Enterprise Financial Services Corp (NASDAQ:EFSC) Q1 2022 Earnings Conference Call April 26, 2022 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Jim Lally - President & Chief Executive Officer

Scott Goodman - President-Enterprise Bank & Trust

Keene Turner - Chief Financial Officer & Chief Operating Officer\

Conference Call Participants

Jeff Rulis - D.A. Davidson

Andrew Liesch - Piper Sandler

Damon DelMonte - KBW

Brian Martin - Janney Montgomery

Daniel Cardenas - Boenning & Scattergood

Operator

Good day. And welcome to the EFSC Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded.

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Jim Lally, President and CEO. Please go ahead.

Jim Lally

Well, thank you Cristina. And good morning, and welcome to our first quarter earnings call. I appreciate all of you taking time to listen in. Joining me this morning is Keene Turner, our company's Chief Financial and Chief Operating Officer; and Scott Goodman, President of Enterprise Bank & Trust.

Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone on the call that a copy of the release and accompanying presentation can be found on our website. The presentation and earnings release were furnished on SEC Form 8-K yesterday.

Please refer to slide 2 of the presentation titled Forward-Looking Statements and our most recent 10-K and 10-Q for reasons why actual results may vary from any forward-looking statements that we make this morning.

Please turn to slide 3 for our financial highlights for the first quarter. On our fourth quarter earnings call, I commented that our expected momentum we had leaving 2021 would continue to 2022. Our results for the first quarter of 2022 showed this to be true.

For the quarter EFSC earned $48 million or $1.23 per diluted share. This compared to $1.33 and $0.96 per diluted share for the linked and prior year quarters, respectively. This level of performance produced a return on average assets of 1.42% just slightly less than the 1.52% that we posted for the fourth quarter of 2021.

As you know the fourth quarter typically has the benefit of the peak of non-interest revenue and 2021 was no different. On a pre-provision basis we earned $57 million for the quarter yielding a robust PPNR ROAA of 1.7% and an ROATCE of 17.5%.

EFSC posted another solid growth quarter for both loans and deposits. Net of PPP loans grew at an annualized rate of 8%. Scott will provide much more detail about where we saw opportunities and where we experienced headwinds, but I will comment that we remain disciplined with respect to pricing and credit likely to the detriment of a few additional basis points of growth in the quarter. Nonetheless, I am confident about our ability to improve on this level of performance as we progress through the remainder of 2022.