Heartland Financial USA, Inc. (NASDAQ:HTLF) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Leisch with Piper Sandler. Your line is open.

Andrew Leisch: Hi. Good afternoon, everyone.

Bruce Lee: Hey Andrew.

Andrew Leisch: Following up on the expenses here. Just looking in once the charter conversion is complete, consolidations complete you have the cost savings in there. Has there been any — have you looked out and seen on other investments in the franchise you expect to make? Are any of these savings going to be redeployed or do you think they’re all going to follow the bottom line.

Bruce Lee: Yeah, Andrew, I think that’s a really great question, and I would anticipate that as I’m thinking about it, over half of them will probably redeploy into the charter with products or potentially some geographic expansion, but it’s really where the opportunities are, at the end of the day. Yes. And one of the things that we’ve been talking about, as you know, we’ll probably reinvest in our consumer deposit platform. That’s one of the things that we’ll probably reinvest in during maybe the back half of ’23 or early in ’24.

Andrew Leisch: Okay. Got it. That’s helpful there. And then on the growth for this year, 3% to 5.5% deposits, growth, because where is that deposit growth coming from? I would imagine it’s not on the wholesale side that you had here this last quarter, but what’s giving you the confidence that 3% to 5% is achievable in this tougher environment?

Bruce Lee: Yeah. We think it will come from the commercial side and the small business side, where we’ve been generating a lot of new business and new opportunities. We think the consumer side honestly, it will probably be flattish as we’re just now starting to see the average balances in our consumer accounts start to decrease. You’ve heard us talk in the past that those extra balances during the pandemic, they were holding steady. We just saw them start to decrease for the first time during the fourth quarter. So our goal is to generate enough new business to offset that decrease on the consumer side, and we think that we’ll be able to grow the commercial in the small — in the business banking and small business side on a go-forward basis. And we would have done that this year, except we did have a significant commercial operational outflows in the quarter that I referenced.

Andrew Leisch: All right. Thanks for taking the questions. I’ll step back.

Bruce Lee: Thanks, Andrew.

Operator: Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of David Long with Raymond James. Your line is open.

David Long: Hi, everyone.

Bruce Lee: David?

David Long: I wanted to circle back to the discussion on the deposit base. And Bryan, you gave some good color, so I appreciate it. But just as you’re looking out to the rest of this year, non-interest bearing, I think we’re at about 32%. Where do you think that ends the year? And do you have a rough deposit beta all in that you’re using for your outlook for this year as well?

Bruce Lee: Bryan, do you want to take that one?