Greetings and welcome to the Axos Financial First Quarter 2021 Earnings Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Johnny Lai, Vice President, Corporate Development and Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Thanks, Jessie, and good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for your interest in Axos. Joining us today for the Axos Financial, Inc.’s first quarter 2021 financial results conference call are the company’s President and Chief Executive Officer, Greg Garrabrants and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; Andy Micheletti. Greg and Andy will review and comment on the financial and operational results for the 3 months ended September 30, 2020, and they will be available to answer questions after the prepared remarks. Before we begin, I would like to remind listeners that prepared remarks made on this call may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties and that management may make additional forward-looking statements in response to your questions. These forward-looking statements are made on the basis of current views and assumptions of management regarding future events and performance. Actual results could differ materially from those expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements as a result of risks and uncertainties. Therefore, the company claims the safe harbor protection pertaining to forward-looking statements contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. This call is being webcast, and there will be an audio replay available for 30 days in the Investor Relations section of the company’s website located at axosfinancial.com. Details for this call were provided on the conference call announcement and in today’s earnings press release. Before handing the call over to Greg, I would like to remind our listeners that in addition to the earnings press release and 10-Q, we also issued an earnings supplement for this call. All of these documents can be found on the Axos Financial website. With that, I’d like to turn the call over to Greg for his opening remarks.

Thank you, Johnny. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I’d like to welcome everyone to Axos Financial’s conference call for the first quarter of fiscal year 2021 ended September 30, 2020. I thank you for your interest in Axos Financial and Axos Bank. Axos announced record first quarter net income of $53 million for the 3 months ended September 30, 2020, up 30% over the $40.8 million earned for the quarter ended September 30, 2019, despite a $9.1 million increase in our provision for loan losses. Our pretax pre-provision income was $87.6 million, a 47.6% increase compared to $59.4 million in the quarter ended September 30, 2019. Axos’ return on average equity for our first fiscal quarter of 2021 was 17.26%, and the bank’s efficiency ratio was 39.95%. Q1 2021 earnings per share increased 33.3% to $0.88 per diluted share compared to $0.66 per diluted share in Q1 2020. Excluding acquisition-related expenses, non-GAAP earnings per share increased 33.82% to $0.91 per share in Q1 2021, equating to a non-GAAP ROE of 17.78%. Our book value per share was $20.80 at September 30, 2021, up 14.7% from the prior year. We had an outstanding quarter with stable net interest margins, double-digit growth in net interest income and non-interest income, positive operating leverage and solid credit performance. The highlights this quarter include the following: Ending loans and leases increased by approximately $294.1 million, up 11.1% annualized from the fourth quarter of 2020 and up 11.7% year-over-year. Strong originations in multifamily commercial specialty real estate and mortgage warehouse were offset by lower production in lender finance and higher payoffs in jumbo single-family and certain C&I loan portfolios. Net interest margin was 3.84% for the first quarter, up 7 basis points from 3.77% in the first quarter of fiscal 2020 and…

Thanks, Greg. First, I wanted to note that in addition to our press release, a supplemental 8-K schedule and our 10-Q were all filed with the SEC today and are available online through EDGAR or through our website, axosfinancial. Second, I will provide brief comments on 3 topics. Please refer to our press release or the SEC filings for additional details. First, as Greg mentioned, Axos Financial adopted CECL effective July 1, 2020. To implement CECL, we developed 6 portfolio models, which use Moody’s forecasts of key macroeconomic variables to predict the probability of default and the loss given default or severity of loss throughout the life of our loans. The formulas for probability of default were developed from 15 years of its historic loss data and more than 1,800 Moody’s macroeconomic variables, measured historically each quarter. The historic loss data for single-family, multifamily and small balance commercial mortgage was sourced from the bank’s own loss history. However, the loss history for commercial real estate, construction, C&I loans, auto and consumer loans was based upon bank call report data. Accordingly, this quarter, we regrouped our loans to align with the industry historic loss data we use to develop the CECL models and to match with the CECL model loss output. The 6 loan groups are as follows: one, single-family mortgages combined with single-family warehouse; two, multifamily mortgage is combined with single small balance commercial mortgages; number three, commercial real estate, which includes CRESL and real estate lender finance; number four, commercial and industrial, which includes non-real estate lender finance, equipment leasing and securities-backed lines of credit; number five is auto and consumer; and number six is other. While the groupings are different, the subcategories making up the groupings are generally the same. Attached in our 8-K filed today is a…

Thanks, Andy. Operator, we’re ready to take questions.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Andrew Liesch with Piper Sandler. Please proceed with you question.

Hey, good afternoon, everyone. How are you?

Hey, Andrew.

I just wanted to look at the margin and just on the liability side here, cost in the quarter about 91 basis points down nicely from the quarter before. I think down something like 30-something basis points. Is this the pace that is to continue to decline at or what level do you think that that’s probably going to reach the floor?

Well, if you look at the components, and I’m sure you have, you’ll see that the – there’s some CDs, obviously there at some pretty high rates that, unfortunately, nobody is going to be interested in encashing out early. So we have about $1 billion of that in the maturity table maturing in the next 12 months. That will obviously be helpful. There’s – there are further declines in other categories that we think we can accomplish this quarter, but they won’t be likely as dramatic. So I think that if you look at where that 91 basis points is coming from, it’s being pulled up a lot by those CDs, which are just going to have to run off in the natural course of things.

There is, Andrew, about $1.25 million of CD costs. This quarter that actually was the write-off of brokered commissions that were on brokered CDs of $150 million that we prepaid. So that $1.25 million won’t recur this quarter on the CDs, which was pushing up the CD rate a little bit. So you can take that amount off of the interest cost next quarter for example.

Okay. That’s really helpful. And then it sounds like loan yields on new production is holding up pretty good, and you also have some good floors. So do you think the margin could rise from this level? Or right now, are we seeing this with re-pricing like with the securities book and on the liquidity, just maybe this is kind of like the margin is weak to fall?

I think we’re comfortable with our margin guidance. Obviously, the excess liquidity that we have is impacting margin right now and loan growth depending on what that will be, may be able to consume some of that liquidity. We have the PPP loans on as well. Eventually, those may roll off, but we just are really uncertain about that. The forgiveness is very, very slow. And there is a compression in loan yields that’s not only as a result of the market but also our warehouse lines tend to be lower rate than our other lines, particularly for the agency production, which was almost all the growth this quarter. So there’s a bit of a shift there as well, and we see continued growth in that side. So look, I think we can – I definitely feel good about where we are from an ability to maintain margin. But I’m a little cautious about saying it’s going to go incredibly up just given the excess liquidity we have and the market.

Okay. That’s helpful. And then just shifting to credit for a section – for a second, it sounds like you’re pretty well reserved on the loans that have migrated to nonperforming, but I also noticed that the special mention in substandard loans are higher. And these also seem like a lot of them are on the jumbo side, but maybe some commercial real estate. Is there some overwhelming concern or is there anything that’s kind of unique or common between some of these loans that may have been downgraded?

Yes. There – with respect to the commercial real estate loans, we have loans that we’ve downgraded that we think we have effectively incredibly limited chance of having any loss in them, but the underlying borrower may have had a well-defined weakness, but the partner that we have in the transaction in the mezzanine capacity in a number of cases, stepped in even with substantial paydowns this quarter. And so we see a lot of those kind of curing up this quarter. We have one payoff that is slated to occur. And in other cases, we have some restructuring on those loans we’re doing. So we don’t think there’s any possibility of loss there, but there may have been a delay in the project completion timeframe or something that represented a weakness. And so they were downgraded. On the single-family side, it’s really more this payment related. We’re not deferring anyone’s payments. And so we’re asking that they make the adjustments they need to make now if they’re unable to afford their property.

Understood. That’s really helpful. Thanks for taking the questions. I will step back.

Sure.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Gary Tenner with D.A. Davidson. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks. Good afternoon.

Hey, Gary.

I think last – hey. I think last quarter, you kind of mentioned that you were preparing for – I think it was a significant housing downturn. I think it’s how you put it. I’m just curious if you’ve seen anything or kind of maybe just updated thoughts on how you’re thinking about housing given that it’s all done fairly well?

Right. Well, it’s all done fairly well with some notable exceptions. I think New York City is a question mark right now. And clearly, you’re seeing the interesting – it’s an interesting dynamic because if you went back several years ago, you would have seen Greenwich or the Hamptons or whatever kind of being pretty stagged and suffering quite a bit, having long sale times, those sorts of things. The city was really booming. There was obviously some flattening out, but there was a very significant run up from, say, 2014-‘15 until now. And so I think the city is going to be giving some of that back so to the extent that that would be the caveat that I would make. How long that lasts? Depends, I think, on the policy decisions that are made in the city there. And what sort of long-term effect you get from any kind of potential ability of people to work from home over longer periods of time, things like that. But in general, you’re right, California is doing very well. If anything, you’re seeing increases. Where we are seeing stress is in dense non-single-family New York areas. And it’s not – I mean where we are from a loan-to-value perspective in most cases, we’re fine. But one of the elements about New York that’s always difficult is that sometimes the foreclosure timeframes can be quite lengthy, which adds accrued interest and those sorts of things to loans, which can be something you have to pay attention to.

Okay, thank you. And then kind of flipping over to some of the data you gave on NPAs. In terms of that equipment loan in the fracking industry, just curious if that equipment is specific to the fracking industry? Could it be kind of repurposed elsewhere or any detail there?

It’s pretty specific to the fracking industry. So that was the loan that was on interest-only payments. They’ve requested interest-only payments to continue, and we’re in discussions with them right now, but we haven’t granted them the ability to continue to make interest-only payments. So that’s where they are right now with respect to that. They have a sponsor. Our view is we want them to get them put in some equity, and we’re kind of in the process with that though. But it’s a relatively small loan. It’s – and it’s – we don’t have much oil and gas exposure there so.

Okay, great. And last question for me. Just in terms of the recent advance kind of loss recognition timing. Do you think you kind of resolved this stuff in the calendar fourth quarter or is it really just dependent on IRS in terms of wrapping up the returns?

Yes. We think we’re done. We basically – if you look at what our exposure is, after what we took this quarter, we actually saw a pretty significant uptick after the quarter ended in collections, which was positive. And so we’re pretty sure – I mean, obviously, we can’t be 100% sure, but we’re pretty sure we’re done. And when we go out and ping and see what percentage of those loans are coming in sort of where the tax return still hasn’t been processed, there’s still a significant number of the tax returns not being processed and either anecdotally through even folks in our own organization who submitted our tax returns quite early during that timeframe still haven’t gotten their refund. And then from some of our data work, we still see that there is funds to collect. So we definitely feel like we’re done. Could we be a little conservative with this? Possibly, but we don’t think we’ll be back to the well.

I mean the entire – after this provision and the entire exposure is $2.5 million before the collections we got this month. So it’s a very small number.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from David Feaster with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, good afternoon, everybody.

Hey, David.

Hi.

I just wanted to start on the specialty CRE I just kind of get a pulse of that. I mean you have seen nice growth there. Just curious what markets and segments you are seeing opportunity and just your comfort with this segment, given the uncertainty? Have you tightened the underwriting standards and just any thoughts on the pipeline and even new production yields in that segment?

Yes. So clearly, from a category perspective, we’re focusing on residential. So that means we’re focusing on multifamily, and we are seeing some industrial as well. So last-mile warehouses, cold storage, multifamily, those are all categories we feel good about. I think, obviously, there’s limited appetite among most folks for hotels, things like that, but there is also not a lot of projects that are – that are being started in those segments. So I think from a city perspective and from a geography perspective, we’re continuing to focus on markets where we feel good about the dynamic. You recently did some things in Nashville. We’re still in the markets that we’re in before too. And we’re doing different things to continue to ensure that we are in good positions from a credit perspective there. So there’s a variety of different trade-offs that are made. The sponsors are usually quite well capitalized. And so we continue to be a very – as we stated on the call, we’re at around 40% average loan to value on those loans. So I think that I would be – it would be a surprise if any of those loans had any losses. And if they did, the severity would be very low because you really have to be digging deeply, deeply into the loan to value in order for us to ever get touched by something. But I think as those projects move forward, is it possible that sometimes our fund partners may need to step in there. I think that’s possible. I think we’re finding in most cases that they’re working themselves through. But things – and almost all the loans look pretty good. And then there are a few places the fund partners are having to step in and true-up some interest reserves, some budgets and things like that. But they have got more than the capacity and wherewithal and willingness to do it. So things look pretty good, really.

Okay. That’s good color. And then just on the securities business, I guess you guys have started to see some pretty nice growth there, had some significant deposit growth. I guess how do you think about the growth in the accounts going forward? And then just how is the cross-sell been into some of the other product offerings early on?

Yes. We really are in a stage right now where we are working on the technology to enable and make that happen. So to give you a sense of where we are in the long-term plan there, Axos Invest will convert to our clearing company in the first calendar quarter of our third fiscal quarter of this year. So then what we are going to be doing is we’ll be combining functionality from the securities and banking side into a single application so that individuals can access both features and functionality in our retail direct customers sometime around the beginning of the second calendar quarter or fourth fiscal quarter of 2021. And then with respect to our correspondents, we have right now one of our correspondents testing our account opening software that is provided to them for automation of their securities account opening and at a certain point that will integrate features that allow a customer to open a bank account concurrently with that. And then the next step in the cross-sell process is that when a third party introducing broker-dealers and customer operates to look at their accounts or communicate with their broker, they’re using our technology with a technological integration on the banking side. So, all of that has to happen. So this is a pretty complex, very long-term strategy that involves the acquisition via third parties of high net worth customers. And it involves a lot of technological development and work. The good part is that we have almost all of these items now, right? We have an account opening system. We have all of these different products. So it’s about the additions and the integrations to make it really seamless across the platform. So it is – I think that, obviously, right now, with the deposit rates low, it doesn’t seem like much to have getting up to $700 million of 0 cost deposits, but that’s – we expect that to be able to grow dramatically over the next, let us say, half a decade and be a really important component of our funding cost and low-cost deposit growth. So we have got a lot of ways to win there. Obviously, with low deposit rates, it makes it difficult to show a really positive net income in that business, and that’s something that’s an industry-wide issue. But we’re going to continue to invest in it and grow that business because we think we are a great partner both on a technology and product perspective for these introducing broker-dealers and RIAs and their end clients. They really do need integrated technology, and we think we have a way of deploying our technology there. But it’s a pretty long-term strategy that we are engaging in here.

Okay, that’s helpful. And then just kind of following up on that a bit, I mean I am just curious on the M&A commentary, what kind of transactions would you be interested? Is it more of adding scale in certain lines or are there any product offering gaps that you might see that it’s just easier to – or more efficient to expand through M&A rather than organic growth?

Yes, they are usually fairly idiosyncratic things that fulfill particular niches. I’m not going to go in too much to the strategies there just for competitive reasons. But look, I don’t think there’s anything large. There’s nothing imminent, but there’s always opportunities given the breadth of what we have and the technological capabilities we can bring to things. So we keep on looking for things like that. And if we find them, then we can take advantage of them. But that’s just – that – I would consider that a more general commentary on the utilization of proceeds from the offerings than anything that’s foreshadowing something imminent.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Michael Perito with KBW. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question.

Hey, Mike.

I want to start on just the non-interest income and non-interest expense line items for the quarter. Sorry if I missed this. But just if we kind of think about the elevated mortgage revenues in the quarter, which I think were a bit more self-explanatory. But as we look at the expense side, are you guys able to break out or provide a little bit more color about what kind of the expense run rate might have looked like in the more normalized mortgage quarter? It seems like some of the environmental trends were maybe a bit elevated to say the least this quarter. I’m just curious what – as we kind of think about the expense line item going forward, what some normalization of that might look like.

Sure. I will give you some color. I think on a broad perspective, when you look at general administrative expense at $6.3 million for the quarter that is up from $4.6 million. A portion of that is going to be attributable to mortgage origination and other details. So that line is probably – that change in that line, you could use that to kind of normalize things. There are a couple of other lines where the numbers were slightly larger than probably the normal run rate. When you look at professional services, we came in at about $6 million. Professional services last quarter was $3.1 million. A good portion of that is a variety of consulting fees, some legal fees. Probably the more normal run rate is closer to $5 million on that just going forward with growth. So there’s a little – that line was a little bit larger than expected. But thinking about those two lines, those are probably the key elements of change, the rest represents just general growth in our business and the variety of different things that we are doing. Depreciation and amortization and data processing are impacted by some of the technology items we have. And the timing on capitalizing the costs can cause that to change a little bit. But in general, the kind of growth rate, we are going to continue to see growth in operating expenses, plus or minus $1 million or $2 million.

That’s helpful, Andy. But it is safe to say, I guess, that – well, I mean, not safe to say, but at this point, all else equal, that the next quarter expense run rate probably will take a step down before continuing to grow beyond that as you guys continue to grow the bank?

There is a good chance it would, but it does depend on a variety of factors. Part of it is mortgage banking, part of it is technology.

Got it. Helpful. Thank you. And then, Greg, I think there has been a lot of increased focus, at least based on headlines read and conversations you kind of have on the digital banking aspect of the U.S. banking sector since the pandemic start here. And I guess – my question for you is, obviously, this is not something that’s new to you guys at all. But have you noticed any more receptiveness to the idea of banking without any branches or any physical contact, whether it be on the commercial side or the consumer direct side or anything along those lines over the past six months that that is worth noting or do you think it’s been fairly steady? I mean obviously, the growth has been steady, but just curious more on kind of the customer interest and openness to dealing with the digital strategy like yours.

Yes. No, I definitely do think that you are seeing a significant shift there. We saw in the application volumes, and we are continuing to see it although the growth rate of these accounts are often – yes, they are relatively small accounts, both on the small business and consumer side. We have seen record account volumes continuing. Partially, that may be because of improvements in our platform, but we believe that it clearly is making a difference that the people are no longer viewing the lack of branches as an impediment to doing business with us. And in fact, because we have the ability to perform all the banking functions digitally, and we have designed our systems that way that many people are communicating that’s a significant advantage for us. So we really – I think we’re really in charge of our own destiny here and in a really great place because we have spent some money on the technology in our systems. So now it’s just about perfecting those systems and technologies to just get so much better at what we are doing. So there is customer experience initiatives from a digital perspective that are going on across the board in the enterprise. How to reduce check holds by using data better, all of the things that customers talk with us about. We have a customer experience committee. We listen to the customers. We listen to what they are saying about things they like, things they don’t and that we develop plans that are very targeted fixing those pin points. So I think we have done a really good job with that. I think there is a titanic shift ongoing and coming. And I think it also is in the nature of, if you start looking at –…

Really, helpful Greg. Thank you and thanks for taking my questions guys.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our final question comes from the line of Edward Hemmelgarn with Shaker Investments. Please proceed with your question.

Yes, thanks Greg and Andy. Just one question about your future loan loss provisions, you appear to be pretty conservatively reserved now given your historical nature of loan losses and in fact, basically just an asset-based lender. Will you be able to use any future or any excess reserves that you might have now, I mean, based upon future clarification of some of these loans to provide for the needed reserve for future loans that you make. I mean, is it going to be able to be adjusted or will you just have to ignore that?

No. The simple answer is yes. An allowance can be reallocated or used in other ways. So there it is possible. As we have spent a little time discussing our CECL discussion. Obviously, CECL requires a little bit more because we are looking at life of loan. But in addition, we were conservative in assuming 12, 15 months out that we would have additional significant price declines in real estate. And that’s what’s really driving that. Obviously, 12 months out, we will see whether that’s right or wrong. So there’s some element of – is our conservative assumption correct. But assuming it is not and that we have reserves, we do have the ability to reallocate reverse or add them in other ways.

And it’s always going to be a forward-looking – yes, it’s going to be a forward-looking analysis based on what happens with respect to the future of what that loan book looks like on a going-forward basis and looking at all these forecasts and all these other things as well. So I mean, clearly, right now, there is more uncertainty than there would be normally as well, which I think makes it wise to be a little more conservative about your assumptions?

Thanks for the clarification, but anyways great quarter.

Thanks, Andy. Thank you.

Thank you. We have reached the end of our Q&A session. So I would like to pass the floor back to management for closing comments.

Thank you, everybody. Appreciate it. We will talk to you next quarter.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today’s teleconference and webcast. We thank you for your participation and you may disconnect your lines at this time.