First Merchants Corporation (NASDAQ:FRME) Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call April 25, 2024 11:30 AM ET
Company Participants
Mark Hardwick - CEO
Michael Stewart - President
Michele Kawiecki - CFO
John Martin - Chief Credit Officer
Conference Call Participants
Damon DelMonte - KBW
Nathan Race - Piper Sandler
Brian Martin - Janney Montgomery Scott
Daniel Tamayo - Raymond James
Terry McEvoy - Stephens
Operator
Thank you for standing by, and welcome to First Merchants Corporation's First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference call. Before we begin, management would like to remind you that today's call contains forward-looking statements with respect to the future performance and financial condition of First Merchants Corporation's that involve risk and uncertainties. Further information is contained within the press release, which we encourage you to review.
Additionally, management may refer to non-GAAP measures, which are intended to supplement but not substitute for the most direct comparable GAAP measures. The press release available on the website contains financial or other quantitative information to be discussed today, as well as a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded.
I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Mark Hardwick, Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Hardwick, you may begin.
Mark Hardwick
Good morning, and welcome to the First Merchants first quarter 2024 conference call. Thanks for the introduction and for covering the forward-looking statement on Page 2. We released our earnings today at approximately 8 AM Eastern time. You can access today's slides by following the link on the third page of our earnings release.
On Page 3 of our slides, you will see today's presenters and our bios to include President, Mike Stewart, Chief Credit Officer, John Martin, and Chief Financial Officer, Michele Kawiecki.
On Page 4, we have a few financial highlights for the quarter to include total assets of $18.3 billion, $12.5 billion of total loans, $14.9 billion of total deposits, and $8.3 billion of assets under advisement.
On Slide 5, if you look at bullet point 1 under our first quarter results, you will note that margin is stabilizing, and new and renewed loan yields for the quarter totaled 8.15%. You will also notice on bullet point 5 that we were active during the quarter. We're purchasing 30 million of shares in First Merchants and redeeming $40 million of sub-debt, which recently repriced to just over 9%.
On bullet point 6, we reported first quarter 2024 earnings per share of $0.80 or $0.85 when adjusted for $3.5 million of non-core items incurred during the quarter. On the last bullet point, I would also note that three of our four major technology initiatives were deployed during the first four months of the year to include the rollout of a new in-branch account opening platform called Terafina, our new online and mobile platform for more than 150,000 consumer customers that converted to Q2, and our new private wealth platform converted to SS&C's InnoTrust platform. As you can imagine, these projects require a significant amount of time and resources and require heightened customer focus during implementation.