Financial Institutions - Q1 2024

Executive Summary

• Q1 2024 was significantly impacted by a one‑time deposit-related fraud event, driving noninterest expense to $54.0M and diluted EPS to $0.11; net interest margin (NIM) stabilized at 2.78% and net income was $2.1M.
• Deposits grew 3.5% QoQ to $5.40B and 5.0% YoY, supporting liquidity that management characterized as “nearly $1.5B”; anticipated 12‑month portfolio cash flow is ~$1.1B, underpinning plans to redeploy into higher‑yielding assets.
• The sale of SDN Insurance Agency closed April 1, 2024, generating ~$27M in proceeds and an after-tax gain of ~$11.2M; management expects the transaction to add ≥40 bps to regulatory capital and >30 bps to TCE in Q2.
• Guidance: NIM 285–295 bps maintained; loan and deposit growth 1–3% maintained; effective tax rate updated to 13–15%; recurring noninterest income reset lower post-insurance sale and noninterest expense lowered, implying operating leverage improvement ex-fraud.
• Potential stock catalysts: resolution/recovery from the fraud event, visible margin expansion as cash flows are redeployed, and capital ratio lift from the insurance sale.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

• What Went Well

  • Strong deposit growth across public, nonpublic, and reciprocal categories (+$183.8M QoQ), enabling reductions in short‑term borrowings and brokered deposits and supporting NIM stability; “our liquidity position may be the strongest it has ever been”.
  • NIM stabilized at 2.78% with monthly improvement through Q1; March NIM was 2.80%, and management reiterated full‑year NIM guidance of 285–295 bps with expected modest expansion.
  • Strategic portfolio actions: closed sale of insurance subsidiary (~$27M proceeds; ~4x 2023 insurance revenue), with management planning to redeploy proceeds to higher‑yielding earning assets and strengthen capital in Q2.

• What Went Wrong

  • A deposit-related fraud event drove ~$18.4M pre‑tax loss and ~ $660K legal/consulting fees, elevating noninterest expense to $54.0M (+54% QoQ), and compressed EPS to $0.11.
  • Noninterest income fell to $10.9M (−$4.5M QoQ) primarily due to normalized company-owned life insurance (COLI) income following a Q4 redeploy strategy; investment advisory income also declined YoY.
  • Allowance coverage ratio declined to 0.97% from 1.14% in Q4 as delinquencies improved and consumer indirect balances fell; while net charge-offs improved to 0.28% (annualized), indirect auto charge-offs remained elevated vs historical norms, prompting analyst questions.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Financial Institutions, Inc. First Quarter 2024 earnings call. My name is Harry, and I'll be your operator. If you'd like to ask a question during Q&A, you may do so by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. I will now hand over to Kate Croft to begin. Please go ahead.

Kate Croft (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you for joining us for today's call. Providing prepared comments will be President and CEO, Marty Birmingham, and CFO, Jack Plants. They'll be joined by additional members of the company's financial leadership teams during the question and answer session. Today's prepared comments and Q&A will include forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from forward-looking statements due to a variety of risks, uncertainties, and other factors.

We refer you to yesterday's earnings release and investor presentation, as well as historical SEC filings, which are available on our investor relations website for a safe harbor description and a detailed discussion of the risk factors relating to forward-looking statements. We'll also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures intended to supplement and not substitute for comparable GAAP measures.

Reconciliations of these measures to GAAP financial measures were provided in the earnings release filed as an exhibit to Form 8-K or in our investor relations presentation, available on our IR website, www.fisi-investors.com. Please note, this call includes information that may only be accurate as of today's date, April 26th, 2024. I'll now turn the call over to President and CEO, Marty Birmingham.

Martin Birmingham (President and CEO)

Thank you, Kate. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Heading into 2024, we knew that the challenging operating environment would persist. In the fourth quarter, you'll recall, we took steps to optimize the configuration of our balance sheet and completed a strategic reorganization to enhance the earnings potential of the company while positioning us for sustained incremental performance in the future.

Given the fraud event we experienced, we never could have imagined the intensity of the challenges we have faced and vigorously managed in the last several weeks. As previously disclosed, in early March 2024, we discovered fraudulent activity conducted by an in-market deposit-only Five Star Bank business customer that resulted in a $18.4 million deposit-related charge-off in the first quarter. This has been broken out in our income statement from other expenses.

The charge is modestly lower than the $18.9 million potential exposure we originally estimated, reflecting funds recouped in late March. We are actively pursuing all legal recourse available to us to recover additional funds from the customer and minimize this loss.

This event certainly had a significant impact on our otherwise solid first quarter 2024 financial results, with the associated pre-tax fraud loss and elevated legal and consulting expenses totaling approximately $19 million. As we recognized this loss in the first quarter, net income available to common shareholders was $1.7 million, or $0.11 per diluted share, compared to $9.4 million or $0.61 per share in the late fourth quarter, and $11.7 million or $0.76 per share in the first quarter of 2023.

We reported annualized return on average assets of 13 basis points and an efficiency ratio of approximately 106%. Excluding the impact of expenses related to this fraud event, the company would have reported $1.12 of earnings per diluted share, ROA of 1.14%, and an efficiency ratio of approximately 69%. Even as we navigated this matter, we remained focused on strategic action to enhance liquidity, capital and earnings.

On April first, we announced and closed the sale of the assets of our insurance subsidiary, SDN Insurance Agency, to NFP Property & Casualty Services, a leading property and casualty broker and benefits consultant. In addition to having a meaningful contribution to overall net income, the sale occurred at an opportune time when this line of business was generating what we believe was a peak EBITDA margin.

The $27 million all-cash transaction represents 4x 2023 insurance revenue and approximately 10x earnings. This transaction allowed us to capture strong value premium in this business, generating a gain of approximately $11.2 million on an after-tax basis, prior to selling costs, while also eliminating $11.3 million of goodwill and other intangible assets.

Importantly, the transaction provides at least 40 basis points of incremental regulatory capital that positively impacts our TCE ratio by more than 30 basis points, which will be reflected in second quarter results. We were pleased to have the opportunity to source capital at a time when it is needed in such an efficient and shareholder-friendly manner. In the 10 years since we acquired SDN, it supported revenue diversification and allowed us to expand the capabilities and services we provide our customers.

We enhanced our former insurance subsidiary through bolt-on acquisitions in the Buffalo and Rochester markets and helped it grow into a leading insurance agency serving Western New York and clients nationally. We evaluated potential buyers for this business. NFP's offer was compelling, both financially and in terms of its vision for SDN's future and continued collaboration with our Five Star Bank team. Looking forward, NFP will be the bank's insurance partner of choice, ensuring our customers have continued access to exceptional insurance counsel, products, and services.

We expect to deploy proceeds from the sale into our core banking business in the form of high quality, credit discipline loan origination to drive higher yielding earning asset growth and support net interest margin expansion through the year.

We continue to expect that our full-year loan growth will be driven by our commercial lending group, which operates across Western and Central New York and our Mid-Atlantic region. In the first quarter, growth in this portfolio was offset by anticipated declines in our indirect auto segment as we continue to enhance the profitability of this line of business while benefiting from the spending cash flow it provides.

While total loan balances were relatively flat at the end of 2023, down $20 million or 50 basis points, we have solid pipelines and have closed several notable commercial deals so far in the second quarter. Credit quality remained strong and stable in the first quarter, with non-performing loans to total loans of 60 basis points as of March 31, 2024 and December 31, 2023.

Annualized net charge-offs to average loans were 28 basis points in the current quarter, an improvement of 10 basis points from the fourth quarter. While we have seen higher charge-off rates in our indirect portfolio the last few quarters, the trend that continued into the first quarter of 2024, we saw positive trends in overall indirect delinquencies during the quarter.

As an example, total delinquencies, including non-accruals, declined by more than $12 million during the first three months of the year to 1.24% March 31. Essentially half of the 2.53% we saw at December 31, 2023. Overall, we remain confident in the health of our loan portfolio and associated asset quality metrics.

Deposit growth was a highlight for our first quarter performance, with balances up $183.8 million, or 3.5% from year-end 2023. While seasonality of public deposits was the main driver of this increase, we experienced growth in non-public and reciprocal deposits as well. Banking as a Service or BaaS related deposits were down modestly from the end of 2023 to approximately $116 billion, reflecting normal fluctuation within end user accounts.

We remain energized about the opportunity this line of business presents, while mindful of the challenges others in this space have experienced. As we have stated in the past, our approach to BaaS has been measured, deliberately aligned with our organizational risk appetite statement, and focused on select partners serving small and mid-sized businesses, affinity groups, and niche markets.

Our risk-adjusted process for evaluating BaaS partners, coupled with a controlled approach to transitioning them onto our platform, has resulted in modest but sustainable growth in this line of business and a reduction in our partnership pipeline. We deem this prudent and are currently focused on cultivating strong and lasting partnerships. This concludes my introductory comments. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Jack for additional details on results and details of our 2024 guidance.

Jack Plants (CFO)

Thank you, Marty. Good morning, everyone. Net interest income of $40.1 million for the first quarter was up $196,000 from the fourth quarter of 2023. Interest-earning asset yields increased 11 basis points, in line with overall cost of funds, reflective of the impacts of the continued high interest rate environment, the inverted yield curve and strong competition in our markets.

Margin has stabilized, and we reported NIM on a fully taxable equivalent basis of 278 basis points for both the current and linked quarters. Margin increased incrementally on a monthly basis in the first quarter. Given our $1.1 billion in anticipated cash flow in 2024, we have ample opportunity to redeploy funds into higher yielding earning assets.

In looking at our total deposit portfolio, relative to the magnitude of FOMC rate increases that occurred in 2022 and 2023, we have experienced a cycle-to-date beta of 46%. Excluding the cost of time deposits, the non-maturity deposit portfolio had a beta of 28%. Given FOMC expectations and internal modeling, we expect the trajectory of deposit beta to slow in 2024.

Non-interest income totaled $10.9 million in the first quarter, down $4.5 million on a linked quarter basis. This variance was largely driven by lower company-owned life insurance, or COLI income in the current quarter. As you'll recall, we reported $9.1 million of COLI income in the fourth quarter, of which approximately $8 million related to a higher crediting rate on the investment of the premium into a separate account product during that period.

As expected, incremental income associated with cash surrender value, those policies, and the stable value component has stabilized and is reflected in our first quarter of 2024 results. In the linked fourth quarter, we also reported a $3.6 million loss on investment securities related to the repositioning we completed in October, which, along with seasonally higher insurance income in the quarter, partially offset the COLI income variance between periods.

Investment advisory income, largely driven by Courier Capital, our RIA subsidiary, serving mass affluent and high-net-worth individuals and families, institutional clients, and 401(k) plan sponsors, was down about $87,000 from the linked quarter. As of March 31, 2024, Courier Capital had assets under management of approximately $3 billion.

As Marty noted, increased non-interest expense was primarily attributable to the fraud event we experienced in March of 2024, including an $18.4 billion deposit-related fraud charge-off, approximately $660,000 in related legal and consulting expenses. Excluding these two items, non-interest expense would have been flat with the linked fourth quarter.

We recorded a benefit for credit losses this quarter as a decrease in qualitative factors, coupled with an improvement in forecasted loan losses and a decrease in consumer indirect loans, resulted in a reserve release. We've provided additional details on Slide 19 of our investor presentation, but I'd like to touch on a couple of the contributing factors here. The primary driver of the improved qualitative factor in our model was the lower level of consumer indirect delinquencies relative to year-end 2023.

This qualitative factor for trends and delinquencies is purely quantitative in nature and corresponds to the range of delinquencies in the portfolio over the look-back period since 2006. We also saw improved commercial delinquencies and observed favorable trends in our commercial credit review and administration functions. Income tax expense was $356,000 in the quarter, representing an effective tax rate of 14.7%.

Our accumulated other comprehensive loss was $126.3 million at March 31, 2024, compared to $119.9 million at December 31, 2023. We reported a TCE ratio at March 31 of 5.72% and tangible common book value per share of $23.06.

Excluding the AOCI impact, the TCE ratio and tangible common book value per share would have been 7.53% and $30.37, respectively. We continue to expect these metrics to return to more normalized levels over time, given the high credit quality and cash flow nature of our investment portfolio. I would now like to provide an update on our outlook for the remainder of 2024 in key areas.

Following our April 1, 2024 insurance transaction, we now expect recurring non-interest income between $8.5 million-$9 million per quarter, or $36.5 million-$38 million for the full year. This guidance excludes income related to investment tax credits, limited partnerships, and gains or losses on investment securities and assets, including the SDN sale.

We're now projecting non-interest expense of $33 million-$34 million per quarter for the remainder of 2024, again, reflecting the sale of SDN. This translates to full-year non-interest expense of $135 million-$136 million, excluding the $19 million of expense related to the fraud event recognized in the first quarter.

We now expect the 2024 effective tax rate to fall within a range of 13%-15%, including the impact of the fraud event in the first quarter, the SDN sale in the second quarter, and the amortization of tax credit investments placed in service in recent years. We will continue to evaluate tax credit opportunities and the positive impact these investments would have on our effective tax rate.

Our previous guidance on loan and deposit growth of between 1%-3%, net interest margin of between 285-295 basis points, and full-year net charge-offs within our annual historical range of 30-40 basis points remain unchanged. Overall, our company remains in a strong financial position.

We continue to be well-capitalized and maintain a steady level of regulatory capital during the first quarter, despite the challenges we faced, reporting a Common Equity Tier 1 ratio of 9.43%, consistent with year-end 2023. Our liquidity position is among the strongest we've seen, approaching $1.5 billion, and our twelve-month anticipated cash flow continues to exceed $1 billion, putting us in a strong position to continue to support our customers and communities. That concludes my prepared remarks and updated guidance.

I'll now turn the call back to Marty.

Martin Birmingham (President and CEO)

Thank you, Jack. As challenging as the first quarter was, I'm very proud of our team for not allowing adversity to distract us from our focus of running the business, delivering on our objectives, and executing on longer-term initiatives. The second quarter is off to a strong start with the successful divestiture of our insurance subsidiary, supporting our capital ratios and earnings potential.

Our pipelines are healthy, and we remain focused on our core banking business and on nurturing strong customer relationships in order to sustain and grow our deposit base. Credit discipline loan growth has been and continues to be a fundamental focus of our retail, commercial, credit delivery, and risk associates. That concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, please open the call for questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two, and when preparing to ask a question, please ensure that your phone is unmuted locally. Our first question today is from the line of Damon DelMonte of KBW. Damon, your line is open now if you'd like to proceed.

Damon DelMonte (Managing Director of Equity Research)

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. So just curious, you know, with regards to the provision reversal this quarter, you know, I understand there's a combination of factors that were provided in the release that support the reversal, but I was just wondering, what would have been the harm to kind of maintain a higher loan loss reserve, especially where we are in the cycle with credit trends today? You know, it looks like the reserve now at 97 basis points is effectively kind of round-trip the day one CECL level. So just curious as to, you know, what the harm would have been to kind of keep the reserve a little bit higher and be a little bit more conservative?

Martin Birmingham (President and CEO)

... Damon, it's Marty. Thanks for the question. It's an important topic, I think, for the industry right now. There's dissonance relative to some of these reserve releases, and, you know, to your point, what we think could happen relative to the economy and other, you know, challenges to credit, et cetera. You know, we obviously all these CECL models were built at a time when interest rates were 0-25 basis points on a Fed Funds basis. We've not, you know, we felt the impact of the velocity of interest rate increases. Obviously, the credit events that we've been talking about in the industry and in the financial press for the last 18 months, they didn't exist.

So, we are, you know, thinking about that and the model, and the times that we are in today versus when it was built and adopted in the late 2019 and early 2020. And exploring other factors that would have acceptable, you know, statistical attribution in terms of predicting future credit losses. But, Jack, you started to think about that.

Jack Plants (CFO)

Sure. So Damon, let me start by saying that a coverage ratio of 97 basis points, I'm comfortable with that, given the credit performance of our portfolio. When I look back to the third and fourth quarter last year when we were building reserves, it was driven by one of the qualitative drivers of our CECL model that's quantitatively driven, and that's the delinquency on our indirect portfolio, which started to increase.

And as a result, we saw higher net charge-offs in the indirect portfolio in the fourth quarter of 2023, and again in the first quarter of this year. However, during the first quarter, we saw delinquencies at basically 50% of what they were during the fourth quarter of last year, which is a leading indicator of future charge-offs in that portfolio.

So given that performance and the quantitative factor around it, that drove the majority of our reserve release there. And, with the underlying performance of that portfolio, it makes me comfortable with our current coverage ratio.

Damon DelMonte (Managing Director of Equity Research)

Got it. Okay, and there's apparently, like, there's no, no concern that if rates stay higher for longer and there's more stress on the consumer, that that indirect portfolio could experience some, some weakness?

Justin Bigham (Chief Banking Officer)

We saw weakness in the portfolio through net charge-offs in the fourth and first quarter of this year. That was driven by a slug of loans that had been originated during the pandemic when consumers were flush with liquidity from government stimulus programs. We're working through that. Given the current delinquencies on the portfolio, I expect to see some improved performance in that line of business.

Damon DelMonte (Managing Director of Equity Research)

Okay, great. Thank you. And then, just one other question here on the margin. It came in at 2.78 this quarter. Do you happen to have what the margin was for the month of March?

Justin Bigham (Chief Banking Officer)

Yeah, it was 280 basis points.

Damon DelMonte (Managing Director of Equity Research)

Great. Okay, great. Okay, that's all that I have for now.

Jack Plants (CFO)

Thanks Damon.

Operator (participant)

Thank you, and as a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please dial star one on your telephone keypad now. That's star one on your telephone keypad for any further questions. Our next question is from the line of Bader Hijleh of Piper Sandler. Bader, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Bader Hijleh (Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, good morning, guys. Just filling in for Alex today.

Jack Plants (CFO)

Good morning, Bader.

Bader Hijleh (Equity Research Analyst)

I just wanted to ask about the NIM guidance. You guys guided to 2.85%-2.95% for the year. Could you just walk us through the drivers of what would have to go right for it to hit the top end of the range, you know, 2.95%, and, and vice versa, to 2.85% throughout the year?

Justin Bigham (Chief Banking Officer)

Sure. So a lot of what's driving that is the cash flow that's coming off the portfolio with really tempered, loan growth in that 1%-3% range. So we're seeing the roll-on yields in our commercial book come on, you know, 8% or higher, which is exceeding the cash flow that's coming off the portfolio. So that's driving the, the modest expansion we're forecasting.

We're also including, you know, a modest amount of, you know, increased beta in the deposit book, just given the higher rate environment. However, we think that that's at a much lower level than what we'd experienced last year. And as we indicated in the call script, we saw margin improvement each month during the first quarter at a modest level, which gets us to that guided range of what we projected for the full year.

Bader Hijleh (Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. Thanks. And then just to follow up also about the NIM, is it fair to assume... I mean, you just gave the, the NIM for March was 2.80. Is it fair to assume that 1Q would be the bottom for the NIM? And should we expect an inflection next quarter?

Justin Bigham (Chief Banking Officer)

That's the expectation.

Martin Birmingham (President and CEO)

Got it. Yeah, that's all my questions. Thanks for taking them.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We have no further questions in the queue at this time, so I would like to hand back to Marty Birmingham for any closing remarks.

Martin Birmingham (President and CEO)

Appreciate everyone's participation this morning and interest in the company. We look forward to continuing this conversation and updating you on our results for the second quarter in July.

Operator (participant)

This concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.