Kevin Riley
Analyst · D.A. Davidson. Please go ahead
Thanks, Kenzie and good morning and thanks again to all of you for joining us on our call today. We had strong second quarter on both the GAAP and core earnings basis. We reported earnings per share of $0.57 for the second quarter which included a $3.8 million recovery due to a settlement on prior year's litigation. On a core earnings basis, excluding the impact of this recovery and other small non-recurring items, we reported earnings per share of $0.52 which was an increase of 16% over the prior quarter and 6% over the prior year. As we typically see the second quarter is a seasonally strong period for the company and we saw positive trends in loan production, fee income and operating efficiencies. We generated 3.2% quarter-over-quarter loan growth with well balanced contributions coming from nearly all of our lending areas. We saw particularly strong growth in our commercial real estate, construction, consumer and agricultural portfolios. The loan growth was fairly well disbursed across our Montana and South Dakota markets, while loan demand in our Wyoming markets remained more subdued due to the slowdown in the energy industry. Although there has been some broader concern in the bank industry related to auto lending which makes up a significant portion of our consumer loan book, in agricultural lending we continue to see good performance in these portfolios. Through the first six months of the year, our net charge-offs in our indirect auto loan lending portfolio has been 12 basis points of average outstanding loans. We don't do any subprime auto lending, so we haven’t seen the weaknesses that some of the newer more aggressive entrance into the markets have seen due to their low underwriting criteria. Approximately 10% of our portfolio which fall into what we would refer to as the paper or our lowest indirect creditor. That being said, we continue to closely monitor new origination activity and the performance trends in the indirect portfolio to ensure that we maintain a strong credit quality that we have historically experienced. With regard to agricultural lending, our ag portfolio has consistently been one of our better performing commercial portfolios, averaging just 11 basis points of annual loss over the past three years. Our ag customers are very experienced and seasoned and have very solid balance sheets. They have ample cushion to absorb the decrease in cash flows caused by the decline in cattle and crop prices. We went through many cycles with our ag customers and they have proven to have a very low credit risk regardless of the strength in the broader commodity markets. For the asset quality, we are going to have Steve Yose, our new Chief Credit Officer talk a little later about our credit trends but I want to take a minute and give you a quick update on oil and gas portfolios as we have in the last few conference calls. Energy continues to remain a headwind for a few of our markets. Quarterly we continue to actively manage down our exposure to energy markets in our total outstanding loans to customers directly involved in oil and gas industry declined again this quarter to $66 million as of June 30, that's down $3 million from the end of the prior quarter. As a percentage of our total loan portfolio, oil and gas declined to just 1.2%, down from 1.4% at the end of 2015. The percentage of criticized loans in this portfolio increased to 62.9% of the portfolio or $41 million as of June 30 and this is up by net $1 million from the prior quarter. This is largely attributed to the conservative approach we have through managing this portfolio. Although, oil prices have nearly doubled since the pricing deck we used in the first quarter, we have not yet made any upward adjustments in our collateral valuations. Until we develop a more confident and sustainability - more confidence and sustainability of the recovery in oil prices, we will continue to use the more conservative valuations and remain appropriate reserve in this portfolio. Outside of the energy space, other sectors in our company continue to perform well, offsetting much of the decline in the energy sector and highlighting the economic diversity of our region. Strong growth has been seen in tourism industry, as well as retail and professional services, namely consultants, lawyers, engineers and architects. Tourism in our region remain strong, thanks to the continue low fuel prices with each of our national parks and monuments witnessing record attendants this year. And for the first six months of this year, visitation at the Yellowstone Park alone are up 10% year-to-date. Labor continues to also remain favorable in our region. In June, South Dakota had the nation's lowest unemployment rate at 2.7% while Montana had 17 lowest unemployment rate of 4.2%. Wyoming unemployment is 5.7% and continues to underperform to the national average. The last thing I'd like to mention is that we made a decision this quarter to sale our mortgage office in Sioux Falls. Many of you may recall that we went in this market on a trial basis in 2015 based on the availability of the talented residential mortgage lending team. Over the past year and half, the performance of this office hasn't warranted continued investment into this market. Fortunately, we had the opportunity to sale this office to another organization wanting to enter the Sioux Falls market. This transaction closed in mid June. So with those comments, I'd like to turn the call over to Marcy for a little more detail behind the numbers. Go ahead, Marcy.