Ameris Bancorp (ABCB) 2017 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Ameris Bancorp Fourth Quarter 2017 Financial Results Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) Please note that this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Nicole Stokes. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Steven, and thank you for all who joined our call today. During the call, we will be referencing the press releases and the financial highlights that are available on the Investor Relations section of our website at amerisbank.com. I'm joined today by Ed Hortman, our Executive Chairman, President and CEO; and Dennis Zember, our Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. Ed will make some opening comments about the quarter and the acquisition announcements made this morning. I'll spend some time going over the details of the financial results, and then Dennis will further discuss the acquisitions and our strategy going forward.

Before we begin, I'll need to remind everybody that our comments may include forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and the actual results could vary materially. We will list some of those factors that might cause results to differ in our press release and in our SEC filings, which are available on our website. We do not assume any obligation to update our forward-looking statements as a result of new information, early developments or otherwise, except as required by law.

Also during the call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures in reference to our company's performance. You can see our reconciliation of these measures and GAAP financial measures in the appendix to our presentation.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Ed Hortman for opening comments.

Thank you, Nicole, and good morning, everyone. Not to correct, Nicole, but I would add that Dennis Zember is also the CEO of Ameris Bank and is the Chief Operating Officer of the company. And Nicole, who you just heard, our new Chief Financial Officer, has assumed the new role today after her much-deserved promotion on January 1 of this year. So I'll make some opening comments about the quarter and then discuss the acquisition announcements that we've made earlier today.

Before I do that though, I want to talk a little about our BSA and AML program. The last investor call we had on November 17, I told you that we had a very high degree of confidence that the consent order was going to be lifted soon, and I'm proud to say that the order was officially lifted on December 14, less than 1 year after we entered into the order. I want to reinforce how proud I am of our team and our whole company for coming together and working through the consent order in record time. Not only did we comply with the order, but we built sustainable program that's positioned to meet our needs as we continue to grow the bank. And additionally, we achieved that without losing our focus on our core bank and continued our positive momentum, delivering outstanding financial results.

For the fourth quarter, we recorded operating earnings of $0.63 per share, which excludes an adjustment for $0.36 attributable to reevaluation of deferred tax assets from the lower federal tax rates as well as a few small items: merger charges, final expenses related to BSA and a loss on the sale of a portion of the mortgage pools. Including these charges, we reported earnings of $9.2 million or $0.24 per share.

For the full year 2017, our operating earnings were $92.3 million compared to $80.6 million in 2016. I really like the way we grew earnings in 2017, managing just a slight uptick in the margin, steady credit cost and a very small decrease in operating efficiency despite continuing to invest where we needed to continue to grow our company.

We grew earnings the way we anticipated by relying on our growth engine and managing as tight as we could on the operating expenses. This was a challenging year with the margin pressures from a flat yield curve and the normal operating expense pressures on a fast-growing bank basis, but we managed through that and posted impressive operating results and stable to improving operating ratios across the board. Nicole will talk more about our earnings for the year and the quarter in a moment, so I'll shift quickly to the other announcements we've made this morning.

First, we're on track with our Atlantic Coast transaction, with the application submitted and being worked by the regulatory agencies. I still anticipate that this will close on time near the end of the first quarter of 2018.

Today, we're announcing that we've negotiated to buy the remainder of U.S. Premium Finance, which we've been operating together with Bill Villari for the past year. The vast majority of lift and earnings per share came when we went into the joint marketing agreement, and this transaction will only slightly impact our earnings per share in 2019, but is increasingly accretive over the coming years with its impressive growth rate. Bill has agreed to continue working with us for an extended period to help us keep building the business, and we're excited to be in this position with him and his outstanding team.

Lastly, we announced this morning the signing of a definitive agreement with Hamilton State Bancshares in Atlanta. This acquisition is important for several reasons: First, the deal will take us over $10 billion at closing, and our economics on the deal are strong enough to more than pay for that cost using our normally conservative estimates and modeling assumptions. Second, maybe more importantly, the deal leverages us in one of the best markets in the Southeast. We're already growing at a very respectable pace, and this deal in this market assures our investors that our attractive growth rates will continue for the foreseeable future. Dennis will talk more about our vision for Atlanta shortly, but as we put this deal together, I was remembering the success we've had in executing our vision for our company's growth in the past decade, with attractive deals and hard work. And my confidence is really bolstered that this vision for the Atlanta market will be really meaningful for us and our investors as we move forward.

Lastly about the integration, Hamilton State operates a community bank model, which fits very nicely with the Ameris Bank model, and we believe will help in a quick and effective integration of their employees and customers. We anticipate that this deal will close sometime in the third quarter this year after the appropriate regulatory approvals are received, and the conversion would be completed soon thereafter.

Nicole, I'll stop here and turn the call over to you to review the financial results

Thank you. As Ed mentioned earlier, we're reporting earnings of $0.24 per share and operating earnings of $0.63 per share for the fourth quarter. This excludes the $13.4 million tax expense or $0.36 per share attributable to the deferred tax remeasurement related to the change in our future tax rate as well as a few small items that are discussed in detail in our press release. Outside of these charges, we recorded operating net income of approximately $23.6 million or $0.63 per share compared to $22.5 million or $0.63 in the same quarter last year. For the full year, we grew our operating earnings by 25% to $2.48. Our full year-to-date operating earnings, exclude the same amounts for the quarter, and there's a reconciliation at the early part of the press release that you can reference where we detailed all those numbers.

During the fourth quarter, we recorded a reduction in our deferred tax asset, or DTA, of $13.4 million or $0.36 a share. That was due to the passing of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. We expect that the lower tax rate will increase our EPS by about $0.44 to $0.40 per share in 2018, mainly about a 9-month earn back on this write-off. We do expect a slightly lower margin going forward from the impact of our muni loan and security book by approximately 6 basis points, and I consider all this in our EPS adjustments that we're projecting.

During the fourth quarter, we sold approximately $120 million of the purchased loan pool that were yielding around about 2 90, expecting to reinvest those funds in one product at a current production yield, which is about 200 basis points higher. The loan sale impacted earnings by about $475,000 during the fourth quarter, which would have accelerated amortization, but it gives us some room on the loan to deposit ratio and positions us for a stronger margin and a return on asset plus those funds are reinvested, which we believe will be in about a quarter.

One of the key metrics we have focused on in 2017 is operating efficiency ratio. Our operating efficiency ratio for the fourth quarter was 60.88%, and the ratio for the full year was 60.27%. This is an improvement compared to our 2016 operating ratio of 61.55%. However, we continue to press for a better ratio at the sub-60 level on a consistent wide basis. We believe the additional USPF purchase, along with the efficiency we gained from our recently announced acquisitions of Atlantic Coast and Hamilton, will get us where we want to be.

Our operating ROA for the year came in at 1.26%, down from the 1.32% that we reported in 2016. The main driver in our slightly low ROA was mortgages lower as well contributions to earnings, given the core bank's outsized growth during the year. Our return on tangible common equity was 13.91% in the fourth quarter, compared to 17.25% for the same period last year. This decline is attributable to our increased capital level as we have over $158 million more capital, or 24% increase this year over last year. Part of that increase comes from the capital raised in the first quarter of this year, and the remainder is due to our earnings stream that went to dividend paid to shareholders.

Our net interest margin, exclusive of accretion, improved by 5 basis points during 2017 from 3.74% in 2016 to 3.79% in '17. For the year, our yield on loans increased by 13 basis points, while our total cost of deposit increased by 16 basis points.

I'm going to talk about loan and deposit growth in a minute, but I want to mention here how important this increase in margin is, considering how we grew the balance sheet organically during 2017 in the current interest rate environment. The spread between short- and long-term rates continue to tighten, so I'm so pleased with our bankers and the effort that they've made to produce these positive results on our margins in this rate environment. Our impact to margins due to the incremental asset growth is 4.69%, which is exceptional given our current rate environment.

Moving on to noninterest expense. Noninterest expense increased $16.1 million during 2017. However, when we remove some of those unusual items, like merger charges, Hurricane Irma, and also, we had $14 million of expenses in the Premium Finance division in '17 that we didn't have in 2016. So when you exclude those items, our noninterest expense actually increased only $7.5 million or 3.7%. Of that increase, retail mortgage, warehouse lending and SBA lines of business accounted for 41% of that increase. So excluding those lines of business, our noninterest expense increased only $4.4 million or 2.8%. While I know some of that was technical, my point here is that we were able to spend money where we needed to spend, such as backing up the strength in the BSA group and building the infrastructure of the new Equipment Finance Division, while controlling expenses in other parts of the bank.

On the balance sheet side, we grew earning assets by $1 billion to $7.3 billion. We grew core deposit by approximately $665 million as well, with a good bit of that growth coming in the fourth quarter. The fact that we handled this many customers and this much growth and still moved a few basis points higher on the margin is notable. Going forward, we expect about the same amount of growth in 2018, except that we believe the momentum we're developing on the deposit side will come closer to fully funding our loan growth.

We continue to see a fairly even sort of growth between the lines of business that we operate versus the core bank. We still believe that this is sustainable going into 2018. As far as geography, our strongest and fastest-growing market has been the Atlanta MSA, which supports the announcement we're making today. For the year, we also had really strong growth in Tallahassee, St. Augustine, Jacksonville, Florida as well as Greenville, Charleston and Columbia in South Carolina.

Just a few comments on asset quality. Our asset quality remains strong as our annualized net charge-off ratio was 12 basis points of total loans and 13 basis points of non-purchased loans. Our nonperforming assets as a percentage of total assets decreased to 68 basis points, and we were able to reduce our nonperforming assets by $11.4 million or over 17% during 2017.

With that, Dennis, I'll turn the call over for you for details on our acquisitions and continued strategy.

Great. Thank you, Nicole. I'm going to be referencing the investor presentation that we filed this morning as an 8-K and can be found again on the SEC's website or on our website at amerisbank.com.

Let's start with the acquisition of the remainder of U.S. Premium Finance. Our agreement to purchase the business, I believe, is a win-win for us and the company's owners. In total, including the 5% that we purchased at the end of 2016, our purchase price of approximately $77 million equates to about 5.8x what we expect 2018's earnings to be from this division. The -- Ed mentioned, and I'll second it, how pleased we've been with the division's growth, the quality of their sales and support staff, the depth of the relationships they have with their insurance agency customers, their consistently strong asset quality, their historical growth rates. Ed mentioned that the additional purchase will not materially affect our go-forward EPS since most of the benefit is already in our earnings. But the purchase will move almost all of the management fee out of our expense load and should reduce our efficiency ratio by about 100 basis points and increase our return on assets accordingly.

We're also announcing the acquisition of Hamilton State Bank today. We've been talking to Hamilton for a couple of years, all along developing our vision for being a significant player in the Atlanta market. We believe that there's real incremental value that we can build for our shareholders with this division, and the acquisition of Hamilton positions us to start realizing that quickly.

The deal terms are 90% stock and 10% cash. Shareholders of Hamilton will receive 0.16 shares of Ameris stock, and about $0.93 per share of cash. Using our stock price as of last night, the shareholders of Hamilton will receive about $9.47 per share, which works out to roughly 2.05x tangible book.

Our economics are pretty attractive. The deal is breakeven to tangible book value and about 3% to 4% accretive to earnings after considering all of the costs and lost revenues for going over $10 billion. Outside of that and on a stand-alone basis, the deal would've been about 6% to 7% accretive to our 2019 EPS estimates.

Our strategy to hit the economics are very realistic, and we expect very doable. Three main assumptions to discuss here: First, we are seeing growth of the acquired balance sheet of 10%. Nicole mentioned how strong our Atlanta bank is. In Atlanta, already, we have an outstanding commercial bank that consistently exceeds all of our growth and production goals. Their growth alone in 2017 would have amounted to about 75% of the forecasted pro forma growth that we have for this market in this deal.

Secondly, we are setting cost-savings of 35%, which can be achieved almost entirely with backroom consolidation and for which we have a road map to achieve. We are modeling and are confident that we can complete the conversion and integration before year-end, and at 2019, will be a clean year with respect to our operating expense run rate. Lastly, we're assuming virtually no revenue synergies.

This is our strong suite, especially at Atlanta, where we have our mortgage SBA and Premium Finance groups headquartered. There's no doubt in my mind that these groups and our commercial bank will work together well, and that our footprint here will afford us the opportunity to move the needle on noninterest income.

Other financial metrics of the deal support our enthusiasm as well. Our pro forma capital levels after the deal -- after both deals are about 8.1% TCE, climbing to about 8.6% by the end of the year. The deal is slightly accretive to our net interest margin by a few basis points and importantly, it lowers our pro forma loan-to-deposit ratio by about 200 basis points. Once we are just done integrating, the deal will be accretive. Like I said to our -- the deal will be accretive to our return on assets, our efficiency ratio and our credit quality.

Lastly, before I turn the call back to the operator, let me talk a little about going over $10 billion and give you some assurances on what that means for Ameris Bank and how prepared we are. First, we have been preparing and planning to go over $10 billion for almost 2 years. Last year's pause on M&A and our enhanced investment in compliance, BSA infrastructure and systems better positions us today for being successful on this new chapter. The look across the company, we are modeling about $1.5 million of additional operating expense, almost all of that synergy and data management and credit analyst roles, and that would support the DFAST testing and modeling that we are already well underway with. Outside of that, all of the costs of going over $10 billion are already baked into our current run rate.

So with that, I'll turn it back over to Steven for any questions.

(Operator Instructions) And our first question comes from Brady Gailey with KBW.

So maybe, let's start about -- with talking about the kind of 5-year vision for a robust community bank in Atlanta that you all talked about in the slides. So you're $1.4 billion in Atlanta deposits right now. Where are you in Atlanta assets? And do you have a goal in mind? Do you want to be $5 billion or some number 5 years out when you think about the Atlanta market?

Brady, right now, in Atlanta, we have about $0.5 billion of total assets before this deal, and it's almost all commercially oriented assets. I think when we say, well, we want to be material, when we look across Atlanta, we want to be material. I don't -- we want to be material in enough of Atlanta so that we have a recognizable brand. And I think that's probably is something closer to $4 billion to $5 billion of total assets. We think, given our growth rate, that we can probably get half of that with just organic growth and probably do another half of that with M&A opportunities that we think exist in Atlanta.

Okay. Great, that's helpful. And then I think when Hamilton raised some capital then, they brought on some private equity owners. Can you just remind us how much of Hamilton is private equity owned? And if there's any sort of agreements or lockup with those shareholders?

About 2/3 of the shareholder base is private equity. As far as lockups, I don't know that we -- I don't believe we have -- we do not have any formal lockups, at least I don't think we have any formal lockups. We do have -- we've had quite a few conversations with them and kind of understand their time horizons and have been comfortable with that.

Alrighty. And then just lastly on capital, with this deal, TCE will be kind of knocked back down into the 8% range. I know you guys accrete capital at a very fast pace, just given your profitability nowadays. But just -- any update on how you're thinking about capital? Would you like to have a little more excess capital for future M&A? Or do you think that you'll just let your capital kind of grow organically post-deal close?

I think what we want to do is see tangible capital grow back to about 9%. I think the 9%, especially given how active we want to be in M&A, I think it's important that we stay over 8s, low 9s on TCE. The deferred tax asset write-off and the final acquisition of U.S. Premium Finance negatively affected that, but both of those sort of accrete capital back pretty quickly. I think what we do is probably stand close to the path on the dividend and just accrete capital all the way back. Again, by the end of the year, we think that will be about 8.60%. And so probably early next year we should see -- excuse me, early next year, we should see -- early next year, see us getting back close to about the 9% range.

Our next question comes from Jennifer Demba with SunTrust.

How long does the Hamilton State acquisition keep you on the M&A sidelines as you integrate this transaction?

Jennifer, typically, the way we look at that is how long does it take us internally to prepare, and then how long does it take to do the data conversion and complete all of that integration? And I think one thing that helps us with Hamilton, and I mentioned it in my comment, was being very similar, like-minded about how we treat customers and how we approach customers and the community bank model will help expedite the culture transition. So I would expect, as soon as we get the conversion done, we would be mentally prepared to be -- to begin again. So that should really answer your question. We would continue to have conversations through the process. And hopefully, in 2019, we'd be greenlighted -- we will greenlight our selves to execute another opportunity.

Okay. You've got an ambitious goal for Atlanta bank size. Do you anticipate adding any de novo branches inside -- more inside the city limits or the business centers inside Atlanta?

Well, I appreciate you saying that, but we don't think it's too ambitious. From what we've done in the past, we think that's really reasonable. And our expectation is we'll use the branches that we have and our business bankers. As you probably know, Hamilton kind of circles around Atlanta, not a lot of downtown presence. We have now in Atlanta's downtown -- midtown rather, not downtown. But -- so we complement each other, but I don't think you'll see us doing a lot of de novo branching there.

Our next question comes from Will Curtiss with Piper Jaffray.

Maybe just talk a little bit about the earnings. The other expenses, I believe you mentioned in the release, the increase was related to Premium Finance. So curious if there was anything else that may have been a little unusual this quarter in that line. And how you're thinking about that line going forward?

So in the -- you mean the noninterest expense.

Correct.

So are you asking about the items that were -- already excluded some of those in the first table, such as the merger-related charges, and then we have that reconciliation in the press release. If I'm not understanding your question, I'm sorry.

Sure. No, I mean, I guess, when I back those out, I've got other expenses at around a little over $11 million.

So then you back out the U.S. Premium Finance as well. And then we also had the build out of the Equipment Finance Division that we had in 2017 that we did not have in 2016. And then we also had the strengthening of the BSA group. So on our financial tables, where we exclude the BSA charges, we're only excluding the onetime charges to get us out of the consent order, like the look-back expense. We did not exclude the ongoing cost of building out that staff in that group. So that increased in '17 versus '16.

Okay. Let me see, and then maybe kind of sticking with expenses, are you guys planning on accelerating any planned projects or reinvestments in the tax saving that may add to the expense base outside of the deals that you guys have pending?

As of right now, Will, we don't. We just -- as of right now, we intend to just accrete capital back with that. But for right now, no. Outside of any strategies or infrastructure build, to accommodate the $10 billion cost, no, we don't.

Okay. And then maybe, Nicole, just to clarify the comment kind of around the margins. You mentioned that the reinvestment will add 3 basis points, and you expect that to be done in a quarter. Is that first quarter or is that second quarter when we will see that?

Probably by the second quarter, to see all that flow back in.

Okay. And then you have the 6 basis point negative tax adjustment, so okay.

That's right.

(Operator Instructions) And our next question comes from Christopher Marinac with FIG Partners.

Just want to ask the Durbin crossing should occur for you -- or the Durbin charge should begin in the third quarter of '19, is that right?

Yes.

That's right.

Okay, that's what I thought. And then, from a strategic standpoint, I know we talked -- that you're talking in the slides a little bit about just sort of metro versus nonmetro. But can you talk a little about the loan side? How much in Atlanta are you doing that is closer to the city center? Just kind of going a little back to Jenny's question a few minutes ago.

How much of our lending right now is in the Atlanta market?

Correct. And I guess, if you really refined it closer into where midtown is and also to the sort of main thoroughfares around the marketplace?

And almost all of our growth -- our Atlanta group focus is really in DeKalb, Fulton and Cobb County. The vast majority of everything we do is in those markets. Really, the further out you go, all of our lenders live probably 2 or 3 miles from the -- from our office there in midtown. The majority of the growth is definitely inside the perimeter. Some of it, again, I'll tell you, is out in the Cobb County area, but the vast majority is there in town.

Okay, so with Hamilton's footprint and as the map show in the presentation, does that push the lending further out? Or do you simply use that as a funding mechanism to keep doing what you're doing with the current lending strategy?

That's exactly. I think we'll use that primarily as a funding mechanism. I think it will -- we anticipate being able to be very aggressive on the deposit side with a much larger footprint in Atlanta, which we've not been able to do. Hamilton does lending kind of in lines of business sort of similar to what we do on the line of business side around here. We will do lending in some of those markets, but the majority of our lending will continue to be focused the way we have it right now. And we'll use that footprint for kind of really intense efforts on deposit gathering.

Got it, okay. And just from a timing standpoint, can you remind us on the sort of integration and systems conversions on Atlantic Coast, and then how the timing will go with Hamilton?

Sure. So right now, we have the regulatory approval pending. We still believe it'll close in the first quarter or late in the first quarter. And then we have a data conversion plan for the second quarter. And then Hamilton, we expect to close in the third quarter, and then we'll start working on that conversion plan and typically, just as soon as possible after legal close.

Okay. So hopefully, by year-end, you'll have that one done, so that finishes the year okay. Got it.

Yes, Chris. Historically, we've been able to do those conversions within 90 days. And then, end of the year, it might be a little tricky, but we would expect it to be within 90 days, which is what we've accomplished in every other transaction.

Okay. And there's still capacity to do additional transactions. You obviously just time it differently in terms of what you do with something else down the road.

Exactly. It's not quite as easy as it sounds. There's an awful lot of work that goes into mapping and work ahead of time. So it's very, very detailed and time-consuming. But as you know, with the number of deals that we've done, we have the procedure down fairly well and typically, don't run into any big problems. So we expect -- we will expect it to be smooth.

(Operator Instructions) And our next question comes from Tyler Stafford with Stephens.

Congrats on the deal. I just hopped on a couple of minutes ago, so I apologize if you've already covered any of this. In terms of Hamilton, can you just talk about the revenue synergy potential here? What could be kind of incremental to the EPS accretion as you guys laid out that's not embedded in that?

Several things: One is the SBA. We get a good bit of our SBA opportunity from our existing branch network and from our existing bankers. So we think there's a real opportunity there. The big opportunity is mortgage. Hamilton has a pretty successful and pretty profitable reach on residential construction. I mean, you look across Atlanta, there's several reports that show them #3 or 4 in residential lending. Anybody and everybody on the call knows what percentage of our residential lending we capture in our mortgage group. It's very high, and so I think that alone provides a pretty significant lift. If you look at what we do in Savannah, Jacksonville, St. Augustine, really, all over South Carolina, we're #1 or 2 in mortgage originations in all those markets. And that's what we expect in Atlanta. I mean, although our group is headquartered in Atlanta, we do most of our mortgage production outside of that. So this is all sort of a de novo opportunity for us. Hamilton does not have a very strong mortgage footprint or mortgage banking activity. And so we think that alone is pretty profitable. And one more thing, Tyler, if you go back to all the other deals we've done, we really never model in mortgage revenues. We never model in SBA revenues, service charge synergies. We get those in virtually every deal. And so if there was one deal where I think we could've justified it, it probably would've been this one.

Got it. Okay, helpful. On the USPF, can you just remind us of the mechanics now that you own 100% of that, what the financial impact to Ameris will be that we should see on our side?

The ---- right now, we pay about -- we pay somewhere between $5.5 million and $6 million of management fees, which will be going away in 2018. So the pretax impact will probably be $5.5 million to $6 million. Nicole is confirming. And then the after-tax effect of that, really that's the only difference. And that's not in the -- that's in the other noninterest expense line, I guess, that Will was asking about earlier. So that's how we're seeing -- that's how we're forecasting the decrease in operating efficiency. From a revenue standpoint, there's not going to be a margin or revenue lift because, again, all those revenues are already coming to us. We just are simply -- now that we're the 100% owner, we're not going to have to pay the management fees.

Okay, got it. And then all-in with ACFC and Hamilton, again, apologize if you already covered this, is your loan deposit ratio moving down or, I guess, stay now, call it, in the low 90s?

Yes. The -- our pro forma -- as of the end of the year, our pro forma loan-to-deposit ratio with Atlanta Coast was about 93.5%. And pro forma with Hamilton, it drops about 200 basis points.

Got it, okay. And then on the loan growth outlook side of things, the 15%-plus loan growth, can you just talk about the portfolios that -- I guess, the mix of that, that you expect to see this year? What portfolios are going to kind of make up that 15%-plus growth?

Yes. I think we're going to say -- I'll start with U.S. Premium Finance. I think we would see just as much growth as we saw last year on that. I would say U.S. Premium Finance and equipment finance probably will be -- probably about 25% to 30% of the growth. I think the bank -- the core bank, what we do, kind of commercial -- just our bread-and-butter commercial real estate, probably end up being about half, which is about what it was this year. We're a little better on consumer than we've been. Not that we're going to develop a lot of momentum there. But consumer and residential lending probably will make up the difference there, probably another 15% to 20%.

Okay, and then just last within that, just -- the mortgage loan pool expectations, could we see more one-off sales? Or will that just kind of naturally cash flow off?.

We think that, that will naturally cash flow off going forward.

And there are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Dennis Zember for any closing remarks.

All right, thank you again for all that joined us. If you have any question or comment, please feel free to call or e-mail me or Ed or Nicole. Thank you. Have a great day.

The conference has now concluded. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.