John Allison
Analyst · Hovde Group. Brett, your line is now open
Thank you, Donna. Welcome everyone to the Home BancShares 2022 second quarter earnings release and conference call. I guess the only thing we know for certain is uncertainty. These times require a steady hand, a discipline team of managers that provide strong leadership and are willing to go against the grain. I've always said there is no substitute for experience. We have for two years, been beating the table about the danger of inflation and then now suddenly everyone's waking up talking about inflation. Did they just wake up? Where have they been? Home has been planning and taking action for the last year and a half. So I think we've called it right when we talk about inflation. We do not believe that the fed is likely to back off of their desire to stop inflation and they should not because it is killing our seniors, fixed out better on fixed income. The reason I think they'll not back up is in the late seventies as inflation roar, vulgar made the mistake of backing off rate increases too soon and had to come back in the eighties and take rates to 20% plus to correct the problem that he probably could have fixed the first time. We have to get rates in parody with inflation to even begin to take control of this outta control monster. Last quarter, I said it was conceivable that fed funds could hit 6% and I'm sticking with that call. Fed member Bullard is now calling for a 4% number. The only way to stop this monster is for the fed to get off the buts and take decisive action. Actually a hundred basis point shock would be a good thing now and if they'd stopped the puppet show, I think that would be good for us. When you look at the tenure that's below the two year, why is that? How does that come about? It's got to be this it's being manipulated. With consumer prices running from 8% to 20% and PPI running from 11% to whatever, it appears the Biden administration is still trying to raise taxes while Americans are already paying an inflation tax of between 8% and 20%. This group of Keystone cops don't have a clue and just don't get. It still appears that the Biden administration deniably have virtually no one with business experience in their entire cabinet. Has anyone ever heard of supply and demand? Has anyone ever heard that there is no substitute for experience? You can't make chicken salad out of chicken waste and it was said during the Clinton administration, it's the economy stupid, but Ron White says, you can't fit stupid. I don't know if he's right or wrong. Our company has deployed some excess funds during this quarter as we plan and they even has had some loan growth. I think we ended up with a little over $200 million worth of loan growth primarily led by Texas in New York. Good job by all. The strong quarter is a result of planning and patience that your company has been exhibiting over the past because of our strong belief that inflation was raising its ugly head. The fed has been very late to the table, which may result in higher rates, longer correction time and a more complicated problem to bring it under control. Interesting fact, for all you younger individuals out there, what do you think the average fed funds rate for the last 50 years are? I'm saying the average fed funds for the last 50 years, a lot of you have never seen a four or five. You think it was two or three. It was actually 5.44. That illustrates the fact that the world can exist at higher rates as we've done in the past. However, as our US national debt has climbed through the roof, the situation required lower rights to allow Congress to continue to spend like a drunken sailor. In addition, one of the differences today from the broker times is the world is now a wash in an additional $200 trillion in debt. So raising interest rates could affect lots of these small countries. Here's the problem. We're all addicted to the sugar, high feeling that we get from zero or low interest rates. But you know what, if you're going to dance, you got to pay the paper, obviously. Well, the payday is now. I guess we can pay or we can kick the can down the road and continue this craziness. In addition to a $7 trillion fed balance sheet created outta nowhere, by the way, I'm told that the fed has not cut back on the purchase as of yet. So the puppet show continues week after week. Now, what happens when the fed cuts back or stops buying our US treasuries and mortgage backs, who will buy our bonds? You think maybe our good friends, the Russians, maybe Biden's buddies, the Chinese or Trump's buddy, Kim Jong-un of North Korea. This is one of the biggest challenges of all this manipulation because we've been buying our own crap with Fiat money created out of air. I'm very concerned about the ability to have a soft landing. I fear a crash could be in the making with this bold and crazy experiment. The key for banks is to be very premeditated and cautious with their moves. It does not hurt to play a little defense mindset it through money at their securities portfolio in the last 12 months, many have allowed their tangible common equity to fall into sixes. That's a number the investment community does not like, and they may be -- they may forced or could be forced to raise substantial high price capital. As you know, happy may have had to do. Some banks have and others will be forced to do the same in the future; raise capital. Add to that how much flow mark they need for those trying to sell their companies that wrote long and low, any loan with a two, three or four in front of it today is certainly elusive. The good news is your home company has a war chest of capital. We do not need to raise capital. We have plenty. We did not write long and low because I said, we've been preparing for two years and I hate to be out there trying to raise capital on this environment, very expensive. We used $25 million of our capital into one of the top banks in the country, and we'll be receiving 7.75% on this bond that they had to sell to fix the tangible book problem. While almost all had blindly ploughed money into low rate security as a low rate loan, Home was in contrarian and sat patiently; paying off almost $400 million in debt in quietly, building a war chest of cash and capital. Your company also refinanced our sub debt at much lower rates that resulted in over $37 million in savings over the next five years. The conservative moves your company has made should pay dividends for our shareholders in the future because we did not sell our future. We're already seen the benefits of the work was happy. The happy deal that was closed in April 1. Your home team is playing the long game, not the short game. We did not receive a very warm welcome. Some people call it a mini mutiny in a couple of the markets. We hate to see good people go, but that may turn out to be a blessing in disguise with a select group of individuals leaving in a very unprofessional manner without any notice. The way it was executed could have done damage to happiest local shareholders that are now new home shareholders. I would hope that was not the intent because they'd be hurting their own customers in their own shareholders. In hindsight, the move appeared that it was in the work for some time. Most employees that left went to some small Texas bank that I'd never heard of, nor do I know anything about the management or the bond. The good news is that even with the hardship, temporary hardship that it created, it also created many opportunities for those that stay and many new hires that stepped up and took over lots of enthusiasm and excitement. This will cost a little money over the next couple of years as we use the strength of Home's powerful balance sheet to compete very competitively in that market. It's a long haul road that doesn't turn. This should be a lot of fun, everybody stay tuned. The impact on smaller competitors' balance sheet can be much more severe than the impact on homes. I consider this an unfortunate situation that is pretty much in the rearview mirror, except for the competition on loans. I want to personally thank our Texas shareholders on behalf of our entire home team that travel to meet all of you. Thanks for your time, your kindness and your hospitality that you showed myself and every member of our team. I personally could not be more appreciative of the very cordial and heartfelt welcome he gave us. After all, we share a common goal and his partners at home and happy. Proudly, we own this outstanding company. For the second quarter, we had deferred onetime merger expenses of $107,316,000. These are nonrecurring expenses that would not have happened without the happy acquisition I'm referencing numbers today that exclude the $107 million in expenses that allows everyone to see the earnings power of the combination on a go-forward basis. Let's go to the numbers. Net revenue was $243,339,000 for Q2. That is a beat over anyone's expectation and a corporate record. Net operating profit was $97 million, also a beat at a corporate record. We thought we might hit $100 million on a run rate on a quarterly basis in the third -- second or third quarter of '23. So we're very pleased with the early performance of the $97 million. That equated to operating EPS of $0.47 a share and that would have been a huge bet. According to rates they had us at $0.38 and our own analyst had us at $0.34. I know that was all across the board. So one sign is the margin -- strong sign. The first quarter of '22, we ended up with a margin of 3.21% and at the end of this quarter, we were 3.64%, that's a 43 basis points improvement. I've been watching the numbers come out on the banks, but I haven't seen anybody with that kind of improvement. Maybe I missed someone. We're watching that on a monthly basis, and we could see the number getting stronger just follow me here at March, it was 3.18; April, 3.40; May 3.65; and June, 3.87. June had a little juice in it because it had all the quarterly accretion of the loan marks for April and May rolled into June. So that was a little inflated. PPNR, pretax pre-provision net revenue was 50% higher in the second quarter than it was in the first quarter. P5NR, pretax pre-provision net profit was 52.06%. Tangible common equity came out almost right at 9%, and we maintain our powerful loan loss reserves at 2.11% of loans or $294.3 million. That is one of the highest of all banks in the country, coupled that with our top-tier asset quality. If there is a recession, which Wall Street is calling for, we may not have to add as many dollars to reserve as other people do. Some people have used it more like a piggy bank pull it in, put it out and it put. We didn't do that. We just left to. We like 2.5% reserve. We just believe we are with too much reserve, we're better off doing that. Significant early improvement in our efficiency ratio as adjusted from 47.33% in the first quarter to the second quarter at 46.02%. Think about that in just a minute. Before the merger, Happy was over 62% and Home was at 47%. So that's really nice execution so far. More to come but it will be hard to get and take longer to achieve -- take longer to achieve the 40% or better, not you like a 40% or better. We're still sitting on about $2.5 billion of cash deployed when we see the opportunities. We're picking our spots to deploy the cash. We continue to repurchase stock when the market puts it on sale. And during the quarter, we bought back over 1 million shares. Having a desire to meet our Texas shareholders, we held 4 shareholder rallies, one in Dumas, Texas, Amarilla, Lubbock and Plainview, Texas. The meetings were very well attended, and we estimate approximately 700 shareholders in the total attendance. They were good meetings and covered the whole story and the difference between owning stock in a private bank and a public bank. And the value of being able to convert that to real trade ride money or cash if needed to be. We also talked about the dangers in these volatile times that the banking sector was experiencing and reassure our shareholders on the fortress balance sheet at home to get us through almost anything they can throw at us. We found our Texas shareholders to be a wonderful hard-working God-fearing, patriotic Americans. We're looking forward to going back as soon as possible. But in the meantime, we're probably going to go into Central Texas, the Dallas foot worn somewhere and have one. On the marine book, John had a pretty good quarter. I think it was one of the best quarters ever at [indiscernible]. He's hit the wall sits in applications are off about 25% or 30%. And I don't know if that will pick up or not pick up. But the dollar volume has going up. The value of what we're financing is going up, but the applications are down. This time of the year, they usually have shows, and that could be -- have an impact on it, plus people wait to buy those shows plus higher interest rates. In conclusion, it was a busy quarter, but one of the happy at Home's best not too bad for the first quarter together. I'm very pleased with this successful start and expect more to come in the future. Citicorp's earnings gave a lift to nearly all bank stocks Friday. But regardless of trend, that we all follow in the bank space, I'm hopeful for us to separate ourselves from the pack because Home continues to outperform most of the risk while remaining very defensive in these volatile economic times. The good news is your company saw this coming and certainly attempted to make preparations to protect all our shareholders, our capital and our future together. We together will continue to march forward and enhance the success that home is known for throughout the entire U.S. as one of the best. Thank you for your support because it takes all of us pulling together to keep the company growing and the dividends coming to each one of us. The more money we make, the more money we pay in dividends. I hope to see you all soon it's an honor privilege to serve as your Chairman. Donna, I'll let you have it back.