Dime Community Bancshares Inc (DCOM) 2022 Q3 法說會逐字稿

完整原文

使用警語:中文譯文來源為 Google 翻譯,僅供參考,實際內容請以英文原文為主

  • Operator

  • Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Dime Community Bancshares, Inc. Third Quarter Earnings Call. We will begin shortly . (Operator Instructions). Thank you for your patience. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Dime Community Bancshares, Inc. Third Quarter Earnings Call. My name is Charlie and I'll be coordinating the call today. We will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the presentation. (Operator Instructions). Before we begin, the company would like to remind you that discussions during this call contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Secretary Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any such statements, including set forth in today's press release and the company's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, to which we refer to you.

  • During this call, references will be made to non-GAAP financial measures as supplemental measures to review and assess operating performance. These non-GAAP financial measures are not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information prepared and presented in accordance with the U.S. GAAP. For information about these non-GAAP measures and for a reconciliation to GAAP, please refer to today's earnings release.

  • I will now hand over to your host, Kevin O'Connor, Chief Executive Officer, to begin. Kevin, please go ahead.

  • Kevin M. O'Connor - CEO & Director

  • Good morning. Thank you, Charlie, and thank you all for joining us this morning on our third quarter earnings call. With me again are Stuart Lubow, our President and COO; and Avinash Reddy, our CFO. We're proud to report this was another strong quarter for Dime Community Bank. We generated net income of almost $38 million or EPS of $0.98 a share, an increase on both a linked quarter basis and year-over-year. This success was the result of another impressive quarter of strong net loan growth, expanding margins and prudent cost control.

  • Our results further illustrate our execution capabilities and the quality and structure of our balance sheet in a rising rate environment. I have to again give full credit to each of our 800-plus employees on delivering record loan growth and 10% year-over-year EPS growth.

  • Capitalizing on the strong loan pipelines we have discussed on prior calls, we grew net loans in excess of $450 million. Loan growth this quarter was weighted towards multifamily, an asset class that has performed extremely well for us over many credit cycles. The quality of originations remain strong and are focused on the appetite loan growth in the face of an uncertain economic environment.

  • As we begin putting together our budgets for 2023 and beyond, I'm confident our team will continue servicing and growing our loan portfolio. Over the past year, we bolstered Dime by hires of revenue producers and support staff from banks in our footprint impacted by merger transactions. Stu, I'm sure will provide more color on this as well as our current pipeline and the mix in the Q&A. Apart from strong loan growth, we continued to execute well on sect of our strategic plan priorities. -- managing our cost of funds and prioritizing NIM expansion, prudently managing expenses and as always, maintaining solid asset quality.

  • Our Q3 deposit costs were only 23 basis points as we continue to outperform the industry and certainly our Metro New York City competitors. Our cumulative total deposit beta for cycle-to-date tightening has been approximately 10%. Our relatively lower betas have been driven by the significant level of noninterest-bearing deposits on our balance sheet. This remains the clear differentiator for its other community banks in our footprint. While many banks across the country witnessed notable declines in DDA deposits this quarter, we were able to keep balances fairly stable. The improvement in our loan yields more than offset the increase in deposit costs and contributed to linked quarter margin expansion.

  • Our core efficiency ratio this quarter was 44%, and on a year-to-date basis, we've operated at approximately 47%, well within our stated goal of operating at sub-50% regardless of the prevailing environment. Asset quality remains very strong with NPAs representing only 34 basis points of total assets. Abi will provide some detail on the loan loss provisioning of his comments. Suffice to say, we feel very comfortable with the level of reserve and the overall health of our balance sheet.

  • Thus far, we have not seen any meaningful early warning indicators of credit deterioration. As you know, Dime's credit losses have been well below the bank index over multiple cycles. Underpinning our strong historical credit performance has been our bulletproof multifamily portfolio that comes through every cycle on scale, including the pandemic and do shutdown of New York City. The LTV on this portfolio, representing 39% of our entire loan portfolio is less than 60%. We continue to believe this portfolio will outperform in any recessionary environment.

  • Turning to capital. We continue to repurchase shares in the third quarter while still supporting significant balance sheet growth. Similar to the rest of the banking industry, rising rates did impact the fair value of our AFS portfolio, contributing to a $23 million decline in AOCI. Despite this, tangible book value per share increased $0.14 this quarter. Regulatory capital ratios remained strong as our Tier 1 leverage stood at a healthy $8.61 for the third quarter.

  • As we said before, our low-risk balance sheet performs favorably in stress testing relative to the industry, providing us with the opportunity to grow our balance sheet and be active on the capital return front.

  • To conclude my prepared remarks, we had a strong quarter. Our balance sheet is well positioned to produce strong returns in any economic environment as evidenced by our quarterly and year-to-date ROAs of over 1.2% and this quarter's return on tangible equity of over 17%. The quarter's results and momentum make me even more excited for Dime's future. We are delivering on the opportunities in front of us as a true community commercial bank, highly focused on being responsive to market conditions and our customers' needs. As you can expect, we're well underway in our annual budgeting process and look forward to sharing our 2023 outlook with you on our next call in January.

  • At this point, I'd like to turn the conference call over to Avi, who will provide some additional color on our quarterly results.

  • Avinash Reddy - Senior EVP & CFO

  • Thank you, Kevin. Our reported net income per common for the third quarter was $37.7 million. Excluding the impact of gain on sale of a branch property, adjusted net income to common would have been $367 or $0.95 per share. The reported NIM and the adjusted NIM for the quarter was $3.38. This represents approximately 9 basis points of linked quarter margin expansion. A couple of housekeeping items. Net accretable balance from purchase accounting currently stands at approximately $1.8 million, while purchase accounting accretion was fairly immaterial this quarter, as mentioned previously, there could be lingering impacts on the income statement in future periods, depending on payoff activity on premium and discount loans.

  • Included in the 338 margin for this quarter was 3 basis points of prepayment-related income. Given the significant increase in market interest rates, we expect prepayment fees to dry up in the quarters ahead. We grew average deposits by over $300 million in the quarter while keeping our cost of deposits relatively well controlled. The average cost of deposits increased by only 23 basis points compared to the second quarter. The spot rate on deposits at quarter end was approximately 47 basis points. We are again pleased with our deposit beta significantly lagging the level of Fed fund increases in the third quarter.

  • That said, given the rapid pace of rate increases, we do expect deposit betas to increase from the low levels seen cycle to date. Offsetting future increases in deposit costs is the repricing opportunity on our loan portfolio. As you'd expect, given the current interest rate environment, we continue to proactively manage our loan pricing. The rate on our total pipeline is approximately 525 and new additions to the pipeline on the high 5% to low 6% area. This is significantly higher than our existing loan portfolio rate of 4.33%. While there'll be a lingering impact of deposit cost catch-up even after the Fed stops hiking, the medium- to longer-term opportunity for us is to reprice our loan portfolio at new origination rates, which are approximately 150 to 200 basis points above the overall portfolio rate.

  • Moving over to expenses. Core cash operating expense, excluding intangible amortization for the third quarter came in at $47.9 million. Annualized expenses on a year-to-date basis have been below our expense guidance for the full year 2022. We remain highly focused on expense discipline while making necessary investments in our franchise and have built this into our culture on a very granular level.

  • Noninterest income for the second quarter was approximately $9.4 million. Included in noninterest income was $1.4 million from the sale of a branch property. Of note, we expect revenue from the back-to-back loan swap program to pick up in the fourth quarter compared to third quarter levels. I would also note that this quarter was the first time the company was subject to the Durbin Amendment cap on interchange income, which reduced our interchange fees by approximately $600,000 for the quarter. This is the final material headwind we faced from crossing the $10 billion asset regulatory test.

  • Moving on to credit quality. Our provision for the quarter was $6.5 million. The provision for the quarter was primarily due to a change in Moody's economic forecast that drive our loan loss reserve model. In addition, we had strong loan growth in the quarter of over $450 million. Needless to say, we are comfortable with the level of reserves on our balance sheet. Our existing allowance for credit losses of 81 basis points is still above the historical pre-pandemic combined levels of the legacy institutions. During the third quarter, we bought back approximately 200,000 shares at $30.97. We believe share repurchases continue to be attractive given our current trading levels. With that said, growing our balance sheet and supporting loan growth in our clients are the first and best use of our capital base.

  • As a reminder, our balance sheet performed very favorably on the stress testing and provides us ample flexibility to continue growing the balance sheet and returning capital to shareholders. We will continue to manage our balance sheet efficiently and our tangible equity ratio of 770, including the full impact of AOCI and 836 excluding the impact of AOCI is within our comfort zone.

  • To conclude, we look forward to ending the year strong and providing you our thoughts on 2023 during our earnings call in January.

  • With that, I'll turn the call back to Charlie for questions.

  • Operator

  • (Operator Instructions). When preparing to ask a question, please ensure you are muted locally. (Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from Mark Fitzgibbon of Piper Sandler.

  • Mark Thomas Fitzgibbon - MD & Head of FSG Research

  • Hi guys good morning. Just to clarify, I missed what you had said about the pipeline. Did you say how large the pipeline is currently?

  • Stuart H. Lubow - COO & President

  • So Mark, it's Stuart. The pipeline is today at $1.8 billion, still very robust. The average yield -- weighted average rate on that pipeline is about $5.28. And it's really quite diversified at this point. Probably the largest portion of that is C&I at $425 million. Our owner-occupied CRE has grown to $365 million. And again, getting back to the weighted average rates on the C&I portfolio, the weighted average rate of 610 CRE portfolios at about 5% on the owner-occupied. So we're really moving away from multifamily. The total multifamily pipeline at this point is about $300 million with only $170 million in new application and the weighted average rate on that is about 520.

  • And our rate today on the multifamily is about 6 3/8%. We're really kind of cycling and rotating sectors now that we have a very strong C&I group and all our teams in place. And our plan is to really keep multifamily relatively flat as previous time had done and really focused on growing the other sectors. We think the multifamily portfolio is a very strong risk-adjusted assets, but we do have other now opportunities to really grow the C&I book, which is a floating rate portfolio and also provides us with more deposit balances. So still very strong. And overall, we're very pleased with how the fourth quarter has started in the first month, and we expect a very strong fourth quarter.

  • Mark Thomas Fitzgibbon - MD & Head of FSG Research

  • Okay. Great. And then secondly, Avi, could you share with us the term and rate on that $520 million of Federal Home Loan Bank advances you guys booked this quarter?

  • Avinash Reddy - Senior EVP & CFO

  • Yes. So Mark, the way our FHLB portfolio structure is after around $600 million in our book. $150 million of that is longer term with 5- to 6-year durations. The cost on that is around 80 basis points. We had locked that in upfront. The remainder is really overnight to 1 month on the FHLB side. We kind of use that as an asset liability management tool in terms of making sure we get to outcomes that we want. So at the moment, it's fairly short ton, the FHLB book.

  • Mark Thomas Fitzgibbon - MD & Head of FSG Research

  • Okay. And I think you said the deposit betas thus far have been around 10%. When you do your modeling for the full cycle, what are you assuming for deposit beta?

  • Avinash Reddy - Senior EVP & CFO

  • Yes. So Mark, the way most models work is they kind of base it on what historical experience was. And so you go back and look at both legacy companies and do a blended beta we were somewhere between 28% and 30%. I think that being said, if you go back in time and look at the first 250, 300 basis points of rate hikes in the past, we've completely outperformed this cycle so far with having only a 10% beta. So the simulation you see in our 10-Q are probably closer to 30%. In reality, I think we've said our guidance was around 45% cumulative total deposit beta through the cycle, and we're reasonably comfortable with that at this point. Now obviously, rates are up a lot more than when we started giving the guidance initially, but I think we're still sticking with that 25% total deposit beta over the cycle at this point.

  • Mark Thomas Fitzgibbon - MD & Head of FSG Research

  • Okay. And lastly, I heard your comments about the tangible common equity ratio. But optically, it does start to look a little light if you're growing fast and buying back stock. I guess I'm curious, how low would you be willing to take that?

  • Avinash Reddy - Senior EVP & CFO

  • Yes. We don't really look at that, Mark, in terms of our internal budgeting process. We really base our capital return on stress testing and our portfolio, honestly, it's as strong as it's ever been. The first and best use of capital is always growing the balance sheet. So to the extent we have double-digit loan growth, we'll do a little bit less on the buyback. But earning a return on assets of 125, as Kevin said, high-teens return on tangible equity, there's going to be a lot of capital to do a lot of good things with it. And we continue to believe the stock is very cheap at these levels and given our earnings profile. So I think the other part of our capital structure is we do have preferred in our capital structure. The way we do think about it is our tangible equity is $770 and even with the AOC impact, and that's very healthy when you look at us compared to the industry.

  • Mark Thomas Fitzgibbon - MD & Head of FSG Research

  • Avi, I know you don't like to give margin guidance, but should we assume that based upon what you all see, the margin should sort of slowly rise from here with remixing and repricing?

  • Avinash Reddy - Senior EVP & CFO

  • Yes. I think we've been -- we've been very happy so far, Mark, with how we've performed. I think we've always said we're a moderately asset-sensitive bank. You go back the last 2 or 3 quarters, the margin was up 5 basis points, 10 basis points. We got 20% to 25% of our balance sheet floating rate loans, obviously, when the Fed reprices, those are going to go up immediately. So look, I mean we're happy with how we've done so far. Again, the opportunity is really repricing the whole loan portfolio. And again, I'd point you to our EVE disclosures in our 10-Q, which really takes into account the full repricing of the whole portfolio, just cash flows of assets and liabilities and you go to the start of the year, our EVE disclosure was the economic value of equity was around $1.2 billion back then. In our latest 10-Q, it's somewhere between $1.7 billion and $1.8 billion. So we feel like we've created around $500 million of franchise value by keeping deposit costs as low as we can. So obviously, we're monitoring competition, but we're very happy with where the NIM is. And again, as Kevin said, our balance sheet is really set up to perform well in any rate environment really.

  • Mark Thomas Fitzgibbon - MD & Head of FSG Research

  • Thank you.

  • Operator

  • Our next question comes from Matthew Breese of Stephens Inc.

  • Matthew M. Breese - MD & Analyst

  • Good morning. A few questions. Maybe first, could you just talk a little bit about -- I don't know if I saw it the prepayment penalty income for the quarter and then how in this rate environment, how the duration on multifamily and commercial real estate has changed? Just curious what the assumed duration of that book is now?

  • Stuart H. Lubow - COO & President

  • To Yes. So I mean at this point, Matt, the prepayment fees have really dropped to historical low levels. I mean I think in the last month, we were down to about 4% on an annualized basis. In June and July, we were in the 20% -- excuse me, in July and August, we in the 20%. So I mean, as expected, as rates have gone up and the market has really moved in terms of multifamily book, prepayments, refinancings have dried up. Purchase transactions are on the wane. -- and we expected that. So our view going forward is we're not expecting over the next 12 months, a lot of prepayment fee income.

  • The duration -- what we are seeing is a lot of our book is repricing at the contractual amount. Most of our deals were 5 plus 5, and they reprice at $2.50 to $2.75 over the corresponding treasury and a lot of those are repricing. The cash out market is really dried up to some degree. The good news is our average LTV on our portfolio is about 59%, and it's a very strong and seasoned portfolio. So that's really where we are on prepayments and what our expectations for the next 12 months are very limited in terms of prepayment fees.

  • Matthew M. Breese - MD & Analyst

  • Got it. And then just thinking about on the reset and as loans kind of go from rates we saw 2017, 2018 into the 5% or 6% range now, particularly for rent-regulated multifamily, which hasn't been able to see the rent increases of the market rate apartments, have you seen any stress or could you give us some color on debt service coverage ratios on those loan resets?

  • Stuart H. Lubow - COO & President

  • Yes. So our average debt service coverage ratios are about 1.5% on our multifamily book, which is, as I said, about 58%, 59% LTV. So from that perspective, we have not seen any stress. Our delinquencies are probably at all-time lows in that portfolio. So we really have not seen any stress there. In terms of underwriting, even going back several years when the whole rent control issue became materialized in terms of New York City rent control increases. We had, at Dime had increased our debt service coverage ratio requirements going back because we expected that landlords are going to have a hard time raising rent.

  • Subsequent to that, in the recent past, obviously, the rent stabilization Board have allowed landlords to increase rates. So that's actually helped. But at this point, we have not seen any stress in our portfolio. And going back in time, as I said, we have taken steps to really be a little more rigorous in terms of requiring higher levels of debt service coverage in terms of new originations going back 2, 3, 4 years ago, and that's proving to be the right decision now.

  • Avinash Reddy - Senior EVP & CFO

  • Matt, the other thing I'd say, obviously, you can look at our asset quality. I mean, so far, there's really nothing in the multifamily book that's over 60 days past due. The other thing that I would add is back in 2018, so those are the loans that are resetting in 2023, right? But that's the time legacy Dime moved away a bit from the multifamily market to remix the whole balance sheet. So we only have around $350 million to $400 million of those loans that are repricing next year. So it's a smaller piece of our overall portfolio. We've done a lot of originations in the last year, obviously, and those ones are not going to reset for another 5 years, and those are very strong DSCR ratios going into this. And we have the hindsight of the pandemic. So we have a lot of reserves and things like that associated with individual loans when we make them 6 months of coverage, things like that. So we feel very comfortable overall.

  • Matthew M. Breese - MD & Analyst

  • Understood. I appreciate all the color there. Maybe going back to loan growth. I don't have it at my fingertips, but the $1.8 billion pipeline, does that support the kind of growth that we've seen over the last couple of quarters, call it, double digits to say the least. And then within that, just thinking about some of the components, 2 areas have been surprised by in terms of strength has been resi growth, which has been higher than we've seen over the last year or 2 and then multifamily as well. I'm just curious overall loan growth and then those 2 portfolios, in particular.

  • Stuart H. Lubow - COO & President

  • Yes. I think overall loan growth in the near term will sustain. Look, if you go back to mid-summer, I think our pipeline was about $2.9 billion. Now not all of those deals come to fruition and make it through to a closing. But -- so the overall total pipeline is down as expected given the current rate environment. But I think in the near term, we expect to sustain that growth.

  • Over the longer term, as I said earlier, we don't expect to see the growth in multifamily. We're really kind of rotating sectors and looking more towards the C&I booked where we have really increased our population and our teams in terms of relationship managers and our opportunities. And as far as the residential portfolio, we're basically doing $10 million a month. It's really solid A paper residential arms. The average yield or weighted average rate on that is in the 5s right now. So it's a good asset. We have no delinquencies, a paper. And we expect that to continue. And that's really all purchase paper.

  • Obviously, the refinance market has really dried up. And it's, for the most part, nonconforming because the Fannie Mae fixed rate market, we sell our Fannie and Freddie fixed rate product into the secondary market, but that's really slowed down. So it's rotated into portfolio arms. And we expect that to remain constant over the coming year.

  • Avinash Reddy - Senior EVP & CFO

  • Yes. Matt, I think both those asset classes are where payoffs have slowed more than the relationship-based portfolio, right? I mean just on regular multifamily and residential. So it is natural that you're going to see some additional growth there when payoffs slow down.

  • Matthew M. Breese - MD & Analyst

  • Okay. And then Avi, just thinking about the other asset components here. securities were down a little bit this quarter, a little less than last quarter, but I just wanted to get a sense for how much you're thinking about using securities cash flows to go into loans and if we should expect kind of a similar pace of decrease in the securities portfolio going forward?

  • Avinash Reddy - Senior EVP & CFO

  • Yes. I mean, look, I mean, we did purchase some securities in Q3. I think we're always opportunistic around the securities portfolio. I mean we like managing the balance sheet with having around 8% to 10% in liquid assets that are not encumbered. So 2023, we probably have $125 million of cash flows from the securities portfolio. But really 2024 and 2025 are the big years for us because we did -- when we sold our PPP loans last year, we put that into 3- and 4-year treasuries, and that's all coming due. So look, in the near term, we feel like yields are attractive on the securities portfolio. We may look to purchase some towards the end of the year into next year because at some point, rates go back down, everybody is then going to be buying at much lower yields. So I think we feel very comfortable from the liquidity side. At the end of the day, we want to support loan growth and we want to manage our deposit costs. So it's kind of a dynamic moving target over time.

  • Matthew M. Breese - MD & Analyst

  • Got it. Okay. I'll leave it there.

  • Operator

  • Thank you. As another reminder (Operator Instructions). Our next question comes from Chris O'Connell of KBW.

  • Christopher Thomas O'Connell - Director

  • Morning. Circling back to the multifamily discussion. I hear you on the long-term growth becoming more flat. But in the near term, I mean, should that continue to be a pretty strong driver? I mean, so far this year, it's the strongest category, and it sounds like with a decent pipeline in prephase fall into near 0 here that it could continue to be a good driver for the next couple of quarters.

  • Stuart H. Lubow - COO & President

  • We really control that. Multifamily is really a commodity priced product. And so we've determined, given our pipeline, the size of the pipeline and the ability to diversify and focus a little bit more on higher-yielding relationship-type businesses, particularly in the C&I world that our pipeline can certainly support growth the kind of growth we've had over the last several quarters and just be in a maintenance road on the multifamily side.

  • Certainly, it's elastic, it's price dependent. And if we determine that we want to move in that direction, we certainly have the ability to move pricing slightly and move origination growth significantly. So for us, we really are focusing on a relationship-based businesses like C&I, like owner-occupied CRE that come with balances and total relationships and multifamily tends to be more of a transaction. Good business, good risk-adjusted business, good credit. But we think this is the right time to kind of slow that part of the business down and move toward the other relationship-based businesses because we have the ability to do significant amounts in that in those other sectors.

  • Christopher Thomas O'Connell - Director

  • Got it. That makes sense. And with the multifamily that's on the portfolio, that will be coming off, call it, over the next 12 months or so, even with balances flat, what's the spread in terms of what's falling off into what it's repricing into?

  • Stuart H. Lubow - COO & President

  • So what's coming off, is that in the $375 million range and what's coming on is in the mid-5% range. So there is a net pickup in terms of margin in that business.

  • Christopher Thomas O'Connell - Director

  • Great. And switching gears to the deposit side, good great flows this quarter in terms of product mix as you guys are moving forward here rising rate cycle. Are you starting to do a little bit more in terms of the CDs in money market? Are you running any specials there or kind of strictly focused on the core deposit growth?

  • Avinash Reddy - Senior EVP & CFO

  • Yes. So of course, so we did a small special in the second quarter, just to test out our capabilities. It's very successful. We raised around $200 million pretty quickly then. I think the one point that maybe gets lost not deposit numbers because we don't have the breakouts in our press release, but we have grown business deposits by $200 million on a year-to-date basis. And we've grown municipal probably by 100 to 150. We've seen some outflows on the consumer side, a lot of it managed where we've allowed higher cost CDs or higher-cost money markets to leave the bank. So look, we may go back into the market at some point to replace some of those lost consumer deposits. But I think underlying everything here is growing business deposits. And the consumer book is going to reach -- it was going to reach a stability point regardless at some point. It's probably down to 30% of our overall base. When we put the 2 companies together, we've probably close to 40% to 45%.

  • So I think in the near term, sure, you could see some additional CDs on the balance sheet. I think in the medium to longer term, as to said, growing C&I, growing on or occupied. It's really about growing business deposits and keeping our overall betas pretty low.

  • Christopher Thomas O'Connell - Director

  • Got it. And on the credit side, I was hoping you could give a little color around the drivers of net charge-offs this quarter. Just any update in terms of any pockets of concern that you're seeing in the market? You mentioned the pipeline is pretty well diversified. And I guess, anything that you're seeing kind of in the local economy that you're trying to stay away from.

  • Avinash Reddy - Senior EVP & CFO

  • Yes, nothing of concern, Chris. I mean the charge-offs of 15 basis points, so pretty low. There was a couple of operational items with the with 1 or 2 PPP loans that we had. So it wasn't really part of the core portfolio. We just did a cleanup this quarter and moved on. The balances on our PPP portfolio is down to less than $10 million. So really a bit of cleanup, nothing that we're seeing overall. Our classified assets, and you'll see this in our 10-Q disclosure that's coming out next month.

  • We started the year with a relatively higher level of classified assets than a lot of peers because we believe we did the right thing in terms of classifying some of the assets during the pandemic because they were not cash flowing when a lot of deals just put them into watch. We've actually seen around a $300 million decline in our classified assets year-to-date. And so we're really not seeing any specific areas at this point. Credit is pretty good. Our stress testing is probably producing better results now than they were 3 and 6 months back. So not really seeing anything on this point.

  • Christopher Thomas O'Connell - Director

  • Okay. Great. And then on the opening comments, I think I'm going to miss it, but did you say -- did you change the expense guide for the year? Because I think you're running a touch below?

  • Avinash Reddy - Senior EVP & CFO

  • No. I think we just said we're happy with where we are, and we're running below the guidance for the year. We generally provide annual guidance. And look, this year, I think we're going to beat the guidance, and we're happy with that. So we'll just see where Q4 ends up.

  • Christopher Thomas O'Connell - Director

  • Got it. All right. Great.

  • Avinash Reddy - Senior EVP & CFO

  • Thank you.

  • Operator

  • Thank you, Chris. (Operator Instructions). Our next question comes from Manuel Navas of D.A. Davidson.

  • Manuel Antonio Navas - Assistant VP & Research Analyst

  • Hi good morning. I just wanted to follow up on thinking about the NIM trajectory. With kind of the longer-term repricing opportunity, would you see the NIM kind of flat -- stabilize when the Fed stops raising rates or kind of still be able to keep going? If we assume the Fed raises rates and stops, could you still have some further NIM expansion?

  • Avinash Reddy - Senior EVP & CFO

  • Yes. Manuel, we don't really give trajectory guidance in the longer term. I think what we'd say is, look, we're moderately asset-sensitive bank. We're happy with the performance so far. I think like everybody else, when the Fed stops, there's always a catch-up in deposit cost, but that happens every cycle for every bank that's out there. But that being said, we've set the balance sheet up to Tata in a great environment. And I think we guided to getting to a 1.25% ROA. We're pretty much there at this point, slightly below. But it's really growing the balance sheet, servicing our customers and producing the right returns. I think we're overall comfortable. We're going to work on making sure our deposit costs continue to lag the peer group. And I think that's the focus for all of us over here.

  • Manuel Antonio Navas - Assistant VP & Research Analyst

  • Okay. I appreciate that. Just I might have missed this. On the end-of-period basis for deposits, what kind of drove the slight decline? I know you were up on an average basis on the end of period. relief on loan growth with deposits, just as a follow-up.

  • Avinash Reddy - Senior EVP & CFO

  • Yes. I mean you all have customers at the end of the quarter, sometimes coming full balances and I mean at the end of the day, as average balance of what drives the income statement. So we're more focused on that. Look, I think in terms of our loan-to-deposit ratio, we're running at 96%, 97% right now, we're comfortable where we're at. It's all about supporting our customers, and we'd ideally like to fund it 100% with core departments. So that's always the plan.

  • Manuel Antonio Navas - Assistant VP & Research Analyst

  • Okay perfect. Thank you.

  • Operator

  • (Operator Instructions). At this time, we currently have no further questions. I'll hand back over to Kevin O'Connor and the team for any closing remarks.

  • Kevin M. O'Connor - CEO & Director

  • Well, thank you, everybody. I appreciate your interest in Dime. I think, hopefully, from the presentations we've made and the way we've answered the questions, we're pretty optimistic about the future for us and look forward to and if there's anything specific that has not been answered, please give Ava call. So have a great day. Thank you.

  • Operator

  • Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.