Nicole Stokes
Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please go ahead
Thank you. As Ed mentioned earlier, we are reporting earnings of $0.24 per share and operating earnings of $0.53 per share for the fourth quarter, which excludes the $13.4 million tax expense or $0.36 per share attributable to the deferred tax re-measurement provided to the change in our future tax rate as well as the few small items that are discussed in detail in our press release. Outside of these charges, we recorded operating net income of approximately $23.6 million or $0.63 per share compared to $22.5 million or $0.63 in the same quarter last year. For the full year, we grew our operating earnings by 25% to $2.48. Our full year-to-date operating earnings exclude the same amount for the quarter and there’s a reconciliation of the early part of press release that you can reference that we’ve detailed out those numbers. During the fourth quarter, we’ve recorded a reduction in our deferred tax asset or DTA of a $13.4 million or $0.36 a share. That was due to the passing of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. We expect that the lower tax rate will increase our EPS by about $0.44 to $0.47 per share in 2018 leaving about a nine month earn back on the drive out. We do expect a slightly lower margin going forward from the impact of our muni loan and security book by approximately 6 basis points and I considered all of this in our EPS adjustments that we're projecting. During the fourth quarter, we sold approximately a 120 million of purchased loan pools that were yielding around 2.90, expecting to reinvestment that's done in loan products at a current projection yield, which is about 200 basis points higher. The loan sale impacted earnings by about $475,000 during the fourth quarter which is at accelerated amortization, but it gives us summary of underlying to deposit ratio and positions us for a stronger margin and return on assets, once those fund are reinvested which we believe will be about a quarter. One of the key metrics we were focused on in 2017 is the operating efficiency ratio. Our operating efficiency ratio for the fourth quarter was 60.88% and the ratio for the full year was 60.27%. This is an improvement compared to our 2016 operating ratio of 61.55%. However, we continue to press for a better ratio as a sub-60 level on a consistent wide basis. We believe the additional USPF purchase along with the efficiency we gained from our recently announced acquisitions of Atlantic Coast and Hamilton will get us where we want to be. Our operating ROA for the year came in at 1.26%, down from the 1.32% that we reported in 2016. The main driver in our slightly lower ROA was mortgages lower overall contributions to earnings given the core bank’s outsized growth during the year. Our return on tangible common equity was 13.91% in the fourth quarter compared to 17.25% for the same period last year. This decline is attributable to our increased capital level, as we have over a $158 million more capital or 24% increase this year over last year. A part of that increase comes from the capital raise in the first quarter this year and the remainder is due to our earnings stream that went do dividend and paid to shareholders. Our net interest margin exclusive of accretion improved by 5 basis points during 2017 from 3.74% in 2016 to 3.79% in '17, for the year, our yield on loans increased by 13 basis points while our total cost of deposits increased by 15 basis points. We're going to talk about loan-to-deposit growth in a minute, but I want mention here how important the increase in margin is considering how we grew the balance sheet organically during 2017 in the current interest rate environment. The spread between short and long-term rates continue to tighten, so I am still pleased with our bankers and the efforts that they’ve made to produce these positive results on our margins in this rate environment. Our impact to margin due to incremental asset growth is 4.69, which the exceptional given our high rate environment. Moving onto non-interest expense, non-interest expense increased $16.1 million during 2017. However, when we remove some of those unusual items like merger charges, Hurricane Irma, and also we have $14 million of expenses in the Premium Finance division in ’17 that we didn’t have fixed in 2016. So, when you exclude those items, our non-interest expense actually increased only 7.5 million or 3.7%. Of that increase, retail mortgage warehouse lending and SBA market business accounted for 41% of that increase. So excluding those lines of business, our non-interest expense increased only $4.4 million or 2.8%. While I know some of that was technical, my point here is that we were able to spend money where we needed to spend, such as backing up the strength in BSA group and building the infrastructure of the new Equipment Finance division While controlling expenses in other parts of the Bank. On the balance sheet side, we grew earning asset by a $1 billion to 7.3 billion. We grew core deposit by approximately 665 million as well with a good bid of that growth coming in the fourth quarter. With that, that we handle this many customers and this much growth and still move the fee base of point higher on the market is notable. Going forward, we expect that the same amount of growth in 2018 except that believe the momentum we’re developing on the deposit side will come closer to fully funding on loan growth. We continue to see a fairly even sort of growth between the lines of business that we operate versus the core bank. We still believe that this is sustainable going into 2018. As far as geography, our strongest and fastest growing markets have been the Atlanta MSA, which supports the amount that we're making today. For the year, we also have really shown grown in Tallahassee, St. Augustine, Jacksonville, Florida as well as Greenville, Charleston and Columbia in South Carolina. Just a few comments on asset quality, our asset quality remains strong as our annualized net charge-off ratio was 12 basis points of total loans and 13 basis points of non-purchase loans. Our non-performing assets as a percentage of total assets decreased to 68 basis points, and we were able to reduce our non-performing assets by 11.4 million or over 17% during 2017. With that Dennis, I’ll turn the call over to you for details in our acquisitions and continued strategy.