Brad Kessel
Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead
Good morning. Thank you for joining Independent Bank Corporation’s conference call and webcast to discuss the company's third quarter 2020 results. I am Brad Kessel, President and Chief Executive Officer. And joining me is Gavin Mohr. Gavin joined our team on September 14, as EVP and Chief Financial Officer. Also from our team, we have Jim Mack, Executive Vice President, Commercial Banking, and Rob Schuster who with the hiring of Gavin has moved to a senior financial adviser role with the company. Before we begin today's call, I would like to direct you to the important information on page two of our presentation. Specifically the cautionary note regarding forward looking statements. If anyone does not already have a copy of the press release issued by Independent today, you can access it at the company's website independentbank.com. The agenda for today's call will include prepared remarks, followed by a question and answer session and then closing remarks. We continue to execute on our operating plan that we share each quarter. This plan is built around diversified and balanced growth, process improvement and cost controls, talent management, and an enterprise wide risk management framework. We believe following this plan will yield consistent and improving performance metrics over many quarters and many years. As we continue to navigate the many challenges brought on by COVID-19 pandemic, we are pleased to report a very strong financial performance in the third quarter of 2020. In fact, I would say our associates were simply amazing. The highlights include the following: We closed over one half billion dollars of mortgage loans, helping our customers buy new homes or refinance existing mortgage loans. Auto deposit balances grew by over $100 million. We assisted our customers in completing and submitting PPP forgiveness applications to the SBA with over 14% of outstanding balances submitted. We -- we maintain solid asset quality metrics during the third quarter of 2020, including decreasing COVID-19 related mode -- loan modification balances by 80%. As part of our on-going branch optimization efforts, we closed an additional six branch locations during the third quarter, bringing the year-to-date closures to eight and our total branch footprint to 60 locations. We announced our fourth quarter planned opening of a new branch in the Brighton, Michigan market where we have had much success with the existing loan production office. Behind the scenes, our teams continue to advance our 2021 digital transformation, which included the third quarter rollout of a new mortgage point of sale system that leverages artificial intelligence. And just last week, we were very pleased to announce the appointment of Dennis Archer Jr. to our board of directors. Dennis is a talented executive with a wide range of business and entrepreneurial experience, who will be a significant contributor to our company's on-going success. Most importantly, we continue to effectively operate our business continuity plan to safely serve our customers and protect our employees. Page four of our presentation with some of the actions that we have taken since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic to protect our employees, clients, vendor partners and the communities we serve. Today our front liners continue to do an outstanding job serving our customers, as to the approximately 38% of our total staff, who continued to work remotely. Page five of our presentation provides a good snapshot of our historical financial performance and our efforts to produce consistent, and improving operating performance quarter-after-quarter, year-after-year. Turning to page six, we reported third quarter 2020 net income of $19.6 million, or $0.89 per diluted share, versus net income of $12.4 million or $0.55 per diluted share in the prior year period. This represents increases in net income and diluted earnings per share of 57.4% and 61.8%, respectively, compared to 2019. The increase in third quarter 2020 earnings as compared to 2019 primarily reflects increases in net interest income and non-interest income that were partially offset by increases in the provision for loan losses, non-interest expense and income tax expense. Our mortgage banking team continues to be a key driver in our strong operating results, producing net gains and mortgage loans of $20.2 million, up 256% over 2019 and total mortgage loan origination volume of $536.5 million. Additionally, we continued to produce net deposit -- deposit net growth of $112.6 million or 3.2%. I continue to be pleased with our asset quality metrics, where we saw a low level of early stage 30 to 89 day loan delinquencies, 0.20% at September 30, 2020 net loan recoveries during the quarter, a low level of non-performing loans and non-performing assets and a significant decline in the level of loan accommodations. Despite the continued strong performance of our loan portfolios, we recorded a $1 million provision during the third quarter, bringing our allowance for loan losses to $36 million, or 1.44% of portfolio loans when excluding Traverse City State Bank acquired loan balances and our PPP loans. For the nine months ended September 30 2020, the Company reported net income of $39.2 million, or $1.76 per diluted share, compared to net income of $32.6 million or $1.40 per share diluted share in the prior year period. This represents an increase in net income and diluted earnings per share of 20.3% and 25.7% respectively, compared to 2019. Year-to-date, we have produced a return on average assets, and a return on average equity of 1.36% and 14.87% respectively, compared to 1.28% and 12.84% in 2019. Tangible book value per share increased by 5.6% for the quarter to $15.55 per share at September 30, 2020. Page seven provides a view of our Michigan markets. Turning to page eight, we display several key economic statistics reflecting the literal shutdown of the Michigan economy during the second quarter of 2020. In addition to a solid housing market, we have seen noticeable improvement in state-wide employment. Yet, there continues to be elevated levels of unemployment, and at the same time labor shortages for many industries. On page nine we provide a couple of charts reflecting the composition of our deposit base, as well as the continued growth in this portfolio while working to effectively manage our overall cost of funds. Since December 30 2019, our deposits excluding brokered CDs have increased by $598 million, with $113 million of this increase taking place during the third quarter. However, it's very difficult to determine how much of the overall deposit increase will stay in the bank and for how long. On page 20 [ph], we provide an update on our $2.9 billion loan portfolio, the commercial portfolio decreased by $11.2 million during the quarter, mortgage loans decreased by $17.6 million, and the installment portfolio increased by $17.6 million. On page 11 we have an update on our loan modifications, which declined to less than $60 million, or just 2.1% of total portfolio loans as of September 30th 2020. With regard to the Paycheck Protection Program, we built an effective process to manage the high volume of applications for loans as well as the applications for loan forgiveness. As of September 30, we had 2,117 PPP loans for $261 million outstanding balances, and was approximately 6.5 million of remaining unaccreted net fees related to PPP. We expect most of these fees to be accreted into interest income over the next 15 months. On page 13 we are displaying the concentrations or makeup of our entire commercial loan portfolio. The portfolio is very granular in nature with the largest concentrations in C&I being manufacturing at 12%, construction at 9% and retail at 7%. Within the CRE portfolio, the largest concentration is retail at 7%. Our credit metrics indicate this portfolio is holding up well, including loans in those industry sectors whose business has been more negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Page 14 provides an overview of our investments at September 30 2020, as well as activity during the quarter. I'm very pleased with how well our finance team has been able to deploy the increased cash levels in very liquid, high quality, relatively short duration assets generating high levels of cash payments. In terms of capital management, our capital levels continue to be strong with tangible common equity, tangible assets of 8.2% at September 30, 2020. We paid a quarterly cash dividend of $0.20 per share on August 14, and recently declared a $0.20 dividend on October 20, payable on November 16 as we believe our capital levels currently support the continuation of our dividend program. In regards to share repurchases during the first quarter of 2020, we repurchased 678,000 shares through March 16, before suspending the buyback in response to the economic uncertainty brought in by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, primarily as a result of the company's strong financial performance, and improving economic conditions, and dependent upon market and other factors, we may begin to purchase our shares under the 2020 share repurchase plan during the last two months of the year. At this time, I would like to turn the presentation over to Gavin to share a few comments on our financials, credit quality, CECL and our outlook for the fourth quarter of 2020.