Old National at RBC Capital Markets Conference: Strategic Growth Focus

On Tuesday, 04 March 2025, Old National Bancorp (NASDAQ: ONB) presented at the RBC Capital Markets Global Financial Institutions Conference 2025. The company highlighted its robust financial position and strategic growth plans, while also addressing challenges such as tariff impacts. Old National is celebrating its 190th anniversary and is poised for significant growth following the acquisition of Bremer Bank.

Key Takeaways

• Old National is set to increase its assets to over $70 billion following the Bremer acquisition.
• The company aims for 4% to 6% loan growth, driven by broad-based demand.
• Focus on traditional banking principles with strategic investments in technology and talent.
• Positive outlook on economic resilience and ability to manage potential tariff challenges.
• The Bremer acquisition is expected to enhance financial metrics and market presence.

Financial Results

• Assets: Currently managing over $50 billion, projected to exceed $70 billion with Bremer.
• Loan Growth: Targeting 4% to 6% annually, with strong demand across markets.
• Efficiency Ratio: Expected to drop below 50% post-Bremer acquisition.
• Profitability Ratio: Anticipated to reach very high teens after integration.
• Net Interest Margin: Modest expansion expected in the near term, with significant gains post-acquisition.
• Asset Repricing: $1.5 billion repricing from the securities book, and $3 to $3.5 billion annually from the loan book.

Operational Updates

• Bremer Bank Acquisition: Closing expected mid-year, with regulatory approvals progressing well.
• Loan Portfolio: Commercial and industrial loans showing strength over commercial real estate.
• Deposit Strategy: Retention rates exceeding 90%.
• Technology Investments: Hiring a new CIO to boost treasury management capabilities.
• Wealth Management: Shifting focus to investment and high-net-worth clients, experiencing strong growth.

Future Outlook

• Loan Growth: Expected to maintain 4% to 6% growth, with potential for higher rates if tariff issues ease.
• Margin Expansion: Modest gains anticipated early in the year, with further increases post-Bremer.
• Fee Income: Confidence in achieving targets, driven by wealth and treasury management.
• Expenses: Projected mid-single-digit growth, with emphasis on positive operating leverage.
• Capital Allocation: Focus on organic growth and potential shareholder returns if growth targets are not met.

Q&A Highlights

• Economic Impact: No significant client impacts observed from tariffs; optimistic about navigating challenges.
• Regulatory Environment: Positive relations with regulators, emphasizing consistency.
• AI Integration: Plans to embed AI in operations to enhance efficiency and decision-making, exploring revenue opportunities.

For more detailed insights, please refer to the full transcript provided below.

Full transcript - RBC Capital Markets Global Financial Institutions Conference 2025:

John Moran, Analyst, RBC: Chat session is with Old National. Jim Ryan and John Moran here. Both old friends. Covered you a long time and and, just happy you guys are here. Your bank has changed a lot, since I started covering the company.

But maybe for the benefit of everyone in the room, give us, Jim, give us an overview of Old National and company description.

Jim Ryan, CEO, Old National: Well, John, thank you for the opportunity. Thank you to RBC for allowing us to be here. We got a great lineup today and happy to do this chat. Old National, just turned 190 years old in November. And I get an email of, I think it’s Axios sends emails out in the morning.

And today’s email about Chicago, Chicago turns 188 years old today. So Old National is two years older than Chicago. So I thought that was an interesting fun fact for the day. So started in Southern Indiana. Today, we’re just north of $50,000,000,000 in assets.

Pro form a for our Bremer transaction, which I’m sure John will talk a little bit about today, will be $70 plus billion. And honestly, I joke around a little bit. We started Indiana. Our building, our headquarters spot is the exact same spot it is, started in 1834. And really, our banking business is not that fundamentally different than when we got started, really.

We’re helping clients in our communities. We’re the pillar, the strength of many of our communities revolves around the business community and Old Nashville is a big important part of that. And so we’ve been able to take that model and kind of replicate it. First, it started in Southern Indiana and then it moved to Western Kentucky and Southern Illinois and then slowly and gradually kind of moved North, up into Central Indiana and Northern Indiana and then across the Midwest. And so today, we find our biggest market is the Chicagoland area.

Our second biggest market is John’s hometown of the Twin Cities, which has been a fantastic market for us. And in fact, we liked it so much. We found our next partnership there with Bremer Bank, which brings a lot greater scale and density to us in the Twin Cities, but also adds some really nice markets across Minnesota, Southwest Wisconsin and North Dakota, which John, I don’t think you had that on your bingo card that would be in North Dakota this year. So Old National, old fashioned basic bank, we talk about this. We do banking the hard way.

There’s nothing particularly glamorous about what we do. It’s just bread and butter blocking and tackling whatever analogy you want to use banking. Wake up every single day, think about how do we get a little bit better and how we serve our clients, how we support our communities and how we help each other out. And I always say if 4,000 of us do that every single day, really good things are going to happen. This strategy, it’s again, John seeing it from maybe the messy days to now where we have some pretty good nice tailwind behind us here, has allowed us to produce nice organic growth, has allowed us to produce top quartile profitability ratios, and really put us in a position to kind of remain on the offense.

Being clean and kind of disciplined about this, whether it was during COVID, we remain on the offense, both in terms of hiring people and growing our client base. Liquidity crisis of twenty twenty three that we don’t really want to talk about, right, we remain on the offense, right? Not only did we go out and make new loans, we grew deposits during a really difficult environment. And I think that basic banking model, you know, people also, what’s special? What’s unique about you?

It’s like, well, what’s unique about us is we do it the old fashioned way, you know? And and that’s that’s sometimes in today’s world always isn’t what people want to hear, but but that’s what that consistency and that ability to be successful despite tough times, whether it’s interest rates, liquidity, credit, you know, we’re going to do better than most, and we’ve been able to do that for one hundred and ninety years in total.

John Moran, Analyst, RBC: Mhmm. Okay. All of these sessions are open for Q and A. So if anyone has questions, just put up your hand and we’ll get you a microphone. Jim, that was pretty upbeat.

As we were saying earlier, the stocks are down big and I think people are you know, everybody that I talk to is thinking about the economy and tariffs and and and just all of the turmoil is what it feels like. How are you feeling about the economy in general in your markets and and any kind of impact you’re hearing from from clients that might slow things down?

Jim Ryan, CEO, Old National: Yes. So it’s funny, we laughed a little bit this morning. I don’t feel any different this morning than it did last night. So I don’t know what to say other than we’re not seeing great client impacts today. We’re combing through the portfolios.

We’re looking for you know, where where we might see, you know, any challenges ahead of us. I’m of the belief that, you know, we’re gonna sort through how these tariffs are gonna potentially impact us in in a relatively short period of time, and then I think we’re gonna get back to business as usual. We have all this tariff discussion, I would say, you know, there’s there’s some clients that are continuing to to do the projects they need to do, continue to grow and expand, and they haven’t stopped. And then there’s some subset of clients that are kind of like, woah, let me pause. I mean, let me assess the environment.

Let me see, you know, how we need to react. But I think businesses are generally, you know, whether it was COVID, you know, maybe the the greatest example, they find a way. They figure out a way to get it done. If you think the types of businesses we have, which are those small and medium sized businesses in the Midwest, they figure out a way to get it done. And whether it’s through higher prices temporarily or maybe they’ve changed supplier networks, I think our businesses in the Midwest are going to figure out how to navigate this.

And I don’t see it as a down whatever banks are down today. I don’t see that impact today. But again, I tend to be optimistic by nature, but I think our businesses will figure it out. Economy in general feels okay? Economy is good.

I think when obviously going through the cycle last year, the election cycle last year, gave everybody a little bit of pause to figure out what was going to look like and there was a lot of business interest post election. I think that was probably a little bit too excessive to be honest with you. I think it was still we’re growing at a moderate pace, and our clients still feel really good about it. Okay.

John Moran, Analyst, RBC: John, maybe bring you into this a little bit. You’ve been in the sell side chair, and you’ve got a lot of other experience too. But talk about your loan growth guide and and as a CFO, how you think about lower end versus higher end of the loan growth guide and and maybe handicap for us.

John, CFO, Old National: Yeah. Still seeing nothing today that would that would shake us off of the the 4% to 6% for the year that we that we put out there. Pipelines have have grown nicely. Fourth quarter, as you know, was impacted a little bit by some elevated pay downs and line utilization that ticked down a touch for us. Other competitors of ours have been seeing that kind of stuff earlier in the year last year.

We saw it in fourth quarter. So far in first quarter, that feels pretty normal or normalized levels. So probably not the headwind that it was in the fourth quarter for us. I think it’ll build as we go through the year. So 1Q will probably be a little bit softer, but 4% to 6% for the year still feels really achievable.

I think if we can get past some of this tariff noise and things kind of calm down, it could be toward the higher end of that range. And I think if things stay a little bit more muted, it’d be the lower end of that range. But I think today, John, we’ve put together a platform, that is capable of putting up sort of GDP plus growth year in, year out no matter what. And we don’t have to go. Jim says this really well.

We don’t have to go out and hit triples and home runs in every single one of our markets to do that. All we got to do is go out and play a little bit of small ball and things will take care of itself.

Jim Ryan, CEO, Old National: I’ll also add, we have a unique opportunity here where we had modeled up selling up to $2,400,000,000 out of the Brammer commercial real estate book at around close. And so our capital projections came in, in the quarter a little bit stronger. The core for the Brammer franchise is a little bit stronger. Rates have kind of helped us a little bit here from where we originally marked this. So we actually have some flexibility around how much of that we ultimately end up just selling.

And I think that will allow us to kind of manage out kind of loan growth expectations for the year as well. So we have a little bit of built in tailwind that maybe others don’t have to help kind of boost the year.

John Moran, Analyst, RBC: Okay. That’s a good point. I want to talk about Bremer in a second, but just kind of the sources of the loan growth. What do you think would be the key drivers of the growth for the year?

Jim Ryan, CEO, Old National: I think

John, CFO, Old National: it’s pretty broad based, and it’s across markets. C and I has been a little bit stronger than CRE here of late and that makes sense just given demand drivers in the CRE space. But again, as rates, particularly in the belly of the curve, come down a little bit, it could get a little bit better on commercial real estate as well. So, pretty broad based. Seasonally wise, first quarter is typically a little bit slower.

A little bit slower for us usually. Last year bucked that trend, but, but Right. But, yeah, normally 1Q a little bit slow, and then it builds throughout

Jim Ryan, CEO, Old National: We feel good about the pipelines where they’re seeing today and they’re growing. Yep.

John Moran, Analyst, RBC: Okay. Good. Let’s talk about Bremer a little bit. Just size Bremer and talk about the key financial assumptions around that before we dig in a little bit more.

John, CFO, Old National: Yeah. So we were not heroic in anything that we assumed in this M and A model. We, so again, pro form a $70,000,000,000 in assets. We expect that to come in the middle of this year. So far, everything’s tracking well on the regulatory app side of things.

But I think for modeling purposes, middle of the year is still the right way to think about that. Their 4Q came in a little bit better than what we had set in the model. It’s only one month in January, but January looks pretty good for them too. So feel good about what we have in the M and A model. We floored their performance at 85 basis points of assets.

I would suggest to you that that’s fairly conservative. I think we’ll, we’ll outperform that. Really good bones on that franchise. And we’ve been up there a lot interacting with their people and their clients, and everything feels, if anything, a little bit better than what we had assumed kind of going in. Okay.

John Moran, Analyst, RBC: And talk a little bit about how the deal came together.

Jim Ryan, CEO, Old National: Yeah. Obviously, there’s a lot to unpack in that question. This is a franchise that is owned 86% by a trust. The trust was created by the original founder of the bank. There are three trustees.

They had some disagreements over the last handful of years. And the good news is we were able to develop relationships with both sets of parties, both with the owners, who are the trustees for the trust and Gene Crane, the CEO, who I admire just a tremendous amount. And for us, having those relationships really matter, we were able to demonstrate our commitment to community, which is very high because of the nature of the ownership structure there, I think, and the philosophy the bank has had. There probably wasn’t a bank that was like them, as much like them as anybody else. We were that very compatible organization.

And obviously, we didn’t have deep insights into the competitive nature of the process and there were banks that were interested. But again, I take this as, look, being prepared, being ready, being have a balance sheet that you can be offensively minded in nature, I think allowed us to ultimately be the winner there where either other people were distracted with either regulatory issues or balance sheet issues or our deals in their own. And so it was a great opportunity for us to really come along a very compatible organization in a market that we care deeply about and are passionate about and build scale and density in that market that we’re deeply passionate about. And so it was really kind of a home run from that perspective. We set aside pricing.

I think that this was a very meaningful deal that obviously continues to bring us scale. We gave guidance, as you know, for the full year. And just on that guidance alone, based on our margin projections, I think we’re running towards a sub 50% efficiency ratio, very high teens profitability ratio. But this kind of just complements all that and build scale and density in a market that we care about. So all those numbers even get a little bit better as you know.

So I mean, it was really kind of a, I would say, unicorn kind of opportunity for us. Yeah.

John Moran, Analyst, RBC: I think Anchor and Cline, you did Anchor and Cline and some people were critical pricing on that, but this folds in nicely. Absolutely. Yeah, just accentuates it. So it feels like maybe you’re feeling a little better about Bremer at this point?

Jim Ryan, CEO, Old National: Yes. I mean, we felt really good going into the deal, but we spent an awful lot of time in The Twin Cities and places like St. Cloud. And I was in Fargo at the February and feel really good. In February.

Exactly. I know, yes. And, if you can go to Fargo in February and feel good, I mean, you can feel good any time of the year. So, it was, you know, we we really the people I’ve I’ve had a chance to meet with a number of clients. I’m going back here soon to do some more visits.

I mean, we feel really good about the team members and the client opportunities that are ahead of us. And really being embraced as an alternative, right? We know that Minnesota has historically two very large banks and Wells and U. S. Bank who have a big part of the share of that marketplace.

And we are a great alternative to those two organizations that fit kind of nicely in the we have a $70,000,000,000 balance sheet, but we got a little bit more of a community bank type field.

John Moran, Analyst, RBC: Okay. So a lot of questions on regulation. You seem to have bucked that trend. You’ve been able to get deals closed. You’ve been able to get them through quickly.

Nashville was a quick approval process. What gave you the confidence to go ahead with something like that when others are kind of saying, let’s just wait and see on M and A?

Jim Ryan, CEO, Old National: Yeah. I think that’s that kind of mindset of just kind of always be in a position to have confidence that you’ve done the right things, you made the right regulatory investments, you have the right regulatory relationships. We don’t take it for granted that the relationships are always going to be there, right? That’s a part of working those relationships. Quite honestly, it’s working those relationships with the folks that are in the room here, right?

Them having the confidence that we go off and execute. So I think just like all of life, I always tell our people in our company, individuals still matter, relationships are incredibly important to how we win business, right? Yes, we need to be competitive in technology, and yes, we need to have good products. But ultimately, our success really rides on the fact that we have some of the greatest people in our industry working for us, and they develop amazing relationships with all of the stakeholders. And that’s just our philosophy.

And I think that gives us the confidence that whether it’s a big opportunity or small opportunity that comes along like Bremmer, it’s a little bit bigger, that this was the right time at the right place.

John Moran, Analyst, RBC: Okay. Anything you’d like to see eased or changed from a regulatory point of view?

Jim Ryan, CEO, Old National: I think like always, we’re always interested in consistency and application. And again, I feel like it’s very constructive today. We’ve always enjoyed excellent regulatory relationships, particularly with the OCC, who is our primary regulator. And obviously, lots of changes going inside all of the agencies today. But I think just that consistency and approach and very constructive approach, which is, I think, under the previous Trump administration, what I would say that the tone was just constructive.

All the same rules applied. It was just a constructive tone. And I think that’s where we’re we’re, you know, that’s where we’re at today is just a really healthy and constructive tone. You still have all the regulations, you got to comply. But when you start with a healthy and constructive tone, I think makes life a little bit easier for all the parties involved.

John Moran, Analyst, RBC: Yep. Okay. A little bit on the margin, John. How do you kind of view the puts and takes around your current guidance, and how do you think about the margin progression from here?

John, CFO, Old National: Yes. We feel really good about where we’re positioned. We’ve we’ve got the balance sheet about as neutral as it can be. So short rates don’t really matter. We think that we’ve bottomed out here in 3Q, 4Q flattening, and then on a core basis, a little bit of sort of modest expansion in the front half of this year.

And then obviously, we kind of reload with Bremer in the back half of this year. We’ll see a good step up in net interest margin and NII dollars. But yes, I feel really good about where we’re positioned and rates in the belly of the curve have been volatile, at times helpful, at times a little bit of a headwind, but fixed asset repricing is a factor for us into next year and belly of the curve matters. What’s helpful and what is a headwind? Some steepness.

I mean, it’s nice to be I think we de inverted there late last year and survived, I think, the longest conversion in anybody’s memory. Yep. Right. It’s tough to make money when you’re a bank and, and you’re fighting an inverted curve. So I think, de inversion was good.

A little bit of steepness in the curve from from where we are here would be helpful for us.

John Moran, Analyst, RBC: It’s a slide in our marketing book, John. It’s buried in there, but yes. Talk about asset repricing and kind of the magnitude of the repricing and what you’re seeing.

John, CFO, Old National: Yeah. Yes. So we’ve got quite a bit coming out of the securities book, about $1,500,000,000 between principal and interest. That was about 180 basis point pickup at the end of last quarter when we set the guidance. And then likewise, on the fixed asset repricing out of the loan book, we’ve got another $3,000,000,000 3 point 5 billion dollars of fixed assets coming back at us every year.

Brammer’s got good fixed asset repricing too, so that’ll be helpful for the target as well. Okay. And how about

John Moran, Analyst, RBC: on the deposit side? What are you seeing on deposit pricing and competition in general?

John, CFO, Old National: Very rational. Very, very rational so far. And actually, we’re very pleased with how the deposit strategy has played out. We, as you know, managed all of our upgrade beta in the exception price book. The down beta on that book is running north of 90% from when we started to move it.

The retention has actually been very pleasantly surprising. We fully expected to have to do a little bit of test and learn in that book on the way down. But so far retention rates have been running north of 90% there as well. So I would say, if anything, the strategy on the way down here has has outperformed our expectations by just a touch. And, and, you know, we continue to work that book hard every day.

K.

John Moran, Analyst, RBC: Yeah. So it seems like a pretty favorable environment margin outlook for you guys. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Good. Don, after sparing, does it feel like it’s bottomed and leaves out the seasonality?

John, CFO, Old National: Yep. I think that’s right. I think I think that’s exactly right. We actually grew it, in in the third quarter of last year. It was flattish in the fourth quarter.

And then I think we’re gonna see seasonal trends, this year. And overall, it’ll be growing in line with the with the core deposits. Mhmm.

John Moran, Analyst, RBC: Okay. And you mentioned the short end doesn’t matter as much to you. You mentioned that a few minutes ago. What’s a better rate environment for Old National? What’s a more challenging rate environment for Old National?

John, CFO, Old National: I think if we could dream the dream and have the perfect curve, we might see, just a little bit more relief on the short end, some steep a little bit additional steepness, I think would be the perfect environment. Higher for longer if it just kind of stays the way that it is, it may ultimately impact our ability to realize our down beta as quick as we would like, but I still think we’ll ultimately realize that the same 40 ish percent that we saw on the way up, see on the way down just might take us a little bit longer to get there. Okay.

John Moran, Analyst, RBC: So generally favorable. Favorable net net interest income outlook, maybe a little better from Bremer. Feel good about the pipelines. Generally, a positive message

Jim Ryan, CEO, Old National: Correct.

John Moran, Analyst, RBC: Despite the noise. Yeah. Right.

Jim Ryan, CEO, Old National: Remain on the offense.

John Moran, Analyst, RBC: Okay. Fee income guidance, I would say, you know, it suggests modest growth, and then at Bremer contributions later. But what’s the confidence level in achieving these targets and maybe the key drivers of what you expect on fees?

John, CFO, Old National: High confidence. And and within within those lines, there’s a couple that are growing better than others. Right? I I think one place that we’ve invested pretty heavily over the last couple of years, wealth management, we’re starting to really see that bear fruit. And so our wealth business, I think, we’ve got high expectations and that’s growing at a pretty good clip.

The other places, treasury management, which for us is a pretty good business and growing faster than fees overall, but I think has the potential to be a really good business. And we’re, we’ve got some additional investment teed up in that area. And look, I think our partner has a couple of good product capabilities in in that space that, that we’re gonna look to leverage as well. And so I think that that could really accelerate for us.

John Moran, Analyst, RBC: I was gonna ask a little bit about that, later, but 70,000,000,000 in assets, I think treasury management would be a more important piece of your business going forward. What what do you need to do there? Do you feel behind it all?

Jim Ryan, CEO, Old National: You know, I would say that the the platforms we’ve built today are really commensurate with the size of organization we’ve been. But to your point, we feel like there are some opportunities to add some additional services. And those additional services and products are really just more integration directly with our clients through our systems as opposed to reporting systems and payment systems. And so we’re actually out hiring a new CIO right now. We’re interviewing some internal candidates, but we’ve also got some amazing external candidates who really can strengthen our knowledge here and really help us build what we think is kind of appropriate mid market treasury management set of capabilities.

And now that we are bigger, we have that balance sheet. We’ve hired just amazing amount of talent, both in the Twin Cities and Chicago and other places like Nashville. We’ve hired more middle market type talent. I think that will just augment a really strong team that we brought alongside that really deserves those products to be more successful.

John Moran, Analyst, RBC: Okay. And remind us on the wealth strategy. Pre Brammer, we talked about it every quarter on the call in terms of what you were doing and the investments you were making. Has it succeeded to basically meet your expectations? And what is the overall strategy?

Jim Ryan, CEO, Old National: Yes. I mean, I think we’ve really transformed our wealth business from being kind of a sleep somewhat sleepy fiduciary type business to more of a investment wealth, high net worth type focused business. We certainly have products that serve every single size and type of client. But what we’ve added is on that kind of higher end. We’ve got an institutional business.

We’ve got this high net worth business through eighteen thirty four, which is a separate brand we created. Our Head of Wealth Management actually sits in the Twin Cities and joined us five years ago to help really transform that business. And what we’ve seen is really strong growth out of it. And as John said, well, we’ve seen great growth. I have even higher aspirations for that business.

And so to me, it’s continued investment in people. I think we got much of the right products. We could trade created some alternative platforms and some securities lending opportunities off that platform, but I think we’ll even augment growth even further. But we’ll continue to add the right level of resources for that business to take the growth even so. It’d be great to I always dream of having that like called out during the quarterly conference calls because it’s growing so fast, right?

And that’s the type of expectations we have around that business. You’ve done well there.

John, CFO, Old National: Yes. And I think as some of those new teams mature and non competes kind of burn off, you get some acceleration in that business. It’s been good. The other thing is, we fished a couple of people out of Bremmer’s wealth business that are working at Old National today. So we’re kind of bringing the band back together in Twin Cities with better product capability.

And I think that could be really interesting up there over time.

John Moran, Analyst, RBC: Okay. Good. On expenses, we’ll pivot to expenses, but talked about mid single digit growth in expenses. As the CFO, you know, talk about maybe some of the pressure points and where you see some opportunities as well.

Jim Ryan, CEO, Old National: His CEO is the pressure point. He always wants to go out and invest and grow, and and John brings me down to to reality all the time.

John, CFO, Old National: Well, it’s funny. When I when I was the strategy guy, I was like, let’s dream the dream. Yes. Yes. Yes.

And now I’m the CFO, and I feel like I’m doctor no. But, yeah. Yeah. I think look. Every budget that we walk into as a as a guiding philosophy and kind of an operating principle, we’re we’re trying to generate positive operating leverage year in, year out.

Right? And I think that we’ve got a long history of growing our core expenses at a rate that’s a little bit below what normal long term inflation would look like. Right? And the way that we’re able to do that is we’re getting a little bit better in the back of the house, a little bit better in the middle office. We’re recycling those saves into technology and client facing opportunities.

Right? I think that’s more of the same. Right? So on a core basis, coming into this year, we’re up very, very modestly on a core basis. And then if you kind of look at our run rate, add Bremer Rand and take away the 25% of the saves that we expect to be realizing by the end of this year, and you’d get to a number that twenty twenty five.

So we feel good about our operating expenses. We did, as I think you know and probably most of the room knows, hold back a little bit on cost saves out of the Bremer transaction. So 30% is the number that we’ve got out there. We think that that allows us to make a significant down payment on the kinds of investments that we need to make to be a larger bank operating at

John Moran, Analyst, RBC: at 70. Ask that. I mean, as you think about you’re 70 and obviously some of your peers have said as as you get to that level, you start being treated or maybe looked at as a category four bank. How much pressure is there?

Jim Ryan, CEO, Old National: I think the good news is the regulators understand, you know, the

John Moran, Analyst, RBC: Okay. Okay.

Jim Ryan, CEO, Old National: There’s some tech talent because of all the Fortune 500 companies that are located there. There’s really an opportunity to leverage that. And that’s quickly become both a risk and tech hub for us right in the Twin Cities. And we’re going to be able to leverage those Bremer team members to really help with the required regulatory investments in order to be a bigger bank. And obviously, we got to have a way to kind of finance that through these net cost savings.

John Moran, Analyst, RBC: Okay. How long do you think you’re on the sidelines from an M and A point of view?

Jim Ryan, CEO, Old National: Well, we said this before, we were really focused on growing tangible book value pre Bremer. And Bremer was just this unique opportunity that came along. We weren’t looking for it. And I would suggest that we’re in that same box again. Like, our job is to execute on Bremer and make sure we drive all the value out that we could possibly for our shareholders.

And so I think that means we’re focused on organic growth first. We’re going to have a ton of capital coming back to us if you just look at the projections based on some of the purchase accounting. And hopefully we have enough organic growth to support that. I think we need to look at potentially returns of capital to the extent that that exceeds just given our high profitability ratios that are likely to occur. And so I’m not eager or anxious to go off and I’m not actively looking for any opportunities.

And I would rather be known as that very highly profitable organic growth machine that’s growing and

John Moran, Analyst, RBC: There. Couple minutes left if anybody has anything. Kevin? Okay.

Jim Ryan, CEO, Old National: Revolutionized our business yet. We’re definitely open to it all. I think I think ultimately for the banking industry, AI is ultimately gonna be these things that are completely embedded in all of our applications, right, and make all of our lives a little bit easier on the margin. I think the revenue idea is a really interesting idea. Can we use it to generate more revenue?

Historically, we’re thinking about being more efficient, more effective and quicker in our decision making capabilities. I think there’s a lot to be written about that. And, and but I assure you, we’re keeping pace with the industry.

John Moran, Analyst, RBC: Interested time, I think we’ll wrap it there. But guys, thanks for being here. Great message.

Jim Ryan, CEO, Old National: Thanks, John. Thanks, RBC.

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