Berkshire Hills Bancorp, Inc. (NYSE:BHLB) Q2 2022 Earnings Conference Call July 20, 2022 10:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Kevin Conn - IR, Corporate Development Officer
Nitin Mhatre - President, CEO
Subhadeep Basu - CFO
Greg Lindenmuth - CRO
Conference Call Participants
Mark Fitzgibbon - Piper Sandler
Bill Young - RBC
Chris O'Connell - KBW
Laurie Hunsicker - Compass Point
Operator
Hello, and welcome to today's Berkshire Hills Bancorp Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Elliot, and I will be coordinating your call today. [Operator Instructions]
I would now like to turn the call over to Kevin Conn, the floor is yours. Please go ahead.
Kevin Conn
Good morning, and thank you for joining Berkshire Bank's second quarter earnings call. My name is Kevin Conn, Investor Relations and Corporate Development Officer. Our news release is available in the Investor Relations section of our website berkshirebank.com and will be furnished to the SEC.
Supplemental investor information is provided in an information presentation at our website at ir.berkshirebank.com, and we will refer to this in our remarks. Our remarks will include forward-looking statements, and actual results could differ materially from those statements. For details, please see our earnings release and most recent SEC reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q.
In addition, certain non-GAAP financial measures will be discussed in this conference call. References to non-GAAP measures are only provided to assist you in understanding our results and performance trends and should not be relied on as financial measures of actual results or future projections. A comparison and reconciliation to GAAP measures is included in our news release.
On the call, we have Nitin Mhatre, President and Chief Executive Officer of Berkshire Hills Bancorp; Subhadeep Basu, our Chief Financial Officer; Sean Gray, our Chief Operating Officer; and Greg Lindenmuth, our Chief Risk Officer.
At this time, I'll turn the call over to our CEO, Nitin Mhatre.
Nitin Mhatre
Thank you, Kevin. Good morning, everyone, and welcome once again to Berkshire's second quarter earnings call.
I'll begin my remarks on Slide 3 that captures the highlights of the quarter. Overall, this was a strong quarter with significant improvement in EPS and ROTCE quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year. Revenues were up 9% versus the first quarter driven by strong net interest income growth. Loan balances growth was robust and net interest margin grew significantly, and those tailwinds more than offset the headwinds in fees.
Expenses were flat quarter-over-quarter and slightly lower year-over-year as we continue to be disciplined on expense management while continuing to self-fund our BEST program. Earnings per share of $0.51 was up 19% quarter-over-quarter and up 17% year-over-year. Return on tangible common equity improved to 8.48%, an improvement of 99 basis points quarter-over-quarter and 40 basis points year-over-year.