Good morning, and welcome to the FB Financial Corporation's Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Hosting the call today from FB Financial is Chris Holmes, President and Chief Executive Officer. He is joined by Michael Mettee, Chief Financial Officer. Greg Bowers, Chief Credit Officer, and Wib Evans, President of FB Ventures, will also be available during the question and answer session. Please note FB Financial's earnings release, supplemental financial information, and this morning's presentation are available on the investor relations page of the company's website at www.firstbankonline.com, and on the Securities and Exchange Commission's website at www.sec.gov.
Today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay on the FB Financial's website approximately an hour after the conclusion of the call. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode. The call will be open for questions after the presentation. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Robert Hoehn, Director of Corporate Finance. Please go ahead.
Thank you. During this presentation, FB Financial may make comments which constitute forward-looking statements under the federal securities laws. All forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and other facts that may cause actual results in performance or achievements of FB Financial to differ materially from any results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Many of such factors are beyond FB Financial's ability to control or predict, and listeners are cautioned not to put undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. A more detailed description of these and other risks is contained in FB Financial's periodic and current reports filed with the SEC, including FB Financial's most recent Form 10-K. Except as required by law, FB Financial disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements contained in this presentation, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.
In addition, these remarks may include certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined by SEC Regulation G. A presentation of the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of the non-GAAP measures to comparable GAAP measures is available in FB Financial's earnings release supplemental financial information in this morning's presentation, which are available on the investor relations page of the company's website at www.firstbankonline.com, and on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. I would now like to turn the presentation over to Chris Holmes, FB Financial's President and CEO.
Thank you, Robert. Good morning, and thank you for joining us this morning. We appreciate your interest in FB Financial. We had a solid quarter as we delivered annualized loan growth of 8% when you exclude PPP loans, adjusted EPS of $0.89, adjusted return on average assets of 1.42%, adjusted return on tangible common equity of 15%, and we grew our non-interest-bearing deposits by 20% annualized. Growth continues to be evident across our markets. We received news this quarter that Ford is investing $5.6 billion in an electric vehicle manufacturing hub at a site midway between Memphis and Jackson, Tennessee, in West Tennessee. This investment will create 6,000 direct jobs in West Tennessee, and the state estimates that in total, 27,000 jobs will be created to support the site.
FirstBank is well-positioned to capitalize on the increased economic activity that will come to West Tennessee, as by our estimation, we're number one market share in that part of the state, including third market share in Jackson. We've got a very strong commercial team in Memphis that continues to deliver good results. In Nashville, the economic activity continues to roll and is becoming a technology hub in addition to our traditional strengths of healthcare, entertainment, and hospitality. Our area just recognized its second unicorn. Tennessee benefits from decades of strong business-friendly leadership from our elected officials, and it's exciting to be at the center of what's become a magnet for economic development. We believe we have the relationship managers and the infrastructure in place to capitalize on that economic environment. 8% loan growth this quarter is in line with our guidance.
We continue to believe that high single-digit growth is a good target for us for the year. Our regional presidents are telling me that they expect strong activity for the fourth quarter, a double-digit annual number is not out of the question for 2021. If trends continue as they have, we would expect to return to our typical 10%- 12% annual loan growth for 2022. On the liability side of the balance sheet, we're pleased with our 20% non-interest-bearing deposit growth during the quarter. Even when the world's awash with liquidity, we place a high value on bringing in strong operating account relationships. As a result of that shift in the composition of our deposits, as well as our continued focus on bringing down our cost of interest-bearing deposits, our total cost of deposits decreased by an additional 5 basis points this quarter.
Moving to mortgage, the team delivered a very strong quarter with $8.9 million of pre-tax contribution. That was an outperformance compared to our guidance for the third quarter as refinance volumes and margins performed better in August and September than we anticipated during last quarter's call. Early results in October have been fairly volatile. Our guidance range will be a bit wider this quarter. Our best guess at the moment is anywhere from $1 million- $4 million contribution in the fourth quarter. Asset quality continues to improve with our non-performing and non-accrual statistics materially declining this quarter, with non-performing loans to loans down by 24 basis points, non-performing assets to total assets down by 16 basis points.
The improvement in our metrics was driven by a $14 million non-performer leaving the bank this quarter, which resulted in a slightly higher net charge-offs at 13 basis points, as well as a $1.5 million reversal in non-interest income as a swap on the credit was unwound. The overall credit environment is favorable right now, and our markets are effectively operating normally despite the COVID activity that our footprint experienced during the summer. We saw a slight ACL relief this quarter as a result of the improving economic conditions and forecasts, but we've cautiously and intentionally held back what reserve we could support ahead of the winter months, just in case we run across any speed bumps as folks move back indoors.
Assuming that forecasts continue to improve and that we survive the changing of the seasons without material shutdowns or changes of behavior in our markets, then we'd expect more sizable releases to follow in the next few quarters. On a related note, we saw positive momentum with the disposition of our non-core institutional portfolio. We've just over $100 million of exposure remaining in there and would expect that to continue to decline as credits mature and refinance out of the bank. We're still marking portfolio and would accept the right bid, but we're down to nine relationships, and the quality of the remaining loans is strong, and the yield is favorable, so it'd take a strong bid at this point.
Speaking to our capital management plan, our tangible common equity to tangible assets is moving a bit outside of our target at 8.5%-9.5% range. We'd prefer to deploy that capital organically, but with the excess liquidity that remains on our balance sheet, we still have some time left before organic growth would materially impact our capital ratios on its own. We dipped our toe in the water with buyback this quarter, but with the bank valuations rebounding shortly after our trading window reopened, we ultimately retired less than $1 million worth of shares.
Our second priority for the capital deployment behind organic growth is accretive merger and acquisition activity, and it's now been just over a year since we closed and converted the Franklin Financial Network merger. We remain pleased with how the combination's performed as talent and customer retention has gone well. As we look towards future mergers, we're targeting similar characteristics to our Clayton, Atlantic Capital, Franklin Synergy combinations.
We look for partners that will provide us additional density across our footprint, as well as fill in open markets within Tennessee and transactions that provide financial returns that support the risk of undertaking a conversion process. We're focused primarily on banks around our footprint that provide a strong cultural fit and ultimately provide operating leverage for us. There's nothing imminent, but we believe that the current dynamics support further consolidation is possible that we could have M&A activity in 2022. To summarize, we had a good quarter of loan growth as our strong team of relationship managers continues to capitalize on the economic activity of our footprint. We expect that growth to continue over the remainder of 2021 and into 2022. Mortgage did very well and outperformed our previous expectations.
We expect them to come back down to earth in the fourth quarter due to the seasonal behavior of the mortgage. We're building capital quickly, but M&A activity is possible, and with rebounding bank valuations, we're not likely to use much capital on our buyback in the near term. I'll now turn the call over to Michael, our CFO, to discuss our financial results in some more detail.
Thank you, Chris. Good morning, everyone. Speaking first to mortgage and illustrated on slide six, mortgage performed better than expected in Q3 with a contribution of approximately $8.9 million. As mentioned on Q2's call, we were not certain how the late second quarter move to lower in rates would impact the industry. Ultimately, we saw refinance business react as one would expect in a lower rate environment. We also saw margins stabilize quarter-over-quarter, payoffs slow in our servicing book, and higher servicing revenue, all leading to outperformance. It is early in Q4. It does appear with the recent run-up in rates and the usual seasonality, the mortgage division will face some headwinds this quarter. As Chris mentioned, our best estimate for contribution is $1 million-$4 million in direct contribution from mortgage in the fourth quarter.
Moving on to net interest margin, we saw our headline number remain essentially flat at 3.2% in the third quarter compared to 3.18% in the second quarter. We were able to bring down our cost of total deposits by 5 basis points. Our relationship managers have continued to focus on bringing down our higher cost interest-bearing accounts, and they've gotten results. I would expect some additional decline on our cost of interest-bearing accounts in the coming quarter or two, but the month of September was at 33 basis points versus 34 basis points for the quarter, so we're seeing a bit of a plateau there, and I would expect more measured improvement going forward.
As Chris mentioned, we did have success in remixing our deposit portfolio this past quarter, with non-interest-bearing deposits increasing to 25.9% of total deposits from 24.4% in the second quarter. NIBs will remain a focus going forward, though, and our next goal is to move that number to 30% plus of total deposits. However, in the near term, that number will continue to fluctuate as public funds come back on after seasonal outflows of approximately $225 million this quarter. Our contractual yield on loans dropped by 13 basis points during the quarter, from 4.37% in the second quarter to 4.24% in the third quarter. We are encouraged that yield on new originations in the third quarter held in that same 3.8%-3.9% range that we experienced in the second quarter.
However, with that still being below the 4.24% contractual rate on the legacy portfolio, we would expect to continue to see yield compression until rates begin to rise. As a reminder, we're maintaining our asset sensitivity, and when rates do rise, we have approximately $2 billion in variable rate loans that should reprice immediately. We continue to manage excess liquidity, in part by increasing allocation to the securities portfolio. Our securities portfolio increased by $168 million in the third quarter. The average yield on purchased securities during that quarter was approximately 1.33%. Interest rates were volatile during the quarter, with the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury swinging as much as 36 basis points. We expect interest rate volatility to continue as monetary and fiscal policy are adjusted from the significant responses to the pandemic.
Given that volatility, we continue to invest in securities that do not exhibit excess duration risk while still providing an overall increase of interest income. In the absence of rate increases, we would expect the margin to stay in the same relative band that we've been in for the past few quarters. We expect yields on loans held for investment in the securities portfolio to continue to decline as incremental volume comes at rates lower than the current portfolio. We expect continued improvement in cost of funds as CDs continue to reprice and as our relationship managers focus on growing non-interest-bearing deposits. Liquidity will be slightly volatile quarter to quarter as public funds enter and exit the bank, and we'll continue to strategically deploy excess liquidity into better yielding assets in order to grow net interest income.
Moving to CECL, as Chris mentioned, at $2.5 million, our release was smaller this quarter than the prior two quarters. Economic forecasts continue to dictate lower reserves relative to the quantitative portion of our CECL model. On the qualitative portion of our allowance, we are maintaining many of our COVID era factors for now as we head into the winter. Assuming that the economic trends in our footprint continue as they have after everyone moves indoors for the season, we'll feel more comfortable relaxing some of these qualitative factors. Based on what we know today, we would expect releases related to these key factors to come sometime between the fourth quarter of 2021 and the first half of 2022. As you know, COVID has taken many unexpected turns, this is subject to change.
Speaking to expenses, the banking segment was slightly elevated compared to where we expected for the quarter, coming in at $58.8 million compared to $58.2 million, that we had pointed to last quarter. This was primarily related to the vesting of stock grants from the IPO, resulting in additional payroll taxes and tangential benefits of approximately $500,000. On banking segment non-interest income, we had a number of non-recurring type events that can muddy the run rate number. The stated segment amount was $13.8 million. Included in that $13.8 million was a gain on sale of real estate owned of $2.2 million, a gain on our commercial loans held for sale portfolio of $740,000, and a loss on the unwind of a swap of $1.5 million. Netting those three items out, the banking segment non-interest income would have been $12.4 million for the quarter.
I'll close my section speaking to this quarter's taxes, as there were a few one-time items in that line as well. We had a $1.7 million benefit related to the net operating loss from the Franklin merger. We also had a $2.1 million benefit related to the vesting of the IPO awards. For the fourth quarter, we would expect to return to a 23%-23.5% tax rate. With that, I'll turn things back over to Chris to close.
All right. Thank you, Michael. I appreciate that color. We're pleased with our results for the quarter. We're particularly proud of our team for the loan growth, the non-interest-bearing deposit growth, and the mortgage outperformance. This concludes our prepared remarks. Andrea, at this point, we'd like to open the line for questions.
We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the key. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble the roster. Our first question comes from Brett Rabatin of Hovde Group. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, everyone.
Good morning, Brett.
Wanted to first ask, the loan growth was obviously nice in the quarter, and in the prepared comments, you talked about possible return to 10%-12%. Maybe could you give us a little more color around the C&I growth in 3Q, and if that's where you expect the bulk of the growth to come from here, and what you're seeing. Is that market share movement, or is that new client additions? Is it activity from new customers? Where is that growth coming from?
Yeah, Brett. The growth has pretty much come across all of our product types. If you look over the last two or three quarters, it's been kind of all of our product types. We did have more growth during this particular quarter in C&I than any other product type. We're glad to see that. Expect to continue to see that grow. I don't know that it'll continue to be the leading product type, but we expect to continue to see that. We have not seen our line utilization return to where it was in the last two quarters of 2019. We were closer to call it a 50% utilization. If you average the last two quarters of 2019, then you looked into the third quarter, this past quarter, we were down still in the low 40s in terms of utilization.
It's higher than it was, but it's still not high. We expect to see that over the next several quarters grow, we think, and see it now continue to be strong. We have seen good CRE growth as well, good growth in residential construction. We've seen new customer acquisition. It's been a combination, and we can't pinpoint any one thing. I would say, I always think about the rate at which our markets are growing, and when we're growing our loan balances, for the most part, either high single digits or low double digits, that's still going to be a little faster than our markets are growing. There is some share that's coming with that as well. It's a combination across all product types, and I can't give you one that I would say is negative.
It's a combination of the existing customers, but there's also we're picking up new customers as well.
Okay. I appreciate the color there. Then mortgage, the guidance for the fourth quarter, maybe a bit of a tough question, but as you guys think longer term, where do you see mortgage normalizing? Would it be a higher level than 2019 because of investments you've made in the platform? Or can you maybe give us some thoughts on how you see mortgage trending as things, quote, get back to normal, assuming that happens at some point?
Yeah, Brett, I think where would mortgage normalize, probably 10%-15% of contribution is where it typically will play out. Being in the low rate environment we've been in, 2022 is kind of a hard crapshoot at this point. If you look at the MBA, you look at Fannie and Freddie, they're predicting volumes to be down fairly significantly. We would expect to outperform that. We certainly would expect a 10%-15% number, which is traditionally what we've targeted.
2022 is a particularly difficult year to forecast. We talked about really quite a bit about how to forecast 2022, and it's a particularly difficult year to forecast, Brett, and for us, and I think for everybody else. Even if you look at the forecasts that are out there, they don't all line up for volumes. We probably take a slightly different view than even most of the forecasts out there. We target somewhere between 10%-15%. We want to do as well as we can, make as much as we can. Typically, that's where it comes in for us on just a cycles on an average year.
Okay. Appreciate the color there. Chris, if I could sneak in one last quick one. You talked a little more optimistically about M&A than I think you have in recent quarters. Are you seeing a pickup in talks with potential acquisition targets? Maybe give us, if you could, any flavor for how you expect 2022 to shape up from an M&A perspective for you.
Yeah. 2022, Brett, as we think about the last couple years, 2020 and 2021, well, we had a lot. We announced the Franklin combination, FirstBank Franklin combination in early 2020. Pretty much tried to digest that in 2020, it took all of 2020 and into 2021. We went over the $10 billion asset threshold with that transaction. That has also taken some focus of the company. It's pretty much been that we've been focused, we think of ourselves as operators and top-level execution on our company. As opposed to thinking of ourselves as having to grow through going out and acquire. We've been focused on that, we feel pretty good about where we are with that. We think it's showing through in the numbers, particularly in our organic numbers.
We're more open to talk about that. That's one perspective I would give you. The second perspective is we keep a targeted list of things that we're interested in, and it's as much reliant on those that we're interested in as it is on us just out trolling the market. Actually, it's much, much more reliant on those that we're interested in rather than us just saying, hey, the doors are open for M&A. We're quite strategic on that.
Our feeling is that as we look at that very small list, that during the 2022, we think that there could be one or more of those that would come to us and go, hey, we think it might be a good time to have a conversation. That's the reason we say that is it's gotten better for us from a timing standpoint, and we think that it perhaps will get better for others. It's going to be a difficult, again, with the interest rate environment. It's not an easy operating environment, I would think, in 2022, and so I think that could play into that.
Okay. Great. Appreciate all the color.
Sure. Thank you for being on the call.
The next question comes from Stephen Scouten of Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, everyone.
Good morning, Stephen.
Maybe going back to loan growth quickly, I'm just curious how the team in Birmingham has been performing. I think maybe it was $40 million that you referenced last quarter that they contributed, just continuing to question how that is shaping up and if you think there could be additional team adds in some of these ancillary markets in the months ahead.
Yeah. I'll say we have been really, really pleased with Birmingham as a market, with our folks in Birmingham. The reception that they have gotten and we have gotten in the market has been really humbling for us. It's been really good. The folks that we've been able to get on the FirstBank team down there have just been fantastic in terms of fitting our culture and us. It's just been a great match. Actually, when we talk about where they were last quarter, they've almost doubled that again, and so they're in the mid-70s in terms of volume at this point. Like I said, we couldn't be more thrilled with the quality of what we're seeing. We're continuing to talk to other folks down there about joining that team.
We don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but we're continuing to talk to some other folks as well. We couldn't be happier with the way it's going up to this point. The pipeline actually is maybe even more encouraging than what I just gave you. We've been very pleased.
That's great. Okay. On the M&A front, I think last quarter, maybe you had referenced Western North Carolina and some areas maybe that were slight extensions to your existing footprint. When you look at that list of banks you spoke to, that targeted list, is there any specific geographic focus that you guys would prefer to move into currently? Are there even product expansion or extensions that you would look to, especially given the uncertainty around mortgage? Can you give us a deeper feel on ideology around potential M&A?
Yeah, sure. As we think about M&A, geography is at the top of the list. Really, geography is at the top of the list because operating leverage is at the top of the list. If you look at where we are in Nashville from a market share standpoint, a decade ago, we didn't even make the top 30, maybe even the top 50, in Nashville from a market share standpoint. Today we're number six. I think we're number five now in Knoxville, and about the same in Chattanooga, where we basically didn't have a presence before, as I said, 10 years ago. When I say we didn't have a presence, we actually had a location, but we had less than $100 million in each of those markets, again, so we were irrelevant from a market presence standpoint.
When you have that presence, we like to have enough density to make sure we're getting a great return on the capital and we're creating operating leverage. We've still got markets in footprint that we don't have as much operating leverage. We're not creating as much operating leverage as we'd like. That's part of our M&A strategy, is to continue to improve our profitability through that. For that reason, we look in and around our footprint. A lot of times, going back to your question of Western North Carolina or say, Northern Georgia, a lot of times we'll get a market extension. For instance, it could be an institution that has a presence in, let's say, East Tennessee and Western Carolina, and we would be interested in that.
We would tend to think of our market extension being something that is partnering with an institution that has a presence in our geography, but it draws us into a contiguous geography. That's really the way we think about bank M&A. We also think about culture, obviously, and we think heavily about the deposit side of the balance sheet. We're very interested in legacy non-interest bearing deposit type institutions. Very interested in those. On what I'll call non-bank, I'll refer to as non-bank or sort of maybe verticals. We have some interest there. Obviously, that's the way we think of mortgage, is really like a vertical. We more and more think of our specialty lending group, our manufactured housing group in the same way that group is performing really well.
If we came across a vertical like that had particularly good yield, we love assets that we can either portfolio or sell into the market. Like both of those, we have the option of either portfolio or selling it. That we can create those product lines for us or those verticals are something that we're interested in being. We want to make sure we're competitive in those more than competitive. We want to make sure we're able to win against any competitor in those spaces, which we do in both mortgage and the manufactured housing. That's another factor that we look at. It's something that we intend to be a really significant market player in.
Awesome. That's a fantastic answer. Thanks, Chris, for all the detail. Just last from me, do you guys have an update on the expected impact from Durbin in the third quarter?
Yeah. Third quarter 2022, it's still going to be in that same $4 million range, Stephen, for half a year until you'd look at about $8 million annualized.
Got it. Okay. Thanks, Michael. Appreciate the color, guys.
Mm-hmm. Thanks, Stephen.
The next question comes from Matt Olney of Stephens. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning, guys.
Hey, Matt. How are you?
Hey, I'm good. I want to drill down on the expenses for the bank. I think you mentioned in prepared remarks, a little bit elevated and there was some unusual items. I think it was the stock grants from the IPO explained a portion of this, but it seems like there was something else in there as well versus your original expectations. Any more color on that from the third quarter and then an outlook here in the fourth quarter into next year as well? Thanks.
Yeah. The reality or the oddity was around the IPO and the vesting. We were expecting flat quarter over quarter, kind of second to third flattish. That $500,000 related to vesting was really the main peculiarity. As we look forward, I would still expect in that same kind of $58 million-$59 million range, knowing that we're going to take opportunities to hire talent as it comes be it in RMs and some of these areas. Chris mentioned going over $10 billion. There are investments that we're making there to continue to strengthen the bench and strengthen our operating kind of risk management. We continue to do that. We're seeing a lot of disruption in our markets, which allow us to capitalize on some talent. You'll see some expense in there.
Efficiency-wise, we look to continue to become more efficient, grow on the revenue side of the balance sheet, and continue to push down our efficiency ratio.
Okay. That's great. Thank you for that. Then on the mortgage front, I want to circle back there and drill down a little more on the near-term outlook. I'm trying to appreciate the dynamics between both the margins and the volume. I think there's that 255 gain on sale margin in the Q3. Are you seeing some incremental pressure on that in recent weeks? Or is the concern more on the volume side given the higher rates in recent weeks? Thanks.
Yeah. Margin's really hung in there over the past couple of months. We've been pleasantly surprised with that, even as capacities kind of return to the mortgage space. We saw volume start to slow there in the third quarter, late third quarter, September-ish, which is kind of leading us to a kind of normal seasonality type expectation for Q4. We're also seeing a lot of inventory pressure still on the purchase side. I think that there was a little bit of hope that inventory would increase, and we'd get some momentum on purchase that typically hadn't been there. I just don't. At this point, we're not seeing a whole lot of that in our markets. In the third quarter as well, FHFA gave back a refi incentive to lenders, which was a boost to volume on the refi side, lowered rates about an eighth.
You saw a pickup in our refinance percentage from 58%-66% from that. That's all fully priced into the market. You'd expect that to kind of tail down as we get through the fourth quarter. A lot of moving parts in there, but housing is still constrained due to inventory and supply chains too.
Okay. That's all for me. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Matt.
Thanks, Matt.
The next question comes from Jennifer Demba of Truist Securities. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning.
Morning, Jennifer.
Wondering if you could talk about your priorities in terms of technology investment and spend right now over the next one or two years, where you feel like maybe you're in line with peers or falling short or ahead?
We spent a lot of time and dialogued internally around that very thing. We look at it as we're really thinking about innovation there with some of our folks and have them really focused on that. We're actually making some changes to create an even more intense focus on that. We've done a couple of things with a couple of investments also, a small handful of investments in that area. When we think about it, we think about first, customer experience. Our research, which is third-party research, says that we have a leading customer in several measures, the leading customer experience in the Southeast, but in almost all the measures, quite good. We think about first, how can we innovate, mostly using technology in the customer experience process.
Secondly, we think of efficiency, and how can we be applying technology to improve the efficiency of the company. We have active dialogues with several fintech companies, also with several fintech investors, and like I said, and we are an active investor in a few ways there. We very much believe that the industry is really transforming over the next few years. And so,
we're transforming our business at the same time because I think your options are to do that or lose value, and we're not going to do the latter.
Okay. Thank you.
Okay.
The next question comes from Kevin Fitzsimmons of D.A. Davidson. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, everyone.
Good morning, Kevin.
Chris, there's been a handful of questions on M&A. One thing I just wanted to ask was, coming out of the Franklin Synergy experience, it was a large deal. It was a complicated deal. It took a while. Do you feel more confident and more emboldened to go with a larger bank transaction like that? Or do you think your appetite's going to be more of a fit for more digestible, traditional type deals in your view?
Yeah, that's a great question, actually, Kevin, because again, we've talked about that a lot. I want to say first off, deals are hard. Okay. I don't care what size they are. First option for us would be go hire great people and pay a smaller premium for those folks and be able to be a little more selective with those investments. We love doing that. We do get the opportunity to make some bigger ones. Franklin and FirstBank, that combination was big, and it was in some ways, particularly in Middle Tennessee, we regarded it as a merger of equals, really, between those markets because we totally merged those. In the Nashville market, If you looked at the total employees in Middle Tennessee, there are more legacy Franklin Synergy employees than legacy FirstBank employees.
All that being said, it's gone well. We've retained the customers. We've retained the folks, and on both sides, by the way. Not only have we retained them, they're ahead of budget. It's hard, and as we look at going back to when we look at potential targets, frankly, most of them are smaller than what that would've been for us at the time. FirstBank would've been, say, 60%, and Franklin Synergy would've been 40%. As we look at those targets that I mentioned and those ones that we're really interested in, they're smaller than that as a percentage of the company. That would be what we would opt for, not only because that's the specific target list, but that's just executionally, that's what we would opt for.
I think once it gets much bigger than, say, I don't know, a third of your size, it gets really hard to digest.
Great. I appreciate that. It's been mentioned a few times today, but we see lots of stories and hear reports about supply chain disruption and worker shortages, and you have the good fortune to be operating in very healthy markets. Can you kind of speak big picture about how much of a concern that is, whether you think it's something that's very temporary or could persist a while? I don't know if this falls into the camp of those things you're watching and why you're not taking the reserve down as aggressively as you probably could have this quarter. Just, is it more of just solely a loan growth headwind, or is it a potential credit headwind in your mind as well? Thanks.
Yeah, in my mind, the potential for a credit headwind comes from a shutdown. If we have something where some industry got shut down again for whatever reason, whether it's just COVID, and we go back into a shutdown status or disruptions from the two things you mentioned, either supply chain or labor, those would be the things we would worry about. We see both of those. The supply chain, we certainly see the effects of that particularly in the real estate side of our portfolio, both residential and commercial. Costs have absolutely gone up. Rents have gone up in the commercial space. Cost of housing has gone up in the residential space. The cost of living in our largest market of Nashville has gone up significantly. We see all of those. The supply chain, I personally think that will settle down sooner versus later.
I don't mean next month, but I think it begins to normalize because the forces of capitalism tend to take over there and tend to really kick in. I think they do normalize sooner versus later. The labor shortages, I'm going to speak regionally and locally as opposed to nationally. The labor shortages are very real. We live in a very attractive spot that's attracting as much in-migration as any spot in the country. I don't think the labor shortages, I just talked about Ford coming and 27,000 jobs being created in the western part of our state, which has been the slowest growth part of our state. The middle being the highest growth, the east being also a high growth area. I think the labor shortages are going to persist. There's a lot of wage pressure where we are at every level.
Even at some of our highest paid folks, they get offers, too. From that standpoint, those are first-class problems, but there's still things that you have to deal with. As we look at it, we do see the labor shortages probably being the biggest issue right now in our markets. Supply chain being also an issue, but like I said, I think it'll resolve itself sooner versus later. In general, the markets, like I said, it's because of the growth and the attractiveness of the area we're in. Michael, would you add anything to that?
Yeah. I think relative to the reserve, Kevin, all those things are part of the consideration. You also had eviction moratoriums coming off. You had PPP loans being forgiven, there was a little bit, especially earlier in the quarter, with how Delta variant was being dealt with, and what impact that would have on businesses with labor, with all those things. That drove a little bit of the hesitancy to get too aggressive there. I do expect that to abate. A little bit of concern around inflation. Chris mentioned home prices and wage, we are certainly seeing price increases across the board, the impact on the economy is a wait and see at this point.
Okay. Chris, one last one from me. You mentioned the long-term attractiveness and focus on non-interest-bearing deposits if you're looking at institutions. One could say, well, why not go out into attractive markets and hire and get the loan growth, and you've got so much excess liquidity right now to fund that. Is it just more of taking a long-term approach to that funding that you can't necessarily count on having what you have today, and that may recede at some point, and you'd rather go in the traditional way, and get the deposits right up front versus trying to claw and get it over a period of years?
Yeah. You read that correctly. It's two things. It is the long-term view that non-interest-bearing deposits are very attractive and will always be attractive. When we think about what we're targeting, that's what we're targeting. Deposits, just from a pure monetary value, given where interest rates are less valuable today than they traditionally are. In our mind, the relationship that comes with the primary operating account is very valuable to us long term, and those are the ones we want. That's what we mean by that. We are doing some hiring of loan officers to get loans on the balance sheet, okay? Birmingham would be an example where they certainly don't have as much in deposits as they do in loans, not even close, but that's fine with us for now.
Because we're taking that long-term approach, those deposits will come over time. If we got the opportunity, that's a good example. If we got the opportunity for the right, I'll call it Legacy Community Bank in and around those markets, it'd be one we'd be very interested in, we'd bring on those operating account relationships sooner than we would bring them in just organically growing them. I'm very envious, Kevin, of those banks that fund their loan portfolio with 40% non-interest-bearing deposits. We want to get there.
Got it. Okay. Thanks, Chris.
All right. Thanks, Kevin.
The next question comes from Catherine Mealor of KBW. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning.
Good morning, Catherine.
Just wanted to follow up as we model the margin and the balance sheet, how to think about the deployment of excess liquidity both into loans and securities, and how you're thinking about how big the securities portfolio potentially could get as a percentage of average earning assets, and how much you plan to put there versus in your strong loan growth? Thanks.
Hey, Catherine, it's Michael.
Hey, Michael.
The best part. Our target has been that 13%-13.5% range of total assets versus earning assets. We're actually right in that range. Came a little bit quicker. We were kind of looking at year-end. Clearly, this liquidity's been here to stay. We deployed some there. We also did some reverse repo transactions that are short-term in nature and deployed some liquidity there as well in their 30-day paper. That helped a little bit. I don't think you'll see material growth above this 13%-13.5% range. We prefer loan growth. As we mentioned, we think that there's strong opportunity there. We have a lot of opportunity in our markets. That's what we'll likely deploy.
Yeah. Catherine, I would just add, on the loans side, our Regional Presidents are very optimistic. When we look out at 2022, when we look at the kind of the pipeline today, we look out at 2022, we're not having to coax them up when we're thinking about targets for 2022. For that reason, we feel better about the outlook for the loan growth side of the balance sheet.
Great. Understood. On the seasonality of the public funds, I think you mentioned this in your prepared remarks, Michael. Can you remind us, you're saying public funds will come in higher this quarter? Can you just remind us typically what the seasonal fluctuations are with that?
Yeah. We saw about $225 million roll out during the quarter. We'd expect some version of that come back, maybe higher in the fourth quarter. There's still a lot of funding that has not been deployed from the government. We expect those balances to increase.
Got it. You think excess liquidity could actually increase a little bit next quarter before we see that more deployed next year with the loan growth. Is that a fair way to think about it?
Yes.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
Okay, perfect. All right, great. That's all I got. Thank you.
Thanks, Catherine.
The next question comes from Alex Lau of JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning.
Morning, Alex.
Morning, Alex.
Appreciate the loan growth guidance. Can you talk about loan competition in your markets as you look at that low double-digit range, both on the rate and credit structure competition front? Thank you.
Yeah, Alex. Sure. The competition is king. There are 4,000 banks out there. I think we all think that's too many. I joke about this all the time. We've got one market, there are only two banks in the market. Every time I talk to them, they tell me it's the most competitive market we got. Everybody thinks it's competitive. The fact of the matter, it is. I would say specifically, one, rates. Rate pressure right now is more competitive than what we see on credit structure. Occasionally, in times like this, you'll see relaxing of credit standards that we have, in times past, have found concerning. Greg, you might check me on this. I haven't seen that of late, a concerning relaxing of credit. We just pretty much don't relax our credit standards with cycles. I don't think we've seen credit relaxing.
No, I think you're right. I think it is very competitive, but as far as being flexible, we're always flexible, and we want to encourage good growth. I'm not seeing anything like you're talking about when in previous cycles where we call it's gotten crazy or loose.
Right. We have made that terse statement on these calls before. We're seeing crazy things or we're seeing loose things. We haven't seen that, frankly, this time. I think that's a very good thing. We are seeing brutal rate pressure. Okay? We're seeing brutal rate pressure. We have priced a competitive deal or two at the lowest price, the lowest rate terms, lowest pricing terms we've ever priced. Frankly, every one of them that we've done that on, we haven't won a single one. Somebody's bolder than we are there.
Thanks for the color on that.
Does that answer your question?
Yes, it does. Thank you. On the potential reserve releases, on the allowance ratio of 191, as economic conditions improve, do you have a range that you see that normalizing towards? Thanks.
I'll give you a couple of references. If we go back to FirstBank Standalone and Franklin Standalone, before the two companies got together, FirstBank Standalone was in the 110%-120% in terms of a reserve as a percent of loans. I think around 120%, I think is a reserve or allowance to loans. Keep in mind, that was pre-CECL. Franklin, I think, was a little higher than that because they have a higher real estate concentration, and so it would naturally be a little higher. If they were to say 150%, I would think it would be somewhere in that. Somewhere probably between those. Again, post-CECL, if you remember, so we've had a significant combination of two institutions.
We've added CECL in there, so we think it's somewhere probably in the 1-, I'll call it to 130%-160%, something like that, probably.
Thanks a lot for that. Just the last one, on your mortgage efficiency ratio of 80%, how do you think about that ratio going through year-end?
Yeah. The 80% in Q3, obviously was at about a $8.9 million contribution. From a $1 million-$4 million, you'd think that that'd push in low 90s. Really, I think as we've said before, Alex, our target in the mortgage space, 80%-85% in that range. For the year, I think we'll wind up right in that targeted efficiency ratio.
Thanks for taking my questions.
Yes, sir. Thank you.
All right. We appreciate it, Alex.
The next question comes from William Wallace of Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I just had two quick follow-ups. On the commentary that you just gave on the reserves to loans, whenever we get to the point where you guys feel comfortable that we won't have a rebound or bounce back in COVID pressures and you decide to start loosening up those Q factors, how quick would you anticipate we might get to that 130%-160% range that you anticipate we could settle out at?
Yeah. That's a tough one, Michael, so I'll let you answer. Michael runs that process, so I'll let him talk about it.
That's kind to say. I run it. Yeah, it's going to take a couple of quarters. I don't think you'd see it happen overnight. Certainly, there's a lot of moving parts relative to the model and the quantitative versus qualitative. I would expect over the next two to three quarters you'll see it return to that range.
Okay. Great. Thanks. That's helpful. Appreciate that. Just maybe trying to put a bow on the margin commentary. What I hear you saying is that the pipeline growth is promising. The conversations as you're budgeting for next year are promising when you think about loan growth. If we look at net interest margin and take into account the fact that you are anticipating pressures on the loan yields, do you think that growth in the loan portfolio and improving the loan portion of the earning asset mix is enough to maybe drive margin expansion? Or do you think that the yield pressures will offset that, and we could see on a core basis, margin contraction?
I think there's two factors working in 2022. One is continued addition of growth in the loan portfolio, and taking up some liquidity there. I think you could see some margin expansion from that. The bigger margin expansion I think comes when we get a rate increase, because we've got about $2 billion of adjustable rate loans that would adjust with a rate increase. I think the bigger expansion comes when that happens. Until either of those, as we add incrementally on the loan growth, like I said, you could see a little bit of expansion. We generally are going to bounce around the same margin where we are in a band that doesn't move up or down very much.
We still probably, over the next couple of quarters, we think we'll get a little bit of reduction on the cost side, but it'll be less than probably what we've got in the previous two quarters. We think that keeps it, as long as rates kind of bounce around where they are, keeps us relatively flat, but positioned to move up as rates that drive our adjustable loans up. As those rates move up, we'll move up with them on the margin side.
Okay. basically kind of flattish plus or minus, until we get some help from the Fed.
Yes.
Thank you. That's all I had. I appreciate it.
Thank you, William.
This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Chris Holmes for any closing remarks.
Okay. Thanks everybody for joining us. As always, we appreciate your interest in FB Financial, and we look forward to another quarter, next quarter of hopefully great results. Thank you.
The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation, and you may now disconnect.