Christopher A. Wolking
Analyst · Stephen Geyen with Stifel, Nicolaus
Thanks, Lynell. Lynell shared with you the company's earnings highlights for the fourth quarter and for the full year of 2012. I'd like to add that we are all pleased with our 2012 performance. We believe it shows steady progress in our basic banking strategy. In 2012, we reduced core operating expenses, successfully executed the acquisition of Indiana Community Bancorp and announced our acquisition of branches in Northern Indiana and Southwest Michigan, a new market for us. Additionally, credit costs declined and we grew core loans and core deposits. We still have work to do, but it is gratifying for all of the associates who have worked so hard at the company to have a successful year behind us. Lynell's slide listed a number of items that affected fourth quarter earnings, including $4.5 million in securities gains and $1.9 million in charges associated with debt extinguishment. I'd like to add a little color to our investment portfolio transactions. The securities we sold included approximately $26 million of long maturity municipal bonds. We feel it is prudent to manage the duration of the investment portfolio towards the low end of our historical portfolio duration. We finished the year with a duration of approximately 3.71. Since 2008, our investment portfolio has had a duration of between 5.66 and 3.33. A full review of the investment portfolio was included in the appendix. We used a portion of these security gains to terminate $50 million of Federal Home Loan advances, which would have had an average cost of approximately 7% in 2013. I will begin with Slide 9. You can see that our pretax pre-provision income without securities gains and merger and integration expenses increased to $34 million in the fourth quarter, from $28.2 million in the third quarter. Fourth quarter includes a full quarter's earnings contribution from Indiana Community Bancorp. Pretax pre-provision income not attributable to accretion income was impacted by several unusual income and expense items in the fourth quarter. If I subtract the impact of the branch optimization, debt extinguishment and charitable contributions expense and add back the reversal of the unfunded commitment expense, pretax pre-provision income not attributable to accretion would have been $19.7 million. Total pretax pre-provision income then would have increased to $38.7 million for the fourth quarter if these items did not occur. As we have discussed for several quarters, accretion income resulting from our recent acquisitions continues to lift net interest income. Accretion income from ICB contributed $5.8 million in the fourth quarter. Without the ICB accretion in Q4, accretion income would have been $13.2 million, slightly higher than the third quarter. We did have accretion income from Integra assets in Q4 -- we did have higher accretion income from Integra assets in Q4 compared to Q3, but our outlook is that accretion income from our Monroe and Integra purchases should continue to diminish over time. We continue to stay focused on reducing operating expenses and increasing organic revenue to offset declining accretion income. On Slide 10, I've illustrated our progress with the impaired assets acquired in the Monroe, Integra and Indiana Community transactions. This is a graphical depiction of the performance of only the impaired assets and does not reflect the acquired performing loans. In the fourth quarter, loan interest income related to Monroe impaired assets was $1.1 million, about the same as in the third quarter. We've owned Monroe for a full 2 years, and you can see that since the second quarter of this year, our projection of the non-accretable component of the impaired asset discount has remained relatively stable. We believe that the quarterly accretion income from these assets should stay relatively consistent with the third and fourth quarters of 2012, at least through the first half of 2013. Loan interest income from Integra impaired assets was $14.7 million during the fourth quarter, up about $2.4 million from the third quarter. Integra accretion income was slightly higher than anticipated due largely to the successful remediation of several impaired assets late in the fourth quarter. I've added the chart for Indiana Community Bancorp. We recognized $2.1 million of accretion income from these assets in the fourth quarter, and our expectation is that $16.1 million of the original discount will be recognized as income over the life of these assets. The non-accretable discounts declined $6.9 million from our original expectation. On Slide 11, I've provided data for Indiana Community Bancorp for the fourth quarter. At 12/31/2012, ICB loans net of discount totaled $407.2 million, and noninterest-bearing demand deposits totaled $99.2 million. One-time charges related to the integration of ICB were $2 million for the quarter, and as I noted earlier, ICB assets generated $5.8 million of accretion income for the quarter. We continue to expect the EPS accretion from ICB to be in excess of the $0.06 to $0.08 per share we provided you on our original model for the first full year of earnings. I will update you further on ICB performance at our first quarter call in April. Moving to Slide 12. You will see that average loans increased significantly in the fourth quarter. The ICB transaction closed in mid-September 2012, so the total reflects a full quarter of ICB average loans. Excluding purchase loans, total average loans increased $85.1 million from the third quarter of 2012, and are up $254.1 million from the fourth quarter of 2011. This continues the steady quarterly increase in core average loans we first saw in the second quarter of this year. Monroe purchase loans are stable over the third quarter, while Integra loans continue to decline. ICB loans averaged $447.9 million for the quarter but stood at $407.2 million at the end of 2012. So we did see a decline in ICB loans. [Audio Gap] Slide 13 shows graphs with several Commercial loan production statistics. Commercial line utilization increased to 36.9% in the fourth quarter 2012, from 36.3%, and has remained relatively stable during 2012 in the range of 36% to 37%. We are still under our 2007 to 2008 average utilization of 39.9%. The commercial loan pipeline declined to $396 million in the fourth quarter, but we saw strong production and funding in the quarter. The chart on the lower right of the slide shows fourth quarter Commercial loan production of $241 million, which is the highest production we saw all year. We consider production the face amount of the loans closing, and the loans may not fully fund at closing. I believe the smaller pipeline we saw in the last half of 2012 reflects the strong production we experienced in the third and fourth quarters of 2012, and does not imply a lack of opportunity or a poor outlook for loan growth in our markets. We expect that the total pipeline will increase in the first quarter of 2013, particularly as our new loan producers in the ICB markets become productive. I added a line in the production graph that shows the Commercial loan pay downs we experienced in 2012. This line reflects all pay downs except the pay downs of assets covered by FDIC loss share. By retaining more quality existing commercial relationships, we may have an opportunity to increase Commercial loan growth further. Keeping existing quality credit relationships is an important focus of credit and lending in 2013. Slide 14 is another look at our Commercial loan pipeline. We believe it is important to show the individual components of our pipeline. Pipeline is broken down into loans in the discussion phase, loan proposals and loans that have been accepted. While the total pipeline declined by $70 million from the third quarter, loans in the proposal and accepted stages of the pipeline only declined $19 million. We believe this shows that the near-term outlook for Commercial loan production is good even after the strong production in Q4. We expect that loans in the discussion phase will increase in early 2013. It's also important to note the overall trend of the pipeline in 2012 compared to 2011. As you can see on the chart, comparing each quarter in 2012 to the same quarter in 2011, in every case, the pipeline was higher in 2012. This is another reason to be optimistic for loans in 2013. On Slide 15, I've provided a graph of the trends in noninterest income. ICB contributed to quarterly increases in mortgage banking and wealth management revenue. Service charges on deposits only increased $100,000 over the third quarter even though ICB deposit accounts contributed $1 million in new deposit service charge income in the quarter. Service charges have been flat during 2012 at the company and were lower than we had forecasted at the beginning of 2012. The primary contributor to the increase in other income for the quarter was the change in the amortization of the FDIC indemnification asset from the third quarter. In the fourth quarter, the change in the indemnification asset resulted in income of $700,000 compared to an expense of $4.9 million in Q3. We would expect to see quarterly amortization expense as the IA continues to shrink like the expense we saw in Q2 and Q3. As I noted earlier, total average Integra loans outstanding in the fourth quarter were $464.5 million, down from $726.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2011. In the fourth quarter of 2012, however, we took a charge of $5.2 million to reduce the carrying value of Integra-related other real estate-owned. Because this is a larger expected loss on this asset, the FDIC should absorb 80% of this loss when it is realized. This caused us to increase the FDIC indemnification asset by 80% of the expected loss or approximately $4.14 million. Without the increase in the IA due to the write-down of the Integra OREO, our amortization expense for the quarter would have been approximately $3.3 million, slightly lower than Q3 expense. As of December 31, 2012, the indemnification asset on the balance sheet was $115.7 million, down from $167.7 million as of 12/31/2011. Total noninterest expenses shown on Slide 16 were $99.4 million compared to $89 million in the third quarter. As you saw on Lynell's slides, we had several expenses in the fourth quarter that we would not expect in future quarters. We incurred the $5.2 million in Integra OREO expenses and $6.5 million in other expenses, all of which are listed on the slide below the chart. Finally, we incurred $2 million in expenses related to ICB integration in the fourth quarter. Core expenses increased to $85.7 million and included ICB operating expenses for the quarter. Our reported efficiency ratio for the quarter was 72.2%, obviously short of our 65% target. However, if I exclude all but the OREO expense from our results in the quarter, our efficiency ratio would have been 66% for the fourth quarter 2012. I didn't exclude the OREO charge because there is an offsetting revenue item reflecting the 80% FDIC loss share. We realize that the 66% efficiency ratio does include significant accretion revenue for the quarter, but it demonstrates progress to our near-term objective of 65% efficiency. In the right-hand margin on Slide 16, I've noted estimated impacts we should see or begin to see in the first quarter. Our largest remaining cost of $2.5 million from our BSA/AML project should be expensed in Q1. This cost is for professional fees incurred for the project and are not considered ongoing costs. We should also begin seeing more benefit to core operating cost from our branch optimization program in Q1. The final branch sales should be completed in February, and I expect that the personnel cost savings from the consolidations in November should be fully phased in by March 31. When the branch consolidations and closures are fully recognized, we should see $6.5 million to $7.5 million in annual expense savings. Moving to Slide 17. I provided a breakdown of our net interest margin in the fourth quarter and the trends we've experienced over the last 18 months. Net interest margin on a fully taxable equivalent basis was 4.34% for the fourth quarter of 2012, up from 4.09% in the third quarter. The net interest income generated by the accretion of purchase accounting discounts translated to an estimated 94 basis points of margin for the fourth quarter when they're annualized. Accretion of ICB discount accounted for 29 basis points of margin. Accretion of discount from Integra accounted for 55 basis points of margin, and accretion for Monroe accounted for 10 basis points of margin. ICB accretion of $5.8 million for the quarter was slightly higher than forecast. Our estimate is that Integra fourth quarter accretion income was approximately $3.5 million higher for the quarter than expected, although contribution from the purchased assets will likely continue to be somewhat variable in 2013, we continue to expect that the Monroe and Integra accretion income will decline significantly in 2013, but that this decline in revenues should be offset by income from the newly acquired ICB portfolio. Core interest margin declined more than we expected in the fourth quarter although some of this can be attributed to higher average earning assets in Q4 compared to Q3 than forecast. Core net interest margin was 3.40% in the fourth quarter compared to 3.47% in the third quarter. Most of this decline was from a lower yield on our investment portfolio. Portfolio yield declined due to growth in the portfolio, the sale of the higher yielding securities I discussed earlier and lower reinvestment yields. Also the growth in core loans contributed to the lower margin as well because new loans were booked at a lower rate than we had forecast. Our forecast indicates that first quarter core margin could decline by another 3 to 5 basis points. Slide 18 shows our trend in tangible book value per share. Our tangible book value per share ended the quarter at $8.17, up from $8.09 per share at the end of the third quarter. The decline in third quarter tangible book value per share was driven by the 6.6 million shares issued for the purchase of ICB plus the goodwill and intangibles added to the balance sheet with the ICB purchase. The trend in tangible book value per share shows an upward trend in tangible book value from the first quarter of 2011 when we purchased Monroe through the fourth quarter of 2012. Significantly higher accretion income over this period has helped us recover tangible book value relatively quickly after each purchase. We believe this shows that these were acquisitions that were priced appropriately and have been managed well. We have stated previously that our priorities for using capital are organic balance sheet growth, attractive acquisitions and the return of capital to shareholders in the form of dividends or stock buybacks. As you saw with our announcements in January, we continue to try to balance these priorities to take advantage of opportunities as they are available. Early this month, we announced the acquisition of 24 branches from Bank of America. We believe this is a low-cost, low-risk opportunity to build our franchise in Northern Indiana, and to enter a new market, Southwest Lower Michigan, in a meaningful way. Additionally, last week, we announced our intention to increase our quarterly dividend by $0.01 per share to $0.10, and reestablished our authorization to buy up to 2 million common shares during 2013. In the last quarter of 2012, we repurchased approximately 250,000 shares under our 2012 authorization. One final point before I turn the call over to Daryl. Our effective tax rate for the fourth quarter increased to 32.4% from 22.9% in the third quarter due to increases in pretax income while tax-exempt income remained relatively stable. In addition, the company completed its 2011 tax return in the third quarter and lowered tax expense to adjust to the actual tax return results. Also we reversed $292,000 of tax expense in the third quarter related to the uncertain tax positions. We expect our effective tax rate to be in the range of 27% to 28% in 2013. I'll now turn the call over to Daryl Moore.