Phil Green
Analyst · KBW. Your line is open
Thank you, Greg. Good morning and thanks for joining us. Today, I will review first quarter 2016 results for Cullen/Frost. Our Chief Financial Officer, Jerry Salinas, will provide additional comments about our performance and our outlook before we open it up for questions. Our first quarter earnings of $1.07 a share were down slightly from $1.10 last year, but we’re up sharply from the $0.90 reported in the previous quarter, several factors significantly affected the quarter. Regulators unveiled a new bright line leverage tests on the shared national credit exam for E&P companies. The test is based on the ratio of total company debt to all types of cash flow or of all debt – debt of all types to cash flow and to EBITDA and very significantly impacted their review of credits. It was also a big change from the guidance, which they’ve given in previous years regarding collateral coverage. We recognized additional provisions for the quarter under this new criteria. We also applied this new more stringent criteria of debt-to-EBITDA to our non-shared national credit energy portfolio resulting in higher classifications and provisions. We also changed our underwriting criteria to recognize the new guidance for new deals. As oil prices dropped sharply during the quarter to the mid 20s, we booked additional provisions to set aside specific reserves for some affected credits. At the same time, we reduce our energy – at the same time, we reduce our exposure to energy and our municipal portfolio by selling $444 million in non-insured bonds from energy intensive economies and replacing with PSF insured securities. The sale of these municipal securities resulted in the gain of $12 million while improving the overall quality of the portfolio. Energy seems over shed all our discussions these days and I will discuss our energy related business in more detail in a few moments, but I would like to mention how well we’re doing in our underlying business. Excluding the energy, average loans were up 6% from the previous year. In a challenging environment, we posted first quarter ROA of just under 1% at 0.96% and our total return on tangible common equity was 12.49%. We saw our pre-provision tax equivalent net revenue increased 2.4% from a year ago, net of securities gains, and we generated positive operating leverage. Looking at loans and deposits, new commercial loan opportunities were up 8% compared with the first quarter last year, so we’re seeing activity. On the consumer banking side, we saw a total consumer loans grow 5% compared to the same quarter last year and consumer deposit balances were up almost 2%. New loan commitments were up 7% compared to the first quarter of last year, and represented the highest first quarter ever for us. As has been the case, run-off is higher than historical levels and continues to put pressure on outstandings and it continues to be competitive. Last year, a little over half the deal we lost were from structure; today it’s running more like two thirds. Regarding credit quality, overall credit quality is acceptable. Delinquencies continue to be below 1% at 60 basis points. Non-performing assets were $180 million in the first quarter of 2016 compared to $85.7 million last quarter and $59.6 million in the first quarter of 2015. The increase was primarily related to three energy credits, two of which were previously listed as potential problem loans and another which was impacted by the sharp first quarter drop in prices and the inability to refinance the maturity tranche in their debt structure where appropriate specific loss allocations have been assigned to these borrower. At the end of the first quarter, problem loans which we define as risk rate 10 and higher aggregated to be $960 million or 8.3% of total loans, of that energy related problem loans represented $594 million. It is important to note the energy problem loan totals include the results of one the recently completed shared national credit examination and two an evaluation of our non-shared national credit borrowers utilizing the recently published regulatory guidance, using debt-to-EBITDA. In total, the $594 million represents 36% of our energy portfolio; $114 million is on non-accrual. Our shared national credit energy loans totaled $496 million or approximately 30% of our outstanding energy dollars, of this $225 million are noted as problem credits. We’re continuously reviewing, discussing, analyzing and shocking individual borrowers. And for this reason, we feel that when completed the spring redetermination will not have a major impact on the problem energy loan totals. Additionally as a result of our ongoing efforts to understand and address the risk in the energy portfolio, we set aside allowance reserves of $85 million, representing 5.13% of total outstanding energy loans. The net increase in problem energy related loans accounted for nearly 90% of the quarterly increase in problem loans. Also, there is currently little if any contagion exhibited in our non-energy portfolio. Our energy loan segments in the first quarter of 2016 were as follows. Production loans totaled $1.180 billion or 71% of our energy loans. We recognized $478 million or 40.6% of our production loans as a problem, again problem defined as risk rate 10 or higher. Service totaled $251 million or 15% of our portfolio. We recognized $82 million or 33% of these loans as a problem. The remaining 14% of the portfolio consists primarily of transportation $91 million, manufacturing $57 million, and private client $51 million. We recognized $34 million for about 15% of these loans as problem loans. I am very proud of how our energy group is performing and their hard work staying close to and working with our customers. This is a cyclical business, and we are addressing and working through it in a proper way. Drawing on the 400 plus year experience of our energy team. The energy business is important to the country, it's important to Texas, and we will continue to be a part of it for the long-term. We also know that how you underwrite and choose customers before slowdown is the most important part of getting through it. Have we done everything perfectly? Of course not, we never do. Have we made some mistakes? Yes we have. But I believe looking back on this time, and the way we handled it will make our shareholders and future Frost Bankers proud. But that shouldn't define us. It shouldn’t define us because there are thousands of Frost Bankers working just as hard to create better customer experiences, better products and services, better technology, to grow customer relationships and deliver on our unique value proposition and culture which at Frost is the thing that makes the magic happen. Finally, let's remember the unique set of advantages this Company has and why I am so optimistic for our future. First we are in growth markets in three of the top 10 largest U.S. cities in an economically diversified state. That state projects to grow population roughly twice the U.S. rate over the next five years. Yes we are only in Texas but that's like saying we are only in Canada or Australia when you look at the relative size of our economies. Second, we’ve got tremendous untapped operating leverage. Take for example our loan to deposit ratio of only 48% down from 80% in 2008. And we will prudently extend this overtime. We’re also solidly asset sensitive and will take great advantage of this as rates rise. Just look at the impact of the recent 25 basis point increase in December. That said, we haven’t just sat on our hands waiting for higher rates. Over this down cycle we’ve crafted one of the finest bond portfolios anywhere. And our relational model provides us with one of the lowest cost funding basis in the country, which allows us to compete effectively with anyone regardless of size. We also have an award-winning value proposition based on our strong culture that provides everyone is significant we give a square deal that provides excellence at a fair price and we are seeing sound place to do business. It resonates with the market and is responsible for our string of third-party recognition like J.D. Power Awards, Consumer Reports Award for the top U.S. regional bank. The highest rated bank app in the Apple Store which we developed and 29 Greenwich Excellence Awards for Commercial Banking just to name a few. We are also – we already made some significant investments we can leverage for the future. Including a highly recognized Texas brand. Our own development over the last 15 years of web and mobile banking application technology a 20 year deployment of organization wide data warehouse technology. A new facility for operations and support that houses over a quarter of our staff and provides a competitive workplace experience that facilitates collaboration and agile workplace methodologies. A 24 hour telephone customer service and the second-largest free ATM network in Texas just to name a few. In closing, I want to thank our exceptional staff for the hard work and dedication they bring everyday but above all for their passion in delivering great customer experiences that really do make peoples lives better. I’ll now turn the call over to Jerry Salinas our Chief Financial Officer for additional comments.