Good day. And welcome to the EFSC Earnings Conference Call. Today’s conference is being recorded. And at this time, I’d like to turn the conference over to Jim Lally, President and CEO. Please go ahead, sir.

Well, thank you, Catherine, and good morning. I welcome everyone to our Fourth Quarter Earnings Call. I appreciate all of you taking time to listen and joining me this morning is Keene Turner, our company’s Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer; and Scott Goodman, President of Enterprise Bank & Trust. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone on the call that a copy of the release and accompanying presentation can be found on our website. The presentation and earnings release were furnished on SEC Form 8-K yesterday. Please refer to slide two of the presentation titled Forward-Looking Statements and our most recent 10-K and 10-Q for reasons why actual results may vary from any forward-looking statements that we may make this morning. Please turn to slide three for our financial highlights of the fourth quarter. 2021 was another outstanding year for EFSC. We were especially proud of our fourth quarter performance. We earned net income of $51 million or $1.33 per diluted share. This compared favorably to our earnings per share for the linked and prior year quarters on both reported and as adjusted for merger and impairment charges. Our return metrics were equally impressive, as we posted return on average assets of 1.52% and pre-provision net revenue of 1.89%. Our pre-provision net revenue set a quarterly record at $63 million, increasing $7 million from the third quarter. I would expect this momentum to continue into 2022 as our variable rate loan portfolio and strong non-interest-bearing deposit base have us well positioned should we experienced expected interest rate increases. This coupled with our solid loan production momentum that we’ve experienced for last several quarters should provide for continued strong performance. Keene will provide much more details on these results in addition to our results for all of…

Thank you, Jim, and good morning, everybody. As you’ll see on slide five, loans at the end of the year totaled just over $9 billion, representing a 24.8% increase from the prior year. The growth was most heavily impacted by the addition of the legacy First Choice book in Q3, as well as well diversified organic growth across core business lines net of a reduction in PPP balances. Slide six reflects the full year performance of the legacy core books for which we posted annual growth of $554 million or 8.5%. Most notably, we experienced strong performance across the Board in our specialty line, while the C&I business was bolstered through the addition of new relationships and a modest rebound in usage of revolving lines. For the quarter, which is detailed on slide number seven, we achieve net growth of $68 million before the impact of PPP balances. Our focus sales process continues to produce healthy deal flow, the total originations up over 30% from the prior quarter. C&I balances grew as we onboard new clients, as well as our businesses more actively using revolving lines of credit. While still below pre-pandemic levels our line draws rose steadily throughout the quarter and with an average usage up roughly 2%. Specialized lending units had another robust quarter growing by $143 million or 22% annualized. Sponsor finance had a record quarter, closing over $100 million in new commitments with 20 different companies and posting net growth of $53 million. As I’ve mentioned in prior calls this year, the deal flow in this unit is at an all time high. Despite elevated competition, our long tenure in the sector and deep sponsor relationships have allowed us to take advantage of the active private equity markets, while also remaining selective to maintain our return…

Thank, Scott, and good morning, everyone. My comments start on slide 10, where we reported earnings per share of $1.33 for the quarter. Most importantly, on an adjusted basis when excluding merger-related expenses, earnings per share were $1.37 per share, which was a $0.10 improvement from the linked third quarter. In addition to record net income, we also had operating income that drove a $0.20 per share sequential increase in earnings per share. Our fee income results were seasonally strong due to tax credit and fees from community development activities and we also had the first full quarter of First Choice operations in both revenue and expenses. To that end, expenses reflect the combined entities and are in line with our expectations with strong asset quality. On slide 11, net interest income was $102 million, a $5 million increase compared to the linked third quarter. This includes approximately $4.5 million from the full quarter impact of First Choice, along with higher earnings on loan growth, partially offset by PPP trends. In the quarter, deposit balances continued to grow with average deposit balances increasing $870 million, including nearly $500 million of DDA. Balances increased across all of our markets and throughout our specialty lines during the quarter, providing additional core funding and flexibility in managing costs. As Scott highlighted, the growth is both a function of underlying strong liquidity of our customers, as well as from new business development activities. Slide 12 depicts net interest margin trends, which indicates the strong deposit growth resulted in higher cash balances and was the largest driver of the 8-basis-point net interest margin declined in the quarter. With that said, the fundamentals of net interest margin were strong as our overall loan yield was stable and our cost of funds declined modestly. Our balance sheet…

Thank you. We’ll now take the first question from Jeff Rulis at D.A. Davidson. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning.

Good morning.

Question on the loan growth and pay-downs, maybe for Scott, just the pay-downs are tough to predict what you saw in Q4, meeting some good origination production. But if you are looking into 2022, the momentum you’ve got on the specialty finance, how about -- any -- can you speak to any expectations on a net basis? Do you feel like payoffs begin to slow down here? If you see any indication of that and maybe just net that against production expectations? Thanks.

Sure. Happy to. Yeah. I think, first of all, our production, certainly the pipeline remains steady. I would expect to see continued growth in really most of the specialty lines. I think the increase in revolving usage is good to see. I think we’re seeing some of the larger companies tap into their lines, some of the smaller ones may be running through some of the PPP liquidity and I think maybe a little bit of a moderation in supply chain. So that’s a good sign. I think, the payoffs, as you said, most highly concentrated within a commercial real estate area. And I think, potentially increasing rates could certainly help moderate that and level the playing field with, what I would call, the non-traditional bank structures, secondary market activity that we see certainly can also affect the velocity of sale of assets that we’ve seen as well. We’re well positioned with investors in that market. So some of the runoffs that we’ve seen, particularly in California that I mentioned are more of the shorter term fix and flip, construct and sell kind of activity. And more of what we’re originating is the longer term hold investors where we can go deeper with them, we can do the construction loan, we can do the acquisition loan, but it’s more of a mini perm structure. So, I think, if that trend continues, the net effect will be positive.

Okay. Fair enough. And then just a couple questions on the fee income, the -- what was the fee waiver? Is that number a $0.5 million a quarter? What do you think you gave up or kind of what the deposit service line? How does that rebound? I guess, in Q1 and then I’ll just leave it there for now.

Yeah. Jeff, it’s probably $300,000 to $500,000 a quarter. It’s not a big number. But the reason we call it out is just because you do see that negative trend from 3Q to 4Q. But we do expect that to come back here in earnest in the first quarter.

And then as we get into the third quarter, if you could just remind us of the Durbin headwind, I think, is that about a $3 million annual impact?

Yeah. And I think, just overall for 2022, I think, we believe that with some of the momentum we have, some of the sequential improvements from the deal leveraging with First Choice. I mean, we still can have a mid single-digit overall growth rate for the year, but yeah, that sort of little over a $1 million a quarter starts to hit up in 2Q.

Okay. So closer to a $1 million being in. Okay. And lastly, just that the other income, so within miscellaneous, I think, you guys called out the servicing income was down, but the actual miscellaneous income up sort of doubled within the income statement there. What was the other figure in that that seem larger than the normal run rate?

Jeff, I’m looking at the slide, I’ve got $1.3 million of miscellaneous in 3Q and $1.2 million in the fourth quarter. So everything’s fairly level. We had a little bit of decline in private equity and swap fees were up in the fourth quarter modestly, but really the big driver there is going to be the CDE exit.

Okay. That figure, could you detail that, that’s probably what it is, the $5 million, is that not occurring…

Yeah.

… and I guess. Go ahead.

Yeah. So, I would say, the 5 million and I try to hit this in my comments, but I’ll give you a little bit more flavor for it. So, the CDE exits for the year were fairly strong there. Moving forward, it’s probably not going to be that magnitude, but we do expect roughly $2 million in the first quarter and then there’s a potential for another $2 million in the fourth quarter for 2022. So there -- that’s not a complete going away for that line item on an annual basis. But it is and something that happens consistently on quarterly basis and certainly the magnitude of that isn’t likely to continue.

Okay. So, just to wrap up that entire conference, again, mid single-digit growth on total non-interest income is you expectation?

Yeah. And again, that’s going to be principally driven by, call it, a 15% to 20% expansion of the tax credit business that continues to have strong momentum and we see some good progress here at the end of the year, and we should have a strong start to 2022 and the first quarter with that business.

Appreciate it. Thanks.

Thanks, Jeff.

We will now take the next question from Andrew Liesch at Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Good morning, guys.

Good morning, Andrew.

Here are some question on the residential real estate, the construction and fix and flip here? So is the decline in the residential book, is that fix and flip loans or is that just other mortgages that maybe you would have acquired in California?

No. Those are more of that fix and flips. Those are -- there’s a lot of residential properties, coastal properties that are residential that those investors were coming to First Choice for.

Got it. Okay. And so with the emphasis on that product, I mean, how far -- how much further do you think this portfolio could decline?

Yeah. I mean, I think, you may see some near-term pressure still. But, I think, as we continue to originate and I’m happy with what I see on the originations that we’re putting on the books, as well as deepening the relationships with a lot of those clients that are not doing those fix and flips. I think it’s going to moderate. But short-term, I think, there could still be some pressure.

Got it. And how…

Hey, Andrew. Just put some perspective there…

Yeah.

Just some perspective, that book was around $150 million when we acquired it, so you’re pretty much halfway through it…

Okay.

…don’t expect.

Okay. Very helpful there. And then just how is the rest of the integration in California going with respect to generating new loan growth, sounds like you’re bringing on someone new to lead that market. I guess, I just wonder what’s been the tone from customers and the lenders that you’ve picked up their?

Tone is extremely positive. If you have a conversation with a client or a business owner in California, it’s the same kinds of conversations we’re having in other markets. So, I’m very confident that our model is resonating here. I think clients are really pleased to hear that, we have maybe a little bit bigger checkbook, we have broader product line and very willing to continue to explore those things with us. I think the other thing is just talents as well. I talked about some of the talents that we added. And I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the strong interest in our model by those external candidates, because I think this provides an opportunity maybe to reinvest some of those resources that we have available. And I think the disruption here with deals like the Union and U.S. Bank, Bank of West-BMO, a few others also kind of leveled the playing field for us as a new name on the market and gets people talking that otherwise would not be in place. So I feel very confident about continuing to bring on new talent.

Got it. Thank you for taking the questions. I get back. Appreciate it.

We will now take the next question from Damon DelMonte at KBW. Please go ahead.

Hey. Good morning, guys. Hope everybody is doing well today. Just I was looking to get a little bit more color on the bullet regarding the strategic approach to the participations. Could you talk a little bit more about that, please?

I can…

Yeah.

I can take that.

Okay. Go ahead.

Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead, Jim.

Okay. I mean, let me just say, let me just, Scott get into detail. Here’s what it’s not Damon. It’s not a snake strategy, right? We’re not out looking at large chunks of faceless credit, right? That’s what it’s not. But I’ll let Scott describe more strategically what it is.

Yeah. I think, as we’ve grown, maybe back up a minute, in the past we may have let relationship managers help source other banks within their markets to do larger deals and that that’s not a real efficient strategy and it’s not a real repeatable strategy. So as we’ve grown and entered new markets and move up market a little bit, doing business with larger companies, really centralizing that in an area that can do that legwork for those RMs, but also centralize it so that we’re able to find partners that can go across markets, go into some of the specialties with us and then we can develop that relationship at that bank level, which a lot of times runs through a participation desk or a syndication desk through the credit side, because we -- what we weren’t necessarily getting in the cases where we were selling credit is an opportunity to buy back. And so this also leverages that relationship to where those that we sell to we can also buy back from with companies that have similar credit cultures with us.

Got it. Okay. That’s helpful. Thanks. And how big is the participation book today and how big do you envision that getting over time?

I don’t know. Keene, if you can help me there. I can tell you…

Damon, rough…

Go ahead.

Rough numbers, I’m going to say that, we buy a $0.5 billion and we sell over a $1 billion. So there’s a pretty big imbalance, but not a lot in terms of what’s bought versus what’s sold. And again, they’re club deals and deals where people are out there, in-house lending and things like that with banks that are covered in your likely coverage, community bank coverage universe. So, I think that, that what Scott’s referring to, is the strategy to try to equal out that imbalance. Back in the days, when we were 100% loan-to-deposit, we were just trying to sell any loan to the small local banks to try to be able to do it. And now recognizing we’ve got some more expansion, some more power, we’re looking at peers who are similarly situated and then the same boat and just trying to make sure that it’s a two-way street when we look at originating and managing the credits.

Got it. Okay. That’s great. Thank you. And then, probably, for you Keene, as we think about the provision going forward, I mean, credit trends, obviously, are strong and very solid base of loans. How do we think about the provision here over the coming quarters?

Yeah. I mean, we said this before, I mean, I think, at CECL adoption that we adopted about 130 basis points, obviously, the guaranteed versus unguaranteed proportions are slightly different. So, I think, we probably think of the low -- when we’re perfectly comfortable with the environment and everything being similar to when we adopted CECL. I think that that’s probably, called 125 basis points to 135 basis points, that sort of where we think the model comes out. And as we continue to renew and originate a lot of credit relative to the net growth, I think, the balances will come down. So, depending on what we see from a growth perspective, you could continue to see some negative provisions if growth is muted, if growth is more substantial or depending on the composition of that growth, you could have some provision, but certainly, I think, if asset quality continues to be as strong as it is, there is definitely going to continue to be downward pressure with continued improvement in overall economic factors and also just comfort with some of the factors that I mentioned, which is the full absorption of stimulus and some of the segments that we thought were maybe a little bit more distressed, making it through kind of pandemic operations.

Got it. Okay. That’s all that I had. Thank you very much.

Thank you. We’ll now take…

Thanks.

… the next question from David Long at Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone.

Good morning.

As you look at your deposit fees, I appreciate the guidance for 2022 on the non-interest income, within that on the deposit fees side, is there any consideration for adjustments to overdraft for non-sufficient fund fees? What -- is -- with seeing a lot of your peers of the bigger banks change how they’re charging for those products? Is that something that you guys have considered and do you have any plans for that for 2022?

David, we’re going to work our way through that. I’ll just give you some comfort by saying that that number is also less than $2 million on an annual basis. So from our perspective, we’re -- we’ll take a look at it, but I don’t think we’re going to follow closely on the heels of the top 25 there. I would just say that, consumer, although, important to us, in certain pockets is still a fairly muted part of the business with $3 billion of balances, but really only driving about $1.9 million of fees and in that regard, it’s both overdraft and maintenance fees on an annual basis. So we’ll continue to evaluate it and have discussions with our regulators, but I think the pain of that if we did anything is limited to that amount for less.

Absolutely great. Okay. Appreciate the color there. And then, on the cash side, I mean, obviously, a lot of liquidity on your balance sheet. With rates moving higher here, how aggressive do you want to be in moving that into securities in the near-term until loan growth really accelerates? And does it -- is that impacted by sort of the stickiness you expect in your rapidly growing deposit balances?

Yeah. David, that’s a -- it’s a good question. I would say, nothing we do at least in terms of deployment of cash or any balance sheet remixing is coupled with the term aggressive. Certainly, we try to take on strategies and manage them as the rate environment or the operating environment dictates. We’ve continued to expand the size of the investment portfolio, because I think -- we think that the target should be around 20% of the asset base and we were short of that, most notably, because both First Choice and Seacoast really didn’t have proportionate sized portfolios and I think we’ll let that dictate overall, where we ended up with investments. I think, certainly, from my perspective, with there being some optimism about rate increases, it takes a little bit of the pressure off to continue to move to securities. But I do think you’ll see over the next couple quarters, we’ll still expand the size of the portfolio, but I don’t think we would increase the amount that we’re moving to securities portfolio unless you continue to see significant cash build and business development activities that that might change our answer. But I think, that’s a -- it’s a good point. It’s some net interest income, that’ll benefit us as we move forward and we certainly want to be mindful of the fact that, with potential tightening that some of that liquidity could get wrung out of the system and we don’t want to put ourselves in a position where we’ve moved too much or taking too much asset sensitivity out and didn’t get the upside. So I would say, status quo will continue, $30 million, $40 million a month moving into the investment portfolio for the foreseeable future and we’ll just continue to monitor that versus overall cash levels. But I do think we sit, we have a good position here from being asset sensitive and we, certainly, don’t want to flush that through for a short-term pick up in investment portfolio net interest income.

Yeah. Sure. Cool. Thanks, Keene. Appreciate the color.

Welcome. Thanks, David.

We will now take the next question from Brian Martin at Janney. Please go ahead.

Hey. Good morning, guys.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Hey. Just wanted to touch on maybe, I don’t know, maybe, Keene, just on the margin and just kind of your commentary on the asset sensitivity, just sounds like there’s some floors on the loan, so maybe there’s a little bit of a lag before you get the impact on the benefits of the asset sensitivity, but can you just give a little bit more color on just kind of your expectations on that?

Yeah. Brian, I actually think it’s pretty linear with the first increase. I mean, there’s a good portion that’s on the floor. So we’ve got $5.7 billion of variable interest rate loan, $2.5 billion have no floor. So we’ll start to see the benefit there and I think also just deposit behavior. We expect that deposit re-pricing is less with initial increases. And then there’s just over $3 billion with a floor, 175 of those are priced at or above the floor, so they’ll move. And then you’ve got another call it $125 million that are zero basis point to 25 basis points and then another almost $0.5 billion that are 25 basis points to 50 basis points. So there’s a pretty good chunk that if you got 25 basis points or 50 basis points, even when they’re at the floor start to move. But, again, I think, the important part is that, you’ve got $2.5 billion that are moving right away, and call it, another $200 million that are going to move somewhere between zero basis point and 25 basis points. And again, I think, some of that’s just as much on the deposit side as is on the asset side. And I think right now, with the level of cash, we’ve got on the balance sheet to David’s question, interest rate increases based on what’s forecast are fairly linear in terms of the guidance. We gave you 50 basis points, but you could probably interpret that in 25-basis-point increments up and down, it would be pretty accurate as the way we see it today.

Got you. And what was the -- I guess, the annual increase for 50 basis points that you guys -- you said earlier Keene?

Yeah. The 3% to 4% net interest income dollars and that’s, call it, 10 basis points to 15 basis points of margin based on existing cash position.

Got you. Okay. And then, how about just your expectation for that excess liquidity position, because that’s over and above the asset sensitivity, I mean, where do you see that playing out or deploying that excess liquidity kind of throughout the year, how does that impact kind of your outlook?

What I would say is, our guidance that we’ve given includes a variety of scenarios. One being that, I think early, call it, in the -- if you thought about it in terms of 100 basis points fed fund increase, I think, zero basis point to 50 basis points, we probably don’t think that there’s a ton of cash moving out. But on the upside, when you go 50 basis points and beyond, I think, we think that at least conservatively cash moves out. But with that said, that’s all static balance sheet analysis, if you couple that with the loan growth that, we’re, I think, anticipating and that everyone expects of us at, call it, 8% or sort of mid-to-high single digits. When you start booking that loan growth, it’s also picking up from zero and you’re booking that at some nice rates and that loan yield is additive to margin. So I think that’s the reason why I’ve said it’s generally linear. But we haven’t focus, we -- I shouldn’t say that, we focus a lot on what happens with cash and each component of the deposit side. But I think, at some point, there’s a tipping point that when the cash moves out, you make up for that with loan originations or remixing. So it’s a -- it moves from a static to a dynamic balance sheet analysis, if that makes sense.

Yeah. No. It does. Okay. I appreciate the help there. And then just going back to the fees kind of with those CDE in there and kind of whatnot, just given that’s a little bit volatile. I mean, year-over-year that the -- you’re kind of looking at, I guess, all in with those added fees potentially on the CDE side and the Durbin kind of all in is everything kind of that upper single-digit type of growth off of 2021’s level.

Yeah. I would say it’s like mid single-digit, Brian. I think it’s probably 5%, 6% overall…

Yeah.

… with robust growth in the tax credit line item that 15% or so percent.

Okay. And I guess, just -- maybe for Scott, just a deposit growth? I mean, do you guys expecting this deposit growth has been stronger, I mean, I guess, do you anticipate that slowing some this year? Is that kind of in your expectations?

Yeah. I mean, certainly, we’ve been the beneficiary of excess liquidity. I think I wouldn’t expect the production as it relates to new business, new accounts to slowdown. I think, particularly in the specialties, I think, we’ve done a good job and that was our primary interest in developing that line of business, as local continued to be low cost steady quarter-over-quarter type growth businesses.

Okay. Perfect. And just last one from me just, maybe, Keene, on the tax rate, given kind of these investments, I guess, can you give some thought on how you’re thinking about the tax rate for 2022?

Yeah. I think the tax rates going to move up a little bit. It’s a function of profitability. I think we haven’t quite kept up as much on the tax credit investment side and the municipal side, despite that we’ve really tried to, but we’ve been disciplined in terms of duration on the portfolio principally with the muni. So it’s going to tick up, call it, 1% to 1.5%, so 22%, 22.5%, something like that for 2022, depending on what you look at from a profitability perspective versus 2021. And also just some of that’s a little bit of a function of a few more assets in California with a higher state rate as well.

Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Thanks for taking the questions.

Of course. Thanks, Brian.

That concludes today’s questions-and-answers session. At this time, I’d like to turn the conference back to Mr. Tim, sorry, Mr. Jim Lally. Please go ahead, sir.

Thanks, Catherine. And thank you all for your interest in our company and for joining us this morning. We look forward to seeing -- to being with you after the first quarter, if not sooner. So have a great day.

That concludes today’s call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.