallet

Mike Price: No. I think we are capturing

Jane Grebenc: I am sorry, Mike. Continue, I will follow you.

Mike Price: No, no, no, go ahead.

Jane Grebenc: I would say both. We are capturing much more wallet share. We have spent some money on our treasury management product and infrastructure and we know that we need to be able to deliver. And so that when we ask for the operating relationship we have got a product set that allows us to ask for it.

Mike Price: I would just add through our regional business model, we are much more likely to have President or a senior lender much more closely it to the other business lines, whether it’s mortgage, wealth management, retail and really bring other partners out to talk to that client and help them, particularly on the personal banking side, also on consumer lending opportunities and wealth management opportunities. So we are getting a better share of the wallet than we were probably five years, six years ago.

Matthew Breese: Understood. I appreciate all that detail. Maybe flipping to the other side of the balance sheet, could you provide what the roll-on blended loan yields are versus what’s rolling off at this point?

Mike Price: Yeah.

Jim Reske: Yeah. Give me a second, let me pull that out. Give me a second.