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spk01: Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q3 2022 Midland States Bank Corp Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Tony Rossi of Financial Profiles. Please go ahead.
spk02: Thank you, Michelle. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for the Midland States Bancorp Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. Joining us from Midland's management team are Jeff Ludwig, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Eric Lemke, Chief Financial Officer. We'll be using a slide presentation as part of our discussion this morning. If you've not done so already, please visit the webcast and presentations page of Midland's Investor Relations website to download a copy of the presentation. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that this conference call contains forward-looking statements with respect to the future performance and financial condition of Midland States Bancorp that involve risks and uncertainties. Various factors could cause actual results to be materially different from any future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These factors are discussed in the company's SEC filings, which are available on the company's website. The company disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements made during the call. Additionally, management may refer to non-GAAP measures which are intended to supplement, but not substitute for the most directly comparable GAAP measures. The press release, available on the website, contains the financial and other quantitative information to be discussed today, as well as the reconciliation of the GAAP to non-GAAP measures. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Jeff. Jeff?
spk08: Thanks, Tony. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Midland States Earnings Call. I'm going to start on slide three with the highlights of the third quarter. We continued to execute well and capitalize on the loan demand that we continue to see in our markets, resulting in further improvement in our financial performance. We generated net income of $23.5 million, or $1.04 per share. up from 97 cents in the prior quarter, while our pre-tax pre-provision earnings increased to $36.4 million. Most importantly, we generated profitable growth, which is positively impacting our level of returns as our return on assets and return on average tangible common equity both increased from the prior quarter. Although we expected to see a lower level of loan growth in the third quarter as higher rates impacted loan demand, The productivity of the commercial banking teams we have built enabled us to still generate exceptionally strong loan growth, with total loans increasing at an annualized rate of 28%. With the highly productive commercial banking teams and diverse lending platform we have built, we are seeing strong contributions to our loan growth across asset classes, industries, property types, and geographic markets. Particularly due to the disruption in Illinois resulting from merger activity, we are seeing excellent opportunities to add new relationships with strong borrowers who we believe will present us with additional opportunities in the future to expand these relationships as they grow their businesses or make additional investments. We operate with a long-term approach, and we aren't going to pass up the opportunity to add high-quality relationships even if we have to utilize higher cost sources of funds to fund the initial loans we are making, as we did to some extent during the third quarter. We believe it's in the company's best long-term interest and the best long-term interest of our shareholders to add these new relationships, even if it has an unfavorable impact on our net interest margin in the short term. During the third quarter, we had growth in all of our portfolios, with the largest increases coming in our commercial and commercial real estate portfolios. Our equipment finance business continues to be a significant driver of our commercial loan growth, and this portfolio surpassed a billion dollars in total outstandings during the third quarter. This represents a significant milestone and reflects the success we have had in growing this business. At the beginning of 2018, We made a significant investment to expand the business development team and rebrand this group to what is now known as Midland Equipment Finance. At the time, the portfolio was a little more than $200 million. In the ensuing four-plus years, we've grown the outstanding balances by approximately $800 million, and the business has become a consistent source of loans and leases that provide attractive risk-adjusted yields. Outside of the strong loan growth, we continue to see positive trends in many of our key metrics that are also contributing to our improved financial performance. We are seeing a significant increase in average loan yields, and our business development efforts continue to focus on new and expanded deposit relationships, although this is having an impact on our cost of funds. We have made a conscious effort to increase our deposit rates for certain customers in certain account types. in order to increase market share and continue to provide funding for our strong loan growth opportunities. We are also seeing positive trends in asset quality, with our non-performing assets declining by 14% from the end of the prior quarter. During the first half of the year, we indicated that we would be exploring options to strengthen our capital ratios and make decisions that are in the best long-term interest of shareholders. Given the strong loan growth we continue to see in the third quarter, we made the decision to raise $115 million through a preferred stock offering. This has enabled us to continue capitalizing on the business development momentum we have built with our commercial banking teams to continue adding new clients, expanding existing relationships, and driving the balance sheet growth that we believe will lead to further improvement in earnings and returns over the long term. and create additional value for our shareholders. At this point, I'm going to turn the call over to Eric to provide some additional details around our third quarter performance. Eric.
spk09: Thanks, Jeff. And again, good morning, everyone. Starting on slide four, we'll take a look at our loan portfolio. Our total loans increased $403 million from the end of the prior quarter. We had increases in all of our portfolios, with the strongest growth coming in commercial loans, which increased at a 36% annualized rate, and commercial real estate loans, which increased at an annualized rate of 22%. As Jeff mentioned, equipment finance contributed to the growth in the commercial loan portfolio during the quarter. But the largest contributor was conventional commercial loans generated within our community banking markets, led to our other commercial loan portfolio increasing at an annualized rate of 44% in the third quarter. The consumer portfolio increased by approximately $71 million, which is largely attributable to loans that we are now originating through our FinTech partnerships, including Green Sky with an increase of $33 million and LendingPoint with an increase of $25 million. We increased our GreenSky portfolio slightly during the third quarter, which led to the consumer portfolio increasing a bit more than we expected. But going forward, we are reducing new originations in the GreenSky portfolio in the fourth quarter and are expecting the portfolio to run off approximately $50 million over the next three months. Now turning to slide five, we'll look at our deposits. Total deposits increased $211 million from the prior quarter. We had an increase in non-interest bearing deposits and all of our interest bearing deposits. As Jeff mentioned, we are continuing to focus on deposit gathering, and we've seen strong growth in balances over the past two quarters. Our commercial banking and treasury management teams continue to do a good job of developing new commercial deposit relationships, which is driving improvement in our overall deposit mix. At the end of the third quarter, non-interest-bearing deposits accounted for 31.7% of our total deposits, up from 29.9% at this same point last year. Now looking at slide six, we'll walk through the trends in our net interest income and margin. Our net interest income increased 4.4% from the prior quarter, primarily due to higher average loan balances. Our net interest margin decreased two basis points from the prior quarter. as the increase in our cost of deposits exceeded the increase we saw in earning asset yields. The increase in cost of deposits is largely due to servicing deposits, our insured cash sweep accounts, and certain interest-bearing checking and money market accounts that are pegged to the Fed funds rate or a similar benchmark. We've also increased rates with certain specials and promotions in order to attract new customers and increase our overall deposit balances. Those rate increases have resulted in an overall increase to our cost of deposits, but also have the desired effect of increasing our balances. We've been able to generate our strong loan growth without compromising on our underwriting criteria or loan pricing. And as a result, we continue to see positive trends in our average rate on new originations. In the month of September, the average rate on our new and renewed loans was 5.53%, which was an increase of 74 basis points from the month of June. In particular, we are seeing higher rates on commercial loans, including equipment financing. We also used a portion of the capital we raised in the preferred stock offering to redeem $40 million of subordinated debt that has an interest rate of 6.25%. With the redemption, we have eliminated a higher cost source of funds. Turning to slide seven, we'll look at the trends in our wealth management business. Our assets under administration decreased by $153 million from the end of the prior quarter, primarily due to market performance. Despite the decrease in assets under administration, we were able to keep our wealth management revenue relatively consistent with the prior quarter. Now on slide eight, we'll look at non-interest income. We had $15.8 million in non-interest income in the third quarter, an increase of 8.3% from the prior quarter. Most fee generating areas were relatively consistent with the prior quarter, and the increase was attributable to the impairment on commercial mortgage servicing rights that negatively impacted non-interest income in the second quarter. We are currently in the process of selling the commercial mortgage servicing rights portfolio, which will eliminate a source of earnings volatility as well as provide a small benefit to our capital ratios. The commercial MSR portfolio also includes approximately $200 million in low-cost servicing deposits. These deposits will either reprice at market rates or could be moved to another institution as part of the sale of the portfolio. We're expecting to complete the sale later this quarter, although it could push into the first quarter of 2023. Turning now to slide nine, we'll review our non-interest expense. Our non-interest expense was up from the prior quarter, primarily due to three factors. First, we had higher salaries and benefits expense, primarily due to increased incentive compensation and commissions. Second, we had a general increase in expenses due to greater loan and deposit activity. And third, we had the full quarter impact of the branch acquisition that was completed in June. For the near term, we now expect our operating expense to be in the range of $42.5 to $43.5 million per quarter. Turning to slide 10, we'll look at our asset quality trends. Our non-performing loans decreased $10 million from the end of the prior quarter, which was due to a combination of payoffs, a note sale, and a charge-off of a previously reserved relationship. The decline in non-performing loans is reflective of the positive trends we're seeing in the broader portfolio with continued upgrades of watch list loans. Within the consumer portfolio, the delinquency rate remains exceptionally low, And as a reminder, should any deterioration begin to occur, we have approximately $41 million in an escrow account that is available to cover any losses on the GreenSky portfolio. We had $3.2 million in net charge-offs in the quarter or 21 basis points of average loans. The charge-offs this quarter were largely driven by two credits. We charged off approximately $1 million on a note that we sold during the quarter. and we charged off $1.1 million on a non-performing loan that we had previously established a specific reserve for. We recorded a provision for credit losses on loans of $7 million during the quarter, which was largely related to the growth in total loans and the impact of negative economic forecasts. On slide 11, we show the components of the change in our allowance for credit losses from the end of the prior quarter. Our allowance for credit losses increased by approximately $3.7 million. The increase was driven by the growth in total loans, changes in the mix of the portfolio, and changes in forecasts from weakening economic conditions. And then on slide 12, we show our ACL broken out by portfolio. So our overall coverage ratio remained unchanged. We had adjustments in the coverage ratio of most of the portfolios to reflect those same economic variables and forecasts. And with that, I'll turn the call back over to Jeff.
spk08: Jeff? All right. Thanks, Eric. We'll wrap up on slide 13 with some comments on our outlook. With the stronger capital ratios we now have, we are better positioned to support continued balance sheet growth. One area that we are continuing to invest in is the equipment finance business. Our equipment finance team continues to generate strong production with $147 million in new loans and leases in the third quarter. Our equipment finance pipeline continues to be strong, and we are expecting continued growth in the fourth quarter and beyond, although not at the same level as in years past, but the continued growth of this business will increase our production of loans and leases that provide attractive risk-adjusted yields. Entering the fourth quarter, our overall pipeline remains strong, but smaller than what it was earlier in the year, and we've started to see some loans fall out of the pipeline as borrowers reconsider planned investments in light of the higher interest rates and uncertain economic outlook. As a result, while we still expect to see loan growth in the fourth quarter, it will likely moderate from the levels we have generated earlier in the year. But with continued loan growth, combined with higher net interest margin and improved efficiencies, that we are now generating, we believe we are well positioned to continue delivering strong financial performance for our shareholders, even as it appears that the near term operating environment will become more challenging. We also continue to make good progress on our banking as a service initiative that we believe will become an important contributor to enhance franchise value over the next several years. We recently added a director of banking as a service, With experience managing similar initiatives at two other banks, the director will be responsible for evaluating and securing new fintech partnerships and managing those relationships as they are added to our banking platform. We are building a good foundation for this initiative and expect it to start making a positive impact on our deposit gathering and fee income generation during 2023 and steadily grow in the years to come. As we head into the final months of 2022, we believe we have never been better positioned to create value for our shareholders, both in terms of improved financial performance we are generating and the continued progress we are making on longer-term initiatives like banking as a service that we believe will improve our ability to generate profitable growth and further enhance franchise value in the future. With that, we'll be happy to answer any questions you might have. Operator, please open the call.
spk01: As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Terry McEvoy with Stevens. Your line is now open.
spk03: Good morning, guys.
spk01: Good morning.
spk03: Maybe first question, Eric, I was just trying to follow your comments on the servicing sale and what that could mean to deposits. What's the message on the $200 million of deposits? Are you still uncertain about whether that stays with your company?
spk09: Well, right now with that mortgage servicing right portfolio, we're actively shopping it to a variety of buyers. I think if we could do it the way we'd like to do it, we'd like to retain those deposits. However, there's a chance that whoever buys that portfolio could move those deposits to another institution. So if we retain the deposits, they're likely going to flip to market rates, or we could lose them as they go to another institution, and we're actively preparing for that possibility. Does that help?
spk03: Yep. Okay. Thank you for that. And then I just want to understand the message on the margin. On the outlook slide, it sounds like you see some improvement, but earlier Jeff kind of said if the loan growth from some new hires, et cetera, occurs and you need to fund that with higher costing funds over the near term, that could impact the margin. Am I kind of understanding how you're thinking about the puts and takes over the near term?
spk08: Yeah, I think that's right. You know, the loan growth that we've seen, we've, And the deposit gathering we've done in the last couple quarters has come in at probably a slightly lower spread than our current margin. And that's sort of offsetting the sensitivity that was in the current balance sheet. So depending on sort of how that moves forward, you know, margin could be up a little. It could be flat. It could be down a little is sort of how we're thinking of it right now.
spk03: Maybe one last question. I noticed a couple weeks ago that the woman that We'll run Bass for you, and I think you added somebody to run wealth management recently. So I guess my question on the expense is, will you continue to find ways to absorb investments like those two individuals on the real estate side, or do you think the cost-cutting side is complete and new hires and new initiatives would translate into an increase in the expense growth rate?
spk08: Yeah, I mean, I think the way I think of it is, you know, the 3% increase in expenses is sort of how I think about it now. Expenses might go up 5%, but we're looking for the 2% cost saves to offset some of that cost increase. But we're still working very diligently on our expense line.
spk06: Great. Thank you both. Yep, thanks, Jerry. Thank you.
spk00: Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Nathan Race with Piper Sandler.
spk01: Your line is now open.
spk04: Hi, guys. Good morning. Appreciate you taking the questions. Hope everyone's doing well. Yep. Thanks. Going back to Terry's question around the margin outlook going forward, Just curious with some of the deposit relationships that you're adding, are you finding that just the rate sensitivity with these clients is pretty similar to the legacy deposit base at Midland? Or I'm just trying to kind of get a sense of how you guys are kind of thinking about the deposit expectations over the next few quarters.
spk08: Yeah, I mean, as we're looking to win for larger commercial clients, That rate needs to be closer to where the market's at. Over the last six months, we've been running on the retail side both CD and money market specials for sort of new money coming in, but also working with existing clients. Although as rates have increased 300 basis points in a very short period of time, thinking that we're going to sit here and not pay our depositors and keep deposits is unrealistic. I just heard a story this morning of one of our directors called his bank and said, hey, when are you going to start paying me? I got tens of millions of dollars with you, and when are you going to start giving me some rate? And if you don't, you're not getting the next loan either. So I think what we're trying to balance is – giving our clients interest on their deposits and doing it slowly over time is sort of the idea. But the lags that maybe what we thought going into this where you're going to lag three or six months on rates, that's not realistic anymore with rates going up as fast as they are. So trying to balance our cost of funds with maintaining our deposit base as well as growing the deposit base. And, you know, as the beginning, from first quarter through now, I think our beta is in the high teens, which I think is not bad. Although, you know, we do think that can continue to accelerate as you move forward, as we get another 75 basis points next month, get some more in December. We're going to have to start giving clients you know, more interest on their deposits or they're going to take them somewhere else.
spk04: Understood. Makes sense. And I appreciate the commentary around kind of the margin outlook for 4Q being, you know, flat or maybe up slightly or down slightly. But maybe as we get into the early part of next year and assuming, you know, the Fed remains on its current path, is it fair to assume that we're not at kind of a peak margin as we can maybe expect some
spk08: Additional expansion in the early parts of next year or even into the second quarter as well You know, I think we're also beginning to move our sensitivity more to neutral Because I think as we get in next year rates are going to be going the other way and so we're beginning to manage the balance sheet more to a neutral spot and I think we could potentially see a little bit of margin increase, but, you know, we could be getting towards our peak anyway, as we think more long-term around margin. I mean, a 360-plus margin for us, you know, we had a 122 ROA with $7 million in provisioning this quarter. So as provisioning starts to hopefully – go away. Now, who knows what will happen next year, but as provisioning and loan growth slows down, provisioning slows down, we'll be able to continue to grow sort of bottom line and continue to improve ROA and, frankly, then ROEs. With our ROE this quarter was 20%. Right.
spk04: Yep. Yeah, no, definitely impressive. Within the context of moving to a more neutral position from a rate sensitivity perspective, Is that a function of just some additional floating to fix swaps? I believe you guys entered into some other ones earlier this year. Are you guys continuing to kind of take some of that floating rate sensitivity off the table to protect against some downsides whenever the Fed begins to become less hawkish?
spk08: Yeah, since the beginning of the second quarter, we haven't done any more of those. We're still contemplating potentially doing more of that. You know, trying to do a little more on the investment portfolio to maybe take a little more duration as we take cash flow and put more in the investment portfolio. And as we fund some of our good loan growth, we're funding it with more variable rate funding, which in the down rate will move down quickly.
spk04: Understood. And if I could just ask one last clarifying question, it sounds like with, you know, absent the potential for some of those servicing deposits to move off balance sheet in the fourth quarter, is the expectation that both loan and deposit growth is going to revert to kind of the mid to high single digit range that I believe we were discussing last quarter?
spk08: Yeah, I would, I'm not expecting another $200 million quarter in deposit growth. although our teams are actively working on deposits. But, yeah, I think retail deposits year-to-date are up like 6%. So I think that upper single digits, as we look on a yearly basis, is probably the right zone.
spk04: Okay, great. I appreciate you guys taking all the questions. Have a great weekend. Yep, thanks, Nate. Thanks, Nate.
spk01: Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Damon Del Monte with KBW. Your line is now open.
spk05: Hey, good morning, guys. Hope you guys are doing well today. Yep, we are. Excellent. Good to hear. I wanted to start off on the commentary on the consumer portfolio. I think, Eric, you had said that you expect some of the green sky portfolio to be running off. Do you guys expect the originations from the lending point relationship to kind of neutralize that impact, or should we kind of be forecasting a modest decline in outstanding?
spk09: I think, David, thanks for the question, a modest decline in outstanding. So we've at I think we've kind of communicated that at some point we'd like to have several FinTech partners with roughly the same amount of that total portfolio. And so we've pulled back on GreenSky's origination. So we think it'll decline about $50 million over the course of the next quarter. And LendingPoint will make up a portion of that, say anywhere from 15 to 20 million. So down like a net 30 on the consumer side.
spk05: Got it. Okay. That's helpful. And then with regards to your outlook on the economy and how that factors into your provision expectations, I mean, do you feel like given the strong growth this quarter and given the view on the economy, the $7 million kind of is a peak provision level for you guys, considering loan growth would be slowing, so you don't need to put as much away for loan growth, and then any offset on the economy would still kind of keep that around $7 million? Or do you think that we could start to see a little bit higher levels of provisioning overall?
spk09: I got to tell you, I hope that's the peak. So, you know, we had 7% loan growth in the quarter, which drove a lot of that provision. You know, our forecasting continues to to pull in some of the idea of a recession coming in 23 or 24. So we're cautious there. However, when you look at some of our other credit metrics, our other credit metrics have been pretty good. So with non-performing loans, we're down. Our watch list, our criticized list is going the right direction. So as long as that continues and our loan growth slows, I think that would be the peak. But the economy is always the wild card out there.
spk08: Yeah, I mean, our metrics don't show that that's there today. I mean, Eric just talked about our substandard of capital is as low as it's been in a long time. And so we're not seeing cracks, but this rapid increase in interest rates, I mean, I just feel like it's going to have some impact as we move into 23. I don't think anybody can tell what it's actually going to look like next year.
spk05: Yeah. Well, with building on that, are there any areas in the economy or in the different asset classes that you lend to that you kind of become a little bit more cautious on and are pulling back from?
spk08: You know, office for sure is an area that we're not real interested in. Resi development, probably another area we're not, you know, real high on. You know, we're looking for, you know, really good A-rated credit with good borrowers. Those would be maybe the couple areas that we're sort of staying away from. And, you know, really sticking to our loan policy and our pricing metrics is sort of the guides that we're giving our RMs right now. We can still... We can still lend out, but, you know, we've got to – across every category, it's to the policy, to the pricing metrics, no exceptions to that.
spk05: Got it. Okay. And then just lastly, Eric, any color on the tax rate this quarter? It seemed to come in a little lower than what had been the last couple quarters.
spk09: Yeah, Damon, good question. So we picked up basically some benefit in our state tax rates over the course of the quarter as we kind of finalized our returns and got everything done. And then with that sort of going forward in the next quarter, we're expecting a tax rate probably around 23.5%. So as we filed all the returns and looked at our allocations and looked at the stack, the taxes, we were able to get a little bit of a pickup and then we lowered our outlook on fuller just slightly.
spk05: Got it. Okay. I appreciate the color guys. Thanks a lot.
spk08: Yeah. Thanks.
spk01: As a reminder to ask a question, please press star one, one on your telephone. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Manuel Navas with DA Davidson. Your line is now open.
spk07: Hey, good morning. A couple of my questions have been answered. But in talking about the NIM, there was the increase in wholesale borrowing happened at end of the quarter. Can you discuss kind of like the makeup and kind of the tenure of it and kind of the expected costs? Any more details would be great.
spk09: Sure. There's a couple of areas there. You know, we did do some additional FHLB borrowings, and so those are mostly short-term at shorter-term rates. And then some of the – there's about 100 million in our FHLB borrowings that are at variable rates, which adjust frequently as well. And then we have added a couple of – Oh, I just call them institutional type relationships. One's classified as a brokered money market, and the other one is similar, although it's not classified as brokered, which moves pretty much with Fed fund rates. So, you know, we elected to do both of those in order to continue to fund the loan growth. And then as Jeff mentioned earlier, we're really thinking about protection in down rate environment, assuming that, you know, that scenario comes to pass a year from now. And those rates will adjust pretty quickly too. But those are two examples.
spk07: What's the capacity for more of these type of lines to help you with funding?
spk09: Yeah, good question. So, we've got a slide in our deck towards the end that kind of talks about our available liquidity. And we still have a lot of available borrowing with the FHLB. And we still kind of look at potentially $500 million of funding that we could do out there in the broker markets if need be. So that's kind of the max target of where I think we'd want to be with that type funding. But it's a possibility.
spk08: Yeah. But, man, maybe to add to that, you know, I'm not real interested in going over 100% loan to deposit ratio. So there's a balance in the governor there as well. You know, we're in the mid 90s now, so we're actively looking at that ratio. You know, it potentially might run over, but that's not where we want to operate. I would prefer to operate more, you know, frankly, below 90. So we're a little ahead of where I would prefer to be. But as I tell our teams here all the time, You know, deposits and loans never come in at the same rate at the same time. Sometimes loans are coming in faster. Sometimes deposits are coming in faster. And we sort of got to, you know, we have targets, but, you know, sometimes we'll be above it. Sometimes we'll be below it.
spk07: Okay. That's great. I appreciate that. Moving on to kind of the loan growth and the mix of the pipeline, I'm guessing a lot more equipment finance into the fourth quarter. It, So CRE, I guess CRE has fallen off a bit, but you're still having some strong other product contributions. Can you just kind of talk about what's in the pipeline? It's mixed versus what has happened year to date.
spk08: Yeah. So on the equipment finance side, our pipeline and backlog is at record levels. And our fourth quarter in that business is always the strongest quarter in So we expect to have a really good fourth quarter in that business. And we've done a lot of CRE over the last sort of 12 to 18 months. And we were, you know, our CRE to capital, I think 12 months ago was under 200. We're 260 today. And we have no desire to go to 300. And so our sort of internal target there is I don't want to be above 275. So we're sort of managing commercial real estate. sort of to that level. And so what that's doing on the commercial banking side is, okay, we've got to look at other asset classes and sort of turning our attention to sort of non-CRE lending. Now, we've got a big CRE portfolio, so we're still going to make a lot of CRE loans because there'll be payoffs and attrition and things like that. But starting to point you know, our teams to maybe some other asset classes other than commercial real estate. I appreciate that. In general, our pipeline's a little lighter than it was in the beginning of the year. But, yeah, there's a fair amount of business still in that pipeline.
spk06: I appreciate that.
spk07: With the... kind of moving to a different tack on the expense, a little bit higher expense run rate. Can we see like a return to positive operating leverage near term or more steady state?
spk08: The goal here is to get operating leverage, right? You know, I think expenses were Well, it's pretty broad-based, a lot of growth, incentive comp. We put a fair amount of marketing into the quarter, and some of that could come back. So, yeah, I mean, we're looking for operating leverage.
spk07: Okay. It also depends a little bit on the NIM.
spk06: Yep.
spk07: Thank you, guys.
spk00: Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Nathan Race with Piper Sandler.
spk01: Your line is open.
spk04: Thank you for taking the follow-up. Just a question on the fee income outlook into the fourth quarter and next year. I imagine if we get some equity markets, I mean, that obviously helped wealth management, which, you know, hopefully continues to trend higher like we saw in 3Q over 2Q. But I guess with other fees up a little bit versus the second quarter as well in 3Q, how do you guys kind of think about just the overall fee income run rate into the fourth quarter and kind of just overall fee income growth expectations in the next year as well?
spk08: Yeah, I mean, looking at the third quarter, you know, I think it's a pretty good number. And to your point, I mean, if we can get some rebound in the markets, our wealth management revenue a year ago was around $7 million, and most of that decreases market-related. So I think there's definitely some lift there. We've hired a new leader there. We're going to make some investments there to grow that business. Now, that's going to take a little bit of time. to do to get to hire advisors and get them on and get them producing and all that good stuff. That's sort of, you know, back part of next year into 24 sort of probably impact to the real impact to the income statement. And then, you know, the resi line item there is really low. I mean, it's not a big focal point for us, but it'd be, We'd like to do more than we did in the current – quite a bit more than we did in the current quarter. I mean, that's $200,000 in a quarter. I mean, frankly, $1 million, $2 million a quarter would be where we would want to be, but the marketplace is just not there right now. I think there's some upside to that. So where we're at, about $16 million, I think as we move forward, there's some upside to that, both in wealth management and residential mortgage.
spk04: Yeah, and the other income line has trended higher over the last few quarters. It's kind of the figure that we saw here in the third quarter. Is that kind of run rate going forward, or is there any kind of one-off items that maybe elevated it here in the third quarter?
spk08: No, I think that's run rate. I mean, our retail teams are doing a good job on the fee lines in sort of that service charge and interchange area. We're doing a lot of work to try to continue to build those revenue lines. Again, that's more of a longer-term game that we're working on. It's not transformative quarter to quarter, but year over year, we can see some good movement in those lines.
spk04: Yep. No, we're definitely seeing the success of those efforts in that line in particular. I appreciate you guys taking the follow-up questions, and thank you for all the color. Yes, thanks. Thanks, Dave.
spk01: At this time, I show no further questions in the queue. I would now like to turn the conference back to management for closing remarks.
spk08: Yep, thanks for everybody joining this morning, and we'll talk next year. Thank you.
spk01: This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
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