Subhadeep Basu
Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Please go ahead
Thank you, Nitin. If you turn to slide four, I'd like to share our high level income statement with you. My comments will be on an adjusted numbers versus GAAP. Please see the appendix for a reconciliation of our GAAP and adjusted financials. Our revenues were up 4% year-over-year as fee growth offset a modest decline in net interest income. Fees were up 36% year-on-year as commercial and consumer activity increased from their pandemic lows. Revenues were lower sequentially, driven by seasonally higher wealth management and insurance revenues in the first quarter. We also had a high swap fair value adjustment and high PPP referral fees in the first quarter. Expenses were down 8% sequentially, driven by lower professional services, compensation and payroll tax expenses. We are very encouraged by our early progress on expense saves; however, I want to remind you that we will be investing in hiring bankers and investing in technology as part of the self-funding the BEST plan. Our provision expense was zero this quarter, down from $6.5 million in the first quarter, reflecting an improving credit environment. Our return on tangible common equity was 8.1%, up 210 basis points versus the first quarter. Turning to slide five, let me address changes in our earning assets. Earning assets were essentially flat on both a year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter basis. While the industry headwinds for loan growth are expected to persist in the short term, we are encouraged by the expansion of our team of bankers and the upward trend for deal activity. Commercial real-estate was flat versus the first quarter and excluding PPP runoff our underlying average C&I loans were modestly down by 3%. Importantly, we are encouraged by recent loan origination volumes. Our loan originations for the second quarter of $310 million reflect a 63% and 33% improvement versus prior year and prior quarter respectively. The growth in originations is also balanced and spread across our commercial and consumer portfolios. Loan yields were up 11 basis points quarter-over-quarter. For the CRA portfolio we recognized higher purchase loan accretion and C&I yields rose due to PPP forgiveness. We ended the quarter with $173 million in PPP loans. These balances are expected to run off in the third quarter of 2021. To assist with your analysis, we have added a page in the appendix on PPP impacts to our balance sheet and P&L. We have $146 million in non-strategic indirect auto loans, which we expect to run off over the next eight quarters. And you will recall, we are also selling eight mid-Atlantic branches in the third quarter, which had average second quarter loans of $269 million and average deposits of $517 million. We expect the transaction to close in the third quarter of 2021. Our investment portfolio has grown 13% on a quarter-over-quarter basis. We continue to pursue investment options to enhance yield on the investment portfolio, while balancing liquidity needs for the BEST plan. Slide six shows our average liabilities. We continue to manage down our funding costs by replacing higher cost funding with lower cost funding. Non-interest bearing deposits are up 19% year-over-year, higher cost brokered CDs and FHLB borrowings are down year-over-year 65% and 60%. Our cost of funds has dropped by 60% from 92 basis points in the second quarter of 2020 to 36 basis points in the second quarter of 2021. Our net interest margin has been stable at 262 basis points. Slide seven provides more detail on our funding trends. With a growth of non-interest bearing, now money market and savings deposits, our lower cost deposits constitute 83% of our total deposit base. 84% of our customers CD's are expected to reprice in the next six quarters. The benefits of our CDs repricing downwards are reflected in our deposit costs for customers CD's, down 102 basis points on a year-over-year basis. We have also paid down $0.5 billion in wholesale funding in the first half of 2021. We anticipate paying down approximately $300 million of additional whole sale funding in the second half of 2021. Slide eight shows our fee revenues. We are encouraged that fee revenues are up 36% year-over-year as economic activity has recovered of pandemic lows. Deposit related fees, which include service charges on deposit accounts and card fees like interchange were up 40% year-over-year as consumer activity increased. Our SBA lending business continues to exhibit strong momentum. Loan fees and revenue are up 30%, driven principally by higher gain on sale from SBA lending and higher swap fees. Fees were down sequentially driven by seasonally higher first quarter wealth management and insurance fees. We also had high positive swap and MSR fair value adjustments and high PPP referral fees in the first quarter. On slide nine, we show our expenses. Adjusted expenses were down 8% quarter-over-quarter, primarily driven by lower professional services expenses, lower compensation expenses and lower occupancy expenses. On a year-over-year basis expenses were down 2%, driven primarily by lower headcount and lower PPP related expenses. Our head count was down 6% on a year-over-year basis. As discussed at a May 18 BEST launch, our goal is to self-fund our transformation efforts and we are very encouraged by the early progress we're making on that front. Slide 10 is a summary of our asset quality metrics, significantly improved across the board. Loan modifications are down 94% year-over-year to $98 million or 1.4% of loans. Charge off are at $4.7 million down 50% versus first quarter. Total delinquencies including non-performing loans are at $66 million or 92 basis points of total loans, which is down 27% versus the first quarter. Both charge offs and delinquencies for the quarter are close to pre-pandemic levels. Leading indicators also point to similar improvements in asset quality. The 30 to 89 day delinquency bucket has reduced 57% year-over-year from $35 million to $15 million. Improved credit quality, coupled with improved economic forecasts, resulted in zero provision expenses in the second quarter versus a 6.5 million provision in the first quarter. Our allowance for credit losses is at 1.69% of total loans, excluding PPP loans. It should be noted that delinquencies net of charge off and ACL as the percentage of total loans are down, notwithstanding a decline in our loan balances. Slide 11 further highlights significant improvements in our COVID sensitive segments, including hospitality, Firestone, restaurant and nursing assisted living loan books. COVID sensitive deferrals are down 88% year-over-year and 58% versus the first quarter. Criticized assets are down double digits versus the first quarter and non-accrual loans are down 4%. The appendix includes two pages detailing trends for each of the four COVID sensitive portfolios. COVID deferrals for our restaurant and nursing, assisted living portfolios are down to zero and down 86% for Firestone and 38% for our hospitality portfolio. I'm happy to discuss with you further if you want to follow up with us. Slide 12 shows detail on our capital and liquidity positions. As Nitin mentioned, we returned $26.8 million of capital or approximately 124% of second quarter 2021 net income to shareholders via stock repurchase and dividends. Our capital levels continue to remain very strong; the common equity Tier 1 capital ratio improved by 10 basis points versus first quarter; our second quarter ‘21 estimated CET1 ratio is at 14.3%. We continue to execute on our share buyback program having already purchased 745,000 shares of the 2.5 million shares authorized by the board. As you can see from the quarterly CET1 walk, our estimated RWA’s also dropped due to change in asset mix moving to lower risk categories. In summary, this was an encouraging quarter and provides us momentum as we continue to execute on our transformation plan. We had revenue growth primarily driven by increased fee income, expense discipline drove down expenses and credit quality has significantly improved resulting in zero provision expenses. Capital levels are robust as we continue to return excess capital to shareholders. Our ROTCE was 8.1% and we grew our tangible book value per share to $22.66, which is up 3% versus second quarter of 2020. Now, I would like to close with comments on our outlook. While we are upbeat about the vaccination trends in our footprint, and improved economic forecast, weaker loan demand trends seen in recent quarters are expected to persist. We expect NII to be lower for the rest of the year as PPP interest income declines and non-strategic loan books continue to run-off. We expect fee revenues to be stable throughout the second half of the year. We expect to meaningfully improve credit environment over time and that credit provision expenses trend towards pre-pandemic levels in 2022. As we said last quarter, we expect to get to day 1 CECL results to loans in 2022. I caution that our credits can be lumpy, so we don't expect a straight line on provision expenses or charge-offs. We expect expenses for the rest of the year to be stable at about $70 million run rate. Our tax rate was higher this quarter and we expect our tax rate for the rest of 2021 to be in mid to high teens, and we expect our fully diluted share counts to be lowered. With that, I’ll turn it back to Nitin for closing comments. Nitin.