Pinnacle Financial Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ:PNFP) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Terry Turner: Yes. I think one of the things that’s important, Brian, when we talk about hiring most of the time when we’re talking with investors, we really talk primarily about hiring revenue producers, because that’s really the thrust of our company, has been all along. What we’re trying to do is grow our revenues, grow our top-line in order to grow our bottom-line, all that sort of stuff. But again, just a sort of maybe make a point that’s obvious that sometimes forgotten, those revenue producers are generally going to be supportive 2:1 by non-revenue producers. And so, the total number of people that have to be hired in a year, I think, that increases were in the 400-person range. Don’t know what the exact number, it’d be in that range for total associates hired whereas the revenue producers were down closer to 125, I think, for the year.

So, what — the point I’m really trying to get to with you is, I think we’ll expect a similar year on revenue producers. We’ll expect a less — where we would expect hire less is support personnel in 2023 than in 2022, primarily because a lot of that support personnel been in controlled infrastructure and so forth, which generally, in my view, a stair step kind of expense, you got to build the capacity for — as you pick compliance monitoring, BSA risk, long review, all those kinds of things, you invest in people in a stair step mode. I think we’ve made significant investments in the controlled infrastructure. So, it’s a long way to say, look, I think revenue hires might be a little less in 2023 than 2022, but it ought to be comparable. Total number of hires ought to be less in 2023 than 2022, because of the stair step nature of some of those control expenditure.

Brian Martin: Got you. No, that’s helpful. And maybe one for Harold. Just on the reserve level, Harold, you talked about maybe being a little bit more pessimistic on — or Terry did on the kind of the outlook. Just how should we think about the reserve level as you kind of go through the next several quarters given your outlook?

Harold Carpenter: Yes. I made with the credit officers quite a bit. Right now, they are still having the same posture that our credit book is strong. We’re not seeing any kind of systemic kind of weakness in it. And so, our planning assumption today is that our reserves probably will be fairly flat here on out. We’ll, obviously, monitor that. So, if we start seeing some weakness and adjust accordingly. But right now, we think credit is in check as best we know today.

Brian Martin: Got you. Okay. And then, just going back to your comment, Harold, about the fee income, I mean, I guess, the — you highlighted the wealth. I mean, when you think about the mortgage and the SBA piece in there, are those expected, I guess, kind of your big picture planning to rebound a fair amount? I guess, just kind of getting to this number you talked about on the fee income side, the high single digit or low double digit growth in fee income ex those kind of more volatile numbers, it just seems like there’s more to it, I guess, on some of those other items that you’re not calling out. So, like the — for instance, the mortgage and SBA. Do you expect — I know SBA was down this quarter, same with the mortgage, a pretty meaningful rebound in those coming in the next couple of quarters?

Harold Carpenter: Yes, for sure, in mortgage, I don’t know about SBA. SBA has got some other headwinds. But no — mortgage should have a better year this year than last year, and this whole wealth management investment that we’ve made should produce tangible results. We’ve also hired some very capable individuals in our capital markets area that all will help us. They have a long resume of success. So, we’re planning on that being influential as well.

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