First Financial Bancorp (NASDAQ:FFBC) Q2 2023 Earnings Conference Call July 21, 2023 8:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Archie Brown - President, Chief Executive Officer

Jamie Anderson - Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operating Officer

Bill Harrod - Chief Credit Officer

Scott Crawley - Corporate Controller

Conference Call Participants

Daniel Tamayo - Raymond James

Brendan Nosal - Piper Sandler

Nick Moutafakis - KBW

Terry McEvoy - Stephens

Operator

Good morning. My name is Rob and I will be your conference Operator today.

At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the First Financial Bancorp second quarter 2023 earnings conference call and webcast.

All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again press star, one.

Thank you. Scott Crawley, Corporate Controller, you may begin your conference.

Scott Crawley

Thank you Rob. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us on today’s conference call to discuss First Financial Bancorp’s second quarter and year-to-date 2023 financial results. Participating on today’s call will be Archie Brown, President and Chief Executive Officer; Jamie Anderson, Chief Financial Officer, and Bill Harrod, Chief Credit Officer.

Both the press release we issued yesterday and the accompanying slide presentation are available on our website at www.bankatfirst.com under the Investor Relations section. We’ll make reference to the slides contained in the accompanying presentation during today’s call.

Additionally, please refer to the forward-looking statement disclosure contained in the second quarter 2023 earnings release, as well as our SEC filings for a full discussion of the company’s risk factors. The information we will provide today is accurate as of June 30, 2023 and we will not be updating any forward-looking statements to reflect facts or circumstances after this call.

I’ll now turn the call over to Archie Brown.

Archie Brown

Thank you Scott. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us on our call.

Yesterday afternoon, we announced our financial results for the second quarter. I’ll provide some high level thoughts on our recent performance and then turn the call over to Jamie to provide further details.

I continue to be pleased with our performance this year. Earnings in the second quarter were once again very strong as an expected increase in deposit costs was mostly offset by higher asset yields. Adjusted earnings per share was $0.72, which was a 29% increase compared to the same quarter in 2022, while the adjusted return on assets and tangible common equity were 1.62% and 26.46% respectively.