First Commonwealth Financial Corporation (NYSE:FCF) Q1 2022 Earnings Conference Call April 27, 2022 2:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Ryan Thomas – Vice President-Finance and Investor Relations

Mike Price – President and Chief Executive Officer

Jim Reske – Chief Financial Officer

Jane Grebenc – Bank President and Chief Revenue Officer

Brian Karrip – Executive Vice President and Chief Credit Officer

Conference Call Participants

Russell Gunther – D.A. Davidson

Daniel Tamayo – Raymond James

Michael Perito – KBW

Gates Schwarzmann – B. Riley Securities

Matthew Breese – Stephens Inc.

Frank Schiraldi – Piper Sandler

Karl Shepard – RBC Capital Markets

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 Q1 2022 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions]

Thank you. Ryan Thomas, Vice President, 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 first 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 financial 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. A reconciliation of these measures can be found in the appendix of today's slide presentation.

Now I will turn the call over to Mike.

Mike Price

Thanks, Ryan. We were pleased to report that core earnings per share of $0.29 for the first quarter met consensus estimates. Pre-tax pre-provision net revenue or PPNR was down from last quarter largely due to a $2.3 million decline in PPP income and a $2.1 million decline in fee income, reflecting in part an anticipated decline in mortgage gain-on-sale income, which I'll return to in a moment. Excluding PPP, 8.8% loan growth in the first quarter was largely driven by the consumer lending categories of indirect, HELOC and mortgage and to a lesser extent by commercial real estate. This balanced loan growth is consistent with our long-term strategy of commercial consumer balance sheet diversification and granularity.