Alerus Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:ALRS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Jeff Rulis: Appreciate it. One last one, just on the — if it was modest, but I wanted to look at the nonaccrual drop anything of specific there? Was that just a miscellaneous, or was there one large loan that came back on accrual?

Karen Bohn: We had a couple of payoffs, Jeff. This is Karen.

Jeff Rulis: Okay. So just a handful of those. I appreciate it. Thanks.

Operator: The next question comes from Nathan Race with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Nathan.

Nathan Race: Yes. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking the questions. Just wanted to drill down into the outlook for this year. I appreciate your comments on is decline in the first quarter. I guess just kind of thinking further out, if we just get two more Fed hikes in the first half of this year, do you see kind of flattish growth after a presumable trough in the second quarter? Or are you guys kind of think about just NII growth prospects in the back of the year on pickup after being somewhat seasonally soft in the first quarter.

Alan Villalon: Yes. So Jeff — sorry, Nate, this is — the timing of the — we kind of gave the guidance already on the previous question in terms of our margin, and I’d say our NII is going to follow somewhat a similar cadence to a lot of that, though, too, will be influenced by the talent adds we’ve had and also the loan growth we’re doing from our current team. So I would say right now, a good portion of that sensitivity, liability sensitivity will be felt in the first half of the year, which will impact that NII and then kind of gradually dissipate as we get through the year. So as we get through the first six months, I think you’ll see those storm clouds on that liability sensitivity kind of starting to dissipate and then start turning to more bluebird guys, I would say, for us in the back half of the year.

Nathan Race: Okay. Great. And then just within that context, curious how you guys just kind of think about the overall balance sheet at from here. With some of the deposit runoff that we saw over the course of last year. Do you think that’s largely brought us sports at this point and we can anticipate a more kind of stable average earning asset base relative to the level in 4Q?

Alan Villalon: Nate, that’s a question that’s going to have — we’re going to have to see how the year goes because right now, the deposit environment is very competitive. I mean we’ve added talent right now and where we’re very positive about right now and very excited about is that on the treasury management side. We’re bringing its very experienced capabilities in our footprint. Maybe I’ll switch it here to Jim in a second. But as we build out that treasury management and also our HLA capabilities, we think we can take market share out there because this is a — they’re bringing in a level of experience that is very high for us, and I’ll switch over to Jim here.

Jim Collins: Thanks, Al. I’d make the comment that else right, the deposits, it’s going to be hard to see what happens to our current deposits. We have a lot of commercial customers that are just going to use their deposits instead of taking on debt. But we are building out and continue to build out our team and bringing in experts in other verticals, such as repositioning one of our commercial executives into building out professional services, right? We’ll focus — have more focus on commercial deposit-focused bankers/wholesale deposit group. And we have the HOA group that we acquired in Arizona, middle of last year and looking at ways to leverage that to garnish more deposits and of course, building out and enhancing our private banking group, which harvests a lot of deposits. So it’s a hard question to answer, but I think we’re doing all the right things in order to build up our deposit base.