National Bank Holdings Corp (NBHC) 2021 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the National Bank Holdings Corporation 2021 Fourth Quarter Earnings Call. My name is April, and I will be your conference operator for today. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this call is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to remind you that this conference call will contain forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to the statements regarding the company's strategy, loans, deposits, capital, net interest income, noninterest income, margins, allowance, taxes and noninterest expenses.

Actual results could differ materially from those discussed today. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, which are disclosed in more detail in the company's most recent filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. These statements speak only as of the date of this call, and National Bank Holdings Corporation undertakes no obligation to update or revise these statements.

In addition, the call today will reference certain non-GAAP measures, which National Bank Holdings Corporation believes provides useful information for investors. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the GAAP measures are provided in the new release posted on the Investor Relations section of www.nationalbankholdings.com. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over and introduce National Bank Holdings Corporation's Chairman, President and CEO, Mr. Tim Laney. Please go ahead.

Thank you, April. Good morning, and thanks for joining National Bank Holdings Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2021 Earnings Call. I'm joined by our Chief Financial Officer, Aldis Birkans. We finished 2021 with record earnings and strong momentum as we enter the new year. Our team is delivering record levels of loan growth, record levels of low-cost deposits and pristine credit quality. We benefit from operating in very attractive markets, and our focus is on earning the full banking relationship of our clients. We continue to realize tremendous opportunity to grow our base of small- and medium-sized business relationships, and we have a pipeline that continues to expand at an impressive rate.

We're well positioned to benefit from rising rates, and I'm pleased to share that outside of our investments into Unify, we believe we can hold core expenses flat to 2021 levels. On that note, I'll turn the call over to Aldis for more detail on our fourth quarter financial performance and 2022 expectations. Aldis?

All right. Thank you, Tim, and good morning everyone. As always, during my comments, I will cover the financial highlights for both the fourth quarter and the full year as well as share our guidance for 2022. Consistent with our past practice, our guidance does not include any future interest rate policy changes by the Fed, nor does it include any large yield curve changes in general.

As we reported in last night's release, we had an excellent fourth quarter as we delivered net income of $22.8 million or $0.74 of earnings per diluted share. For the full year 2021, we reported a record net income of $93.6 million or $3.01 per diluted share. And although we carried an average excess cash balance of approximately $750 million throughout the year, the full year's return on tangible assets was 1.37%.

And despite the high levels of excess capital, the return on tangible common equity was 12.87%. As Tim already discussed, we are very pleased with the strong loan growth during the second half of 2021 and the continued performance of our teammates in building robust new client relationships.

During the fourth quarter, our non-PPP loan balances grew a strong 13.4% on an annualized basis. The fourth quarter's loan fundings were $475.4 million, which was our second consecutive quarter of record loan production. The loan growth was broad-based with most asset classes and geographies contributing to the loan balances. And just as important, we entered the new year with strong prospects for continued loan growth.

We expect to sustain this current momentum and deliver 10% to 12% loan growth for the full year 2022. With regard to PPP loans, we ended the year with $21.7 million in outstanding balances and approximately $600,000 in unrealized PPP fees. We expect most of this to clear our balance sheet during the first part of 2022.

Turning to deposits. During the fourth quarter, our total average transaction deposits grew 6.1% annualized as compared to the prior quarter, and core transaction deposits grew 14.2% as compared to the average balances during the fourth quarter of 2020.

The total cost of deposits decreased another 3 basis points to 18 basis points this quarter, and we projected deposits to settle at the 17 to 18 basis point level for 2022. Again, this projection does not include any interest rate increases. The fourth quarter's fully taxable equivalent net interest margin was 3.03%, an increase of 10 basis points from the prior quarter.

This quarter's net interest income benefited from $1.8 million in PPP fees and an $800,000 of accelerated market accretion from our acquired loan portfolio. Looking ahead, our balance sheet is well positioned to profit nicely from any interest rate increases by the Fed.

Our balance sheet is asset-sensitive, and our annualized net interest income is expected to grow 5.4% in a 100 basis point rate increase scenario. Our asset quality remains strong with another quarter of solid reductions in nonperforming loans and just 2 basis points of annualized net charge-offs.

For the full year 2021, our net charge-offs were just 3 basis points. And during the year, we reduced NPLs and NPAs, 47% and 29%, respectively. The fourth quarter's provision expense of just $132,000 was a result of the reserve requirements for our loan growth being partially offset by our strong asset quality and an improved economic outlook in the Moody's forecast in our CECL model.

As a result, our year-end ACL to total loans, excluding PPP, was 1.11%. Total noninterest income for the fourth quarter was $22.2 million or a $5.3 million decrease from the prior quarter. As expected, residential banking revenues decreased $6.2 million, driven by a seasonal slowdown during the fourth quarter.

We do continue to see strong purchase market activity in our geographies and expect that to carry into the new year. During the quarter, we also realized a $1 million gain from the continued disposition of our consolidated banking center buildings as well as a $2 million pickup in our equity method investment funds.

For 2022, we project our total noninterest income to be in the range of $92 million to $98 million. Our core banking fees are projected to continue to grow in the low single digits. However, we do expect a slight mortgage margin compression during the recent increase in the mortgage rates.

Mortgage volume projections are in line with Mortgage Bankers Association outlook. Total noninterest expense this quarter was $44.5 million, a decrease of $6.8 million from the prior quarter. The decrease was driven by lower mortgage-related compensation and a $700,000 gain realized through audit property resolutions.

Also as a reminder, during the third quarter of 2021, we incurred $2.4 million in transaction expenses related to defense role and figure investments. This was part of our UniFi initiative. Looking ahead for 2022, we project approximately $4 million to $5 million in expenses related to unify ecosystem build-out.

Exclusive of this investment, the total noninterest interest expense is projected to be in the range of $189 million to $193 million. As Tim already covered, absent our investment aimed to unify and despite the inflationary pressures, our core expenses are expected to remain flat to the prior year.

When projecting the 2022 effective tax rate, we expect it to remain around 19%. As always, this projected rate excludes the FTE adjustment on interest income. In terms of capital management, during the quarter, we repurchased another $17 million of NBHC stock. And as a result, the fully diluted share count for 2022 is projected to decrease to around 30.5 million shares.

Our capital ratios remained strong at 10.39% Tier 1 leverage ratio and 14.26% common equity Tier 1 ratio. And finally, even with our stock buyback activity, our tangible book value per share increased $0.13 this quarter to $24.33. Tim, with that, I will turn it back to you.

Thank you, Aldis. I also want to thank my teammates across our company for their focus on caring for our clients and for their focus on taking care of each other. The thoughtful actions of my teammates are making our company stronger and producing record results.

In 2022, we expect our core banking enterprise to continue to grow earnings, both organically and through disciplined acquisitions. We've also challenged ourselves to further diversify and grow our core bank earnings stream with an expectation that will begin delivering incremental results later this year.

Now turning to Unify. Our vision is to create a national platform that's the equivalent of an Amazon marketplace for financial services. We're focused on providing small and medium-sized businesses, or SMBs, with alternative digital access to a robust array of financial services. These services will address borrowing, depository and cash management needs, while also providing world-class information management and access to blockchain payment tools. We believe we're positioning to unify to provide SMBs with unparalleled digital access to financial services, real-time information and blockchain solutions that in turn, will reduce stress and save business owners and operators precious time and money.

Earlier this week, it was announced that NBH completed a first of its kind transaction over the Providence blockchain. We believe that this work in partnership with a consortium of other banks will begin to usher in a range of lower cost payment and information management solutions that can be game changers for many small- and medium-sized businesses.

And this is just one example of how we believe to unify will provide groundbreaking financial and information management solutions for business. I really do want to thank you for your interest in our company, and we look forward to your questions this morning. April?

(Operator Instructions) And we'll first hear from Jeff Rulis of D.A. Davidson.

Tim, just a question on the (inaudible) figure impact. I just outlined the build-out cost. I don't know if it's too early to say what the revenue impact could be on '22 and/or '23 if you framed up anything initially.

We've not framed anything up that we're prepared to share publicly at this point. But I am very optimistic about the pace at which we're seeing in particular at this point, the (inaudible) partnership evolve. And I would certainly put it in the category of examples that we're very focused on when we talk about delivering incremental results, and those are incremental to anything that all this has shared with everyone this morning.

We're also looking at some really interesting SBA-related market opportunities. And then frankly, as a result of this work around to Unify, we're beginning to recognize use cases related to available technology that we believe can both reduce core expense and deliver incremental revenue. So more to come. No, we're not ready to put explicit numbers around those expectations, but it is an intense focus and something we're quite optimistic about.

Got it. I appreciate it. Just jumping to another topic. All this -- in the release, you talked about the cash deployment into loans and you look at sort of cash on the balance sheet quarter-over-quarter. Are you still got a big balance there. Are we supposed to read into that, that what you did spin off of the securities portfolio in the quarter was -- in other words, the cash build would have been greater had you not put it in a loan is question one?

And then two, could you remind us, I think you framed what if you were to return to normal cash levels, what would be the impact to the margin?

Right. So taking the first question first. Really, if you look at the margin table, you can see that actually on an average basis, we did deploy about $100 million into loans on the cash. So the year-end balance sheet clearly got benefits from some late in the year of cash movements and deposit movements.

So that's one. In terms of how much that excess cash today is weighing on the margin calculation itself, it's about 30 basis points.

And that would return, I mean, is there a -- what's the comfortable cash balance that you -- is that ...

We typically run our cash balance in terms of free available cash between $25 million and $50 million at the Fed. You add in the kind of the cash letters and want money on ATM money, it's about $100 million to $125 million on the balance sheet as we can see on the top of the house is what our cash typically would be.

Okay. And then last one, if I could, just the rotation of what you saw out of nonperforming into OREO. Is that -- could that just be one credit? Or any shift within that total NPAs pretty flat, but the ship within that any color?

Yes, that's -- you got it. It's a long credit, and it's actually an SBA-related loans that is working through the process, moving from NPLs into OREO in addition to the SBA coverage, obviously, it's extremely low LTV type of thing. We expect no loss. And as in many cases, and (inaudible) this last quarter being another one of those where things go through OREO almost more often than not being up for the recovery on those. So this is just one loan going through the process.

And next, we'll hear from Andrew Leach of Piper Sandler.

Question on the NII guide on the 100 basis point rate up scenario. Clearly, a nice benefit there. But you guys are also in growth mode and doing some interesting things on the fintech front. So my question is how much of that boost do you think falls to the bottom line or maybe accelerate other investments into the franchise?

Well, I think in terms of how I guided for this year, all of that falls to the bottom line because the investment into Unify what we've circled up and as part of the expense guidance already is $4 million to $5 million. So unless there is accelerated investment or change of strategy and additional things we can see we can develop right now, all of that would be accretive to us.

And Andrew, it's such an important question, and I think it offers us this opportunity to clarify -- We're going to manage with great discipline, the pace of our investment into Unify? And should we find a need to accelerate investment, we will find opportunities in the company to bring down expense in other areas. And I just want to be very black and light about that. We'll continue to look at, for example, our brick-and-mortar distribution network for opportunities to create greater efficiencies.

So we feel like our estimates around investing into Unify are very tight. But again, our commitment is should we, for some reason, discover the need to accelerate our pace of investment our discipline will be around offsetting that investment through action on other opportunities.

Got it. That's really helpful. And then just at this level with the stock here, what's the appetite for more repurchase activity?

I'm pointing at Aldis and he's pointing at me. I think what we would say is I'll continue to be opportunistic. And we have a threshold and discipline around in our mind, the pace at which it would take to earn back any tangible book dilution, we've adhered to that. Obviously, we've benefited from that discipline, and we'll just have to watch what happens in the market because we obviously are very optimistic about where this company can continue to go with its earnings and I guess I'll leave it at that. That's a nonanswer answer.

And next, we'll hear from Kelly Motta of KBW.

I would (inaudible) of loan growth. You guys -- it's so nice to hear about the Unify stuff, but you also put up some really nice growth this quarter. Tim, I believe in your prepared remarks, you had said it was pretty broad-based across geographies as well. I was just wondering if you could give us a bit more color on how much of this is maybe winning new business versus economic growth in your markets versus maybe line draws normalizing? Just any help there and kind of how that fuels your outlook would be great.

Great. Yes, great question, and I think you really hit all of the key categories there at the end. I mean, we're excited about what our teams are doing around taking market share. We feel like in certain tranches of the small- and medium-sized business arena. Those businesses are not getting the attention by some of the larger institutions in the country that perhaps they once did that's translating into opportunity for firms like ours who really focus on that business.

I am really pleased with the discipline our teams are showing. We were back in our offices, if you think about it in July and later than Labor Day of 2020. we've been engaging. We've done it with sensitivity. We've been careful. But frankly, a lot of those prospects that are now clients are in the pipeline to become clients are folks that we have engaged with face-to-face. And when a business is making an important decision around moving their banking relationship, we found that it does make a difference to be able to engage directly and work through that transition and demonstrate that we understand -- no one understand their business. So again, I couldn't be more pleased with our team's focus on taking market share.

And then finally, we certainly have to acknowledge that strategically we put ourselves in some of the absolute best markets in the United States. I mean they continue by virtually any economic metric to outperform U.S. national averages. And so that represents wind at our back. And we're grateful for it, but it was by design, and we'll continue to work very hard to expand in these markets because they continue to grow and show promise.

And by the way, and both Aldis and I alluded to this. All of that translates into coming into 2022 with very, very solid momentum. That's what is really encouraging. We are very, very pleased with the momentum we're seeing as we come into this year.

Great. And maybe if I could slip in a last one. You also mentioned potential M&A in the prepared remarks.

I believe on the traditional side, just wondering what the appetite is there and kind of how the pace of conversations have been?

Yes. So we -- we're constantly in a state of working to develop relationships with groups that we think would be powerful partners. And we're going to maintain our discipline around ensuring that anything we might do on that front would be well met by all of our investors.

We hold ourselves to a high standard there. Our fundamental belief is that should any company consider selling themselves to us and becoming part of our company that as investors, that's in their best interest to construct a transaction that's going to be well received in the marketplace. And we're not going to do anything unless we believe cultures mesh well and unless we believe that there are incremental opportunities to create revenue. What we -- I can tell you, what's as important is we've made a very clear decision that what we're not going to do is play in that space where you're simply making an acquisition and only looking for expense takeout.

If a target doesn't bring incremental capability and incremental opportunity to the table, it's not something we'll focus on. Kelly, I stopped. I'm not sure if you have any other questions, but that's where I would leave it.

And she may have dropped. We'll move on to Brett Rabatin of Hovde Group.

I joined a few minutes late, so you may have -- you may have covered some of this, but I wanted to, I guess, first just talk about your assumption on deposits. And you guys, like many have had your deposits increase about 1/3 post the pandemic or through the pandemic.

And I'm just curious, as you look out on the horizon, what your assumption is for the deposit base? How much of it is sticky and kind of how you think liquidity could drain from customers as you think about the economy going forward?

Great question. I'll begin and then turn it to Aldis for more detail. But we've talked about this on prior calls. And what I would tell you is I do think that banks could be lured into complacency around these excess deposit balances that the industry has experienced.

We fight against that fundamentally by also really leaning into accountability around the development of new relationships. So it's one thing to see this, what could be obviously, a temporary increase or flex in balances. What we get excited about is the expansion and growth of new relationships, which speaks to our focus on taking market share in growing markets.

Now having said that, to come back to your -- the details around your question, I'll throw it to Aldis.

And that's why we didn't necessarily provide explicit guidance on deposit growth itself as we are building the relationship and client base behind it. But throughout -- over the last year, fourth quarter transaction deposits did grow 14%. I think it's -- that pace most likely will slow down into mid-single digits in my opinion.

But again, some of the -- how the liquidity withdraw by the Fed and maybe quantitative tightening will play out. It's hard to put a very hard estimate on it.

Okay. Fair enough. And then again, you may have covered this, but loan utilization, I'm curious how that trended during the fourth quarter and kind of how you see that playing out over the next few quarters?

Yes. That's part of the auto loan growth. This quarter was also the line utilization did pick up. And I'd say our lines return to kind of long-term averages at the moment at the end of the fourth quarter. And it is in our long table. So you can see how the quarter-to-quarter line legalizations benefit or take off the loan growth. But this last quarter was a good line utilization. It seemed like clients were starting to draw down.

Next, we'll hear from Andrew Terrell of Stephens.

This is John Walter on for Andrew. Congrats on the great quarter. Aldis, I guess, quick question on the deposit base again. I guess, how should we be thinking about deposit betas at NBHC in a rising rate environment? And is there any reason to think that your beta in this cycle will be dissimilar to last cycle? And can you remind us of like what you assume in your disclosed NII sensitivity for deposit beta?

Yes, yes. Yes. So first of all, I'll start the -- look, if you look at our deposit construction for us, 40% of our deposits are in noninterest-bearing deposits. So that bodes well for any rising rate environment to begin with. In that 5.4%, 100 basis point rate shock scenario that I talked in my prepared remarks, embedded there is about 30% deposit beta on total deposits . But again, once you kind of -- if you back into what does that mean for interest-bearing deposits, that's actually 50% deposit beta.

And then to kind of get to your -- just to your question, I think it is quite conservative because if you go back in the last tightening cycle, our deposit beta was between 10% to 25% depending on the period when you measure it. So we are quite conservative in the way we modeled in projectives.

All this -- For the benefit of folks that have joined us on the call today translate that 5.4% at a 100 basis point rate shock roughly to dollars. Yes, that approximately would be a $12 million annualized pickup if give 100 basis points after a basis point increase in fed fund rates.

Got you. That's helpful. I appreciate the color. And one last one. Can you remind us of the repricing dynamics of the loan portfolio? How much is floating rate adjustable, fixed? And do you guys have loan floors in place on any of those floating rates?

Yes. So in past, our loan book is approximately 40%, call it, 40% to 42% variable rate that is variable index, either prime LIBOR. We're so far these days. Of that, just only 15% of that only is with rate floors that would not lift, call it, for the first 50 to 75 basis points.

So vast majority of our LIBOR prime loans will have an immediate benefit as the rates move up. April?

And I am showing we have no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Laney for any closing remarks.

All right. Thank you, April. Now as always, I would just thank you for your interest in our company. We certainly are open to any follow-on questions should anyone have them after this meeting. Again, thank you, and have a good day. Bye now.

And this concludes today's conference call. If you would like to listen to the telephone replay for this call, it will be available beginning in approximately 4 hours and will run through January 26 2022 by dialing (888) 203-1112 and referencing passcode (245-4367)

The earnings release and an online replay of this call will also be available on the company's website on the new Investor Relations page. Thank you very much, and have a great day. You may now disconnect.