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spk00: Thank you Monday. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us for our 4th quarter earnings call. Today's presenters are president and CEO and senior executive vice president and chief financial officer Tom lines. Before beginning the review of our financial results, we ask that you please take note of our standard caution as to any forward looking statements. That may be made during the course of today's call our disclaimer. This is contained in last evening's earnings release, which has been posted to the investor relations page on our website, provident.bank. Now, it's my pleasure to introduce Tony Labazzotta, who will offer his perspective on the quarter. Thank you, Tony.
spk01: Thank you, Adriano. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Provident Financial Services earnings call. The fourth quarter was characterized by moderate economic growth, fluctuating interest rates, and continued industry-wide funding challenges. resulting in reduced profits for many regional banks. Provident has navigated these complexities with resilience, fostered by a commitment to our robust risk management and customer-centric approach. Provident produced good core financial results this quarter, which once again demonstrates the stability of our franchise and the strength of our management team. As such, we reported earnings of 36 cents per share, an annualized return on average assets of 0.77%, and a return on average tangible equity of 9.47%. Excluding merger-related charges and contingent litigation reserves, our pre-tax pre-provision return on average assets was 1.25% for the fourth quarter. At quarter end, our capital was strong and exceeded well-capitalized. Tangible book value per share increased 5.9%, to $16.32. Our tangible common equity ratio was 8.96%. As such, our board of directors approved a quarterly cash dividend of 24 cents per share, payable on February 23rd. During the quarter, our average core deposits remained very stable. Our rising rate cycle to date deposit beta was approximately 33.5%. which is well below the average based on available data, and we believe is among the best in our peer group. Our deposit beta and steady deposit levels reflect the quality of our deposit base. Our total cost of deposits increased as expected given market trends, but remained among the best in our peer group. The total cost of funds grew 19 basis points to 2.23%, compressing our net interest margin for basis points to 2.92%. We expect a continued easing in the rate of increase in our total cost of funds, which should stabilize the net interest margin. Our commercial lending team closed approximately $450 million of new commercial loans during the fourth quarter. Payoffs remain relatively low at about $95 million, which is consistent with the trailing quarter. Our credit metrics continue to be strong in the fourth quarter, and we are maintaining prudent underwriting standards, particularly in our CRE lending portfolio. As a result of our production and low level of prepayments, our commercial loans grew approximately 212 million or 9.2% annualized for the quarter. For the year, we grew 641 million or 7.3%. The pull through in our commercial loan pipeline during the fourth quarter was in line with our expectations. And the gross pipeline remains strong at approximately $1.1 billion. The pull-through adjusted pipeline, including loans pending closing, is approximately $671 million. And our projected pipeline rate is 7.17%. And we remain optimistic regarding the strength and quality of our pipeline. Our fee-based businesses performed well. Despite a hardened insurance market, Profit and Protection Plus has strong fourth quarter with 81% organic growth, which resulted in a 19.7% increase in revenue and a 4.1% increase in operating profit as compared to the same quarter last year. Fee income at Beacon Trust remains stable. Improved market conditions drove an increase in assets under management to $3.9 billion at year end. which should drive improved fee income in the first quarter of 2024. With regard to our prospective merger with Lakeland Bancorp, we are continuing our engagement with the regulators and await final approval of the merger. While regulatory approval is not within our control and is not guaranteed, preparations for our merger with Lakeland continues to progress as both companies eagerly await approval. As we move into 2024, our focus will be on growing our business lines with an emphasis on deposit growth. In addition, we will continue to strengthen the fundamentals of our business with a particular attention towards operational efficiency, pricing discipline, and risk management. Now, I will turn the call over to Tom for his comments on our financial performance. Tom? Thank you, Tony, and good morning, everyone.
spk02: As Tony noted, our net income for the quarter was $27.3 million, or $0.36 per share. compared with $28.5 million, or $0.38 per share, for the trailing quarter, and $49 million, or $0.66 per share, for the fourth quarter of 2022. Transaction charges related to our pending merger with Lakeland Bancorp totaled $2.5 million in the current quarter, or approximately $0.03 per share, and $2.3 million in the trailing quarter. Excluding these merger-related charges and a $3 million charge for contingent litigation reserves, pre-tax pre-provision earnings, the quarter with 44.4 million dollars or an annualized 1.25 percent of average assets revenue total 115 million dollars for the quarter compared to 116 million for the trailing quarter and 132 million for the fourth quarter of 2022. our net interest margin decreased four basis points from the trailing quarter to 2.92 percent the yield on earning assets improved by 15 basis points versus the trailing quarter as floating and adjustable rate loans repriced favorably and new loan originations reflected higher market rates. This improvement in asset yields, however, was more than offset by an increase in interest-bearing funding costs. Increased interest expense reflected current market conditions and funding requirements, which resulted in an increase in average borrowings despite an increase in average deposits. Average non-interest-bearing balances also decreased as some balances moved to earn interest-bearing insured cash suite product in the trailing quarter in order to obtain increased deposit insurance. The shift from non-interest-bearing to the ICS product has greatly diminished in the fourth quarter. In addition, both average balances and rates paid on interest-bearing demand and time deposits increased during the quarter. The average total cost of deposits increased 21 basis points in the trailing quarter to 1.95%. This is a deceleration from the trailing quarter, but the increase brought our rising rate cycle to date total deposit cost data to 33.5%. The average cost of total interest-bearing liabilities also increased 21 basis points in the trailing quarter to 2.71%. The prolonged inverted yield curve and ongoing deposit competition continue to impact funding costs. This is expected to largely offset future improvements in asset yields, and we currently project the margin will stabilize in the 2.85% to 2.90% range. Period end total loans grew $206 million driven by C&I, CRE, and multifamily mortgage loans. Our pull-through adjusted loan pipeline at year end was $671 million with a weighted average rate of 7.17% versus our current portfolio yield of 5.5%. Asset quality remains strong with non-performing loans totaling 46 basis points of total loans and criticized and classified loans representing 2.2% of total loans. Net charge-offs were $863,000 on an annualized three basis points of average loans this quarter, bringing our full-year net charge-offs to just eight basis points. The provision for credit losses on loans decreased to $500,000 for the quarter due to a modestly improved economic forecast within our CECL model. As a result, the allowance for credit losses on loans decreased to 99 basis points of total loans at December 31st from 1.01% at September 30th. Non-interest incomes remained steady this quarter at $19 million. Excluding provisions for credit losses on commitments to extend credit, merger-related charges, and the establishment of a $3 million contingent litigation reserve related to a previously disclosed matter, non-interest expense increased to $70.4 million for the quarter and included two additional notable items that are not expected to recur. These items consisted of a $2 million write-down of an REO property and a $775,000 special FDIC assessment. Our effective tax rate was also impacted by an unusual discrete item this quarter, as a deferred tax asset related to performance-based stock compensation was written down by $1.9 million. We currently project our 2024 effective tax rate to return to approximately 26.5%. That concludes our prepared remarks. We'd be happy to respond to questions.
spk04: The floor is now open for your questions. To ask a question at this time, simply press the star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Again, to ask a question at this time, simply press the star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. We'll now take a moment to compile our roster. Our first question comes from the line of Mark Fitzgibbon with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.
spk07: Hey, guys, good morning. Happy Friday.
spk01: Mark, how are you?
spk07: Good, thanks. Hey, Tony, I wonder if you guys could explain that contingent litigation reserve, what it relates to, and how that flows.
spk02: Yeah, Mark, that's pending litigation that we disclosed in our last quarter 10Q in the contingency footnote. There's greater detail available there, but it's an estimate of a potential settlement or ultimate damage outcome.
spk07: And I just don't have that in front of me. What does it relate to, Tom?
spk02: Yeah, it's part of a class action lawsuit around approved positive, settled negative overdraft fees with respect to debit card transactions.
spk07: Gotcha. Okay. And then secondly, it looked like there was about a $19.6 million uptake in non-performing commercial loans. Any color you could provide on those?
spk02: Yeah, the flows for the quarter were actually positive, absent one large loan moving into non-performing category. We had about $10 million of favorable resolutions, and then we had a little over $19 million loan move into the non-performing category. At this point, we deem adequate collateral coverage, and we're working through resolution on that, borrowers cooperative, winding down operations, and looking to market the underlying collateral properties. It's a C&I loan. It's a C&I loan, yes.
spk07: Okay. And then, Tom, any thoughts on sort of expense growth this year, excluding the impact of Lakeland?
spk02: Yeah, I think we'd be about $68 to $69 million a quarter. It's usually weighed a little heavier in the first quarter, first quarter and a half of the year mark, just because of the usual seasonal items and payroll tax resets.
spk07: Okay. And then lastly, could you share with us AUM and maybe net flows for the quarter?
spk02: AUM closed at $3.9 billion. Really, we saw the big pickup in the last month of the year. Looking at averages, you know, at September 30th, it was $3.6 billion, $3.551 billion, went down to $3.4 billion, $3.7 billion, and $3.9 billion at the end of the period. So, in terms of flows, a pretty good pickup in terms of organic growth over the course of the year. Nothing notable to bring to your attention in terms of outflows.
spk07: So in the fourth quarter, there were positive flows?
spk05: Positive net? That's correct. Okay. Yep. Okay, great. Thank you.
spk04: Our next question comes from the line of Billy Young with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
spk03: Hey, good morning, guys. How are you? I guess just to touch on the margin guidance, the 285 to 295 range for the year. I guess, can you just help us parse through what gets you to kind of the top end of the range and then what you're assuming on rate cuts? I think last quarter you were assuming two, now the forward curve is pointing closer to six. So, how did that kind of change your margin expectations? Thanks.
spk02: Yeah, the softest part of the estimate bill is probably on the funding side as we try to anticipate, absent any rate movement or even in the face of a declining rate environment, how much further the liability costs could go up, particularly on the deposit side, because we are pretty low relative to our peer group. So, you know, we don't see that necessarily stopping just because rate movements have plateaued. In terms of what's modeled, We work off the Moody's baseline forecast as a kind of a default and then adjust it if we deem it necessary. So that's what's built into our model right now. They had four 25 basis point rate increases in there, but the last one's in December. So figure three, that would be meaningful to 2024.
spk01: Yeah, I would just add on to that that some of the trends that we're seeing in terms of on the deposit side and the cost rising are very much stabilized but i think what tom is mentioning is that given where we are in our relative cost of deposits uh and the dynamics may occur that can show us on the lower end of that margin but if they don't we should be on the higher end of our expectation that's correct and bill i misspoke i said writing rate increases obviously i meant rate excuse me rate decreases right okay okay um and then
spk03: guess as a follow-up to that you know obviously your deposit betas screen very well versus peers in the industry like you said um and i guess you know there is it may be a bit of a slight lag on the way up you know kind of thinking i guess beyond 2024 a little bit you know how do you think deposit betas should um behave on the way down
spk02: Again, if the terminal rate is lower than the competitive environment, it would probably slow down, meaning that we wouldn't be able to decrease quite as quickly on the way down as you would if we were up to full market pricing.
spk05: Hopefully, we're conserved in that. That's how we're modeling. Okay. Got it.
spk03: And then switching gears, you know, CNI growth was nice and pretty strong this quarter. Can you just speak to, you know, kind of – What are some of the drivers there that you saw? And how are you feeling about the opportunities going to 2024 here?
spk01: Well, the drivers were tactical. That was our focus internally. You know, how we drove not only parts of our incentive plan, but our focus, even reducing the levels in the Cree side in terms of how much we would own on an individual vehicle. loan and some of the qualitative natures. More importantly, one of the drivers was how we attached the total relationship to it, meaning the deposit side. So naturally, you would see a lot of transactional CRE not happening at Provident over the last couple of quarters, and you would see more of a focus on the deposit relational side, which comes largely on the C&I, but even on the CRE side, The stuff that we've been putting on has been coming on with deposit relationships. So again, I think that's a focus internally, and our team rose to the challenge. And we see that happening again, market conditions considered. We see that focus moving into 2024 even more acutely.
spk02: The other factor that helped loan growth in Q4, Bill, was a reduction in prepayments. I think we're going to see a little bit of pickup. I know for the first couple of weeks of this quarter, some of the things that we expected to pay off in Q4 didn't pay off until Q1. So I think looking forward in terms of a long growth rate, something in the 4% to 5% range makes sense for us for 2024.
spk05: Very appreciate it, guys. That's all I've got. Thank you.
spk04: Our next question comes from the line of Michael Perito with KBW. Please go ahead.
spk06: Hey, guys. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. One quick follow-up on the last line of questioning just around loan growth. You know, 4% to 5% for the year seems very reasonable. But any areas of upside to that? I mean, like, you know, for example, maybe on the construction side where, you There still seems to be a lot of supply issues, particularly on the residential construction side in your markets. Just any areas where you think there maybe could be a pickup if we kind of continue to kind of glide to the soft landing on the macro side?
spk01: Yeah, I will answer that in a little bit of an unusual way because I think there's an upside in all of our lending categories that we choose to be in. I think this year we were very contained in our lending. We tightened down a lot of our underwriting standards and anticipation of what might happen in the marketplace. We de-emphasized certain concentrations we had, and we spent a good amount of time, you know, authoring some of those, including the construction portfolio. So, from our perspective, you know, had it been business as usual, we could have had a substantial growth in 2023. You know, our folks are out there. I think if market conditions are or prevalent that allow for loan growth, I think we'll get our fair share and we can certainly meet or exceed the expectations that Tom just mentioned. But all within the credit underwriting standards that we have in place.
spk06: Got it. Helpful, Tony. Thanks. And a little bit of a conceptual question here, but obviously 23% It kind of was a bit of a challenging year, right? You had the macro and rate uncertainty. You had the pending deal. Just as we think about kind of at the onset of 24 here, you know, assuming that the Lakeland deal closes at the end of the quarter here, how do you kind of attack the strategic priority list? What are some of the top, you know, on the other side of that? You know, where do you guys focus? What should we be mindful of as you guys, you know, move past, you know, the rate hikes and the pending deal?
spk01: Well, I mean, I can give you some color on that. I mean, first, I come back to 23 and see that, you know, the Providence team, despite all the delays with the merger and so much work that we put into it, still managed to do a fair job, you know, producing some good results. I think when we look into 24, we're optimistic that we'll get the deal closed as soon as possible. And then our focus will be on a number of things. primarily is looking at our business lines and figuring out how we deepen and share across both organizations since we have complementary services. And building our businesses would be a big focus, principally on the funding side. I think individually, I think both Lakeland and us are focused on growing our funding base. And together, I think we're going to look to deepen that. Lastly, I think we've spent a good amount of calories preparing this bank for it to be $25 billion already. And I think remaining, you know, putting together these two banks, achieving our efficiencies, you know, getting it ready technologically as we move into our future. I think those are the things that we're going to be paying a lot of attention to, you know, pricing disciplines and things of that nature. But a big focus on building our businesses, operational, you know, efficiency. And again, I think we're going to have the combined team that's going to be more than capable of rising to that challenge. So I'm excited and optimistic once we get this deal closed.
spk06: That was perfect.
spk05: Thanks, Tony. Good update. I appreciate you guys taking my questions. Have a good weekend. Thank you. You too. Thank you.
spk04: I would now like to turn the call over to Tony Lavazetta for closing remarks.
spk01: Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for joining the call. As we all know, 2023 was a very difficult year. I think as we head to 2024, as I mentioned earlier, I think we're all optimistic that we're going to get the merger closed and focus on building our businesses and the efficiencies I mentioned. The team is ready to meet those challenges, and I look forward to talking to you in the quarter and speaking again in the future. Thank you very much, and have a great day.
spk04: This concludes today's call. You may now disconnect.
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