Ralph Mesick
Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead
3:27 Thanks, Bob. Turning to slide four and building on Bob’s comments, You should note, we took some actions in the fourth quarter to improve the balance sheet position going into the new year. At December 31, total assets fell 2.2% over the prior quarter to $24.99 billion, but the changes in the balance sheet were planned and will be accretive to income in 2022. We worked to move some public deposits off the balance sheet and deployed excess liquidity into loans and securities. The change in mix improved our interest income for the quarter. 04:01 We also use some of the cash to prepay $200 million of FHLB advances, this quarter for total savings of about $12 million in interest expense. The reduction in cash also reduced deposit insurance cost and improved our capital position. 04:16 Turning to slide five. Period end loans and leases were $13 billion, an increase of $128 million from the end of Q3. Excluding the impact of PPP loans, total loans increased by about $414 million or 3.4% for the quarter. The growth in loans was broad-based with increases in C&I, CRE, residential, home equity and credit card. 04:44 Construction balances were down due to scheduled completion and payoff of several large for-sale projects with continued draws on other projects helped to offset the paydowns. The completion of these projects contributed to residential loan growth in the quarter. Looking ahead to 2022, we are expecting loan growth ex-PPP to be in the mid-to-high single digit range. The variability is driven by uncertainty around the return of dealer flooring balances. 05:11 The low end represents a scenario where we don’t – we do not have significant contribution from dealer flooring, while the high end represents a gradual normalization of flooring balances. In the latter scenario, we would expect most of that growth will be back loaded into the second half of the year. 05:29 Turning to Slide 6. Deposit levels fell by 1.4% or $304 million to $21.8 billion at year end, but the composition shifted significantly. Public deposits declined by almost $1 billion, while non-interest bearing deposits grew by about $520 million. Our loan-to-deposit ratio was 59% at year end, and the cost of deposits was unchanged at 6 basis points. 06:01 Turning to Slide 7. Net interest income was up $4.7 million over the prior quarter to $137.3 million. The improvement was attributed to deployment of cash into securities and loans, as well as higher fees from PPP forgiveness. 06:18 The net interest margin was 2.38% up 2 basis points from the prior quarter. Higher PPP fees accounted for 6 basis points of the increase. Excluding PPP fees, the NIM would have declined 4 basis points, in line with our outlook of a 2 to 4 basis point decline in Q4. 06:38 Beyond Q4 the impact of PPP fees should diminish significantly since there is only about $5 million remaining. And looking into Q1, the balance sheet actions we took in Q4 should add 4 to 6 basis points to the NIM, but we're also expecting a significant drop in PPP fee income, which could negatively impact NIM in the 10 to 12 basis point range, so net-net, the reported NIM could decline around 6 to 8 basis points from the 2.38% reported in Q4. 07:12 Looking forward, we feel that the asset sensitivity of the balance sheet provides good upside potential for NIM and net interest income heading into 2022. About $4.8 billion of the loan portfolio reprices every 90 days or less and another $3.3 billion in the – in fixed rate loans and securities reprice in 12 months. On the funding side rates paid on deposit in our market have historically been less sensitive to rising rates than in mainland markets and this will help hold funding cost down. 07:45 Turning to Slide 8. Both non-interest income and expense were impacted by non-recurring items in the fourth quarter. Non-interest income was $41.6 million this quarter, which was $8.5 million lower than Q3. We took a $6 million charge on the funding swap for the visa Class B shares sold in 2016 and realized $2 million less in BOLI income. 08:11 The normalized run rate is about $48 million per quarter. We remain focused on growing non-interest income and feel there's good potential upside in 2022, as economic activity picks up and interest rates increased. Non-interest expense rose $7.7 million to $108.7 million about $9 million of that increase was the termination fee for the FHLB advances previously discussed. Going forward, we expect 2022 expenses to increase 6.5% to 7% over 2021, it was about one third of the growth coming from inflationary impact and increasing levels of business activity. One third coming from expenses related to the new core platform and one third from additional tech investments. 09:03 Moving to Slide 9, asset quality at year end was strong. Realized credit costs in the quarter were low and the level of NPAs criticized credits and past due decreased over the prior quarter. We did not record a provision expense this quarter. Net charge-offs were $6.2 million for the quarter, and $12.5 million for the full year or 10 basis points, 13 basis points better than the rate for 2020. NPAs and 90-day past due loans are flat this quarter and the level is 4 basis points lower than the prior year. Criticized assets continued to decline dropping from 2.98% of total loans in Q3 to 1.6% in Q4. This level is 263 basis points lower than year-end 2020. Past due loans decreased from the prior quarter, loans 30 to 89 days past due declined 12 basis points to 23 basis points at the end of Q4. 10:07 Moving to Slide 10, you see a roll-forward of the allowance for the quarter by disclosure segments The allowance for credit loss decreased $4 million to $157.3 million The level equates to 1.21% of all loans or 1.23% net of PPP loans. The decrease in the ACL level is due to improvements in commercial credit quality. The reserve for unfunded commitments decreased $2.2 million to $30.3 million. Our economic outlook was unchanged in Q4 primarily due to the renewed uncertainty related to the Omicron variant that could impact loss (ph) recovery and credit losses. 10:49 Let me now turn the call back to Bob for any closing comments.