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WesBanco, Inc. (WSBC)

Q4 2013 Earnings Call· Wed, Jan 29, 2014

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to WesBanco’s Conference Call. My name is Amy and I will be your conference facilitator today. Today’s call will cover WesBanco’s discussion of results of operations for the quarter and year ended December 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, include risks and uncertainties, including those details 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 fourth quarter 2013 earnings release was issued yesterday and is available at www.wesbanco.com. This call will include about 25 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; James C. Gardill, Chairman of the Board; and Todd Clossin, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer and Robert Young, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. And all will be available for questions following the opening statements. Mr. Limbert, you may begin your conference.

Paul M. Limbert

Management

Thank you, Amy. Good morning. Thank you for participating in WesBanco’s fourth quarter 2013 earnings conference call. We are pleased that 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, James C. Gardill, our Chairman, will moderate the question-and-answer period. Before I get started I would like to welcome Todd Clossin to WesBanco’s management team. Todd brings to WesBanco knowledge he has gained in a variety of senior management positions including Regional President as well as Chief Administrative Officer reporting to the CEO of Fifth Third Bank. We look forward to his leadership to improve WesBanco’s products and services. As all of you know Todd will become WesBanco’s President and CEO upon my retirement in April. Todd is with us this morning. A press release detailing on the results of the fourth quarter and the year 2013 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 our financial results and the year 2013. WesBanco had an excellent year net income was up 29%, there were no large unusual one time revenue or expense other than the Pittsburgh acquisition, which resulted of course in certain one-time cost. The ROA for the year was 1.05% and return on tangible equity was 15.8%, our stock price was up 44%. Returns like these have provided the ability to raise dividends twice during 2013, further improving our returns to shareholders, various kinds of number define an excellent year. Financial results for enhanced by our continued efforts to improve the credit quality of our loan portfolio, thereby reducing the provision…

Robert H. Young

Management

Thank you, Paul. Good morning all. Earnings per share for the fourth quarter of 2013 were $0.52 up from $0.46 last year or 13%. Net income was $15.4 million versus $12.7 million last year up 21.4%. For the year end December 31, earning per share was a strong $2.18 per share as compared to $1.84 for all of 2012 an increase of 18.5%. Net income was $63.9 million versus $49.5 million for the same comparable periods up some 29%. Excluding merger related and restructuring expenses net of tax for both 12 months periods, net income was up 24.4% and earning per share 13.9%. In addition, the continued improvements in credit quality the year 2013 showed positive operating leverage with total revenue growth exceeding expense growth. Accretable yield from last year’s Pittsburgh acquisition a better mix of loans versus investments in earnings assets and an improved cost to funds helped to improve the net interest margin and pre-tax pre-provision return on average assets was 167 – 1.67% for both periods. Earning per share was up by a lesser percentage of the net income due to the shares issued for last year’s acquisition. Both return on average assets and return on average equity are significantly ahead of last year’s results and core operating efficiency is approximately 61%. Return on tangible equity for the year increased to 15.8% putting us in a high performing tier of similar size banks based on prior quarter peer group ratios. Turning to the income statement. Net interest income increased $4 million or 9.1% in the fourth quarter and $17.1 million or 10.2% for the year, due to increased average earning assets primarily through higher average loan balances. Average earning assets increased $322 million or 6.5% in the fourth quarter and $421 million or 8.5% for the year…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions). Our first question is from Kevin Fitzsimmons with Sandler O'Neill. Go ahead please. Kevin Fitzsimmons – Sandler O'Neill: Good morning guys.

Robert H. Young

Management

Good morning Kevin. Kevin Fitzsimmons – Sandler O'Neill: Just wanted first of all just to clarify the margin outlook, so from what I thought I heard decrease in income in the fourth quarter contributed about five basis points, so I take that to mean the core margin is about 3.53 if we ex that out and then what you are saying is you expect going forward that core margin to be the same or slightly higher and then we would think of theoretically that five basis points pace of accretion income has dwindling down over the next couple of years. Is that a fair way to characterize it?

Robert H. Young

Management

That is correct, Kevin we would expect at most three to four basis points for 2014 in accretion related income and a slightly increasing net interest margin otherwise which comes from the continued remix in the balance sheet are slight asset sensitivity and loan growth. Kevin Fitzsimmons – Sandler O'Neill : Great, great thanks for clarifying that Bob and then if I can just ask you’ve mentioned a couple of times in the call about the – being open to the idea of acquisition opportunities when they present themselves. Can you remind us what would be your ideal appetite by asset size, by market, are there – are you looking predominantly for in market type of cost savings deals or are there other kind of new frontier markets adjacent to your footprint that you would look at doing deals and then on that front are you sensing there is a pick up in conversations or is it more of a kind of slow steady pace of opportunity out there. Thanks.

James C. Gardill

Analyst

Kevin thanks, I guess to start with that question you could almost say all of the above. Basically I believe that we’ve indicated in the past we would like to stay within our principle markets, we’d like to continue to improve our market share in some of the larger metropolitan areas, we’d also like to look at contiguous markets that have attractive opportunities for us and so we continue to evaluate. As far as asset size, we would look at acquisitions that primarily have synergy and so we’d be looking at larger transactions, but in certain markets we’d look at smaller transactions where they could add market share. So I think it depends on the opportunity, and it depends on the pricing, and it depends on the impact for our shareholders and our long-term growth. So we continue to have an open mind about opportunities and we look for the right pricing and opportunity within the areas that we manage and within the areas that we operate in. Kevin Fitzsimmons – Sandler O'Neill: Thanks, Jim. Just – and then just on that note, are you getting a sense that this is a wave or coming or more of just really kind of one-by-one very specific opportunities that will take time to emerge?

James C. Gardill

Analyst

There seems to be more activity in the marketplace here in the last 60 days to 90 days. We’ve looked at some transactions and opportunities. We’ve seen announcements on additional transactions. I think there is some regulatory pressure on some of the smaller banks, the Dodd-Frank regulations coming on board would have an impact. We are seeing some impact on mortgage lending and compliance costs. So there are some pressures on smaller institutions, but I think there are also some almost transformative kinds of deals that are being – touted out there that we’ve seen. So we continue to watch all of those. Kevin Fitzsimmons – Sandler O'Neill: Okay, thank you very much guys.

James C. Gardill

Analyst

Thank you very much Kevin.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Scott Valentin with FBR. Go ahead please. Scott J. Valentin – FBR Capital Markets & Co.,: Good morning and thanks for taking my question.

James C. Gardill

Analyst

Good morning, Scott. Scott J. Valentin – FBR Capital Markets & Co.,: With regard, I think you mentioned in the operating expense line there was some true ups I guess some year end normal adjustments and that came a little bit higher than we have thought. Just wondering if you could give maybe breakout of what those kinds of adjustments were and maybe an idea of what kind of core experience rate is to think about going forward?

Robert H. Young

Management

Sure can do that Scott. There were primarily higher in the salary and wage line and keep in mind that we talked about a couple of new branches and while one of them didn’t come on line here until early January. We had the folks hired for that branch that both of those new branch is around the Columbus market. So we will produce revenue out of them going forward, but we did have those employees on hand. We had some incentive compensation true up in the fourth quarter as you would imagine production levels were high throughout the year and we did true that up for some of our producers in expectation of approvals on those coming here in the first quarter. We have two or three positions senior level positions in the organization. You know Todd is us here and that are – I don’t want to use the word duplicate, but we have two of the same if you will during the transition periods. So there is a little bit of that in mortgage lending HR and the CEO office. We are hiring more producers; Paul has talked about that throughout the year. There were a couple of two or three additional commercial folks on hand including the new senior lender Cincinnati that also impacted that and you have the full impact in the fourth quarter of wage increases for a certain portion of our non-exempt employees that dates back to August, but its full quarter either in the fourth quarter. So those are the primary reasons, there is a little bit of securities brokerage additional commissions as well those are the primary reasons, there is also deferred compensation that offsets itself in non-interest income.

Paul M. Limbert

Management

And Scott just summarizing on that because I think it’s important to look at quarterly differences. We go through a succession planning process as Bob noted we changed the traditional leaders in mortgage in HR during the quarter. So we had a transition phase where we had Senior Executive Officers duplicate during the quarter. We also opened the two new branches and then we added new revenue producers as Todd indicated in our last call, we would be adding and we won’t see that revenue production tow into the first quarter and second quarters of 2014, so part of the quarterly issue with expenses is matter of timing. Scott J. Valentin – FBR Capital Markets & Co.,: Okay that's helpful. Thank you for the color. And then just mortgage banking like most others, this quarter was challenging for the industry just wondering in terms of a decline, was it more volume driven or more again on sale margin driven.

Robert H. Young

Management

It’s more volume driven than it is gain on sale, our gain on sale margins have held up very well during the year at close to 2%. So it is that and Paul were you going to talk about the mix in the balance sheet? Including more on the balance sheet as well. Scott J. Valentin – FBR Capital Markets & Co.,: Okay thank you and then one final question. On loan yields, still very competitive market pretty in all the banks we talk to. Just wondering within your footprint any markets, you mentioned Pittsburgh as being a big production area for you. Are there any markets that are I mean less competitive that you focused on, are all markets roughly the same and then the probably that maybe new origination rates where they are relative to the portfolio today, trying to get an idea of maybe how much compression is left through the loan portfolio.

Paul M. Limbert

Management

Let me start with a last point first, and I guess the – our ratio of new purchase mortgages is much higher than the industry and so we have not seen as much of a reduction and don’t project as much of reduction in our long-term mortgage origination for the coming year. The refinance boom has of course faded, but we’ve always had a higher proportion from our branch network of new finance, new purchases. So we feel pretty strong it will be okay there, the other production issues on the lending, the competition is keen in all of the markets and it depends really on the players. We see different competition for either large banks or smaller banks depending on the market, we are in four large MSAs, so you do see a different level of competition and we are also in rural markets and we see smaller player competition there. So it does vary quite a bit Scott. Scott J. Valentin – FBR Capital Markets & Co.,: Okay. All right. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Stephen Scouten with KBW. Go ahead please. Stephen Scouten – Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Hi good morning guys, thanks for taking my call. I missed some of the call, just now if you are down here in Atlanta we shut down for an inch and half of snow so I know guys wouldn’t understand that up there but…

Robert H. Young

Management

We heard.

James C. Gardill

Analyst

Okay we heard Steve, thank you very much for participating. Stephen Scouten – Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Sorry if my phone were cut off, but just some additional clarification on I guess expectations for production and maybe net loan growth next year, I mean obviously the $1.6 billion of originations is really impressive and I would expect with the new lenders added that we would see comparable to maybe increase production next year, but do you see any abatement in terms of the kind of the run-off and so of course that can correct that net growth to that $207 million number.

James C. Gardill

Analyst

You know and I’ll let Paul speak to this in a second Steve, but one of the things that we saw in the second half of the year was as rates started to move refinancings declined. So we had a little more stickiness in originations. So I would think that we would continue to see some improvement there, competition for loans is still very strong and that will have an impact, but the refinancings have slowed a little bit on the commercial side. Paul.

Paul M. Limbert

Management

Steve, I do anticipate our originations staying at a high levels, we have a very talented lending team on staff, they have shown that they can originate loans in a very competitive marketplace, I really don’t see why that would not continue into 2014, they are very – we’ve got a seasoned team, they are very focused, we have some new initiatives established for some of our market areas and we have a couple of new lenders that we are planning on adding to some of our market areas. So I think we’ve got plans in place to do very well in 2014. Stephen Scouten – Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Okay great, well thanks guys. I appreciate it, I think all my other questions had been covered previously, and I appreciate it.

James C. Gardill

Analyst

Thank you, Steve.

Operator

Operator

Your next question is from William Wallace with Raymond James. Go ahead please. William Wallace – Raymond James: Thank you. Good morning guys.

James C. Gardill

Analyst

Good morning Wallace. William Wallace – Raymond James: I want to maybe dig in a little bit more on the margin commentary; there has been a couple of questions in the Q&A around it. Bob you mentioned that you expect actually some core margin expansion, which I think is somewhat unique of what we are hearing from a lot of the other banks in the industry and you did say that you would expect some of that to be driven by a shift in the earning asset mix. So my first question would be, give a target maybe what portion of your earnings assets would be securities versus the higher yielding loans?

Paul M. Limbert

Management

We are anticipating that if you take a look at the growth that we have had this year in loans and we are not going to give you the growth number that we have in our plan for next year, but think about that level or above that slightly above that we would expect that the funding for that would come 50/50 from a growth in deposits and a reduction in investment. So at the end of the year we have a $1.05 billion in investments and you would expect that to run down by half of the loan growth give or take in 2014. Is that what you are getting at? William Wallace – Raymond James: Yes that can help me back into the answer and then to Scott’s question, would you disclosed maybe where the new loans are coming on at a yield basis, so we can get to the sense as to how quickly you are coming to the bottom in that – in the yields in that portfolio?

Paul M. Limbert

Management

That is a tough question because it really depends upon the mix of the loans that we are in competition with other banks and the loans that we are getting from some of our less competitive market areas and it is really going to depend upon that mix for 2014 obviously when we are in competition with other banks that does drive the rates down lower, we have seen competitive rates in the marketplace as low as I’m struggling getting the thought of my mouth but as well as the low two’s that’s not what we are anticipating will average for 2014, but that does give you some idea of the competitive marketplace that we’re in, but I would expect our average rate to be a little lower than where we saw it in 2013, but I don’t expect it to move all that much.

James C. Gardill

Analyst

Wally we do return on equity analysis of price and so there are some relationship pricing models that we run which will vary than the interest yield depending on the relationships, so as Paul said it can vary, but with the competitive pressures we would probably see some erosion except that that maybe offset by rate increases there. William Wallace – Raymond James: So that was going to be my next question because Bob did mention your asset sensitivity position around the margin expansion comments, are you guys expecting that we could see stock rates up?

Robert H. Young

Management

No, we’re not expecting that, we’re reflecting in our model within intermediate range do impact things like residential mortgages, there would have been significant weight compression in that portfolio over the last 18 months, we are not expecting that rate compression in 2014, while there is plenty of competition on the business loan side, we still manage to get our fair share of yield there wouldn’t expect that to go significantly lower, our portfolio is – models to be approximately the same as where we ended the year, but I would also tell you that beyond those factors, we still have room to go in the cost of fund side. Recall, I said that we had I think $750 million of reprising CDs over the next year to 87 basis points, still room to get some improvements there and our model does anticipate that CD portfolio will continue to reduce from the 112 number that were reporting towards the end of the year, we also have some $38 million or so of more expensive borrowings that come due in the first quarter, we’re projecting savings from that as well, so that informs my comment which you will see in the 10-K relative to slight growth in the margin going forward. William Wallace – Raymond James: Okay, I really appreciate the additional color on the margin and then one last question on M&A. In the discussion previously you said you would buy smaller institutions or larger institutions depending on the circumstances, is there an institution that would be too small just no matter what the circumstance – I’m trying to get a sense of how small the institution you might be willing to take the time to buy?

James C. Gardill

Analyst

Again it’s hard to forecast Wally, there are I mean something in the nominal $25 million to $50 million in asset size because of the cost of acquisitions that’s more of a branch transaction, but that can be done on a cash basis and can be done efficiently if it’s a fill in, in a branch network. So there would be some idea looking at that but that’s not what we would consider a full M&A transaction, so we’re thinking of something higher, so again its got to depend on the market, and it’s going to depend on the opportunity, we’re looking at higher value deal though that has the opportunity to drive growth. William Wallace – Raymond James: Okay. All right, well fair enough guys. I appreciate your time and have a great day.

James C. Gardill

Analyst

Wally thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Matt Schultheis with Boenning. Go ahead please. Matthew C. Schultheis – Boenning & Scattergood Inc.: Good morning.

James C. Gardill

Analyst

Hey Matt good morning. Matthew C. Schultheis – Boenning & Scattergood Inc.: A couple of quick questions, deposit balances were relatively flat linked quarter, I was wondering if there was municipal one-offs or single customer deposit one-off in this CD [ph] bucket or anything else that we should be aware of.

James C. Gardill

Analyst

And Matt I’ll let Bob speak to that in detail in just a minute, but basically if you remember our strategy was to roll off higher cost CDs, in the Fidelity transaction we acquired a fair amount of that and so moving them into lower cost DDA accounts and so part of that strategy you have seen flattening of the deposits that we’ve grown the non-interest bearing deposits of – and the demand deposits and reduce those lower cost CD deposits in that portfolio. Bob, additional detail.

Robert H. Young

Management

Yes. It is really the more expensive CDs that are maturing from four and five years ago Matt, you know those 2.3% average CD is a $290 million that came due in the fourth quarter, we certainly kept our fair share of those, but if you see from September 30 to December 31 we are down about a $120 million, $125 million in that category and while a fair amount of that parts in money market, because that money markets are up in the fourth quarter and as you noted the deposits are in total flat, we’ll see where those folks go going forward once rates begin to increase. So Jim talked about transaction account strategy and I think it’s just simply a matter of some of these are single service customers who have their high rate CDs mature. So they left the bank, we also worked them through our securities brokerage unit and some of them do transfer over there. Matthew C. Schultheis – Boenning & Scattergood Inc.: Okay and second question. Your share repurchase during the quarter you said it was time to a terminated employee benefit plan, I was wondering and refresh my memory please if you have an authorization for a share repurchase outside of that and if so how much is it for?

Robert H. Young

Management

You know we had a million share authorization that’s been out there for several years, its in the queue Matt and you will see a detail there and we still had ample room under that share authorization of that share repurchase program to absorb those shares. Matthew C. Schultheis – Boenning & Scattergood Inc.: Okay, thank you.

James C. Gardill

Analyst

Thank you very much Matt.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions). And our next question is from Taylor Brodarick with Guggenheim Securities. Go ahead please. Taylor Brodarick – Guggenheim Securities LLC: Great, thank you, I think we’ve touched on pretty much everything, but I had one question about I guess wealth management. There is any news out about something similar to what happened across the river in Belmont county where you are expecting any type of I guess one off major influx of bonus payments, I mean you said it sounded like it would be steady state growth, but didn’t know if you are aware of anything else in your market. Thanks.

James C. Gardill

Analyst

Taylor thank you for the question. The one-off that we talked about in the spring dealt with a specific land owner group in Belmont County, Smith Goshen [ph] group and we did realize benefits from that. I think what Paul talked about in his commentary was the fact that we are seeing royalty payments now coming on-stream in a broader area of our local market here in the Upper High Valley on both sides of the river. And so those are sort of offsetting those one time bonus payments that we saw early in the ramp up, but they continue to drill primarily on the Ohio side in the Utica shale, so they continue to lease, we continue to see royalty payments and some of the larger drilling companies have now moved in, so we are seeing some of the larger oil companies here and I would anticipate that we will see continued growth in that area, we may not see a one-time shot of a $158 million in one month as we saw it back in April, but at the same time its continuing to be a fairly aggressive pattern. Taylor Brodarick – Guggenheim Securities LLC: Great. Thank you very much, I appreciate it.

James C. Gardill

Analyst

Thank you, Taylor.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from John Moran with Macquarie. Go ahead please. Michael Burn – Macquarie Capital: Good morning guys this is Michael Burn in for John.

James C. Gardill

Analyst

Hey, Michael, how are you? Michael Burn – Macquarie Capital: Yep.

Paul M. Limbert

Management

You get in under a [indiscernible] name. Michael Burn – Macquarie Capital: Just a quick question for you guys on the provisioning. Can you just gives us a sense of how you sort of think about provisioning for loan growth versus sort of releasing reserves sort of asset quality improves but there have been sort of reserve to loan target that you guys are thinking about?

James C. Gardill

Analyst

I’m not sure that we have benchmark, I think what we continue to try to assess is where we are in the marketplace and where we see the economy in our markets, when we look that fourth quarter provision it was probably level with the third quarter provision a little bit reduced and then we will see that kind of – I think what we talked about either last quarter or the June quarter was that we’ll some lumpiness in provision as you go through the cycle. So we could anticipate some lumpiness in our provision and if you look at the annualized numbers though there has been steady decline in the provision and an improvement and the quality of our loan portfolio. So as far as credit quality is concern we continue to see those trends, we continue to see a decline in provision, we continue to see improved credit quality. So I guess as far as a general statement that’s about as close as I can tell.

Paul M. Limbert

Management

Again, I think relative to loan growth are certainly an element beyond charge-offs that we’ll have to consider going forward, we had nice tailwind over the past 12 months to 18 months as the credit recovery allowed us to reduce the provision, but I wouldn’t think of in terms of the all traditional we are going to provide 1% for each new dollar of loan growth, it’s a factor that’s probably 25%, 30% of that obviously depends upon what types of loans are being added, where they are consumer or they are commercial or construction and then the rating system of the rating scale, because that helps to determine the overall provision for a particular quarter.

Robert H. Young

Management

Michael this is from an accounting standpoint, I’m not sure the accounting rules allow you to provide for something you haven’t done yet. So I would be very careful about thinking of the provision and the concept of getting ready for loan growth into the future. Michael Burn – Macquarie Capital: Okay.

James C. Gardill

Analyst

When the rules change in a couple years though course that will be different, but that’s still only a proposal of FASB now. Michael Burn – Macquarie Capital: Sure, thank you.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions). Showing no further questions in our queue at this time, this concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Jim Gardill for any closing remarks.

James C. Gardill

Analyst

Thank you very much Amy. And I appreciate everybody participating on the call. We’re very pleased with 2013 numbers of 29% increase in net income and 18% increase in earnings per share and an ROA of 1.05% we went through a very good year, we accomplish from succession planning that we had talked about we completed and integrated an acquisition transaction in the Pittsburgh market. We increased loans outstanding about 5.6% and we generated $1.6 billion in production in loans. So we are very pleased with the year 2013, we thank you very much for participating in our call.

Operator

Operator

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. And please disconnect your lines.

James C. Gardill

Analyst

Thank you, Amy.