Premier Financial Corp (NASDAQ:PFC) Q1 2022 Earnings Conference Call April 27, 2022 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Gary Small - President, CEO & Director

Matthew Garrity - EVP & Chief Lending Officer

Paul Nungester - CFO & EVP

Conference Call Participants

Robert Siefers - Piper Sandler & Co.

Christopher Marinac - Janney Montgomery Scott

Michael Perito - KBW

Operator

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Premier Financial Corp. First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Victoria and I'll be coordinating your call today. [Operator Instructions].

I'll now pass over to your host, Paul Nungester to begin. Please go ahead.

Paul Nungester

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for today's First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. This call is also being webcast, and the audio replay will be available at the Premier Financial Corp. website at premierfincorp.com. Following our prepared comments on the company's strategy and performance, we will be available to take your questions.

Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that during the conference call today, including during the question-and-answer period, you may hear forward-looking statements related to the future financial results and business operations for Premier Financial Corp. Actual results may differ materially from current management forecasts and projections as a result of factors over which the company has no control. Information on these risk factors and additional information on forward-looking statements are included in the news release and in the company's reports on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

And now I'll turn the call over to Gary for his comments.

Gary Small

Thank you, Paul, and good morning, thank each of you for joining us today. Premier's results for the first quarter built on some familiar themes from prior quarters.

We had very good loan growth across the board with the Commercial Banking group achieving double-digit growth for the second consecutive quarter and they're up over 7.6% versus Q1 of last year. Strong performance in each of our markets with excellent C&I growth. Consumer lending in Q1 was very active as well. Our HELOC origination activity was ahead of our internal plan for the quarter, and we experienced the highest auto finance origination numbers in our history in the month of March.

And based on what we see in April, we'll eclipse that record in April. Consumer households are maintaining their strong cash positions. They seem well prepared to weather the near-term bumps that are brought by inflation and other news of the day.