Northwest Bancshares Inc
NASDAQ:NWBI

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Northwest Bancshares Inc
NASDAQ:NWBI
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Earnings Call Analysis

Q2-2024 Analysis
Northwest Bancshares Inc

Northwest Posts Resilient Results Amid Restructuring

Northwest Bancshares reported a net income of $5 million ($0.04 per diluted share) for Q2 2024. After adjustments, EPS stood at $0.27, beating estimates by $0.05. The bank's net interest margin improved to 3.20%, driven by a successful securities restructuring that saw a significant yield pickup. The company anticipates low single-digit loan growth and expects deposits to remain flat. Noninterest income is set to grow modestly by 0.2%, while keeping expenses flat to positively impact the efficiency ratio. Credit quality remains strong with an allowance coverage of 1.10% of loans.

Northwest Bancshares: Transformative Changes in Commercial Banking

Northwest Bancshares reported a net income of $5 million ($0.04 per diluted share) for the second quarter of 2024. After adjustments for securities losses and restructuring charges, the adjusted earnings per share (EPS) stood at $0.27, surpassing analyst expectations by $0.05. The bank is undergoing significant transformation, evidenced by a shift in focus toward commercial and industrial (C&I) loans, which saw a robust growth of 33.4% year over year.

Loan Portfolio Restructuring and Yield Improvement

A key highlight was the strategic restructuring of the bank's securities portfolio, with 15% of the portfolio sold at a $39.4 million pretax loss. The reinvestment of $258 million from these sales aimed at acquiring higher-yielding securities, which enhanced the average portfolio yield from 1.96% at the start of the quarter to 2.45% by the end. This initiative is expected to deliver a yield pickup of over 420 basis points with a payback period of approximately three years, indicating a strong upward trajectory in profitability.

Improved Net Interest Margin Amid Industry Challenges

Northwest's net interest margin (NIM) rebounded to 320 basis points, marking a 10 basis point increase from the previous quarter but still 8 basis points lower than a year prior. This growth reflects a slower pace of funds cost increases and improved loan pricing strategy. The bank anticipates further NIM expansion, projecting an additional 4 to 5 basis points in the next quarter due to continued disciplined loan pricing.

Consumption of Deposits and Expense Management

Deposits grew by 1.6% quarter over quarter and by 5.8% year over year, primarily driven by increases in consumer time deposits. The cost of deposits increased only modestly by 15 basis points, the lowest rise observed in the last five quarters. With total noninterest expenses maintained at around $90 million, the efficiency ratio improved to 65.4%. This efficiency in expense management is crucial for maintaining profitability and shareholder value.

Outlook for the Second Half of 2024

Looking ahead, Northwest anticipates low single-digit loan growth, particularly in the C&I sector, while keeping expenses roughly flat. The bank expects noninterest income growth of approximately 0.2%. The management team emphasizes a conservative approach to capital deployment, balancing organic growth with potential acquisitions while maintaining their dividend of $0.20 per share.

Credit Quality Highlights

Credit quality remains stable, with an allowance to loans coverage increasing slightly to 1.10%. The net charge-off rate stood at just 7 basis points for the quarter. However, some emerging stress in the healthcare portfolio is being monitored closely, and management expects a normalization in provision levels over time, potentially aligning closer to 15-20 basis points.

Strategic Growth Initiatives and Leadership Changes

In addition to financial performance, Northwest has reinforced its leadership team with strategic new appointments aimed at enhancing operational execution and market strategy. Recent transformations in commercial banking, including the establishment of new lending verticals, are well-placed to leverage emerging opportunities in diverse market conditions.

Earnings Call Transcript

Earnings Call Transcript
2024-Q2

from 0
Operator

Good morning. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to Northwest Bancshares Second Quarter 2020 Earnings Call. This call is being recorded, and playback will be made available on Northwest Bancshares Investor Relations website. [Operator Instructions]

Now I would like to introduce Jeffrey Maddigan, Northwest Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

J
Jeffrey Maddigan
executive

Good morning, everyone, and thank you, operator. Thank you for joining Northwest Bancshares Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. Today with me, I have Louis Torchio, President and CEO of Northwest Bancshares, Inc. the holding company for Northwest Bank. Also with me is Douglas Schosser, Chief Financial Officer; and T.K. Creal, Chief Credit Officer.

During this earnings call, we will reference information found in the supplemental earnings release presentation, which can be found on Northwest Bancshares' Investor Relations website. Included in that presentation, you will find our statement on forward-looking information and other data, including non-GAAP measures.

These statements cover our earnings materials plus commentary offered on this morning's call. Please keep in mind that actual results may differ materially from forward-looking statements offered today, July 23, 2024. These forward-looking statements will not be updated after today's call.

Thank you. And with that, I would like to turn it over to Louis.

L
Louis Torchio
executive

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss our quarterly results. Before we dive into the numbers, which Doug will cover, I would like to acknowledge the significance of this call. It marks an important milestone in our company's growth and maturity. As the bank has grown in size and complexity, we recognize the need to enhance our investor relations function and provide more comprehensive and regular updates to our shareholders and the financial community.

This quarterly call format reflects our commitment to transparency, open communication and best practices in corporate governance. We are eager to share our results with you and provide insights into our strategy, performance and forward outlook.

I'm thrilled to highlight the exceptional leadership team we've assembled over the past year at Northwest. In June, we welcomed Urich Bowers as our new Chief Consumer Banking and Strategy Officer, exceeding [ John Goldy ]. Urich brings valuable experience from P&C to our organization. Earlier this year, we also added Doug Schosser as our new CFO, leveraging his expertise from KeyBanc.

These additions significantly enhance our strategic development and execution capabilities. Looking back, we further strengthened our leadership team with Greg Betchkal, our Chief Risk Officer, with experience at Citibank, KeyBanc and [ Bread ] Financial; and J. D. Marta, Chief Commercial Banking Officer; who brings rich experience from GE Capital, TD Bank and most recently, LendingClub. Together with our existing experience and capable leaders, I have confidence that this group of experienced individuals will propel our bank to new heights in the coming years.

I'd also like to highlight some key strategic initiatives that are driving our performance and positioning us for long-term success. First, our commercial bank transformation continued to gain momentum. Under JD [ Martos ] leadership, you'll see how we shifted our focus to growing our C&I portfolio. We established new commercial lending verticals, which are showing promising early results. We verticals include sponsor finance, equipment finance, sports finance, franchise finance and a new SBA lending group. Each unit is outperforming our early expectations and are ever to see their continued contributions. Last quarter, we also announced our intention to restructure our securities portfolio we were successful with this plan, and Doug will talk more about the strategy and our results in a few minutes.

The result of the restructure enabled Northwest to purchase higher-yielding securities as well as significantly reduced our overnight borrowing A portion of the benefit showed up in our net interest margin improvement for this quarter. Overall, I'm pleased with our core financial results, and I'm confident the positive changes to our security portfolio will enable a strong position for Northwest for the coming quarters and years ahead. I want to thank each and every team member for their talent and dedication to produce these results. I'm proud of your hard work and focus on our customers and our communities.

I'm also pleased to notify you that the impact to our bank operations from the CrowdStrike IT issue was minimal. All of our branches and ATMs were open and running, servicing our customers. Personal and business customers have been able to access online banking, mobile banking, treasury pro and wire funds without incident.

Finally, as we have for the past 119 quarters on behalf of the Board of Directors, I'm pleased to declare a quarterly dividend of $0.20 per share to shareholders of record as of August 2, 2024.

Now I'd like to introduce Doug Schosser, Northwest Bank's Chief Financial Officer, as he will take you through our financial results. Doug?

D
Douglas Schosser
executive

Thank you, Lou, and good morning, everyone. Please look to Page 4 in the earnings presentation as I cover the financial resorts Northwest posted for the second quarter of 2024. We announced net income for the quarter of $5 million or $0.04 per diluted share. After adjusting for the securities loss and restructuring charges, EPS is $0.27 per share to $0.05 above analyst context. We completed our previously announced securities restructure hitting our targets on the reinvestments, which I will discuss later.

Loan growth was more muted this quarter as we focused on improving our new loan yield rather than seeking loan growth more aggressively. These actions resulted in an improving net interest margin, which after bottoming in the first quarter rebounded to 320 basis points during the second quarter. Fee income was improved over the first quarter due to strong SBA originations, while noninterest expenses were maintained at the $90 million level after we adjust for some restructuring costs incurred in the quarter.

Credit quality remains very good and overall allowance coverage increased slightly to 1.10% of loans.

Now I will get into some additional details. Turning to Slide 5, you'll see the results of the restructuring so far. We sold $314 million or 15% of our portfolio at a loss of $39.4 million pretax with an average yield of 1.79%, we reinvested $258 million of the proceeds with an average yield of 6%. This represents a yield pickup of over 420 basis points with an anticipated payback of 3 years or less.

The average overall portfolio yield now stands at 2.45% compared to 1.96% at the end of the first quarter. These results met or even exceeded initial expectations.

Next, I'll speak to our loan portfolio, which can become on Page 6. Most notably, you'll see that our commercial and industrial loans grew 3.2% since last quarter and 33.4% since the same quarter last year. while residential mortgages declined $143 million or 4.1% since last year. To the earlier point, this demonstrates the results of our commercial banking transformation. While our commercial real estate portfolio grew modestly, less than 1% since last quarter, you can see the change in the loan mix to a more desirable share of C&I compared to CRE. Embedded within this group is the discipline to grow profitably, maintaining adequate margins on new loans originated. You'll see in the bottom right chart that our loan yield has grown steadily quarter-over-quarter for the last 5 quarters and now stands at 5.47%.

On the next Page 7, I will cover the profit. largely due to competitive pricing and continuing marketing efforts, deposits grew by 1.6% since the last quarter and 5.8% since the same period last year. While our cost of deposits grew by 15 basis points, that represents the lowest increase in the past 5 quarters. Most deposit growth was within our consumer time deposit product category with modest growth in both consumer savings and noninterest demand accounts. The current cost of deposits stands at 1.76, which is near best-in-class relative to our peers.

On Page 8, I will cover net interest margin, which now stands at 320 basis points or a 10 basis point improvement from the first quarter and 8 basis points lower than the same quarter last year. Net interest income grew from $104 million at the end of the last quarter, $108 million or approximately 4%.

This is the first quarter with NIM growth since a year ago and reflects the impact of reduced borrowings, higher loan yields and a slower pace of growth of our cost of funds. We remain diligent in managing our profit growth and pricing strategy alongside prudent loan pricing. We ended the quarter with a cost of funds of 2.4%.

Noninterest income covered on Slide 9, and grew 9% or $2.6 million quarter-over-quarter, excluding the loss incurred from the securities restructuring. As I mentioned previously, the gain on the sale of SBA loans improved by 67% on. We also saw gains year-over-year in trustees and consumer deposit service charges.

Slide 10 shows details of our noninterest expense. Our efficiency ratio improved to 65.4% despite modestly rising expenses However, if we adjust out onetime costs incurred due to the termination of [ Genco's ] contracts, expenses were essentially flat for the quarter. We remain focused on expense management. We're making smart decisions to in-source work previously produced by more expensive third-party professional services firms.

We continue to be focused on finding additional cost reductions without impacting for operating activities or diminishing the service levels our customers have come to expect and maintaining a well-managed institution.

A few comments on credit quality. On Page 11, our allowance to loans coverage increased slightly to 1.10% with net charge-offs of just 7 basis points for the quarter. As seen on Page 12, overall credit performance remained strong, although we did see a slight increase in nonperforming assets, however, these increases can result from small changes given the overall low level of classified assets today.

Slide 13 shows our commercial loan concentration. As you can see from the graphs, we have a diverse portfolio backed by strong underwriting, we've been able to avoid many of the CRE specific issues, and we do not have material risk with exposure in large metro office or rent control markets. Our health care sector, which has seen some challenges recently is currently beginning to show signs of improvement.

Page 14 summarizes the balance sheet changes I just shared with you and also shows our estimated capital ratio that remain very strong. We expect to report a 13.18% CET1 capital ratio and an 11 basis point improvement on our TCE to tangible asset ratio, which will be 8.37%.

Finally, I will cover our outlook for the second half of the year. We'll stay focused on responsible and profitable loan growth in the commercial space, specifically C&I lending. We anticipate low single-digit loan growth. We expect deposits to remain largely flat, and we will manage our deposit costs while balancing client expectations and market pressures. That combined with disciplined loan pricing will allow for a modest expansion of the net interest margin.

We expect modest growth of 0.2% in noninterest income, and we remain focused on keeping expenses flat. This will have a positive impact on our efficiency ratio. With our tax rate and net charge-offs are expected to normalize closer to Q1 2024 level. On behalf of the entire leadership team and Board of Directors, thank you for joining us this morning.

At this time, I'll turn the call over to Desire, our operator, who will update my question and answers. Thank you.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Tim Switzer with KBW.

T
Timothy Switzer
analyst

My first question is on the timing and impact of the securities restructuring. It seems like from the presentation, it maybe had up to a 13 basis point impact on the margin this quarter. Could you guys maybe provide some details on the timing of it over the course of the quarter? And then what's the impact we should expect in Q3?

D
Douglas Schosser
executive

Sure. We started -- we started the restructuring in the middle towards the end of the quarter. Most of the sales were late May and early June. We finished all of the selling activity towards the end of June. We have a little bit more about $20 million, give or take, to redeploy into some asset classes that have a little less supply in the market. So that was the timing. So we will get a full quarter's benefit next year, and we would expect that to be incremental 4 to 5 basis points.

T
Timothy Switzer
analyst

An incremental 4 to 5 basis points in Q3.

D
Douglas Schosser
executive

Correct on the investment portfolio. 9 total basis points for the margin.

T
Timothy Switzer
analyst

Okay. And should we assume some incremental NIM expansion on like a core basis on top of that in Q3 and Q4? Or is that going to be the primary driver?

D
Douglas Schosser
executive

We continue to focus on our ability to price in this market. So I think there is some opportunity for some additional core margin growth based on how we handle deposit pricing opportunities as well as loan volumes in the quarter.

T
Timothy Switzer
analyst

Okay. Great. And then if I could ask follow-up kind of clarifying exactly what's intended in the guidance. On the noninterest income and expense side, you're guiding to low single-digit growth off of the adjusted base per quarter. Do we take like the average in the first half of the year and just add low single-digit growth on top of that? Or is it low single-digit growth in Q3 relative to Q2 and then low single-digit growth in Q4 relative to Q3.

D
Douglas Schosser
executive

I think it's low single-digit growth on the adjusted Q2 numbers. And I wouldn't necessarily say that it's 2% per quarter. It's 2% over the course of the year.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Daniel Tamayo with Raymond James.

U
Unknown Analyst

This is [ Tim Delas ] filling in for Danny. First quarter in a while here where commercial growth was not very strong. And you alluded to the comment on [indiscernible] loan yields advantageous for you. Can you talk about if that reflects maybe a change in the competitive dynamics, potential entrants in the markets and then perhaps a follow-up. Can you talk to how current pipelines are comparatively to the last few quarters in that commercial portfolio.

D
Douglas Schosser
executive

Yes. I wouldn't say it's due to higher levels of competition. I think it is due to both credit discipline and pricing discipline as we look at opportunities. I will say we did have some higher levels of runoff in our portfolio than we were expecting. So that put some downward pressure on the overall balance growth for the quarter. We wouldn't expect that level of payoffs to continue as for our pipeline, we are seeing pipelines that are similar this quarter to last quarter, and we wouldn't expect to have continued reductions in loan balances across the portfolios because again, we're expecting that runoff to not be as big of an impact on us going forward.

But again, that runoff is outside of our control in certain cases of those corporate transactions and things that just created some earlier-than-anticipated paydown.

U
Unknown Analyst

Great. I appreciate that color there. Then maybe switching over to credit. Cost did remain over low for the quarter. I did see the nonaccruals tick up in the commercial and you didn't specifically mention that 1 single credit. Is there any detail that you can provide on that from an industry vertical and then maybe the trends you're seeing overall in that portfolio?

D
Douglas Schosser
executive

Yes. I mean I don't think that we're getting into that level of disclosure on this call. I would just say, as we stated in our earlier comments, some of the health care portfolio has shown some signs of stress, but we believe that that is getting better or at least normalizing. And we did guide to a more normalized overall provision level. So I think over the cycle, we would say our overall charge-off number would be 15 to 20 basis points. We don't know that we'll get there next quarter, but you should see that credit normalization over time.

Operator

Next question comes from the line of Frank Schiraldi with Piper Sandler.

F
Frank Schiraldi
analyst

Just first on expenses. Just want to make sure I heard you correctly. So when we're looking at the guidance, you talked to low single-digit growth. So that's low single-digit growth in the back half of the year annualized off of normalized 2Q numbers? Is that just saying in a different way? Is that the right way to think about it?

D
Douglas Schosser
executive

I think last quarter, we talked about a $90 million per quarter expense number. I still think that's fairly good. So depending on how you look at second quarter, again, we're looking forward to saying it's going to be around $90 million, give or take, 2% of that. Again, I don't think it's sustained expense growth. We continue to focus on expenses, but there's a lot of uncertainty. So we continue to look for opportunities to drive overall profitability.

But again, on the conservative side, we're at that $90 million plus or minus 2% over the course of the year and the quarter.

F
Frank Schiraldi
analyst

Got you. Okay. And then just switching gears as a follow-up. Just the macro picture seems to improve a bit, certainly at least stabilized and bank stocks, certainly reacted positively over the last month or so. So just wondering your thoughts if the -- your appetites change at all for M&A, your updated thoughts there on opportunities in the near term.

L
Louis Torchio
executive

Frank, it's Lou. Thanks for the question. Really, I think with the deployment of our capital strategy, it continues to be, one, protect and deliver on the dividend. Secondly, we are focused on organic growth and optimizing and transitioning the firm over time, which is our stated goal. And then certainly thirdly, acquisitions, we have a strategy, conversations are picking up, whether that means expanding our geography into higher-growth markets, whether it's acquiring an institution brings businesses that we otherwise don't have or whether it's a deposit play or really a combination of all of that.

So we are actively having conversations. We're interested in growing organically and inorganically. And then, of course, lastly, would be any buybacks as a result of our capital position. So yes, we do see the market clearing. There are more conversations going on, and we are interested, but we're going to be pretty selective we want to make sure that strategically it propels us to where we want to go.

F
Frank Schiraldi
analyst

And then just in terms of geography, would it be if there is some expansion, would you still expect that to be contiguous expansion? And any thoughts on most attractive geographies as you look out at the potential for M&A?

L
Louis Torchio
executive

Yes. I mean, we certainly would consider end market as well. We think it's a little bit lower risk. It's higher execution. But certainly, we'd like to grow, as I said, in some different markets that provide more opportunity for the franchise. We certainly are based here in Columbus now, Ohio is the focus of ours, Indiana, specifically the Indianapolis area would be a focus. And we are focused primarily -- you don't see us going outside of contiguous footprint. So the 4 states we're in, think about the contiguous states around those states.

So as you know, we can only evaluate the opportunities that are presented to us. But we will be fairly selective in deploying capital.

Operator

Next question comes from the line of Daniel Cardenas with Janney.

D
Daniel Cardenas
analyst

Just some follow-up on the margin. What kind of rate cut assumptions are baked if any are baked into your margin guidance?

D
Douglas Schosser
executive

Yes. Last time we looked at it, we were looking at about 3 cuts over the course of the year for the final year as part of our margin guidance, again, I think we're pretty well positioned to handle if it comes out to be 2 or something like that. But we definitely were providing guidance given the more current [indiscernible] stance.

D
Daniel Cardenas
analyst

Okay. And then so for every 25 basis points, what kind of cuts, what kind of impact does that have on the margin?

D
Douglas Schosser
executive

I might turn that over to Jeff to answer more specifically.

J
Jeffrey Maddigan
executive

Yes. I think because of where they come in, so we're kind of assuming there's September and then late year. So certainly, the last 2 don't have that much impact -- we do think our -- we'll be able to bring deposit prices down in line with any kind of cut to kind of help suffer margin and if anything, continues to keep increasing margin as our guidance suggests.

So really good to see that deposit -- our ability to bring down deposit costs. We just think that given the competition or what the competition is facing is margin compression that we'll be eager to bring costs down as well. So we think there'll be some limit to that.

D
Daniel Cardenas
analyst

Okay. Great. And then what was your CRE ratio, concentration ratio look like at quarter end?

D
Douglas Schosser
executive

For that number, I think that was on the earnings deck on the loan section Page 13. Flip to Page 13. That just shows -- that shows the overall concentration. You're looking for a percent of the portfolio for CRE. So $3 billion on the...

D
Daniel Cardenas
analyst

I'm just kind of looking for the regulatory number that everybody is looking at right now.

D
Douglas Schosser
executive

All right. Yes, give us 1 second, we'll pull that for you. We'll come back. If you have another question before that one, and we can come back and clean that up.

D
Daniel Cardenas
analyst

Yes, sure. No problem. And then on the operating expense side, thanks for the color there as well. I know there's been some branch rationalization exercises that you guys have gone through. Is that pretty much done? Or could we maybe expect to see a few more branch closures here in the second half of the year.

L
Louis Torchio
executive

Yes. This is Lou. We don't anticipate really any any further branch closures. I mean we are looking at a multiyear plan for consumer, both investing in the franchise as well as there may be some 2 for ones, some consolidation or -- and we're looking at really a branch of the future modernization plan, but nothing meaningful. We think we've really exhausted the branch closure piece for the organization.

D
Daniel Cardenas
analyst

Right. So then I think about expenses, then our technology investment is really going to be the the biggest growth driver here on a go-forward basis?

D
Douglas Schosser
executive

No. I mean we've got -- if you look at our commercial strategy, we've been building up multiple verticals, as Lou mentioned in his originating comments. So those have not even been online for a full year yet. So we can expect as those verticals mature, we would expect to get more production out of them for a full year 2025 as opposed to what they did for a partial year in 2024. And then as we have brought Urich onto the scene to when consumer I also think we'll see sort of a different level of execution within our branches to drive some organic growth that way.

So we think we've got levers for growth right now that we're going to focus on over the course of the next year, and we should be able to drive growth just from or those types of blocking and tackling activities as well as having full years across these commercial verticals.

L
Louis Torchio
executive

I would add also specifically around your expense question, we have invested a lot in our IT stack. We have invested in our risk management and our commercial credit acumen at the organization. So we are building the firm both from a regulatory and from a operating platform to be able to scale the organization and sort of remix the balance sheet as we described and grow organically.

So that run rate that you see has a lot of investment already embedded in it.

J
Jeffrey Maddigan
executive

The CRE concentration is 168%.

Operator

Next question comes from the line of [ David Merocnic ] with [indiscernible].

U
Unknown Analyst

This is David on for [ Matt ]. I was wondering if you could start -- if you guys could talk on the loan book. Just in terms of you guys know what percent of the book is pure floating rate as it will reprice within 3 months? And then just maybe what those are tied to?

D
Douglas Schosser
executive

Yes, absolutely. On the commercial book, we would have 53% of that will be floating. Overall book, it would be 27% would be floating.

U
Unknown Analyst

Great. And then is it safe to assume those are tied to prime or sulfur, maybe 200 or 250 spread?

D
Douglas Schosser
executive

Yes. I think that's a good assumption.

U
Unknown Analyst

Great's. And then by chance, do you have the yield on maybe the difference of the floating book on the yield on the fixed rate book?

D
Douglas Schosser
executive

If we don't, we can get back you, yes, we'll have to get back -- we'll follow up with that, and we obviously can provide that.

U
Unknown Analyst

No worries. And then I guess just switching over to deposits, sorry, if I missed it. Did you guys talk about maybe your expectations on where you think PDAs will kind of settle out? And maybe in terms are you being more selective now and kind of looking at running off higher cost deposits as you guys kind of mentioned looking at funding costs?

D
Douglas Schosser
executive

Yes. I'm going to come back and answer your earlier question. I think you have been [indiscernible] with us. I would tell you, as far as the deposit goes, right, we plan to look at our CD book as it matures and take advantage of keeping the maturities on that short and providing an opportunity for reprice as rates to decline in the market.

And I would also say that we continue to look at our money market book, and that would have a relatively high beta the way down as would some of [indiscernible]. So again, I think where we have the opportunity to price deposits down, we'll take advantage of it, but we're also operating in a competitive market, and we want to maintain our overall deposit levels and potentially grow them. So that would be part today. I think the earlier question you asked is what our floating rate yield was in the aggregate and it's 7.95%.

U
Unknown Analyst

Great. I appreciate that. And then last would just be if there's any kind of color you can give, maybe thoughts on the provision going forward? And will the reserve maybe keep ticking higher if you see any pressure in the C&I space?

D
Douglas Schosser
executive

Yes. I mean, again, you would expect the provision to go up if our charge-offs go up in order to maintain coverage ratios. So there is the potential for that. And then other than that, it's a [indiscernible] situation, right, where it's going to depend on economic outlook overall. I wouldn't expect our provision is necessarily going to increase because we're putting on riskier credit.

So I think the book we expect to maintain the level of credit risk that we take today, but it's going to be tied to both economic changes as well as sort of what happened on the charge-off side.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We have another question came in -- comes from the line of Manuel Navas with D.A. Davidson.

M
Manuel Navas
analyst

So on the loan growth, I appreciate some of the commentary. Do you have the actual runoff that was this quarter that you had to fight against on the commercial side, I feel like a balanced number?

D
Douglas Schosser
executive

I mean I would just say it was -- I don't know that we're going to get into all of those details, but it was not insignificant. We give you a general direction Yes. I mean it was $400 million to $600 million.

M
Manuel Navas
analyst

Okay. And then if -- you talked about pipelines being very similar, which are -- on the commercial side has been strong for a while. What specific lines are doing best? Is there any that you're starting to move away from because you're opening up a number of different business lines. Just wondering if you're at the point you're winnowing any of them or are all still performing excellently and still all ramping up?

L
Louis Torchio
executive

Yes. No, this is Lou. Yes, thanks for the question. So some of them are returning quite nicely. Some will be more strategic than others. In addition to the verticals that we described, we are heading into strategic planning. And we -- we'll be revisiting our lower middle market/upper-end business banking model inside our footprint as well. what that looks like and what our go-to-market strategy is. So that will see further development.

Some of those businesses come come with fees and deposits are more strategic and some are just asset generation. So as we go through strategic planning, as the market evolves and as we see how those mature that will dictate our course of action as far as how we optimize, what we're looking to do is optimize performance as well as give ourselves enough latitude and levers to be able to transform the balance sheet as we've described previously. I hope that gives you a little color on that.

M
Manuel Navas
analyst

No, I appreciate that. And any specific lines that you're calling out -- Oh, go ahead, I'm sorry.

L
Louis Torchio
executive

We are seeing really good success in our sponsored finance group and our SBA group that are contributing and of course, equipment finance has been around. So it's been gestating for a while. And so we notwithstanding the market for that given where those credits get put and where they lie on the curve is a little bit difficult. But we're seeing success there as well.

So we're really happy with Jay's leadership, and he's been able to procure a great deal of talent from his former employers across his career to be able to stand those up and they're relatively efficient. And so we're really pleased with that.

M
Manuel Navas
analyst

I appreciate the commentary. Do you have any insight on new loan yields in the pipeline on the commercial side?

D
Douglas Schosser
executive

We've been targeting $7.5 million and better. So I would give you generic guidance around that level. Of course, each deal is unique and priced sort of individually. But I think generally, if you think about that being a decent level to count on, obviously, higher is more attractive to us, but it's all risk-based pricing.

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. Mr. Doug Schosser, I'll turn the call back over to you.

D
Douglas Schosser
executive

Okay. Well, we'd like to thank all of you for taking some time to join us this morning. And all of the information that was discussed is available on our Investor Relations website. Thank you, and we'll talk again next quarter.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.

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