First Financial Bancorp. (NASDAQ:FFBC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

James Anderson: Yes. I would say preserving is maybe a little bit, might be a little bit of a stretch. I mean, buying some insurance on the severe downside, I mean, that’s really more what our strategy is at this point. And when you think about what happened to our margin, back in the beginning of the pandemic and call it March of 2020, when rates declined so rapidly, we saw our margin . So we are building in some protection, I would say more on buying some floor, getting some floor protection, but it is more, I would say in the extreme case as LIBOR, SOFR would move in that maybe below 2. So it’s more of that kind of, I don’t know, call it catastrophic insurance, but more along those lines of what our strategy is at this point.

Christopher McGratty: Okay. And if I could just sneak one more in, you’ve got a ton of cash coming off the bond book, like $800 million plus for the next year. If you map to the mid-single-digit loan growth that you’re talking about, that’s 500. So it would feel like you could run in place with the earning assets from Q4 levels. Is that kind of the expectation?

James Anderson: Correct, yes. So our plan is obviously, and everybody is seeing it, pressure on the deposit side, especially on the — we’re seeing some pressure on personal account balances on the consumer side. And so with that pressure, our plan is to let cash flows off of the securities portfolio fund at mid-single-digit growth. And so yes, we could definitely from our ending earning asset level be relatively flat from an earning asset base.

Christopher McGratty: Okay, thanks a lot.

James Anderson: So that, and so the other things though Chris that does is that also, if you think about it, that also helps the margin a little bit just because of that little richer mix, that rotation between securities and loans.

Christopher McGratty: Yes, yes, got it. Thanks Jim.

James Anderson: Yep.

Operator: Thank you, Chris. Our next question comes from Jon Arfstrom from RBC Capital Markets. Jon, your line is now open.

Jon Arfstrom: Can you hear me?

Archie Brown: Hey, Jon.

Jon Arfstrom: Okay, good, good. Is there a pool on who’s going to ask about the Bengals first?

Archie Brown: No.

Jon Arfstrom: No? Okay. I just, I wanted to ask a couple of questions on lending, Archie.

Archie Brown: Sure.

Jon Arfstrom: What are you guys seeing in the pipelines? You talked about a little bit of a seasonal slowdown, and I think we all understand that, but what do you think that that Slide 14 looks like throughout the year where you’ve seen the growth opportunities in lending?

Archie Brown: Yes, Jon. First, great, great quarter for the company, and as we said, it was broad based. We saw a nice rebound in the fourth quarter in ICRE that little slower growing in the first three quarters, and that really rebounded for them. We talked about Summit because of their back half of the year, especially Q4 was their strongest quarter of the year typically is. Commercial had a really solid quarter. Mortgage grew and some of that’s a little bit more on sheet, on balance sheet mortgages we’re holding in and just lower, much lower payoffs on the mortgage book as well. And then our Oak Street business did well. I don’t — we’re fairly confident in that mid-single-digit, maybe even a little bit, a little bit stronger than that type of growth for the year.