Wintrust Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:WTFC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Jeff Rulis: Thanks. Good morning. Most question, little housekeeping items. The — on the expense side, I think, you alluded to a mid single-digit expectation for the full year. I think you are about 4% for 2022, which is pretty good in the inflationary environment. But what was the expectation again for 2023?

David Dykstra: Well, I was saying probably mid-to-high single digits to the middle of that range sort of just normally with an acquisition that probably gets to the high single digits for the full year. First quarter will probably be less, because the acquisition — pending acquisition. If it’s in there, it will be the end of the first quarter or early second quarter, but so it won’t have much impact. And some of the increases are later in the year, as we talked in our comments, second quarter and the third quarter tend to be higher for certain expense categories, particularly sponsorships and marketing. And then salary cost, we do salary increase effective February 1st, so that will impact a little bit in the first quarter, but more so the second quarter.

So, probably not a lot of growth in the first quarter, but as the year goes on for all those other reasons, probably mid-to-high single digits. But again we would expect that with the leverage and the growth in the balance sheet and the higher margin that will more than offset that expense growth.

Jeff Rulis: Right. I guess we could back into your comments on the efficiency ratio, still seeing improvement despite a reasonably higher expense run rate. So just to catch up on the margin again, did you have a December average for the month?

David Dykstra: Yeah. We don’t really haven’t disclosed that and we don’t want to get in the position of doing that. I think what you can see is in the past. We told you we would be around 3.70% for the fourth quarter and we were, and I think, we are pretty confident in our guidance for the full quarter of the first quarter. So I think we will leave it at that.

Jeff Rulis: Okay. Fair enough. And then just the last one, on the tax rate, any expectation that that’s going to change anywhere off of 27% — 27%, 27.5%. Is that a reasonable assumption for 2023?

David Dykstra: Yeah. 26.5% to 27% is a reasonable assumption. It bounced around a little bit because of what we noted in the press release with a $2 million expense in the third quarter and $1.7 million of that reversing in the fourth quarter related to some minimum taxes with our Canadian stuff. But you take those out in 26.5% to 27% seems like a reasonable rate.

Jeff Rulis: Got it. Thank you.

David Dykstra: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. At this time, I’d like to turn the call back over to Edward Wehmer for closing remarks. Sir?

Edward Wehmer: Yeah. Thanks everybody for listening in. We — our mask out here, yes, of course, and the rock rolls down the hill at the end of the year and we have to push it back up this year. We got everybody who got their shoulders in this will be a big rock, but we are going to make it. So if you have any other questions, please contact any of the speakers today and we will talk to you again pretty soon. So thank you.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

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