Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q1 2022 Midland States Bancorp, Inc. earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during that session, you will need to press star one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded, and if you require any assistance during the call, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr. Tony Rossi of Financial Profiles. Mr. Rossi, the floor is yours. Thank you, Chris. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for the Midland States Bancorp first quarter 2022 earnings call. Joining us from Midland's management team are Jeff Ludwig, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Eric Lemke, Chief Financial Officer. We'll be using a slide presentation as part of our discussion this morning. If you have not done so already, please visit the Webcasts and Presentations page of Midland's Investor Relations website to download a copy of the presentation. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that this conference call contains forward-looking statements with respect to the future performance and financial condition of Midland States Bancorp that involve risks and uncertainties. Various factors could cause actual results to be materially different from any future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These factors are discussed in the company's SEC filings, which are available on the company's website. The company disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements made during the call. Additionally, management may refer to non-GAAP measures, which are intended to supplement, but not substitute, for the most directly comparable GAAP measures. The press release available on the website contains the financial and other quantitative information to be discussed today, as well as the reconciliation of the GAAP to non-GAAP measures. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Jeff. Jeff? Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Midland States earnings call. I'm going to start on slide three with the highlights of the first quarter. As we expected, we saw a continuation of many of the positive trends we experienced in the second half of last year. Most notably, we had very strong loan growth, an expanding net interest margin, and disciplined expense control. This resulted in a strong quarter with net income of $20.7 million or $0.92 per share and pre-tax, pre-provision earnings of $32 million. Relative to the first quarter of 2021, our return on average assets, return on average tangible common equity, and adjusted pre-tax, pre-provision return on average assets have all increased, which reflects the consistent improvement we are seeing in the level of profitability as we generate strong organic growth and realize more operating leverage. Despite the first quarters typically being a seasonally slower period for loan production, we had another strong quarter of loan originations. We had $673 million in new commercial and commercial real estate originations, which is 115% higher than in the first quarter of last year. The higher level of loan originations reflects the more productive commercial banking teams we have built and the increased presence we now have in higher growth markets. Our loan production was more heavily weighted towards commercial real estate this quarter as we continue to see good results from our specialty finance group that primarily originates loans for multifamily and senior care properties and provides bridge-to-HUD financing. Within commercial lending, our Midland Equipment Finance team had a strong quarter of originations, with production being about 60% higher than the first quarter of 2021, although a higher level of payoffs impacted the growth we had in this portfolio. From a geographic perspective, we had a strong quarter in loan production in the St. Louis market, which reflects the improved business development capabilities we have following changes in leadership and additional resources we have added to the team. The record level of loan production resulted in 24% annualized growth in total loans. The strong growth in loans enabled us to redeploy a lot of our excess liquidity into the loan portfolio, which resulted in a favorable shift in our mix of earning assets and significant expansion in our net interest margin. We are seeing higher rates on new loan originations, which is also contributing to the increase in our net interest margin. Notably, we are generating the strong loan growth and increase in net interest income while maintaining relatively flat expense levels. As we have mentioned in the past, we've kept the size of our overall banking teams relatively consistent, but we have made many changes in personnel over the past couple of years that have upgraded the quality and productivity of the teams. We are also continuing to realize more efficiencies from the investments we have made in our technology platform. As a result, while we are seeing some degree of inflationary pressure, particularly in labor costs, we've been able to largely offset this pressure by increasing efficiencies and productivity, which allows more of the strong organic growth we are generating to fall to the bottom line and improve our earnings and returns. At this point, I'm gonna turn the call over to Eric to provide some additional details around our first quarter performance. Thanks, Jeff, and again, good morning, everyone. I'm starting on slide four, and we'll take a look at our loan portfolio. Our total loans increased $315 million from the end of the prior quarter. As Jeff mentioned, the strongest growth came in the commercial real estate portfolio, which increased 16% during the first quarter. We also had small increases in equipment finance, conventional commercial, and consumer loans. These increases were partially offset by declines in commercial FHA warehouse credit lines, residential real estate loans, and the continued forgiveness of our PPP loans. Turning to slide five, we'll take a look at our deposits. Total deposits decreased $53 million from the prior quarter. The largest decline was in non-interest-bearing deposits, which was primarily attributable to fluctuations in end-of-period balances of commercial FHA servicing deposits. We had growth in interest-bearing checking, money market, and savings deposits, which was due to inflows from new business development, as well as some clients and customers starting to transfer balances out of non-interest-bearing accounts. One of the contributors to the new business development is the increased focus we have in growing our market share in St. Louis. In the first quarter, we had a $120 million increase in our commercial deposit balances in this market. Looking at slide six, we'll walk through the trends in our net interest income and margin. Our net interest income increased 4.7% from the prior quarter, primarily due to higher average loan balances and the increase in our net interest margin. We brought down our cash balances by $348 million from the end of the prior quarter, which was primarily redeployed into the loan portfolio to fund our strong loan growth. This favorable shift in our mix of earning assets drove a 25 basis points increase in our net interest margin, or 26 basis points when accretion income is excluded. As interest rates increase, we're seeing improvement in new loan pricing, which is also positively impacting our net interest margin. In the month of March, the average rate on our new and renewed loans was 4.10%, an increase of 17 basis points from the month of December. The most significant driver of this increase is our equipment finance business, although we are seeing some higher rates on originations across all of our commercial lending. Turning to slide seven, we'll look at the trends in our wealth management business. Our assets under administration decreased by $173 million from the end of the prior quarter, primarily due to market performance. Despite that decrease, our wealth management revenue was essentially flat with the prior quarter as seasonal tax preparation fees offset the decrease in assets under administration. Compared to the first quarter of the prior year, our wealth management revenue increased 20%, which reflects our strong progress on growing our recurring sources of fee income. Turning now to slide eight, we'll look at non-interest income. We had $15.6 million in non-interest income in the first quarter, a decrease of 30.7% from the prior quarter, which included a number of one-time items. Excluding these items, most areas of non-interest income were slightly down from the previous quarter, except for impairment on commercial mortgage servicing rights, which decreased $1.7 million due to refinancing activity as interest rates continue to increase. Turning to slide nine, we'll take a peek at our non-interest expenses. On an adjusted basis, excluding the FHLB advanced prepayment fee recorded last quarter and integration and acquisition expenses, our non-interest expense was essentially flat with the prior quarter. We had slight variances in each major line item, some a bit higher, some a bit lower, which all essentially offset each other and enabled us to come in at the low end of the range of guidance we provided for operating expenses in 2022. Looking ahead to the second quarter, we expect to keep expenses relatively stable, although the completion of the FNBC branch acquisition will bring on some additional personnel and occupancy expenses. Turning to slide 10, we'll look at asset quality trends. Our non-performing loans increased $10.3 million from the end of the prior quarter, which was entirely attributable to one commercial real estate loan where no loss is currently expected. Outside of this one credit, trends in the portfolio were generally favorable, with continued upgrades of watchlist loans as more borrowers demonstrate sustained performance with the impact of the pandemic declining. We had $2.3 million in net charge-offs in the quarter, or 17 basis points of average loans. We recorded a provision for credit losses on loans of $4.1 million, which was largely related to the growth in total loans. On slide 11, we'll show the components of the change in our allowance for credit losses from the end of the prior quarter. Our ACL increased by approximately $1.9 million. The increase was driven by growth in total loans and changes in the mix of the portfolio. On slide 12, we show the allowance for credit losses segmented by portfolio. Given the positive trends we're seeing, we continue to bring down our coverage ratios in most areas of the portfolio. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Jeff. Jeff? Thanks, Eric. We'll wrap up on slide 13 with some comments on our outlook. Our loan pipeline remains very healthy, and we continue to see good demand in both commercial and commercial real estate lending. Based on our current pipeline, we expect another quarter of strong loan growth. Beyond that, it's difficult to predict the level of loan growth in the second half of the year, as it's uncertain how rising interest rates will impact loan demand. Based on current trends, we expect low double-digit loan growth in 2022, although higher rates could impact loan demand, resulting in slower growth during the back part of the year. We're already seeing significant expansion in our net interest margin. As we continue to grow loans and the Fed continues to increase rates, we should see further expansion in our margin. We expect to continue to be able to fund our loan growth with low cost deposits. Our treasury management group is having more success in bringing in large commercial deposit relationships, and the closing of the FNBC branch acquisition later this quarter will provide another source of low cost deposits. As Eric mentioned, we expect to keep expenses relatively flat, which should lead to further operating leverage as our expected loan growth and margin expansion generate higher levels of revenue. With the combination of continued balance sheet growth and expanding margin and greater operating leverage, we expect to see further improvement in earnings and our level of profitability as we move through the year. While we continue to see good results from the efforts we have made to enhance our business development capabilities and improve our financial performance, we are also making good progress on our long-term initiatives to further enhance the value of the Midland franchise. Over the past few years, we've talked about the investments we've made that have significantly strengthened our technology platform. One of the strategies of our long-term technology roadmap is to position the company to effectively compete within the banking-as-a-service space. Our relationship with GreenSky has given us valuable experience that we will leverage with other fintech partnerships that can be meaningful contributors to our balance sheet growth and fee income in the years ahead. With the improvement we have made in our technology platform, we are now in a position to begin implementing our broader banking-as-a-service initiative. Earlier this month, we announced a partnership with Synctera, which will help us develop new partnerships with other fintechs that will contribute low cost deposits and increase the number of customers using our payment solutions. We have a pipeline of potential fintech partnerships that we are in the early discussions with and we look to bring on board towards the second half of the year. We expect to announce a new partnership with a consumer lender similar to GreenSky, while we also are reviewing other fintechs focusing on deposit gathering. We are being very balanced in the implementation of this initiative, doing it in a way that does not require much incremental investment in our technology platform and enables us to learn from the experiences that we can prudently manage the growth in the area over the coming years. Over the long term, we expect banking-as-a-service to become another important catalyst for our earnings growth and further improvement in our financial performance. Finally, strengthening our capital ratios will continue to be a priority for the company. With the efforts we have made to increase loan production having been very successful and the pipeline remaining very healthy, we want to make sure that we can continue to have the capital strength to support our strong balance sheet growth, as well as continue to have the ability to execute on attractive transactions like the FNBC branch purchase. As we move through the year, we will be evaluating the best options for strengthening our capital ratios as well as optimizing our capital stack as we have some subordinated debt that is callable later this year that we may redeem. Whatever capital actions we take will be in the best long-term interest of shareholders and enable us to continue executing on the strategies that have contributed to the improvement in our financial performance. With that, we'll be happy to answer any questions you might have. Operator, please open up the call. Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, please press the pound key. Stand by as we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Terry McEvoy of Stephens. Your line is open. Hi, good morning. Nice start to the year, Jeff, and Eric. Thank you. Maybe first question. Could you just maybe expand on the growth in the CRE portfolio, you know, multifamily retail, some segments that maybe kind of contributed to that growth? Maybe as a follow-up there, how are you stress testing the portfolio as rates continue to rise or are expected to continue to rise? How are you stress testing and getting comfortable with the relative size of your CRE portfolio? Yeah. Most of the CRE growth came in multifamily, senior care, and industrial warehouse portfolios. Retail was up a little bit, but not a lot. Those three portfolios were the main drivers. In all of our underwriting, we're stressing deal by deal. We stress interest rates, we stress cap rates, as part of the underwriting process. We think we're deal by deal doing that. We also once a year do full stress testings on commercial real estate, where we'll stress those things at a portfolio level. We're doing that on a regular basis. Thanks for that. As a follow-up, I mean, a lot of the discussion we just heard was growing revenue. I don't know if I'm surprised, but to keep your expenses 41%-42%, I thought that would maybe go higher given the revenue initiatives. Can you maybe talk about how you're balancing the investments and then where you're looking for kind of opportunities to reduce expenses to keep that flat this year or at least next quarter? I mean, we've talked about our commercial banking team now for several quarters that we've held relatively flat. Actually, from a total headcount, might be down a little. But the productivity, you know, the pipeline management, we've put Salesforce in at this point probably three or four years ago, and it's really has matured and the calling efforts, the follow-up on pipeline with, you know, from the president of the bank down to RMs, I think we've done a really nice job of managing pipelines and accountability to pipelines. We've been able to keep headcount sort of down. We're not adding a lot of people to the commercial team to get the additional growth. I think that's good. Now, over time, that's gonna have to change, but right now that's where we're at. It's looking, you know. The good thing about taking a pause, the pause that we've taken on M&A the last couple years is to really dig into vendors, dig into how we operate. You know, it seems like quarter in and quarter out, we're finding, in some cases bigger pieces and then in other cases, little pieces here and there add up over time that are allowing us to continue to grow revenue at least now and hold expenses relatively flat. That can't go on forever, right. At this point, we're able to do that. If I could squeeze one last one. The equipment finance yields up 76%, a big jump. Was there something going on within that business last quarter to contribute to the higher yields? Yeah, that business tends to be five-year contracts. Prices on the sort of that five-year part of the curve. As we saw the lift during that, we were able to kinda nudge those prices up. You know, when we looked at new contracts there, Terry, in the month of March, we were at about 5.30% or so in the month of March compared to the prior December, which would've been sort of 4.50%, somewhere in 4.60%, somewhere in that range. We've still continued to see pressure on loan pricing overall, but that's one segment of the business where we are able to get a little bit of a better lift because it's national, it's at that part of the curve. There's still been a lot of demand. As Jeff mentioned, there was a lot of demand during that first quarter compared to the first quarter in the prior year, which is typically a little bit softer. Great. Thanks a lot. Have a good weekend, guys. Yep, thanks. Thank you. Our next question comes from Damon DelMonte of KBW. Your line is open. Hey, good morning, guys. Hope everybody's doing well today. Good morning. Yes, good morning. My first question just regards to the margin. Can you talk a little bit about that? I mean, very impressive expansion this quarter and good detail on kind of what drove that expansion. Kind of digging in a little bit deeper to the core margin. I know there's a little bit of accretable yield. How much was the PPP impact? I'm trying to get to like a core level and kind of figure out if there was anything else, any other one-time loan fees or items that might not be repeatable next quarter as we try to model this out. Yeah, Damon, this is Eric. On the PPP impact is roughly about five basis points or so to our margin. You know, those fees are shrinking, of course. They're a little bit over $1 million in the last quarter. T here were a few odds and ends. Jeff, in his remarks, mentioned some earlier deferrals that we were seeing in equipment finance. W e've seen with the increase in the price of that used equipment, we've had some customers that have been selling that equipment, paying off their contracts early. We have seen some prepayment fees in that portfolio. And then a few other kind of odds and ends, but not more than just a few basis points overall during the course of the quarter. Okay. Is it fair to assume that you're kind of somewhere in the high 3.30%s for your core? I think probably more like low 3.40%s. Low 3.40%s. Okay. All right. That's great. I guess, as far as the commentary on the loan growth. Your pipelines continue to be strong going into the second quarter here. Do you expect it to be continued to be driven by commercial real estate, or do you see other areas of the portfolio starting to contribute more? Yeah, I mean, that's probably gonna be the bigger driver as we look at all the growth. We do expect to see growth on the commercial side as well. The equipment finance business should pick up. I mean, we should probably have a better second quarter. We typically have a better second quarter than first quarter. If pay downs slow down, that'll contribute more to the commercial line. Consumer, I think that'll be relatively flat. Yeah, more of the growth will probably be in the commercial real estate area. Got it. Okay. Just lastly, on the fee income, any kind of guidance there to what to expect for the quarterly run rate? I know the other line was lower than previous quarters. Do you think you get back up over that $16 million quarterly run rate? Yeah, I think so. W e had a little lighter interchange quarter, which I think is, sort of seasonal. Service charges, which sort of go hand in hand. I think just seasonally, the first quarter's a little lighter. We do expect those to come back. But yeah, I think that's not a bad number. Okay. All right, great. That's all that I had for now. Thanks a lot, guys. Appreciate it. Yes, thanks. Thank you. Next we have Nathan Race of Piper Sandler. Your line is open. Yeah. Hi, guys. Good morning. Hello. Question just on the deposit growth expectations. I appreciate some of the decline in the quarter was tied to the FHA servicing partnership. Just curious how you guys are thinking about deposit growth over the course of 2022 to fund continued strong loan growth expectations. Just within that context, it sounds like you guys are in the process of onboarding some partnerships to drive some deposit growth as well. Just curious how we should think about the rate sensitivity of those potential deposits coming on board relative to kind of your lower beta deposit franchise historically. Yeah. I mean, other than, you know, we had an influx of deposits at the end of the year with the servicing business, so we sort of knew that was gonna go out. We had a really good first quarter in deposit gathering, in treasury management, and retail deposits were nicely up in the quarter as well. It's sort of back to the productivity of the team has been really good. Salesforce is driving pipelines. Our pipelines in treasury management are in a pretty good spot going into the second quarter. We won some nice accounts in the first quarter. I think we expect to win some nice accounts in the second quarter. The branch acquisition's gonna supplement that. The cost of funds at that branch we're buying is what, eight or 10 basis points, so we're bringing in some nice core deposits there. It's working both sides of the balance sheet. We gotta gather deposits, and we gotta make loans, and that's sort of what we're doing. I think we're doing a nice job on both fronts. The banking as a service is more of a longer term sort of play. I don't see that impacting the financials in a big way this year. As we start to move into the next year and the years after that's sort of where we think there'll be a bigger impact. Okay. Got it. Perhaps kind of deposit growth maybe lagged a little bit in terms of that of loans. But you guys obviously have f lexibility to increase your loan deposit ratio from, you know, just looking at average balances at 89% in the quarter. Is that kind of a fair way to piece all that together? Yeah. I mean, with the branch acquisition coming in, that number should stay relatively in that range, up some, down some, based on where loan growth ends the quarter and where deposit growth ends the quarter with the branch acquisition. That'll help supplement that. Okay, great. Just kind of thinking about the margin outlook, you know, from that low 3.40% range, on a core basis going forward. I believe around 35% of your portfolio's floating rate, and I imagine most floors will be not a factor, assuming the Fed moves by 0.5%, next month. Just kinda how should we think about the progression of the core margin from here? Is it fair to just expect, you know, by the end of this year that we could get up to, you know, a core margin, you know, in the mid 3.50%s, if not low 3.60%s range? Or how are you guys kind of thinking about the cadence of the NIM over the next few quarters from that low 3.40% range this quarter? Yeah, Nate, I guess that's the magic question, right? We are a little bit less asset sensitive today than we were as of December 31. Reason for that is, number one, the loan growth and putting that cash to work during the course of the quarter. You roughly, your number's about right except for I think now we're about 67%-68% fixed, with the rest being variable in some rate. Then in late March, we took a little bit of our asset sensitivity off the table, and we executed a receive-fixed swap on approximately $200 million of our variable rate loans. We picked up roughly anywhere from 190 basis points-195 basis points in that trade. We basically accelerated sort of 8 rate increases. That took a little of our asset sensitivity off the table too. As I look out over the next quarter, we will pick up, let's call it 3 basis points or 4 basis points from the swap, which will help offset the PPP fees or income that we talked about earlier. Then we're largely through our floors for the remaining of that portfolio and we could pick up a couple of basis points as the Fed moves that next 50 basis points that we're all expecting. You know, as you get through the year with sort of that same cadence, if we do see another couple different 50 basis point rise, it could be we're roughly around 3.50%, maybe a shade over that in core by the end of the year. Okay, great. That's super helpful. Thanks, Eric. Maybe just one last one on the fee income outlook. E xcluding mortgage, which is a challenge across the industry, is the expectation outside of that line to generate some growth just consistent with kind of what we've been talking about over the last few quarters? You know, increased cards spending. And just share gains there across your clients. Then also wealth management, I imagine, would hopefully stabilize with equity market valuations hopefully stabilizing as well. Yeah, I think that's right. Okay, perfect. I appreciate you guys taking the questions and all the color. Congrats on the great quarter. Yep, thanks. Thank you. To ask a question, you'll need to press star one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, please press the pound key. Our next question comes from Manuel Navas of D.A. Davidson. Your line is open. Hey, good morning. Good morning. What are some of the guideposts or metrics we should watch as you kind of create these fintech partnerships or continue along the banking-as-a-service evolution? Are you really focused on on-balance sheet items, fee income growth, number of customers? Any color there would be helpful. Yeah. I think our focus is gonna be around deposit gathering and payments, so, interchange. That'll be where our sort of focus is. I mean, we're looking at a fintech right now on the loan side, but, you know, the loan side will be to continue to diversify our fintech loan partnerships. You know, GreenSky's a pretty big piece right now. So one of the things we'll be doing over the course of the next 12 months is to have enough other fintechs that we're more diversified than we are today. But a big focus on the bank as a service is gonna be on the deposits and payment side. Okay, that's helpful. Maybe I missed it. Is there any change to your expectations for the GreenSky portfolio? No. Nope. I think it'll stay relatively, up or down, 3%, 4%, 5% either way, depending on how the quarter goes. We've sort of set our limit, and we're about at our limit. Kind of a modeling question. That swap that you entered into, is that gonna show up in your loan yields or a different part of the average balance sheet? It'll show up in loan yields. Okay. That's helpful. I appreciate that. With kind of the swings in AOCI folks have been seeing, have you seen that impact M&A discussions at all? Kind of, are you guys in the activity that you're hearing about in your markets? Yeah. We're keeping an eye on it. Our investment portfolio, you know, decreased in fair value by roughly $48 million-$49 million during the course of the quarter. We're keeping an eye on it. You know, it impacted our tangible book value by, call it, 3.6% or so overall. You know, one of the things that helped us compared to some of the others in our industry is that we, because of a strong loan growth, we haven't had a bigger percentage of our balance sheet in investments as some of our peers. Then also we've got some forward-starting swaps that allows us to get some funding on the liability side at pretty attractive rates right now. That increase in value is helping offset our investment securities portfolio. We have a little bit of a hedge there that's helping us. Yeah, we're keeping an eye on it pretty closely, but don't really expect any major moves to try to address it or change it. If everyone's keeping an eye on it, is that kind of limiting M&A discussions? Do you feel like it's hurt it at all? Yeah, I mean, we've been pretty clear that we're really not in M&A world right now. I mean, we're looking at small acquisitions. We did a small wealth deal, all cash last year. We're doing a small branch acquisition, which is all cash. Yeah, we're not looking at big M&A to use our stock today. It's from that perspective, not an issue. I think, this is just accounting stuff. All this comes back 'cause we typically hold our bonds till maturity anyway. These losses for practically everybody are gonna come back. Unless you have to sell investments to fund loan growth, then you're gonna take losses, but we're not in that position. This will all come back over time. Okay. That's great. Thank you very much. Thank you. I show no additional questions at the time and would like to turn the call over to management for any closing remarks. Thank you. I wanna thank everybody for joining. We had, I think, a really good quarter and look forward to talking to everybody next quarter. Have a good weekend. Thanks. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect. Have a pleasant day, and enjoy your weekend.