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

As I look in the, maybe the next quarter, it’s still pretty balanced. It’s just, it’s smaller levels. Commercial will be part of the growth stored for the coming quarter. ICRE is probably where we’re seeing some softness in the pipeline as we approach Q1, we see they may be flat to slightly down. Our Commercial Finance Group will continue to bring some growth. Mortgage will continue to provide some growth and Summit had a really strong end of the year that is carrying over into the first part of the year. Normally, that slows down a lot for them. It’ll be slower, but they’ll be contributing to that growth here in the first quarter. So our Commercial Finance Group, Mortgage, Summit being the drivers for Q1 with ICRE pulling back to being kind of more flattish for the quarter.

Jon Arfstrom: Okay. This guy kind of touched on credit I guess, but Jamie, any thoughts on provisioning and just overall how you expect that to track through the year?

James Anderson: Yes, so I mean I would, when we’re looking at it, we did 10 million in the quarter. A lot of that was driven by the $500 million of loan growth that we saw. So in terms of a little bit more moderate loan growth if it’s in that $100 million to $200 million, $250 million range a quarter, you could see the provision come down a little bit maybe in the short-term. But, obviously it’s depending on — we also had a basis point of net recoveries for the quarter as well which we normally would not see. So I think the way to look at it, if charge-offs come back a little bit, I mean, we’re not seeing any real deterioration in the portfolio at this point, but if charge-offs come back to 10 or 15 basis points even, you would see and then, but kind of offset by a little bit of the growth, of the loan growth kind of normalizing, you could see what we really look at is the coverage ratio.

We’re at 129 now. We would like to see that as we, kind of head into the predicted recession to see that still start to, still continue to move up, not, I don’t think it’s going to move up a lot, but to continue to move up as we head into that, I think is what you’ll see. So kind of back into the provision from that, from all of that and all of the E&P inputs, but in that kind of level that we saw here in the quarter or potentially maybe even a little bit lower if growth is lower.

Jon Arfstrom: Yes, okay. But you’re not seeing the erosion in the portfolio at this point. It’s just?

James Anderson: We are not, no.

Jon Arfstrom: Yes, okay. Just two more. Archie you referenced some seasonal deposit flows, typical seasonal deposit flows, and I only ask that because people are a little more sensitive to deposit trends at this point, but what does the deposit flow number look like in the first quarter in terms of composition?

Archie Brown: I’m sorry, what was the last, what’s deposit?

Jon Arfstrom: Yes. How big was for us — seasonal deposit flow, yes.

Archie Brown: Yes. So we see in the — in Q4 we see a pretty big buildup of our public funds for tax payments that starts to bleed out mid-December, but it’s not all finished by the end of the year. So there’s a little more of that exits in Q1, the seasonal aspect of that does. And then we saw a nice buildup in business balance as I was looking at our and just our business transaction accounts. I mean, December was our highest month in average balances ever. All five of those months have come in 2022, so it’s holding up really strong. But some of that we see a little bit of a surge in Q4 and then that starts to come back out in the first quarter. Those are probably the two bigger trend changes. The consumer is already been spending down their excess deposits.