First Financial Bancorp. (NASDAQ:FFBC) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Jamie Anderson: Yes Nick, this is Jamie. The other thing on the personal side, I would tell you as we’ve seen the last few months, we’re seeing the average balance per account come down, but we are growing the number of accounts, net new accounts, and it’s helping to offset that. But we are seeing pressure just on each individual account, the average dollars that are sitting in those accounts, coming down, which is what we expected just given the large increase throughout ’20 and ’21 during COVID, and the large increase in deposits. But we’re offsetting a good portion of that with the fact that we are–that we’re adding accounts.

Nick Moutafakis: Great, and maybe–I don’t know if it’s in the slide deck, if I missed it too, but just the–as far as the CD growth, maybe the duration of the CD portfolio, retail, brokered, or–?

Jamie Anderson: Yes, all of that is relatively short. I mean, we are putting on–you know, our specials would typically run either in the seven months or 11 months, but it’s all less than 12 to 15 months. Brokered would typically be in that 6 to 12 month range.

Nick Moutafakis: Okay, thanks guys.

Archie Brown: Thanks Nick.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Terry McEvoy from Stephens. Your line is open.

Terry McEvoy: Thank you, good morning. Let’s start with a question or two on the loan portfolio. Could you just talk about what you’re seeing and hearing from your customers in commercial and small business banking, maybe pipelines, and what are their concerns given some of the macro headlines out there?

Archie Brown: Yes Terry, this is Archie. We saw, especially at the beginning of the quarter, some softness, and I think it had a lot to do with some of the turmoil that had occurred in the latter part of the first quarter in the industry, so pipelines certainly softened, activity slowed. Then somewhere around mid-quarter, it just shifted and we’re seeing much stronger and better activity at this point. Now when I say that, I’m talking primarily on the commercial banking side, probably middle market side in particular. With respect to commercial real estate, it’s sort of mixed. I mean, there is opportunities, but certainly the industry and we are being more selective, probably a little more defensive in the areas we’re targeting, and we are seeing–you know, relative to quality in that space, we’re seeing a lot better structures, more equity into projects and things like that, when we do them.

The C&I side, much better demand in the back half of the quarter. CRE side, there is demand but we’re just much more selective, so it’s a little–I’d say it’s just a little slower activity because of that.

Terry McEvoy: Appreciate that, thank you. Getting back to the discussion on Summit and some of the moving parts, what are the–are the economics different at all to the bank, whether it’s run through fee income or net interest income? I’m just thinking about the capital that goes with holding it in the loan portfolio.

Jamie Anderson: Yes Terry, this is Jamie. It’s relatively marginal on either side from an economic standpoint. If you think about the capital side of it from a risk-weighted asset standpoint, whether it’s sitting in that–so they’re both 100% risk-weighted, whether it’s sitting in other assets or whether they’re sitting in the loan book. From a capital allocation standpoint, they’re both at 100%, but the economics–I mean, the timing of it moves a little bit but the economics are virtually the same.

Terry McEvoy: Great. Maybe one last one, is the company considering selling any loans going forward in order to either reduce concentration in the portfolio or de-risk a certain asset class?