Yahoo Finance

Mike Stewart

Thank you, Mark, and good morning to all. Our business strategy summarized on slide 6 remains unchanged. We are a commercially focused organization across all these business segments and our primary markets of Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. So, let's turn to slide 7. I like this slide.
As Mark stated earlier, loans grew nearly $155 million or at a 4.8% annualized rate, which follows the strong 6% loan growth we saw last quarter.
The $9.8 billion commercial segment was the primary driver of the growth increasing $169 million or a 7% annualized growth rate. Within the commercial segment, C and I grew by $248 million which offset the $96 million decline in our investment real estate portfolio.
We saw the C and I loan growth in all of our markets as the M&A and CapEx pipelines we discussed last quarter were funded and closed.
Our commercial bankers continue to win new client relationships across our footprints. And revolver usage increased during the quarter due to reduction in client cash balances, which we'll talk about on the next page, and inflationary effects on inventory and receivables, which might be early impacts of tariffs.
Another pleasing bullet point on this page is the quarter ending pipeline, which is consistent from prior quarter end and gives us optimism that we will be able to maintain our loan growth.
A few comments on the consumer portfolio. We have a very strong team of mortgage bankers that are driving the growth of both non-interest income and the $24 million of balance sheet growth referenced on this slide. We utilize our balance sheet for variable rate, short term, fixed rates, or construction loans. On a quarter over prior year quarter basis, our mortgage unit volume is up over 15% and our dollar volume is up over 30%. And as you can see on the bottom of the page, our mortgage pipeline remains strong.
So, let's turn to slide 8, talk about deposits.
The story of this slide continues to be the mix of our product set and our goal of managing deposit cost.
Michelle will be reviewing our net interest margin, but this slide represents the great work our teams have done in managing and building core deposit relationships while reducing deposit costs on the public funds and maturity deposit categories in particular.
For the quarter, total deposits declined 1.6% on an annualized basis. The commercial deposit balance decline is almost solely the result of the activities within the public funds portfolio, or $208 million of the $228 million total decline. Public funds are an important segment, yet one of our highest cost depository categories.
What I have labeled core relationship balances declined by $20 million which is primarily attributed to companies managing their working capital levels. We also continued our pricing discipline within our consumer segment, specifically maturity deposits.
Consumer deposit balance declined during the quarter by $9 million. But core consumer relationship balances grew by $188 million but was offset by the decline of maturity deposits of $197 million.
The mix of deposit categories has been the focus of our teams for the past year. It has been a focus on primary focused accounts and deposit costs, and overall, I am pleased with the active management our teams are having with their clients to manage mix and deposit costs. So let me turn the call over to Michelle to review in more detail the composition of our balance sheet and the drivers of our income statement. Michelle.

Michele Kawiecki

Thanks, Mike, and good morning, everyone.
Slide 9 covers our first quarter performance.
Looking at the summary income statement in the middle of the page, you will see total revenues were down slightly from Q4 after normalizing for the one-time events that occurred in Q4.
I would remind you that we recorded a gain on the sale of our Illinois branches offset by a loss on securities repositioning, which resulted in a one-time $8.4 million dollar increase to non-interest income on line 13 in the fourth quarter.
Total revenues in Q1 were quite strong, despite being impacted by day count and seasonality.
Solid expense management during the quarter also added to the performance with an overall result of pre-tax pre-provision earnings of $67.4 million. Those earnings fueled a $0.56 increase in tangible book value over a prior quarter after returning value to shareholders through dividend payments and share repurchases, bringing tangible book value per share up to $27.34. Which is an increase of 9.1% when compared to the same quarter last year.
Slide 10 shows details of our investment portfolio.
Expecting cash flows from scheduled principal and interest payments and bond maturities through the remainder of 2025 totaled $214 million with a roll-off yield of approximately 2.16%. Slide 11 shows some details of our loan portfolio.
The total loan portfolio yield decreased by 34 basis points to 6.21% as our variable rate portfolio repriced down due to lower short-term rates. New and renewed loans were priced with a 6.96% yield and continued to positively impact the overall portfolio yield.
The allowance for credit losses is shown on slide 12. This quarter we had net charge-offs of 4.9 million and recorded $4.2 million of provision. The reserve at quarter end was $192 million and the coverage ratio was 1.47%. In addition to the ACL, we have $16.3 million of remaining fair value marks on acquired loans. When including those marks, our coverage ratio is 1.6%. Overall, we remain well reserved as our allowance is well above peer levels.
Slide 13 shows details of our deposit portfolio.
The total cost of deposits declined meaningfully by 20 basis points to 2.23% this quarter. Our interest-bearing deposit costs declined 25 basis points, reflecting a downward cumulative interest-bearing deposit beta of 56% and good deposit pricing discipline.
On slide 14, net interest income on a fully tax equivalent basis of $136.4 million decreased $3.8 million from prior quarter. Net interest margin on line 6 totaled 3.22% and declined 6 basis points this quarter. When normalizing for the lower day count in the quarter, margin was stable on a linked quarter basis.
Next, slide 15 shows the details of non-interest income.
Non-interest income totaled $30 million with customer-related fees of $27.1 million. Customer related fees declined from last quarter, reflecting lower derivative hedge fees, card payment fees, and gains on sales of mortgage loans.
The first quarter is always seasonally lower for our mortgage business, but we still had a strong start to the year, giving gains this quarter were over 50% higher than the first quarter of last year.
Moving to slide 16, non-interest expense for the quarter totaled $92.9 million, a decrease of $3.4 million from prior quarter. We completed a voluntary early retirement program in the first quarter of 2024, and as you can see on the bar chart on the bottom right, salaries and benefits have been lower in all subsequent quarters. We continue to demonstrate effective expense discipline to maintain our efficiency ratio, which was 54.54% for the quarter.
Slide 17 shows our capital ratios.
We continued to grow capital this quarter with common equity tier one climbing to 11.5%. These strong capital ratios along with our ample loan loss reserves provide immense balance sheet strength against any economic uncertainty we may face this year and also provides great strategic flexibility. That concludes my remarks, and I will now turn it over to our Chief Credit Officer, John Martin, to discuss asset quality.

John Martin

Thanks, Michel. My remarks start on slide 18. We had strong mid-single digit commercial loan growth led by commercial industrial loans shown on line 4. Total investment real estate or CRE, non-owner occupied on line 7 includes both stabilized or stabilizing properties and construction, land and land development.
We originate construction loans that meet secondary market underwriting standards, allowing properties to stabilize post-construction. Our expectation is that borrowers will either transition to the secondary market or proceed with a property sale. We continue to have ample room for new originations given our concentration levels and are well below any regulatory threshold of concern.
On slides 19 and 20.
We provide more details on the loan portfolio. On slide 19, the C and I classification includes sponsor finance, as well as owner-occupied CRE.
I would highlight that our current line utilization increased again for the quarter from 46% to 49%, contributing to roughly $71 million in growth in C and I loans.
We saw some firms purchasing additional inventory in anticipation of the tariffs, while others were unfazed by the tariffs and continued to make inventory purchases at planned or increased levels. In the sponsor finance portfolio, we have key credit metrics for the 90 platform companies. We underwrite to higher origination underwriting standards as compared to regular C and I loans and track the portfolio quarterly.
This portfolio almost exclusively consists of single bank deals for platform companies or private equity firms. As opposed to large, widely syndicated leverage loans from Money Center bank trading desks.
On slide 20, we break out the investment or non-owner occupied commercial real estate portfolio. Our office loans are detailed on the bottom half of the slide and represent only 1.8% of total loans, and potential issues are easily managed.
The wheel chart on the bottom right details office portfolio maturities, loans maturing in less than a year represent 25.2% of the portfolio, or roughly $60 million.
On slide 21, I highlight this quarter's asset quality trends and position.
Non-accrual loans were up $8.1 million with 90 days past due declining to $4.3 million. NPAs and 90-day past due loans represent only 0.7% of total loans. The planned sale of the collateral for the $22 million non-performing multi-family property mentioned last quarter was delayed for several weeks, although the sale is scheduled.
To occur within the next 30 days without principal loss. Finishing out the slide, classified loans leveled and declined to end the quarter at 2.78% of loans, while net charge-offs were roughly $5 million for the quarter or 15 basis points annualized.
Then moving to the asset quality roll forward on slide 22 in column 1Q 25, new non accruals on line two totaled $19.6 million the largest of which was a $6.8 million C and I loan. We had a reduction from payoffs or changes in accrual status on line three of $5 million. Then dropping down to line 11, 90-day delinquent loans decreased $1.6 million with NPAs ending the quarter at $91.2 million.
To summarize, asset quality remains stable. Classified loan balances have leveled and declined with 15 basis points of annualized charge off. We have a solid quarter of C and I loan growth and have begun analyzing the impact of tariffs on new originations through relationship management discussions and quarterly portfolio reviews. I appreciate your attention, and I'll turn the call back over to Mark Hardwick.

Mark Hardwick

Yeah, thanks, John.
Turning to slide 23, tangible book value per share, the compound annual growth rate on the bottom left continues to grow at a healthy 7% post-dividend, post buyback, and post-acquisition rate. As Michelle mentioned earlier in the call, tangible book value per share has also increased 9.1% in the last 12 months.
Slide 24.
Represents our total asset CAGR of 11.9% during the last 10 years and highlights meaningful acquisitions that have materially added to our demographic footprint fueling growth.
We do believe in accretive M&A, but it's important to note that we focus on organic growth and high performance first.
We are comfortable being selective in the M&A process, and April 1st marked the three year anniversary of our last acquisition.
As we look forward to the remainder of 2025, there has been an increase in volatility and uncertainty regarding the impact, the impacts of tariffs. Growth and credit may prove to be challenging, and our team maintains active and intensive discussions with our customer base to identify any early signs of stress.
However, so far, we haven't identified any specific credit problems, and our loan pipelines remains very strong. So, at this point we're sticking to our mid to high single digit loan growth guidance for the year. Thanks for your attention and your investment in first merchants. Now we are happy to take questions.

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions)

Question and Answer Session

Operator

Our first question comes from Daniel Tamayo with Raymond James. You may proceed.

Daniel Tamayo

Thank you, good morning, everybody.
Maybe just starting on the credit side so you were saying there the multi-family NPA that was scheduled to pay off in the first quarter will now pay off in the Second quarter.
Given that, do you think the well, first of all, do you expect any kind of additional charge offs related to that? It sounded like the answer was no, but just for clarity, and then second, with that coming down, do you think you may have reached the peak in non-performing loans in the first quarter? I guess assuming that we don't go into a meaningful recession here.

John Martin

Yeah, hey Daniel, it's Sean Martin, yeah, so to answer your questions in the order, we don't expect any additional loss and have a closing date set on that in in a fairly short period of time here so I'm pretty optimistic at this moment about, that closing in a fairly short order. As it, relates to, what would happen in the second quarter, it should, that's going to, the clearly one of the larger non-performers we have, and we on any given quarter have things moving in and out, but there's not something that I see lined up behind it that would push that number in a material way, any higher than it would be that of the $22 million coming out.

Daniel Tamayo

Okay terrific. And then I guess, another kind of, smaller one, but kind of zooming in on the fee income, Michelle, I'm not sure if you gave an expectation, but just curious on your thoughts on where that could land in the second quarter and beyond and, kind of your underlying assumptions and included in that in relation to mortgage banking if you think that. Is going to be kind of softer or you are expecting more of a typical seasonal bounce here in in the middle of the year.

Michele Kawiecki

Hey, Danny, thanks for joining the call. So, for non-interest interest income, really, I think for all of our income statement categories, I'd probably reiterate the guidance that we provided in January as we still think those are the levels that we'll hit. And so, on the income, the guidance that we provided was we thought that we would have year over year mid to high single digit growth.
And when you look at our mortgage team, they had a great quarter when you look at this Q1's performance this year compared to last year, and they'll pick up steam in the remaining quarters given the seasonality of the business and so we expect double digit growth in mortgage. And even looking at wealth management, although market volatility can be a bit of a headwind for the wealth business, we believe that team has the ability to grow in double digits as well. And so, when you put all of the non-interest income categories together like bully, etc. We expect that mid to high single digit growth through every year.

Mike Stewart

I point out that the pipeline that I referenced, excuse me on my slide, is very strong for the mortgage group going into the second quarter.

Daniel Tamayo

That's great. Okay, well I will step back. I appreciate you taking my questions.

Terry McEvoy

Thanks, Danny.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Terry McEvoy with Stephens. You may proceed.

Terry McEvoy

Hi, good morning, everybody. First off, love the new updated pictures in the presentation and looks like John elected to not wear a tie this time, so I just wanted to know.

John Martin

A lot, Barry. It’s a lot.

Terry McEvoy

It's like I like the beard as well, in terms of questions, on the loan yields that were down more than we had modeled and it impact impacted the margin, so could you maybe talk about the amount of fixed rate loans. That will be repricing over the next 3 quarters where you would have some pick up on the loans for on the yields for those loans?

Michele Kawiecki

Yeah, we've got $190 million of fixed rate loans that, through the end of 2025 and just as a reminder that the rate on those is about $4.65.

Terry McEvoy

Okay, and then John, since I mentioned your name, just a question on the sponsor of finance a good quarter of growth the classified ticked a little bit higher and if my math is correct, I think that charge off in the professional services came out of that portfolio. So, I know you provide great data but are you seeing any concerns there, just given the size and what I think was a charge off last quarter.

John Martin

Yeah, you spotted that correctly. It did actually come out of that book, was roughly $2.5 million and you know I would say given you know what that portfolio is how we underwrite it and on balance, I'm pretty pleased with how it's performed from a historical standpoint. You know that portfolio has, somewhat elevated level of classifieds because quite frankly we also grade more aggressively in that portfolio than we do in the rest of the book just because of the nature of the underwriting and the nature of the type of asset there but. It's performed pretty well and it continues to perform pretty well, but any given quarter can, it can kind of bump up and down. So, I, there's not some underlying concern there. There are names in there that, we continue to monitor and make sure that. You know we're in touch with the sponsors and there's really good communication in that group with the sponsors. So again, I feel like I would expect given the higher spread and the higher, underwriting that that we put to it if that helps.

Terry McEvoy

It does. I appreciate that and thanks for taking my questions.
Thank you, Terry,
Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Damon DelMonte with KBW. He may proceed.

Damon DelMonte

Hey, good morning, everyone. Hope everybody's, doing well today. Michelle, just wondering if you could just, give us a little updated outlook on the expenses, obviously a very strong quarter to start the year and just curious if your guidance from last quarter kind of still holds and kind of what your thoughts are around that.

Michele Kawiecki

Yeah, I think our guidance from last quarter does still hold. I mean, I think the guidance that we provided was that we thought we would have like 1 to 3% expense growth over to the 2024 expense base. We're running ahead of that, probably will all year, but I would probably still reiterate that level.

Damon DelMonte

Okay great and then as far as the cash flows that are rolling off the securities portfolio can you just remind us of the strategy there? Are you reinvesting some of that into higher yielding securities or are you kind of reallocating that to support loan growth?

Michele Kawiecki

Yeah, we're reallocating that to support loan growth, we're not reinvesting yet and so we'll continue to use that cash for loan growth.
Probably through the next couple quarters.

Damon DelMonte

Okay great and then I guess just lastly, given the strong capital it's nice to see that you guys are, executing on the buyback, Mark just kind of curious on your thoughts on M&A you kind of look across your footprint and potentially into other footprints, any updated, thoughts on like, conversations or, changing strategy there?

Mark Hardwick

Yeah, no change in strategy, just continue to stay close to the to the partners that.
That we're most interested in and they're all any anyone we're talking to is in Indiana, Ohio or Michigan.
And it just given the volatility of stock prices, it's hard to create any real momentum.

Damon DelMonte

Got it.
Okay, that's all that I had.
Thank you very much.

Michele Kawiecki

Thanks, Damon.

Mark Hardwick

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Nathan Race with Piper Sandler. You may proceed.

Nathan Race

Hi everyone, appreciate you taking the questions. Circling back to the margin, Michelle, just curious to kind of get your expectations for the second quarter, assuming the Fed remains on pause, it seems like you still have some deposit cost leverage, some repricing within the loan book as well and kind of redeployment of excess liquidity to loan. So just kind of curious to get your expectations in terms of what we can expect in terms of the magnitude of potential expansion here in 2Q.

Michele Kawiecki

I mean, we would expect margin to remain relatively stable, and I guess I should clarify stable, excluding the day count impacts cause, our stated margin was 3.22% for Q1, but we had 5 basis points that was the of decline that was due to the day count. So, if you add that back in to normalize it, I think that level seems like a a good level to look forward to in the next coming quarters.

Nathan Race

Okay, and in the next, in the back half of this year, I imagine it's still probably a safe assumption that you guys can, kind of offset some of the headwinds on the floating rate book if we do get seemed cuts, maybe one or two cuts in the back half of the year just given some of the loan growth prospects that you have that, being funded partially by the cash flow coming off the securities book, is that still a fair assumption?

Michele Kawiecki

It is, yeah, and, the other thing we've been pretty successful at is, repricing deposits, we've got a pretty strong downward beta and so if we get a couple more Fed cuts in the back half of the year, I think that gives us an opportunity to, reduce some costs again there as well that will help offset some of the repricing on the asset side.

Nathan Race

Okay, great. And I think Mark, you reiterated that you know you still expect mid to high digit loan growth this year. Just curious, how volumes are tracking so far here in the 2nd quarter if you're seeing kind of any unusual activity in light of all the volatility of late, and just kind of any other commentary in terms of kind of the loan pipelines heading into the 2nd quarter here.

Mark Hardwick

Yeah, I think Mike did a nice job covering it in the call just, we were 5%, 4.8%, 5% this quarter, 6% last quarter, and for the second quarter, the pipelines were really strong, throughout the regional bank and investment real estate categories and so we're pretty optimistic about how we should at least continue through the remainder of the second quarter and then we'll continue to assess the impact of tariffs. On the customer base and whether or not it causes them to kind of start to pull back.
Mike anything you want to.

Mike Stewart

To add? April’s off to a good start. Yeah.

Nathan Race

Okay, great. If I could sneak one last one in for John just maybe on the reserve and think about provisioning going forward, you guys obviously still have a really strong reserve level, so just curious, if we, exclude any major Cal impacts tied to the environment and assuming, credit remains, fairly stable going forward, do you see much need to provide for growth or do you kind of just kind of grow into kind of the unallocated excess reserves that exist?

John Martin

Yeah, I think we generally have targeted the 1.5% range, and I think.
Depending on, what growth does need and you know what happens with credit is going to ultimately of course drive, whether we need to provide more but I think right now we've basically been providing for any incremental credit issues with, some incremental amount you know for growth and really it's kind of wound up being kind of at that 1.5% range. I don’t Michelle, if you want to

Michele Kawiecki

No, I think that covers it.

Nathan Race

Okay, so it sounds like you're still targeting kind of staying kind of near the one key reserve level.
Yeah, okay, great.
I appreciate all the color. Thanks everyone.

Michele Kawiecki

Thanks, Nathan

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Brian Martin with Janney. He may proceed.

Brian Martin

Hey, good morning.
Good morning. Hey, just Michelle, just wondering, I guess can you just remind us what the on the on the margin, just the impact, I guess depending on how the how the Fed plays out here the impact if we do see cuts on the margin just kind of, it's 25 basis point cut what do you expect the impact to be on that?

Michele Kawiecki

Well, our Alco models, would tell us that with each 25 basis point cut, that we would have maybe about 2 to 3 basis points of margin compression, but when we did our plan.
Yeah 2 cuts that we had originally built into the plan, and we did have a bit of modest margin, expansion, and some of that is due to the fact that we felt like we had some runway on, being able to cut deposit costs to offset some of the asset repricing and so far I think we've been, like I said, we've been successful with that. I think what we did see some increased competition on deposits. I think more towards the kind of the middle of this quarter and the back half of this quarter. And so that’s the reason why at this point, I’d say we look for margin to be stable

Brian Martin

Gotcha. Okay, no, that's helpful. And how about me just for John, I guess the reserves are, just asked a question about that, and it feels like credit's pretty healthy at this point and the reserves are high. I guess what areas I know it's early on with the tariffs, but as you kind of look at the book today, where do you see the most exposure or the most risk.
Due to the tariffs that you know could creep into the credit side of the equation here as we get it to the back half of the year and just trying to identify the areas that you're focused on.

John Martin

Yeah, you know, it’s interesting, Brian. That question is so difficult to answer, as you know, and it’s so difficult to determine the impacts. You know, it can hit or be in any place in a supply chain, but it is way too early I think to try to draw any conclusions about the impact. The tariffs aren't when you look at them, they're not even and where you might think or you read a headline that a tariff is you dig into it more and the customers somehow been exempted out of it so it's we're analyzing the impact of the tariffs on initial underwriting. And as we do our quarterly portfolio reviews on our larger and you know certain specific portfolios sponsor finance as an example we're asking the question what our borrowers might expect the impact to be and how they're dealing with it but we're not really able to quantify it and you know feed it back into any kind of analysis that would push the allowance in one direction or another.

Mark Hardwick

Yeah, Brian, I'm really pleased with the work we're doing internally. We, we've had a nice meeting internally and talked about trying to do not regurgitate or not re-quote what we hear on the news and just say, let's talk about what we're hearing directly from our borrowers and so our credit teams, our commercial bankers, the RMs are actively communicating with customers. And trying to find out exactly what they know and how they think it's going to impact their business. And to John's point, it's really early. They, they're, I'm proud of our customer base for how close and they are to the risk and uncertainties, how smart they are. They're really capable, business owners, but it's too early for us to really give you direct numbers until this settles in.

Brian Martin

Got you. Okay. And Mark, just last one for me, just on the capital front, I know you talked about the buyback and I guess that seems like the most likely, path here and you guys have been active last quarter, this quarter to date, and I guess is your plan, I guess at this point to be to continue to be assertive on the buyback and kind of executing this plan, given, the focus on organic growth, but you know the top market in terms of M&A at the moment, is that I guess we should, think about that being. Pretty solid execution on that on that buyback at at current levels certainly I mean opportunistic with the pricing.

Mark Hardwick

Yeah, it is. So we're, I'm, I mean, I, it's today's an interesting day. I thought we had a hell of an earnings announcement and beat all analysts expectations. Our teams are focused on the plan. You think about, there's lots of different ways you hear this, but it's, let's develop the plan, know the plan and work the plan, and that's what we're doing.
As a team and the stocks down 2% today and it's an environment where the minute we're outside of our quiet period we're going to be active.

Brian Martin

Got you. Okay, and, that's it for me. Just housekeeping, maybe, Michelle, the tax rate going forward, I guess, keep it kind of where we're at, today, is that fair?

Michele Kawiecki

Yeah, I think the range I would use would be between like 13 to 14% for the effective tax rate.

Brian Martin

Got you. Okay, thank you for taking the questions.

Operator

You're welcome Thank you. Our next question comes from Daniel Tamayo with Raymond James. You may proceed.

Daniel Tamayo

Thanks guys. Just a quick follow-up here. You’ve talked about the impact you just recently talked about the impact from tariffs on credit. It’s tough to gauge, totally understand that. I guess zooming in and looking more on the demand side, zooming in on the construction portfolio which I think you saw a nice growth in the first quarter and talked about. Maybe gaining some share there and then the sponsor book which came down a bit, just curious how you think the tariffs are impacting demand on the construction side maybe in terms of input costs and then on the sponsor book overall and how that might impact your growth guidance.

John Martin

Yeah, so, Danielle, the feedback we've been receiving directly is that on any project that's already under construction they've, priced out or have already priced in, any impact that might affect their building costs for you know to completion so they've already kind of hedged that out. Anything that's new that's coming in, they're pricing it into quotes for the construction of new opportunities. So anything that we have or we're underwriting today we'll have those costs built into it the the the the contractors are out hedging that or at least pre-buying for for you know a new construction and anything that's already afoot has been. It's been accounted for. That's the feedback we're getting from the developer group too.

Mike Stewart

No. I think that's well said on the construction side and on the sponsor side or just M&A activity in general. It's just part of the analysis process that individuals or, executive teams are doing. So they're not, they're doing the same thing, understanding the impact, what's it mean, the margins, what is it going to do to the evaluation if there is any change, so it might take them more time to do some analysis, but. They're still active.

Daniel Tamayo

Great, so it sounds like on the construction side, the loans in process, those projects in process if you will are they're even able to pass through any increase in in input cost to the to the direct consumer is what you're hearing?

John Martin

Yeah. They've already bought forward or hedged out what the impact of the tariff would be on what they have planned to buy

Mike Stewart

on construction. Estimated clauses are the fixed rate contracts.

Daniel Tamayo

Okay great appreciate the color.
Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. I would not like to turn the call back over to Mark Hardwick for any closing remarks.

Mark Hardwick

Yeah, just, we appreciate all the. Attention, time that you're willing to give to understand our story, the best you possibly can, and we look forward, like I said, to just continued execution of the plan, and the guidance that we've provided in the past. So again, thanks for your time and we'll talk to you next quarter.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's conference.
Thank you for your participation and have a great day.