Washington Trust Bancorp Inc (WASH) 2025 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Hello, everyone, and thank you for your patience. Today's call will begin shortly.

Good morning and welcome to Washington Trust Bancorp, Inc. conference call. My name is Lydia and I'll be your operator today. (Operator Instructions) Today's call is being recorded.

I'd like to turn the call over to Sharon Walsh, Senior Vice President and Director of Marketing and Corporate Communications. Ms. Walsh, over to you.

Thank you, Lydia. Good morning and welcome to Washington Trust Bancorp's conference call for the second quarter of 2025.

Joining us this morning are members of the Washington Trust executive team, Ned Handy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Mary Noons, President and Chief Operating Officer; Ron Ohsberg, Senior Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Treasurer; Bill Wray, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Risk Officer.

Please note that today's presentation may contain forward-looking statements, and our actual results could differ materially from what is discussed on today's call. Our complete Safe Harbor statement is contained in our earnings release, which was issued yesterday, as well as other documents that are filed with the SEC.

All of these materials and other public filings are available on our Investor Relations website at ir.washtrust.com. Washington Trust trades on Nasdaq under the symbol WASH.

I'm now pleased to introduce you to today's host, Washington Trust's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Ned Handy. Ned?

Thank you, Sharon. Good morning and thank you for joining our second-quarter conference call. We respect and appreciate your time and your interest in Washington Trust.

I'll briefly comment on the quarter and then Ron will provide more detail on the financial results. After our prepared remarks, Mary and Bill will join us for the Q&A session.

Washington Trust second-quarter results reflect our diversified business model performing positively. We realized growth in net interest income, Wealth Management revenue, and mortgage banking revenue, and we continued to build capital. This was a solid quarter with loan and deposit growth on target.

This quarter, while we continue to focus on deposit generation, we enhanced our Wealth Management team with the addition of a new client services manager and business development additions to our wealth advisory and private clients teams. This added expertise will be instrumental as we continue to grow and evolve to meet the needs of our clients and communities and continue to provide the highly personalized consultative experience that has defined our firm for generations.

Also in the quarter, we finalize the conversion of our core Wealth Management system, which will ensure enhanced customer experience. The company remains committed to providing exceptional full service banking, mortgage, and wealth services to our customers and is focused on continuing to be a financial partner that provides solutions and resources that customers need for all life stages and the unique opportunities and challenges that come with those milestones.

I'll now turn the call over to Ron for some additional details on the quarter. We'll then be glad to address any of your questions. Ron.

Thank you, Ned. Good morning, everyone. For the second quarter, we reported net income of $13.2 million or $0.68 per share compared to $12.2 million and $0.63 per share last quarter.

As previously disclosed, there were two infrequent items included in first quarter results: a pension termination charge and a sale lease-backed net gain. Excluding these items, adjusted net income increased by $1.5 million or $0.07 per share.

Net interest income was $37.2 million, up by $763,000 or 2% on a linked quarter basis. The margin was 2.36%, up by 7 basis points.

Non-interest income totaled $17.1 million in Q2. Excluding Q1's sale lease pack net gain of $7 million, adjusted non-interest income was up by $1.4 million or 9%. Wealth Management revenues were $10.1 million, up by $229,000 or 2%, reflecting an increase in transaction-based and seasonal tax servicing fee income.

Asset-based revenues were down modestly reflecting a decline in average AUA balances. However, at the end of period, AUA balances totaled $7.2 billion, up by $363 million or 5%.

Mortgage banking revenues total $3 million up by $730,000 or 32%. Our mortgage pipeline at June 30 was $102 million, up by $6 million or 7% from the end of March.

Loan related derivative income, which is transactional in nature, a total of $676,000 in the second quarter compared to $101,000 in Q1. Non-interest expense total of $36.5 million in Q2. Excluding Q1's pension plan settlement charge of $6.4 million, adjusted non-interest expense was up by $770,000 or 2% on a linked quarter basis.

Salaries and benefits expense was up by $603,000 or 3%, largely due to volume-related increases in mortgage originator compensation. Income tax expense in the second quarter totaled $3.9 million and the effective tax rate was 22.7%. Our full-year effective tax rate is expected to be 22.4%.

Turning to the balance sheet, total loans were up by $44 million or 1%. Total commercial loans increased by $57 million or 2%, while residential loans decreased by 1%.

In market, deposits were up by $30 million or 1% from the end of the first quarter and by $407 million or 9% on a year-over-year basis. Broker deposits were down by $25 million and FHLB borrowings were up by $151 million.

Our asset and credit quality metrics remained solid. Non-accruing loans were 51 basis points, and past due loans were 27 basis points compared with total loans. The allowance totaled $41.1 million, or 80 basis points on total loans and provided NPL coverage of 157%. And the second-quarter provision for credit losses was $600,000. We had net charge offs of $647,000 in the second quarter.

And at this time, I will turn the call back to Ned.

Thanks, Ron. And Lydia, we can open it up to questions.

(Operator Instructions) Mark Fitzgibbon, Piper Sandler.

Hey, guys, good morning. First question, Ron, I had for you was how you're thinking about the net interest margin and what you're assuming for Fed rate cuts in the back half of the year?

Yeah, so for the third quarter -- yeah, I would say, you can see our margins starting to level out. So I think we're expecting a pretty modest expansion in the margin, maybe only a couple of basis points in the third quarter. What we are seeing, higher than previously projected deposit costs, so reaching the top on that.

As far as the Fed, we're a lot less liability sensitive than we were last fall when the Fed was cutting. And I think we did a good job last fall of repricing our deposits down.

We will aggressively reprice our deposits down as much as we feel we can without causing attrition if the Fed indeed does start to cut. But I don't think that we'll necessarily see as much impact as we did in the third and fourth quarter of last year.

Okay. Great. And then looks like you had pretty good mortgage origination this quarter, I think $181 million. I guess I was curious, how much of that was purchased versus refi? And also, what was the mix between hybrid ARMs and 30-year fixed?

Hi, Mark. This is Mary. We have about 75% of our origination related to the purchase market. It goes as high as 80% depending on the time frame. As far as the mix, predominantly, the saleable is 30-year fixed, but we do a -- some origination into portfolio that is a hybrid ARM, mostly [71%].

Okay. Great. And then I guess, Ned, I'm curious with all the consolidation that we've seen up in Massachusetts recently, it would seem like an opportune time to maybe open some branches up there or even consider a merger with a bank up in the mass market since you have so much of your loan portfolio up there and the mortgage business, the Wealth business. I guess I'm curious, is that in the cards for you all or how are you thinking about strategic expansion into Massachusetts?

Yeah, always on the list of possibilities. We think there's probably some talent opportunity. We've added a few people in Wealth that have spent prior periods in their life in the Boston marketplace.

We think, Mark, we've got locations in Rhode Island that we can build out where our brand is stronger before we jump into the Massachusetts market on the de novo branching side. We'll see what comes out of the various transactions that are going on in terms of -- obviously, one of those transactions has some Rhode Island presence, that's going to be interesting to see what kind of what opportunities come out of that.

M&A, you know our history. Nobody would accuse us of being overly acquisitive, but if the right transaction were to come up at the right price point and enabled us to grow reasonably, we'd have to think about it. So I think we've got work to do about (multiple speakers) --

I'm sorry. I was going to say, what about the other way? There's some much bigger banks up in Massachusetts now that seem to be looking south. Could Washington Trust be a target for one of those banks at some point?

I suppose we could. We haven't -- that hasn't come to our attention yet. We think we're -- obviously, Mark, our job is to try and maintain independence, and we know we have to earn that. And we know we've got work to do on the organic front to assure that and that's where we're focused.

And so we're -- we like our independence and we want to stay independent. We'd rather be an acquirer than acquired. But that's always -- obviously, we have a fiduciary duty to respond to any kind of activity, but we haven't seen any yet.

Okay. And then lastly, and I hate to beat a dead horse here because I've asked about this in the past, but we've had, I think, 13 consecutive quarters of net outflows in the Wealth Management unit. Could you talk about maybe some of the things you're doing to try to stem that or change the direction?

Yeah, as I pointed out, we've added some talent, not hundreds of people, but a few people that are that are going to add to our client service capabilities and our sales capabilities in the private clients group. We just finished the conversion of our wealth core system, which I know will create a better customer experience going forward. That's just being rolled out now.

I think we've talked about small M&A activity in the -- primarily in the Rhode Island marketplace where our brand is strongest. That continues to be in our strategic plan.

So -- and I think there's a little bit of marketing activity that we're embarking on, but I think the combination of all those things, there's no silver bullet marks. It's a hard business to grow organically.

We know that you've made that point. And you're not wrong that, in addition to market support, we need to see net growth. And so we're -- all I can tell you is that we're focused on that incrementally on a lot of fronts.

Thank you.

Damon DelMonte, KBW.

Hey, good morning, everyone. I hope you're all doing well today. Thanks for taking my questions.

I guess first -- morning. First question on loan growth. Good to see some positive movement here with, I think, you had about 3% in linked quarter annualized for the whole portfolio. But you really got the majority of the growth on the commercial side, about 9%.

Could you talk a little bit about how your pipelines are looking today? And what your expectations are here for the back half of the year?

Yeah, thanks, Damon. Yeah, we were happy with the growth. And the pipeline continues to grow at quarter end. It was close to $145 million, which is not the highest it's been over the last 5 to 10 years, but it's up substantially from the end of the first quarter, with pretty equal balance between C&I increase. So we're happy with the activity levels and continue to support the low single-digit growth for the year.

The second quarter was obviously strong. Payoffs were down a little bit. We do have some projected payoffs still in the in the second half of the year, so I think we stay with the guidance that we've given. But happy with the growth in the quarter.

How would you characterize the sentiment of your borrowers today versus, call it, 90 days ago when there was a lot more uncertainty coming out of DC? Do you feel like people are believing in the economy and believing in their businesses and looking to take the next step forward with investing, or do you think there's still some scepticism out there?

Yeah, it's interesting. I've been looking at some of the larger regional bank reports and I've seen a couple people comment on higher utilization of lines. We haven't necessarily seen that. We don't have a whole lot of lines of credit. But I think there's still a level of uncertainty.

On the real estate side, I think projects are costing more and people are being all the more careful for it. I think investment and machinery and equipment is certainly not back to the old days.

But I think people are optimistic but careful, I would say. And I think we're -- I'll put us in the same category. We're optimistic about the opportunities we're seeing. We're seeing some -- a little more construction opportunity, although that's slowed down a fair amount in our footprint. So I'd say, it's a little better than lukewarm, but it's not quite warm yet. How's that?

That sounds good. That's good characterization. Thank you.

And then I guess on the fee income, the swap gains were or the derivative income was very strong this quarter. Do you think that, based on what you're seeing today, like you could repeat a level of this quarter? Or do you think it goes back to a more normalized level after this quarter's result?

I would lean towards more normal. I mean they're hard to predict, right? They're chunky in nature and we're working with our customers and making sure that they understand that the product is available to them.

Ultimately, it's whatever works best for the customers. But I think we're pushing that a little harder than we were say last year, so hard to know, Damon, exactly what will come in on that.

Got it. Okay. That's all I have for now. Thank you very much.

(Operator Instructions) Laurie Hunsicker, Seaport Research Partners.

Yeah. Hi. Thanks. Good morning. Just saying it was not interesting for a moment, the [BOLI] looked a little bit outsized. Was there anything one-time in that?

No.

Okay. And then, just going back to NIM here, your wholesale broker, down to almost zero, which is great. But obviously, you had a sharp jump in your FHLB. How do we think about that and do you have a spot margin for us for the month of June?

Yeah, well, I'll start with the spot margin, which was [2.38%]. And so, wholesale funding, whether it's brokered or FHLB is really just a balancing function on the rest of the balance sheet.

We're probably carrying a little bit higher interest-bearing deposits at other banks just from a timing standpoint, so we will pay down that FHLB with excess cash as those advances hit maturity. So there's no particular reason for it other than that's just what the balance sheet called for.

Brokered CDs are way down because they're just not economical for us right now. They're -- we look at those as interchangeable with FHLB just depending on price. And the CD market is just more expensive than FHLB, so we're not doing it.

Okay. That's helpful. And then, on expenses, the sale lease back that you did, is that fully reflected from an extent standpoint this quarter or just remind me when that happened last quarter, what was the timing?

Yeah, it happened in the first, we did them in the first quarter and so I think the lease has kicked in in February. So that's all in there and it was in the guidance that I gave back in January.

Right. Okay. So we had about a half a quarter expense last quarter, so fully in this quarter. Okay. Great. And then -- okay, and then, any de novos planned for this year, next year? How do you think about that.

Middle of next year.

And how many are you looking at?

Right now, it's one.

Okay. Great. And then, just going back over to loan growth, your multi-family growth was substantial this quarter, and even last quarter too, but really this quarter.

Can you just remind us, I don't think there's anything, but can you just remind us, do you have any New York City rent controlled ex -- do you have any New York City exposure? What should we think about that?

Hillary, this is Bill. No, we don't.

Great. Okay. And Bill, probably, these next few questions are for you. So just touching here on non-performers, can you go through that uptick that that C&I non-performers? That $9.4 million, any details on that loan, timing, specific reserves, just how you're thinking about that.

This is a potential $11 million exposure to a broadband infrastructure contractor. What happened was, during the quarter, their largest customer backed out of a major contract. They had to file for Chapter 11 due to cash flow.

And we're part of a bank syndicate pushing for expeditious resolution. We have -- we think appropriate specific reserves. We expect this will be at least partially resolved this year before the end of the year.

Okay. And sorry, how much in reserves do you have on this specific loan?

We have the appropriate amount. (laughter)

Okay. No, I get that. Okay. Then obviously you're -- the Class C office non-performer, the $3.3 million you all said would resolve, which is great. Just -- are there any details you can share just generally with respect to that resolution?

And then I know you had another credit that was part of that same relationship, the $4.3 million, which I think is the only free non-performer that you have. Can you update us on the vacancy and the timing of that and (multiple speakers) --

As you noted, one was sold, that actually was prompted by 1031, so we were pleased to see that go at a loss but not a reasonable loss. And then on the remaining non-performers, 50% vacant.

They are paying. They are trying. They are seeing some leasing activity, but we're not seeing, to be blunt, a lot of positive momentum there. So that one we're still watching carefully, trying to push for expeditious resolution if we can.

And that is likely going to be resolved in, what do you think, in the next couple quarters or how do you think about that?

You know that would be our hope, but right now, they're paying. They're supporting the property. And we're -- the office market doesn't have demand that's really easily to estimate, so we're pushing all things that we can looking for potential owner occupancy type sales, maybe other 1031s. So I couldn't give you a timeline on that other than that we will resolve it as soon as is appropriate.

Okay. And then just remind us, I know you took a charge-off last quarter. What's the reserves on that specific loan?

That loan's been appropriately reduced via charge off to the right carry value based on accounting rules. So I don't want to get any more specific than that if I can avoid it.

Okay. Right. And the $21.5 million, the new construction that's part of the [SNCC], the labs, the $21.5 million. Do you have any updates on that?

Yes, that's gone from 50% to 62% leased. And if things keep moving, it's on track for 70%. There's an LOI out for that, we hope. So good momentum on that project. Still classified where it is, but we think it's got some traction.

Okay. Great. Thank you so much. I know I asked a lot of questions on credit here. Your credit's really good, but I just wanted some details.

And I guess, Ned, just very high level back to you. Your capital levels are strong. But your stock is still sitting here 15% below your cap rate. Can you talk a little bit about how you're thinking about buyback consideration?

Yeah, Laurie, we have the approval in place and, Ron, we dipped our toe in the water for a day. Laurie, we really decided that capital preservation and growth is a more prudent thing for us right at the moment and it's something we keep our eyes on. Ron, I don't know if you have a --

Yeah, Laurie, listen. It's tempting and I can certainly make an argument. And as I said, we actually did initiate for a single day and then decided that we're more focused on operations. And just -- our capital's fine and we think we'd like to have a little bit more, so that's where we are at the moment.

Okay. And how many shares (technical difficulty) in the quarter?

I think it was 10,000.

Okay. Great. Thanks for taking my question.

Thank you. We have no further questions, so I'll pass you back over to Ned Handy for any closing comments.

Great. Thanks, Lydia, and thanks, everybody. I hope we've presented a clear picture of the current state and our focus going forward.

And as we near our company's 225th birthday next month, we want to say thank you to our customers for entrusting us as their partner along their journeys; to our employees, past and present, for bringing their expertise and heart to every customer interaction; and to our shareholders for continuing to support our vision and investing in community banking in general.

We certainly appreciate your time today and look forward to speaking to you all again soon. Thanks, everybody. Have a great day.

This concludes our call today. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your line.