Simmons First National Corporation (NASDAQ:SFNC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Jay Brogdon: I don’t have that number off the €“ right off the here for you, Gary, but I think you can suffice it to say, I think to maybe get to the point of your question, if you unpacked the quarter, certainly as we layered in on the wholesale side and made a decision to extend maturities, margin or cost of deposits, cost of deposits was higher, margin was lower late in the quarter, compared to early in the quarter. I think that as I tried to say earlier, as I did say earlier, is a headwind early in the year and a tailwind as we continue to move through the year next year?

Gary Tenner: Okay. And then just to be clear again, make sure I understand it. The decision to, kind of layer on some of that is more of an issue with timing of funding in that, you didn’t really have a lot of excess liquidity that was, even though you have a low loan deposit ratio you were pretty well invested in the securities portfolio. So, there loan growth that stayed strong in the quarter. Is that kind of the thought for the fourth quarter?

Jay Brogdon: I’d say it’s two-fold. That’s a part of it. And the other part, again, if we’d have the same sort of third same, sort of fourth quarter as we had third quarter in terms of some on the core deposit trend side, we wouldn’t have had near the reliance. I think that’s part of it as well, but it is timing of cash flows. We knew we were going to have at least a decent loan growth fourth quarter, it came in better than expected, maybe some seasonality and other headwinds that impacted us on the core deposit side. That’s all a moment in time for me. The cash flow off the securities portfolio is what it is day-in and day-out, quarter-in and quarter-out. And so, I think as time moves on, again, all things being equal with the deposit portfolio on the core side, our reliance on wholesale funding should diminish over time as well.

Gary Tenner: Great. Appreciate that. And then just to go on the credit side for a second, it looks like you’re waiting is in terms of the Moody’s scenarios, the S2 was about 30%. And I think even later in the year, S2 hadn’t become €“ has not become, kind of the Moody’s baseline forecast, could you give us a sense of the sensitivity of your ACL as that kind of maybe if the S2 waiting were to increase?

Jay Brogdon: I’ll just say a couple of comments. This is just our management input. Keep in mind, we’re putting the scenarios in for the markets we serve. This is not on a national basis. So, we really look at the markets we serve. And over time Moody’s changes there. The baseline changes. At one point, the baseline was more positive. Now, it’s turned a little more negative. So, I would say, I feel very comfortable, wasn’t a lot of change in what we did from Q3 to Q4. We all feel really good about where we are today, but we all have a little bit of concern on the economy just because the rates have continued to go up and we just don’t know where it’s going to go, but you know asset quality continues to be at its best level historically.

It’s just €“ we just continue to look at the market, the macro environment we’re in, and our markets more specifically. Yes. And therefore, yes, we also have a pretty large reserve in unfunded commitments that didn’t change this quarter. Our unfunded commitment level was relatively close to Q3. So, there’s a pretty significant reserve in there that when those loans fund over we’ll move over to the ACL.

Gary Tenner: Great. Thank you.

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