First Commonwealth Financial Corporation

My name is David, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the first Commonwealth Financial Corporation fourth quarter 2021 earnings release conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, press star one once again. Thank you, Ryan Thomas, Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations. You may begin your conference.

Thank you, David, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss First Commonwealth Financial Corporation's fourth quarter financial results. Participating on today's call will be Mike Price, President and CEO, Jim Reske, Chief Financial Officer, Jane Gervance, President and Chief Revenue Officer, and Brian Carrick, our Chief Credit Officer. As a reminder, a copy of today's earnings release can be accessed by logging on to fcbanking.com and selecting the Investor Relations link at the top of the page. We've also included a slide presentation on our Investor Relations website with supplemental financial information that will be referenced during today's call. Before we begin, I need to caution listeners that this call will contain forward-looking statements. Please refer to our forward-looking statements disclaimer on page 3 of the slide presentation for our descriptions of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statement. Today's call will also include non-GAAP financial measures. Non-GAAP financial measures should be viewed in addition to and not as an alternative for our reported results prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation of these measures can be found in the appendix of today's slide presentation. And now I will turn the call over to Mike.

Hey, thank you, Ryan. This past year was another good year for First Commonwealth. So much of what we did sets us up well for 2022. We continued multi-year investments in our core systems and digital technologies, core businesses, fee businesses, new geographies and credit systems, as well as our leadership and line talent. Here are a few of the 2021 highlights. Regarding loans, we had strong growth XPPP of 12% in the second quarter, 8.2% in the third quarter, and 11.2% in the fourth quarter of 2021, and carried good momentum into 2022. Regarding PPP, in two rounds we made 7,400 loans for $845 million and realized some $23.2 million in forgiveness income in 2021. We also picked up a number of new business prospects in each round of PPP lending. On margin, our NIM suffered in this low-rate environment, but our core NIM, net of excess cash and PPP, seems to have bottomed out in the third quarter of last year. Importantly, our loan growth prospects and asset sensitivity position us well for NIM expansion in 2022. Our non-interest or fee income was up appreciably in 2021 to $106.8 million, even as gain on sale of mortgage income fell from $5.2 million from record 2020 levels. Our card-related income grew $4 million to $28 million. Our wealth and insurance businesses were up $2.7 million to $19.6 million. As we segued from PPP activity to traditional SBA lending, our SBA gain on sales business improved $3.1 million to $6.8 million in 2021. We are now the number one SBA lender in Pittsburgh and a top SBA lender in Ohio. And SBA is poised to make an even more meaningful contribution to fee income in 2022. In mortgage, we've built a strong, balanced offering between purchase money, construction, and refinance. It was well-positioned to take advantage of low rates and higher premiums, I might add, in 2020, doing $787 million in production. Given ongoing strength in the purchase money and construction portions of the business, the team had another strong year with $760 million in 2021 production. Mortgage touched over 6,000 households over the last two years, many now using debit cards, HELOCs, checking accounts, and other services with us. Expenses were well controlled from 2020 to 21, even as we added talent in commercial and indirect lending and scaled our risk and governance culture. We also kept up a brisk pace of IT project work each quarter. Also, after years of looking to buy into the equipment finance space, we did a lift-out strategy with a PA-based team from a larger bank. we will see our first originations this quarter in equipment finance. Our actions to close 20% of our branches in 2020 enabled these investments. We also wanted to give you a sampling of record levels of digital engagements. And just to name a few, mobile remote deposit capture items increased 43% in 2021, We now have 50,000-plus mobile wallet users, and we saw a 63% increase in monthly transactions. Overall, active mobile users on our digital platform increased 13.5% in 2021. And lastly, debit card dollar volume increased 14.4% year-over-year. On capital, the team took advantage of excess capital and low stock prices to retire 2.1 million shares in 2021 at an average price of $14.29. And we still grew book value per share by 8% from $7.82 per share at the end of 2021 to $8.43 per share at year-end 2021. On credit, metrics remain strong in the fourth quarter with our ACL salons at 1.35%, with low delinquency and low charge-offs given our business mix. Turning our attention to the fourth quarter, net income of $34.8 million improved $684,000 as compared to the third quarter. Core earnings per share of $0.37. was a penny better as well. Core ROA was a healthy 1.45%, and the pre-tax pre-provision RA was 1.71%. A $2.7 million negative provision expense stemming from low charge-offs or recovery on a previously charged-off loan and reserve reliefs created tailwinds for the quarter-over-quarter comparison. I wanted to add some color to our fourth quarter loan growth of 11.2% XPPP, which really sets us up well for continuing growth. In CNI lending, we were up 26 million to 9.6% annualized to $1.1 billion in footings. I might add our lines of credit on the commercial side at 35% usage of the total facilities are still well below the pre-pandemic levels of 48%, which could provide some 2022 tailwinds that haven't yet. Commercial construction was up some $65 million from a $318 million base in the quarter, so a lot. Our commitments now run over $750 million, and increased construction draws will be a source of 2022 loan growth tailwind. CRE was up 3.4% to $2.3 billion. Residential mortgage was up $53 million or 10.6% to $2 billion. Really a combination of both mortgage and really reinvigorated consumer lending through our branches. Consumer was up $23 million or 9.4% to $1 billion, including $15 million in growth in indirect auto, which had a terrific year. As we look forward, the outlook in each of our geographies and lending disciplines is positive. Taking a step back from the quarter, our three Ohio markets grew loans over 22%. or $500 million for the year. This stems from building out those three smaller acquisitions we did in northern Ohio, Columbus, and Cincinnati from three to six years ago, respectively. All in all, 2021 was a good year for First Commonwealth, and the fourth quarter was another solid quarter. Our team is just as enthused about what lies ahead for our company. With that, I will turn it over to Jim.

Great. Thanks, Mike. The PPP wave will soon be behind us, but it continues to affect our results in the fourth quarter, so let me say a word about that before moving on to more fundamental results. At the end of the third quarter, we had approximately $152 million in PPP loans on our books, with approximately $6.3 million in fee income left to be recognized as of September 30th. We had thought that most of our PPP loans would have been forgiven by year end, However, as of December 31st, $71 million of PPP loans still remained on the books, with approximately $2.5 million in origination fee income remaining, which will be recognized as interest income over the remaining life of these loans or upon forgiveness. As a result, while we recognized approximately $5.7 million of total PPP income in the third quarter from interest and fees, that figure fell to $4.1 million in the fourth quarter. Nevertheless, the GAAP net interest margin, or NIM, was unchanged at 3.23%. Essentially, strong loan growth could access cash for work, offsetting the loss of PPP income, leaving the GAAP NIM unchanged. Looking forward to 2022, as PPP runs its course, the GAAP NIM will lose the benefit of PPP in the first half of 2022, as it will for all banks that participated in the PPP program. The gap in NIM is then expected to rebound in the second half of 2022 as loan growth puts the remaining excess cash to work. In contrast, our core NIM, which we defined to exclude both PPP income and excess cash, is expected to rise steadily from here. The core NIM increased slightly from 3.16% last quarter to 3.17% in the fourth quarter, confirming our previous guidance that the core NIM bottomed out in the third quarter. We expect that Cornyn trajectory to continue in 2022. The full reconciliation of Cornyn to Gapnin is provided in our earnings supplement, which can be found on the investor relations portion of our website. Fourth quarter fee income benefited from stronger swap income, but that wasn't enough to overcome the seasonal slowdown in mortgage gain on sale income. Expenses were up by half a million dollars over the last quarter, almost entirely driven by expenses related to the build-out of our new equipment finance group. I'll wrap up with some guidance for 2022, which hopefully you'll find helpful. We expect organic loan growth to be in the mid to high single digits and, when combined with growth from our new equipment finance division, should approach double-digit growth in earning assets. But because we can fund that growth with cash and securities portfolio runoff, the bank's total assets should only grow by about $200 million, keeping us under $10 billion in total assets at year-end 2022. Fee income is expected to remain steady in 2022 compared to 2021. As a long-expected fall-off in mortgage and on-sale income is replaced with growth in SBA, interchange, swaps, and wealth income. Expenses are expected to run at $56 to $57 million per quarter in 2022, due in part to our equipment finance buildup. However, we still expect positive operating leverage when comparing our growth in expense with the year-over-year growth in our revenue, excluding PPP. Finally, I would note that our buyback program was active in the fourth quarter, during which time we repurchased 1 million shares at a weighted average price of $15.28. If those numbers sound slightly different from what you recall reading in our earnings release, that's because they are. The repurchase numbers I just gave you are correct, just for the record. In any event, we have approximately $20 million remaining under our current repurchase authorization. And with that, we'll take any questions you may have.

Questions, Operator?

Thank you. At this time, I'd like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. We'll take our first question from Frank Giraldi with Piper Sandler.

Hi, guys. Good night.

Just on – Jim, just a clarification on the – loan growth expectations i heard you say mid to high single digits so was that excluding equipment finance and with equipment finance it's double digits no the number the well yes and no the number i was giving the mid to high single digits is excluding equipment finance it's just just the regular loan growth organic loan growth without equipment finance if you add equipment finance on top of that together all in it should approach double digits okay um And then just, you know, you mentioned the core NIM moving higher here. Wondering if you can give any sort of color on expectations as we see rate hikes, what a given 25 basis point hike would do for your NIM here. Yeah, sure. 25 basis point hike results in about a 5 to 7 base point improvement in the NIM. That's usually in the quarter in which the hike happens. Then there's follow-on effects as long as we price and continue with the after effects after that. So it does drift upwards after that. But that's about the ratio, you know, per hike. Okay. And, you know, any color on how you think about, I would imagine, I don't know if you model it with, you know, static sort of deposit betas through hikes, but I would imagine the first couple at least betas are going to be a lot lower. So, you know, any color on that front in terms of what the five to seven, what sort of deposit betas they've done for that? Yeah, we changed our approach last quarter, and what we're assuming now is 0% deposit betas for the first two hikes, whenever they occur. And we're doing that in our regular planning. We're doing that in our interest rate sensitivity tables that we publish. So 0% deposit rate is what our assumption is in the first few hikes. And that's really just driven by the liquidity levels that we have and that everybody has. After that, our beta assumption is 25% per hike. Okay, so the five to seven then would be for the first few, and then as the deposit beta gaps up a little bit, that would be reduced, I guess, is the way to think about it? Yeah, it would be. It would be. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay, next we'll go to Daniel Tomeo with Raymond James.

Hi, good afternoon, everyone. Maybe first, you touched on the repurchase activity in the quarter, but I just want to know kind of how you're thinking about the repurchase at these prices. And I think you mentioned $14 last quarter. You repurchased on average a little bit higher than that, but obviously with accrued intangible book each quarter, I'm just curious what you're thinking about the process for repurchases now.

Yeah, we're – We, I think, share purchases are a very appropriate way to return capital to shareholders and an appropriate way to manage capital levels. So for us, we will look at, for example, the earn-back calculations, but it's really driven by where we want the capital to be and how much excess capital we're generating and how much capital we need to retain to fund what we expect to happen in loan growth. Last quarter, in the fourth quarter, we were repurchasing up to $16 a share. We just had a cap of $16, and we were repurchasing at levels below that. When it got above that, we just stopped repurchasing. And what we plan to do in the fourth quarter is to repurchase just the excess capital generation we have. We now have, as I mentioned a moment ago, $20 million of share repurchase authority remaining, but we have really strong loan growth prospects, and the share price Still staying about $16 a share and getting north of that, but the share purchase activity probably will slow down a bit from here. Happy to have that authorization, though, so that if the share price does drop, you have plenty of dry powder to buy in the depths.

Understood, yeah, thanks. Yes, absolutely. I guess, secondly, on the margin, you have clear core NIM margin guidance in terms of expansion from here. But in terms of the discussion or the comments you made about the decline in reported NIM of the first half of the year and then a rebound in the back half, what are your assumptions within that for the usage of the excess liquidity on the balance sheet?

Yeah, sure. Thanks for asking. And I'll try to be a little more explicit on the new guidance to be helpful. So the end of the year with about $300 million in excess cash, the number fluctuates a little bit. But we think the excess cash will probably be deployed fully given all the loan growth prospects that we have sometime in the third quarter. At the same time, we stopped purchasing securities and securities portfolio at the end of the year at about $1.6 billion. We think that will drift down to about $1.3 billion by the end of next year, so that will provide another $300 million of funding that we can deploy into loan growth. So that will mean the excess cash will be gone by the end of the third quarter of next year. So what will happen is that the NIM, the gap NIM, will lose the benefit of PPP early in the year but still suffer the weight, the suppressive effect of the excess cash for the first part of the year. By the end of the year, the PPP will be in the rearview mirror, the excess cash will be in the rearview mirror, and the core NIM and the gap NIM will converge. So to be very explicit about it, we think that if rates don't rise at all, both the Gapnin and the Cornyn will probably end the year by the end of the year in the fourth quarter somewhere in the 320 range, in the middle 320s. If rates rise two times, which is what we had in our forecast, I know some of you have rates rising three or four times, so if rates rise two times, both the Gapnin and the Cornyn together will converge in the mid-330s by the end of the year. The pattern is much different. The gap new will fall a little bit first and then recover, and the core new should just steadily rise because in our core new calculation, we exclude both PPP and excess cash. So hopefully that's really helpful to you.

That's very helpful. I appreciate all the color there. And then lastly, changing tax here, just on the equipment finance guy, you talked about the difference in the growth targets with and without, but I think last quarter you mentioned $200 to $250 million in balances is what you were thinking by the end of the year. Is that still the thought process?

Yeah, that's correct, and probably making loans here in the first quarter.

All right, terrific. That's all I have. Thank you for taking my question. Thank you.

Next, we'll go to Steve Moss with B. Reilly.

Good afternoon. Steve, just, you know, going back to loan growth here, Mike, I hear you in terms of very much upbeat and obvious the guidance is there, too. Maybe a little color as to, you know, the type of construction projects you're lending on. I heard you on, I think it was 750 million commitments, you know, kind of curious as to how you've drawn that up and just a little bit more color on the other sources of commercial loan growth you're seeing.

Yeah, on the construction side, we're seeing some nice opportunities with our top developers in probably strong submarkets in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh, kind of, you know, education, meds and tech, and just really good projects coming online with multifamily. And we're also seeing on the industrial side some in-footprint developers with large tenants like Amazon, Frito-Lay, Pepsi, and others that are building out space for those. So high-quality projects, people we know, in-footprint. And they've come on pretty quickly, I think, are – Our commitments there have probably gone from $350 million up to well north of $700 million over the course of the last 12-plus months and not really fully drawn. In fact, we expect that the incremental funding will be about $6 to $9 million per month that will come online this year. So that's just one piece, the commercial construction, and then that goes mini-perms or permed commercial real estate. And then other aspects of the growth are really C&I lending, where we've seen a nice uptick in everything from small business to kind of mid-market classic family-owned businesses. We've also seen an uptick in SBA. And then on the residential side, I think our – we believe our mortgage production will be in line with the last few years. We're getting paid a little bit less on gain on sale. That being said, the consumer or the branch side of the business has really improved the productivity, and that business is growing. And then indirect, we've had nice momentum as well. So one or two of those could miss, and perhaps the commercial – kind of eclipse the consumer side in the fourth quarter. It's just nice to have kind of a loan growth engine that's relatively equally yoked between consumer and commercial banking. And it just allows us perhaps to absorb some shock or maybe a weakness in any one segment in a given quarter. Is that helpful?

That is helpful. And maybe just with the equivalent finance business as you're starting that up here, if you could just remind us of kind of the yields you expect to get and just kind of the trajectory of growth maybe as the year goes on.

Yeah, I mean, the trajectory of growth will be a back end or second half loaded. And then we really expect the business to kind of take off from there and really have breakout years in the next two years once we get beyond this year. We've built the business from scratch, and as of this week, we can book loans. And I guess, Jane, anything you want to add? Jane is the president of our bank and really is hands-on with the startup of equipment finance.

Sure. Thank you. As Mike said, we can go live now and will. And we expect the yields to be in the high fours, and so it will help them a little bit, but it is a hockey stick toward the end of the year.

Right. Okay, that's helpful. And then on expenses, I apologize. It might have just been my phone, but just – If you can repeat, was it $56 million per quarter for expenses? I'm not totally sure.

I'm sorry, yes, the number was, the guidance I gave was $56 to $57 million per quarter.

Okay, great. That's everything for me. Thank you very much. Appreciate the call. Thank you.

Okay, next we'll go to Michael Perito with KBW.

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. On the call side,

I'm just curious maybe if you can spend a minute. There's clearly – if we kind of move back a couple quarters, you guys are clearly kind of in a run right now that is a little higher than what you were thinking six months ago. Some of that seems like maybe some faster growth on the equipment finance side, and some of it seems like obviously the environment on the labor side and elsewhere is kind of a little bit more challenging. But just curious, as we think about that range for next year, I mean, is it safe to say that it assumes budgeted in fairly robust growth on – On the equipment finance side, if it comes in higher, what do you think are some of the pressures that are relevant that we should be mindful of as the cost environment remains a little challenging?

In the range that Jim talked about, in the mid-

high single digits in the budget. And we expect that pretty much across the board in our lending businesses and also across geographies. Growth obviously in Ohio, but the Pennsylvania growth really beginning to move as well.

And I'm sorry, I didn't hear the second part of your question.

It's just generally speaking, I mean, what do you guys view as some of the pressures on expenses upward that could potentially knock you guys above the guy range that you're mindful of managing?

The pressure and inflationary pressure in the supply chain would probably be top of mind for me. All of us are having a lot of open RECs.

maybe those get filled more quickly uh that would actually be good because it would probably lead to more productivity and higher production uh jim anything you want to add yeah you know just because part of your question was talking about first half of 2021 when the run rate was more like 52 million or 53 and then the second half and what's going on in other words we think we were getting kind of stabilizing that 55 or 56 to 57 million dollar number so something that definitely couldn't finance build out um just on that note i would say that we are we're really uh pleased with where things are going we thought that that business would be we'd be lucky to break even in 2022 we actually think that business on a standalone basis will have positive operating leverage this year so pretty soon the more income than actually the expense this year so it's really working out very well but one of the things that happened over the course of 2021 But the early part of the year still got the benefit of operating in a somewhat closed environment. So things like travel, client entertainment, some of the expenses were just inordinately low, like they were in 2020. uh then as we uh over the course of years the pandemic waned and we opened up we spent more money on travel on entertainment all those expenses kind of came up a little bit uh and that added to the expense base as well over the course of the year then when omicron hit that all slowed down again and so we are expecting we're actually looking at um forward to 22.42 and baking the numbers we gave you and our guidance uh really operating as a more open company again so i hope that gives you maybe a little bit color behind some of the trends we saw in the numbers and And the other thing, just to make sure we're clear, is what Mike mentioned. All that production, you know, there's expense associated with that, and that's money well spent. That's in some of the compensation that we pay to get that kind of loan growth. So that's just part of the business.

Yeah. No, that's perfect. Thank you for that. On the fee side, I just want to clarify that you guys are expecting to be fairly flat in that $106 million reported GAAP non-interest income that you guys put up this year for next year?

I think our number is around $107 million this year, total year $107.2 million. That's what I have, and I do think that's going to be slightly up from there, but really the story is going to be mortgage income down a little bit, offset by growth in some of the other areas we talked about, like SBA.

Yeah, and what about on the swap side? I mean, is that an area where we see some decent growth this year, just with rates and with some of the commercial customer growth that you guys are seeing? I mean, I think you guys were running almost $3.5 million leading into the pandemic annually, and then obviously took a step back. I'm just curious what your thoughts are there.

Absolutely, and there could be some upside there and in other places. I think the guidance is hopefully conservative but realistic and then could provide some upside. You know, loan and fees will be hitched together. A lot of times we cross-sell to clients, health management and other fees that really billows the fee income. But each of the businesses is on firm footing, and it's really had a nice growth trajectory the last several years on the fee income side. Wealth was a prime example I highlighted earlier that was between wealth and insurance, we were up $2.7 million to $19.6 this past year. So we'll try to keep it going.

Yeah. Great. And then just last for me, I mean, Jim, you mentioned the $200 million, I think it was, of earning asset growth is staying under $10 billion. you know, can you, like, maybe give us just a state of the pipeline as we look into 2022 on an M&A from an M&A perspective? And, and, you know, I guess, how are you guys thinking about crossing that threshold? And it seems like, particularly with the equipment financing coming on, it's kind of inevitable at some point in the near future. Just curious for some updated thoughts there.

Yeah, I mean, we've done five deals. We've looked at almost 60 at this point. So it has to be really constructive for both the seller and us strategically, and then as well as financially, both on the dilution side and also accruing close to the knitting in our backyard and things that are contiguous to our footprint, execution risk. And then just the details of it. I mean, you can't go in – just, hey, we're going to do a deal. I mean, you get in the midst of a deal and you look at it, and it has to work for both of you, and you have to really feel like, on the other end of this, we're a more valuable company. So I think we've been maybe more picky than some, but you can see the platform we've built out in Ohio from scratch had alone a half a billion dollars of growth this past year. So, I mean, we're conservative, but when we do – When we get involved in a deal, we make it very constructive for both parties. And we're excited about M&A. It's just that's a little lumpy and episodic, but it has to work.

Yeah. And maybe just on that point, one last question, and maybe, Jim, on the budgeting side, I mean, how long do you think you could stay under $10 billion without kind of significantly altering your natural growth, organic growth efforts.

It's actually one of the nice things about using up the cash in 2022 that puts us in a slight borrowing position. at the end of 2022. So, like I said, organically, you think your balance sheet won't grow that much in 2022, so it will comfortably stay below 10 billion. But in 2023, if we're borrowing some money, then it gives you a little flexibility to manage the balance sheet to sell off some assets, like securities, pay off some borrowings, and hover below by the end of 2023. And that would be the plan. But you're right. So you comfortably have 24 months, I guess.

Yeah.

That's right. I think we can stay below the end of 2023 as well. And then, you know, God willing, there's M&A can help us leap across, which I think is also implied in your question, which we've been saying for years.

It sure would be nice to be on the other side of $10 billion, a more profitable and not a less profitable company. Between a nice acquisition plus... you know, plus equipment finance, that would be a strong position to be in. And we've had a record here the last five, six, seven years of improving the profitability of the bank virtually every year.

Thank you guys very much. Mike, if I might add, it's important to remember that indirect SBA equipment finance and mortgage also give us the ability to, uh, to sell assets. We don't, you know, we've chosen to keep lots of that stuff on the balance sheet because we could, but we don't have to do that. And, uh, you know, we're prepared not to. And I, and I think that helps us quite a bit as well.

If you can, uh, know obviously with the way the measurement period works if you can just stay below through the end of 2023 i mean it almost buys you another six plus months anyway even if you were to cross so it really extends the period out even longer before you have to worry about any of the um urban impact or anything like that that's right that's right okay great thank you guys appreciate that thank you okay next we'll go to russell gunther with da davidson

Hey, good afternoon, guys. Just a couple of follow-ups. The first on the loan growth conversation, you know, Mike, you talked about the benefits of the commercial and consumer complementing each other. Both verticals really on fire at the end of the year. I'm just curious within your guidance, you know, how you think about that mix for 2022 and, you know, could it look different or is there less of an appetite to portfolio single family?

Just any thoughts there?

Yeah, I would say that as we close the year, commercial definitely gained momentum in the second half of the year, the mid-market and larger commercial banking. You know, mortgage tamped down a little bit in the third quarter, was surprisingly resilient in the fourth quarter, and the pipelines there looked good going into next year. Our gain on sale income there has been – submarine to pit, but we also get a household, and we get checking accounts, debit cards, and something we can bank, hopefully, for a decade or so.

So mortgages are a source of young, creditworthy households.

You know, as I think about the businesses, small businesses on a good trajectory, as is branch lending, but commercial seems to have really heated up and could carry the day in the first half of the year. Jane, anything you want to add on just momentum in lending businesses as we go into 2022? Sure. If all goes well, nobody has to carry the day.

we expect one of the business lines and we also expect growth again not but evenly but we do expect growth in as a geography so as an example we don't expect rapid commercial real estate growth in our community markets are more rural markets but we do expect lots of good consumer growth

And so if you take that sort of thinking throughout the footprint, that's the beauty of being organized geographically. We can set expectations by line of business and by geography, and we've done that.

Great. I would also add, Russell, that the producers and the teams get just better every year. in each line of business. And Jane likes to say, and I couldn't agree more, our top producers in any of our disciplines are as good as any at our much larger banking brothers and sisters. And that's been fun. And that sets a different tone. And we also did some lift-outs rolling off. And as you know, Russell, we will invest and wait for a return on that investment like we're doing with equipment finance for a year or two. We just think it serves us well, and we have the expense discipline where we can do that.

That's great, Mike, and Shane. Thank you both. I just have one other follow-up, Jim, on the margin conversation.

Guidance you gave in terms of converging in the mid-330s with a couple of hikes, does that consider the equipment finance growth and the static basis?

No, it does. It's all in. Thanks for asking. I appreciate that, but it's all in, equipment finance.

And that's one of the reasons why the equipment finance business with the higher yields, putting cash toward those yields, even if there are no hikes, which almost no one is thinking right now, but if there are no hikes, the margin should still expand because that's a nice margin business.

That's it for me, guys. Thank you.

Thanks, Russell.

I'd like to remind everyone, if you have a question, it's star 1 on your telephone keypad. Next, we'll go to Matthew Brees with Stevens. Hey, good afternoon.

Just a few quick ones. The first is, could you provide with the incremental blended loan yields for the pipeline? What are those today, and what does that compare to versus what's on the books, ex-PPP?

Yeah, we're kind of searching for that.

Yeah, it's not too different than what the answers are giving the rest of the quarters.

The loans are coming out of the mid to low threes. Commercial loans are probably coming out in the mid-threes, depending on the category.

Consumer loans are going to be less than that, high-threes and low-threes.

Got it. Okay. I'm just curious if we're starting to see higher loan yields today, XPPP, versus what's on the books.

Yeah, I would say not yet.

So, you know, maybe it's implying a question of this whole notion of replacement

So whether they're positive or negative, we've talked about this on the earnings calls for several quarters now, and I think to be really honest about it, we had thought that the replacement yields would start to turn neutral in mid-2021, and that really didn't happen. They continue to be negative. It's got to be negative or a little more negative. We've had that bounce around a little bit, but they're negative throughout 2021. We do expect them to really start to neutralize mid-2022, even in a flat rate environment. And equipment finance contribution is part of that. But they should neutralize mid-2022. The nice thing, however, was that our loan growth was such that the loan growth beyond the replacement dollars were all positive. Because if you originate $120 of loans and you run off $100, the first $100 that you originate is negative. If you replace the yield to what's running off, that's negative. But the next $20 is putting excess cash to work. So that replacement yield is incredibly positive. And that basically was a story for us for three-quarters of the year last year as we had really strong growth in the second, third, and fourth quarter. So that's maybe a little more complicated answer than you're asking for, but that's maybe digging deeper into the whole replacement yield story and how that's playing itself out. It hasn't neutralized yet. We generally expect neutralization sometime in the middle of 2022, regardless of what happens in the big picture.

Perfect. Next one for me is just, you know, I appreciate the financial guidance for 2022. Are there any new geographies that you plan to expand into? And then as you think about those items, you know, going back to the M&A question, you know, in terms of priorities, where does M&A fit into the stack these days?

You know, we feel like we need to grow organically first and foremost and make our business better, and then we become more attractive and our valuation goes up. And so we really start with – we have six strategic initiatives this year. I'll just give you two. One is to accelerate growth, and the second one is to improve our digital relevance, which we continue to do every year. And on the growth side are a bevy of initiatives, one being equipment finance and ramping that up as quickly as we possibly can. But it also includes getting better in every one of our businesses, in every one of our geographies. And what you're seeing on the fee income side is just the synapses fire quicker in our regional business model, and that regional president and that team are working better and better together, and they make referrals, and it shows up. So we think the productivity gains... importantly, are among the most important things we can do quarter to quarter and year to year. We do have some things tucked away that we're going to explore. I don't know that we're ready to announce those. We've had good card businesses, and our card business has grown significantly. significantly but we have to evaluate whether we extend in businesses like that we're going to have a foray here in the leasing that leasing will be small ticket how quickly could it become more of a middle market business we think that'll take another year or two or three so there's all these all kinds of things we can expand to do uh with what we have already geographically though assembling the best team to compete is a big, important idea in improving share in each of our major metro markets, Northern Ohio, Columbus, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh. Jane, do you want to add anything to that?

You know, just to cabbage on to what you were saying, Mike, about recruiting for top talent, the beauty of many of our markets is that we're really branch-light. And so we can recruit a lot of commercial talent and create very quick operating leverage.

Is that helpful, Matt?

Very helpful. Last, very quick one for me, is what's a good tax rate for 2022? About 19%. I think that's 19.1%.

We've noticed most of you have dialed that in quite well.

Great. I appreciate you taking all my questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay.

There are no further questions at this time. I'll now turn the call back over to Mike Price for any additional or closing remarks.

Thank you, as always, for your interest in our company. We're enthused about the future of our company. We feel like we've built a balanced bank between commercial and consumer with lots of good offerings, deep offerings. We connect the dots between lines of business, and it's fun. And we feel like we make a difference in the communities we're in with both consumers and and our business clients. Thank you again. I look forward to seeing a number of you over the course of the next quarter. Take care.

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.