Hello, and welcome to the F.N.B. Corporation first quarter 2022 earnings call. All participants will be in the listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, today's event is being recorded. I now would like to turn the conference over to Lisa Constantine, Investor Relations. Ms. Constantine, please go ahead. Thank you. Good morning and welcome to our earnings call. This conference call of F.N.B. Corporation and the reports it files with the Securities and Exchange Commission often contain forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures. Non-GAAP financial measures should be used in addition to and not as an alternative for our reported results prepared in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP operating measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are included in our presentation materials and in our earnings release. We refer to these non-GAAP and forward-looking statement disclosures contained in our related materials, reports, and registration statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available on our corporate website. A replay of this call will be available until Tuesday, April 26th, and the webcast link will be posted to the About Us, Investor Relations section of our corporate website. I will now turn the call over to Vince Delie, Chairman, President and CEO. Thank you, and welcome to our first quarter earnings call. Joining me today are Vince Calabrese, our Chief Financial Officer, and Gary Guerrieri our Chief Credit Officer. FNB began 2022 with solid fundamental performance and the full integration of the Howard Bank acquisition. We are pleased that the deal metrics associated with Howard came in at or better than planned with a positive impact to our capital ratios. Howard added $1.8 billion of loans to the balance sheet, bringing our total assets to $42 billion. In fact, on a combined basis, FNB had strong loan pipeline growth in the Mid-Atlantic region, up 13% year-over-year and 61% linked quarter. Our expectation is that the Mid-Atlantic region will continue to grow with the exceptional employees and new clients who joined FNB. Additionally, we expect to receive revenue benefit from FNB's more robust product set as we offer these services to the existing customer base already in the market. Earlier this month, FNB's board of directors approved a new 150 million share repurchase program, providing additional flexibility to effectively manage capital and benefit our shareholders. FNB reported first quarter GAAP EPS of $0.15 and $0.26 on an operating basis. Revenue increased 3.4% linked quarter, led by net interest income increasing 5%. We remain well positioned to grow net interest income given the strategic steps we undertook to position our balance sheet and benefit from the current interest rate cycle. These include favorable deposit mix changes and investing in a short-term securities portfolio. We remain well positioned with $16 billion of assets that are tied to short-term rate indices. Loans increased $2 billion or 8.2% when excluding PPP. While Howard contributed to the growth, commercial loan production was more than $1 billion, up 30% year-over-year. As we look ahead, pipelines have rebuilt from our strong growth in the fourth quarter and are up 23% quarter-over-quarter. This gives us additional confidence in our mid- to high-single-digit organic loan growth guidance for the full year. Our fee income businesses contributed another solid quarter at $78 million, essentially flat to the last quarter. Wealth management continued to produce record results, with revenues increasing $1.1 million linked quarter, or nearly 30% annualized, driven primarily by record organic sales activity. Mortgage banking income increased $700 thousand linked quarter to $7 million amid significant interest rate volatility. While rising mortgage rates are expected to reduce refinance activity, we are confident our diversified geographic footprint and consistent commitment to the home purchase and new construction market will help us outperform the industry. In fact, nearly 80% of our originations this quarter were for purchase money mortgages. FNB's investment in technology has also enabled us to efficiently bring in more mortgage clients, with 66% of our mortgage applications submitted through our online eStore. As we continue to grow our balance sheet, we remain vigilant in examining the current macroeconomic environment of high inflation, supply chain disruption, and geopolitical unrest. We have proactively assessed the risks and activated plans given the current environment. Our credit team is continually monitoring the industries that are potentially affected by the rising interest rates, higher food, oil and gas and commodity prices, and supply chain disruption. We will continue to assess the environmental risks and adjust our strategy appropriately to ensure consistent performance while addressing the needs of our key stakeholders. I will now turn the call over to Gary to discuss overall credit performance and the steps his team has taken to position our portfolio. Thank you, Vince, and good morning, everyone. Our first quarter results remained strong, and we are very pleased with the continued favorable positioning of our credit portfolio as evidenced by our key asset quality metrics. The quarter also marked the successful completion of the Howard Bank acquisition, which I am pleased to report came over slightly better than expected and did not have a material impact to the overall credit portfolio. I will provide some additional color on the transaction, including the day one and day two impacts to the reserve levels, which I will touch on later in my prepared remarks. Let's first review our GAAP asset quality results for the quarter. As I have mentioned previously, we entered 2022 with our credit portfolio in a position of strength. With the newly acquired Howard loan book now reflected in our total consolidated results, we saw only slight increases in our delinquency and NPL levels as compared to our very low year-end results. The level of delinquency ended March at a very solid 66 basis points, reflecting an increase of 5 basis points driven entirely by Howard. Exclusive of that acquired book of loans, delinquency would have decreased slightly compared to the prior quarter. NPLs and OREO also reflected a small increase on a linked quarter basis against very low year-end results, with the GAAP level up 2 basis points to end March at 40 basis points, which was again due to the absorption of Howard's portfolio. Net charge-offs for the quarter were very low at $1.9 million, or 3 basis points annualized, as we continue to track at historically low levels over the past several quarters. We recognized provision expense of $18 million for the quarter, including the $19.1 million initial provision for non-PCD loans associated with the Howard acquisition. With the additional day one PCD gross-up of $10 million, our ending reserve position stands at $371 million or 1.38% of loans at quarter end. Acquired PCD loans were relatively low and represented just over 10% of the Howard loan book. Absent the Howard transaction and the associated provision and gross-up activity, our reserve level would have been down slightly compared to December, which is consistent with the favorable credit quality trends we've seen. Our NPL coverage position remains strong at 365%. Regarding Howard's loan portfolio, we are very pleased with the successful conversion of the book and the ongoing tracking and monitoring our teams continue to perform to help us better manage risk during this transition phase. Howard's credit book performed slightly better than we were expecting leading up to the conversion, with our loan risk profile and credit concentrations all remaining satisfactory. We look forward to the additional lending opportunities and access to the expanded customer base within our Mid-Atlantic footprint, which helps support our overall loan growth objectives and provides us with deeper opportunities for our other fee-based services. I would like to congratulate the team for their tireless efforts to close the transaction and expand our position in this highly desirable market. I would now like to briefly touch on recent global and macroeconomic activity that we have been monitoring, including the potential effect on our borrowers and the markets in which we operate. With the ongoing challenges of widespread inflation, elevated input costs, supply chain disruptions, labor shortages, and geopolitical influences, we are focused on these factors in our underwriting and in our credit discussions to address and mitigate these risks upfront. While we have not seen any material impact to our credit portfolio at this time, we remain vigilant and have tailored our credit decisioning approach to address the impact that these various factors could have on a borrower's EBITDA and margin levels, including the effects of fluctuating operational and supply costs, as well as potential interest rate sensitivities that may lead to increased borrowing costs. That said, we have been very proactive in utilizing interest rate instruments to provide borrowers the option to fix their borrowing costs and reduce their sensitivity to the rising rate environment. In closing, we remain very pleased with the position of our portfolio and the successful acquisition of Howard Bank, and we remain focused on the year ahead to manage our growing credit book through a potentially softer economic environment. Maintaining our strong credit culture stands front and center, and we are well prepared and remain proactive in our approach to quickly identify and better manage emerging risks in our loan portfolio. Our disciplined credit framework is built on a foundation of consistent underwriting, attentive risk management, and selectivity of high-quality lending opportunities, all of which has served us well and positions us for the year ahead. I will now turn the call over to Vince Calabrese, our Chief Financial Officer, for his remarks. As Vince mentioned, we are very excited about the Howard acquisition and the potential this deal offers to continue growing our fee-based revenues. As of the merger closing date, loans and deposits were both $1.8 billion, with 43% of deposits in non-interest bearing accounts. In terms of significant items, the first quarter had $28.6 million in merger related expenses, $19.1 million of initial provision for non-PCD loans, and $4.2 million in branch consolidation costs. In conjunction with the acquisition, FNB issued a little over 34 million shares of common stock at $12.99 in exchange for 18.9 million shares of Howard common stock. Going forward, Howard will be included in all of our reported numbers, including guidance, as they are now part of FNB. With that, let's turn to slide five and discuss the first quarter financials, starting with the highlights. First quarter reported EPS totaled $0.15 and $0.26 on an operating basis after adjusting for the Howard related items and branch consolidation costs previously noted. Excluding PPP and Howard loans as of the acquisition date, which is more reflective of underlying loan growth, period end total loans increased $259.7 million, or 4.3% annualized on a linked quarter basis, including an increase of $81.7 million in commercial loans and leases, and $178 million in consumer loans. Average loans excluding PPP and Howard increased $440 million or 7.4% annualized. Let's continue with the balance sheet on slide seven. First quarter average securities reached $7.0 billion, an increase of $469 million from the prior quarter as we increased our investing activity to take advantage of the higher interest rate environment. Securities growth, coupled with the loan growth, contributed to a 3.9% increase in total average earning assets. Average deposits, excluding Howard, totaled $31.7 billion, an increase of 7.8% year-over-year, reflecting continued organic growth in households and account balances, partially offset by decline in time deposits, given customer preferences to move funds into liquid accounts. Turning to slide eight. Net interest income totaled $234.1 million, an increase of $10.8 million or 4.8% from the prior quarter, primarily due to growth in average earning assets and initial benefits from the higher interest rate environment, partially offset by the $4.2 million decreased contribution from PPP. Our net interest margin increased 6 basis points to 261, reflecting the early stages of benefiting from upward movement in interest rates. Total impact of PPP purchase accounting accretion and higher cash balances on net interest margin was a reduction of 13 basis points for the quarter, similar to the 14 basis point reduction last quarter. Now let's look at non-interest income and expense. Non-interest income totaled $78.3 million, essentially flat from the prior quarter. We have previously mentioned the strategy of investing in our diversified fee-based businesses, and this quarter again demonstrates its importance. For example, the insurance commissions and fees increase of $2.3 million linked quarter offset the capital markets decrease of $2.4 million as it reverted from elevated levels in the fourth quarter. We expect our diversified fee income strategy to be advantageous as we continue along the economic cycle. Reported non-interest expense increased $45.8 million or 25.2% linked quarter. On an operating basis, non-interest expense increased $13.9 million or 7.7% to $194.6 million, excluding merger related expenses and branch consolidation costs from the current and prior quarters. On an operating basis, salaries and employee benefits increased $8.1 million or 7.8% linked quarter, primarily related to normal seasonal long-term compensation expense of $6.2 million in the first quarter of 2022, as well as seasonally higher employer-paid payroll taxes. Also included in the quarter total is a little over two months of salaries and benefits for the Howard employees that joined FNB. Occupancy and equipment increased $3.1 million or 10.1%, primarily due to higher seasonal utilities costs. Bank shares and franchise taxes increased $2.3 million due to the recognition of state tax credits in the prior quarter. The efficiency ratio equals 60.7% compared to 58.7%. The higher efficiency ratio resulted from nearly $20 million of lower PPP and purchase accounting accretion income versus a year ago. Excluding PPP and PAA, our efficiency ratio would have improved around 220 basis points year-over-year. We expect improvement from this quarter's efficiency ratio moving forward with a positive impact from expected rate hikes and synergies in revenue and expense associated with Howard. Tangible book value per share decreased linked quarter to $8.09, primarily related to $202 million or $0.57 per share in accumulated other comprehensive loss as of March 31, 2022, reflecting the impact of higher interest rates on the fair value of AFS securities. This compares to a $62 million or 19-cent negative impact at the end of the prior quarter. Increased unrealized losses in the AFS portfolio due to rising interest rates should come back into capital over time as securities mature or prepay. During the first quarter of 2022, the company repurchased 2.2 million shares of common stock with a weighted average share price of $13.25 for a total of $29.8 million. To date, FNB. repurchased 111 million under the program approved in September 2019. Earlier this month, our board approved a new $150 million share repurchase program, continuing to provide FNB with the tool to optimize capital management and enhance overall shareholder returns. Now let's turn to guidance on page 12. We expect loans to increase in the low double digits to low teens, with underlying organic growth in the mid- to high single digits on a year-over-year spot basis. Total deposits projected to grow high single digits on a year-over-year spot basis. Full-year net interest income is expected to be between $1.0 billion-$1.04 billion, with the second quarter between $249 million-$253 million. Our base guidance currently assumes 125 basis points of rate increases for the remainder of the year, including a 50 basis point increase in May. Full-year non-interest income is expected to be between $315 million-$330 million, with the second quarter around $80 million. The revised full-year guidance is due to slightly lower than expected market-related fee income. There is no change to our full year guidance for non-interest expense, with a range of $760 million-$780 million on an operating basis for the full year and $190 million-$195 million for the second quarter. This does not include the one-time expenses associated with the Howard Bank acquisition. Positive credit quality is expected to continue throughout 2022, with provision guided to $20 million-$40 million. This does not include the initial $19.1 million of provision related to Howard and is dependent on net loan growth experienced throughout the year. Lastly, the effective tax rate should be between 17.5%-18.5% for the full year, which assumes no changes to corporate income tax rates and is dependent on the level of investment tax credit activity. With that, I will turn the call back to Vince. Thanks, Vince. We've worked hard to build a strong differentiated brand, including our commercial lending and wholesale banking businesses. Our knowledgeable team and investments in products and technology result in a commercial banking experience that is unique for its high level of convenience and sophistication. Our commercial business ranges from large corporate clients to small business lending, including highly specialized industry verticals, creating an opportunity for FNB to surpass the needs of most clients. Thus far in 2022, FNB has been named as one of America's Best Banks and World's Best Banks by Forbes, received 17 Greenwich Excellence and Best Brand Awards, and was recognized as a Top Workplaces USA by Energage for a second consecutive year. These awards add to an extensive list of honors FNB has received for its differentiated culture and business model, which focuses on doing what is right for its clients, communities, and employees, and ultimately benefiting our shareholders. For example, FNB is increasing our closing cost assistance grant to $5,000 in April 2022, advancing our commitment to borrowers in low- to moderate-income communities. We also enhanced our mortgage product offerings through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to provide additional access for homeowners with income at or below the area median income for their market. Our goal is to ensure all stakeholders benefit from the products and services that we offer. Our first quarter results provide a solid foundation for us to continue building momentum throughout 2022. As always, our performance is a testament to our team, and I thank each employee for their dedication and contribution. With that, I'll turn the call over to the operator for questions. Yes, thank you. At this time, we will begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble the roster. The first question comes from Frank Schiraldi with Piper Sandler. Good morning. Morning, Frank. In terms of, Vince, you know, you mentioned still a lot of confidence in the loan growth expectations for the year. I think you said that the current pipeline is up 23% linked quarter. I just want to follow up on that. Is that the commercial pipeline? I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about that pickup. You know, does it reflect supply chain issues improving? Is it more seasonal? Just wondering if you can frame a little further that, you know, significant tick up in the pipeline linked quarter. Yeah, I can address that. I think it's pretty broad based. If you look at the dispersion of our pipeline, we have a little chart here for our own sake that shows the trending. You can see almost every region in the company has seen growth in their pipeline on a linked quarter basis. If you remember back in the fourth quarter, we had a pretty strong. It was a record production quarter for us. Typically what happens, the bankers are busy closing transactions, the pipeline kind of shrinks a little bit, and then we start to move back into prospecting or accommodating borrower's requests, and the pipeline builds again. I think you're seeing that here. The other factor is the first quarter growth is seasonally slower. You know, you don't have the financial results from your corporate borrowers to act upon. Typically, the companies haven't devised their CapEx plans until now. You know, now is the time when you start to see a pickup in the pipeline. You know, we're very pleased with the growth in the Mid-Atlantic region. Mid-Atlantic's up, you know, 13% year-over-year, 61% quarter-over-quarter. You've got a big boost because of that Howard acquisition, a lot of critical mass and scale, you know, deeper penetration in the market and, you know, some great bankers that we picked up who seem to be pretty happy with our system. You know, we're very excited about the opportunities there. We also feel that, as I mentioned on the call, you know, from a non-interest income perspective, you know, we have fee-based businesses that we have a tremendous opportunity to penetrate that customer base with some, you know, sizable fee opportunities in wealth and the public market. I think that should help us in that market. You know, that's a big driver. Charlotte's up 33% year-over-year, you know, 52% on a linked quarter basis. You know, there's quite a bit going on in the Southeast. I just spent some time, spent a week in Charleston and Raleigh, and, you know, both of those markets are performing very well. Spent a lot of time with clients and, you know, I think our brand is being received well in those markets. We're pretty well established. We have regional headquarters that we've established in Greensboro, in Charlotte, in Raleigh, in Charleston, South Carolina, with highly visible signage and a decent delivery channel. So, you know, things are starting to cook there. We've expanded from a de novo perspective into Asheville, North Carolina. It's been a couple of years now, so that's starting to pick up for us, as well as Greenville, South Carolina. We were on the outskirts of Greenville, but we have a plan to move into that market more heavily, which provides quite a few commercial opportunities for us, particularly C&I opportunities. Then small business banking for us, you know, historically has lagged from a growth perspective because we were consolidating portfolios every time we did an acquisition. That stabilized and has actually started to grow nicely for us across the footprint. We're seeing a little bit of lift from our small business lending activity. You know, that kind of gives you the landscape. I think it's more related, Frank, to, you know, when you look at line utilization rates within the company, Gary, Dan, and I were just looking at that data. You know, what you see is a substantial drop off in utilization. Borrowings declined post-pandemic, you know, beginning of the pandemic. After the first quarter of the pandemic in 2020, you know, things really fell off from a borrowing perspective for commercial borrowers. A lot of those businesses went to cash. They got stimulus or benefited from stimulus and drove down their balances. A series of things occurred which were unpredictable, but supply chain disruption, all kinds of things happened. That kind of slowed their ability to grow or expand. I think we're starting to see a pickup if you dive into that utilization rate, even though we haven't seen much of a global rise in utilization rates across all the portfolios. When you start to drill down into it, we're seeing growth in the middle market now. We're starting to see things pick up. That's telling me that, you know, we're working through those supply chain issues. You know, companies, you know, the war in Ukraine is probably a worry. I think, you know, companies are starting to get back to normal and, you know, from an operating perspective. Anyway, that's. We're still very cautious, as I've said in my remarks. You know, we're still watching what's going on from a credit perspective because there are concerns, right, about additional supply chain disruption, the price of oil and gas, rising and impacting certain industries. We keep a close eye on it, but all in, you know, we're seeing we haven't seen any significant weakness anywhere in the portfolio. In fact, the credit quality is holding in there. I hope that answers your question. Yeah. I tried to be as comprehensive as possible. That was helpful. Thank you. I guess just as a follow-up, in terms of just given how strong your confidence on the loan growth picture, is there any room to ramp up the buyback at all? Just wondering if, you know, with bank stocks having pulled back a little bit, you know, from where you bought back stock in the first quarter, if we should think about that maybe ramping up a bit, if we should think about that any differently, you know, than we did going into 1Q. Yeah, I think, you know, our guidance on loan growth isn't crazy. I mean, we're mid- to high-single-digit growth. There is some room, right, for us to fund that growth with capital that we generate internally, plus buyback shares. That's why the board approved the buyback program. You know, we want to have options so that we can continue to drive shareholder value and, you know, support the stock price if we see movement downward. The company has performed admirably over the last few years. There's a lot of confidence in the board in putting forward a buyback program. If you look at the financial performance of the company, it's been very strong through some very different challenging times. The actions that Gary and the credit team have taken and our commercial bankers, I mean, we've really prepared ourselves well and gotten through, you know, in pretty good shape. You know, that gives them a lot of confidence on the buyback. If you look at the capital ratios, and I can't remember, Gary, we're at 10%, I think. Yeah. Anyway, you know, from a regulatory capital perspective, we look good. I think we're in a good place, Frank. There are options for us. Okay. All right, great. Thank you, Vince. Thanks. Thank you. The next question comes from Michael Young with Truist Securities. Please go ahead, Mr. Young. Your line is live. Sounds like he's on a horse. All right. We're moving on. The next question will come from Daniel Tamayo with Raymond James. Good morning, guys. Hey there. How are you? Morning. Doing well, thank you. Maybe let me first on the mortgage banking outlook. You gave some good color on, you know, continuing to expect that to be, you know, I should say, outperform the industry going forward. Maybe if you could provide a little more detail on how you're thinking about, you know, how we should be thinking about sizing that revenue stream going forward. Or, are you still expecting that to increase from here or flat or how from an overall perspective do you see revenue trending from here? Well, I'll let Vince answer that question, Vince Calabrese. Before he does, I will tell you that the pipeline has shifted as we've indicated. You know, we are very well positioned across the Southeast and the Mid-Atlantic in some fairly dynamic housing markets. We have an opportunity to benefit more heavily from purchase money mortgage originations. You know, I think our current pipeline sitting at around 90%, purchase money. We did make that shift, you know, which provides some support, which is why I indicated in my prepared comments that, you know, we should outperform the industry. We're not as dependent on refinance activity. We are spread across a pretty broad geography in some very attractive markets. You know, about 50% of the franchise sits in very stable, more stable markets, gives us some stability and, you know, we're able to maintain, you know, a lower growth trajectory. Then half of it sits in more dynamic, higher growth markets, you know, where we're seeing more housing starts and a lot of activity. Go ahead, Vince. I don't know if you want to give him a little bit more color on the top line and what were our expectations are. Yeah. No, I would say, you know, for the quarter, you saw the result there. We're up a little bit from kind of the low last quarter. We were thinking it was going to be the low. You know, the purchase versus refi mix, as Vince mentioned, positions us well to focus on purchase there. You know, for the quarter, it was 77%, and now it's up to, you know, the refi is last I looked was even down to 5% of the total. So kind of the way our business is built is very well positioned. And the activity on the purchase side has still been very strong. I guess if you boil it down to the mortgage banking income, right, that's a function of how much you sell and how much your portfolio too, depending on the nature of the originations. We've definitely seen some shift to customers wanting to get ARM, you know, 7/1 or 7/7, six months, it's not one anymore, and 10-year and six months. We've seen some movement towards that. That stuff goes in the portfolio. You'd have more portfolio, higher net interest income, a little bit less gain on sale on that. I guess if you kind of boil it all down, I would expect mortgage banking to move up from here, from the first quarter. You know, we're entering the seasonal second and third quarters that are kind of high. Kind of around the level to a little bit higher from here would be the best way to characterize it. It's really going to be a function of the mix of those originations. They're still very healthy. Applications are very strong. Like I said, the purchase market continues to be strong, so that helps to support the business activity there. The other side of it too is there's quite a bit of activity in the consumer lending area relative to mortgage lending. Outside of the mortgage bank itself, we have a surge in pipeline. I don't know, Barry, whether we're seeing. We have one of the strongest pipelines we've ever had right now in home equity. Yeah. There's been a significant pickup. There was a lot of pent-up demand. I don't know if there was the capacity to execute a lot of the construction projects. I think we've seen a surge in demand across our footprint. I mean, it's pretty much every geography. Absolutely. Plus, we continue to add bankers to the mortgage bankers. Yeah. All of that leads to you know, the reason I brought that up is because ultimately that may lead people, you know, to take out a consumer loan secured by real estate, and then they roll it into a larger or a larger mortgage loan, and it's taken out. Anyway, there's quite a bit of activity. We're feeling pretty good about being positioned where we are with the purchase money opportunities and the growth in certain segments of our business geography. All right. That's terrific color. I appreciate all of that. Maybe switching gears here, you know, thinking about net interest income. Obviously, we're in a much different rate outlook environment now than we were last quarter, and you've updated guidance to reflect that. How should we think about or how are you thinking about the change in the bank sensitivity to rates from the, you know, from the hike we just had all the way out to what you're forecasting by the end of the year? Is there any impact? Are you expecting any difference in terms of loan betas, like what you're able to reprice on the loan side? Just remind us if you're still thinking that deposit betas end up around the 40%-50% range by the end of the year. Thanks. Yeah, I would say, you know, a few things there. As far as, you know, what's baked into the guidance, you see what we have in there, an additional 125 basis points with 50 in May. If we get more than that, obviously there's upside to the range there. I know everybody's modeling it with their interest rate projection. So clearly there's some upside to the range depending on where we end up. As far as the betas, I mean, the loan betas, you know, continue to be pretty strong. You know, as you know from the past, I mean, we have close to 50% of total loans that are tied to LIBOR, SOFR, three months or less on those two measures, as well as prime. So it's $13 billion, 48% of total loans. That benefits as rates move up. The cash position we have, you know, is benefiting, while we still have around $3.2 billion. You know, that was earning 15, now it's earning 40, and then we would expect that to move up as the Fed moves. That would move up another 50 basis points if you get 50. That's helping. You know, while that cash is not yet deployed in loans, you're getting a benefit there too. And then the investment portfolio, we've been able to take advantage of the higher rates in the recent quarter to put some more money to work there, and you'll see that in the growth of the investment portfolio. That's kind of supporting the overall margin. And PPP is almost gone. You know, if you kind of put PPP on the side, our loan yields were actually up five basis points, kind of the continuing business that's there. You know, and then on the deposit beta side, you know, there's again, none of us really know, you know, level liquidity in the banking system obviously is still a consideration for all of us. I do think we'll feel more pressure as we continue to move down this path of Fed moves, you know, with kind of commercial municipal depositors being earlier in that process. You know, our current projection for us, based on what we see and what we think, would be we end the quarter of the rate hikes coming through in total cost of deposits. Kind of 25% on a total deposit basis and around 40% for interest bearing deposits at the end of the year. That's kind of our current projection. Terrific. That's all I had. Thanks for all of that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Next question is another attempt from Michael Young with Truist. Please go ahead, Mr. Young. Your line is live. Hey, can you hear me? We can now. Hello. Okay, sorry about that. Having some technical issues here this morning. I apologize. You sounded like you were trotting around on a horse the first time. We just had a clicking noise. I don't know, but I'm glad to have you on the call. Yeah, maybe it's the ghost of cell phone past. I don't know. I apologize. It always happens. Go ahead. At any rate, just maybe Vince wanted to walk through kind of the fee income side. Obviously kind of a lot of big swings this quarter with kind of the MSR fair value adjustment. You know, you kind of have big, big moves in insurance to the upside, but capital markets to the downside. You know, it sounds like, you know, slight weakening is kind of the outlook. But is that more mortgage driven or are you seeing some things in some of the other business lines that you think will be a little weaker as we move throughout the year? It's a combination of several areas you touched on. I think the mortgage banking fee income in general year-over-year is going to be, you know, it's going to be challenging to meet last year's fee income obviously because it was so strong. The way we've tried to build out our fee-based businesses is to ensure that when one's not performing at the highest level, you know, we have enough balance within our offerings to kind of make up for it. You know, the guide that we gave you implies some of that shifting, as you mentioned. You know, capital markets, we saw, you know, from a pure derivative perspective, interest rate hedging. You know, obviously a lot of customers, clients took advantage of the hedging products during a time when rates were extraordinarily low. That business has come down a little bit. On the flip side, you know, in capital markets, we launched our debt capital markets platform. We're seeing good activity there and good prospects there. We're expecting, you know, to have, you know, a pretty decent year in that space. We have invested in our international banking platform and added products. We're expecting to see some growth there. We've had some really solid growth in SBA. We expect that to continue. You know, our SBA platform that we shrunk and then rebuilt and integrated into our, you know- It's integrated more in-depth into our calling activities across the company versus being a standalone business. It's starting to take off. Those things should counterbalance the weaker mortgage and derivative business. Then wealth, you know, obviously, you know, of course, we rely on net asset values as well, right? I mean, if the market remains steady, we should be able to benefit there as well because we're seeing a lot of organic growth. We're very opportunistic in D.C. and Baltimore with that Howard portfolio and the fact that they didn't have a product offering. We're starting to see some good opportunities there. In the Carolinas, Charleston, Asheville, Greenville are all great markets for us from a private banking and wealth perspective, and we're starting to see some activity. Plus Howard will be additive just across the base. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You, you've added quite a few households. You know, nice little commercial bank that fit in well culturally with us, that people there did a nice job and, you know, we were able to take cost out but still keep the vast majority of the frontline people. We've added to our teams and, you know, they're, those folks are doing really well. Yeah, they didn't have the same product set that we have today. The opportunity there on the fee side is significant given the quality of the customer base that Howard has, you know, really across the board. Wealth management, cap markets, insurance, mortgage. You know, there's opportunities across the different fee-based revenue categories. That'll be additive. While there are challenges, you know, we're not trying to kid you. You know, it's gonna be tougher in mortgage banking this year. It's gonna be tougher in capital markets, particularly centered around hedging. You know, but I think, you know, the guide that we gave you, we feel confident about because of our ability to drive fee income in those other areas. Yeah, I think that's important too, right? The quarter 78, our guide for the next quarter is around 80 and then $315-$330. You know, obviously we feel with diversification within the fee-based categories that, you know, we're comfortable with those guidance range that we gave out, which is higher than first quarter level. Okay, great. Just following up on the prior questions. Just as we look at kind of the cash balances, you know, the 10-year rates moved up pretty considerably. You know, are you guys thinking about kind of laddering some of that out into securities and growing the size of the balance sheet? Are you opting more for kind of remix and just funding loan growth with the cash? We should expect, you know, a little less balance sheet growth, but higher margins. Yeah, given the opportunities with rates, I mean, we definitely put some more money to work. You know, during the first quarter, you know, we invested $600 million into the portfolio, which is about $200 million higher than the cash flows. When you look at the, you know, the average balance was up almost half a billion. We did take advantage of rates moving. We still stayed within our strategy of duration around kind of 3.5-4. You know, we haven't wanted to go long to date. As we sit here right now, for the current quarter at least, you know, our anticipation will be to kind of reinvest the cash flows that are coming on. You know, the rates are. I mean, we were in the fourth quarter investing around 1.34. First quarter is up to 1.90, again, with the 3.5 duration. You know, I think one of the things that's important for us too is, you know, with the movement in interest rates, I mean, our securities portfolio is 50/50 AFS versus held to maturity. It's on the short side. I think the AOCI hit that we had was much smaller than others, depending on how they structured their portfolio. That helps us manage as far as that impact to the book equity. It also helps us manage and create opportunities with $1 billion worth of cash flow coming that rates continue to move. You know, we'll be opportunistic and if it makes sense, you know, we will grow the portfolio some, but we've a good amount here. We'll just monitor very closely and look for those opportunities as we have been doing. Okay, thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from Jared Shaw with Wells Fargo. Hi, good morning. This is Timur Braziler filling in for Jared. My first question, I guess just following up on the NII guidance and looking at the guide this quarter versus last quarter. Last quarter is fairly similar with expectation for two rate hikes, and I think 3% sensitivity if there was a third rate hike. Now going to five rate hikes, with one that already occurred and expectation for 50 basis points in May. I'm a little surprised that the guidance wasn't higher. Is there anything else that kind of changed in the calculation of that guidance that offsets some of that sensitivity to the incremental rate hikes? Or, maybe the combination with Howard? I guess if you can frame that would be great. I would say, you know, the one place that we are conservative is on the betas, because I really don't know what's going to happen there. You know, with Howard coming on board and just kind of looking ahead from here, you know, we'll see. We'll see what happens. There's still, like I said, a lot of liquidity in the banking system, so I think banks are going to be methodical about moving rates up as you need to. But everybody has a lot of cash on their balance sheet. So, I mean, that's one area where we're probably being a little conservative on the betas, but, you know, nobody really knows for certain. You know, we moved the guide up from the guide that was in the first quarter, and given what we have in here, and I know some analysts have more rate hikes baked into their forecast. As I said earlier, you know, if we get more than 125 basis points from here, which the futures market, I don't know where it is now, Scott, it's higher than that. Higher than that. Higher than that. If you get more, there's more upside there too. Or so I mean, those are the two things I would comment on. Okay. As far as Howard goes, maybe for Gary Guerrieri just an outlook for purchase accounting dollars starting here in the second quarter. Yeah. Go ahead, Vince. I'm sorry. I wasn't sure of the question. Just, the expectation and outlook for accretion. Purchase accounting accretion. Oh, okay. Yeah. Do you want to comment? Go ahead. Yeah. The net accretive discount overall was only around $10 million once you do the PCD gross up. So we would assume maybe, you know, $600,000 or a little more than half a million a quarter going forward, subject to prepay. That's just for Howard. Just for Howard. Yeah. Hey, Gary, do you have any other color on, you know, Howard and for the group? Yeah. Vince, I can update everyone. You know, as I mentioned in the remarks, the portfolio came over better than expected. We were very pleased with the information that we gathered as we got deeper into the transaction around some clients that you know we had some missing information on upfront. We were able to get very comfortable with some of those clients and move those ratings upward to pass ratings. That helped tremendously from the mark perspective as well as how the portfolio performed through the quarter. The portfolio was very nicely underwritten. It was actually the best underwritten portfolio that we've seen. We expect it to continue to perform very nicely as we move forward. As you saw in the metrics, the changes in the metrics were very minimal. Generally speaking, you know, they're significantly higher than that. From a rating standpoint, the portfolio rated very nicely, very closely to FNB. Very pleased overall with it. Okay. If I can clarify too on the, I'm sorry, just for a second. On the accretion. The total purchase accounting accretion in first quarter was about $3 million pre-Howard, right? That number kind of would be projected to come down as it has kind of on a quarterly basis. Then you add in Howard, which is the kind of $600,000 a quarter that we were talking about. So net net, you know, we'll be somewhere between $3 million and $3.5 million a quarter, you know, over the next few quarters, all in Howard plus what we had before. Got it. Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. And then just one more follow-up for me. Glad to see that the pipeline is being rebuilt. I'm just wondering, as you look out at the expected loan growth this year, is the composition going to be similar to what we saw kind of in the back end of 2021? Or with some of these new digital initiatives, should we expect to see more of the loan production coming on the consumer side versus on the commercial side? Well, to start the year off, we're seeing pretty strong production coming out of the consumer bank in total, and I attribute that to a couple of things. Some of it is just economic, macroeconomic. Some of it is the embedding of the eStore into our mobile application and our online offering. You know, basically what we've done is we've pushed that, you know, we've pushed those products, essentially put them in front of the client repeatedly in those digital channels. So, you know, they're able to act on it pretty easily or schedule an appointment and go out and see somebody in a branch. You know, for example, it's added to our online user base. You know, we've increased online users 10% year-over-year. You know, we have over 900,000 enrolled users now. Now, mobile banking is up 12%. The number of mortgage applications that we've pushed through our eStore is up to 66% of production, which is up from 59. You know, we've invested pretty heavily in a number of areas. If you look at the total eStore visits that I mentioned, that's up 56% year-over-year. You know, that for us is a very reasonable way, right, to advertise our products and services, particularly when there's you know, macroeconomic factors at play. People need to borrow money for renovation, home renovation. You know, that seems to be working for us. The data analytics tools that we put into place and the leads that we're able to generate from analysis that we do on pools of data in our data hub, that's helped us immensely. We can, you know, find opportunities within the portfolio in a systematic way, and then, you know, exploit them by contacting those customers proactively. You know, if you look at all of those statistics in total, you know, there's quite a bit going on there, and it's driving. On the commercial side, you know, I think that, you know, we're well-positioned. We have very, very good bankers across the footprint. They're high quality bankers. We don't have a lot of carpetbaggers. There's a lot of bankers that, you know, I ran corporate banking groups for a long time. There's a lot of bankers that move around from bank to bank to bank. You know, we don't have a lot of that. We have, you know, pretty sound, respected bankers in each of the markets. They've not jumped around 50 x. You know, we may have attracted them here for career opportunities. You know, and we really rely pretty heavily on their skill set. You know, salesmanship being one of a series of, you know, skills that we expect. I think, you know, we're starting to see the benefits of all of this. Anyway, that's Production in the first quarter was very strong. Origination level was very strong. The originations were strong. Great. Thank you for the color. Much appreciated. Yep. All right. Thank you. Yeah, bye. Thank you. The next question comes from Casey Haire with Jefferies. Hi. Good morning. This is Tyler Marks on for Casey. Following up on Frank's question on share buyback appetite, how much lower are you willing to go below your target CET1 ratio of 10%? I would say that's really the target that we're managing to. You know, we're 10.0% for this quarter. We were 10.0% a year ago, and 9%, I think, in the prior quarter. That's really the level we're using as kind of our floor to manage to. You know, with the earnings generation capabilities plus the expectation for higher rates, obviously that generates more earnings, which is built into our guidance. We'll use that as kind of a governor, and it'll be dependent on the amount of loan activity. If the loan activity was lower for some reason, we'd be more active here. But if you look at what we did with the first program, you know, we bought back $111 million at a very attractive price, as I mentioned. We were opportunistic when the opportunities were there and the market was dipping, and we still think our stock is still very attractively valued. We will continue to be opportunistic. We were down to $30 million or so we wanted to approve a new level to give us that flexibility to manage capital. 10's really kind of the governor that we're using. We think that's a good level for us, the overall profile of the company. As we move up above that, you know, we'll opportunistically look to do share buyback. Okay. Understood. How are you addressing the secular pressure seen with the overdraft fees? Is your fee guide assuming any of this impact within service charges? I'm sorry, can you repeat the question? Yes. How are you addressing the secular pressure seen with overdraft fees? Is your fee guide assuming any of this impact within service charges? Yeah, sorry. I didn't hear secular pressure. I was wondering what that was. I heard. I know what you're talking about. First of all, we've rolled out a product that is Bank On certified that we recommend to clients, particularly those that are afraid, you know, that they're going to overdraft or have an issue with overdrafting. It just simply does not permit it. The product that we offer, you know, just, you know, you can't overdraft the account. If there is an overdraft because of some POS transaction or some posting issue, it's refunded to the customer. We have this product that we rolled out. It's a top four product for us. It's actually the third most popular checking account product. It's already had an impact on overdraft fees for us. You know, we've made a number of changes over the years to our overdraft practices and plan on continuing to make those changes. I think we mentioned when we rolled out the guidance for the year on fee income, that we were expecting that category to decline throughout the year. You know, that's another area. Add that to the mortgage and other, you know, capital markets area that I said there'll be headwind pressure that we have to overcome or make up. That's another category. I don't have an exact number for you, I don't have it at my fingertips, but, you know, it's pretty meaningful decline that we were expecting because of that pressure. There are additional changes coming to our practices, but it's reflected in the guides that we had given you at the beginning of the year. Yeah. I would just add, too, that the consumer fees are about $6 million-$7 million a quarter. That's right. To put it in perspective. Understood. Thanks so much. Yeah. Thank you. Take care. Thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from Michael Perito with KBW. Yeah, thanks. Just one last kind of clarification question for me. I'm just curious if you guys could comment, you know, you talked about how we're doing well and some of the appetite on the buyback, but maybe putting the whole capital deployment picture together here as we move forward. You know, it seems like the fundamental outlook is fairly bullish for you guys. Margins moving higher, growth pipelines are filled, you know, the expense guide was unchanged. I mean, how do you view the new buyback program versus incremental M&A as you guys look out over the next 12-18 months, just in terms of the capital deployment priorities, as you guys see it? That'd be great. Thanks. Yeah. I mean, we spend a lot of time modeling all of these things and evaluating them. When we look at loan growth relative to buybacks, you know, from a return on capital perspective, we look at M&A the same way. Our decisions are based upon what's best for the company and the shareholders moving forward. We try to balance that out. I think having the ability to buy shares back in the event that loan growth doesn't materialize or, you know, M&A opportunities that are accretive and provide us with substantial returns over our cost of capital aren't out there, we have another tool to essentially return capital to the shareholders. We look at it as kind of a backstop, and then we evaluate the option. I'm not ruling anything out, but nor am I saying that there's something looming. I'm just simply telling you that, you know, we're very careful about the deployment of capital. We look at the effect on tangible book value dilution and the earn back and all of that. The primary focus, you know, it's the loan growth is the primary focus for using capital. That's right. Since the loan growth is strong, that's where we'll put our capital. If it slows, like Vince said, then we, you know, look at the buyback and become more active on the buyback. Got it. I guess just to kind of be clear, I mean, so if your growth guidance is achieved as expected and no additional M&A comes to fruition for this year, you guys would expect, given current market conditions, that buyback would be utilized to some extent. Yes. Yes. Yes. Got it. Great. Thank you, guys. Yep. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Michael. Thank you. The next question comes from Russell Gunther with D.A. Davidson. Hey, good morning, guys. Hey, Russell. Morning, Russell. Morning. Just the bigger picture in terms of better understanding your view of the operating environment from a growth perspective. On the one hand, we've talked about how pipelines are up and giving increased confidence in that mid to high single digits. Then on the other, you know, the potential for a softer environment, some caution from a credit watch perspective, just things you guys are focused on there. Does the mid-single digit guide, you know, reflect a stable operating environment, growth environment, or are you dialing in the potential for, you know, some softer growth in the back half of the year, recessionary pressures? Just to help me frame that would be great. Thank you. Yeah. I think mid-single digits dials in the current environment, including the factors that we laid out as, you know, potential areas of concern. I don't want to alarm everybody. As I said, we haven't seen weakness yet, but those are areas that any prudent banker would look at and say, "Hey, you know, we've got a number of things coming at us we have to be prepared to deal with." Right? That could potentially result in a slowing of the U.S. economy and lower loan demand, and it'll hit first in the commercial segment. You know, there's some talk about, you know, consumer spending declining in the latter half of this year. I've read that in a number of economists' reports. Some economists say they think consumers are stronger than we expect. We'll see how that plays out. If you look at what's going on right now, and we only know what's happening at our bank and within our portfolios, right? The consumer portfolio pipeline's up record levels, Gary Guerrieri mentioned. The mortgage business has shifted pretty dramatically to purchase money. The commercial business slowed in the first quarter. You know, we had the war in Ukraine and some supply chain disruption and a very robust pipeline in the fourth quarter that was closed. It closed out, which converted to production, and we've got some seasonal slowness. You know, the expectation, our expectation, which is built into our guide, is that the beginning of the year would be slower. Things would start to accelerate just like they did last year. We were in the same spot last year with a little better growth in the first quarter than last year. The consumer bank didn't have anywhere near the production and pipelines that we have this quarter. I hope that sums it up for you. I'm you know, cautious about our growth prospects as we move throughout the year. Obviously, you know, with Gary Guerrieri and, you know, he's a very skilled professional. His team, Tom Fisher, the people we have here, you know, we're watching very carefully what's happening, and we're going to continue to monitor it because we don't want to balloon into a recession, right? That's why we're giving you the guidance we're giving you. It's all baked in. You know, we've thought a lot about it, spent a lot of time modeling it. It's built from the ground up portfolio by portfolio, and that's how we derived it. Yeah. I appreciate it, Vince. It's exactly the type of color I was hoping to better understand. I appreciate the input. Sorry. It's a little. I can understand it's confusing, right? Because on one hand, we're saying, "Hey, we're going to achieve mid- to high-single-digit loan growth." On the other hand, we're saying we're a little concerned about certain things that are going on in the economic environment that could potentially impact that growth in the latter half of the year. I think given the geographic diversification, the quality of the credit portfolio, the skill of our bankers, we can achieve our guide. I appreciate the color. That's it for me, guys. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thanks, Russell. Thank you. The next question comes from Brody Preston with Stephens. Hey, good morning, everyone. Hey, Brody. Morning. Hey, I just wanted to circle back. Thanks for all the color on the securities book earlier. I just wanted to ask and just clarify, was it $134 million per quarter in cash flows that you said that you're reinvesting, Vince? Then, could you give us an indication as to As to what the new yields look like, that are coming on the book versus what's rolling off during that repricing cadence. Sure. The 12 month cash flow that we estimate is $1 billion, and that's rolling off at a yield of 1.74. If you look at where we're putting money to work, you know, so far this quarter, you know, we've invested $150 million so far in April at yields closer to 3%. You know, new purchases are still within that kind of 3.5-4 duration, a little bit on the higher end of that, but still within that kind of tight band. That's kind of the moving parts there, Brody, if that answers you. Got it. That's helpful. Thank you. I just wanted to ask on the timing of the hikes that you all are modeling. I know you have the 50 in May, but beyond that, where's the additional 75 coming in from a timing perspective? Yeah, it's pretty much one per meeting, Brody, after that. Got it. Thanks, Gary. I did have one follow-up on the capital markets business. Could you remind me? I know you have a lot that kind of goes into it, but could you remind me what the big drivers are from a revenue perspective within capital markets? Absolutely. We have syndication. This is, you know, we do both, large CRE and C&I syndication. We have a big derivatives practice that I mentioned, which focuses principally on interest rate derivatives, but, you know, there's the ability to do, commodity-based derivatives within that space as well. We have international banking, which we throw into the capital markets arena because we're offering hedging products in the international space and spot transactions. We have our, I call it the debt capital markets platform, where we participate in bond economics for public bond offerings. That business was started last year. You know, I think that pretty much covers it. You know, those are the principal areas that drive the bulk of the revenue in capital markets. You know, the syndications business is lumpy, right? Because you get big syndications. If you underwrite a deal, you're getting paid more heavily than the best efforts arrangement. The debt capital markets area is lumpy, too, because if you're participating in a larger deal, then, you know, we may be getting syndications fee income because we're participating in the distribution, and we're getting now bond economics, right? Because the company's issued public debt, so we're included in the syndicate. Anyway, those are the businesses that we have. Got it. Thank you for that. I just have two last ones here. The first one is on expenses. Could you kind of maybe give us a sense for what would cause y'all to be either at the low end or the high end of the expense guidance, just in terms of are there any individual items that come to mind, that would cause it to be, you know, one way or the other? I would say, as you know, we manage expenses very tightly within the company, and we've had that discipline for many years. You know, within our guidance for 2022, as we mentioned in January, was you know, $10 million cost savings target. You know, we have the cost savings from Howard you know, still to be realized given the timing in the quarter. Some of that's been realized, but you know, on track for what we initially said early on. You know, one of the drivers is always commissions tied to production. You know, that can swing depending on you know, the business activity in the different businesses. That is a swing item. It could move from quarter to quarter. It kind of can move you within that range. You know, we'll continue to manage expenses tightly as we always have. You know, I think the range for the full year is a pretty tight range. Those are really the key drivers for us. You know, we've talked in the past about you know, RPA continuing to go after ways to automate our processes. That's just a continuous every day and you know, there's more opportunity. To the extent some of that stuff can get done quicker, you know, there's opportunity there, too. Again, it's a pretty tight range, I'd say, for the guidance. Got it. Thank you. My last question would be, Vince, I just want to follow up. I appreciate the color on the deposit betas, which y'all are modeling. I think it was 40% interest-bearing, was what you mentioned. That's pretty in line with last cycle. I guess I wanted to get your thoughts on, you know, what's driving the beta to be close to last cycle. I think a lot of folks initially, you know, just given industry-wide improvements in terms of liquidity, you know, lower loan-to-deposit ratios, lots of cash, higher securities balances, are thinking that maybe betas could lag last cycle, at least on a percentage basis. You're assuming in the case that you expect them to be in line. Could you give us any color on why you expect that? Yeah, I would say, you know, what we had said last time was we'd probably be around 50% would be kind of maybe the historical, right? You know, things are quite a bit different as far as liquidity in the system. We're kind of inside that to begin with, as far as at the 40. As I mentioned earlier, again, we're being conservative on the betas. You know, we're going to manage them to, you know, optimize the earnings for the company overall and, you know, not be more aggressive than we need to be. As I said earlier, I think there's some conservatism baked into that. Even at the 40, we're kind of inside of. I think last quarter we said 50. We're at 40. I think You know, the pace of the changes, the rapid nature of them, the large amount, 50 basis point moves, you know, it's just something we have to manage closely and, you know, the customers get more alert as things are going through. It's just for all of us to mention. But I would just say the 40s inside the 50s, 40, I guess, bottom line, and then there's conservatism within the betas. Got it. Thank you very much for taking all my questions and then, for giving us all the time this morning, guys. I appreciate it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from Brian Martin with Janney Montgomery. Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. Just a couple of follow-ups here. Just the yield on new loans, Vince, commercial loans, can you just talk about where those are at, where those are coming on today? You want Vince? Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. No, I can comment. You know, the new loans in total, Brian, I would say, came on at 309 during the quarter. You know, that was 291 last quarter. Clearly kind of a nice move up. The overall spot portfolio rate, ex-PPP, that's down to, like, $180 million, increased 10 basis points to 322. That's kind of the all-in figures there. Gotcha. Okay. That's helpful. Just a couple other housekeeping things. The line of credit, the unused line utilization, you know, it didn't sound like that moved up a lot this quarter. Is that fair? Is it pretty similar to what it was last quarter, but the expectation is it's going to move higher? Is that kind of what I'm hearing? Well, I think, you know, with the debt capital markets platform, we did some larger transactions that were unfunded. So that kind of, you know, we got fee income. So we would expect those to fund off at some point, right? So, you know, we brought over larger commitments with lower borrowings on them. That's part of it. The other part is, as I've said, I think when you drill down into the various segments, we saw, you know, certain areas starting to grow, expand, you know, small business, middle market banking on the C&I side saw expansion. Then we brought on some large construction deals and those large corporate transactions, which kind of kept us still or moved it back slightly. Actually, it's kind of flat, but slightly down. If you took those out of the equation, we saw an expansion in utilization. I don't have the exact numbers for you, but that's what we were seeing. Gotcha. Yeah. I would add overall, if you look year-over-year, it did move up about 3 points from first quarter of last year to first quarter of this year. Then it's pretty stable to where it was at the end of the year, kind of in that mid-30s. I would expect it to continue to move up over time. It was running in the 42%-44% range historically. We expect it to get back there at some point. Yeah. Okay. Just a last couple, just on the Howard expense savings, just kind of, is second quarter kind of a, you know, largely a clean quarter given the, you know, the back office consolidation this quarter, I guess, or just kind of how should we think about that clean expense quarter? Yeah. Like we said in the announcement, we expect cost savings to be greater than 50%, and we're well on track on getting to the 85% phase in that we talked about during 2022. I mean, Howard really didn't add that many expenses to the quarter. I mean, we're talking, you know, less than mid-single-digit million type number. So Yeah. I think we've got a pretty good handle on the expense saves and where we're going to end all out for the rest of the year. Yeah, Brian, I would think it would take some more like the third quarter till you kind of get clean where, you know. Yeah. Starting the fourth and second quarter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're running some dual branches right now as we're doing some renovations. As that finishes up during the summer, you'll see kind of the last bit of the tail come out. Okay. That's helpful. Just given the cautiousness about some items you mentioned, just kind of the reserve coverage, you know, with some of the noise this quarter with Howard, I mean, where do you see, given your outlook on credit quality seems pretty robust here that certainly with some caution, just kind of where that reserve level, you know, the reserve coverage may trend to, you know, over the next couple quarters. Very winter- I think that, Brian, yeah, in terms of the reserve, I mean, we've been very cautious all through the pandemic and didn't have any large releases as you're aware. You know, with the headwinds that we see out there with inflation, supply chain, transportation costs, higher interest rates, you know, those things, as we've talked, we're cautious about them, and they do have the ability to impact borrowers that are on the lower end of the liquidity range or higher end of the leverage range. You know, we were flat in the quarter at 138, even including bringing Howard on. We're comfortable with that level right now, and we'll continue to watch it all play out as we move forward, despite, you know, only 3 basis points of charge-offs. The other thing that's gonna play a role there is loan growth. We've talked about that a good bit today. That has its impact. I would tell you that we're, you know, we're looking at right now the guide being 20-40. Could it surely come in on the low end of that guide based on the strength of the book right now? Surely it can. I would expect with all the headwinds, we'll be cautious around those items as we move forward. Gotcha. Thanks, Gary. Just last one, Vince Calabrese. I guess just last quarter, you talked about the liquidity levels kind of maybe cutting that in half by year-end. I think you're still similar level on liquidity right now. I guess, is that still your expectation or at least kind of how you're thinking about things? Yeah, it's hard to say. I mean, the deposits keep growing, PPP are gonna feed another $180 million of forgiveness, and that goes into the coffers too. I would think that's probably too low at this point, and we'll see how the year plays out, Brian. I thought we'd already start moving down, and we've been saying that for, I don't know, six quarters now. Those deposits are, they keep us growing. I would think we'd start to, you know, slowly bring that number down, but the pace of it is just hard to say with certainty. Yeah. Okay. Thank you for taking the questions, guys. All right. Thank you. Thanks, Brian. Thank you. Next question is a follow-up with Brody Preston with Stephens. Hey, guys. Sorry to hop back in like this. Just one quick question. Could you remind me how much you have left in PPP fees going forward? I know the portfolio is smaller. I just wanna make sure I'm understanding what you have left. About $3.5 million. Awesome. Thank you very much. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. That does conclude the question and answer session. I would like to turn the floor to Vince Delie for any closing comments. Well, first of all, thank you for all the thoughtful questions, quite a few questions. I thought they were great. I'm glad we were able to answer. If we weren't able to get to you or get to your question, please call. We posted a pretty extensive deck walkthrough. Thank you. We appreciate your support and look forward to. We got a lot of work to do. It was a good solid quarter, but we still have a lot in front of us, and we plan on executing. I wanna thank the employees for a great start, and we'll keep working on your behalf. Thank you very much for joining me on the call and all of us. Take care. Bye. Thank you. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines.