Gregory Garrabrants
Analyst · Keefe, Bruyette, & Woods
Thank you, Johnny. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I'd like to welcome everyone to BofI Holding's conference call for the third quarter of fiscal 2014, ended March 31, 2014. I thank you for your interest in BofI Holdings and bank -- and BofI Federal Bank. BofI announced record net income for its third quarter ended March 31, 2014, of $14,610,000, up 40.5% when compared to the $10,402,000 earned in the third quarter ended March 31, 2013, and up 11.1% when compared to the $13,154,000 earned last quarter. Earnings attributable to BofI's common stockholders were $14,533,000, or $1 per diluted share for the quarter ended March 31, 2014, compared to $0.74 per diluted share for the quarter ended March 31, 2013, and $0.91 per diluted share for the quarter ended December 31, 2013. Excluding the aftertax impact of net gains related to investment securities, core earnings for the third quarter ended March 31, 2014, increased $4,801,000, or 47.1% when compared to the quarter ended March 31, 2013. Other highlights for the third quarter include: Total assets reached $3,850,000,000 at March 31, 2014, up $760 million compared to the June 30, 2013, assets and up $889 million from the third quarter of fiscal 2013. Return on equity reached 17.94% for the third quarter. Our net interest margin was 3.89% for the quarter ended March 31, 2014, a 12 basis point decrease over the quarter ended March 31, 2013, and a 15 basis point improvement over the quarter ended March 31, 2013. Total deposits reached $2,833,000,000, up $430 million when compared to December 31, 2013. Our loan units had another great quarter, with $696 million in gross loans originated in the quarter. As a result, the bank achieved good quarterly loan growth, growing loan balances by 11.4% over the linked quarter and at a 46.1% annualized rate. The excellent performance of our lending groups resulted in $301 million of net loan growth. The $696 million of production consisted of $47 million of single-family agency eligible gain on sale production, $6 million of single-family non-agency eligible gain on sale production, $305 million of single-family jumbo portfolio production, $15 million of single-family jumbo gain on sale production, $34 million of multifamily non-agency gain on sale production, $67 million of multifamily portfolio production and $222 million of C&I and specialty asset production. As of April 31, 2014, the lending pipeline is robust, with a single-family jumbo pipeline of $363 million, $157 million of multifamily loans and $167 million of C&I loans. For this quarter, our noninterest income continues to show the diversity of our platform. This quarter, our noninterest income, excluding securities and mortgage repayment penalties, was $5,400,000, consisting of $800,000 of mortgage banking income from single-family agency-eligible mortgage loans, $400,000 of mortgage banking income from single-family jumbo mortgage loans, $1.2 million of mortgage banking income from multifamily mortgage loans, $1.9 million from the sale of structured settlements and other loans, $600,000 of prepaid card fees and $500,000 of other fees. Because the banks felt that the agency mortgage loans involve sales [indiscernible] of single-family jumbo and multifamily and specialty finance production, the bank's continued strong overall loan production allows us to continue to generate fee income from loan sales, reducing dependency on agency mortgage banking income. Although we can see mortgage banking income as lower in the third quarter, we are pleased to see significant positive trends in our agency mortgage banking business in the current quarter. As the selling season picks up and we move away from the holiday pipeline rolls, I believe we will see an increased contribution from agency mortgage banking in the fourth quarter. We're also bullish about volumes in our single-family jumbo, multifamily and C&I lending businesses. We are particularly bullish about the jumbo mortgage business, given the securitization market is not an effective threat or competitor to balance sheet lending at this time, although we are well positioned if the securitization market does come back; the enhanced capital requirements of larger banks that are driving them to either exit businesses or reprice their loan rates; and the many potential competitors discouraged by the fixed cost of managing the wave of complex regulations, including those related to QM and QRM that came into effect in January of this year. We are pleased with the increasing credit quality of the bank. Our non-performing assets, as a percentage of total assets, are down from 0.71% at the end of the March 2013 quarter to 50 basis points at the end of the quarter, March 2014. Into the third quarter of our fiscal year, that trend appears to be continuing. We remain highly focused on credit quality of the bank and have not sacrificed credit quality to increase originations, nor loosen our underwriting standards to gain volume. For the third fiscal quarter's originations, the average cycle for single-family agency eligible production was 7 65, with an average loan-to-value ratio of 65%. The average cycle for the single-family jumbo production was 7 17, with an average long-to-value ratio of 59%. The average loan-to-value ratio of the originated multifamily loans was 61%, and the average debt service cover was 1.45. At March 31, 2014, the weighted average loan-to-value ratio of our entire portfolio of real estate loans was 55%. When reviewing our loan loss provision, we spent time to ensure that our loss provisions are well matched to the level of risk in our portfolio. For example, our provision that will be booked for an 80% loan-to-value jumbo mortgage is 210 basis points, and for a 65% loan-to-value jumbo loan, the provision is 65 basis points. Our reserve for C&I loans is 274 basis points. Our current level of loan loss reserve reflects the low risk and low loan-to-value ratio on the current portfolio. When reviewing our loan loss provision adequacy, it is worth remembering that our historic loss rates on single-family loans, including bulk loan purchases and those in our 2005 to 2007 vintages, are under 1 basis point. We're in the process of selling of our last piece of real estate owned this week. We continue to make progress in growing and enhancing our deposit franchise. Our goal is to increase our share of transaction accounts and develop deeper customer relationships. We've made strong progress on changing the [indiscernible] of our deposits to become more transaction focused. From December 2011 to March 2014, we grew our checking account balances by 1,303%, our money market balances by 200%, while our certificate of deposit balance is increased [ph] by 61%. Transaction accounts now make up 79% of our deposit base, up from almost 45% from the year ago. The bank's deposit base, as of the end of the March 31 quarter, is approximately 69% checking and savings prior to the acquisition of the H&R Block Bank. On a pro forma basis, assuming the H&R Block deposits were added to our deposit mix, as of the end of the 2014 quarter, our transaction accounts would equal 85% of our deposit base and reduce our average cost of deposits by 13 basis points. Out of 31% of our deposits that are CDs, over 21% have durations of 5 years or more. Our business banking group had over $1.1 billion of total deposits at the end of the quarter, up from $688 million in the prior quarter ended December 31, 2013. The business bank has over 2,300 accounts with 81% of those balances comprised of checking accounts. We continue to pursue robust growth in our business deposit balances. Including the growth of both consumer and business checking, we have grown our checking account balances by approximately 225% this fiscal year. We believe that we create value on our consumer deposit franchises by providing a strong value proposition to our customers. We do not rest on any single attribute of that value proposition. First, for our deposit customers, the majority of whom are coming from larger banks, there's a deeper satisfaction with the fee and product structure of those large bank accounts, particularly in monthly fees, overdraft fees, overdraft line and credit usage fees, and not sufficient fund fees. No product from a large bank offers a fee-free usage of any ATM in the country. If the account is not at a monthly fee, it usually has a set of got-you criteria associated with the avoidance of the fee and an overdraft component tied to it. We can offer this enhanced consumer value because we have around half the cost on a percentage of asset basis as branch-based banks. Additionally, we have a significant advantage over larger banks, collecting roughly 95 basis points of additional interchange revenue with 115 basis points as average interchange versus 21 basis points of average interchange for non-Durbin exempt banks. Such that a checking account with an average spend of $3,000 per month would generate approximately an extra $250 per year of fee revenue. This interchange advantage allows us to offer more competitive accounts and to our debt and rewards products. Second, as branch transaction volumes continue to collapse, and technology, such as lower remote deposit capture, fully transform banking from a place you go to something you do, branches represent a much smaller part of a consumer experience for the ever-shrinking number of people. We have competent bankers able to handle customer requests effectively and efficiently and create a customer-centered experience where consumers engage with us through their cellphone, tablet, desktops, ATMs and customer service centers. The addressable consumer deposit market for a branchless bank continues to growth far beyond what will be required to support our asset growth. There will continue to be a segment of the consumer deposit base that values branch proximity because they need a safe deposit box or other services. These customers will have to pay for those services eventually because most banks providing these services are not earning their cost of capital. However, we don't need to be all things to all people. We simply don't need to penetrate that customer segment because ours is growing more than sufficiently to support our funding needs and it is a more profitable segment. I sometimes hear the concern that we have many more direct banking competitors than we did previously. We've always had competitors with our now -- with the now-consolidated ING DIRECT, the most conspicuous one. Our deposit strategy is different than these competitors in a significant way. We've demonstrated that we can offer a full-service consumer and business accounts in a cost-effective manner, not just focused on high-yield savings and CDs. We can do this with a lower cost structure by focusing on differentiated acquisition channels and operating efficiency without growing the cost of branches. The primary entitlement to growth of branchless banking is the momentum of customers willing to step out to try it. I believe the robust group of direct banks and branch-based banks doing things like charging customers to use a branch, will only increase the addressable market. Despite our success in both our consumer and business deposit franchise, I'm excited about what we have left to do to expand our product offering, enhance our customer service simultaneously becoming more efficient in acquiring and servicing customers. Because we have shifted our deposit base toward consumer and business checking and savings accounts, and away from certificate of deposits, as well as extending our borrowing, interest rate risks have significantly improved both since year end and since last quarter. The sensitivity of our net present value of equity to an instantaneous 200 basis point parallel upward shock [ph] of 130 basis points decline in present value at March 31, 2014, compared to 166 basis point decline at December 31, 2013, and 199 basis point decline at June 30, 2013. A review of a simplistic interest rate gap table will show, not surprisingly, that checking and savings accounts don't have contractual maturities, although the average time frame our checking and savings accounts are outstanding are 7 years and 5 years, respectively. The interest rate gap table simply do not reflect the economic benefit of longevity of higher-quality checking and savings deposits, and it does not reflect the prepayment of mortgage principle. Our multifamily and single-family portfolio loans are primarily 5-1 ARMs, and the portfolio's weighted average life is about 3 years, shorter than the contractual period reflected in the interest rate gap table. We're looking at the cumulative interest rate gap table [indiscernible] is essentially neutral over a 5-year time horizon. From a net interest income and risk perspective, the bank benefits by approximately 1.8% in the first year from a 200 basis point up shock to rates, and the cumulative impact in year 1 and 2 with a decrease of 1.81% on a static asset base, an insignificant amount given the rate of growth in the bank’s net interesting income. I also do not foresee margin compressions. I believe that we have a real opportunity, although one that is not guaranteed given our strong asset growth, to continue to take advantage of our ability to offer a better value of [indiscernible] to our customers to continue to lower our cost of funds. We will continue to reprice at lower rates our remaining repurchase agreements and to certificate of deposits, and gain the benefit of a lower cost of funds associated with the H&R Block deposit. I believe that we'll be able to utilize our [indiscernible] relationships, as well as our increasingly sophisticated Internet marketing engine to drive consumers to our deposit products, including the approximately $300,000 rate [ph] deposit accounts we acquired from H&R Block. On the loan side, I believe we can sustain the pricing on our multifamily and single-family products and pick up some incremental yield on our C&I portfolio. Given that we grow our loan portfolio at around 25% per year on a net basis and keep the duration of our loan book relatively short, our loan book would be priced upward in any interest rate -- in an upward environment at a relatively rapid pace. Additionally, although our securities book is higher-yielding than other banks, partially due to opportunistic purchases, the securities book is a lower yield than the yield generated from newly originated loans. As a result, we believe that our average asset yield will increase as a result of our securities book being replaced by a greater percentage of loans. Approximately 15% of our net interest income is from bonds, and we've grown our loan interest income by the entire amount of our bond portfolio income in less than 5 months this year. Another way to look at this would be at a 15% rate in securities payoff, it would take 3 to 4 weeks of loan production to replace the entire annual income from the runoff of securities portfolio, assuming that we do not purchase additional securities. At different times, over the last number of years, there's been a concern expressed over how the bank can replace income from its securities portfolio. And that shows that this is a small concern, but it is interesting because those concerns are often voiced by those who say that they're simultaneously concerned with higher rates. The easy answer is that if rates are so much higher, you can buy marketable securities to replace the yield. I'm proud of our 35% efficiency ratio we attained this quarter, a 35% efficiency ratio, despite our investment in our technology and compliance infrastructure, expansion of our more established and newer business as is a testament to our business model, as well as the ongoing operational improvements and cost management initiatives we have undertaken at the bank. What is so fantastic about where we are on our cost-management initiative we began about 8 months ago is that we still haven't fully implemented all our vendor cost containment processes, where we have significant repetitive processes that are too labor intensive and can be automated to increase the efficiency of our personnel. However, as we prepare for the Block transaction, some of the incremental personnel expense associated with preparation for that business will be incurred prior to the realization of revenue that is clustered around tax season. And as we enhance our executive team for the next phase of our growth, I believe that we will revert to an efficiency ratio that is closer to 40% than 35%, at least until we realize the revenue benefits from the H&R Block transaction. This quarter, we have a new Chief Digital Officer, who will enhance our digital marketing infrastructure and refresh our marketing strategy for the mobile- and social-oriented consumer. We also added a Chief Deposit Officer, a former Mckenzie partner will ran analytics through the city bank to focus on enhancing the integration between our data and marketing initiatives and continue to drive greater engagement with our customers with a particular focus on our consumer deposit customers. We significantly upgraded talent in our analytics area as well as with a recent senior hire. We also recently added several risk-focused personnel in our C&I lending business in order to ensure that our infrastructure sufficiently handles the increased volume of business we expect. As we grow the bank, the expertise required to manage our operations continues to increase, and we're pleased to be able to supplement our management team to allow us to pursue the significant opportunities that are available to us. Now I'll turn the call over to Andy, who will provide additional detail on our financial results.