Evans Bancorp, Inc. (AMEX:EVBN) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

John Connerton: Yes. So that 3% does include a higher expected FDIC rate. The biggest impact on our expenses that are kind of holding down in relation to prior year is our expectation in our salaries and our expected incentive that will pay out just based on the levels of goals that we have and the payout that were assumed. So the fourth quarter is actually kind of a good run rate moving forward and then with that 2% to 3% kind of impact as the quarters move on from linked quarter to linked quarter.

Chris O’Connell: Okay. Great. And what’s a good tax rate for next year?

John Connerton: About 24.5% is a good tax rate.

Chris O’Connell: Great. And then, lastly, credit metrics all around seemed great this quarter. Can you just talk about, given the moving rates and kind of overall economic activity, what you guys are seeing in your market areas and within your portfolio and maybe where you’re pulling back on or see additional risk as well as what the critical factors are to keep the hotel portfolio criticized coming down over the course of next year?

David Nasca: I’ll answer that one, Chris. Couple of things. One is, in the marketplace, we’re still seeing strength and good credit, especially in the manufacturing and the C&I side. Commercial real estate has slowed down with the increase in rates. Mortgage, obviously, has really tightened up in terms of slowing down. So from an activity standpoint that’s kind of what we’re seeing. We’ve offset commercial real estate growth last year. We’ve offset that with our C&I expectation this year. Obviously, when you are in industry, whether it’s service or manufacturing, if we head into a recession here, there could be impacts there. We’re watching that. At this point, credits are fairly benign. We’re seeing that across the industry and we’re feeling the same way.

You are hearing that, I’m sure, across all your discussions here. We are trying to stay very close to our customers, though, because if we get into a recessionary environment, demand is going to matter. Most of the people have worked through the supply chain issues that they had, and that actually is resulting at least in the manufacturing side improving. We’re not seeing any deterioration at this moment on a credit side. So I think we’re feeling pretty constructively positive in terms of going into this. We’re not chasing it. Certainly, we always talk about that. We maintained our credit standards. We’re not loosening those. John talked about the margins earlier. We are getting paid for the risk we’re taking. We’re not shrinking too much on the margin here.

So I think, overall, we’re feeling okay going into what we’re seeing right now and we’re watching it.

John Connerton: The only thing I would add just, Chris, we’re going to be on CECL in the upcoming year. And the provision will be a little more at risk with forecast on the economy, so that’s something to kind of consider.

David Nasca: I guess you also asked the question about the hotels. I’ll go back to that. 60% of the hotels have come out since we originally criticized them. You have probably $30 million still left. Of those, one of them will stay in there, call it, $8 million to $10 million. The rest of those, we are continuing to watch for performance at their given cycles, different prime periods. They are performing. We don’t see anything that will preclude them from continuing to repair themselves and come out over the next period of time.

Chris O’Connell: Great. And for the CECL impact, you guys have an estimate for that yet?

John Connerton: Well, yes. We’ll have some disclosures in our K when it comes out in the beginning of March.

Chris O’Connell: Okay. Got it. Makes sense. Appreciate you taking my questions.

Operator: And we have reached the end of the question-and-answer session. I’ll now turn the call back over to management for closing remarks.