Associated Banc-Corp (NYSE:ASB) Q1 2022 Earnings Conference Call April 21, 2022 5:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Andrew Harmening - CEO

Chris Niles - CFO

Pat Ahern - Chief Credit Officer

Conference Call Participants

Scott Siefers - Piper Sandler

Timur Braziler - Wells Fargo

Terry McEvoy - Stephens

Daniel Tamayo - Raymond James

Chris McGratty - KBW

Jon Arfstrom - RBC Capital Markets

Michael Young - Truist Securities

Operator

Good afternoon, everyone. And welcome to Associated Banc-Corp’s First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Hilary and I will be your operator today. At this time all participants are in listen-only mode. We will be conducting a question-and-answer session at the end of this conference. Copies of the slides that will be referenced during today's call are available on the company's website at investor.associatedbank.com. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded.

As outlined on Slide 1, during the course of the discussion today, management may make statements that constitute projections, expectations, beliefs, or similar forward-looking statements. Associated’s actual results could differ materially from the results anticipated or projected any such forward-looking statements. Additional detailed information concerning the important factors that could cause Associated’s actual results to differ materially from the information discussed today is readily available on the SEC website and the risk factors section of associated most recent Form 10-K and subsequent SEC filings. These factors are incorporated herein by reference.

A reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures to the GAAP financial measures mentioned in this conference call, please refer to Page 23 of the slide presentation and to Page 8 of the press release financial table. Following today's presentation, instructions will be given for the question-and-answer session.

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Andy Harmening, President and CEO for opening remarks. Please go ahead, sir.

Andrew Harmening

Thank you, Hilary. And good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our first quarter earnings call. I’m Andy Harmening. And I'm joined here today by Chris Niles our Chief Financial Officer and Pat Ahern our Chief Credit Officer.

I'd like to start things off by covering the highlights of the quarter and provide an update on our strategic initiatives. From there, Chris is going to walk through our updates on income expense and capital. And then Pat will follow up with an update on our credit trends.

So here in the upper Midwest, we continue to see signs of a strong economy and our footprint. COVID restrictions have largely been eased or lifted, and employment trends remained remarkably strong with unemployment rates in Wisconsin and Minnesota now down below 3%. We also continue to see encouraging strength in our commercial loan pipelines and utilization rates, given us confidence that the momentum we began to see in manufacturing back in the second half of 2021 is in fact carrying over into 2022.