Northwest Bancshares, Inc.

Thank you for standing by. My name is Kayla and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Northwest Bank Shares Inc. 3Q2024 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again, press star and 1. I would now like to turn the call over to Joseph Canfield, Executive Vice President, Chief Accounting Officer. You may begin.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you, operator. Welcome to Northwest Bank Shares' third quarter 2024 earnings call. Joining me today are Louis Torchio, President and CEO of Northwest Bank Shares, Inc., the holding company for Northwest Bank. Douglas Schauser, our Chief Financial Officer, and TK Creel, our Chief Credit Officer. During this call, you'll refer to information included in the supplemental earnings release presentation, which is available on our investor relations website. This presentation includes our forward-looking statements and other data, including non-GAAP measures. Please note that actual results may differ materially from the forward-looking statements made today, October 29th, 2024. These statements will not be updated after today's call, Thank you, and now I'll hand it over to Lou.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us to discuss our quarterly results. We delivered solid returns, and I'm pleased with our core financial performance, which Doug will cover momentarily. I'm particularly pleased with our NIM expansion, quarter-over-quarter revenue growth, and continued improvement in our efficiency ratio. This clearly demonstrates that we are delivering on prior commitments made. Though modest, we continue to see deposits rise, even with the near best-in-class cost of funds. In addition, we continue to see positive results from the security portfolio restructure executed last quarter, which continues to positively position Northwest for the upcoming quarters and years ahead. I want to thank every team member for their talent and dedication in producing these results. I'm proud of your hard work and focus on our customers and communities. I'd like to take a moment to discuss the increasingly dynamic M&A environment within our markets. As previously stated, Northwest and our board are steadfast in our commitment to responsible growth, both organically and through acquisitions. I'm in frequent discussion with other bank leaders and investment bankers positioning Northwest advantageously for future opportunities. Our leadership team remains dedicated to enhancing our performance, thereby strengthening our financial standing and bolstering our acquisition potential. Finally, as we have for the past 120 quarters, on behalf of the Board of Directors, I'm pleased to declare a quarterly dividend of 20 cents per share to our shareholders of record as of November 8, 2024. Now, it's my pleasure to introduce Doug Shosser, Northwest Bank's Chief Financial Officer, who will take us through our financial results.

Thank you, Lou, and good morning, everyone. Before we dive in today's presentation, I'd like to welcome Joe Canfield, who you already heard from at the top of the call. Joe recently joined Northwest as our executive vice president and chief accounting officer. Additionally, we've named a new treasurer this quarter, Sean Morrow, who's been with the firm for over seven years and was formerly our assistant treasurer and was promoted with Jeff Madigan's departure. He was unable to join this call, but will be on future calls. Let's begin on page four of the earnings presentation, where I'll highlight Northwest's financial results for the third quarter of 2024. We reported a net income of $33.6 million, or 26 cents per diluted share. Our net interest margin expanded by 13 basis points for this quarter to 3.33%, aided partially by an interest recovery on a non-accrual loan, which added four basis points to that margin. We continue to see our margin increase due to our continued pricing discipline across our balance sheet, including our deposit portfolio and our newly originated loans, and supported by a more favorable interest rate environment. Compared to the same quarter last year, our loan portfolio was essentially flat, and deposits grew by 3.2%. Excluding a $39 million loss on the sale of the securities as we resettled our balance sheet, Non-interest income decreased by $3 million due to a loss on an equity method investment, lower gains on the sale of SBA loans, and a loss on the sale of some bank-owned real estate acquired from past acquisition activity. Non-interest expense decreased by nearly 2% or approximately $2 million from the second quarter. Credit quality remained strong. Overall allowance coverage slightly increasing to 1.11% of loans from 1.10 last quarter and a year-ago quarter. Finally, our capital position remains strong with an estimated Tier 1 capital to risk-weighted assets of 13.7% at 930. Now, let's delve into additional details. On page 5, you'll see that our commercial and industrial loans grew by 2.8% since last quarter and 25.7% year-over-year, while residential mortgages declined by $190 million, or 5.5% since last year. This shift underscores our focus on commercial banking transformation. Our commercial real estate portfolio shrank by just 1% since last quarter, reflecting a more desirable loan mix with higher share of CNI compared to CRE. Our loan yields have steadily increased over the last five quarters, now standing at 5.6%. Moving to page six, deposits remained largely flat since last quarter and up 3.2% year over year. Our cost of deposits only increased by two basis points, the lowest rate in the past five quarters. Most deposit growth occurred in interest bearing demand products with modest growth in consumer savings and money market accounts. The current cost of deposits stands at 1.78%, which is near best in class relative to our peers. On page seven, We cover the net interest margin, which now stands at 333 basis points, a 13 basis point improvement from the second quarter, and 10 basis points higher than the same quarter last year. Fully tax equivalent net interest income grew by approximately 4%, from $108 million last quarter to $112 million. This marks our second consecutive quarter of net interest income growth and NIM improvement, reflecting reduced borrowings, higher loan yields, and no growth on our cost of funds. We ended the quarter with the cost of funds at 2.39%, one basis point lower than the prior quarter. We have included some additional information on the margin on the next few slides. Now moving to slide 10. Non-interest income decreased quarter ended September 30, 2023 due to a $3 million decrease in income from bank-owned life insurance resulting from death benefits received in prior periods. Excluding the $39 million loss on the sale of securities last quarter, non-interest income decreased by $3 million from the prior quarter due to a loss on the equity method investment, lower gains on the sale of SBA loans, and a loss on the sale of real estate that was part of some previously acquired banks and was largely vacant. On slide 11, details of our non-interest expense, our efficiency ratio improved to 64.3%. 8%, reflecting a nearly $2 million reduction in expenses for the quarter. We continue to insource work previously handled by more expensive third-party firms to reduce overall costs and increase the quality of that work. We remain focused on finding additional cost reductions without impacting core operations or diminishing the service levels our customers expect. Regarding credit quality on page 12, our allowance to loan coverage increased slightly to 1.1%, with net charge-offs at just 18 basis points for the quarter. Page 13 shows that overall credit performance remains strong, with an improvement in non-performing assets. While 30-day loan delinquency saw a slight increase to 70 basis points, classified loans also increased slightly to 2.83% of total loans. Slide 14 highlights our commercial loan concentration, showcasing a diverse portfolio. Strong underwriting has helped us avoid many CRE specific issues, and we have minimal exposure to large metro areas, large metro offices, or rent controlled markets. Finally, let's discuss our outlook for the remainder of the year. We will continue to focus on responsible and profitable loan growth in the commercial space, particularly CMI lending. We anticipate low single digit loan growth and expect deposits to remain largely flat. We will manage deposit costs while balancing client expectations and market pressures, allowing for modest net interest margin expansion. We expect non-interest income to grow by the mid-single digits, often the 930 base, given some of the one-time items this quarter. We continue to keep expenses in the low single-digit growth per quarter, positively impacting our efficiency ratio. Both our tax rate and net charge-offs are expected to normalize, closer to the third quarter rate for taxes, and towards our long-term average for charge-offs. On behalf of the entire leadership team and the Board of Directors, thank you for joining us this morning. I will now turn the call over to the operator who will facilitate the live Q&A session.

At this time, in order to ask a question, please press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Our first question comes from the line of Daniel Tamo with Raymond James. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe first just starting on the fee income guidance. Just curious. It looks like it's a little bit lower number than what I was looking for. And then you had the losses in the marked market in the fourth quarter within the other. So I'm curious if that is still a good number kind of going forward, that million, given you're talking about... The guidance off of the $27 million, $27.8 million number in the third quarter going forward as kind of we get into 2025 or if that's going to go back to a number similar to what we saw in prior quarters, maybe in the $2 or $3 million range per quarter.

yeah we'll provide more guidance for 2025 when we go through the full uh fourth quarter results sometime in january so we'll update that guidance but for now we're just guiding to a sort of a more normalized level after you account for some of the one-time losses that we had for the fourth quarter um so just to be clear then that you're you're expecting a a number similar to the one million number level in the fourth quarter Yeah, I would say, you know, we're expecting a number closer to where we were at in the third quarter after you adjust for the security or the second quarter after you adjust for the security losses. So, again, if you're going to rebound back to, you know, mid single digits, you're going to pick up another couple million dollars on that line and a million and a half to three million, somewhere in that range. So we should expect to get back to that kind of level, that core level of, you know, twenty nine, thirty, something like that.

Okay, so when you say mid-single digits, you're not saying annualized. You're talking about, I guess, stated mid-single digits in the third quarter. I think that may be the confusion. Got it. Okay. All right. Thank you. And then also, I guess, maybe looking at the credit side, so it looks like your normalized net charge-off guidance went up from last quarter. So curious kind of what drove that thought, and then if there was – um, if there was visibility into kind of the, the path of getting there, if that, you know, if you're, when you say, um, you're getting trending towards that, if that's because you see something near term, that's going to take you into that range or if that's more of a, um, you know, just, we expect to be there at some point. Thanks.

Yeah, it's more the latter, right? We're just trying to guide to what a normalized level of charge loss would be for the firm over a long period of time. So we're obviously in really, really good credit quality environment right now. So I think most banks are saying the same thing, right? We do expect this environment will normalize and it'll get closer to those long-term averages. We're not suggesting that we expect any one quarter to be significantly different. It's more, you're going to see some volatility in it as, you know, individual credits can create a bit of volatility when you're at these low levels.

Okay, I understood. And in terms of the increase in the normalized guidance from last quarter, what was the driver there?

I think that was just more me getting clarification from credit partners as to what that longer-term normal would be. So, last quarter, we were guiding a little bit lower than that, which is true. We haven't really changed our credit outlook, although the guide is a little bit higher. Again, it is not indicative of a single quarter. It's indicative more of a long-term trend. So, just getting a little bit more consistent with where internally we are. Okay, thanks. All right, I appreciate all the- We continue to- I will add too, as we continue to rebalance towards more commercial, you're going to expect a little bit of a different profile going forward. But again, we're talking longer term trends, not a specific quarter that I'm guiding to.

Understood. All right. Thanks, Doug. Appreciate all the color. Yep.

And your next question comes from the line of Manuel Navaz with DA Davidson. Your line is open.

Hey, can you remind us some of your targets in M&A, kind of financial hurdles, geographies that you might be finding intriguing, and size of targets and opportunities that you're looking for? Just kind of reset that for us.

Yeah, good morning, Manuel. How are you? Good. Good. Yeah, so, you know, similar to last quarter, I would say that, you know, first of all, um you know we're we're focused in market in our four state footprint um and the opportunities that that come up to us really fall into a couple different categories um you know sort of an in-market deal uh something that probably uh looks more like the geography um in in columbus and indianapolis growth markets that that we happen to be in and around and then um And finally, maybe strategic from a product or a diversification standpoint. But I would say that, you know, the most important thing for us is really how creative it is, what it's going to cost us to acquire. We're really in tune with that. And then I think, you know, strategically, you know, some of the in-market stuff is – uh, since, you know, we haven't really had an acquisition, um, you know, since, uh, since the COVID era, we, you know, we'd be, we'd be looking at doing something, um, that, that we're confident we can execute on, right. Highly creative, um, a size from a size perspective, uh, more of what you expected, uh, in the past, uh, the one to 3 billion range, um, and something that, um, We feel highly confident in executing on making the deal creative. The other note there is, you know, in the two fast-growing markets being Columbus and Indianapolis, we're going into strategic planning here in a month. And, you know, we're evaluating de novo strategy, branch expansion in those areas. We've already hired some commercial lenders. We've got some business bankers. And we're looking at the viability of using some capital to expand into fastest growth markets in the Midwest from a de novo strategy. So, you know, as I stated in my statement, the market's picking up. I'm out in the marketplace meeting with other bank CEOs. We're having some conversations. But we're going to be very prescriptive and very careful to make sure that our transaction is going to be highly accretive.

Hey, Manny, the only thing I would add, too, is we are looking for similar, you know, low-cost, granular deposit basis as well. So we'll be looking for deals that will add to the strengths that we already have within this franchise.

I appreciate that, Culler. That's interesting about the LPO development. That leads to kind of my next question is, can you go into where you had strength on the commercial side, kind of by business line and regionally? And kind of where did you have strength in commercial regionally?

Yeah, I mean, I would say that the overall model for commercial continues as we've done our expansion. So I think we've talked about it before. So we have some new verticals that have come online. Several of them actually started this year. So you've got sports finance, you've got sponsor finance, franchise finance. We've got a corporate finance team and we have equipment finance. So, as you continue to see all of those businesses mature, equipment finance, corporate finance being the longest-term ones, you're just starting to see our folks build pipelines and get more at-bats, which we expect that progress to continue. So, in talking a little bit to JD Marteau, he's seeing his pipelines grow, you know, anywhere from 10 to 20%. That's in the highly probable categories. And again, I think it's just a matter of maturation as these businesses are on the ground longer, as our credit teams and business leaders are out getting more confidence in the type of deals that will get approved. You're going to start to see some more consistent growth. So I would say it is relatively broad based across all of those verticals, and we continue to look forward to those particular verticals maturing over the course of 2025.

Any regions stand out more than others?

I don't know that I've seen any major concentration in any one of our regions in terms of opportunities or actual credits that we've approved.

Okay. And then just a quick follow-up on the MIM. What are you kind of assuming in terms of initial deposit betas in your guidance or initial loan betas for the fourth quarter? And where can they go full cycle? Just kind of talk through that a little bit.

Yeah, again, I think we'll provide a little bit more color on that going into 2025 in terms of what our margin guidance will be. I will just say that this last rate cut, some of our deposit pricing changes didn't go in until the very end of September, like literally on the 27th of September. So we still have some opportunity there and we're not suspecting that there is going to be significant additional fed cuts this year we have one 25 basis point cut in november in the guide that we provided but again we're still going to pick up benefit from the last cuts that had some deposit changes that came late in this cycle how successful were you to lower deposit rates do you have like an end of period deposit um costs uh

level to disclose? How are you doing into October? Has there been pushback on deposit declines?

Yeah, so we're not providing an end-of-month guide. As you've seen, we had very, very low deposit growth this quarter, deposit cost growth. Given the fact that I just said we had rates that went in as of 9-27, you can expect that that deposit cost will continue to trend down next quarter. We have been pleasantly surprised and comfortable with the deposit renewal rates that we've been seeing in the book and in our ability to maintain our deposits with this pricing. So again, I believe we kind of continue to have a very reasonable pricing stance within our markets and against our competition. And we have seen our customer base respond accordingly without having significant levels of runoff as a result of those in line with market price changes that we made.

I really appreciate the discussion. Thank you. Yep.

And your next question comes from the line of Matthew Breeze with Stevens, Inc. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning. Morning, Matt. Morning. I was hoping you could help me out with a couple of things. The first one is just, could you break out for us what pure floating rate loans are as a percentage of total loans, meaning priced off SOPR or prime? If you have it, what the yield is on that book versus everything else, the adjustable and fixed rate book.

Yeah. So if you go into our deck on slide eight, We provided, although we didn't give you the rate index that they were off of, we did provide fixed and floating percentage across our earning assets. So the aggregate book is showing 24% floating, 68% fixed, and you can see it broken down across our categories. And we also provided some additional detail on the funding mix side of things and how those would tend to react over time. Oh, this is great.

Thank you. Okay. I'll just go here. Do you have any idea on the fixed rate, what the duration is, or how much you expect to reprice over the next 12 months?

I mean, again, our residential mortgage book is our single largest book. And you can assume like everybody else, that is a pretty long tenured book with relatively low yields. And then the second largest book in that consumer area. Well, not second largest commercial real estate, so next largest. But if you look at consumer as well, that is a pretty sizable auto loan portfolio that's, again, going to have generally fixed rate duration, but of a much lower fixed rate loans of a lower duration.

Could you talk a little bit about the pace of C&I growth? Obviously, that's kind of been the lion's share of where growth has come from recently um should we expect this kind of pace to continue you know kind of mid to high single digits on a quarterly basis and and where do you want to bring cni loans to as a percentage of total loans where do you feel like the appropriate level is

Yeah, I don't know that we have a specific target of where that level would be. I think we like the CNI business. We've made some significant investments in that business over time. We plan to continue to grow the CNI portfolio as a percent of total. Again, we have a pretty significant amount of runoff in that consumer book that we would like to replace with some more commercial loans. And I would generally say, you know, the commercial real estate book, although we're still in that market, we don't tend to significantly grow that. So the bulk of our commercial growth will be into CNI, and we would tend to run down and support the funding of that by rundown of sort of mortgage and home equity and consumer, just as natural cash flows in that portfolio occur.

And I would just add to that, this is Lou. I would just add to that, right? While we don't really have a target percentage, what we're looking for there is balance, right? And we're also looking for the ancillary economics that are going to be meaningful to us from a fee standpoint, a deposit standpoint to help us grow deposits. We're under indexed in the commercial deposit space. We have a real focus on not just giving out loans in the C&I space that eat up capital. So we're looking to gather deposits in our strategy. A number of our businesses, like the sponsored finance business, the franchise business, all come with deposits and fees, full deposit relationships. So it's really strategic in that we want a better revenue stream, we want more balanced economics, and we want to We want a loan book that, you know, is consistent through various economic cycles. So I think you'll continue to see that remixing. But ultimately, we'll get to the equilibrium there. And I think it'll produce much better economic results for us, financial results. Understood.

Okay. Last one for me, just, you know, along those lines as we continue to remix into CNI. Is it fair to assume the reserve as a percentage of loans increases as well? We haven't seen it really, at least on that metric, grow much year over year, but I'm curious as time goes on whether or not that 111 reserve will creep higher.

Yeah, so we're very in tune with that remixing, and you're absolutely right. We will see an increase over time in the reserve, you know, prudently. You know, we built internally, we built the infrastructure to make this transition. So, we understand the risk-adjusted returns and the increased risk in moving away from, say, you know, residential mortgages into C&I lending. We built in our risk enterprise, we built the three lines of defense. and we're investing in some Moody's risk rating software, et cetera. So yes, it's all part of the strategy. And we've procured a number of the senior leadership who've been there, done that. So this isn't something that is novel for us. And so I think We understand the risk component of the transition, and we'll prudently, the reserve will reflect that. Got it.

That's all I had. Thank you for taking my questions.

Thank you.

And your next question comes from the line of Frank Chiraldi with Piper Sandler. Your line is open.

Morning. Morning, Frank. You guys have obviously seen some pretty good commercial growth here. I think Doug, you talked about continued runoff on the consumer side of things. Just wondering, just thinking about 4Q, is the level we saw in terms of runoff in the consumer book in the third quarter, is that a reasonable place to think about contraction in 4Q? You know, just trying to think about getting to that low single-digit loan growth in the fourth quarter, given the consumer side of things. you know, is a further ramp up in commercial and any color you can just kind of provide there in terms of quarter over quarter growth. Thanks.

Yeah. So if you recall, there was a quite a bit of there was a lower level overall vehicle sales, I believe, in the third quarter. They had a couple of different things that were working against them in terms of they had that technology matter. And then in general, there's just a bit lower demand. So we are looking at our pricing on the consumer book and trying to correct that with some better pricing to drive a little bit more consumer loan growth. So, ideally, what we'd like to see is that overall level of decline slow so that we can show the modest loan growth that we're forecasting right now. So, again, I mean, subject to the overall economy and what the market is giving us, we are doing things on our side to be priced competitively so that that runoff slows a little bit or so that the net change in the portfolio is less negative and gives us an opportunity to show that zero to 2% quarterly guide we're given on loan growth. Hopefully that answers your question.

Yeah, that's great. And then just thinking, you know, credit, obviously overall looks pretty good. You had the increase in classifieds and you called out a specific segment there, healthcare. And I just wondered if there was, you know, I think in the past you guys last quarter talked about some stabilization you're seeing in that segment. Just curious if the increase in classified reflects any sort of internal review in the quarter or just any more color there. Thanks.

Sure. Yeah, no, this is TK, Krill. Thanks for the question, Frank. We are reviewing that majority of that portfolio quarterly. So the risk rating changes are reflective of that. That said, as we noted, we had a nonperforming asset, nonperforming loan payoff that was within that same portfolio. So what we're seeing is, you know, transition of the portfolio Through the criticized and classified, and then, you know, we are seeing a market for these. As that nonperforming loan exited, the developer was able to find a suitor for it. So, we do feel positive about the overall market slowly improving the sector.

know we actually had more number of loan upgrades and downgrades it's just a couple of the downgrades were a larger one so the dollar amount actually increased gotcha okay that's helpful and then just lastly just want to make sure just clarification on um part of the guide um when you guys talk about the um the low single digit growth in in them um link quarter into the into the fourth quarter um i just want to make sure I don't know if it's too fine a point, but anyway, you mentioned, Doug, the four basis points on the interest recovery on the non-accrual loan. So is that low single digits off of the report number off of that 333?

No, it'd be off the 329. That's why we wanted to highlight the four basis points, like spike we had in interest income as we cleared that non-accrual loan from the books. So you would adjust that down to 329, and then you'd do low single digit off of that.

Great. Okay, I appreciate it.

Thank you.

And again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and the number one on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from the line of Daniel Cardenas with Janie Montgomery Scott. Your line is open.

Excuse me. Good morning, guys. Hey, David. Morning. Just a quick question in terms of thoughts on any additional balance sheet restructuring efforts coming into fourth quarter or into 2025?

Yeah, we don't have anything planned. I mean, there's still and we're always evaluating the opportunities that the market would give us. But I think right where the current portfolio stands, we also, as I mentioned at the beginning of the call, right, we had a change in our treasurer. So again, I think you would You should not expect to see anything dramatic from us in terms of restructures or things that we would be doing in the next quarter or two, but we'll keep an eye out for opportunities. And if one becomes economically advantageous to us, we'll consider doing it.

And then with just going back to credit quality here quickly and the increase in the classified levels, Should we be thinking that maybe provisioning goes up a little bit if these classified levels can't come down? Is that kind of a good assumption here as we look into Q4?

So the provisioning, you know, has occurred for those credits, you know, quarterly migrated. At this point, I would not expect material increases in the provisioning for the long-term healthcare portfolio.

And then how many credits made up that increase?

Made up the increase in the classified loan level? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Sorry about that. Here, actually. Net, it was about five credits. But again, there were some that came in and some that went out. So we actually had more upgrades than downgrades.

Okay. Any geographic concentration in those five credits?

No. Okay.

All right. And then quickly, just one other question in terms of potential de novo in Columbus and Indy. how long do you guys think it takes or historically what is, what has proven to be a kind of the breakeven period for, for de novos and, um, you know, in your history?

Yeah, I would say, let us, um, come back on that. So we're looking at that strategy right now, as you will recall, last time we commented that we added your Bauer, uh, to the team, long-term PNC consumer bank specialist, um, I think we want to give him some opportunity to continue to look through that de novo strategy and talk to us about how he's going to execute that. So we are considering taking out and going through an investor day at some point over the course of next year, at which point we could talk a little bit about those plans more holistically. So let's take a pass on that question for right now. And we'll answer that with a little bit more detail when we're more ready to provide details on that strategy.

Okay. Just to clarify, Mike. Yes, sir. Well, just to clarify my response on those numbers in classified, that was within the long term health care portfolio. So you can follow up with other total migrations.

Right now. Perfect. Perfect. All right. That'll do it for me. I'll step back right now. Thank you. Great. Thanks.

And there are no further questions at this time. This does conclude today's conference call, and you may now disconnect.