Community Financial System, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Community Financial System Incorporated third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Dimitar Karabinov, President and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Dimitar Karabinov Thank you, Danielle. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining our third quarter earnings call. I would characterize the quarter as one with solid operating performance as evidenced by our PPNR of $1.29 per share, which was consistent with the prior quarter and grew 11.2% compared to last year's third quarter. Bottom line earnings were impacted by a couple of items, which I wanted to touch on before we get into each business unit. The first item is the increase in our provision expense. We've been observing the general industry trends towards normalization of credit for a few quarters now, and as you may recall, we added some reserves back in the first quarter of this year. Since then, that industry trend has continued. If you look at the industry-wide loan classifications of special mention and substandard balances, they're now close to long-term averages. We also have the Federal Reserve embarking on an easing cycle, which is typically a late cycle development and comes with expectations for increased unemployment, which is the main driver of credit costs. Our own credit experience continues to be one of low losses and minimal delinquencies, and the quantitative results in our CISO models have remained steady. With that said, we considered it prudent and conservative to add to our reserves at this point in time. The second main item that drove differences to the prior quarter was an increase in the accrual for performance-based incentive compensation expense. We typically refine our estimate in the third quarter with a look towards the full year results as compared to prior year, and that drove most of the delta in that expense line compared to the last quarter. Now turning to underlying business performance. Our banking business had a strong quarter. Net interest income surpassed the prior peak from the fourth quarter of 2022, and we're now up on a year-to-date basis compared to 2023. This positions us well for the fourth quarter, and I expect that we will continue our annual net interest income growth streak, which dates back to 2006. Balance sheet growth was excellent on both sides, and pipelines remain in good shape. I will note that long growth this quarter was a bit higher than trend, driven by a couple of larger closings, which are relationships we've been working on for multiple quarters. Just last week, we celebrated the opening of our first branch from our strategic branch expansion plan, which we announced late last year. Our Hanover Square branch in Syracuse is now open and off to a great start, and we're progressing well on the other 17 locations. Our benefit administration business did very well as well. Both revenues and profitability expanded, and outlook remains bright. BPIS was recognized for the third year in a row as a top five record keeper across multiple categories by the National Association of Plan Advisors. Our insurance services business also reached a new high in revenues. We've been hard at work in reorganizing the business and creating the infrastructure to support the excellent revenue growth in the future. This has impacted profitability here to date, but should position us better for 2025 and beyond. One group was also recently recognized as the 66th largest broker in the U.S., by the insurance journal, an improvement from being ranked number 75 last year. Our wealth management services business also performed well. Organic growth has been supported by very strong market growth, and we've been using the revenue gains to reinvest back in the business by adding sales capacity and addressing some geographical presence gaps. In aggregate, I would say that I'm particularly encouraged by two things. Number one, our ability to continue to attract both leadership and execution talent with a few key hires this quarter across all businesses. And number two, the momentum with new client acquisition across all businesses. We continue to operate from a position of strength and actively gain market share. Quick comment on M&A. We continue to be an active participant and had a number of opportunities in this past quarter. Ultimately, the risk and reward equation did not work for us due to various reasons, but the opportunity set remains interesting. This covers predominantly our banking and insurance verticals and to a lesser degree benefits. We will continue to be active and continue to keep our risk and reward principles in line with our investment thesis. Lastly, I wanted to note the investor day we hosted last month at the New York Stock Exchange. Excuse me. I want to thank all of our investors and analysts for tremendous interest and encourage those of you who weren't able to attend to view the recorded event and presentation on our investor relations website. With that, I will turn it over now to Joe for additional color on the quarter.

Thank you, Dimitar, and good morning, everyone. The third quarter was a solid one for the company. Earnings per share of 83 cents were up a penny over the third quarter of the prior year, but down 8 cents on a linked quarter basis. The year-over-year increase in earnings per share were driven by increases in both net interest income and non-interest revenues and a decrease in fully diluted shares outstanding, but were largely offset by increases in non-interest expenses, the provision for credit losses, and income taxes. The decrease in linked quarter earnings results were driven by increases in the provision for credit losses and non-interest expenses offset in part by increases in net interest income and non-interest revenues and a decrease in income taxes. Similarly, operating diluted earnings per share were $0.88 in the quarter, or a penny higher than the same quarter in the prior year, but $0.07 lower than the linked second quarter results, while operating pre-tax pre-provision net revenue per share of $1.29 was up $0.13 or 11.2% over the prior year's third quarter and consistent with linked quarter results. Third quarter results were marked by new quarterly records and total operating revenues, net interest income, bank-related non-interest operating revenues, employee benefit services revenues, and insurance services revenues. More specifically, the company recorded total operating revenues of $189.1 million in the third quarter. This was up $13.7 million, or 7.8%, from one year prior, and up $5.9 million, or 3.2%, from the linked second quarter, and marked the fifth consecutive quarter of increases in total operating revenues. The company recorded net interest income of $112.7 million in the third quarter. This represents a $3.4 million or 3% increase over linked second quarter results and also marks the second consecutive quarter of net interest income expansion. An improvement in the yield on interest-earning assets supported by loan growth and subsiding pressure on funding costs helped drive improvement in both net interest income and net interest margin in the quarter. During the quarter, the cost of deposits was 1.23%, which was consistent with the linked second quarter, while the total cost of funds increased seven basis points from 1.37% in the second quarter to 1.44% in the third quarter, due to an increase in borrowed funds costs. The company's fully tax-equivalent net interest margin increased one basis point from 3.04% in the linked second quarter to 3.05% in the third quarter. The outlook remains positive for continued net interest income expansion in the fourth quarter and on a full year basis. Operating non-interest revenues were up in all four businesses compared to the prior year's third quarter and represented over 40% of total operating revenues. Banking-related operating non-interest revenues were up $3 million, or 17.1% over the same quarter of the prior year. driven by increases in mortgage banking revenues and deposit service and other banking fees, including interest rate swap fee revenues. Employee benefit services revenues were up $3.2 million, or 10.7%, over the prior year's third quarter, reflective of an increase in the total participants under administration and growth in asset-based fees. Insurance services revenues were up $1.5 million, or 12.7%, reflective of both acquired and organic growth, while wealth management services were up $1 million, or 12.1%, reflective of more favorable market conditions over the same period. On a linked quarter basis, operating non-interest revenues were up $2.6 million, or 3.5%, driven by higher revenues in all four businesses. During the third quarter, the company recorded $124.2 million in non-interest expenses. This represents a $7.7 million or 6.6% increase from the prior year's third quarter, driven primarily by a $7.3 million or 10.4% increase in salaries and employee benefits, expenses due to merit and market-related increases in employee wages, higher incentive plan costs, and acquisitions between the periods. Total non-interest expenses were also up $5.2 million or 4.4% over the length's second quarter results. On a year-to-date basis, total operating non-interest expenses were up $18.7 million, or 5.6%, consistent with the mid-single-digit growth rate pension during prior quarterly earnings calls. Reflective of an increase in loans outstanding and qualitative factor adjustments, the company recorded a $7.7 million provision for credit losses during the third quarter of 2024. This compares to $2.9 million in the prior year's third quarter and $2.7 million in the linked second quarter. The effective tax rate for the third quarter of 2024 was 23%, up from 21.2% in the third quarter of 2023. The lower effective tax rate in the prior year was largely driven by the balance sheet repositioning completed during 2023. Ending loans increased $227.8 million, or 2.3%, during the third quarter. This marks the 13th consecutive quarter of loan growth and is reflective of the company's continued investment in its organic loan growth capabilities. This included growth in both the business lending and consumer lending portfolios. Ending loans are up $801.6 million or 8.5% from one year prior. The company's ending total deposits increased $338.3 million or 2.6% during the third quarter, driven by seasonal inflows of municipal deposits. Third quarter deposit funding costs of 123 basis points were flat compared to the linked second quarter results. Non-interest bearing and lower rate checking and savings accounts continue to represent almost two-thirds of the company's total deposits. The company's full cycle deposit beta of 24% was one of the best in the banking industry during the Fed's 2022 to 2024 rate hiking phase. It reflects the stability of the company's core deposit base. Ending deposits were also up $445.4 million, or 3.4% from one year prior. The company's liquidity position remains strong. Readily available source of liquidity, including unplugged cash and cash equivalents and investment securities, funding availability at the Federal Reserve Bank's discount window, and unused borrowing capacity at the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York totaled $4.49 billion at the end of the third quarter. These sources of immediately available liquidity represent approximately 200% of the company's estimated uninsured deposits, net of collateralized and intercompany deposits. The company's loan-to-deposit ratio at the end of the third quarter was 76.1%. 76.1%, providing future opportunity to migrate lower-yielding investment securities into higher-yielding loans. At the end of the third quarter, all the companies in the bank's regulatory capital ratio significantly exceeded well-capitalized standards. More specifically, the company's Tier 1 leverage ratio is 9.12%, which substantially exceeds the regulatory well-capitalized standard of 5%. At September 30, 2024, non-performing loans totaled $62.8 million, or 61 basis points of total loans outstanding. This represents a $12.3 million, 11 basis point increase from the end of the link second quarter, due primarily to the transfer of one loan relationship to non-accrual status. Comparatively, non-performing loans were $36.9 million, or 39 basis points of total loans outstanding one year prior. Loans 30 to 89 days delinquent were also up slightly on the linked quarter basis from $45.1 million or 45 basis points of total loans at the end of the second quarter to $47.2 million or 46 basis points of total loans outstanding at the end of the third quarter. The company recorded net charge-offs of $2.8 million or 11 basis points of average loans annualized during the third quarter. This is up from $1.2 million or five basis points in the same quarter of the prior year. The company's allowance for credit losses was $76.2 million, or 74 basis points of total loans outstanding at the end of the third quarter, up $4.7 million from the end of the second quarter and up $11.2 million from one year prior. Although credit loss reserves increased during the third quarter due to qualitative factors, overall the company's asset quality remains strong. The allowance for credit losses at the end of the third quarter represented over eight times the company's trailing 12-month net charge-offs. We believe the company's diversified revenue profile, strong liquidity, regulatory capital reserves, stable core deposit base, and historically strong asset quality provide a solid foundation for future opportunities and growth. Looking forward, we are encouraged by the revenue outlook in all four of our businesses and prospects for continued organic growth. We will continue to play offense, lean into growth, and deploy capital in the best manner possible for our shareholders. Thank you. Now I will turn it back over to Danielle to open the line for questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time a question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then 2. At this time, we'll pause momentarily to assemble the roster. The first question comes from Matthew Breeze of Stevens, Inc. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning.

Morning, Matt. Morning, Matt. I was hoping we could just start on the NII and the outlook. It sounds like there's, you know, quite a bit of confidence that the trajectory is kind of up and to the right on NII. Perhaps you could just give us some sense or expectations around deposit costs and deposit betas and maybe some of the actions you've taken so far. on the back of the Fed cut. And then just remind us, you know, the maturity schedule on loans, how much is expected to reprice over the next six to 12 months. Thank you.

Sure. Matt, I'll kick it off and Joe can add some of the more detailed answers there. But I think if you look at just kind of where we are, this is the second quarter of expansion in NII. And really, this was before the Fed cut essentially, which was very late in the quarter. So we sit back here and we look at our asset side and we have a lot of loans that are continuing to move up at a much better spread than the back book. So that's going to continue to go up. Even with the cut, we have a lot more loans that are repricing up than down. So that seems reasonably optimistic on that side. Then you look on the deposit side and we already on the deposit side were flat this quarter and We did make some adjustments throughout the year, and I think we talked a little bit about that in prior calls, but we had already adjusted some rates down during the year, and we certainly adjusted rates down post the Fed cut as well. We didn't capture all of the cuts in this initial kind of a move. We captured on our most sensitive deposits, we captured probably about 50% of the cut. There are some things that are more, I would call them index to the market in the sense of the municipal deposits where we're matching some rates. So those will move as the market rates move. But I expect that on the next cut, when and if that comes, we're going to capture potentially a higher beta than what we captured on the first one.

Yeah, Matt, regarding the loan repricing, you know, I would just probably direct you to the investor deck. Toward the back of the deck, there's kind of a summary of the expectations around loan maturities and, you know, repricing opportunity. And just in kind of, you know, broad general terms, you know, the fixed rate loan portfolio, we would expect about $1.5 billion in cash flows off of that portfolio over the next 12 months. When we sort of published that slide, the weighted average rate on those maturing loans was a little over 5%. We've been booking new loans kind of in the, call it, seven and a quarter range, if you will. So if we do nothing more than just turn over that fixed book, that's obviously going to be additive to NII. I would also mention that there is about a billion, billion one or so of truly floating rate loans, which are sold for prime base. So, you know, obviously they come down a bit as rates move down. Then there's an adjustable set of loans, which is relatively small, which is a price reset with, for example, a loan that might have a 10-year maturity with a five-year reset. So there's a portion of those. So, you know, I think when you kind of blend all of those components on the loan side, you know, it's going to be a net positive to the book yield as we move throughout the year.

Great. I appreciate that. And then, Dimitar, I know you had mentioned that there was a couple of kind of chunkier credits that were closed this quarter. Can you just discuss the size of those or maybe give us some idea of what you would expect in terms of the forward outlook on loan growth? I know it's going to be higher than you have been historically, given the entrance or penetration of the denser markets. But maybe just discuss what happened this quarter and what the kind of normalized outlook is.

Yeah, I mean, I think this quarter is, you know, 200 plus million of loan growth is not our current trend line. You know, that's high single digits. That's not kind of where we are. As I mentioned, you know, we, our market share has been tremendous in terms of gains and the quality of the people and the customers that we continue to attract is really exciting for us. So we've been hard at work on a number of cases where I would call it marquee type opportunities and clients across our markets. And as we just had a couple of those come to fruition, they take a long time. Typically those are takeaways from other larger institutions. And that kind of boosted that rate. I expect that we'll be closer run rate kind of where we were in the past couple of quarters than this particular third quarter. So that's what I would think about in terms of our growth on the balance sheet.

Okay. And I had two others, if you don't mind. You know, the first one is just given your comments around kind of late cycle and trending towards normalized credit coupled with, you know, increased loan growth. Is it fair to assume that the reserve continues to increase, you know, moderately from current levels and the provision will kind of increase in kind? I was hoping you could comment on that.

Yeah, I think, Matt, so the CISO model we have is quite sophisticated, as I'm sure everybody's model, right? There's a whole bunch of variables that go into all of that. At the end of the day, I try to think of it as a little bit of a common sense model in my head. And we're sitting here at 11 base points of charge-offs, and our, I guess, year-to-date is actually below 10. But let's say 11 in this past quarter, and our ACL coverage is 74 basis points. So that's, you know, almost seven years' worth of losses, which seems a little bit high. So then the question really is, what do we think that 11 basis points is through the cycle? And as we talked about at our investor day, our goal is through the cycle, you know, with the ups and the downs, to be below 15. So if I take that 15 and I think about our – our loan book, which life is somewhere between five and six years, you can kind of do the math of, you know, the coverage, if that's five years and change, what that would mean kind of on the ACL. So I think from that perspective, I would agree with you that you can probably see a couple of basis points here and there, you know, depending on the quarters as we move forward in terms of ACL.

Great. And then last one for me, you know, one of the standout moments during Investor Day was your commentary in regards to just general economic activity, you know, beyond the chip manufacturing stuff. I think it was, you know, in the teens or high teens, multiples of what it has been historically. And I was just hoping you could comment a little bit more on that and why that is. You know, what's going on in upstate New York versus what's been going on historically that is driving so much more economic activity. That's all I had. Thank you.

Sure. Yeah, I mean, that hasn't changed. I don't think it's going to change for a while. You have a number of things, as we mentioned, that did the investor day. You know, it really is kind of the onshoring of a lot of the manufacturing that was offshore over the past number of decades. The government tax, you know, be it the CHIPS Act or the Inflation Reduction Act, also provided for a whole lot of subsidies that New York turned out to be very well positioned for. So you're looking at what's happening with solar, what's happening with wind investments, what's happening with carbon credits. A lot of that is happening in New York State. And so we're clearly a beneficiary of that. There is a kind of a move towards, it's an advanced technology in upstate New York as well, you know, on the back of basically the skilled industries. the skilled labor force, you know, from all the colleges and, you know, be it in central New York or in Rochester, you know, kind of the former technology investments there as well. So a lot of that is happening in our markets. And we're seeing that happening on the back of what has been a constrained infrastructure and housing availability as well over the years. So There is a lot of infrastructure that's being built to support that growth, and that's kind of creating a lot of opportunities. But our manufacturing clients are doing really well across the board. You know, the consumer is doing really well, and we just happen to be in a moment in time where we are adding our own capabilities on top of that in terms of market share gains, and you're kind of seeing all of that in the results.

That's all I had. Thank you.

The next question comes from Steve Moss from Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Good morning, guys. Good morning, Steve.

I apologize. I hopped onto the call a bit late here, but I did want to just kind of follow up on or touch base on expenses here in particular. I'm just kind of curious. I heard you, Dimitar, kind of midway through your comments talking about you made a number of hires this quarter. And just kind of wondering how you guys are thinking about the expense run right here going forward.

Yeah, Steve, this is Joe. I would still kind of characterize it as mid-single digits, you know, on a full year basis. You know, obviously there's a little bit of volatility up and down from quarter to quarter depending on, you know, sort of what happens in the quarter and what accruals we have to put through. But I think... You know, if you look at it kind of on a longer-term basis, that mid-single-digit growth rate is still, you know, not unreasonable. On a year-to-date basis, right, they grew up a little over 5.5%. And I think that's a fair expectation. You know, as Dimitar, you know, has said to me multiple times, you know, we're investing through RP&L, right? We're putting the organic... growth capabilities in place. And, you know, so that requires some continued investment in the company. And so that, you know, mid-single-digit growth rate is probably, I think, a fair expectation. I would say this is that, you know, a lot of the investments that were made in 2023 and year-to-date 2024, you know, we are starting to see, you know, results from those investments. So, you know, I wouldn't expect that the pace, if you will, would, you know, replicate what we did in 2023. But so I think 2024 is more indicative of a longer-term expense rate.

Okay, great. Appreciate that. And then just on the credit front, I think you guys in the text said it was, you know, the uptick in NPLs was primarily due to one commercial credit. Was there a specific reserve tied to that credit that was included in the provision this quarter?

No, there wasn't, Steve. And I mean, so to give you a little bit more color, it's a fully paying, basically never delinquent credit going back to 2006. It's a longstanding relationship. The borrower probably overexpanded a little bit. And we felt that given the fact that the borrower is going through restructuring themselves to position them for kind of scaling back some of their investment, it's appropriate that we would put it on non-accrual. But again, the loan is actually fully paying non-delinquent, and we expect that to continue.

Okay. Great. Appreciate that, Collar. And then in terms of, you know, fee income here, it was, you know, strong across the board. I trust that those trends are likely to continue for, you know, employee benefits, insurance services, and wealth management. But, you know, deposit service charges were also, and banking fees were also strong here. Just kind of curious if there was anything idiosyncratic there.

Steve, I wouldn't say anything, nothing really idiosyncratic. We've, you know, we rolled out some new services in the last year or so. You know, we're doing more swap fees and some, I'll call them, for lack of a better term, capital market transactions where we're participating out some loans and there's some fee income generation from those activities. And so now they're kind of embedded in our infrastructure. So nothing really idiosyncratic per se. I think, you know, this quarter's a fair representation of what the expectations are going forward. You know, this was an area where we needed to actually find new fees. You know, over the last, you know, call it five, six, seven years, if you remember, we kind of experienced urban and then we experienced some reductions in you know, I'll call them competitive and regulatory pressure run NSF fees and the like. So, you know, that deposit service fee line item is going to be challenged. So, you know, we've had to find other opportunities in the banking space, and I think we've been pretty successful in doing that here. And so I would expect that, you know, that this quarter is a fair representation of expectations going forward.

Okay, great. I appreciate all the color. I'll step back. Thanks, Steve.

The next question comes from Manuela Navas from DA Davidson. Please go ahead.

Hello, this is Sharon G. on for Manuela. I have one quick question for loan and deposit growth. We're pretty solid this quarter, and how is the pipeline mix looking?

Morning. The pipeline is looking pretty good. I would say it's consistent with... Probably more so the first and the second quarter than the third quarter. I think we talked about we had a couple of more significant events in the third quarter. So I would think about those rates of growth as more indicative of going forward. As it relates to deposits, we have seasonal inflows because of our municipal deposits. So that kind of ramped up that rate of growth in the third quarter. I will say that this was the first quarter in a while, just kind of an aggregate comment on deposits outside of municipals where we trended actually a little bit better on the individual and commercial deposits than historical medians. You know, going back to the summer of 2022, we started observing the kind of the drift below median performances as the industry was experiencing the kind of the seeking out of liquidity. And we've been bouncing around kind of the bottom quartile to median quartile performance in the retail and commercial side in terms of deposit performance over the past eight quarters. And this was the first quarter where we kind of broke up a little bit over that. So I'm a little bit more optimistic probably on average on the retail and commercial side, but we'll see. It's a sample size of one so far in terms of bucking that trend.

Great. That was all for my questions.

The next question comes from Chris O'Connell from KBW. Please go ahead.

Good morning. You guys mentioned earlier that you moved rates on the most sensitive kind of deposit buckets as well as the munis. Any sense of just the dollar amounts of those two buckets that you guys have moved rates on?

Yeah, I'm not sure I can give you a precise amount, Chris, but we do

carry money market balances of about $2.4 billion. There's a fair amount of that. It hasn't been priced up all that significantly, so there's not a lot of opportunity to go down. But we do have, I'll say, probably in the ballpark of a billion dollars of opportunity. you know, that is kind of a little more rate-sensitive money that was priced up during the rate hikes. And so, you know, that's probably where most of the adjustments will be made is when and if rates continue to come down.

And is that inclusive of the muni deposits or separate?

Yes. Yes. Correct.

Got it. And do you have what either the spot you know, total or interest-bearing deposit costs are as of, you know, either today or kind of, you know, the most recent date?

Yes.

So, interest-bearing deposit costs for Q3 was about 170 basis points. And do you have what it was either, you know,

at the end of the quarter, early in October, kind of after those rate moves?

It was the same interest-bearing deposit costs for just about the same in Q2. You know, there's a little bit of a mixed shift. So there's some, you know, I'll call it rate adjustments as rates move down, but there was also a mixed shift to, you know, more time deposits and interest-bearing deposits. interest-bearing accounts, but the blended rate was about the same in Q2 as it was in Q3.

No, yeah, I'm talking about, like, post-Q3 or either at the end or just after Q3, you know, after the moves, just kind of a spot rate, not the average.

Yeah, I don't know that I have that specifically, Chris, but it's down a bit.

Okay. Got it. And then I think, you know, on the rising rate cycle, you know, the interest bearing beta kind of shook out around, you know, 30% or so. How are you guys thinking about that beta, you know, over the course of, you know, the cutting cycle?

Well, I think we...

To be honest with you, we look at the total beta versus the interest-bearing, so probably haven't framed the question that way in our heads. But I think our expectation is that it's going to be a little bit slower initially, and as the industry responds, it's going to kind of get closer to those levels in the aggregate. I think one of the things that maybe is – There's a couple of things going maybe in different directions. One is I think everybody in the banking space is looking forward to cutting rates on deposits. On the flip side, everybody is also now all of a sudden trying to grow their assets. And there is not a lot of liquidity that's been generated over the past number of quarters. So I think both of those are going to go in different directions in terms of determining that beta. But as it relates to us, I think I mentioned we captured roughly half of that, you know, 50% beta on the first move for those rate-sensitive buckets. And we're expecting that we may be fortunate to capture a little bit more on some of the other ones. But again, on the aggregate deposit base, because again, we have 70% of our deposits that are in truly very low-cost type of accounts. So we have savings accounts paying four and five basis points. So we're not going to be able to move them as much. and we may not touch them for a little bit of time. So I think in the aggregate deposit beta, we're probably going to get to those 24% that we experienced, but it might take us a little bit longer.

Got it. Just thinking about the trajectory of the margin from here under the assumption of the forward curve, you know, appreciate, you know, the NII guy, you know, up in the fourth quarter and year over year. And how are you thinking about the margin into, you know, Q4 and, you know, kind of the trajectory as we get into 2025?

I think, Chris, that the expectations are that, you know, kind of along with NII, the margin would continue to drift up into Q4 and into Q5. I think a fair expectation is three, four, five basis points a quarter. I think that's not unreasonable given what we have turning over on the loan book in particular and the fact that we've stabilized the cost of deposits. I think it's fair to assume that drifting up five, six, seven basis points or four or five basis points a quarter.

Great. Very helpful. And then, you know, can you just give us an update on, you know, the pace and the outlook of the branch plan in terms of, you know, the rollout and timing? You guys, you know, clipped one this quarter. And then, you know, I believe the, you know, intention is for it to be, you know, kind of net neutral this on the overall expense base and just kind of where some of the puts and takes are to help keep that from kind of adding to the overall expense run rate too much going forward?

Yeah. So as we look towards 2025, we have a whole lot slated for late first quarter and second quarter in terms of openings. We have, we've been frankly a little bit slower than we would like to because of a whole bunch of logistical reasons. Plus we're now running into the kind of the quarter months of the year in upstate New York. So opening branches in Buffalo in December may not be the most optimal timing. So we're going to hold off on a couple of those situations. But again, most of them I think are going to come kind of late first quarter. second quarter, and then we've got a number of others coming in the third quarter and a little bit less so in the fourth quarter of next year. So by the end of next year, our plan is to be almost fully open across the board, hopefully. As we have committed to our shareholders, we're also going to be looking to make that net neutral in terms of both branch counts and expenses. The first part of that is already in our numbers because of some of the retail optimization staffing we did late last year. And we have a whole number of other locations that we're considering in terms of consolidating for 2025. So that's how I would think about it. You know, it's going to be a little bit lumpy. These things are not perfectly matched in terms of cost and savings across the year. So some things might come a little bit sooner. Some things might come a little bit later. But in the aggregate, our plan is to stick to what we promised.

Great. I appreciate the time. Thank you.

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Dimitar Karabanov for closing remarks.

Thank you, everybody, for joining us on the third quarter call. We're excited and optimistic about the future here with everything that's going on at our company and look forward to speaking with you back in January. Thank you.

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.