First Financial Bancorp (NASDAQ:FFBC) Q1 2023 Earnings Conference Call April 21, 2023 8:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Scott Crawley - Investor Relations

Archie Brown - President and Chief Executive Officer

Jamie Anderson - Chief Financial Officer

Bill Harrod - Chief Credit Officer

Conference Call Participants

Daniel Tamayo - Raymond James

Chris McGratty - KBW

Scott Siefers - Piper Sandler

Terry McEvoy - Stephens

Jon Arfstrom - RBC Capital Markets

Operator

Hello and welcome to today’s First Financial Bancorp First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. My name is Bailey and I will be your moderator for today’s call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to pass the conference over to Scott Crawley, Corporate Controller. Please go ahead when you are ready.

Scott Crawley

Thank you, Bailey. Good morning, everybody and apologies for any technical difficulties you might have had logging on this morning. Thanks for joining us on today’s conference call to discuss First Financial Bancorp’s first quarter 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 will 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 first 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 March 31, 2023 and we will not be updating any forward-looking statements to reflect facts or circumstances after this call.

I will 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 first quarter. I will provide a few high level thoughts on our recent performance and then turn the call over to Jamie to provide further details.

The first quarter was a strong quarter for First Financial and I am very pleased with our operating performance. The company achieved record revenue of $215 million. Net income and total revenue increased 70% and 46% respectively from the same quarter last year, with both increasing slightly compared to the linked quarter. Our quarterly results were driven by strong net interest income, moderate loan growth, an 8 basis point increase in our net interest margin, record leasing business income and another great quarter from Bannockburn and strong performance from our Yellow Cardinal Wealth Division.