Carla Leibold
Analyst · Michael Perito from KBW. Your line is open
Thanks, Sam, and good morning, everyone. I’ll begin by briefly summarizing our fourth quarter and full year 2022 results as shown on Slides 9 and 10. From an earnings perspective, in fourth quarter 2022, we earned $0.77 in GAAP EPS on net income of $25.6 million. For full year 2022, we earned $6.51 on net income of $218.4 million. Our fourth quarter GAAP results were negatively impacted by two items. The first after tax net losses realized from the sale of available for sale investment securities of $13.5 million or $0.41, which benefits net interest margin in the short-term and only has a one-year earn back. And the second after tax net losses on PPP loans of $6 million or $0.18, primarily caused by slower forgiveness than expected, leading to higher funding costs and one-time charge-offs of $11 million net of a $7.5 million gain recognized upon settlement with a PPP loan servicer. To provide additional perspective, PPP related income contributed a positive $0.18 in the third quarter compared to the negative $0.18 this quarter. I’ll also highlight that the $11 million of gross charge-offs are before the impact of any contractual indemnities or recoveries we may receive in future periods. After adjusting for these two items, Q4 2022 core earnings were $1.37 on $45.3 million beating internal targets and estimates adjusted for PPP. This brings our full year 2022 core earnings to $6.51. As a reminder, included in this amount was a pre-tax provision benefit of $36.8 million or $0.86 from the loan sale that Jay mentioned earlier, leaving $5.65 of sustainable core earnings for full year 2022, significantly higher than our $4.75 to $5 target and the $4.44 we made in 2021. Net interest margin excluding PPP was 2.87% for fourth quarter lower than our previously guided range of 3% for two primary reasons. First, challenges impacting the mortgage industry as a whole led to an unexpected large outflow of non-interest bearing deposits from clients in our mortgage warehouse vertical, which negatively impacted our fourth quarter margin by roughly 12 basis points. And two, higher average cash balances compressed margin by approximately 3 basis points. Turning to the balance sheet, we ended the year with $19.9 billion in core assets ex-PPP, up 22% over the prior year. Our core loan book ex-PPP grew an impressive 31% year-over-year ending 2022 at $14.8 billion. This growth was primarily in the low risk variable rate corporate and specialty banking vertical I’ll discuss in more detail later. Total deposits grew by 8% to $18.2 billion and have more than doubled over the last three years. From a profitability standpoint excluding PPP, our Q4 2022 core ROA was 93 basis points and our adjusted pre-tax pre-provision ROA was 1.67%. Turning to Slide 11 on loan growth. In fourth quarter 2022, we purposely moderated loan growth that we intend to retain on balance sheet, as we think about optimization strategies over our planning horizon. Our Q4 2022 held for investment loan growth was about 300 million of which $200 million was in our low risk variable rate, corporate and specialty banking vertical, which prices at roughly 300 basis points over SOFR. Year-over-year, this vertical increased $2.2 billion and ended 2022 at $7.2 billion. Moving on to deposits on Slide 12. Total deposits increased $1.4 billion in 2022 and ended the year at $18.2 billion, up 18% year-over-year. Notably, 57% of total deposits are sticky transaction related DDAs consistent with the challenging deposit environment industry-wide, we experienced a negative mix shift and higher funding costs in the fourth quarter, primarily from several larger institutional customers that we were previously able to hold at lower levels. Our core deposit pipelines remain robust, particularly in the verticals that Sam mentioned earlier as we continue to build out our relationship-based deposit franchise. Turning to Slide 13, we had another strong year of interest earning asset growth with interest earning assets up 22% year-over-year. Notably, we have $1.5 billion of lower yielding PPP loans and available for sales securities, which can be reinvested at roughly a 400 basis point higher yield in 2023. Moving to Slide 14. This slide shows a trend of increasing net interest income excluding PPP over the past five years, largely driven by strong organic growth in our corporate and specialty banking vertical. In 2022, we continued to experience strong growth in our NII ex-PPP, which was up 33% year-over-year. This growth outpaced the 22% annual growth rate we experienced over the past four years. The right side of that page also shows significant margin expansion since 2018 and highlights our disciplined loan pricing strategy despite the remix into lower credit risk lending verticals. Turning the Slide 15, this slide really showcases our effective and disciplined expense management. Despite significant asset and NII growth, we’ve more than doubled our asset size since 2018. Our core non-interest expenses have only increased 9% annually. This has resulted in a significant decrease in our efficiency ratio down from 63% in 2018 to 43% in 2022, highlighting our positive operating leverage. Moving to capital on Slide 16, our regulatory capital levels remain within our targeted operating ranges and well above required regulatory well capitalized minimums. Our TCE ratio was down slightly during the quarter given loan growth and slightly higher AOCI losses. Our AOCI adjusted TCE ratio was 7.2% at year end. Slide 17 highlights significant tangible book value accretion over the past five years, despite $165 million of increased unrealized losses deferred in AOCI. Our tangible book value at year-end 2022 was just under $39, up approximately 5% from last year despite nearly $5 of negative impact from AOCI. This significantly outpaces our midcap peers. Without AOCI, we would’ve ended this year at nearly $44. And with that, I’ll turn it over to Andy to talk more about asset quality.