FRME · FIRST MERCHANTS Q2 FY2026 earnings call record财报电话会记录

“We now operate 126 banking centers, reflecting the addition of Southern Indiana following the First Savings acquisition.”

“Tangible common equity remains strong at 8.99%, as we continued our share repurchase activity throughout the first half of this year.”

“Strong revenue growth, along with disciplined expense management, resulted in overall pre-tax, pre-provision earnings of $84.6 million, increasing $5.9 million over prior quarter and generating 2% positive operating leverage.”

“Looking at the income statement in the middle of the page, total revenue grew 18% when comparing year-to-date 2026 on a normalized basis to the same period in 2025, with First Savings contributing 12% of that growth.”

“Pre-tax, pre-provision earnings totaled $163.3 million, reflecting growth of $25.2 million or 18.2% over the same period in the prior year.”

“Moving to slide 18, non-interest expense for the quarter totaled $115.3 million and included $3.8 million in acquisition-related costs.”

“The cost synergies we expect to gain from the First Savings acquisition are on track.”

“While current quarter charge-offs remained a modest 10 basis points annualized, we currently anticipate full year 2026 net charge-off will trend into the 40-45 basis point range.”

“It's really because we've focused on customers that are in our backyard that happen to be large enough to participate in the SNC market.”

“We're not just buying credits to expand the balance sheet from outside of our core markets, and really not even outside of our current markets where we don't have a relationship focused on those customers that we're close to.”

“Our quarterly run rate, I think the guidance that I gave last quarter was that we thought through the remainder of the year, our total expense run rate would be between $111 million and $114 million per quarter.”

“I also just think it's fair to say the carrier has taken a pretty dramatic, or made a pretty dramatic shift in their retail distribution model, and it's impacting this customer directly, and the changes moved quickly.”