SB Financial Group, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the SB Financial fourth quarter 2022 conference call and webcast. I would like to inform you that this conference call is being recorded and that all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will begin with remarks by management and then open the conference up to the investment community for questions and answers. I will now turn the conference over to Sarah Minkus with SB Financial. Please go ahead, Sarah.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I would like to remind you that this conference call is being broadcast live over the Internet and will be archived and available on our website at ir.yourstatebank.com. Joining me today are Mark Klein, Chairman, President, and CEO, and Tony Cosentino, Chief Financial Officer. This call may contain forward-looking statements regarding SB Financial's performance, anticipated plans, operational results, and objectives. Forward-looking statements are based on management's expectations and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied on our call today. We have identified a number of different factors within the forward-looking statements at the end of our earnings release, which you are encouraged to review. SB Financial undertakes no obligation to update an forward-looking statement, except as required by law, after the date of this call. In addition to the financial results presented in accordance with GAAP, this call will also contain certain non-GAAP financial measures. The reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in our earnings release. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Collins.

Thank you, Sarah, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our fourth quarter 2022 conference call and webcast. Highlights for the quarter. net income of $3.5 million, up 201,000, or 6%, from the prior year quarter, and would have been up 38%, excluding the effects of PPP program and the OMSR recapture. For the full year of 2022, net income was $12.5 million, with diluted earnings per share of $1.77. When we exclude the impact of PPP and OMSR from both full-year earnings our results would be off by just 1.2 million or 9.3%. Return on average assets of 1.08% with return on equity of just over 12. Net interest income of 10.9 million was up 1.8 million or just over 20% from the prior year as loan growth and increasing yields have offset the increase in deposit and other funding costs. Loan balances from the linked quarter rose $37 million. When we adjust for PPP balances, loans were up $141 million, or 17.2% compared to the prior year. Deposits grew from the linked quarter just slightly, but were down $26 million from the prior year. Expenses were down from the linked quarter by 1.1%, and for the year, 11.2% decline. Mortgage origination volume for the quarter was just $51.2 million, and for the full year, $313 million. The mortgage business line contributed $7.3 million in total revenue for 2022 compared to just over $20 million for 2021. This reduction of nearly $13 million in revenue was difficult to fully overcome in 2022. However, our strong loan growth and expanding margins did reduce the negative impact. Asset quality metrics remained strong with NPAs at just 38 basis points, and for the second consecutive year, we reported net recoveries on loans. We continue to identify initiatives that will deliver our five key strategic initiatives, which are revenue diversity and course growth, more scale through organic growth, more products and services and more households for scope, operational excellence, and, as always, asset quality. Revenue diversity. For the full year, our mortgage business line generated $313 million in volume, well below our $600 million we produced in 2021. The impact of higher rates is evident in the percentage mix of volume for the full year with refinance of just 20% and purchase and construction lending of 80%. This compares to 2021 when we split between refinance and purchase volume at 49% and 51% respectively. Since we began the mortgage business line expansion strategy in 2006, we have now originated over $5 billion in residential mortgages. Overall, non-interest income decreased to $3.7 million from the prior year order of $6.6 million. The current quarter includes a mortgage servicing recapture of 86,000 compared to a recapture of 581,000 for the fourth quarter of last year. When we exclude the full impact of the mortgage business lines from both years, our year-over-year decline is just 8.5% compared to the adjusted level of a 43.6% decline. Looking forward, we fully expect residential mortgage volume to stabilize. That's something near our traditional levels of production. In fact, we are adding more mortgage lenders across our footprint in 2023 to deliver annual production at that run rate of approximately $500 million. That said, in light of the pullback in volume this year, we did achieve greater efficiency in the business line as we right-sized our backroom support to align staffing with the current level of production. Our wealth management division faced risk headwinds this year as distributions exceeded assets under management, while the market contraction further constrained their contribution to our net income. The equity markets were clearly under pressure during 2022, and that pressure was evident in our year-over-year decline we experienced in assets under management. Total AUM were down just over $111 million for the year or 18% to finish 2022 at just 507 million. We delivered new assets of approximately 31 million, realized 66 million distributions and saw market corrections and reduced our level of asset center management by another 76 million. Despite these reductions, total revenue for the wealth business line was down just 86 million or 2.3% and finished the year at $3.7 million. We were able to keep our decline in revenue closer to neutral due to pricing adjustments that we implemented late 2021 and the lift we experienced from a renewed emphasis on our brokerage platform, which increased revenue this year by 24%. Second, initially, more scale. Loan growth in the quarter was quite strong as we were up $37 million from the linked quarter and, as I mentioned, $141 million or over 17% net of PPP from the prior year quarter. All of our regional markets continue to make inroads with solid pipelines and targeted calling as we implement our new CRM system. With this quarterly growth noted, we have now grown our loan portfolio consistently over every length quarter during 2022. We are committed to adding an additional lender in two of our key growth markets of Columbus, Ohio and Fort Wayne, Indiana, and leverage our newer one-year presence in the Indianapolis market in 2023. We also intend to place more emphasis on the CNI arena in 2023 to provide lift to not only our level of higher earning assets, but also more lower cost transactional deposits to fund those loans as well. As a result of our quarterly and annual loan growth, our loan to deposit ratio reached a new post-pandemic high of 88.5%, which is up nearly 15 basis points over the prior year. Deposit growth and funding have been challenged this year due to the effects of the inverted yield curve, leading to systemically higher deposit rates, more competition, post-pandemic client spend downs, and the expansion of our investment portfolio. As a result, identifying sources for our loan growth has accelerated, and we have been more aggressive in raising deposit rates to meet that need. As I mentioned, we've also begun to pivot and emphasize more traditional C&I lending, which, along with a renewed focus on SBA 7-8 lending, should drive more opportunities for treasury management services and growth in lower-cost transactional deposits. Third, more scope. We closed the last of our PPP loans right before year end, and we continue to work to expand on the successes we identified from the initiative. Traditional SBA lending made some headway during the year as we were able to close just over 6 million in balances and deliver over 500,000 in fee income. As we look forward into 2023, we expect SBA loan originations to approach our pre-COVID historical levels of something around 15 to 20 million. Our pipeline is quite strong and we anticipate a very strong first quarter of this year. Referrals continue to be the center post of our sales initiatives. This year, our staff, our board, our advisory board delivered over 1,300 interdepartmental referrals for just over $77 million in new business to our company. The corporate sales champion that we hired in the fourth quarter is just starting to identify how and where we can work smarter to expand our number of households and the products and services in those households to achieve greater market penetration. The Encino and Salesforce platforms are now up and running, and integration of these tools into our business development teams is a high priority for this new key role in our company. Operational excellence is our fourth theme. We have traditionally been a producer of saleable mortgage product with a small amount of residential construction lending. In fact, in the 10 years prior to this year, we sold over 85%. of our originated mortgage volume. This drove non-interest income as a percentage of revenue to roughly 40% every year and built a highly profitable $1.4 billion servicing portfolio. With the rapid increase in rates and the inversion of the curve during 2022, residential portfolio pricing became more attractive to home buying clients and this resulted in our total sale percentage for the year to drop to just 59%. This has obviously added some mild duration risk as we discussed in prior quarters for our balance sheet and has necessitated an emphasis on competitive funding needs at the margin. We intend to return to a more historical level of mortgage sales in 2023 as we anticipate a continuing squeeze on margins from higher funding costs. Operating expenses were down from the prior year quarter by $1.3 million, or 11.2%, and for the full-year operating costs were down $2.5 million, or 5.6%. The majority of the full-year reductions was in salary and benefits segments, reflecting the lower level of commission-based payments to our originators. Included in these cost saves would also be the reduction in support staff in this business line. Additionally, we're also in the process of right-sizing retail office hours in select markets to better align with customer trends that will reduce pressure on hiring constraints. Going forward, our quarterly run rate for expenses should allow for a return to positive operating leverage in 2023. Our client-driven contact center staff continues to take pressure off our retail office staffing requirements. This initiative allows our community bankers to spend more time on the street, out of the office, engaging with local businesses to garner greater market share. We believe this strategy will ensure an efficient and consistent client experience and one that will aid in our efforts to expand those single-service households. Fifth and finally, asset quality. While we chose to not take any provision in 2022, despite the significant loan growth I mentioned, the 5.5 million we added to reserve in 2020 and 2021 was certainly an offsetting factor. Our non-performing assets have declined this year by over 21%. And as referenced earlier, we had 13,000 in net recoveries in 2022 and 181,000 in net recoveries for all of 21. And finally, before I turn it over to Tony, our CECL adoption will occur here in the first quarter of 23, and we will add approximately $1.4 million to our reserve levels that Tony will talk about now. So, Tony?