First Commonwealth Financial Corp (FCF) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the first Commonwealth Financial Corporation Q2 2026 earnings release conference call. After today's prepared remarks, we will be hosting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand, and to withdraw your question, press star 1 again. I will now hand the conference over to Ryan Thomas, Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Jonah, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss First Commonwealth Financial Corporation's second quarter financial results. Participating on today's call will be Mike Price, President and CEO, Jim Reske, Chief Financial Officer, Mike McEwen, Chief Banking Officer, and Brian Sohaki, Chief Credit Officer. As a reminder, a copy of yesterday's earnings release can be accessed by logging on to fcbanking.com and selecting the investor relations link at the top of the page we have also included a slide presentation on our investor relations website with supplemental information that will be referenced during today's call before we begin i need to caution listeners that this call will contain forward-looking statements please refer to our forward-looking statements disclaimer on page three of the slide presentation for description of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statement. Today's call will also include non-GAAP financial measures. Non-GAAP financial measures should be viewed in addition to, and not as an alternative for, our reported results prepared in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliation of these measures can be found in the appendix of today's slide presentation. With that, I will turn the call over to Mike.

Thank you, Ryan. Second quarter financial performance at First Commonwealth, and highlights include core earnings per share of $0.44, up $0.07 over the first quarter, a core ROA of 1.46 percent, and core pre-tax pre-provision ROA of 2.14 percent, a core efficiency ratio of 52.24 percent, and a net Net interest margin of 4.01%, which expanded nine basis points as a function of lower deposit and funding costs, higher loan yields, and securities purchases. All key income statement categories moved positively quarter over quarter to include net interest income, provision expense, non-interest or fee income, and non-interest expense. Second quarter loan growth of 1.97 annualized percent was matched by average deposit growth of 2.03%. Loan growth for the quarter was led by equipment finance, commercial construction, branch-based home equity loan lending, and our indirect lending business, all of which offset contraction in commercial real estate and C&I lending. The quarter was notable due to a record quarter of commercial loan payoffs of roughly $740 million, following a record first quarter of commercial loan payoffs of roughly $630 million. Commercial loan originations increased to approximately $693 million in the second quarter. Although charge-offs remain elevated as we continue to resolve identified problem credits, credit quality improved modestly in the second quarter with lower non-performing loan balances alongside stable delinquency and allowance levels. Other items that may be of interest to investors include, for the year, Community PA in Cincinnati, two of our five regions, have led the way with both deposit and loan growth. Fee income grew in part year over year due to nice traction in mortgage and wealth management businesses, and the team continues to find uses for AI, and we've felt like we're on our front foot with IT and technology for years, particularly with our fintech partnerships, but let me just give you one AI example. In our call center, our vendor turned on a feature where AI listens to the call and pops the policy and procedure to the employee to help navigate a solution for our clients. And oftentimes, they're navigating up to six different systems at one time. Just one small example of probably a dozen or more. With that, I will turn it over to Jim Reske, our CFO.

Thanks, Mike. Mike has already summarized the second quarter's financial performance, so I'll try to provide some additional detail around the margin, fee income, and expenses as usual. The net interest margin improved by nine basis points to 4.01%. While average deposits grew by 2.03%, period end deposits were down at an annualized rate of 5.77%, with about two-thirds of the decline coming from time deposits. With excess cash on hand and limited loan growth, we priced time deposit promotions less aggressively compared to competitors in the second quarter, resulting in outflows towards the end of the quarter. That tighter deposit pricing obviously helped the NIM. About six basis points of the nine basis points of improvement came from lower funding costs, with the cost of deposits falling by five basis points to 1.74%. The other three basis points came from the asset side of the balance sheet. driven by a combination of higher loan yields and the investment of excess cash into securities. The rate environment continues to allow us to reprice our loan book upward, with fixed-rate loans repricing upward by 61 basis points. The yield on the loan portfolio improved by four basis points from 6.03 to 6.07%. The expiration of $150 million in macro swaps on May 1 contributed to the increase in loan yields. Looking ahead to the second half of 2026, we see net loan growth picking up as production continues and payoffs normalize, returning loan growth closer to our mid-single-digit guidance, while the NIM will benefit from the rate environment but suffer from stiffer deposit competition. We expect that will leave the NIM in the low 4% range. Fee income was up by $2.3 million from last quarter. Fee income benefited from an $806,000 gain from the redemption of a $6.6 million sub-debt instrument inherited from a prior acquisition, along with a $450,000 BOLI death claim, which together accounted for about $1.3 million of the $2.3 million of improvement. We also had an increase of about half a million dollars in interchange and deposit service charges. Our previous guidance for fee income to range from $24 to $25 million per quarter for the remainder of this year remains unchanged. Non-interest expense improved by $1.3 million from last quarter. Salary and hospitalization expense did go up in the second quarter, offset somewhat by a vendor rebate of approximately $450,000. But the quarter-over-quarter comparison benefits from a few discrete expense items that hit us in the first quarter, including about half a million dollars of snow removal costs in the first quarter and a half a million dollar FHLB prepayment penalty in the first quarter. Our previous expense guidance of about 74 to 76 million dollars per quarter remains unchanged for the remainder of 2026. We repurchased approximately 12 million dollars in stock last quarter at a weighted average price of 18.66. We had approximately 13 million dollars remaining in repurchase authorization at the end of the second quarter. And yesterday, our board approved an additional $75 million in repurchase authorization. We intend to continue share repurchase activity in the third quarter. Tangible book value per share grew to $11.58, up from $11.34 last quarter and $10.63 cents a year ago. Compared to last quarter, our CET1 ratio has improved from 12.5% to 12.6%, and our tangible common equity ratio increased from 9.7% to 9.9%. And with that, we'll take any questions you may have.

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimal sound quality. And if you were muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question is from the line of Daniel Tomeo at Raymond James. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon, guys. um maybe we uh we start on the on the credit side just curious if you could provide some details i guess the the the bigger increase and neither was it was a huge increase but a little bit of an increase in in classified loans if you could kind of uh give us some color on on uh what was driving that in the quarter yeah daniel i can jump in um you know maybe just taking a look at criticized overall to start.

As a whole, the overall trend remained relatively stable. We ended the quarter at 3% of loans, essentially unchanged. Within that portfolio, however, we saw some migration between special mention and substandard. It was really about $10 million dollars and two credits. That resulted in the modest increase in classified assets that you saw. Importantly, the migration occurred within the previously identified criticized relationships rather than a broad influx of new problem credits. As a result, the classified balances increased, but we didn't see a corresponding increase in the overall level of criticized assets, which was a positive. And as Mike said in his comments, at the same time, several, you know, the indicators that we view as leading measures of the portfolio direction improved during the quarter. Watch balances decreased by some $30 million. dollars, delinquency was stable, and the other, you know, portfolio asset metrics, portfolios. You know, all that said, you know, classified assets and non-performing loans remain elevated above, you know, our long-term objectives, and we'll continue to work through those in the future quarters and, you know, expect a little bit of a degree of volatility.

Thanks for that. Yeah, That was my next question was just on the charge-off side. I mean, I'm just curious if you can put a little finer point on that in terms of what we may see in terms of charge-offs near term before they come back to somewhat normalized levels.

Yeah, it's hard to put an exact number on it. You saw that we increased reserves in the first quarter. If you go back to the last quarter, we had three commercial credits with reserves totaling about $11 million. One of those worked through the process in the second quarter and a credit that had a $3.4 million charge. So, yeah, as we go through that, we'd expect a little bit of, you know, action on individual credits before we revert back to three and five years.

Okay, thank you. That's helpful. And then maybe just quickly for you, Jim, on the margin guidance, appreciate the low force thoughts. I mean, it sounds like that means maybe you're expecting a little bit of expansion here in the back half as you think about it holistically. Is that about the levels you think that you might stay in the low forces as these kind of competing factors on both sides start to stabilize? or do you think there's the potential for continued expansion in 27?

Yeah, I'm hesitant at this point to give that guidance into 27, Dan, just trying to look just for the remainder of this year. I mean, the runs we did, the most recent runs we did, did have a margin drifting up for the second half of this year. And I can tell you even explicitly the run we did, the last run had the margin with no rate increases at all going to 4.08 in the fourth quarter and 4.13 if there was one hike in September. But that latest run, I'm taking with a grain of salt for my guidance because that didn't include the latest and greatest information we have about deposit competition, which is really heating up in our market. We were able to bring deposit costs down in the second quarter in a really healthy way, which is good, especially after having lags and peers doing that. So we were bringing that down and we saw an outflow of CDs and now we see deposit pricing competition picking up. So all All that works together to bring that guidance from the low fours, but at this point, I can't – the crystal ball doesn't go out into 2027 yet.

I understand, right? I appreciate you going over those – yeah, the pushes and the pulls. Appreciate the answers, guys.

Thank you.

Your next question is from the line of Carl Shepard at RBC Capital Markets. Carl, please go ahead.

Mike, you touched on the record payoffs again this quarter. I guess, could you frame up maybe what you see as a more normalized range, and then do you have visibility into that in the third quarter and maybe a little bit into the fourth quarter as well?

We do expect them to subside somewhat. We think we've had probably a half a dozen or so larger ones that were more one-off and just outright sales and getting out of real estate. A lot of them, obviously, are construction. A lot of them are planned, going to the permanent market. That being said, we just feel regarding loan growth, we have good growth in construction fundings, which hit the tipping point there. Business banking and our corporate bank, we have good momentum in each market. Our consumer is growing, and probably most importantly, their talent and execution just continues to improve. In the first half of the year, we grew two of our five regions. we expect to grow all of them in the second half of the year so just momentum and just getting beyond this so it's not perfect but that's kind of my best take from the vantage point in July I appreciate that and then I know this comes up on every every quarterly call but on the buyback you've you've gone over kind of your framework before but the authorization is a little bit larger than you've had so anything you want to message with with the with the bigger number out there this quarter thank you yeah just uh i mean we're just drifting up all the time and jim and i put our heads together and at 9.7 and 9.8 and it's going to continue to drift even if we start to hit our loan growth targets uh we just thought it might be prudent uh to get a little larger authorization in place jim yeah i just exactly that i mean the capital ratio keeps drifting up upward and upward.

And like Mike said, even if we have plenty of capital to first and foremost capitalize organic growth, which is the first priority. But even then, if the capital TCE ratio gets to where it's pushing 10%, it goes beyond 10%, it's very hard to earn a respectable return on equity. Now, we were really pleased to see the ROTCE go over 15% this quarter, but it's harder and harder to do that if you have excess capital. So we bought back some shares. I think when I look back now in the second quarter, the purchases of $18.66, which we bought back a whole lot more given the price today. So that will probably be a little more aggressive going forward.

Thank you both.

Thank you.

Your next question is from the line of Kelly Mata at KBW. Kelly, please go ahead.

Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for the question. I think putting together some of your margin commentary, one thing you noted was the increased deposit competition. I was hoping you could provide color as to what you're seeing in your markets, one, and then two, your balance sheet flexibility allowed you to be a little bit more discerning, just wondering how you're thinking about that loan-to-deposit ratio and the additional flexibility you may have there.

Yes, specifically, and I'll let Jim amplify, but on the deposit side, our money market, we feel, we're very competitive, but more on the CD side. And we felt that pressure really just in the last month or so.

Yeah, that's right. The competition, Kelly, is really in the time deposits. And, you know, back in COVID, we just had, way back, we didn't have a very large time deposit. book. We run some of that down, but now it's a fairly decent size time deposit book, about $1.7 billion. And so we have to price it to maintain that deposit book and grow it. We had so much excess cash in the second quarter that we felt like we didn't need to be so aggressive. And we pulled back a little bit, and lo and behold, towards the end of the quarter, right in June, as Mike was saying, the deposit competition heated up, and we saw the outflow. So we did react to that. And that's really good to bring you up to the minute. We saw even just yesterday a couple more competitors, raising CD rates to rates that have four handles on them. The competition really is not so far anyway in the money market product. That's still in the mid threes. But the CD competition is heating up and it's across the board. It's not just online banks. It's not just credit unions. It's not just smaller banks. It's everybody. So you cannot You cannot ignore that and maintain your CD book. So we've raised rates already to do that, and we'll continue to do that to grow our deposits to fund our loan growth.

Kelly, forgive me, the second part of your question?

Just the flexibility on balance sheet. And you did have a bit more flexibility this quarter to let some deposits go.

So wondering where you're comfortable with taking that loan-to-deposit ratio. that's right we like it where it is in the low 90s you know there's but it's not binding good yeah we've worked hard to get there i mean we've after silicon valley we really have grown our deposits about uh five percent a year each year and um we worked it down from 96 97 and so it feels like a good place to be and we don't want to give that way away quite frankly our customers didn't have rate with us they were just loyal customers and they were getting rates somewhere else and we've worked hard to gather the CD book. We appreciate it. It's come mostly from our own customers and we just don't want to give that away. And it remains a nice way to continue to grow deposits and in a way that our loan yields are good.

Got it. That's helpful. And then on the growth and the payoffs you saw, you noted that there was pressure on CRE, which I think you had touched on earlier and also CNI. Can you provide color as to where line utilization stands and how that compares to normalized levels and any dynamics factoring in there? Thank you.

Yeah, it's drifted up. We've been monitoring that and watching that. Just the line utilization of evolving commercial lines and CNI lines drifting up over the last three quarters. So, So the one comment here I give you, Kelly, is that the production's been really good. It's just the payoffs have been – the payoff crescendo has continued and gotten stronger. If that crescendo, the payoff slows down even a little bit, we'll have really good loan growth. Now, of course, that'll put pressure on the deposit growth and make sure we fund that loan growth for deposits, but it'll all work together. But we're really pleased with just the production side.

Yeah, Kelly, we also feel like we have six buckets of lending, commercial real estate, C&I, equipment finance, mortgage, branch-based consumer lending, and indirect auto. And now, in the second half of the year, just going in, we have four of those six growing between equipment finance, indirect auto, key lock, key loan, and probably going to get there with C&I and commercial. So just, you know, we're pretty broad-based, and we just feel like we have momentum in those few businesses. As a mortgage, we're still selling most everything we originate. And by the way, mortgage is a good story year over year on the fee side, up almost a million dollars, I believe. And we just have good pipelines despite the rate environment. So we just feel good about loans and where we're at.

A last question, if I could just flip it in, is just on that, you know, it sounds like everything on the production is very constructive. What do you think is driving that? And what are you seeing as you're talking about borrowers to your borrowers? Are they just more comfortable, you know, where we are now? Just any color would be really helpful as we think about what's been impacting that uptick.

On mortgage or on all?

I was talking mostly commercial, but I'm happy with whatever color you can get.

I just think our regional model has coalesced with really good leadership and new leaders over the course of the last few years and just better and better teams that are just getting more sophisticated. We really like the fact our business banking, which is the lower end of commercial, has really gathered momentum in the last year and a half to two years. We've added a lot of professionals to that space. that's obviously very granular on the lower end it comes with a lot of deposits so at the end of the day it does give down to talent and execution we've added talent on that team the other thing is we've complemented with uh just a pretty strong and uh a tm function that's getting better and has more capability because our borrowers need more than just a loan they have deposit relationship and then um you know even we're doing a better job of cross-selling our wealth management our insurance you see that in the numbers and how we've recouped what we've lost with the 13 and a half a million dollars of crossing uh 10 billion and so just all coming together and uh we feel like you know the best years are ahead of us um with the team we have now got it thank you so much for all the caller i'll step back your next question is from the line of Manuel Navas from Piper Sandler.

Your line is open. Please go ahead.

It seems like you guys have some nice confidence on the production levels in terms of loan growth. How fast can you see loan growth kind of get back to mid-single digits? Is it as soon as third quarter? Do you need it to build a bit more? Just kind of some thoughts on the pipeline here into the near term back after the year.

Yeah, good question. I mean, last quarter we sold a $200 million portfolio and we had a downdraft of another $100 million. So, it was quite a climb from that spot and the payoffs we had with more payoffs to get to 2% annualized. So, we do feel like we have some momentum in that, you know, the mid-single digit is good guidance for us. As you've seen over the years, we really believe deeply in the concept of operating leverage, so we manage with a lot of cost discipline, and we feel like 4%, 5%, 6% is enough to really leverage into good earnings per share growth and value creation. And another lever we like is we just feel like we can do a better and better job with fee income. And that's one of the reasons we really move pretty decisively to a regional model. You know, we report by line of business, but we execute and we win in discrete regions throughout the company. And that's the conclusion we came to. it's a little bit more expensive model but we have good leaders and we're confident that it'll create differentiation what's your appetite for continued talent acquisition is that pipeline continue or are you kind of uh seeing it uh try to produce now and taking a step back. I'll share you an anecdote is that one of our very wise leaders put in a ghost position and what he meant by that was I want to be able to hire the right person at any time that I find her or him and I love that I love the confidence and that's the way we feel when we find good people we got to find a way to get them on the payroll and move the company forward with the white kind of rainmakers. Consequently, we've lost very few of them over the years. And so that speaks to the culture and the good leaders that we have. And so not everybody has caught on yet, but after this call, I guess they will. But I thought that was cool.

I appreciate the color. Can I shift over to Nim for a moment? What are kind of like new loan yields coming on at? And I'm just trying to think of the marginal aspects to it and how big of a shift, I guess you'd say CD books are more like 4.5% of competitors. Kind of where is your marginal deposit cost right now? If you could kind of walk through those near-term kind of drivers of NIM, please.

Yeah, so I'll try to answer those, but I forget part of the question just to refresh my memory. I think the new cost of deposits blended overall coming on was 3% for a good part of the quarter, but that changed more towards the end of the quarter. With the deposit competition, that's going to drift upwards. So that's if you take the blended average of all the deposit growth categories, including NIV, you get kind of a 3% cost of deposit acquisition cost overall. But, like I said, the CD rates are definitely going to be in the – the promotion rates are going to be in the fours going forward. The loan yield coming on, new loans coming on in the mid-sixes, six-four, loans coming off a little bit lower than that. So that's why you get a positive replacement yield so far. The differential is much wider in the fixed-rate loans. The variable rate loans, if you look at all the production, variable is about two-thirds of production. Six is about a third of production, roughly. And the positive replacement yields that I mentioned in my prepared remarks is 61. That's on the fixed rate. The variable rate, if the spreads maintain the same level, then the replacement yields are net to about zero. It fluctuates a little bit quarter for quarter, but it's not much. So that's the dynamic there.

Do you talk a little bit about the repricing potential on the fixed rate side, like over time? Maybe the rest of this year into next year?

Yeah. I mean, if the Fed holds where they are now, we're really happy with 61 base points on the fixed rate side. That's on the loan side. On the security side, it was better. But it skewed a little bit because we accelerated some securities purchases with the excess cash. The securities portfolio yield is low compared to the opportunity right now of new rates. We're able to purchase new securities at low fives right now. So that replacement yield there is pretty strong. But if the Fed just holds where they are for a while, it will eventually replace the whole loan book, except for the low-rate mortgages that are hanging on that aren't prepaying until they move or the house burns down.

It's still about a third of the overall volume.

Yeah, overall. And that's all categories. That's not just commercial. That's everything. HELOCs and equipment finance, everything. Hope that helps a little bit.

Thank you for the commentary. No, it definitely helps. Thank you for the commentary. I'll jump back into the queue.

Thanks, Ben.

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. Your next question is from the line of Matthew Breeze at Stevens Bank. Matthew, please go ahead. Yes.

Thank you. Good afternoon. I guess, I don't know if we fully answered this, but, you know, what gives you confidence that we're going to see a slowdown in payoffs? Is it just that the current pace is unsustainably high in the normal, such a lower amount that we've got to get there at some point, reversing to the mean? And then the other question I had was, if you strip away equipment, CNI growth, it looks like non-equipment-based CNI growth has been down for maybe four consecutive quarters. Is that expected to turn around as well? And what does the pipeline look like there?

Yeah, great question. I think the anecdote around each payoff is an important factor in our guidance on that. And the size of the payoffs, I mean, we just don't have that many loans over $50 million anymore. And on the C&I side, we're working really hard to grow it and to grow it granularly with business banking and middle market loans. And we've worked, you know, from a decade ago, we had all the SNICs. Well, we don't have $100 million of SNICs left. It's that. And so even though the composition of the CNI book over the years has changed, when you talk about the last four quarters, you know, just the pipelines and particularly the pipelines in business banking and that really that under $5 million range has grown as we've invested in that team, you know, the last year plus. I hope that's helpful.

Jim, maybe just thinking through if, you know, I know securities aren't your first option, but, you know, if loan growth is, let's just say loan growth is on the lower end amid single digits and capital is building, do we continue to see some securities purchases and where would you like to see that as a percentage of assets?

It's a great question. It depends on the funding side. So we really don't believe in balance sheet leverage. Let's go out and borrow a lot of money overnight and buy securities with that to leverage the balance sheet. We'd just rather not do that. We'd rather have a more concentrated balance sheet with less leverage where we really make our money by taking deposits and making loans. But if we had great deposit growth and excess cash and slower loan growth like we did in the second quarter, then, yeah, securities are a good option, especially when we can get rates where they are now on the low fives. But it's not our go-to option. We really don't believe in borrowing excess funds just to purchase securities and get that kind of balance sheet leverage. It dilutes NIMA, it dilutes ROA, it gets you a little EPS, but in the long run, it's not a winning strategy. a bank like ours was there another part of your question everything we saw this quarter was really kind of like a pre-funding of stuff that's maturing yeah that's right that's right that's right so then yeah and then right and then we saw you know with the way we're pricing cds uh these funds started to have these outflows uh towards the end of the quarter and so we got to react to that um if anything goes right you know we have the mid single digit loan growth we have the mid-similarly deposit growth and loan deposit will grow. And as capital grows, we retire some shares and leave the capital ratios more in line with norms so the capital ratios don't grow at the sky. And then we can accept a return on that capital. That's the balance we're shooting for.

Within expenses, one area I noticed is just that your FDIC insurance expense has been like clockwork between 1.4 and 1.7 million per quarter it dipped to 1.1 and I'm curious just kind of what happened there and if anything within it's kind of one time or non-recurring in any way no that's more of a new run rate that's based on new assessments we're very happy about that can't say a whole lot more about it but it's very very positive okay I don't know if you provided But did you have the spot cost of deposits for the month of June or at the end of June, just to give us some idea of where this thing might be heading?

I did not provide that, but I don't mind providing that. I can get it for you in a minute. Let me move on another – it'll take me a second. Yeah, I'll give you one more question while you pull it up. Yeah, ask somebody else.

Go ahead. You know, obviously, you know, Warris left rates unchanged today, but it feels like the bias is towards hikes. You know, if we do get a hike or two this year, kind of, what's the reaction to the NIM? I think, Jim, you had mentioned 408 by the end of the year, but with the hike, we got the 403. That seemed a little backwards to me, and I was hoping you could flesh it out.

Thank you so much for letting me clarify. With the hike, it was 413. But the adjustment I'm making is that I know that those forecasts we did do not take into account the latest thinking of the pause prices. That's why I backed off to our NIM guide to the low fours. But the relationship is about the same. If we get a hike, we get about a five-basis point lift for a 25-basis point hike, a five-basis point lift in the NIM. It's been that way for a while, so we're still asset-sensitive, and it's a benefit to us.

That's all I have. If you happen to have this broadcast, I'll take it. If not, I'm all set.

I might, it might take me a second or two. Oh, 1.71. 1.71 in June.

Let's just step in the right direction then. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

There are no further questions at this time. We have reached the end of the Q&A session. I will now turn the call back to Mike Price, President and Chief Executive Officer, for closing remarks.

I appreciate your interest in our company. I appreciate the questions. It's fun running a bank, a commercial and a consumer bank. And we feel like we're very relevant to our customers here in Central and Western PA in Ohio. And we also feel like we're a good bank. We do a lot of the right things for our clients. And first and foremost, we listen to them. But thank you and look forward to seeing a number of you over the course of the next quarter in the field.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.