Premier Financial Corp.

Hello everyone and welcome to the Premier Financial Court First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference call. My name is Victoria and I'll be recording your call today. If you'd like to ask a question during the presentation, you may do so by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, please press star 2. If you have joined us online, please press the red flag icon. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure that your line is unmuted locally. I'll now pass over to your host, Paul Manchester, to begin. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for today's first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. This call is also being webcast, and the audio replay will be available at the Premier Financial Corp. website at premierfincorp.com. Following our prepared comments on the company's strategy and performance, we will be available to take your questions. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that during the conference call today, including during the question and answer period, you may hear forward-looking statements related to the future financial results and business operations for Premier Financial Court. Actual results may differ materially from current management forecasts and projections as a result of factors over which the company has no control. Information on these risk factors and additional information on forward-looking statements are included in the news release and in the company's reports on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. And now I'll turn the call over to Gary for his comments.

Thank you, Paul, and good morning. Thank each of you for joining us today. Premier's results for the first quarter built on some familiar themes from prior quarters. He had very good loan growth across the board, with the commercial banking group achieving double-digit growth for the second consecutive quarter, and they're up over 7.6% versus Q1 of last year. Strong performance in each of our markets with excellent CNI growth. Consumer lending in Q1 was very active as well. Our HELOC origination activity was ahead of our internal plan for the quarter, and we experienced the highest auto finance origination numbers in our history in the month of March. And based on what we see in April, we'll eclipse that record in April. Consumer households are maintaining their strong cash positions. They seem well prepared to weather the near-term bumps that are brought about by inflation and other news of the day. Mortgage application activity was very good for the quarter. We were 15% ahead of our expectations from an application dollar standpoint. We added originators to our teams across the markets, and we also established a new team in the very strong Ann Arbor market. And now on to some performance highlights. For the quarter, we reported a net income of 26.4 million, or 73 cents a share. ROA and ROE were 142 and 1034, respectively, and our average tangible equity return was 15.44. These figures were generally matched our expectations for the quarter. Loan growth was strong, as mentioned, for the quarter. Adjusted for PPP, annualized loan growth was 10.1%, commercial loan led the way with an 11% move. Net interest income for the quarter expanded three basis points, and that was aided by some additional PPP e-income recognition as the portfolio rolls down. Our core margin was relatively flat for the quarter, and with the Fed action not really affecting the results as of 3-31. Our non-interest income met expectations when you adjust for the $642,000 mark to market we took on our bank equities portfolio. We're happy with that portfolio. It's a dividend yield play as much as a valuation play. But again, you do feel the market mark from time to time. Residential mortgage income of $4.3 million was actually ahead of our expectations, but we do anticipate we'll see a challenging environment going forward. Gain on sale margin is expected to be under pressure into the third quarter. On the plus side, bank service fees, this would be debit, credit card, account fees, and so forth, continue to climb. We were up 9.7% versus the first quarter of 21, and clearly households are out there active in spending as they have been the last couple quarters. Expenses are generally in check. We saw an uptick in variable comp related to our commercial loan production, so that's a good rationale, but we also see our healthcare expenses continuing to run higher than normal, and this is the third quarter in a row for that. Certainly deferred maintenance for some of us coming out of the COVID environment, but we're keeping a close eye on how much of it is that versus inflationary driven. Capital-wise, in addition to capital reductions that all banks are experiencing this quarter due to marks on AFS securities and so forth, we were also reasonably active in buybacks in the first quarter, 2.2% of our shares. We are comfortable with our capital position as we head into what appears to be an active period for the Fed over the next couple of months. With that, I'll turn it over to Paul, and he'll provide some 22 performance info as well. Thank you, Gary.