First Commonwealth Financial Corporation (NYSE:FCF) Q3 2022 Earnings Conference Call October 26, 2022 2:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Ryan Thomas - Vice President, Finance & Investor Relations

Mike Price - President & Chief Executive Officer

Jim Reske - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Frank Schiraldi - Piper Sandler

Daniel Tamayo - Raymond James

Michael Perito - KBW

Matthew Breese - Stephens

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Chris, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the First Commonwealth Financial Corporation Q3 2022 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. [Operator instructions]

Thank you. Ryan Thomas, Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations you may begin.

Ryan Thomas

Thank you, Chris and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss First Commonwealth Financial Corporation's third quarter financial results.

Participating on today's call will be Mike Price, President and CEO; Jim Reske, Chief Financial Officer; Jane Grebenc, Bank President and Chief Revenue Officer; and Brian Karrip, our 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've also included a slide presentation on our Investor Relations website with supplemental final 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 3 of the slide presentation for a description of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statements.

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.

And with that, I will turn the call over to Mike.

Mike Price

Hey. Thanks, Ryan and good afternoon, everyone. Net income of $34 million increased $3.2 million over the second quarter on the heels of significant improvement in net interest income and better fee income, partially, offset by pressure on non-interest expense and an uptick in provision expense.

Our pre-provision net revenue of $48.9 million was strong and produced a core pre-tax pre-provision ROA of 2.03% and our core ROA in the first quarter was 1.43%. Key elements of the quarter follow: strong loan growth of 3.3% annualized coupled with the burgeoning net interest margin of 3.76% propelled an $8.7 million increase in net interest income to a record third quarter figure of $82.6 million.