Primis Financial Corp (FRST) 2025 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. My name is (Inaudible), and I'll be your conference operator today.

At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Primis Financial Corp Third quarter earnings call.

(Operator Instruction) I would now like to turn the conference over to Matthew A. Switzer, Chief Financial Officer.

Good morning and thank you for joining us for Premise Financial Corp's 2025 Third quarter webcast and conference call.

Before we begin, please note that many of our comments during this call will be forward-looking statements which involve risk and uncertainty. There are many factors that cause actual results to differ materially from the anticipated results or other expectations expressed in the forward-looking statements.

Further discussion of the company's risk factors and other important information regarding our forward-looking statements are part of our recent filings with the Security and exchange Commission, including our recently filed earnings release, which has also been posted to the investor relations section of our corporate site, Premisebank.com.

We undertake no obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect changed assumptions, the occurrence of unanticipated events, or changes to future operating results over time. In addition, some of the financial measures that we may discuss this morning are non-GAAP financial measures. How a non-GAAP measure relates to the most comparable GAAP measure will be discussed when the non-GAAP measure is used if not readily apparent.

I will now turn the call over to our President and Chief Executive Officer Dannis J. Zember.

Thank you, Matt, for that introduction and thank you, to everybody that's joined our conference call this morning.

We believe our third quarter results reflect much of what we've been talking about in recent quarters, and we're excited to see the improvement and the lack of noise, Honestly, in the current quarter. For the current quarter, we are reporting $6.8 million in net earnings at about $0.28 per share, which compares to core income of $2 million and $0.08 per share in the same quarter in 24.

Our ROAA and ROATCE in the current quarter improved to 70 basis points and 9.45%, respectively.

We mentioned this in the press release and I know Matt's going to give more current or more color, but our current profitability levels are higher than what we are reporting. When we adjust for some certain items that we know aren't permanent, we see a core ROA that's closer to the 90basis points to 90 basis points and puts us right in line to be successful reaching the 1% ROA that we've been targeting.

I know Matt's going to give more details on that, but from a high level, I want to recap some of the impactful things that happened this quarter and that give us the confidence that a 1% ROA is within reach. First, we're reporting our core margin in the in the quarter at 3:15, which is up from 3.12% in the second quarter of this year, but up about 35 basis points compared to a year ago.

At this point, we've replaced about half of the loans that we sold with the life premium business a year ago at yields that are at least 200 basis points higher. Importantly, we have, importantly, we have the pipeline and the momentum to get the remaining portfolio replaced.

And with current levels and margins that we see across our business, we expect that to add another 6basis points to 8 basis points of ROA and about, excuse me, of margin. And improve pre-tax earnings by about 1.6 million per quarter.

We've also driven results on the deposit side. Compared to a year ago, we've grown non-interest-bearing checking accounts by about 16%.

Which has materially improved our deposit mix and taken our cost of deposits down by almost 20%.

At the end of the quarter alongside the rate cut by the FOMC we're able to move lower again on the deposit side across our footprint, across our business, both digital and in our core business. And thanks to our focus on core relationships, we've experienced very strong retention across the bank.

Very little of this last move is reflected in our results due to the timing at the end of the quarter, but we expect this to be meaningfully positive to our margin and our results in the 4th quarter.

When I look through the improvement in margin, I see new asset yields holding in strong, being funded incrementally at very attractive levels. Matt, I know has more details on this, but in the current quarter, our new and renewed loans came in at about 7.16% compared to 7.57% in the second quarter of this year. New deposit mix.

Excuse me, new deposit business.

Is a mix of us competing hard on new businesses, commercial businesses, and driving down the overall cost with new checking accounts.

New deposit business came in at around 2.51%. And so taken together, our new activity across the entire bank, all of our divisions produced spreads of about 4.65%. These kinds of incremental margins on balance sheet growth is important because we're still relying on operating leverage to drive our results to where we know they should be. Our table in the press release reflects how steady we have been on operating expenses, showing that we came in at just $100,000 or so from our five quarter average.

Looking ahead, we're confident that we can continue to hold growth in OpEx to a very minimal level, managing very tight in this environment and letting the investment that we've made in past quarters pay dividends with growth at the attractive levels we've talked about.

On our operating divisions, real quickly, I'm getting pretty excited about the investments we've made tied that are tied to residential mortgage.

We've built our mortgage division from about 20 million a month of production to about $100million to $120 million a month over the past few years. We've done this profitably too, slowly reinvesting enough of our earnings to build our production staff to what it is today.

We've focused on culture and service as well as just products and pricing, and all of this work continues to pay dividends. In the third quarter, we were, we had continued recruiting success that built annual production by about another $120 million or 10% of where we stood at the beginning of the quarter.

Core results for the quarter showed pre-tax earnings of about $1.9 million which is 58 basis points on closed volume and our strongest quarter yet.

For core results in mortgage, we are excluding some legal fees associated with some recent hires that totaled about $900,000 and we expect this to moderate back to normal levels very rapidly.

Mortgage warehouse continued to grow nicely and continued and shows real problems for the bank and for our earnings. To illustrate this, we had average balances in the quarter of about $210 million.

But ending balances of about 327 million.

Today, we have over a billion dollars of uncommitted lines approved and in place, and a pipeline of new opportunities working through the system of about $300 million.

For the quarter, the warehouse group showed pre-tax earnings of about $1.6 million and moved their efficiency ratio down to about 27%.

Long-term and at scale, this business can be 2times to 3 times its current size on our balance sheet with operating ratios that are creative across the board. And taken together with our mortgage company, we have the ideal, we have ideal and sustainable exposure to residential mortgage that produces fee income and balance sheet growth, that nicely augment what our core bank is doing.

Panacea, continues to gain steam and momentum. Loan balances moved higher in the current quarter to $530 million on average compared to $385 in the same quarter a year ago.

Deposits, what's what's really impressive, growing, at a faster rate, ending at about 132 million in the current quarter, which is about 50% higher than they were a year ago.

Importantly, panacea's cost of deposits reflect a blend of technology, customer service, and deep brand endorsement. For the current quarter, their cost of deposits came in at 1.37%, lower than our core banks and compares very nicely to 2.28% in the same quarter a year ago. I have, obviously, I have a lot of conviction.

About the kind of value that we're creating here, because the industry deeply values traditional community and commercial banking and Honestly, rightfully so.

And while panacea and what we're doing here does have somewhat of a fintech flair to it, operating nationwide with deep embedded technology versus physical branches, it's producing dynamite credit results focused on C&I and owner occupied CRE with excellent yields to one of the most, if not the most coveted customers out there.

And it's funding the balance sheet at extremely attractive levels, lower than most established community banks. Strategies like this in the past didn't garner meaningful value because they focused on real easy credit and funded with flimsy or expensive solutions like CDs or institutional borrowings. But Tyler and his team have focused on relationships and technology and a customer experience that's proven to be more meaningful.

Lastly, before I turn it to Matt, for some more details, a few comments on credit. We noted in the last quarter that, we've had a few downgrades that were centered on loans that weren't delinquent, but did have weaker prospects and weaker guarantor support. Our negative exposure to two office real estate properties in the Northern Virginia market are reflected in our quality numbers, with both being in substandard and one being in non-accrual.

Both properties have improving NOI and strong leasing activity, but tenant improvements, leasing commissions, and rent abatements have stressed the borrowers cash levels and their ability to support the property.

These properties are ideally situated outside of the district in very desirable locations, and it's important to note that the market here.

It's stable to slightly improving compared to areas inside the District of Columbia.

The remainder of our non-accruals are centered in two loans. One is a $7.5 million dollar loan to a private equity backed company with proven value. Recent capital raises for the company indicate a strong enterprise value that puts us at about 35% loan to value. Mats impairment testing on the company using pretty deeply discounted cash flows continue to show no impairment, on this loan. The other loan is a nationwide operating business with positive debt coverage that's working several strategic opportunities to either be recapitalized or sold. On both of these loans, the bank's working with the borrowers to exit the relationships through sales or refinance. And at this point, we don't believe there's additional losses or cost to be incurred.

Outside of these properties, we really have virtually no exposure to office in any of our markets, but especially the DC metro area. That is still not operating ideally.

I don't want to minimize or gloss over any credit issue, but I don't believe we have exposures that should be causing problems or costs going forward.

Okay, with that Matt, I'll turn it to you.

Thank you, Dennis. As a reminder, a discussion of our financial results can be found in our press release and investor presentation located on our website and our AK filed with the FCC.

Beginning with the balance sheet, gross loans held for investment increased almost 9% annualized from June 30 to September 30th, including the panacea loans reclassified to health for sale, gross loans would have increased approximately 15% annualized, led by growth in panacea and mortgage warehouse. Importantly, average earning assets increased 10% annualized in the third quarter, positioning us to fully replace the earning assets sold a year ago with the life premium finance sale.

Deposits were flat in Q3 due to limited runoff at the end of the quarter after the Fed rate cut, but were still up 7% annualized using average balances for the quarter.

Even more impressive non-interest-bearing deposits increased 10% annualized in the quarter with a strong contribution from the core bank and mortgage warehouse.

As Dennis discussed, our focus has been making sure we execute on the strategies that drive the ROA higher from here, which we've done. Our net interest margin in the third quarter was 3.18%, up from a reported 2.86% last quarter and 2.97% in the year ago period.

We had limited impacts on the net interest margin and this quarter from the consumer program and expect that to be the norm from here.

The margin was impacted by interest reversals on loans moving on accrual in the quarter and would have been 3.23% on an adjusted basis without those reversals.

We're still booking new loans with yields near 7%, and we have a substantial amount of loans repricing later this year and next that will continue to move yields higher and help the margin.

The core bank cost of deposits remains very attractive at 173 basis points in the quarter, down 6 basis points linked-quarter. In addition, we use the Fed cut in late September as an opportunity to move digital rates down more aggressively by lowering rates 35 basis points at that time, which should benefit us meaningfully in the fourth quarter.

Our provision this quarter was a small release driven by growth in the loan portfolio tied to categories with lower reserve requirements, low core charge off activity, and the release of reserves for moving a portion of the panacea loans to help for sale.

Non-interest income was 12 million in the quarter versus $10.6 million in the second quarter when excluding PFH stock sale-related gains, with increased mortgage revenue as the primary driver.

Mortgage revenue and profitability bounced back in Q3 with pre-tax income of approximately 1.9 million versus 0.1 million in the second quarter, and which had been impacted by costs tied to new teams onboarded at the end of March. To give you a sense of the scale we're building a mortgage, we funded 59% more loans in September of 2025 than we did in September of 2024.

We also closed 26 million of construction of term loans in the quarter where we won't see material profitability at closing, but generate a tractive gain on sale revenue in a couple of quarters.

On the expense side, when you exclude mortgage and panacea division, volatility and non-recurring items, our core expenses were 21.6 million versus 22.3 million in the second quarter.

There are a handful of items described in the earnings release that are one time in nature, but don't rise to the definition of non non-recurring for reporting purposes in total of approximately 1.8 million, including one more month of technology contract savings.

Normalizing for these items, core non-interest expense was approximately 19.8 million, putting us only slightly higher than the year ago quarter.

We are laser focused on driving that number down further, even in the face of inflationary pressures that would otherwise move it higher.

In summary, as we detailed in the earnings release and investor presentation, our reported ROA was 70 basis points in the third quarter.

Adjusting for the expense items we just highlighted, pre-tax earnings were close to $11 million and ROA would have been approximately 90 basis points in Q3.

With growth and repricing of earning assets, pre-tax earnings will grow to over 13 million in the near term, which equates to our 1% ROA goal with upside still from there.

We're pleased that the third quarter showed meaningful progress on profitability with much fewer, many fewer, one-time items that had masked our core earnings power before.

As I stated last quarter, we have substantial tailwinds from here that get us to strong profitability ratios without Herculean efforts, just straightforward blocking and tackling.

We recognize that one quarter is not considered a trend, but we firmly believe that we are seeing that trend play out and look forward to demonstrating our earnings power from here.

With that operator, we can now open the line for Q&A.

(Operator Instruction) Russell Gunther, Stephens Inc.

Hey, good morning, guys.

Hey Russell, good morning.

Morning. I wanted to begin on loan growth, please, and would be helpful to get your guys' thoughts about how you're thinking about overall growth for the fourth quarter, given maybe some potential mortgage warehouse seasonality, continued consumer runoff, and then thinking ahead into 26 as well in terms of order of magnitude and and mix.

Russell, I'll start and Matt can.

That can correct me, probably. .

I think I think on mortgage warehouse, we're proba, we've got so much potential and so much still kind of, maturing there that I think what's probably at scale, we would have more runoff in the 4th quarter. I don't know that we're going to have that same kind of runoff. I don't, again, we we only averaged 200 million or so.

I think 210 million in the second quarter, excuse me, 3rd quarter. I think we can sustain those levels. Maybe the, where we ended the quarter, we might not sustain that. Matt, Matt's probably got a little deeper understanding there. I think for panacea, H1stly, we could probably take the panacea loans to whatever level we want the.

I think an annual production capacity there is probably about what their balance sheet is. We've got, some other parties that are going to take some of that.

Production And Matt and I don't really want, panacea to take over the whole balance sheet, but I think we're ending at 5:50. I think we may sell a little bit of those loans in the fourth quarter To, sort of get into some of the flow agreements with the larger bank, the third-party. But I think for next year, 150 million or so, I think is definitely possible there.

And on the core bank, I've, I think we probably could squeeze out 767, 8% growth there. I think for all of next year.

If you're asking me, I think this point in time next year, we could be.

Comfortably, call it 10 to 12%. Matt what do you.

What's your thought? Yeah.

I agree with all that and I mean, a lot of our growth this quarter was mortgage warehouse related. We would normally expect some seasonality, but as Dennis mentioned, I mean, they're still on the growth path in terms of adding customers and lines. So even though utilization may drop some in the 4th quarter. The additional lines they're bringing on is going to offset some of that growth. So they'll they'll probably be up some on an average basis, in the fourth quarter.

Okay, that's great color, guys.

Thank you. And then, my next question was in regard to slide 11 of the deck, kind of two parts. One, the timing of when you'd expect to get to that 330 margin that you say is average earning asset driven. I think maybe just expand upon, what you are referring to when you talk about continued shifts and deposit makes will then become a focus.

Go ahead, man.

Yeah, I mean, well, I think we'll be closer to 330 margin, as we exit this year, so probably first quarter next year. And then the deposit mix change is, I mean, we've talked about this for a couple quarters now and you, I mean you can see it in the balance sheet results. We are 100% focused on increasing our proportion of non-interest-bearing deposits. We have all.

I wouldn't say long-term goal, more of a medium-term goal to have that number closer to 20% of total profits. It's about 20% in the core bank, but we want it to be 20%, for the entire, institution.

So, 26, that is a focus of ours, just like it has been in 25, getting non-paring.

Percentages up.

So that's really the remixing we're talking about.

Russell, I'd had to I would add that if you look at the bank as a whole, I mean, we've probably got, we have, there's no probably, we have more technology and more strategies focused on driving low cost deposits.

At a pretty fast clip, than we do on the loan side. And we've got pretty notable loan strategies between Warehouse and Hennessy and life business, life premium business that we sold, but vibe in and around our markets is driving massive, pipelines and massive success. I mean, we've looked our peer group is up 5% in checking accounts and we're up 16%. And I'd attribute some of that to, what we're getting in the lines of business vers as well as, in the core footprint. So we really believe that our long-term value here sort of being as, being unique is centered more on the deposit side than the loan side. Right now, we're driving real success in the margin and With replacing the earning assets, as Matt's showing you here in this graph. But I think as soon as we sort of tap out on replacing all those assets, the thing that will drive it is what Matt was saying, getting, the deposit mix situated right thanks to some of the technologies that we got at play.

Got it. Okay.

Very helpful, Dennis Matt, that's it for me. Thanks for taking my question.

Thanks Russell.

(Operator Instruction) Christopher Martin, Janney Montgomery Scott.

Thank you very much. Thanks for hosting us, Matt and Dennis. I wanted to ask about deposits, and Dennis, the point you made on deposit costs incrementally, with interest rates going down, does that get harder to do, or does it get more easier or flexible for you to drive more deposits in at kind of the appropriate rate to push up margins?

I guess it really could go either way. I think the, you look at our universe or our competition.

Chris, I mean, a lot of them are sort of looking at.

Falling rates, the Fed cuts, they're looking at that to be, I mean, the whole industry H1stly has been looking at that to be the sort of driver to get some of our margins back. So we suppose, Matt and I both suppose that the competition is going to be using most of that to get the biggest beta possible. I think the fact that we're driving as many checking accounts into the bank lets us be. Sort of more aggressive on, business money markets, business checking, consumer, even CDs and still sort of maintain a cost of deposits that's at or below our peer group and.

I mean, we, we're more of a growth bank, so we have to sort of balance, where we're bringing in, or where we have things priced.

Versus just straight for profitability. So that checking account growth is absolutely key to us keeping.

Deposit flows at the right level. Matt and I don't want to fund a balance sheet with brokers CDs and institutional borrowings like for Homeland bank. We want to be core funded.

And we don't want that to, eat into the margins or the operating leverage we want. The only thing we can do to stay competitive and we're very competitive.

I are those checking accounts. And the fact, and as long as we're driving checking accounts in at sort of better than 10%, I think we can be very competitive on the rate oriented products, Chris, and still punch out good growth and good profitability.

Got it. That's helpful, Dennis.

Thank you. And I guess just kind of another point, because you've now been doing the digital bank, process for several quarters, a couple of years now. Are you finding evidence that these are more sticky customers, which is really differentiating, premise from the rest of the pack?

100%. And Matt can, give you more color here, but I mean, our average customer.

Has over $50,000. They, the average customer, I think we're right, maybe a month from having an average customers deposit relationship for two years. Over 90% of our customers have either more than one deposit account with us or more than one product, or they've referred a customer.

Unquestionably, these are stickier than what the industry believes. Chris, I would still caution you though.

We, these are not customers that are in the branch. These are customers using a digital experience that's by far better than what most banks are rolling out.

Still, they're more rate sensitive than the traditional community banks. So, community bank customers. So.

We're not going to get ahead of ourselves and push, TRY to push these rates down to, Fed funds minus, 150. That's not going to be these customers. But we've moved rates 3 or 4 times now. Matt can correct me, and we've got retention rates over 90%.

Matt, what, help me make sure I'm right on most of that.

You're 100% right. And, as I mentioned in my marks, Chris, we were aggressive after this last, be cut because we were seeing.

Still growth and balances without any advertising and, based on our read of the deposit base, it looked like we were probably a little bit high, relative to the rest of the market. So we actually had, we cut rates a little bit more than the Fed cut in September, and we did see a little bit of runoff, but nowhere near the runoff you would have expected, from a deposit base that was truly.

Hot money based or or rate sensitive. I mean there were some, rate sensitive customers in there, but frankly no more than we would have in the core franchise, so we're pleasant, pleasantly surprised with how sticky these deposits have been as we've lowered rates with the Fed and.

We, it's a, it's been a very valuable funding source for us and as we talked about in previous quarters, allowed us to protect the core bank deposit base, which is still very low cost and and very sticky.

Chris, I'd add one more thing speaking on a panel.

A few weeks ago and people were asking about digital. And, the industry, and I mean, I'll be H1st, I had this too. The industry believes that kind of digital customers that you never see or touch, have some sort of hotness to them, hot money.

Honestly, every customer, we have 20,000 customers, maybe 25,000 when you include, all the lines of business, every single one of those customers has a banker and every single banker's cell phone is in the hands of every single customer.

We're available to them 24/7 is what we pitch, our bankers and our call center, we offer premium, banking products we offer the full suite of banking products. I mean, yes, the digital products are deposit oriented, but if any of those customers.

Needed anything, loans, deposits, loans, mortgages, he likes, anything. We would, we.

Are ready to do that. That's the reason, H1stly, that they're sticky. I don't think that the industry is wrong about.

Whether these customers are sticky or not or rate sensitive or not or how rate sensitive, I think.

I think we just sort of neutralize that by working hard to just to build relationships with these customers and sort of, I guess I hate to say it, but sort of community bank style.

And I think that's been successful and really we're proving it out with what Matt just said.

Understood. I had a, asset quality question, which is the, and thanks for the information you gave on a couple of loans. Do you see any of those being resolved in the next, 234 quarters, and even though it's only a few basis points of margin difference, do you see any of that helping you in the next few quarters?

The larger C&I.

The C&I property that's sort of the operating business.

I think there's a chance that could be resolved, sold, potentially, the business sold or recapped.

In the 4th quarter.

That would improve the margin, obviously, because that one is on non accrual and was for the whole quarter. The others are still sort of, we're still sort of receiving payments and working with the borrowers. I think the real estate deals.

In Alexandria are not going to be resolved in the current quarter. Although I think if you gave us probably a couple quarters or maybe to the midpoint of next year.

Just given the leasing activity and Matt and I are personally involved in these loans and in the leasing activity and just to have very relevant right now data.

I think by June of next year, the, given the leasing activity we're seeing.

Those properties could be strong enough to be and have strong enough.

Debt coverage to at least not be on non accrual.

Both of the properties right now are at one time debt coverage.

On interest only on P&I, one is above debt, one is above one, one's at like 105 and the other is not. But the leasing activity on the one that's on non accrual.

I think by June of next year, we could have it above 1 times debt coverage, on a P&I basis. So I would tell you, really, we just got one that could be resolved in the current quarter and the others, I don't.

I mean, I hate them being in nonac accrual and substandard and all, but I believe we're, in the best possible place we could be with those.

Great, thanks. That's good background.

Thank you. And then just the last question just to connect that what you said at the beginning of the call, but the expense number should continue to get better, given the operating difference as you outlined the release, and we'll just see that quarter to quarter. I suspect it's not just a 4th quarter phenomenon, but it will go over the next few quarters.

Yes.

Yeah.

Super.

Thank you for taking my questions and we appreciate it.

All right. Thanks, Chris.

(Operator Instruction).

Okay, thank you, everybody that's joined our call. Matt and I are available, if you have any further comments or questions, and if you don't, I hope everyone has a safe and happy weekend and we'll talk to you soon.

Thank you.

And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call, and we thank you for your participation. You may not disconnect.