WSFS Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:WSFS) Q3 2019 Results Conference Call October 22, 2019 1:00 PM ET
Company Participants
Dominic Canuso - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Rodger Levenson - President and Chief Executive Officer
Steve Clark - Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Banking Officer
Conference Call Participants
Frank Schiraldi - Sandler O'Neill
Michael Perito - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods
Russell Gunther - D.A. Davidson
Joe Gladue - Alden Securities
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the WSFS Financial Corp Third Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session [Operator Instructions].
I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker for today, Dominic Canuso, Chief Financial Officer. Sir, you may begin.
Dominic Canuso
Thank you, Towanda, and thanks to all of you for taking the time to participate on our call today. With me on this call are Rodger Levenson, President and CEO; Art Bacci, Chief Wealth Officer; Steve Clark, Chief Commercial Banking Officer; and Rick Wright, Chief Retail Banking Officer. Before Rodger begins with his remarks, I would like to read our Safe Harbor statement. Our discussion today will include information about our management's view of our future expectations, plans, and prospects that constitute forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from historical results or those indicated by these forward-looking statements due to risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to, the risk factors included in our Annual Report on Form 10-K and our most recent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q as well as other documents we periodically file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All comments made during today's call are subject to the Safe Harbor statement. With that read, I'll turn the discussion over to Rodger Levenson.
Rodger Levenson
Thank you, Dominic, and thanks again to everyone for joining us on the call today. In the second full quarter since the closing of the Beneficial acquisition, WSFS reported solid operating results with core net income of $52 million and core earnings per share of $0.98, both increasing approximately 10% when compared to the second quarter of this year. These results drove a core return on assets of 1.66% and a core return on average tangible common equity of 16.93%. Dominic will be providing additional commentary on our results in a few moments. Similar to the last two quarters, we have provided an earnings release supplement posted on our website. The supplement includes additional details on our financial performance as year-over-year comparisons are impacted by the timing of the Beneficial acquisition. During the third quarter, we completed the last major milestone of the Beneficial integration with the very successful brand and systems conversion over the weekend of August 24th and 25th.
This was a very large and complex project, including the closing of 20 retail office locations. Combined with the sale of five retail offices to the Bank of Princeton in May, we have now reduced our retail footprint by 25 locations. The remaining five retail location closures of our original branch optimization plan will occur by the end of 2020. We are pleased with our progress on Beneficial and the entire WSFS team is enthusiastic and very well positioned to deliver on the promise and opportunity from being the largest locally-headquartered bank in the Greater Philadelphia and Delaware regions. I will now turn it over to Dominic to provide details on our financial results.
