Thank you all for joining us. Well, we've got quite a few questions to roll through, a nice conversation in 25 minutes. We'll get started here. Larry, why don't we just set the foundation?
Sure.
Give us a little on your background, a little on MVB.
Sure. My background started in the Big Four, KPMG. I started out in accounting, did both tax and audit. From there, I went into banking, became a CFO. From there, I eventually landed with one of my former clients at KPMG who started MVB Bank in 2000. I joined in 2005. In 2009, I became CEO and have been CEO since 2009.
A little bit on MVB.
MVB started out in West Virginia. We're now in 40 different states. We have employees in 40 different states and clients in 40 different states. We focus on fintech, but we do have legacy bank. We have two verticals that we focus on. On the legacy bank, we have traditional deposit gathering. We're branch light, seven branches. As far as lending, we do the traditional CRE, C&I in our region, which would be Northern Virginia, West Virginia. On the fintech side, we focus on payments. We work with the big guys like Fiserv and Worldpay, and larger organizations like that Nuvei, Global, et cetera. That's where we get our deposits, Non-Interest Income i t's a great niche for us t he payment business is a multi-trillion-dollar business, and we like to play in that space. It's a specialty.
It takes a lot of compliance, it takes a lot of tech, and we've decided to focus in that area. But additionally, we do gaming. We're one of the first banks, actually the first bank in gaming. When I'm talking about gaming, I'm talking about DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM. We have 43 digital gaming clients i t's been a great niche for us w e not only do operating accounts and things like that, but if you, for example, place a bet at DraftKings that money will go into MVB. We set up the structure. We have learned secrets since 2008. We were the first bank in. And so it's been a good run for us, and it continues to grow. There are 38 states that legalized sports betting.
What's changed dramatically is prediction markets, and even though those states that have not gone legal on sports betting, prediction markets has opened up in those states which it's not a bet it's a prediction. There is a dramatic difference as far as the law goes t hat has been tested 3 0 states have lawsuits against the prediction markets, Kalshi and Polymarket in particular, and the prediction markets have won those first two cases, but the Supreme Court will decide that. We are banking that as well, and it's been very positive as far as our growth. The last piece of fintech is Banking as a Service w e have our largest clients, Credit Karma, Intuit. We have 6 million clients w e work with them on 66 million tax refunds a year, and it gives us a lot of scale.
We stay below $10 billion so that when we work with clients like Credit Karma/Intuit, we have the Durbin Act, which gets them a higher fee on their transaction processing. They like banks like MVB. It's been a six-year relationship. We have three years left on our contract, and we expect to continue to develop that relationship and get deeper into what we would call Specialty Lending, that fintech lending. That's the last thing we do is Specialty Lending and fintech lending on the fintech side, where we do everything from Litigation Finance to working with insurance companies, et cetera. That's MVB.
It's an incredibly dynamic.
A mouthful. Yeah, exactly.
Had a lot going on, a lot of changes.
Yeah.
As investors take a look at the business they're always interested in what's the earnings-generating capacity. What do the next few years hold? Where do you see MVB headed over the next few years?
Patrick, we're pretty excited. The world has changed, I think as we all know, since January of 2025. The regulatory environment has changed dramatically. Fintech banks have a large regulatory commitment w e have committed dramatically to AI w hat I mean by that is for example to be able to handle clients that are fortune 500, fortune 100 clients, you have to have the capacity. We use AI to do that f or example we had 160 people in compliance and risk. Now, with AI and what we call digies are what we call digital workers s ome would call them bots w e now have 32 digital workers, and we've taken that 160 in compliance and risk down to 90, and we're even a much better organization with less people.
On the operating side, we have operating leverage, so our expenses are staying flat, that we have dramatic growth. When you see us on the deposit side, you'll see excellent growth coming from the payment side. We have 52 clients in our fintech pipeline for payments, et cetera, and that will help us grow both Non-Interest Income, and it'll help us to grow deposits. Lastly, the last catalyst is what we call Specialty Lending w e continue to grow in that area t hat's another large pipeline y ou'll continue to see excellent growth on the lending side for us. In that Specialty Lending, we believe even though it yields higher, it has lower risk based on loan deposit ratios, based on underwriting. It's what I would call the underserved commercial market. It's more complicated, so it does take a specialty w e have that specialty that helps us do it.
Those are the catalysts, from the Non-Interest Income driving to the Non-Interest-Bearing Deposits. We have 40% Non-Interest-Bearing Deposits, which is in our peer group, it's normally around 20%. Those are what's driving the catalyst for EPS, which is our North Star growth over the next several years, a good place to be.
When you talk about the peer group, some of the partnerships you have, the names you're bringing up from the Fiservs to the Kalshi, and enormous organizations.
Right.
On the branching side, more like a community bank.
Right.
I think this is very atypical. Would that be true? Who is the peer set?
Our peer set, we would look at The Bancorp, they're a big payment bank o f course they're a one-branch bank. The other one would be Pathward t hey're another organization t hey're a one-branch bank. Coastal Bank out of Washington State would be another peer t hose are the kind of specialty organizations that focus on Banking as a Service, that focus on payments. We do honor the legacy side, and it's important to us, but the fintech side is where we're seeing the massive growth.
With that, what are the key metrics you judge yourself by?
Our key metrics are what we call the North Star it 's our earnings per share w e focus on earnings per share. There's three pieces of earnings per share that we really look at i f you look at the trend, I'll call it the trend is our friend, Patrick.
Yep.
If you look at Net Interest Margin, you'll see an excellent trend, and we expect the trend on Net Interest Margin to continue. We're seeing lower deposit cost and higher loan yields w hen you look at Non-Interest Income, I told you about the fintech pipeline. We see Non-Interest Income growing every month, and we see that to continue for the next several years based on that pipeline. The third measure is Non-Interest Expense. We see Non-Interest Expense staying flat even though we have leverage. Those four metrics, one, Earnings Per Share, Net Interest Margin drives Earnings Per Share, Non-Interest Income drives Earnings Per Share and Non-Interest Expense drive that. That's what we really follow.
Got it. When you're looking at future partnerships, when you're bringing people on, I assume you're looking at how those are going to impact those metrics. What are some case studies of some recent partnerships and how those have helped drive it?
Yeah. We have something called REVO. REVO is the way we will measure a client relationship. REVO is looking at risk. It's looking at opportunity cost. It's looking at the value of this client. If you look at that, for example, we work with Fiserv very closely with a client like NAPA. NAPA will do $21 billion worth of payment volume. They'll have 8,000 stores. We work closely with them on onboarding, so it's a nice deposit play for us, as well as a Non-Interest Income play. It really helps both the client and our partner, Fiserv. Those are some of the examples there. On the tech side example that we're really excited about and happened to show you the MVB innovation, we have a subsidiary called Edge Ventures.
The reason we call it Edge Ventures is that we want it on the edge of the bank. Reason being, bankers are traditionally ultra-conservative w hen we put it on the edge of the bank, we don't want the bank to screw it up. I say that nicely, and I say that with respect w e want it to operate as a venture capital company. One of our first investments was four and a half years ago into a company called Victor. Victor's focus was on APIs and also on ledgering as well as some compliance. Well, this started on the back of a napkin four and a half years ago. We continued to grow it w e hired 17 developers it really started to go well for us, and it started to differentiate us in the payments space.
We needed to have tech to compete with the Bancorps of the world, the Pathwards of the world, the Coastals, the Cross Rivers. We developed this as our own tech, and it really made a difference it really made a difference, too, if you would talk to the CFO of DraftKings, the first thing he would pull up is something called webhooks that came out of Victor. It was his first software choice in his company to monitor all the APIs because they were live numbers constantly i t was his measurement. Anyway, we got approached by our processor, Jack Henry, who like Fiserv, et cetera, wanted to improve their payment processing side. They made us an offer for Victor that we couldn't refuse. After four and a half years, we monetized that investment, but stayed closely in contact with Jack Henry.
We still use 100% of Victor, but we now went from 17 developers to their 2,000 developers, and we'll take Victor to the next level. We'll continue to use that with our client base, but have a partnership, a shared revenue with Jack Henry on where we work, and I think it really is a case study of innovation of how we play in the space.
That's tremendous. A nice segue as you look at all the things you're doing internally, maybe a little bit about the culture of the bank and how you think about it.
Yeah. Culture's extremely important to us, the first thing that we talk about on every all-hands call, every meeting that we have with clients, the meetings we have with investors. In our first meeting with ICR, I went off on this, and they said, "Oh, okay." It's a little different, I think. The different thing is our purpose. Our purpose is to be trusted partners on the financial frontier, committed to your success. We talk about that every day t here's three pieces to that piece o ne is trusted partnerships, two it's the financial frontier, which is fintech, and three you're looking at commitment to success. Those are the three things. That's great, Larry, right? You have that, and it sounds like this big vision and purpose that you have. How do you validate that? How do you live that?
How does your team be able to execute it? Well, we have five values that tie to those three pieces of our purpose segment. The first one, to be a trusted partner e veryone in this room has a trusted partner. It may be your spouse, it may be your work people, work partners, it may be a good friend, right? Trusted partnerships have three pieces. When you're looking at three pieces in a culture and three pieces in a relationship which are valuable, they have, and I'm going to use the L word, it has love, trust, and commitment. Now, I'm not talking about love that you have with your spouse or your kids or something like that. I'm talking about something called agape love, which is that caring, that relationship, et cetera. You have love, trust, and commitment.
Do you care about me? Can I trust you? Are you committed? That's what everybody wants in a trusted partnership. That's what we have with our teammates t hat's what our teammates have with us t hat's what we have with our clients t hat's what our clients have with us. That's what you have with your spouse, and that's what you want back. If you do not have that, you may have a partnership, but you don't have a trusted partnership. I think that's critical in every relationship, and that's what we want to have, and that's what we work and strive hard to have inside our culture. The second one is the financial frontier. The financial frontier is changing dramatically. Fintech is changing every day, every second, and it's changing the world of finance.
If you look at AI, et cetera, if you're not on that, if you don't have our fourth value, Love, Trust and Commitment is the first three, the fourth value ties to the Financial Frontier, and that's adaptivity. If you're not adaptive, you won't survive on the Financial Frontier a daptivity. Charles Darwin, like him or not, said it best w hat he said was, "It's not the smartest or the strongest of a species that survive, it's the most adaptable." We have adapted tremendously e specially, I'm telling you, to continue to grow people with the clients that we had wasn't going to work. Our operating leverage would've been lost, and our expenses would've went crazy t hat is our fourth value. Our fifth value is Teamwork. Commitment to success takes a team.
Just like a village to raise a child, it takes a team for you to be successful with your client base, with your teammates, with your communities, with your shareholders. We have teamwork, that we work together to make that happen. That's our culture. We take it very seriously. We talk about that every time we're together. We have all-hands meetings e ven though we're a virtual company, like I said, we have employees in 40 different states, we have clients in 40 different states, we do come together several times a year as the whole company. We meet in Dallas, Texas w e meet in Dulles, Virginia, Reston area. We meet in West Virginia, and we talk about this stuff. We have a monthly all-hands meeting. We talk about it. Culture is very, very important, Patrick. Thanks for asking the question. That's a big differentiator for us as well.
One final question I have, or opportunity for you, and then maybe we'll open it up for questions from the crowd. I'm sold. You've got me excited. Maybe you could synthesize for the group. These people are sitting in on a lot of different presentations today.
Yeah.
Why you and not one of the other presentations? What makes an exciting investment opportunity?
Patrick, what I look for, and I think a lot of the people in the audience probably look for, are catalysts. What I want to see is what's this company's earnings catalyst? We know where they are today, but where are they going? I think if you look at our Big Three, you look at our margins, okay, our Net Interest Margin, you're seeing that trend continue to grow. It's growing because we're able to reprice deposits down, a lot of non-interest-bearing deposits. Just where interest rates are, we're able to reprice deposits down. We're also able to get better yields on our loan side because we're willing to do Specialty Lending, which is making a commitment. We brought in a p erson like [Joe Medea], who leads Specialty Lending for us.
He comes out of an iBank, he comes out of an insurance specialty, and he knows that area, and he nails it. It's a lower risk, but a higher yield for us. That's a big catalyst t he second catalyst is what I talked about on the fintech pipeline. We have 52 clients in that pipeline a s we bring those over, you continually see deposits grow, and you'll see Non-Interest Income grow. You see our AI commitment w hen you see a company able to reduce expenses, and it's a four-year journey to get to where we are today y ou have to have a great clean Data Lake, which it took us a year and a half to do. That's why a lot of banks aren't there yet, because they haven't put their Data Lakes in, because garbage in is garbage out.
We've been able to flatten out our expenses and keep them at a level where we have growth. To me, when you're looking at the drivers of earnings per share, I think MVB has a wonderful future. We're excited about it, and I think we're in a niche that can really drive shareholder value. We're a screaming buy. Of course, that's coming from your CEO, who's one of the largest shareholders, but the screaming buy is we're a little under book value. I think when you look at companies that we talked about in our peer group, like a Pathward, a Coastal, a Bancorp, they're at 3 times book. That's where I see there's a ton of value for MVB.
Nice arbitrage. Questions?
You said you have 32 AI workers. Why is it 32? I guess, what makes you determine, are you going to grow that number even more, getting a better understanding of that?
Absolutely. The digies come from one financial analysis w hat we do, we have a AI product that we use, software that we use, very similar to Waymo. Every teammate has this product on their desktops w hen you go in there, they'll come through like Waymo does. You'll have the driver drive and Waymo, the technology, predicts what it's going to do and then records what it's going to do to eventually where there's not a driver. You have it all technology.
We're going through that process now. We've only been through the first phase of that, and that's where the 32 digies came. We believe there's a lot more digies that will be created based on this process. It's very widely accepted in our company. We're not intimidated. We always want a human in the middle in a lot of this i t won't be just humanless. We believe that we currently have 450 teammates. We'll have some reduction, but we'll be at a level where we're able to grow and not have to add people. I think that's the critical part of the digies th e 32 is just the start.
Yes.
Just curious, after the Victor's exit, what's the current vision or status of Edge Ventures? Are you looking to incubate more product internally, like Grant, or are you trying to bank more, or investing more like external fintech companies like Flexia, I don't know, Flexia Payments?
Right. We had a successful exit of Victor, as you said. Our next phase will be what we're creating in AI. We have a lot of peers that are looking at what we are doing, and we think that we can go ahead and sell that into the market. We'll be very particular on which ones we plan to sell into the market w e're working with some AI companies as well that will help us sell into the market. That's our next phase of Edge Ventures, is working with AI and helping banks using our model that has been successful of how they can reduce their cost and risk, compliance, operations, et cetera. More to come from that side of Edge Ventures. We're excited about it.
Other questions? Yes, sir.
Is there any data that you can also monetize, or is this purely regular, like [Victor] or anything like that you can sell to others as well, like third-party data? Is that now part of the model, or is it too regulatory?
It's too regulatory and also the commitment to our large clients that we will not use their data.
Sure
In that way. Yeah, you're right. We won't. We have a ton of data from the gaming industry. We have a ton of data from Intuit Credit Karma, but we're not able to sell that.
For your AI digies, did you hire someone that would be in charge of leading that program? Do you store that data in-house or do you use a cloud provider?
On the AI, the evolution there was we first started with Snowflake. That was our database or our Data Lake. We went to riskCanvas. That was the AI first step, and then we went to an outside company here in New York called WorkFusion, that got us started on the digies. They created six digies for us. While we were creating that, we hired a team of six engineers that would come in and create the in-house digies much cheaper and do that. We do, for example, we use Claude l ike Claude. In French class, it was Claude. Anyway, it kind of sounds better in a way. We use Claude for that. We have an agreement where they'll not replicate our information, things like that. We are stored on the cloud with those relationships. Did I cover everything? Is that everything you asked?
Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. That was the evolution. Now we have six, and we'll probably add six more people in the AI area in the next year. Absolutely. They do it. We have 175 licenses for Claude, so they're on the team using it. We're using it every day. It'll continue to expand past that 175 as we continue to educate our team.
I think we're at time, but Larry and his colleagues will be here all day.
Yeah
Please.
Thank you.
Find him. Thank you.