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spk00: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Associated Bank Corp's fourth quarter and near-end 2021 earnings conference call. My name is Hillary, and I will be your operator today. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. We will be conducting a question-and-answer session at the end of this conference. Copies of the slides that will be referenced during today's call are available on the company's website at investor.associatedbank.com. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. As outlined on slide one, during the course of the discussion today, management may make statements that constitute projections, expectations, beliefs, or similar forward-looking statements. Associated's actual results could differ materially from the results anticipated or projected in any such forward-looking statement. Additional detailed information concerning the important factors that could cause Associated's actual results to differ materially from the information discussed today is readily available on the SEC website in the Risk Factors section of Associated's most recent Form 10-K and subsequent SEC filings. These factors are incorporated herein by reference. For a reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures to the GAAP financial measures mentioned in this conference call, please refer to pages 24 and 25 of the slide presentation and to page 10 of the press release financial table. Following today's presentation, instructions will be given for the question and answer At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Andy Harmoning, President and CEO, for opening remarks. Please go ahead, sir.
spk04: Well, thank you, Hillary, and good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our year-end earnings call. I'm Andy Harmoning, and I'm joined today by Chris Niles, our Chief Financial Officer, and Pat Ahern, our Chief Credit Officer. I'd like to start things off by briefly reflecting on 2021, covering the highlights for the fourth quarter, and giving you the most recent update on the strategic initiatives we rolled out in September. From there, Chris will walk you through an update on interest income, fees, and expenses, and Pat will round us out with an update on credit. In many ways, 2021 was an inflection point for Associated Bank. We enjoyed consistent deposit growth, improving credit dynamics, and stabilization in our loan book, and importantly, we began to accelerate growth in several core and new lending categories. More recently, we continue to see signs of a strengthened economy. In the fourth quarter, unemployment rates in Wisconsin and Minnesota came down below 3.5 percent. The manufacturing expansion we saw emerge in Q3 has maintained strong momentum, which is being reflected in increasing commercial pipelines and in utilization rates. Customers remain resilient, credit continues to improve, and we feel well positioned to build on our momentum in 2022. Now, let me touch on our fourth quarter highlights as outlined in slide two. This quarter is marked by a significant expansion in our balance sheet. Notably, we saw meaningful loan growth as commercial loan outstandings, line utilization, and our new initiatives all kicked into gear. We saw $600 million in loan growth for Q4, which equates to 10% annualized growth in terms of loans, even as we intentionally shrank our PPP and our oil and gas portfolios each by more than half. On the liability side, core low-cost deposits continue to grow, and as promised, we began building our investment securities book to put our excess liquidity to work. Taken together, These factors contributed to expanding margins, growing net interest income, and total higher revenues for the quarter. Turning to credit, our customers continued to prove their resiliency as markets recovered throughout the year. After posting reserve releases in each of the first three quarters of 2021, we posted another negative provision in the fourth quarter and a further net reserve release. Our CECL reserves remain appropriate for our risk profile, But as we grow into next year, we expect to add to our provision in accordance with our loan growth. From an operating expense perspective, discipline continues to be our foundational focus for Associated. Our four-year non-interest expense was down year over year, while our fourth quarter expense ticked up by only 2 percent, despite the rollout of several new initiatives and an increase in our minimum wage. During the fourth quarter, we also repurchased $25 million of common stock. Taken together, all of these factors helped us drive full-year EPS to $2.18 and positioned us well going into 2022. Now, let's shift to slide three. I'd like to provide a little more detail on the trends we saw in our loan book in the fourth quarter. In mid-2021, we started to see some encouraging signals of increased commercial activity and line utilization. and this is now beginning to translate into meaningful growth in our commercial balances. In Q4, our total commercial book, and that is commercial and business lending and commercial real estate combined, grew by nearly $500 million, which is more than a 13% annualized growth rate from the third quarter. While several of our specialty businesses added balances during the quarter, importantly, general commercial loans were the driving force behind this growth. Additionally, we're still in the early stages of our new commercial initiatives, but our expanded asset-based lending team has already started to bear fruit, and our equipment finance team is not far behind. On the consumer side, the new auto finance initiative we launched on September 30th is off to a very strong start, adding nearly $140 million of high-quality auto loans to our books. We have now booked over 4,500 loans, As mortgage activities moderate, these new auto loans will allow us to further diversify our portfolio while earning slightly better spreads. Following up on a strong Q3, we also saw credit card balances increase by another 6 percent quarter over quarter, which continues to suggest that confidence is growing among our retail customer base. And during the quarter, we took advantage of a positive economic background to X the majority of our remaining oil and gas book at minimal cost. Our PPP balances also continue to pay down as expected throughout the quarter. And at year end, our oil and gas outstandings were just $52 million, and our remaining PPP portfolio was down to $66 million. And in January, we realized an additional oil and gas payoff that will bring our remaining oil and gas portfolio to approximately $30 million. With these runoff portfolios worked down, we are squarely focused on driving growth in our general commercial and initiative portfolios in 2022. Turning to slide four, we highlight our annual loan trends for 2021. And as you can see, total end of period loan balances are down slightly year over year, but that was largely driven by intentional reductions in our oil and gas exposures, runoff of PPP, and some declining mortgage balances. These reductions were largely offset by strong growth in general commercial and other commercial specialty verticals, giving us a very strong base to build on in 2022. On slide five, we've highlighted a couple additional metrics that give us optimism as we turn the page going into 2022. In Q4, growth in commercial balances was once again supported by a steady monthly uptick in line utilization. Commercial line utilization numbers continue to close the gap relative to our historic levels. In April of 21, we hit a low point in utilization, with regional commercial customers funding 12 percentage points below our historic line utilization. From that point, the monthly gap has continued to narrow, and in December, the gap closed to five percentage points. Line utilization increases during Q4 drove about 125 million of the commercial loan balance growth. Additionally, Our commercial real estate team has steadily grown construction lending exposures on a quarterly basis, and in the fourth quarter, exposures grew 5% from Q3. Given seasonality and our substantial back book, we remain confident Outstandings will continue to grow well into 2022, especially once the ground thaws in the upper Midwest footprint. As we look to 2022, we remain bullish around loan growth. Specifically, we now expect full-year auto finance loan growth of over $1.2 billion and total commercial loan growth of $750 million to $1 billion. Turning to slide six, let me give you an update on our initiatives. When we talked back in the fall, we laid out a multi-year balance targets for our new initiatives. And while we're still in the initial phases of the plan, I'm very pleased with the progress so far. I've already talked about total commercial and the reasons I'm excited about the broader segment, but we thought it was important to show a breakout of asset-based lending and equipment finance so you can more clearly see progress in those verticals going forward. What you see here so far through year-end is mostly ABL balances. And while we have some ABL loans on the books historically, the team has already made meaningful progress quarter over quarter. Now that equipment finance is up and running in Q1, I'm confident both teams are working towards the targets we've set as we move through 2022. On the auto side, the team is off to a very strong start, but we've been very thoughtful about steadily ramping up the program over time to ensure effective execution. Production is now eclipsing $4 million per business day, and we expect this portfolio to grow more quickly as we roll out the program to our broader dealer network and into our core footprint states over the course of 2022. Turning to slide seven, we've highlighted some of the additional steps we've taken to make headway against the four pillars of our strategic plan. In the auto finance businesses, we've stuck largely to prime and super prime space, with average FICO's north of 750 and 82 percent average LTVs on the loans we booked in the fourth quarter. Additionally, we've officially began closing new ABL deals in November of 21 and are currently building an active equipment finance pipeline while rounding out our full lending team. As we look to augment the growth in our core businesses, we've continued to ramp up our staffing in our commercial and small business segments, and we also established a new commercial real estate office in Houston, allowing controlled expansion in the great state of Texas on the digital front. We're on track to pilot our consumer digital bank platform in the second quarter of the year, bringing increased flexibility and architecture that will more easily allow us to integrate FinTech partners to improve the user experience. And as always, we continue to seek ways to efficiently deploy our capital. While we see plenty of balance sheet growth in our outlooks, should that not materialize, we also have $80 million in remaining repurchase flexibility available to optimize our capital position. In summary, our initiatives are in full swing, and we look forward to building on this momentum as we head into 2022. Let me pause there and hand it over to Chris Niles, our Chief Financial Officer, to provide a little more detail on our revenue and income statement trends for the quarter. Chris?
spk07: Thanks, Andy. Turning to slide eight, our net interest income increased $3 million from the prior quarter, or nearly 2%. driven by higher net interest income across most major segments and lower funding and time to pilot costs. Our quarterly net interest margin continues to move higher after having bottomed out in Q2. We continue to see a steady decline in liability costs and expect asset yields to continue to move higher as we move through 2022. Our nearly $16 billion of commercial and commercial real estate portfolios have historically been primarily floating rate LIBOR and prime-based portfolios. Over 90 percent of those commercial loans will mature, reprice, or reset within the next year. Relative to our mid-cap banking peers, we have a higher percentage of near-term repricing earning assets and more capacity to grow our investment portfolio. So, we believe we're at the upper end of the asset sensitivity range as we look into 2022. We have already seen our margins stabilize and begin to move higher. and every major lending category is poised to benefit from a rising rate outlook. This puts Associated in a solid position to capitalize on the expecting rising rate environment in 2022. Given our expectations for at least two rate increases, we expect our full year 2022 GAAP reported net interest income to exceed $800 million. Turning to slide nine, given the high levels of liquidity in the industry, We selectively added securities throughout Q4. During the quarter, our average investment security balances grew by over $400 million, and our blended portfolio yields rebounded to 1.76%. We anticipate deploying additional cash balances into the investment securities portfolio throughout 2022. Reinvestment yields today are expected to be 2% or better and will generally be accretive to our portfolio earnings. We expect to rebuild the investment portfolio to between 20% and 22% of total assets by year-end 2022. Moving to slide 10, we continue to see record average deposit levels. Average deposits were up nearly $1.7 billion in Q4, or 6% year-over-year. Notably, growth continues to be concentrated in our lowest-cost deposit categories. Our aggregated wholesale funding levels have also continued to steadily decrease over the past five quarters and have decreased by nearly $750 million year-over-year. We expect these deposit and funding trends to continue and our margin to continue to benefit into 2022. On slide 11, we note Associates' shift to lower-cost deposits has been even more pronounced when viewed on an annual basis. In 2017, our average low-cost deposits represented less than half of our total deposit base, while at year-end 21, they accounted for 68 percent of our year-end deposit levels. Switching to non-interest income trends on slide 12, we note that non-interest income was essentially flat during the fourth quarter, as strong wealth and capital market fees offset softening mortgage banking results. We also saw modest growth in service charges, card base, and other fee-related income items. Taken together, we view these collective trends as encouraging indicators of growing customer confidence as we continue to emerge from the pandemic. Looking to 2022, we expect full-year non-interest income to exceed $300 million for the year. On slide 13, we highlight our expenses. The fourth quarter came in at 182, a $4 million increase from the prior quarter, including $1 million of facilities-related exit costs. Our fourth quarter expenses included initiative-related expenses and our recent announced increase to minimum wage to $17 an hour. For the full year 2021, total non-exit expense of $710 million was within our guided full-year range and down $66 million from the prior year. I'll remind you that we executed on expense initiatives in the second half of this year that are expected to shave about $10 million per year off of our run rate. As we continue to roll out our strategic initiatives, we remain committed to maintaining expense discipline. Taking all of our initiatives into consideration, we expect full-year 2022 non-interest expense of between $725 and $740 million. On slide 14, we have provided a walk-forward of our quarterly pre-tax, pre-provision income from the third quarter to the fourth quarter. While our pre-tax income was down from the prior quarter, our pre-tax pre-provision results were relatively flat quarter-over-quarter and remained well above the $78 million baseline we set for you in the second quarter. As shown on slide 15, our tangible capital, tangible book value per share continues to grow, and our quarter-over-quarter has increased 7 percent to $17.87. While we have taken several steps to deploy capital in an effort to support stronger growth and shareholder returns, Associated's regulatory capital levels also remain strong. We will continue to target TCE levels at or above 7.5 percent and CET1 levels at or above 9.5 percent. With that, let me hand it over to our Chief Credit Officer, Pat Ahern, to provide an update on credit.
spk10: Thanks, Chris. I'd like to start by providing an update on our allowance as shown on slide 16. We utilized the Moody's December 2021 baseline forecast for our CECL forward-looking assumptions. The Moody's baseline forecast assumes additional fiscal support, a continuing low interest rate environment, the recent acceleration in consumer prices to be transitory, and relatively localized COVID cases. Following net reserve releases of $28 million, $40 million, and $32 million in the first three quarters of 2021, respectively, we ended the year by posting a further net reserve release of $12 million in the fourth quarter. This net release was driven by gross reductions in our allowance for several of our specialty commercial and CRE business units, specifically an $11 million reduction in oil and gas and another $12 million reduction in CRE As of December 31st, our total ACLL was $320 million down from $332 million in the prior quarter. In addition, our ratio of reserves to loans declined to 1.32% from 1.41% during the quarter. We had previously guided that we expected ACLL to loans to drop back down to CECL Day 1 levels by the end of 2021 We ended the year comfortably below that benchmark. Turning to our quarterly credit trends presented on slide 17, most of our key credit metrics continued to improve over the course of the quarter. Our key COVID commercial exposures continued to decline for the quarter, led by further declines in retail and shopping center exposures. Non-accrual loans also decreased by 3% in Q4 and were down 38% year over year. While aggregated restructured loans and delinquencies have fluctuated throughout the year, I'm pleased to announce they decreased 35 percent year over year. Net charge-offs also decreased by $1 million quarter over quarter and by $21 million versus Q4 of 2020. Going forward, we expect to adjust provisions to reflect changes in risk rates, economic conditions, loan volumes, and other indications of credit quality. With that, I will now pass it back to Andy to share some closing thoughts as we look to carry our momentum into 2022.
spk04: Thanks, Pat. On slide 18, we recap our full-year guidance for 2022. As we look to capitalize on the economic outlook in 2022, we are expecting strong loan growth at Associated. With full-year auto finance loan growth of over $1.2 billion, total commercial loan growth of $750 million to $1 billion, and then reflecting Reflecting our growth outlook and anticipation of a rising rate environment, we expect total interest income to exceed $800 million and total non-interest income of $300 million plus for a grand total north of $1.1 billion. We expect to finish 2022 with approximately $725 million to $740 million of non-interest expense. With that, and before moving to Q&A, I'd like to say a few words about the CFO transition we also announced this afternoon. After nearly 12 years with Associated Bank, our CFO, Chris Niles, will retire from the bank later this year. We've engaged a diversified search group, and the search for successor is underway. Chris will continue in his current position until a successor is in place to ensure a seamless and successful transition. Chris, on behalf of the whole Associated Bank team, I want to thank you for your many contributions over the years, first serving as our treasurer, then serving as the CFO. And on a personal note, I want to say I appreciate you helping me get my footings at Associated Bank. Your partnership and generosity of spirit has allowed me to get acclimated internally and externally. I also want to emphasize that I believe we are making this CFO transition from a position of strength, especially given our positive momentum at year end. Our Midwest markets are robust and our 2021 performance demonstrates we are driving revenue growth across our core business lines and we are moving decisively to accelerate our digital transformation. I am confident in our strategy and I'm confident in our team. to continue to deliver strong performance for our stakeholders in the years to come. I'll now pass it over to Chris for a few words.
spk07: Thank you, Andy, for those kind words. It has been my privilege to work alongside an exceptional team over the last decade. I could not be prouder of our collective accomplishments. As I indicated to Andy and the Board, I've been thinking about the next phase of my life for a while. In consultation with Andy, we agreed 2022 is a good time to initiate the succession process. Retiring from Associated will allow me to attend to personal and family interests, and I'm deeply grateful for that opportunity. With that, let's open it up for questions.
spk00: Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. The confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our first question is from Scott Seifers of Piper Sandler. Please proceed with your question.
spk08: Good afternoon, guys. Thanks for taking the question. So I guess before I get into it, Chris, I've enjoyed working with you over the years and hope to do so more this year and wish you the best. Thank you. Yeah, you bet. So thank you for all your help. Maybe first question is for you, Chris. Just on sort of how you see the margin projecting from this quarter's 240, kind of where do you stand with respect to the 275 aspirational margin in terms of progress this year? It seems like you should get a bunch of help from rates. So maybe just some thoughts there.
spk07: Yeah, so when we look back on the year, clearly our margin results for the year were weighed down by the excess liquidity levels that we carried over the course of the year. We estimate that probably cost us about 11 basis points in margin for the year. So, absent the excess liquidity, our start point probably is somewhere north of 250, and we're continuing to build into positive yield accretive asset classes as we move through the course of the year. So I'd like to think that we're going to quickly move towards 250 and build from there. I don't expect we'll get to 275 this year. We didn't say we would either. But we're going to make solid progress and move a nice way in that direction.
spk08: Okay, perfect. And then so a lot of moving parts with the change of the balance sheet mix as well as just the higher rates. So I guess just as a follow-up, I want to confirm you suggested that Two rate hikes are sort of embedded in the NII guide for the year. And then you have sort of an easy rule of thumb that you're using for how much NII help you get for each 25 basis points rate hike, kind of in isolation.
spk07: One and a half million dollars per month for 25 basis point hike.
spk08: All right. Perfect. That is a good one. All right. Thank you very much.
spk00: Our next question is from Chris McGrady of KBW. Please proceed with your question.
spk03: Great, thanks. And Chris, we'll miss you. In terms of the outlook, I was hoping you could refine or give a little bit more color on slide 18. The 800 plus, the 300 plus, obviously it's, I bet, intentionally open-ended, but wondering if you could provide a little bit more clarity on what would drive those to be meaningfully above and how meaningfully above the 1.1 do you expect?
spk04: Well, maybe I could start that off and turn it over to Chris. This is Andy. So, Chris, what I would say is we're 20 days into the new year, and we had a strong end of the year, which put us in a really good position. So seeing where our pipelines are, what we've closed, where we started the year, we think we're very much on track to what our midterm, short-term targets are. So, yes, we did leave it meaningfully open-ended, but what I'll say is every initiative that we have is on target, not just from hiring people, but from pipeline, and not just from pipeline, but from the loans that are booking. But that's the new RMs that we have in place. We haven't hired enough RMs at this point already to hit our commercial baseline in-market targets. We are very much on target in ABL. and our expectation was our first loans in equipment finance would book in the first quarter. So we feel very bullish about what our forecast is, but 20 days into the year, we didn't want to forecast the month-by-month flow of how we end up. Chris?
spk03: Yep, understood. Thanks. Totally, I get it. In terms of the auto book, I'm interested – I know you talked about the prime and super prime. Can you just – provide some color on where yields are coming on today, and then also, you know, you're expecting a lot of growth, and you talked about providing for that at some degree this year. Maybe throwing a little bit more color on that would be great.
spk07: Sure. So as Andy mentioned, we're booking more than $4 million per business day, and that's why we have very high confidence that we're going to get well above the sort of $1.2 billion full-year growth level because we're continuing to add more dealers and we'll continue to add more markets as we go through the year So the baseline is there to support the growth, and we think we're going to add to it. Second, I would note that the yields have come in essentially where we thought they would. It was a premium to what we've seen in the mortgage market and higher than mortgage yields, which is what we've been targeting in that net threes, net of the dealer discounts, et cetera. And so when you see the numbers, we'll be breaking those out in future quarters. I suspect you'll see something that will be in the It's three-handle with a varying range as we move through the course of the year and as rates perhaps evolve with that policy.
spk04: And I'll say, Chris, on top of that, as we've opened up the number of active dealers, we've purposely controlled the number of active dealers we have. So we're at about 700 active dealers, and we've increased that roughly every 30 days. As we've increased the number of dealers each month, we've seen increased production each month. We want to make sure that we're sound on the operational side. I want to make sure we're sticking to the credit box very strictly, and we have been, in fact, right on target. So I'm pleased with what we've done so far, but we want to make sure we do this the right way. While we're at 700 active dealers today, we think we could end the year with a number well exceeding double that number. And the dealers have been very accepting based on the long-term relationships we had hoped for, and we had hoped that they would send us strong deals in prime and super prime, and that's exactly what's occurred so far.
spk03: Great. And then just a ticky-tack one, Chris. When in the year are you assuming the hikes, and is there any non-recurring in that expense guide? Thanks.
spk07: I'll happily take your forecast on the Fed. I'm pretty sure it's probably better than ours.
spk03: But you said at least two, I think, in your prepared remarks. Are they mid-year and end of year? I'm just trying to get a sense of what's in the guide.
spk07: One in the first half, one in the second, and if there's more than that, there's upside.
spk03: Okay.
spk00: Our next question is from Michael Young of Truist. Please proceed with your question.
spk05: Hey, thanks for taking the question. Wanted to start just on the mortgage portfolio. Obviously, that's been an area that's been kind of shrinking. But as rates rise, we would expect maybe payments in that area and refinances out of that book might slow. So should we expect those volumes to become a little more stable or any other thoughts? Are you doing anything proactively ahead of higher rates to move some of that off the books?
spk04: Michael, this is Andy. That's exactly what we're expecting is stability in that book. Not only stability in the mortgage book, but We actually think a long-term trend on home equity is shifting right now as well. In fact, we see that. So we think for the first time in a long time, home equity has a real chance to grow. So we're proactively addressing that in the first quarter of the year. Clearly, with the rates, people locked into the first mortgage at very low rates are not going to want to refinance that mortgage, which opens up the home equity market. As rates go up, we will start to see a decrease in the churn of that portfolio. So When we looked at the year, our forecast was that the mortgage portfolio was going to be fairly flat, and auto would make up for that at a slightly higher margin. That is proving early on to be the case.
spk05: Okay. And on the auto book, I'm just curious, given your history or how you guys are kind of attacking this, do you expect that rates, as they rise in the market, that the auto market book will keep pace in terms of the yield, or do you think at some point that may be a less attractive area to deploy capital versus commercial or other areas?
spk04: Well, I see the auto as one piece of a balanced approach. And so when I look at the margin being well above three, we have room to come down and still hit the forecast that we've put out there. We are going to stick with prime and super prime period. That is our focus and has been. Now, when I think of the balance of growth, I think of the equipment finance and the ABL. And you can see we've put pretty modest targets out there. We booked about 67 million, I believe, in ABL, new ABL, in the fourth quarter. That's two months' worth of work, and we forecasted 300 million in combined at the end of the year between ABL and equipment finance. So we think those businesses are ones that will continue to grow for us. They make sense. We're in a manufacturing belt. The ABL is an extension of our commercial, and we're expanding our commercial team. So I expect that as we look at $750 to $1 billion in commercial growth this year, that will continue to be a strategy for us to continue to expand on the verticals that we have and feed those. And I think that the margin – I'm optimistic that we have room to even go down in that margin on prime and super prime and still hit the forecast that we have laid out.
spk05: Okay, and one last one for me just on expenses. Just as I kind of think about mortgage, you know, and volumes kind of coming down at a macro level, Are you guys kind of shrinking the expense base there, assuming that we're going to be in a lower origination environment for longer, or are you pivoting personnel into auto, or just how are you kind of thinking about that expense run rate?
spk07: Sure. I think we're positioning ourselves to continue to service our customers and our markets through our mortgage teams across the marketplace in an effective manner, recognizing that there may be less volume available to manage as we move through 2022. There'll still be plenty of customers of service, plenty of loans to make sure that we're doing the right thing on. So I don't think it's going to be a significant shift in our strategy, but we certainly recognize that maybe less new origination volumes and fewer commissions paid as we move forward.
spk04: Yeah, I think the other thing is we've built flexibility in our expense base by having outsourced colleagues as well as FTE. We'll monitor that closely based on volumes and the contractual nature of what we have out there. But we've built in the assumptions that as that goes down, the expenses of that book go down as well. They're not necessarily transferable resources into auto, as that's a specialty vertical.
spk05: Okay, fair enough. And, Chris, I'd be remiss if I didn't wish you congratulations, and I hope you at least get to spend a few weeks somewhere warm here near term. Thank you. Appreciate it.
spk04: He means warmer than Green Bay, Chris.
spk00: Our next question is from Terry McEvoy of Stevens. Please proceed with your question.
spk06: Hi, good afternoon. Good afternoon, Terry. Hi, Terry. And, Chris, I'll echo what others have said this afternoon. Congrats, and I can't believe it's been 12 years. Enjoyed working with you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Terry. It's been a pleasure. And then just a couple questions. In your November investor deck, you talked about 23 revenue growth of 17% to 10% and expense growth of 3% to 4%. I didn't see it in today's presentation. I just want to confirm that those are still good growth rates and similar in terms of how you're thinking about next year.
spk07: Yeah, we're not changing our long-term outlook. We think the numbers that we're putting forward here are consistent with that outlook, and I think you'll find – that we're making steady progress towards hitting those long-term goals, and we feel good about those long-term goals.
spk06: Others have covered the auto and margin. So the other one was anything to report on the increase in potential problem loans? It just kind of caught my eye up, I believe, about 20%, quarter of a quarter in the commercial portfolio. Anything to talk about there?
spk10: No, not really. I think we had, you know, as you know, In the portfolio, it ebbs and flows quarter to quarter, but I don't think we're seeing anything systemic there that's affecting the portfolios at large.
spk06: And then just one last question. I just want to make sure, have all the hires been made and relationship with dealers established to hit those loan growth targets for the year?
spk07: The hiring for the auto team is largely in place, yes. That's not a significant gap, and we have established Deal relationships with about 700 today. As Andy mentioned, we'll likely more than double that as we move through the course of this year, so there's more to come. And we haven't yet opened up our footprint states, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois in particular, which we think will be a nice source of additional growth later in the year.
spk04: And what I'd say on the verticals, we have about 60% to 70% of the colleagues that we'll hire by year end already hired and in place. So With what we have there today, we're on track to hit our targets. On the commercial side, we have roughly half of the colleagues already in place, and with that, we're on track to hit our targets. The colleagues that we bring on the rest of the year in commercial will start funding our end-of-year, beginning-of-next-year target numbers as well. So we're right on pace, feel very comfortable on the hiring front and what those hires mean from a production standpoint.
spk06: Great. Thanks, everyone.
spk04: Thank you.
spk00: Our next question is from Daniel Tamio of Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.
spk09: Good afternoon, everyone. Hey, Daniel. Just one from me here. As we think about, you've been asked about the revenue guide as a whole. As we think about it just related to fee income, the 300-plus million number, Kind of putting aside whatever assumptions that are made for the mortgage banking business, is there anything within the remaining line items that you would expect not to grow in 2022? Or are you seeing growth in those numbers? And then we can kind of put whatever assumption we have on the mortgage banking business.
spk07: I think broadly speaking, we're seeing positive trends in the service charges, card businesses, capital markets, et cetera. We don't make a practice of projecting a lot of BOLI increase, and we're not necessarily in the business of taking asset gains and losses per se. So those would be sort of the two of the wild cards. But generally speaking, our core fee-based revenue streams all have a nice year-end trajectory and continue to build nicely.
spk04: And, you know, just the wealth business is probably another one that wasn't necessarily mentioned there. We had record production. We have a dedicated leader in that business for the first time in quite some time. And that's really brought the group together. I'm pleased with the results, both on the sales and the retention and the portfolio performance.
spk09: Great. Everything else has been asked and answered. And I'll just also give you my wishes for a happy retirement and congratulations on a great career, Chris.
spk05: Thank you, Daniel.
spk00: Our next question is from Jared Shaw of Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question.
spk01: Hi, good afternoon. This is Timor Brazile filling in for Jared. Maybe just starting on the improved line utilization and just the loan growth in general, Maybe talk through pay down activity, kind of how that trended through the quarter, and I'm wondering if you get a sense that any of the loan activity was pulled forward from the first quarter of 22, or is this type of momentum kind of sustainable as we are now 20 days into the new quarter?
spk07: Well, I think if you look at the growth, which was – almost half a billion for the quarter. We're not calling for that to be sustained for quarters going forward. We had really strong growth, and we don't think that it was necessarily pulled forward. I think it was really our customers stepping into the market in a very positive way. Payoffs were not necessarily out of line with what we've seen in prior periods, but new fundings and draws were the difference maker of this quarter, and they were increases. So that's what we saw both New customers, new lines from existing customers or new additions, and line utilization all contribute to those numbers.
spk04: And line utilization has been a steady number for us. We've seen it go up slightly for several months in a row. The auto business, I think, is a very clear line that's increased each of the last three months, and we expect that to continue to do it. do so. The commercial side, as Chris said, look, we're looking for $750 to $1 billion in growth for the year. So it was a very strong quarter. That puts us in good shape. But when we think about the CRE book and the numbers that we see out there on the construction side, that really bodes well for that business as we head into the year, the commercial pipelines that we had. And And keep in mind, we haven't yet booked our first equipment finance loan. So we'll have equipment finance. We'll have asset-based lending. We have nice growth in the opportunity in CRE. So while I don't expect $500 billion forecast per quarter, and we're not forecasting that, I'm pretty bullish on what we are seeing in the fourth quarter and what that could mean for 2022.
spk01: That's good color. Thank you. And then just one last one for me, if I can follow up on some of the auto-related questions. I guess the new growth, is it coming from the additions of the new dealers coming online every 30 days? Is it coming from the existing dealers? And maybe talk about some concentration limits that you're going to be putting in place once the dealer network is kind of fully built out. Concentration limits on dealer activity, I would say.
spk07: Yeah, so clearly the team we hired came over with a very well-established collection of long-standing, deep-rooted relationships. And as part of our acquisition of intellectual property from KeyBank, we acquired dealer scorecards and histories as part of this. So I think we have a very good handle on the folks we're doing business with. We have a very good handle on the type of volume, the quality, consistency of that flow of activity, and we feel very comfortable with what we've been doing over here over the last roughly 120 days. And it's come on along at essentially exactly what our team said it would be. So we're actually very pleased with that and don't see us running into any constraints or limits for a while as we expect this to become a multibillion-dollar portfolio on our balance sheet over time.
spk04: I'll also follow that up by reiterating the balanced nature of what our plan is and how much I think we have some legs on small business. We haven't talked much about that. You know, we're looking at a $100 million increase in production year over year just in small business. Our commercial businesses, as we've hired people, we've gotten the production fairly quickly, and we have an opportunity in market to grow those. The verticals that we have we believe, have legs for years to come. So there will be a point where that growth clearly dissipates in auto in year, I don't know, three, four. But as we're moving towards that time, we have a path outlined and we've taken the actions towards the beginning of both verticals, commercial, and small business growth.
spk01: Great. Thank you for the questions and good luck and congratulations, Chris. Thank you. Thank you.
spk00: Our next question is from John Artstrom of RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.
spk02: Hey, thanks a lot. Congrats, Chris. Thank you, John. Did you think you were this popular, by the way?
spk07: If I gave my usual answer, I would have said, of course I did.
spk02: Question for Chris or Pat, just how do you want us to think about the provision? You still have pretty healthy reserves, but you did say you're below day one CECL, and you obviously have a lot of growth on the horizon. Are we at the end of the reserve releasing in negative provisions, or how should we think through that?
spk10: This is Pat. I would say from a reserve ratio, we might see that come down a little bit. You know, could it be in the 125 to 130 range? possibly, but I think we're starting to see this quarter with growth, you know, some need to add to that provision. So I think as we get into the year, the growth that we've outlined here will kind of push that provision in more of a build standpoint than a release.
spk02: Okay. Okay. Thank you for that. Chris, the $1.5 million per month for each 25 basis points, that's great. That's a great way for us to think through it. How long does that relationship hold? Meaning, you know, how do you think about deposit betas and, you know, how comfortable are you with the rate sensitivity in the deposit base?
spk07: Yeah, so I think we've been very thoughtful about the sensitivity that we experienced deposits in the last run-up, and our estimate reflects that into the number that I gave you, the $1.5 million per month for 25 basis points. Clearly, it's our expectation that liquidity levels are elevated and that there's going to be a shift somewhat downward. I think if you had asked us a year ago, we would have thought that would be a more rapid shift than we're actually seeing. And the reality is, as I think, John, you and I have talked about in the past, the alternatives that used to be out there for investors, whether that's the commercial paper market, the asset-backed CP conduits, the money market alternative funds, the prime rate funds, money market reform really did away with a lot of that, and so there's fewer alternatives, and we're seeing that reflected in the biggest banks' pricing. And so I think there's an opportunity here where you'll see, as we have seen in the past, a fair amount of deposit lag, but we'll see some outflows. And so we're assuming those outflows, and we're assuming some deposit lag, and that's baked into that $1.5 million per month.
spk02: Okay. Okay, fair enough. And then last question maybe for you, Andy. You touched on the footprint being strong. And I'm looking at slide six and slide 18 in terms of the commercial loan growth and some of the expectations there. How much of that do you think is just from the footprint versus some of the specialty lines of business?
spk04: I would tell you that we're getting a lot of single-name credits. And we're seeing it balanced out between Wisconsin and specifically probably Milwaukee, Chicago, and Minneapolis. So I don't have the exact mix in front of me, but I will tell you that the occurrence of single-name, we can follow up on that, but the occurrence of single-name credits has been significant for us, particularly as we've added RMs in market.
spk07: I would throw out that we do some geographic reporting, and our largest growth in commercial real estate was absolutely in our Wisconsin market. And, you know, it's a nice turn. And we saw growth, you know, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois. Those are sort of the top four out of five states in the commercial land. So it's happening today in our core markets.
spk02: Okay. That's what I was getting after. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you.
spk00: Our next question is from Scott Seifers of Piper Sandler. Please proceed with your question.
spk08: Hey, guys. Thank you. So, Andy, for you, one of the questions that I have gotten more recently since the forward curve has really changed quite a bit since back when you guys put out the strategic plan is do you still feel the same need to grow the newer verticals at the same rates you discussed last year, or does the likely help from rates would that allow you to sort of ease off the gas or be more measured? I think I know the answer from sort of the tone of a lot of your prepared comments and responses to questions, but would just be curious to hear your thoughts on that.
spk04: Well, I think the good news is we started measured. So when you have numbers that you feel are very attainable, you don't have to change your strategy. We don't have to reach for credit to hit $150 million in ABL. I think we exhibited that with $67 million in the fourth quarter. equipment finance in a heavy manufacturing belt, people are asking for these kind of loans. So I feel very comfortable with the numbers. That doesn't change our strategy or our approach. We're going to stay true to the credit side. We're going to stay true to the prime and super prime and auto. We're going to make sure that we have the fundamentals down behind it. I see the rate increase as more of a tailwind for us.
spk08: Perfect. Perfect. And then just maybe returning to loan growth for a second. So it's pretty clear what's going on with auto and commercial, but was curious, Chris, if you might have a sense for what full kind of all-in loan growth would look like in 22 after you kind of take out all the moving parts, be it the combination of the CNI momentum, auto finance, but also PPP runoff that'll hit averages and you know, some of the other areas that are kind of getting de-emphasized to make room for auto?
spk07: I mean, the reality is our runoff portfolios now are down to, you know, given the payoff that we had here in the first year in January, down to less than $100 million. So that's the runoff book is $100 million and shrinking. And we're looking to stabilize the mortgage book. So the really only moving part that we haven't given you is home equity. And I'd like to think that in a rising rate environment, home equity will probably stabilize. So if those are stable, then really the growth is all coming from the initiatives that we've outlined and talked through. Perfect. Okay. Wonderful. Thank you.
spk08: Thank you.
spk00: We have reached the end of the question and answer session. I will now turn the call back over to Andy Harmoning for closing remarks.
spk04: Well, I want to thank you all for your interest in Associated Bank, and I would be remiss if I didn't end with I hope you guys are all going to have a great weekend and support our Packers. Thank you so much.
spk00: This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation, and have a great evening.
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