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WesBanco, Inc. (WSBC)

Q1 2013 Earnings Call· Thu, Apr 25, 2013

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon and welcome to Wesbanco's Conference Call. My name is Ashley, and I will be your conference facilitator today. Today's call will cover Wesbanco's discussion of results of operations for the quarter ended March 31, 2013. Please be advised all lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks there will be a question-and-answer period (Operator Instructions). This call is also being recorded. If you object to the recording, please disconnect at this time. Forward-looking statements in this presentation relating to Wesbanco's plans, strategies, objectives, expectations, intentions and adequacy of resources are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The information contained herein should be read in conjunction with Wesbanco's 2012 Annual Report on Form 10-K and other reports, which are available on the SEC’s website www.sec.gov, or at WesBanco's website www.wesbanco.com. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements, which are not historical fact, involve risks and uncertainties, including those detailed in WesBanco's 2012 Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC under the section Risk Factors in Part I, Item 1A. Such statements are subject to important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by such statements WesBanco does not assume any duty to update any forward-looking statements. WesBanco’s first quarter 2013 earnings release was issued yesterday and is available at www.wesbanco.com. This call will include about 20 to 30 minutes of prepared commentary followed by a question-and-answer period, which I will facilitate. An archived webcast of this call will be available at wesbanco.com. WesBanco’s participants in today’s call will be Paul Limbert, President and Chief Executive Officer, Jim Gardill, Chairman of the Board and Robert Young, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. And all will be available for questions following opening statements. Mr. Limbert, you may begin your conference.

Paul M. Limbert

Management

Thank you, Ashley. Good morning everyone. Thank you for participating in WesBanco’s first quarter 2013 earnings conference call. We’re pleased you have joined us this morning to hear about WesBanco’s excellent operating results. I would like to make some opening comments, Bob Young, our CFO will provide financial highlights and then Jim Gardill our Chairman will moderate the question-and-answer period. A press release detailing the results of the first quarter was issued last evening. A copy of the entire press release is available on our website. We will assume that all participants are familiar with WesBanco and we can begin our discussion of the first quarter results. WesBanco had an excellent first quarter. Our results were better than the fourth quarter of last year, and also better than the first quarter of 2012. Including merger related expenses WesBanco was able to increase earnings to $16 million, representing a return on average assets of 1.07% and a return on average equity of 9%. Earnings in 2013 represent an increase of 34% from the first 2012 and 27% increase from the fourth quarter of 2012. These results have allowed us to raise our first quarter 2013 dividend to $0.19 per share or by 5.6%. Our dividend has been increased five times in the last nine quarters. During this quarter we were able to convert the fidelity customer processing into WesBanco’s information systems and change signage on the fidelity branch locations. Completing the conversion during the quarter allowed us to adjust the staffing complement and include most of the final merger related expenses in this quarter. That increased earnings was provided by improvement in net interest income, revenue growth, continued improvement in credit quality and control of other operating expenses. Bob Young will provide additional details relating to the improvements. We’ve been pleased…

Robert H. Young

Management

Thank you, Paul. Good morning everyone. Earnings per share for the first quarter of 2013 were $0.55 up from $0.45 last year, representing an increase of 22.2% despite the merger related and normal operating expenses assumed with the fourth quarter closing of the Fidelity acquisition. GAAP net income was $16 million versus $12 million last year, up 33.6%. Excluding merger related and restructuring expenses of $1.2 million, net income was $16.8 million and earnings per share was a strong $0.57, up 40% and 27.4% respectively from last year. Continued improvements in credit quality resulted in a $2.1 million loan loss provision, lower than any quarters since prior the recession started in 2007. Increased net interest income and non-interest income more than offset an increase in total operating expenses from the acquisition leading to overall positive operating leverage for the quarter. The Fidelity acquisition and improved cost of funds helped to improve the net interest margin and pre-tax, pre-provision earnings were up to 1.72% measured as a return on average assets. Earnings per share was up by a lesser percentage than net income due to the 2.6 million common shares issued for the Fidelity acquisition. As Paul mentioned return on assets and return on equity were up significantly this quarter, with return on average assets breaking through the symbolic 1% barrier for the first time since before the recession and efficiency also improved from the fourth quarter, return on tangible equity increased to 16.72% putting us in a high performing tier of similar size banks, based on year end peer group ratios. Turning to the income statement, net interest income increased 10.3% or $4.3 million for the first quarter due in part to the Fidelity acquisition, 4.9% of organic loan growth over the past year, plus a higher net interest margin…

Operator

Operator

We will now begin the question and answer session. (Operator Instructions) And our first question comes from Catherine Mealor of KBW. Please go ahead. Catherine Mealor – Keefe, Bruyette & Woods : Good morning everyone.

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst

Good morning, Catherine. Catherine Mealor – Keefe, Bruyette & Woods : On the expenses, they came in lower than we were expecting, can (inaudible) little bit, can you just walk us through how far you are to the cost savings, how you’re through conversion, how much more you think you’ve got over the next couple of quarters and maybe what a target efficiency ratio could be for you? Do you feel like once you got the expense savings fully and could get back down a 60% efficiency ratio and maybe even below that given the revenue growth you are seeing? Thanks.

Paul M. Limbert

Management

Thank you, Catherine. Well, I would note they were pretty close to 60% at the end of the quarter anyways, and in fact, drove that lower from the fourth quarter’s level of 62.5%. So, I think in the interim that’s a good target for us and hopefully below that as we move forward. If you take out the restructuring and merger rate expenses of $1.2 million, indeed we were only some 10% above last year’s first quarter and the size of the balance sheet we acquired just coincidentally is about 10% of our size. All of that is before we get significant cost saves, there is a month of cost saves if you will towards the end of the quarter, but we have said in the past that we intend to reinvest back in the franchise. We are adding three offices this year after closing six last year. We are adding originators in our markets and as a result, we expect to drive more business in the way of revenue which you see this quarter starting as we move forward. We did get some nice cost savings on the FDIC insurance line, as well as, less than anticipated increases in some of the other categories, but I think in what you are seeing net of the restructuring and merger related expense add back a little bit more in salaries and wages will have a little bit of higher run rate and marketing in the second quarter, you are pretty close to what we would expect as we move forward. Catherine Mealo – Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc: Okay, great. That’s very helpful. And that’s so (inaudible) assuming we will pickup next quarter, you always got to investment some of your higher cash and securities into that loan demands, you will see more of a shifting in the mix of the balance sheet versus a lot of average earning asset growth?

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst

We are continuing our investment and the talent to expand our commercial lending groups, and we plan to continue that throughout the year, as we have added additional lenders in the Pittsburgh market and in Cincinnati, so we do plan to continue our efforts to grow our loan production capability.

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst

I might just add that we are seeing some very strong pipelines and we are not seeing those pipelines decline at the end of the first quarter, so we feel pretty good about where we can be headed into 2013. Catherine Mealor – Keefe, Bruyette & Woods : Okay. That’s great. Thank you guys.

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst

Thanks Catherine.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from William Wallace of Raymond James. Please go ahead. William Wallace – Raymond James: Good morning gentlemen.

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst

Hi, Wally, good morning. William Wallace – Raymond James: As a quick follow-up to Catherine’s question, so for loan production and pipelines the growth in those accelerate through the first quarter?

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst

Yes, they did as we mentioned in the material, it was growth over the fourth quarter of 2012, and it was material in loan origination. William Wallace – Raymond James: But each month it accelerated?

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst

Well, its always lumpy, Wally, I mean, it’s never a constant progression, but when we looked at the quarter, we look back at the quarter, we were well pleased with the progression we have made in the pipelines and the origination.

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst

And as Bob mentioned in his presentation we've incurred about 45 million in pay-off so that we had in the first quarter

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst

Unusual pay-offs, yes.

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst

Lot of that construction Wally, it will hit the outstandings as we move into the second quarter William Wallace – Raymond James: Right, okay. So, Bob, last quarter in the Q&A, we were talking about margin and you were talking about an expectation in the low 340s by the end of 2013. I know there was some accelerated accretion in the first quarter related to pay off to some of those (inaudible) loans, but maybe if you back that out, what is your expectation now, I am assuming it’s going to be higher.

Robert Young

Analyst

It is. I would say that we anticipate the accretion to drop off, as I said in my commentary, throughout the year and you acknowledge the additional 440,000 in accretion from prepayments. The total loan accretion will remain throughout the next two years at a declining rate, if you will. And there are other aspects to the Mark borrowings, which will eliminate by the end of the year, CDs, which play out over 2 to 2.5 years. They are part of that overall accretion, if you will. So I assume a run off in that at a pace over the next few quarters, that would take a few basis points a quarter away from the margin. Another way to look at it would be to take the entire 1.8 million out of the margin in the first quarter, I don’t think that’s real because purchase accounting is part of GAAP, the acquisition has to be done at fairly value, but the impact of that in the first quarter was some 14 basis points. Stripping that out entirely and looking at the fourth quarter, we were up three basis points on core without fidelity in either quarter. So I think the continued reduction in cost of funds and as I appointed out CDs will continue to reprice down and become a lot less expensive for us as we get towards the end of the year. We have substantially paid off all of our expensive borrowings were below 5% in total borrowings at this point, when many of our peers still have that as a headwind. So I do think that goes well and will suggest not only a higher margin on average for the year that probably a slightly higher endpoint in December. William Wallace – Raymond James: So since we last spoke in January has pricing formed significantly because you already knew about the CDs reprising and the ability to offset pressures on the funding side, so I have to assume that you are seeing some strength from the pricing, something.

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst

We've continue to see improvement, and those things are going to vary on an average balance sheet, average balance sheet is also a factor here, we would have anticipate the balance sheet to be $100 million to $150 million higher and shows not to completely reinvest, the size of fidelity’s balance sheet in an investment portfolio where rates are so [high] today that we are concerned about the impact of those rates as we move forward on market values overall. So I think that also, it's a little bit different twist if you will from January to where we are today, in terms of margin. And these are constant management tools they are going to change continuously throughout the year as we manage our cost of funds and our loan balances. I do think the accretion would, we did anticipate accretion, but it was higher than we thought, that's a factor as well. William Wallace – Raymond James: Okay, fair enough. And then one question on credit, Bob you mentioned in the prepared remarks that you had some accruing TDRs that were commercial that moved into non-approval during the quarter. Can you talk a little bit more about what those ones were and what happened to them during the quarter?

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst

So let me address that just generally as always. In those categories, we continue as Paul said in previous calls, we continue to work with our borrowers from our Community Bank models. So we continue to manage those credit relationships and they will migrate depending on our solutions that we designed for individual credits because we’re analyzing them individually. So as the TDRs will continue to work with those customers, you will see some migrations where we make a decision that we maximize our ability to recover on those credits.

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst

There was one credit, commercial real estate credit in the Charleston market that was added and one in Western Pennsylvania that was added to non-accrual. Those are the two and it is commercial real estate and both moved from TDR to accruing to non-accrual this quarter and that’s the $3 million change probably. William Wallace – Raymond James: Okay. And then lastly also I just wanted to maybe dig into the expense a little bit, where is the related cost reported, is that spread out or is that in anyone particular line item?

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst

No in the press release, that’s in the line item called restructuring and merger related expense. William Wallace – Raymond James: Okay, thank you. So, you had the conversion occur in the middle of the quarter and then you had some of the staff reduction associated with that. So are we going to see release in the top line or you reinvested all of that savings into new hires et cetera in Pittsburgh and other markets?

Robert H. Young

Management

Well, there is a day count in the second quarter as compared to the first quarter. But we should see the full three months of the impact of the reduction in employees, some 59 from the end of the year to the end of the first quarter in the full run rate in the second quarter.

Paul M. Limbert

Management

And those separations took place at the end of February. So as Bob said, we had only one month of those changes in staffing, so you will see the benefits of that. There will be some give backs as we add additional talent, as both Bob and Paul indicated that we were doing in order to expand our lung capability. William Wallace – Raymond James: Okay, that’s good, that’s perfect. I appreciate you, guys. Thank you.

Paul M. Limbert

Management

Okay, Wallace, thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from David Peppard of Janney. Please go ahead. David Peppard – Janney Montgomery Scott LLC: Hi, good morning, guys.

Paul M. Limbert

Management

Hi, David,. David Peppard – Janney Montgomery Scott LLC: We’ve had a lot of comments on the call about staffing and some of the markets. Could you maybe just kind of clarify where we are at in each of your core markets in terms of full set of products and a full personnel to execute on those products on each markets?

Paul M. Limbert

Management

Well, David, it’s more of an evolution kind of, then I’ll start to stop. What we’re doing in the Pittsburgh market is adding additional lenders to that market on both the commercial and the mortgage origination. We’ve added additional commercial lenders in Cincinnati. We continue to look at staffing in Columbus, but as Paul indicated, we’re also adding two new branches in Columbus and another new branch in South Western Pennsylvania. So as we measure those markets in our loan production and capabilities, we keep addressing our staffing needs and increasing the talent of our lenders. We have a very strong commercial lending team. They are generating significant volumes in originations, and we’ve been able to grow that significantly over the last year. And I believe that’s our plan to continue that effort.

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst

I would just simply add that we are providing our full complement of products and services in all of our regions at the present time. We maybe staffing some of that customer contact out of a different region, and the best example, I can give you is our trust wealth management services in the Pittsburgh market, we offer them. But we are currently sending somebody from Wheeling to the Pittsburgh market at the present time. That doesn’t mean that that’s what we’ll do consistently. As we’ve pick up the trust wealth management business in Pittsburgh. We will eventually staff somebody in that particular market. But we do offer all of our full complement of products and services in all of our markets. David Peppard – Janney Montgomery Scott LLC: Okay, thank you guys.

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst

Thank you, Dave.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) And our next question comes from John Moran of Macquarie Capital. Michael Burn – Macquarie Capital: Good morning, guys. This is Michael Burn in for John.

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst

Hi, Michael. Good morning. Michael Burn – Macquarie Capital: Good morning. Could you guys just give us the now that we should have Fidelity and converted? Just give us an idea of your some additional appetite for M&A and maybe just sort of the charter you’re seeing?

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst

I think, what Paul suggested to you is that that’s not our sole source of growth, and we’re balancing organic growth with acquisition opportunities and de novo branch opportunities as we look at the allocation of our capital on our branch network, so we’ve got a multifaceted approach to driving growth, and I think as Paul indicated we are also looking at acquisition opportunities and as we’ve indicated before we’re looking primarily in the markets in which we already exist to try and expand market share in those larger metropolitan areas and in the geographic areas in which we already have a presence. So we’ve been a little bit judicious in our acquisition opportunities and we’ve been a little bit discerning to ensure that we add quality institutions. We are very pleased with the Fidelity transaction both with respect to the market and also with respect to the management group that we’ve added to our team. They are doing an excellent job and they’ve shown a lot of energy and we’re excited to have them as part of our overall group and the team that we work with. Michael Burn – Macquarie Capital: Okay, sure, and then just you guys mentioned sort of hiring additional revenue producers in Fidelity’s market, can you just give me a senses of maybe how many of our, have you any hired any so far in the quarter or up to now? And then, [Toby] on your, just a sense of how many you plan to hire in sort of timeline of those hours?

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst

Well, we’ve already hired treasury management and securities people in the Pittsburgh market. That’s already done, and actually we’ve hired two additional commercial lenders in the past couple of weeks. So we’ve added five, six people to the market already. We are going to continue to look for mortgage originators and commercial lenders in the market. Over the next, I don’t know, six, seven, eight months, we’ll continue to look for individuals. As time goes and as we get closer to our full complement, we obviously are making sure that we get the right people inside our organization and the right people for those particular markets. So the hiring process will go on for another six, seven, eight months probably. Michael Burn – Macquarie Capital: Okay, great. That’s very helpful. Thanks a lot, guys.

James C. Gardill

Analyst

Thanks, Michael.

Operator

Operator

Showing no further questions, this will conclude the question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn conference back to Jim Gardill for any closing remarks.

James C. Gardill

Analyst

Thank you very much. Actually we appreciate facilitating the call. We appreciate everyone participating this morning. We are very pleased with our first quarter numbers. We think it’s set pretty well for the year, the growth in non-interest income, the improvement in net interest margin, the management of expenses, and the success in our Fidelity acquisition have all contributed to that. So, we’re very pleased with the first quarter results. I want to thank you all for participating in this morning’s call. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

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