speaker
Jonah
Conference Call Operator

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to the first Commonwealth Financial Corporation Q2 2026 earnings release conference call. After today's prepared remarks, we will be hosting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand and to withdraw your question, press star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Ryan Thomas, Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

speaker
Ryan Thomas
Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations

Thanks, Jonah, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss First Commonwealth Financial Corporation's second quarter financial results. Participating on today's call will be Mike Price, President and CEO, Jim Reske, Chief Financial Officer, Mike McCuen, Chief Banking Officer, and Brian Sohocke, Chief Credit Officer. As a reminder, a copy of yesterday'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 have also included a slide presentation on our investor relations website with supplemental 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 three of the slide presentation for description of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to defer maturely from those reflected in the forward-looking statements. 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. Reconciliation of these measures can be found in the appendix of today's slide presentation. With that, I will turn the call over to Mike.

speaker
Mike Price
President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Ryan. Second quarter financial performance at First Commonwealth and highlights include core earnings per share of 44 cents, up 7 cents over the first quarter, a core ROA of 1.46%, and core pre-tax pre-provision ROA of 2.14%, a core efficiency ratio of 52.24% and a net interest margin of 4.01%, which expanded nine basis points as a function of lower deposit and funding costs, higher loan yields and securities purchases. All key income statement categories moved positively quarter over quarter to include net interest income, provision expense, non-interest or fee income, and non-interest expense. Second quarter loan growth of 1.97 annualized percent was matched by average deposit growth of 2.03%. Loan growth for the quarter was led by equipment finance, commercial construction, branch-based home equity loan lending, and our indirect lending business, all of which offset contraction in Commercial Real Estate, and CNI Lending. The quarter was notable due to a record quarter of commercial loan payoffs of roughly $740 million following a record first quarter of commercial loan payoffs of roughly $630 million. Commercial loan originations increased to approximately $693 million in the second quarter. Although charge-offs remain elevated as we continue to resolve identified problem credits, credit quality improved modestly in the second quarter with lower non-performing loan balances alongside stable delinquency and allowance levels. Other items that may be of interest to investors include, for the year, Community PA and Cincinnati, two of our five regions, have led the way with both deposit and loan growth. Fee Income grew in part year over year. They've been nice traction in mortgage and wealth management businesses. And the team continues to find uses for AI. And we've felt like we're on our front foot with IT and technology for years, particularly with our FinTech partnerships. But let me just give you one AI example. In our call center, our vendor turned on a feature where AI listens to the call and pops the policy and procedure to the employee to help navigate a solution for our clients. And oftentimes they're navigating up to six different systems at one time. Just one small example of probably a dozen or more. With that, I will turn it over to Jim Reske, our CFO.

speaker
Jim Reske
Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Mike. Mike has already summarized the second quarter's financial performance So I'll try to provide some additional detail around the margin, fee income, and expenses as usual. The net interest margin improved by nine basis points to 4.01%. While average deposits grew by 2.03%, period end deposits were down at an annualized rate of 5.77%, with about two thirds of the decline coming from time deposits. With excess cash on hand and limited loan growth, We priced time deposit promotions less aggressively compared to competitors in the second quarter, resulting in outflows towards the end of the quarter. That tighter deposit pricing obviously helped the NIM. About six basis points of the nine basis points of improvement came from lower funding costs, with the cost of deposits falling by five basis points to 1.74%. The other three basis points came from the asset side of the balance sheet, driven by a combination of higher loan yields, and the investment of excess cash into securities. The rate environment continues to allow us to reprice our loan book upward with fixed rate loans repricing upward by 61 basis points. The yield on the loan portfolio improved by four basis points from 6.03 to 6.07%. The expiration of 150 million in macro swaps on May 1st contributed to the increase in loan yields. Looking ahead to the second half of 2026, We see net loan growth picking up as production continues and payoffs normalize, returning loan growth closer to our mid-single-digit guidance, while the NIM will benefit from the rate environment but suffer from stiffer deposit competition. We expect that will leave the NIM in the low 4% range. Fee income was up by $2.3 million from last quarter. Fee income benefited from an $806,000 gain from the redemption of a $6.6 million sub debt instrument inherited from a prior acquisition, along with a $450,000 Boley death claim, which together accounted for about $1.3 million of the $2.3 million of improvement. We also had an increase of about half a million dollars in interchange and deposit service charges. Our previous guidance for fee income to range from $24 to $25 million per quarter for the remainder of this year remains unchanged. Non-interest expense improved by $1.3 million from last quarter. Salary and hospitalization expense did go up in the second quarter, offset somewhat by a vendor rebate of approximately $450,000. But the quarter-over-quarter comparison benefits were a few discrete expense items that hit us in the first quarter, including about half a million dollars of snow removal costs in the first quarter and a half a million dollar FHLB prepayment penalty in the first quarter. Our previous expense guidance of about $74 to $76 million per quarter remains unchanged for the remainder of 2026. We repurchased approximately $12 million in stock last quarter at a weighted average price of $18.66. We had approximately $13 million remaining in repurchase authorization at the end of the second quarter. And yesterday, our board approved an additional $75 million in repurchase authorization. we intend to continue share repurchase activity in the third quarter. Tangible book value per share grew to $11.58 up from $11.34 last quarter and $10.63 a year ago. Compared to last quarter, our CET1 ratio has improved from 12.5% to 12.6% and our tangible common equity ratio increased from 9.7% to 9.9%. And with that, we'll take any questions you may have.

speaker
Jonah
Conference Call Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, please press star one again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimal sound quality. And if you were muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question is from the line of Daniel Tomeo at Raymond James. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

speaker
Daniel Tomeo
Analyst, Raymond James

Thank you. Good afternoon, guys. Maybe we start on the credit side. Just curious if you could provide some details. I guess the bigger increase, and neither was a huge increase, but a little bit of an increase in classified loans, if you could kind of give us some color on what was driving that in the quarter.

speaker
Brian Sohocke
Chief Credit Officer

Yeah, Daniel, I can jump in. Maybe just taking a look at criticized overall to start. As a whole, the overall trend remained relatively stable. We ended the quarter at 3% of loans, essentially unchanged. Within that portfolio, however, we saw some migration between special mention and substandard. It was really about $10 million and two credits. that resulted in the modest increase in classified assets that you saw. Importantly, the migration occurred within the previously identified criticized relationships rather than a broad influx of new problem credits. As a result, the classified balances increased, but we didn't see a corresponding increased in the overall level of criticized assets, which was a positive. And as Mike said in his comments at the same time, several of the indicators that we view as leading measures of the portfolio direction improved during the quarter. Watch balances decreased by some $30 million, delinquency was stable, and the other portfolio asset metrics improved as well as we dug down into the portfolios. All that said, classified assets and non-performing loans remain elevated above our long-term objectives, and we'll continue to work through those in the future quarters and expect a little bit of a degree of volatility or variability, I should say, in you know, charge-offs and problem loans as we go through those categories.

speaker
Daniel Tomeo
Analyst, Raymond James

Thanks for that. Yeah, that was my next question was just on the charge-off side. I mean, I'm just curious if you can put a little finer point on that in terms of what we may see in terms of charge-offs near term before they come back to somewhat normalized levels.

speaker
Brian Sohocke
Chief Credit Officer

Yeah, it's hard to put an exact number on it. You saw that We increased reserves in the first quarter. If you go back to last quarter, we had three commercial credits with reserves totaling about $11 million. One of those worked through the process in the second quarter and was part of the charge-offs. We had an individual credit that had a $3.4 million charge-off and a prior period reserve of $3.25 million. So as we go through that, we'd expect a little bit of action from those reserves and individual credits before we revert back to kind of where we've seen our charge-offs. If you look at a three- and five-year history, we've been right at about 30 basis points to 32 basis points, and we'll see ourselves revert back to that norm over time.

speaker
Daniel Tomeo
Analyst, Raymond James

Okay, thank you. That's helpful. And then maybe just quickly for you, Jim, on the margin guidance, appreciate the low force thoughts. I mean, it sounds like that means maybe you're expecting a little bit of expansion here in the back half. You know, as you think about it holistically, is that about the levels you think that you might stay in the low forces as these kind of competing factors on both sides start to stabilize, or do you think there's the potential for continued expansion in 27?

speaker
Jim Reske
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, I'm hesitant at this point to give that guidance in the 27, Dan. I'm just trying to look just for the remainder of this year. I mean, the runs we did, the most recent runs we did, did have a margin drifting up for the second half of this year. And I can tell you even explicitly the run we did Last run had the margin with no rate increases at all going to 4.08 in the fourth quarter and 4.13 if there was one hike in September. But that latest run I'm taking with a grain of salt for my guidance because that didn't include the latest and greatest information we have about deposit competition, which is really, really heating up in our market. We were able to bring deposit costs down in the second quarter in a really healthy way, which is good. especially after having lags from peers doing that. So we bring that down. We saw an outflow of CDs and now we see deposit pricing competition picking up. So all that works together to bring that guidance a little forward. But at this point, I can't, the crystal ball doesn't go out into 2027 yet.

speaker
Daniel Tomeo
Analyst, Raymond James

I understand. I appreciate you going over those. Yeah, the pushes and the pulls. Appreciate the answers, guys. Thank you.

speaker
Mike Price
President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

speaker
Jonah
Conference Call Operator

Your next question is from the line of Carl Shepard at RBC Capital Markets. Carl, please go ahead.

speaker
Carl Shepard
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Mike, you touched on the record payoffs again this quarter. I guess, could you frame up maybe what you see as a more normalized range? And then do you have visibility into that in the third quarter and maybe a little bit into the fourth quarter as well?

speaker
Mike Price
President and Chief Executive Officer

We do expect them to subside somewhat. We think we've had probably a half a dozen or so larger ones that were more one-offs and just outright sales and getting out of real estate. A lot of them obviously are construction. A lot of them are planned, going to the permanent market. That being said, we just feel regarding loan growth, we have good growth in construction fundings. We've hit the tipping point there. Business banking and our corporate bank, we have good momentum in each market. Our consumer is growing and probably most importantly, talent and execution just continues to improve. And the first half of the year, we grew two of our five regions. We expect to grow all of them in the second half of the year. So just momentum and just getting beyond this. So that's not perfect, but that's kind of my best take from the vantage point in July.

speaker
Carl Shepard
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Okay, I appreciate that. And then I know this comes up on every quarterly call, but on the buyback, you've gone over kind of your framework before, but the authorization is a little bit larger than you've had. So anything you want to message with the bigger number out there, the score? Thank you.

speaker
Mike Price
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, just, I mean, we're just drifting up all the time. Jim and I put our heads together and it 9.7 and 9.8, and it's going to continue to drift even if we start to hit our loan growth targets. We just thought it might be prudent to get a little larger authorization in place. Jim, would you add to that?

speaker
Jim Reske
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, just exactly that. I mean, the capital ratio keeps drifting upward and upward. Like Mike said, we have plenty of capital to first and foremost capitalize organic growth, which is the first priority. But even then, if the capital TCE ratio gets to where it's pushing 10%, it goes beyond 10%, it's very hard to earn a respectable return on equity. Now, we were really pleased to see the ROTC go over 15% this quarter, but it's harder and harder to do that if you have excess capital. So we bought back some shares. When I look back now in the second quarter, the purchases at 1866, which we bought back a whole lot more given the price today. So that will probably be a little more aggressive going forward.

speaker
Jonah
Conference Call Operator

Thank you both.

speaker
Mike Price
President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

speaker
Jonah
Conference Call Operator

Your next question is from the line of Kelly Mata at KBW. Kelly, please go ahead.

speaker
Kelly Mata
Analyst, KBW

Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for the question. I think putting together some of your margin commentary, one thing you noted was the increased deposit competition. I was hoping you could provide color as to what you're seeing in your markets, one, and then two, your balance sheet flexibility allowed you to be a little bit more discerning. Just wondering how you're thinking about that loan to deposit ratio and the additional flexibility you may have there. Thank you.

speaker
Mike Price
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yes, specifically, and I'll let Jim amplify, but on the deposit side, our money market, we feel we're very competitive, but more on the CD side. And we felt that pressure really just in the last month or so.

speaker
Jim Reske
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, that's right. That's right. The competition, Kelly, is really in the time deposits. And I look back in COVID, we just had way back, we didn't have a very large time deposit book. We run some of that down, but now it's a fairly decent size time deposit book, about $1.7 billion. And so we have to price it to maintain that deposit book and grow it. We had so much excess cash in the second quarter that we felt like we didn't need to be so aggressive, and we pulled back a little bit, and lo and behold, towards the end of the quarter, right in June, as Mike was saying, the deposit competition heated up, and we saw the outflow, so we needed to react to that. And that's really, to bring you up to the minute, we saw even just yesterday a couple more competitors raising CD rates to rates that have four handles on them. The competition really is not so far, anyway, in the money market. that's still in the mid threes, but the CD competition is heating up and it's across the board. It's not just online banks, it's not just credit unions, it's not just smaller banks, it's everybody. So you cannot ignore that and maintain your CD book. So we've raised rates already to do that and we'll continue to do that to grow our deposits to fund our loan growth.

speaker
Mike Price
President and Chief Executive Officer

Kelly, forgive me, the second part of your question,

speaker
Kelly Mata
Analyst, KBW

Just the flexibility on balance sheet and you did have a bit more flexibility this quarter to let some deposits go. So wondering where you're comfortable with taking that loan to deposit ratio.

speaker
Jim Reske
Chief Financial Officer

That's right. We like it where it is in the low 90s, but it's not binding.

speaker
Mike Price
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, we've worked hard to get there. I mean, after Silicon Valley, we really have grown our deposits about 5% a year each year. and we worked it down from 96-97 and so it feels like a good place to be and we don't want to give that away. Quite frankly, our customers didn't have rate with us. They were just loyal customers and they were getting rates somewhere else and we've worked hard to gather the CD book. We appreciate it. It's come mostly from our own customers and we just don't want to give that away and it remains a nice and so forth. So, it's a great way to continue to grow deposits and in a way that our loan yields are good.

speaker
Kelly Mata
Analyst, KBW

Got it. That's helpful. And then on the growth and the payoffs you saw, you noted that there was pressure on CRE which I think you had touched on earlier and also CNI. Can you provide color as to where line utilization stands and how that compares to normalized levels and any dynamics, you know, factoring in there? Thank you.

speaker
Jim Reske
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, it's drifted up. We've been monitoring that, watching that. We've just, the line utilization and revolving commercial lines and C&I lines drifting up over the last three quarters. So the one commentary I gave you, Kelly, is that the production's been really good. It's just the payoffs have been, the payoff crescendo has continued and gotten stronger. If that crescendo, the payoff slows down even a little bit, we'll have really good loan growth. Now, of course, the output pressure on the deposit growth to make sure we fund that longer for the deposits, but it'll all work together. But we're really pleased with just the production side.

speaker
Mike Price
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, Kelly, we also feel like we have six buckets of lending. Commercial real estate, C&I, equipment finance, mortgage, branch-based consumer lending, and indirect auto. And now, in the second half of the year, just going in, we have four of those six growing between equipment finance, indirect auto, HELOC, HELO, and and probably going to get there with CNI and commercials. So just, you know, we're pretty broad based and we just feel like we have momentum in those key businesses. Mortgage, we're still selling most everything we originate. And by the way, mortgage is a good story year over year on the fee side, up almost a million dollars, I believe. And we just have good pipelines despite the rate environment. So we just feel good about loans and where we're at.

speaker
Kelly Mata
Analyst, KBW

Last question, if I could just slip it in. It's just on that, you know, it sounds like everything on the production is very constructive. What do you think is driving that? And what are you seeing as you're talking about borrowers to your borrowers? Are they just more comfortable, you know, where we are now? Just any color would be really helpful as we think about what's been impacting that uptick. Thank you.

speaker
Mike Price
President and Chief Executive Officer

On mortgage or on all?

speaker
Kelly Mata
Analyst, KBW

I was talking mostly commercial, but I'm happy with whatever color you can get. Thanks.

speaker
Mike Price
President and Chief Executive Officer

I just think our regional model has coalesced with really good leadership and new leaders over the course of the last few years and just better and better teams that are just getting more sophisticated. We really like the fact that our business banking, which is the lower end of commercial has really gathered momentum in the last year and a half to two years. We've added a lot of professionals to that space. That's obviously very granular. On the lower end, it comes with a lot of deposits. So at the end of the day, it does give down to talent and execution. We've added talent on that team. The other thing is we've complemented with just a pretty strong and a TM function that's getting better and has more capability. because our borrowers need more than just a loan. They have a deposit relationship. And then even we're doing a better job of cross-selling our wealth management, our insurance. You see that in the numbers and how we've recouped what we've lost with the $13.5 million of crossing $10 billion. And so just all coming together, and we feel like the best years are ahead of us. with the team we have now.

speaker
Kelly Mata
Analyst, KBW

Got it. Thank you so much for all the color. I'll step back.

speaker
Jonah
Conference Call Operator

Your next question is from the line of Manuel Navas from Piper Sandler. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

speaker
Manuel Navas
Analyst, Piper Sandler

You guys have some nice confidence on the production levels in terms of loan growth. How fast Can you see loan growth kind of get back to mid-single digits? Is it as soon as third quarter? Do you need it to build a bit more? Just kind of some thoughts on the pipeline here into the near term, back after the year.

speaker
Mike Price
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, good question. I mean, last quarter we sold a $200 million portfolio, and we had a down draft of another $100 million. So it was quite a climb from that spot in the payoffs we had. with more payoffs to get to 2% annualized. So we do feel like we have some momentum in that, you know, the mid single digit is good guidance for us. We are, as you've seen over the years, we really believe deeply in the concept of operating leverage. So we manage with a lot of cost discipline and we feel like, you know, four or five, 6% is enough to really leverage into are good earnings per share growth and value creation. Another lever we like is we just feel like we can do a better and better job with fee income. And that's one of the reasons we really moved pretty decisively to a regional model. You know, we report by line of business, but we execute and we win in discrete regions throughout the company. And that's the conclusion we came to. It's a little bit more expensive model. but we have good leaders and we're confident that it'll create differentiation over time.

speaker
Manuel Navas
Analyst, Piper Sandler

What's your appetite for continued talent acquisition? Does that pipeline continue or are you kind of seeing it try to produce now and taking a step back?

speaker
Mike Price
President and Chief Executive Officer

I'll tell you, I'll share you an anecdote is that One of our very wise leaders put in a ghost position. And what he meant by that was, I want to be able to hire the right person at any time that I find her or him. And I love that. I love the confidence. And that's the way we feel. When we find good people, we got to find a way to get them on the payroll and move the company forward with the right kind of rainmakers. Consequently, we've lost very few of them over the years. and so that speaks to the culture and the good leaders that we have and so not everybody has caught on yet but after this call I guess I will but I thought that was cool.

speaker
Manuel Navas
Analyst, Piper Sandler

I appreciate the color. Can I shift over to them for a moment? What are kind of like new loan yields coming on at and I'm just trying to think of the marginal aspects to it and how I'm thinking of a shift and I guess you say CD books more like four and a half percent of competitors. Kind of where is your marginal deposit costs right now? And if you could kind of walk through those near-term kind of drivers of NIM, please.

speaker
Jim Reske
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, so I'll try to answer those, but if I could get part of the question just refresh my memory. I think the new cost of deposits blended overall coming on was 3% for a good part of the quarter, but that changed more towards the end of the quarter. with a deposit competition that's going to drift upwards. So that's if you take the blended average of all the deposit growth categories, including NIV, you get kind of a 3% cost of deposit acquisition cost overall. But like I said, the CD rates are definitely going to be in the promotion rates are going to be in the fours going forward. The loan yield coming on, new loans coming on in the mid sixes. 64. Loans coming off a little bit lower than that. So that's where you get the positive replacement yield so far. The differential is much wider in the fixed rate loans. The variable rate loans, if you look at all the production variables, about two-thirds of production, six is about a third of production, roughly. And the positive replacement yields that I mentioned in my prepared remarks is 61. That's on the fixed rate. The variable rate, if the spreads maintain the same level, then the replacement yields are net to about zero. It fluctuates a little bit quarter per quarter, but it's not much. So that's the dynamic there.

speaker
Manuel Navas
Analyst, Piper Sandler

Do you talk a little bit about the repricing potential on the fixed rate side, like over time?

speaker
Jim Reske
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah.

speaker
Manuel Navas
Analyst, Piper Sandler

Maybe the rest of this year into next year?

speaker
Jim Reske
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. I mean, if the Fed holds where they are now, we're really happy with 61 base points on the fixed rate side. That's on the loan side. on the security side was better, but it's skewed a little bit because we accelerated some securities purchases with the excess cash. The securities portfolio yield is low compared to the opportunity right now of new rates. We're able to purchase new securities in low fives right now. So that replacement yield there is pretty strong. But if the Fed just holds where they are for a while, it will eventually reprice the whole loan book, except for the the low rate mortgages that are hanging on that aren't prepaying until they move or the house burns down.

speaker
Mike Price
President and Chief Executive Officer

Is the fixed rate loan still about a third of overall volume?

speaker
Jim Reske
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, overall. And that's all categories. That's not just commercial. That's everything. HELOCs and equipment finance, everything. Hope that helps a little bit.

speaker
Manuel Navas
Analyst, Piper Sandler

Thank you for the commentary. No, it definitely helps. Thank you for the commentary. I'll jump back into the queue.

speaker
Jim Reske
Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Ben Lo.

speaker
Jonah
Conference Call Operator

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. Your next question is from the line of Matthew Breeze at Stevens Bank. Matthew, please go ahead. Yes.

speaker
Matthew Breeze
Analyst, Stevens Bank

Thank you. Good afternoon. I guess I don't know if we've fully answered this, but, you know, what gives you confidence that we're going to see a slowdown? And payoffs, is it just that the current pace is unsustainably high in the normal, such a lower amount that we got to get there at some point, reversion to the mean? And then the other question I had was, if you strip away equipment CNI growth, it looks like non-equipment based CNI growth has been down for maybe four consecutive quarters. Is that expected to turn around as well? And what does the pipeline look like there?

speaker
Mike Price
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, great question. I think the anecdote around each payoff is an important factor in our guidance on that and in the size of the payoffs. I mean, we just don't have that many loans over $50 million anymore. And on the CNI side, we're working really hard to grow it and to grow it granularly with business banking and middle market loans. And we've worked from a decade ago We had all the SNICs. Well, we don't have $100 million of SNICs left. It's that. So the composition of the CNI book over the years has changed. When you talk about the last four quarters, just the pipelines and particularly the pipelines in business banking and really that under $5 million range has grown. as we've invested in that team, you know, the last year plus. I hope that's helpful.

speaker
Matthew Breeze
Analyst, Stevens Bank

Yeah. Jim, maybe just thinking through if, you know, I know securities aren't your first option. Right. But, you know, if loan growth is, let's just say loan growth is on the lower end, the mid single digits and capital is building, do we continue to see some securities purchases? Where would you like to see that as a percentage of assets?

speaker
Jim Reske
Chief Financial Officer

It's a great question. It depends on the funding side. So we really don't believe in balance sheet leverage. Let's go out and borrow a lot of money overnight and buy securities with that to leverage the balance sheet. We'd just rather not do that. We'd rather have a more concentrated balance sheet with less leverage where we really make our money by taking deposits and making loans. But if we had great deposit growth and excess cash, and slower loan growth like we did in the second quarter, then, yeah, securities are a good option, especially when we can get rates where they are down at low fives. But it's not our go-to option. We really don't believe in borrowing excess funds just to purchase securities and get that kind of balance sheet leverage. It dilutes them. It dilutes our way. It gets you little EPS, but in the long run, it's not a winning strategy for a bank like ours. Was there another part of your question?

speaker
Matthew Breeze
Analyst, Stevens Bank

So everything we saw this quarter was really kind of like a pre-funding of stuff that's maturing.

speaker
Jim Reske
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's right. So then, yeah, and then, right, and then we saw, you know, with the way we're pricing CDs, these funds started to have these outflows towards the end of the quarter, and so we got to react to that. If everything goes right, you know, we have the mid-single-digit loan growth, we have the mid-single-digit deposit growth, and loans are possible to grow, and as capital grows, we use a we retire some shares and leave the capital ratios more in line with norms so the capital ratios don't grow with the sky and then we can earn an acceptable return on that capital. That's the balance we're shooting for.

speaker
Matthew Breeze
Analyst, Stevens Bank

Okay. Within expenses, one area I noticed is just that your FDIC insurance expense has been like clockwork between 1.4 and 1.7 million per quarter. It dipped to 1.1 and I'm curious just kind of what happened there and if anything within its kind of one time or non-recurring in any way.

speaker
Jim Reske
Chief Financial Officer

No, that's more of a new run rate. That's based on our new assessments. We're very happy about that. Can't say a whole lot more about it, but it's very, very positive.

speaker
Matthew Breeze
Analyst, Stevens Bank

Okay. I don't know if you provided, but did you have the spot cost of deposits, you know, for the month of June or at the end of June, just to give us some idea of where this thing might be heading?

speaker
Jim Reske
Chief Financial Officer

I did not provide that, but I don't mind providing that. I can get it for you in a minute. I'll give you one more question while you pull it up.

speaker
Matthew Breeze
Analyst, Stevens Bank

Obviously, you know, Morris left rates unchanged today, but it feels like the bias is towards hikes. You know, if we do get a hike or two this year, kind of what's the reaction to the NIM? I think, Jim, you had mentioned 408 by the end of the year, but with the hike, we got the 403. That seemed a little backwards to me, and I was hoping you could flesh it out.

speaker
Jim Reske
Chief Financial Officer

Thank you so much for letting me clarify. No, no, no. With the hike, it was 413. But the adjustment I'm making is that I know that those forecasts we did do not take into account the latest thinking on the POS prices. That's why I backed off to run them to the low fours. But the relationship is about the same. If we get a hike, You get about a five basis point lift for a 25 basis point hike, you know, a five basis point lift in the NIM. It's been that way for a while. So we're still asset sensitive. It's a benefit to us.

speaker
Matthew Breeze
Analyst, Stevens Bank

That's all I have. If you happen to have the spot cost, I'll take it. If not, I'm all set. Thank you.

speaker
Jim Reske
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, okay. It might take me a second or two. Sorry. Oh, 1.71. 1.71 in June.

speaker
Matthew Breeze
Analyst, Stevens Bank

Okay. All right. Let's just step in the right direction then. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

speaker
Jim Reske
Chief Financial Officer

You bet. Thank you.

speaker
Jonah
Conference Call Operator

There are no further questions at this time. We've reached the end of the Q&A session. I will now turn the call back to Mike Price, President and Chief Executive Officer, for closing remarks.

speaker
Mike Price
President and Chief Executive Officer

Appreciate your interest in our company. Appreciate the questions. It's fun running a bank, commercial and a consumer bank, and we feel like we're very relevant to our customers here in central and western PA and Ohio. And we also feel like we're a good bank. We do a lot of the right things for our clients, and first and foremost, we listen to them. But thank you, and look forward to seeing a number of you over the course of the next quarter in the field.

speaker
Jonah
Conference Call Operator

Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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