Primis Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:FRST) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Matthew Switzer: I would just say — I mean, you all don’t get to see this obviously, but when we were — when we work on our multi-year projections, when we were working on our projections last year, we had 2022, somewhat basically coming in. There were more moving parts that we experienced this year than we anticipated, but we ended up netting out around where we thought we would be this year with the various investments we were planning. And we anticipated 2023 seeing meaningful improvement in EPS and profitability as a result. That — with that slide seven and that buildup, that’s not inconsistent with what the plan was a year or so ago. And Dennis said, we’re increasingly confident that we can get to those numbers just based on kind of what we’re seeing with the improvement in these business laws.

Christopher Marinac: Great. That’s helpful for both of you. I appreciate that clarity a lot. My only other questions just goes back to deposits. I know you’ve made a lot of progress on deposits as you cited within Panacea specifically, but just as a general kind of question about opening new deposit accounts and that — what do you see organically ahead of you this year? I know it’s a challenging environment with rates, but you want organically focused and so just want to get a sense of what you think is possible on kind of new deposits coming across the company.

Dennis Zember: In the core bank, out of the branches in our markets, I think staying flat’s going to be pretty magnanimous. I mean, in the whole industry — I don’t — I find a CEO, bank CEO that believes they’re going to be able to grow their poor deposits and now you can. But you’re obviously paying up for every new deposit coming in the bank. Our advantage — and we have got to exacerbate this advantage, our advantage is this digital bank that honestly is as good in Phoenix, Arizona, and I always say Minnetonka then as it is in our core footprint. And so, being able to use the digital bank to raise those deposits in places that we aren’t and that won’t affect, are really valuable core deposit franchise. I mean, we have an advantage that not every other bank in the country has, very few banks have disadvantage.

And so, we’ve got to exacerbate that, really help us. I mean, because honestly, if it wasn’t for that and we were trying to grow loans like we are, or had all the opportunity, we would basically be faced with sacrificing the real value in our core deposit franchise and making it more rate sensitive. And we don’t have to do that because of the opportunity we have with the digital bank. And we’re just hitting the stride on the digital bank. Really, we are. And we’ve got some places that we’re about to market that at reasonable prices. And that’s going to work. I mean, in our delta or what we need to be impactful here is, is really not a big number when you consider it’s got a potential national reach. If I was trying to raise this number in Hampton Roads or Richmond, it would be daunting.

We would be having a different conversation here. But when I know that I have the whole country, I feel better about it.