Lindsay Corby
Analyst · Piper Sandler. Nathan, your line is open
Thanks Alberto. Good morning, everyone. I’ll start with some additional information on our loan and lease portfolio on Slide 4. Our total loans and leases were $4.8 billion at March 31, an increase of $227 million or 20% annualized from the end of the prior quarter. Excluding PPP loans and leases increased by $339.4 million from the prior quarter. We saw payoffs moderate for the quarter down $180 million to $127 million. Our originated portfolio increased by $387 million when PPP loans are excluded for the quarter. Each commercial lending area of the portfolio increased from the prior quarter. While macroeconomic conditions may pose a heightened level of uncertainty, we are reaffirming our loan and lease guidance towards the higher end of our range with projected high single-digit growth for the year assuming normalized payoff activity. Turning to Slide 5. We’ll look at our government guaranteed lending business. At March 31, the on balance sheet SBA 7(a) exposure was $478 million approximately $15 million higher than at the end of the prior quarter with $92 million being guaranteed by the SBA. The USDA on balance sheet exposure with $65 million, flat from the end of the prior quarter of which $26 million is guaranteed. We continue to see improving trends in this portfolio. As a result, we’ve slightly decreased our allowance as a percentage of the unguaranteed loan balance to 7.4% from 7.8% at the end of the prior quarter. Moving over to deposits on Slide 6. We continue to benefit from our strong core deposit trends. Growth continues to be concentrated in commercial transaction deposits that are replacing higher cost of funds. As expected our total cost of deposits remain flat at 8 basis points, with rates expected to rise we would anticipate deposit pricing pressure at some point later this year. Commercial deposits represent about half of our total deposits and 77% of non-interest bearing deposits. Time deposits represent a 11% of total deposits. Our deposit composition continues to be a core strength of our franchise. Moving on to net interest income and margin on Slide 7. Our net interest income was $58.7 million for the quarter, a decrease of 4.8% from the prior quarter. This was primarily due to lower loan fees and lower volume of PPP forgiveness. Net interest income on a year-over-year basis increased 12.3%, as a result of replacing PPP loans with organic loan growth. On a GAAP basis, our net interest margin was 3.81% for the first quarter down 15 basis points from the last quarter, but up 4 basis points from year ago period. Accretion income on acquired loans contributed 10 basis points to the margin for the first quarter up from 9 basis points in the last quarter. PPP interest and net fee income combined contributed $2.7 million to net interest income for the first quarter, compared to $4.5 million from last quarter. Looking forward, our GAAP margin will be impacted by the $1.3 million of remaining net processing fees from PPP, which we expect to be recognized over the remainder of the year. As a result of the rising rate environment, our asset sensitive profile and our organic growth we believe our net interest margin, excluding accretion and PPP will begin to expand during 2022. Moving on to Slide 8, we have intentionally maintained a balance sheet, a balance sheet that is balanced and approach to managing of interest rate risk. We believe our asset sensitive balance sheet positions us well for rising rates. And we estimate that an instant, 100 basis point increase in the interest rates will result in an additional 8.5% increase in net interest income and to break it down further every 25 basis point increase would result in approximately $4 million to $5 million of additional net interest income on an annualized basis. Approximately 65% of our asset sensitivity stems from the short end of the curve. The asset sensitivity is principally driven by our loan portfolio of which 60% of loans excluding PPP are variable rates. Turning to non-interest income on Slide 9. In the first quarter, our non-interest income increased 2.2% from the prior quarter. The increase was primarily attributed to other non-interest income due to higher swap income and a small change in our loan servicing asset revaluation this quarter. We sold a $102.3 million of government guaranteed loans in the first quarter, an increase of 38% from the year ago period. The net average premium continued to be strong at 11.6% during the quarter, which was as expected lower than the fourth quarter. Our pipeline for government guaranteed loans remained strong, and we anticipate premiums decreasing throughout 2022 and returning to pre-pandemic averages. Moving to non-interest expense trends on Slide 10. Our non-interest expense was $44.6 million in the first quarter, a decrease of $14.4 million or 24.4% from $59 million in the prior quarter. The decrease was primarily attributed to two factors. First, we saw a decrease of $12.4 million in asset impairment charges, which were taken during the prior quarter due to branch consolidations and our real estate strategy. And second, we saw a decrease of $3.2 million in loans and leases related expenses, mainly related to the recapture of government guaranteed loan expenses of approximately a $1 million. As a reminder that previously announced branch consolidations have occurred in the second quarter. And the cost associated with that will be realized at the beginning of the second half of 2022. We continue to focus on our expense run rates and look for opportunities to gain efficiencies. We believe the quarterly non-interest expense run rate will trend between $45 million and $47 million. Turning to Slide 11. Asset quality remains strong. We reflect our prudent risk culture, diverse portfolio, and current economic conditions. Our nonperforming assets declined 5 basis points to 33 basis points of total assets. Our nonperforming loans declined nine basis points to 42 basis points of total loans and leases. Net charge-offs decreased 5 basis points from 37 basis points on average loans and leases in the prior quarter. Our provision expense was $5 million for the first quarter, an increase of 37 basis points compared to the prior quarter. The increase in the provision during the quarter was mainly driven by growth in the loan and lease portfolio and changes in qualitative factors due to the macroeconomic environment. We believe we continue to have a high level of total loss observancy, as measured by allowance plus acquisition accounting adjustments, which represented 132 basis points of total loans and leases excluding PPP loans at March 31. We believe our reserve levels reflect current credit conditions, but also take into account uncertainty associated with inflation, rising rates and geopolitical events. As a reminder, we are still accounting for our reserve under the incurred loss model, and we will be adopting CECL at the end of 2022. Turning to slide 12. Our capital liquidity levels remain strong. Of note, the rapid rise and rates resulted in an unrealized loss on an available for sales securities that combined with share repurchases, common and preferred dividends, net of the bank’s earnings resulted in a $0.99 reduction in tangible book value, a 5.6% decline. Our total common equity to tangible assets remains above our peers at 9.36%. And we believe our capital ratios position us well to pursue both organic and strategic opportunities. Through the first three months of the year, we return 50% of our earnings to stockholders through the common stock dividend in our share purchase program. We will seek to continue to opportunistically manage our capital through share repurchases. With that, Alberto back to you.