Good day, and welcome to the Independent Bank Corp’s Fourth Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Before proceeding, please note that during this call, we will be making forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from these statements due to a number of factors, including those described in our earnings release and other SEC filings. We undertake no obligation to publicly update any such statements. In addition, some of our discussions today may include references to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Information about these non-GAAP measures, including reconciliation to GAAP measures, may be found on our earnings release and other SEC filings. These SEC filings can be accessed via the Investor Relations section of our website. Finally, please also note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Chris Oddleifson, President and CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Anthony, and good morning and happy New Year to everyone. Thank you for joining us today. With me is Mark Ruggiero, our Chief Financial Officer; Rob Cozzone, our Chief Operating Officer; and Gerry Nadeau President of Rockland Trust and our Chief Commercial Banking Officer. We capped the year with another strong and well-rounded quarterly performance. Excluding one-time charges, operating net income for the fourth quarter rose to $65.7 million or $1.63 per share. The quarter also marked a major milestone as we closed on the Meridian Bancorp acquisition and its flagship East Boston Savings Bank. Mark will be taking you through the quarter shortly. I’ll be focusing my comments on the year just concluded. Needless to say, 2021 was another year of challenges and lingering uncertainty posed by the ongoing pandemic. The banking industry once again was confronted with having to meet the pressing needs of customers and communities or dealing with tight staffing and economic disruptions. While certainly not immune from these issues, the respectful caring relationship-oriented culture at Rockland Trust was instrumental navigating these times. Financially, we’ve performed quite well. Operating earnings for the year grew by over 50% to $187.6 million, or $5.38 per share. In addition, core deposits grew organically by 18%, robust demand deposit growth helped keep our funding costs quite low. The current low rate environment has temporarily masked the intrinsic value of our core deposit franchise, but we strongly believe in its long-term potential. Organic loan growth continues to be constrained by elevated levels of pay downs, relatively low utilization rates and PPP loan run offs. And I can assure you, our loan officers remain very much in the deal flow. In fact, total commercial loan originations in 2021 rose by 29% to $1.85 billion and our pipelines remain strong. Our…

Thank you, Chris. Driven primarily by the upfront costs of the Meridian Bancorp and East Boston Savings Bank acquisition that closed on November 12, fourth quarter GAAP net income of $1.7 million and diluted EPS of $0.04 represents significant decreases from prior quarter results. The company recorded pre-tax one-time merger expenses of $37.2 million, as well as provision for credit loss of $35.7 million, which includes a one-time provision of $50.7 million attributable to acquired non-purchase credit deteriorated or non PCD loans. When excluding these non-recurring acquisition-related items and their related tax effect, operating net income and diluted EPS were $65.7 million and $1.63 for the fourth quarter, reflecting a 59% and 30% increase, respectively, from last quarter’s non-GAAP operating results. On a GAAP basis, the results reflect a 0.04% return on assets and 0.28% return On average common equity, while the operating basis results, excluding the non-recurring items just noted, were 1.47% and 10.75%, respectively. In addition, the return on tangible common equity for the quarter was 15.92% on an operating basis, also up nicely from the prior quarter. I’ll now summarize some key metrics associated with the closing of the Meridian acquisition. Total deal consideration was approximately $1.3 billion comprised of the issuance of 14.3 shares valued at approximately $1.29 billion, plus $12 million associated with the cash out of stock options. Total assets acquired totaled $6.4 billion at fair value, including $4.9 billion in total loan balances outstanding. Total deposit balances acquired were $4.4 billion, long-term borrowings of $576 million at fair value were immediately paid in full shortly after the closing. Key purchase-related accounting marks include a $67.2 million or 1.4% credit mark, with a 25% purchase credit deteriorated allocation or PCD allocation. A combined loan interest and liquidity premium of $51.4 million and a core…

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Our first question comes from Mark Fitzgibbon with Sandler O’Neill. You may go ahead.

Hey, guys, thank you, and good morning.

Hey, Mark, good morning.

First question I had for you is, I heard your comments, Mark, about you’re confident in the 45% cost saves. But I wondered if you could share with us sort of an updated timing of when you’ll extract those costs saves. And I was curious if there’s any further branch consolidations beyond what you’ve already done?

Sure, Mark, I’d say those costs saves are already achieved. There’s very little a few $100,000 impact expected in the first quarter for a few locations that we’ve closed. We just haven’t been able to fully negotiate sort of the final exit. So the accounting requires us to push a little bit of that into 2022. But barring that, all cost saves already achieved as of December 31.

Okay.

And in terms of branch closing, nothing is in – is on the short-term horizon. I think we’ve – the decisions we made around the Meridian acquisition, we – and where we stand today with the brand footprint, we feel very good about. So there’s nothing. We’re always assessing. We’re always looking at opportunities and what makes sense. But right now, there’s nothing slated in the near-term.

Okay. And then I wondered if you could just clarify what you had said about the loan pipelines. I thought I caught that it was $242 million and the pipelines were particularly strong in resi mortgage and home equity. Is that – did I hear that correctly?

That is correct. Yes. Yep, $242 million is the commercial approved pipeline. And usually, we see a bit of a decline this time of year on the consumer book, which is still the case compared to where we were at Q3. But we still see a lot of good opportunity, both in mortgage and home equity and a pretty optimistic heading into 2022 on those fronts.

Mark, do you have a sense what the average pipeline rate is on the commercial stuff?

In terms of our…

…the commitment rate, or…?

I don’t have that in front of me. I’m don’t know if Gerry you have insight on that.

Hi, Mark. Good morning.

Good morning, Gerry.

Mark, it’s probably – it’s hard on the – it’s a good question. I think about but I would say more than probably 75% of it is floating. So it’s probably somewhere on average, between 200 to 300 over LIBOR now SOFR. And on the fixed rate side, it’s probably in the high 3s to 4% as a range. Is that kind of what you’re looking for.

Yep, that’s perfect, Gerry. Thank you.

You’re welcome.

And then I wondered what is the maturity schedule of the remaining COVID deferrals look like?

Yes. As noted, the majority of that will start to run off as we head out into the second half of 2022. We do still have some level of maturity that we extended on deferrals into 2023. And I believe even, it was a very small percentage, but some acquired the Meridian book that go out until late 2023, or 2024. But I believe it’s well over half of those deferrals are expected to mature here in the upcoming 12 months.

Okay. And then lastly, Mark, I was curious if you could just help us think about that, say, a 25 basis point move in rates up. What does that mean for the margin?

Yes, it certainly gives us a nice lift. In terms of the immediate impact, as I sort of noted, certainly, all $2 billion of the cash position would reprice. And when we think about loan book, around 34% of it is actually tied to one-month LIBOR and prime. But as I noted, we have the macro level hedges and some floors already embedded in the portfolio. So that brings the net population down to about 20% to 25% of the loan book. So that gives you – if you just do the math, the 25 basis point rate increase on those numbers suggested a $12 million to $13 million lift pre-tax, or about 2.5% increase on net interest income, and that’s on a pre-tax basis.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Sure.

Thanks, Mark.

Our next question comes from Dave Bishop with Seaport Research. You may go ahead.

Hey, good morning, gentlemen.

Hi, Dave.

Hey, sorry about that. Hey, quick question for you. Maybe following up on a large question there regarding the operating expense guidance. I just wonder if you could drill down just putting the math in terms of getting the cost saves upfront there. Looking at, Mark, maybe just trying to circle in on that, I’m getting to maybe a mid to high $80 million range, that’s about right, in terms of a ballpark for the first quarter with, like you said, the 2% to 3% inflation lift?

Yes. I think we – I think about it in terms of a full year, Dave, if you just break it down into really two components, sort of the legacy expense run rate had been around $70 million to $72 million a quarter, give it a little bit higher in the fourth quarter with some one-time items. But if you put a a mid single-digit rate increase on that number, and then the East Boston expense load prior to the acquisition was right around $100 million on an annual basis, and that’s where you would extract the 45% costs saves off of that number. So I think if you put those pieces together, your number, I think, sounds a little high from where we’d be landing, but not too far off.

Okay, got it. I appreciate that. And then, also circling back to that last question you mentioned the macro hedges, we’ve seen a couple of other institutions unwind those. Is that something you can kind of contemplate if the Fed does get a little bit more hawkish than expected unwind some of the macro hedges?

I think it still serves a good portion, given the totality of our balance sheet position at this point, Dave, where I think letting those run their natural course those will start to actually, just by nature, mature heading into 2023. So I think it still gives us some protection here in the near-term. So, I think even with those in to be able to benefit from the – from any sort of increases in rates, we feel very good about that benefit, even net of the hedges. So I don’t think we’d be looking to sort of accelerate unwinding those in the near-term.

Okay, got it. And then I appreciate the color or the update in terms of the loan attrition you expect from the Meridian side. I think it was like $700 million. Do you expect a similar amount on the positive side as well in that ballpark, or…?

Yes, sorry. Sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off. You added a second part to that question.

No, that’s fine.

Yes. It’s actually certainly not to that degree on the deposit side. The time deposit portfolio is where we’ll likely see most of the runoff, a lot of their larger brokered deposits had already matured prior to the closing. So you saw some downtick on their total deposits through the announcement to the closing date. So subsequent to the closing, we’ve actually had very good success in retaining the majority of their deposits. And we’ve had great momentum, great referrals, a lot of good energy around sort of the retail network there. So, right now, the deposit base is looking strong, and it’s tough to know how much of that will run off. But I would definitely not say to the level that we expect the loan attrition at.

Got it. Appreciate the color.

Sure.

Thanks, Dave.

Our next question comes from Laurie Hunsicker with Compass Point. You may now go ahead.

Hi, thanks. Good morning.

Hey, good morning, Laurie.

Just open we can go back here on interest rate sensitivity. I’m just extrapolating how you answered your first question, I just want to make sure that I’m an apples-to-apples as we think about this broadly against the bank spectrum. So if we look at this with 100 basis points shock, pro forma with EBSB round numbers, you’re at a positive 9% on NII, am I thinking about that the right way?

That’d be an immediate impact, Laurie. What we don’t – what I – what isn’t factored into that is obviously some level of deposit repricing over time. So I do want to be clear that that would be the immediate benefit of the asset repricing. As you know, we’ve been very successful in prior interest rate environment, where we’ve been able to deposit bait is very well contained, and then often lag and deposit prices out of the gate. So at some point, we would expect to give a portion of that back on the deposit side. And when you think about sort of our SEC public disclosures, there’s an assumption baked in there. So I think that 100 basis point rate shock that you reference will likely suggest a 5% to 6% increase on net interest income, all in reflective of assumptions over deposit pricing. But that 9% to 10% number on the asset side is more immediate. Does that help?

Got it. Yes, that sure does, because you guys were sitting at 8%, I guess, as of September, layering an EBSB…

That’s right.

Okay.

Yes, EBSB, certainly mitigated a bit of the asset sensitivity as we expected, it would, but still poised to benefit on a net basis.

Got it. Okay, perfect. And then just going back to expenses. So it looks like you’re obviously ahead of what you have laid out all the cost saves already achieved. That’s wonderful. So just thinking about this, again, just to go back, I want to make sure I heard this, right. If we think about a quarterly run rate, you’re probably $89 million, $90 million or so a quarter. Is that the right way to be thinking about?

Yes. No, when you said that, I realized I did the math in my head incorrectly to David’s question. I was thinking of it as a 90 a quarter, getting to an annualized number. So I think both of you are sort of on the right track there. I apologize for that.

Okay, that’s helpful.

Dave’s number was too high. But I take that back. I think you’re both thinking of it correctly.

Okay. That’s helpful. Okay. And then forward-looking accretion income, how should we be thinking about that? Do you have any – and I realized it’s a moving number, but do you have any approximation what accretion income is going to look like in your net interest income for 2022? What sort of assumptions are you using there?

Yes, I’d say, the good news is that it should be pretty benign, Laurie, just because of where we landed with the non-PCD credit mark in the interest premium. Those are – should be washing each other out over the longer period of time. So those get applied on a loan level basis. So any given quarter to the extent, you may have a payoff on an individual loan that has an outsized Mark either way, it could create a little bit of noise. But over time, those numbers will wash each other out and actually create very little purchase accounting accretion in the margin. So I think you’re going to end up seeing numbers very similar what we’ve been experiencing through much of 2021 due to still some of the prior acquisitions, and that’s probably a $1 million to $2 million a quarter number in terms of benefit. So should be pretty modest.

Okay, that’s helpful. And then last question, so, Chris, can you update us? You’ve got amazing strong currency, you closed this deal, to your point, to homerun? How are you thinking about acquisitions mix? Can you refresh us as to what you’re looking for? What’s the lowest you could go? How far afield you would go? Just any general comments would be very helpful. Thanks.

Yes. Well, I’ll say generally, that we believe that the majority of the economic activity in New England is Worcester, East New sort of semi circles South and North and the Atlantic Ocean. And we – so that’s sort of our focus area. The other thing I think is really important to keep in mind is that we have a really good history of thinking about acquisitions that are adjacent to or within our market. Now knowing sort of, because we have no way more familiarity and therefore, the cultural integration and the potholes that are out there, you can sort of see a little bit better to have sort of being sort of next to the market. Often we know the lenders there. We know – often we have common customers. Mark, I think our common customers with East Boston was, I think, what 15% or 16% of our portfolio was when we had common customers. Is that about right?

On the commercial side, that’s right, Gerry – Chris.

So I mean, that’s a real advantage, because it sort of puts you – it lowers the risk and improves the execution – probability of execution success. The – we have never – and in all the acquisitions we’ve done over the last 20 years, it’s never been seek somebody out and say, here’s an offer. It’s always been about building relationships over time. And slow and steady, focusing on the, as you say, Laurie, our currency, our strength of the franchise, being very methodical about making, saying, what we’re going to do, and then doing what we’re saying. So having that high degree of integrity. And so, no, I await the next set of time a board – a local board sort of adjacent or within our market sort of raises their hand, say, like listening, we’d like to talk about strategic options and love to talk. I think you’re right now they’re at $20 billion, I think there’ll be some more size considerations that we’ve had in the past. I think our first acquisition, you remember, way back in 2004, was $175 million assets bank, that was fabulous for that. It really got our feet wet. We got sort of gotten kind of into that mode and then Slades Ferry was $600 million, again, a great way to get our feet wet, and so the rest is history. I think we’d have to, if a smaller institution of that size came along, I think we’d have to think long and hard and say, we’ll even move the dial. So I think as we’re getting bigger, you’re right. I mean, they’re – our size requirements are going to go up a bit. But we feel like this is a core competence that we’ve developed it well. Now I will say at $20 billion that we have a work to do internally to sort of get our – all our ERM sort of to really snappy, I mean, may become what we call a long, long way. But our expectations of ourselves is to take it even further. So that that’ll continue. But I’m here for conversations. Is that enough, Laurie?

Yes, thank you. Appreciate it.

Yes.

Our next question comes from Chris O’Connell with KBW. You may now go ahead. Chris O’Connell: Good morning, gentlemen.

Hi, Chris. Chris O’Connell: Hey. So why don’t you start off with some of the balance sheet management? I mean, there’s obviously a lot of moving parts here following the acquisition, if EBSB on both the asset and liability side, but just trying to get a sense of the securities outlook going forward. And how much you guys are planning to add to that book over the course of 2022? And what the yields on that you are seeing on the oncoming securities? And then also kind of longer-term, how you see the cash balances kind of progressing over the course of the year here?

Yes, certainly, as you said, Chris, a lot of moving pieces. I think the excess liquidity as a whole, certainly an area that where we’re anticipating and making decisions as the rate environment continues to unfold. But it’s no secret what we anticipated as having maybe sort of surge deposits out of the PPP environment and certainly a lot of excess liquidity for a lot of our customers, that seems to be sticking on balance sheet to a much higher degree than what was originally anticipated. So, as you noted over the last couple of quarters, we have been a bit more aggressive in terms of putting some of that into the securities book. As we look out into 2022, we’ll continue to do that, won’t be at the pace we’ve done the last couple of quarters. But I still think what you saw here in the fourth quarter enough purchasing to increase the securities book, call it, $75 million to $100 million on a quarterly basis is sort of how we’re thinking about the strategy heading into 2022. As you noted, we are seeing some nice lift in the longer end of the curve. I mentioned here in the fourth quarter, we extended a bit more in our purchases, we went out a little longer in sort of a six to seven-year part of the curve, and we’re getting rates and yields on those securities in the mid-1%, sometimes even high 1%. So I think that’s certainly a nice benefit to the churn of the portfolio as we think about it going forward. But I think barring any really unforeseen issues, that combined cash and securities position of high 20% is still going to be here for most of 2022. Chris O’Connell: Got it. That’s helpful. Thank you. And then, if you can talk about just the reserve and what you guys are reserving for kind of oncoming loans or loan originations. At this point, it sounds like from your prepared comments that reserve to loans is likely to trend a bit lower from here, over the course of the year given that it should be coming in – the provision should be coming in below net charge-offs. Just trying to get a sense of the magnitude maybe if that at the end of the road.

Yes. I think that’s been an interesting journey through this pandemic. And as that’s shifted now to a lot of analysis over, which businesses may be affected because of what needs to be closing or has now shifted to where were their supply chain issues, to now where is their wage and sort of just manpower or man, woman power issues. So the dynamic continues to change across our customer base, but we still think there’s some risk out there in certain portfolios. And as a result, we haven’t pulled back all of the reserve build that we did when we first had the onset of COVID. So, between that and the additional credit, Mark, we just put on the acquired Meridian book. We think the allowance is at a very healthy level reflective of a conservative approach around still some element of risk in the environment. But as time goes on, and if we continue to see the strong asset quality and minimal net charge-offs we’ve had, I think our models would suggest that we could continue to pull back on the allowance. I mentioned, we’re at 1.08%. Today, whether it’s net charge-offs that don’t need to have direct provision to replenish or actual release of allowances, I think, a path to get closer to 1%. Over the next 12 months, certainly no, not out of an expectation, again, all things being equal, based on sort of a fairly benign credit environment. So I don’t know if that helps, but it’s – there’s a lot of moving pieces to where we land on the provision each quarter. But I think we feel very, very good about the allowance being able to support what we think is this risk in the today environment. Chris O’Connell: Yes, absolutely. It’s very helpful. And then you guys noted the buyback authorization announcement here. And I was just curious as to what the plan is in terms of utilization of that. Is it contingent on kind of capital levels and grow through here? Or do you plan to take kind of a measured approach over the course of the year? And what the thresholds are, I guess on pricing, the market price is story will be active?

Right. Yes, I think to hit on a couple of points, embedded in the question. Certainly, overall capital levels are very, very healthy. So I think there’d be an appetite for buyback based on the sheer of magnitude of overall capital. The second part of your question in terms of the pricing and impact on tangible book, that’s really sort of the governing principles that we think about in this buyback initiative. So it’s opportunistic. We always think about a buyback as needing to still make sense from a tangible capital perspective. So as I’m sure hopefully, you can appreciate. We don’t want to give specific guidance on sort of where we think that price point is. But we always look at a buyback strategy as sort of a tangible book, dilution and earned back equation. And with a buyback, we do get more comfortable thinking about an earn back out in the six to seven-year range. So I think if you just do the math that would suggest 3% to 3.5% initial tangible book dilutive – that that’s sort of the range we’d be comfortable at if you start to get a lot above that range, I don’t think it makes economic sense. Chris O’Connell: Great. Appreciate that. And you guys mentioned, there’s pop in the loan level derivative income here in the fourth quarter, as customer appetite increased, triangulating somewhere between 2021 and 2020 levels likely for 2022. Just curious as to how the demand for that has been so far to start off the first quarter if it should come in kind of relatively close to 4Q levels or the fourth quarters a bit stronger?

Yes, I may ask Gerry to chime in as well. But I would just say big picture here, Chris. It’s very much sort of a collaborative effort of our folks in the treasury department working with our commercial lender group to identify opportunities where customers may be just coming to the table, looking for fixed rate pricing and our ability to think about giving them options between a pure balance sheet fixed rate price or a swap, and just introducing those conversations. So a lot of it is, to be honest, predicated on sort of our strategy to introduce as many of those conversations as we can. And I think that has been something we’ve sort of talked a lot about here internally, and that was evidenced in the fourth quarter where we had a lot more of those conversations and were able to execute on some more swaps. That was a very strong quarter for fee income. I wouldn’t expect to see it replicated at that level out of the gate. But if it’s a $1 million to $1.5 million a quarter, those are levels that I think seem pretty sustainable in this environment. Chris O’Connell: Great. That’s all I had. I’ll step up for now. Thanks.

Thanks, Chris.

This concludes our question-and-answer session.

Great. Thank you, Anthony.

Sorry, I would like to turn the conference back over to Chris Oddleifson for any closing remarks.

All right. Thank you, Anthony, and thank you, everybody, for joining us today. And we look forward to talking to you again in April after our first quarter. Happy weekend. Bye.

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