Eagle Bancorp Inc (EGBN) 2023 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the EagleBancorp fourth quarter and year end 2023 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Eric Newell, Chief Financial Officer of EagleBancorp. Please go ahead.

Good morning. This is Eric Newell, Chief Financial Officer of EagleBancorp. Before we begin the presentation, I would like to remind everyone that some of the comments made during the call are forward-looking statements. We cannot make any promises about future performance. Our form 10-K for the 2022 fiscal year and 10-Q for September 30, 2023, and current reports on Form 8-K, including the accompanying earnings presentation slides identifies certain risk factors that could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those projected in any forward-looking statements made this morning.

EagleBancorp does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information or future events or developments unless required by law. This morning's commentary will include non-GAAP financial information. The earnings release, which is posted in the Investor Relations section of our website and filed with the SEC, contains reconciliations of this information to the most directly comparable GAAP information. Our periodic reports are available from the company online at our website or on the SEC's website.

I would now like to turn it over to our President and CEO, Susan Riel.

Thank you, Eric, and good morning, everyone. This last year presented many challenges through which EagleBank team persevered. I'm excited about the resiliency of our company in light of those challenges.

We quickly reacted to uncertainties that crept into the banking sector in the first quarter through the failure of some large banks. We were able to lean into our Relationships F-I-R-S-T culture and focus on and respond to what our customers needed from us in that moment of uncertainty. While we experienced a large deposit outflow in the early part of 2023, I'm thrilled that we reported total deposits at December 31 that were higher than the year-ago period.

I am proud of the EagleBank team and the strong and trusted relationships they have with our customers, our communities, and with each other. I am confident that we will be able to leverage those characteristics as we work to achieve our strategic initiatives in 2024. I touched on those initiatives in our third-quarter call, but it is worth highlighting again.

We have been and will remain focused on our deposit portfolio. Our goal in 2024 is to have a higher quality deposit portfolio with enhanced diversification. Successfully enhancing our deposit portfolio quality and growing deposits will allow us to reduce wholesale funding and enhance flexibility for pricing in dynamic interest rate environment.

During the year, we will work on enhancing our capabilities to leverage our branch network and better instill sales behaviors, building and improving our treasury management capabilities, services and products, and introducing a digital channel, primarily for deposit gathering efforts in and outside our footprint. We are working to grow our C&I portfolio relative to total loans. We have evaluated areas of opportunity to grow our team and ensure those teams are compensated on the appropriate incentive plans and growth and deepen relationships which can set us up for future years of portfolio growth.

Finally, asset quality will remain an important part for us in 2024. Our history shows that EagleBank has recognized asset quality pressures earlier than our peers. We've taken a conservative and proactive approach by reassessing internal credit ratings for credits exhibiting weaknesses in primary cash flows where those cash flows are our primary source of repayment. This increased our classified assets in the fourth quarter. Jan will speak in more detail about the actions we took in the fourth quarter, which in part drove a higher provision for credit losses and impacted our net income.

I am confident that our credit team will work with our borrowers to maximize collateral value while at the same time seeking to improve the credit posture of EagleBank through principal paydowns or enhancements on recourse and guarantors. Our team aligned with those workouts and surveillance efforts have up to 50 years of experience with CRE and have seen many deep downturns.

Our strong capital level positions us well in the face of economic uncertainty, and we have proven over the years to be good stewards of our capital through strong capital management. I am excited about the prospects of EagleBank and the team. A lot of progress has been accomplished over the last six months. The senior staff is working closely with the entire EagleBank team to position ourselves for sustainable growth with improved and consistent profitability for years to come.

While this upcoming year may throw us some curveballs, we will respond appropriately. Importantly, I am confident that we've identified the actions needed to be accomplished in 2024 to set us up for continued success. With that I'll hand it over to Jan.

Thank you, Susan, and good morning, everyone. Our credit teams continue to assess and work with our customers that are or might potentially be experiencing stress or future issues that could cause stress on a loan-by-loan basis, predominantly in our office portfolio. We make every effort to work with our customers to improve their opportunity to succeed and protect the bank through early outreach and intervention.

We had two notable events in the fourth quarter that impacted our provision expense. First, late in the quarter, we sold a multi-family construction, non-performing note that I've discussed in our calls the past two quarters. The note was at $39.5 million multi-family loan in the D.C. metro market. The property was nearing stabilization, however, there were significant impediments to a near-term resolution acceptable to the bank.

Our team assessed a multitude of disposition and remediation strategies and determined that our best course of action was to sell the note to an unaffiliated third party. We recognized the $5.5 million loss as a result of the note sale. An important factor in evaluating the decision to sell the note was the assessment of the time to remediate and dispose the property and the net present value of the carrying costs compared to the disposition value realized.

Second, we had a charge-off of $6.1 million recognized in our collateral shortfall from an updated appraisal on a previously performing substandard office loan. As a result of the collateral deficiency, the loan was moved to non-accrual in the fourth quarter.

Non-performing loans fell to $65.5 million at December 31 from $70.1 million at September 30, with the aforementioned office loan migrating into non-performing and the multi-family construction loan migrating out of the portfolio. NPAs were $66.6 million, which was 57 basis points to total assets. Loans 30 to 89 days past due were $20.7 million, down from $46.4 million at the end of the prior quarter. The decrease was due to migration of the loan into non-performing status at December 31.

During the quarter, the teams reviewed and conservatively reassessed internal risk ratings for loans where there may be some weakness or future weakness on the primary source of repayment as compared to how the project was initially underwritten. In many of these situations, we believe we are adequately collateralized based upon the recent appraisal and where we have guarantors with ample income and/or assets to supplement repayment. However, management felt it was prudent to downgrade these credits based upon the weakness in the primary source of prepayments. As a result of these efforts in the quarter, you will see an increase of special mention and substandard loans.

As you have seen throughout our disclosures in 2023, we've used modifications of the tool for working with our customers. Our modifications are generally extensions of maturity and are short in duration between 3 and 12 months. They may require one or more credit enhancements, for example, the establishment of a payment and other reserves controlled by EagleBank, sweep accounts to control excess cash flow, principal curtails, additional collateral, and/or other measures as being prudent in exchange for the extension accommodations.

Our office exposure will be a continued focus for the team in 2024. The expectation of lower interest rates improves the prospects for commercial real estate and will improve the prospects and remediation efforts of more challenged yields.

Office loans secured by non-owner occupied CRE credits were $949 million or 11.9% of the total loan portfolio at quarter end. These office properties are primarily located in the Washington, D.C. market, with 24.5% in the District of Columbia; 35.4% in the Maryland suburbs, 32.7% in Northern Virginia, and 7.4% located outside these markets.

For the fourth quarter, we had a provision to the ACL of $14.5 million. Driving this increase were losses on the note sale and the updated appraisal value on the substandard office loans. The ratio of ACL to loans at quarter end was up 3 basis points to 1.08.

With that, I'd like to turn it over to Eric.

Thanks, Jan. Net income for the quarter totaled $20.2 million or $0.67 per diluted share. Jan's comments just detail net income was meaningfully impacted by the provision expense of $14.5 million, increasing from $5.6 million in the previous quarter. Notwithstanding the higher provision expense, we are excited that we experienced continued core deposit growth in the fourth quarter, with deposits ending the year at $8.8 billion, increasing $432 million compared to $8.4 billion at September 30.

The team's efforts throughout the year helped us show year-over-year deposit growth at year end for the first time in six quarters. Brokered deposits declined by $67 million and were down to 27% of deposits. Our mix of deposits and borrowings at quarter end is now much closer to how it looked at the end of December 2022 before the market disruption in March.

At December 31, 2023, deposits of $8.8 billion compared to $8.7 billion at year-end 2022 and borrowings were $1.4 billion compared to $1 billion at year end 2022, due in part to our Bank Term Funding Program borrowings totaling $1.3 billion. During the quarter, we had relatively flat loan growth with loans up $52 million, but some of that was timing of existing construction loans funding at quarter end.

This was the reason for the reversal of the provision on unfunded commitments. Even with the increase in loans plus strong growth in deposits drove our loan to deposit ratio down to 90% from 95% the prior quarter. Net interest income totaled $73 million for the three months ending December 31, increasing from $70.7 million in the linked quarter, the first time in several quarters that we've experienced a period-to-period increase in net interest income. Contributing to the increase was stability in our cost of interest-bearing funding while also benefiting from an increase in the yield on our earning assets.

Interest-bearing liabilities benefited from lower cost borrowings. Since the start of the first quarter of 2024, management has taken actions to reduce some of our deposit rates on non-maturity deposits to reflect lower market rates seen late in the fourth quarter and into the new year.

Non-interest income totaled $2.9 million for the fourth quarter, a decline from $6.3 million in the linked quarter. The main driver of the decline was swap fee income and mark-to-market benefits from higher interest rates recognized in the third quarter that did not repeat in the fourth quarter due to lower swap activity and falling interest rates, in total, contributing $3.7 million of the decline in total non-interest income.

Non-interest expense totaled $37.1 million in the fourth quarter, relatively flat from the prior quarter. Salaries and benefits declined $3.1 million in the fourth quarter from the prior quarter due to truing up of incentives and lower salary expense. Offsetting the decline in salaries and benefits is increased FDIC insurance costs, increasing $1.1 million from the prior quarter. Impacting our FDIC premium costs at our level of modified loans, which increased the basis points of premium paid on deposits.

EagleBank was not impacted by the special assessment pursuant to systemic risk determination that was finalized in the fourth quarter. As Charles indicated last quarter, we expect to invest in the company in 2024 to achieve our strategic goals, but we did not -- but we do not expect a meaningful increase in our run rate of expenses in 2024 due to cost savings actions taken in 2023. This past quarter, efficiency was 48.9%, which compares well to our proxy peers.

We remain committed to identifying and executing strategies to find positive operating leverage. Starting this quarter, management will release its quarterly investor's deck along with earnings as you can see with our filing last night. In that deck, we provided insights to our expectations for full year 2024 performance. In future calls, we will update you as our expectations change. Our 2024 performance or expectations near Susan's comments on the strategic goals for the year, mainly with deposit growth and continued improvement in the mix of our funding and reduced reliance on the wholesale funding.

Lastly, capital remains a core strength of the company. Our tangible common equity ratio at quarter end was 10.12%, benefiting from lower market rates, decreasing our unrealized loss impact on capital. In the face of uncertainty with non-owner-occupied office market valuations, management believes it is prudent to gain more certainty before seeking approval from our Board on another share repurchase program.

With that, I'll hand it back to Susan for a short wrap-up.

Thanks, Eric. We are all excited about EagleBank's future. We have demonstrated our ability to improve the balance sheet and stabilize the earnings in market. We also continue to meet our commitment to our Relationships F-I-R-S-T culture, strong conservative underwriting, and peer-leading efficiency. We are committed to our heightened surveillance of and engage with our portfolio.

In closing our senior management team and I would like to thank our employees who work hard every day to make Eagle a success. With that, we will now open it up for questions.

(Operator Instructions) Casey Whitman, Piper Sandler.

Hey, good morning.

Hi, Casey.

Hi. So first, Jan, sorry if you mentioned this in your prepared remarks, but what is the remaining balance of that office loan that you partially charged off this quarter?

Hello. (inaudible) right around $20 million.

Okay. Thank you. And then sticking with office, I think last quarter you gave us the amount that was in substandard, special mention, do you have those numbers for this quarter just within the office book?

With office?

Yeah.

I have 130 in the office in special mention.

Okay. And what about substandard?

Okay, give me a minute around that total. I'll tell you that after I answer your question.

Okay. Would you say, though, that most of the move this quarter into the criticized was office or there? Or maybe walk us through some of the other classes that might be experiencing [market institutions].

Now in terms of the additions to the substandard category, a little over two-thirds were C&I loans. There wasn't much on the CRE side that moved into that category, the one office loans.

Okay. And then I had one more question about this. I mean, I guess the $950 million in office, like how much of that is currently on extension or in modifications? Do you have that number?

I think the modifications are disclosed every quarter. I can run a total on what was modified in the last trailing 12 months. Eric, do you happen to have that?

I don't.

We don't have it with us, but it will come out with the --

With the [8-K].

(inaudible)

Okay. Thank you. Appreciate that. And I really appreciate the outlook slide in the presentation. So you guys have done a nice job managing expenses over the last few years. So can you just walk through a little bit more about some of the puts and takes into what's going on -- going into the expectation you put in there for some expense growth this year?

Yeah, I think -- this is Eric, Casey. There's a little bit of just inflationary expense associated with salary as well. If there's actually probably a little more inflationary pressure on professional services in contracts more than even salaries at this point, as contracts, that sometimes have two to three years come up for renewal. We are seeing some more meaningful increases there. So I think that that's driving some of the increases in the salaries part, in the non-interest expense line.

Okay.

And we're also in orientation of growing some of the -- or executing some of the strategies that Susan mentioned. There is some additional people that we're going to add to the team throughout the year as well.

Got it. And then what kind of rate assumptions are you using to get to that margin outlook?

Flat. So we're not assuming any -- that's more just a decision that management made to not complicate things. So it's not necessarily our expectation of what's going to happen, but there's no assumption in rate change here. And then with one caveat in that deposit betas, there's some repricing there if we had some deposits that were repricing that current period or current rates that they would reprice up, but there's no expectation in rate change.

Okay. Last question. I mean, obviously, some really nice deposit inflow this quarter. Is there any seasonality there where we shouldn't be surprised to see some leg down, especially in that non-interest-bearing category in the first quarter, or is that not really the case?

Yeah. I think, historically, we've seen a little bit of seasonality where our DDA is higher at the end of the fourth quarter, and there could be some reduction here in the first quarter. Obviously, we're working on building new relationships and deposit growth, so we're hoping to see some of that. But I think from a historical perspective, there has been a little bit of the seasonality in the first quarter in deposits.

Okay. Got it, and we'll let someone else ask questions. And Jan, if you get that substandard office number, let us know. Thanks.

Well then.

Catherine Mealor, KBW.

Thanks. Good morning.

Good morning, Catherine.

Maybe one follow-up on just the credit conversation. Do you have the updated reserve for your office portfolio? And was there any changes specifically in that [office] (inaudible) had the higher reserve this quarter?

Yeah, I would say when we look at the office reserve, a lot of it is a qualitative overlay for us, not just because we haven't seen a lot of losses to date in the office portfolio from a quantitative perspective. And we're continually evaluating the adequacy.

And from that office perspective, the majority of that portfolio continues to perform. And as Jan said, office wasn't a primary driver of classified migration. And when we think about the overall ACO and how did it improved to 100 basis points of total loans coverage, we're obviously constantly looking at the adequacy of the office-based deals. And as our circumstances present themselves throughout this year, we'll close to what we need to do to continue to have an adequate.

Great. And so is there any way --? I know it does maybe a big range on this, but is there any way you can help us think about what the LTV is currently on your office book?

And as you're getting up to [nine] of just one credit, part of what drove (inaudible) part of why you charge it off when you had an updated appraisal. Just trying to think if there's -- if you're getting updated appraisals in that book, are you seeing that LTV on the overall portfolio starts to move up?

Catherine, every property is pretty unique, and it's hard to generalize about where an appraisal is going to come out. I think there's still a lot of price discovery going on in the market, so even appraisers are struggling with us.

It really depends on the characteristics of an individual property, what class of building is it, what kind of leases are in place, whether or not the property has a parking lot. For example, it could be a conversion to residential. What type piece of land, I mean, the worst possible scenario? Based on what I'm breathing, it's a Class C building that's vacant that has a zero lot line. Mercifully, I don't have any of those. But it's very hard to (inaudible)

Yeah. Okay. And then I think it's the first that Casey have asked, but I just want to make sure that the current modifications -- do you have that number? (inaudible) but generally, maybe what percentage of loans have had a modification in the past year or so?

We do keep our record of the trailing 12, but I honestly haven't looked at the number for 12/31. I don't think it's been hope yet.

Okay. And then would you think there'll be a big change from last quarter? Before last quarter, this quarter have a big change, or you're probably pretty stable on that?

I think it's going to be pretty stable because some of what you're going to see is that runs that we may be modified for 90 days, might have been modified again during the same trailing 12 as we put into place a longer-term solution. So even if it was modified during the quarter, it's already going to be in the path of trailing 12. So they wouldn't (inaudible)

Amazing. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, great.

And then maybe switching over to the margin, any just kind of big picture? I know that 250 to 270 margin guide assumes a flat rate environment. But if we start to see -- assuming you're well positioned in a rate cut scenario, just given your ability to bring deposit costs down, but what are you -- how are you thinking about the sensitivity and maybe the deposit beta on the way down that we should assume? Or how are you thinking about how much of that we could potentially see once we start to see rate cuts?

Yeah, in terms of how we model our sensitivity and what our approach to sensitivity, it's really more of a neutral positioning that you could add and still feel and get compensated appropriately enough to be liability sensitive, materially liability, or asset sensitive, or else we probably all be in different jobs. But (technical difficulty) our approach is to really be as neutral as possible.

But given some of the nuances of our funding profile, I would say that we are positioned quite well in a downward rate environment to passed along those any changes to market rates to those that are -- have funding with us. And in fact, I had it in my prepared comments, but we've already taken some actions earlier in January to reduce rates and deposits. And so we're going to continue that effort throughout the quarter even before the said -- potentially, if we could reduce rates.

Okay, great. That's all I've got. Thank you so much.

And you mentioned -- you asked the question about betas. I would say maybe in a future call I could probably talk a little bit more about our thoughts on betas in a downward rate environment.

And I know it's everyone's best guess, right? I think that's a big question of how this is going to react on the way down. But given you have one of the higher betas on the way up, my hope would be that you would have at least one of the higher betas on the way down on a relative basis, and we'll see.

I hope that as well.

All right. Thank you so much.

Christopher Marinac, Janney Montgomery Scott.

Hey, thanks, good morning. I want to leverage Catherine's question just to go a little bit deeper on PPNR, ROA. Eric, where you are now, do you see that gap narrowing the next year or two? And what are some of the best ways to get there?

Yeah. To me, when we look at our pre-provision net revenue, ROA, I think it really is a revenue story and largely spread. I mean, if you look at our non-interest expense to average assets, we're industry-leading there. And I think that's a testament to our commitment and focus on operational efficiency.

So I don't think we can cut our way to excellence. From my perspective, our focus strategically on deposit growth improving the composition of that deposits that will ease up on our funding costs, and our focus on ensuring that we get the margin on loans that the market is giving us, and our focus on that will help us on the asset side as well. We have about $300 million -- call it $330 million, $350 million that's rolling off the investment portfolio this year that will move into higher yielding assets as well. So I think that looking over the next 12 months on a PPNR basis, it's really going to be a spread story.

Got it. And then some of that also loan yield in addition to deposits and necessarily follow the funding piece.

Yeah. I think -- there's a little more visibility, which from my perspective, having only been here for three or four months on the funding side and seeing how we could really increase spread income by improving the composition and the qualities of our funding. We spent a lot of time as a management team over the last 60 days looking at spread and really understanding how we compare that competition and making sure that we're getting loan spreads that the market is giving us and assessing ourselves that way and making sure that our relationship managers are being compensated on profitability. So I do think that it's both sides of the spread calculation.

Got it. Thanks for that. And then Jan, just a question for you on the C&I migration, what's your general sense of the risk of loss on those loans maybe in general, just using history and how Eagle's performed with C&I in the past?

Well, I'll tell you, the migration is really I think a lot to do with the primary source of repayment focus and not really focusing on additional guarantor support. Obviously, the payments are being made, or they're showing up on the past-due record -- they are not. So I think we've been pretty darn conservative in the way that we are assessing this and highlighting it.

In today's economic and regulatory climate, I think there's a huge focus on primary source of repayment, and we're following that. I don't think it means that they are necessarily in worse shape than they were last quarter. It's a change in the way that we are evaluating though.

And is this the first quarter of that, or could you remind us how long you've been instituting this new discipline?

This is the first quarter of that.

Okay. That's helpful.

Great.

Thank you for taking my questions.

Sure.

Thanks, Chris.

Thank you. And I am showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn it back to Susan Riel for closing remarks.

We appreciate your questions and you taking the time to be with us on this call today. We look forward to speaking to you again next quarter. Thanks, and have a great day.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.