Marcy Mutch
Analyst · D.A. Davidson. Please go ahead
Thanks, Kevin, and good morning, everyone. As I walk through our financial results, unless otherwise noted, all of the prior period comparisons will be with the fourth quarter of 2018. And I'll begin with our income statement. Our net interest income decreased 2.4% from the prior quarter, primarily due to two fewer accrual days and a slight decline in average earning assets. Included in net interest income this quarter was recoveries of previously charged-off interest of $900,000, a slight increase from last quarter. Total accretion income on the acquired portfolios was $3.9 million this quarter, which was $200,000 less than the fourth quarter. Included in this was accretion related to early payoffs of $1.7 million this quarter, which was the same as last quarter. Current scheduled accretion should run at approximately $2 million per quarter, excluding the two deals we just closed. We're in the process of marking those portfolios right now, which should result in a modest increase to scheduled accretion in the second quarter. On a reported basis, our net interest margin increased 5 basis points to 4.04% in the first quarter. Excluding the impact of interest recoveries and loan accretion, our operating net interest margin increased 3 basis points to 3.87%. The expansion in our operating net interest margin was driven by a 12 basis point increase in our yield on earning assets, again excluding interest recoveries and loan accretion, which offset a 9 basis point increase in our cost of funds. The increase in our earning asset yields is being driven by increases in both the average loan yield and the yield on our investment securities. With a full-quarter impact of the rate increase in December, we saw the benefit from repricing in our loan portfolio which drove our average loan yields up 10 basis points to 5.12% on an operating basis. The yields in our investment portfolio increased 12 basis points in the quarter to 2.44%. We're putting new money to work at around 3% and the duration of the portfolio remains short at about 2.2 years. Going forward, we're seeing no pressure to raise our deposit rates. As we stated many times, we've been ahead of our markets in that regard. And while there is pressure on loan pricing, we stay disciplined. We would expect our margin to hold fairly steady heading into the second quarter. Moving to non-interest income. We saw an increase of $200,000 quarter-over-quarter to $34.5 million as we were able to more than offset the seasonal softness we see in our payment services revenue with growth in other areas. Our wealth management revenues increased $400,000 from the prior quarter, which was primarily attributable to a continued focus on expanding client relationship coupled with stronger financial markets as approximately 85% of our assets under management are fee-based. Assets under management stand at $5.1 billion at the end of the first quarter. All of our other fee income lines were relatively consistent with the prior quarter. With respect to our mortgage revenue, it came in just about as expected despite a particularly harsh winter in our markets that delayed the typical start of the spring home buying season. We continue to see lower demand for refinancing, which accounted for just 21% of our mortgage production in the first quarter. Looking ahead, the overall housing market in our footprint continues to be challenged by inventory constraints. However, we are seeing strong construction volume, which should help ease this pressure later in the year. We're also expanding our product set within the mortgage area including offering more products specifically designed for the construction market. This, along with lower mortgage rates and the launch of the digital platform that Kevin mentioned earlier, should positively impact our production levels. Moving to noninterest expense. We incurred $2.3 million in acquisition related expenses this quarter. Excluding these expenses in both periods, our non-interest expense decreased by just under $1 million. This was primarily due to lower salaries and wages, resulting from the staffing reductions at INB as we completed the integration process. In the first quarter, we did have severance and hiring costs unrelated to the acquisition of about $700,000 and one-time maintenance cost related to a temporary facility of about $300,000. Looking ahead, as a reminder, in the second and third quarters, our noninterest expense will include expenses related to the Idaho Independent and Community First Bank acquisitions pre cost saves, as we will not see the full benefit of these savings until the middle of the third quarter. By the fourth quarter, we expect our expenses to level out right around $96 million a quarter. Kevin has already discussed out loan and deposit trends, so I'll move on to asset quality. Generally, we saw stable trends across the portfolio this quarter with just slight increases on our non-performing assets and criticized loans. Within the non-performing asset bucket, our non-accrual loans decreased by $9.2 million, while our other real estate increased by $6.7 million, primarily due to an $8.4 million loan transferred to other real estate through foreclosure. We had $4.3 million of net charge-offs during the quarter, or 21 basis points of average loans on an annualized basis. The quarter-over-quarter increase was the result of a $1.2 million charge-off and the resolution of a long-term classified commercial loan and $1.2 million increase in consumer charge-offs compared to the prior quarter. Consumer charge-offs were elevated this quarter primarily due to a home equity loan charge-down and higher indirect loan charge-offs. Excluding these items, consumer charge-offs were at 9 basis points, which is in line with the two-year historical average. We don't expect consumer charge-offs to continue at this pace, as our consumer delinquency rates are trending down. Consumer delinquencies at the end of the first quarter were 71 basis points versus 89 basis points at year-end and 82 basis points a year ago. We recorded $3.7 million in provision expense, which was primarily driven by the higher level of charge-offs in the quarter. Our allowance for loan losses declined 1 basis point to 85 basis points of total loans, while our coverage of non-performing loans increased just 139%. As you know, the allowance does not take acquired loans into consideration, but the combination of the allowance with the remaining loan discount on the acquired portfolios represents 126% of total loans. And with that I'll turn the call back over to Kevin.