Good day, and welcome to the HomeStreet Inc., second quarter 2015 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Mark Mason, President and CEO. Please go ahead.

Hello and thank you for joining us for our second quarter 2015 earnings call. Before we begin, I’d like to remind you that our earnings release was furnished this morning to the SEC on Form 8-K and is available on our website at ir.homestreet.com. In addition, a recording of this call will be available today at the same address. On today's call, we will make some forward-looking statements. Any statement that isn't a description of historical fact is probably forward-looking and is subject to many risks and uncertainties. Our actual performance may fall short of our expectations or we may take actions different from those we currently anticipate. Those factors include conditions affecting the mortgage markets such as changes in interest rates that affect the demand for our mortgages, our ability to meet our internal operating targets and forecasts, and economic conditions that affect our net interest margins. Other factors that may cause actual results to differ from our expectations or that may cause us to deviate from our current plans are detailed in our SEC filings, including our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and our Annual Report on Form 10-K for 2014, as well as our various other SEC reports. Additionally, information of any non-GAAP financial measures referenced in today's call, including a reconciliation of those measures to GAAP measures, may be found on our SEC filings and in the earnings release available on our website. Today, I'll give you a brief update on recent events; review our progress in executing our business strategy and highlight key financial results. Please refer to our earnings release for a more detailed discussion of our financial condition and results of operations. In the second quarter, we made significant progress on our strategy to grow and diversify earnings. We expanded our commercial and…

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Jeff Rulis from D.A. Davidson. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning.

Good morning, Jeff.

Question on the expense line item, excluding merger costs, Mark, is it possible to sort of break out what the percent increase was due to simplicity on board for a full quarter versus additional mortgage production. Does the ballpark figure of, call it, the $11 million or so that increased on a core basis?

Quickest way to answer I think is, looking at the separate segment results for Mortgage Banking and you will see that non-interest expense there went from $53.8 million to $63 million, right. So that’s the Mortgage Banking delta. Again, much of that is commissions on closed loans and 26% increase in that activity. And then of course, we – in the consumer commercial banking segment, if you back out from each of the two periods, the merger related expenses of $3.2 million current quarter and $12.2 million the prior quarter, you get a good idea of the run rate difference related to Simplicity, plus we added a branch during quarter.

That’s helpful, thanks. And then Mark, today here you’re right that -- I guess, if you look at the close to $90 million base this quarter, did you say that not anticipating any further synergies from Simplicity of that base?

That’s correct. Again, correcting for merger-related expenses, I think we have roughly $60,000 to $100,000 of expense to take in the third quarter. It really relates to closing down the last month of lease and other cost of corporate headquarters, but that did.

Got it. Okay. Just a couple sort of housekeeping, the tax rate is -- any expectation there? I know you’ve got some merger costs that impacts that tax line, but on a normalized run rate, is there a number you’re expecting on the tax rate?

There is, it’s gone down a little. Moving into higher tax jurisdictions states, it’s going to be a continuing adjustment and so we know exactly where that’s going to even out. But I think we are around 33% right now for the remainder of the year we’re expecting roughly – I am sorry 33% to 34%.

Okay. And then lastly just – you mentioned something on the expectation for margins going forward, net interest margin?

Yeah, we are expecting about flat – hey, just to correct my prior statement, 34% to 35% actually, I think is closer to what we think the effective tax rate is going to be. So net interest margin, we think it’s going to stabilize kind of where it’s at right here. It can move 1 basis point kind of in either direction, but it’s largely going to be dependent on the market from here.

Okay. That’s it from me, thanks.

Our next question comes from Paul Miller from FBR Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hey, Mark, how are you doing? Can you talk a little bit about the opportunities that come on the commercial side? As you explained, your footprint was Simplicity down in LA. And can you a little bit about because we are getting some questions this morning on the gain on sale in the commercial loans and what loans are you selling and what can we expect off of that line item going forward?

Sure, second question first. In the commercial segment, those gain on sale numbers relate to our Fannie Mae multifamily business and that business has picked up in the first two quarters of this year. Not sure, if it’s going to continue at the same pace because Fannie has made some pretty substantial changes to their program to limit production over the remainder of the year. The originations run a little faster than they had expected earlier in the year. So we are having to refocus on parts of their business that aren’t subject to limitation, which is the small balance and low income origination section. So that’s what relates to that business. Opportunities in Southern California, we think for us are substantial. I mean, when you think of the size of our business relative to that market, which is the largest in the Western United States, we think we have a pretty long ramp there. We intend to initially grow organically and then acquire as opportunities present themselves. We think the opportunities for organic growth in that market in particular are extremely good because of the substantial consolidation that's already occurred in that market, there are lots of great lenders available and a fair number of customers we think that have been marginalized somewhat. And so, we're very excited about that market, we are still shopping for teams of general commercial lenders, as we noted we've hired commercial real estate folks and SBA folks but we need to fill that out with general purpose commercial lenders and cash management people and we're working on that now.

Okay, thank you very much Mark.

Our next question comes from Jackie Chimera from KBW. Please go ahead. Jackie please go ahead.

Sorry, I was on mute, can you hear me now?

Hi Jackie.

Okay, hi sorry, I'm working from a different office today. In light of the recent staffing increase that you had and just the ongoing growth, and you mentioned the three LPOs that were opened and then you want to add some more branches near the Kaiser [ph], how should we think about your shopping needs as we look through the end of the year?

I would expect that our mortgage staffing will rise, serve consistent with the year-to-date run rate over the remainder of the year and we sort of caught up in the second quarter, we didn't add as many lenders, net as we had hoped on the mortgage side in the first quarter, we caught up in the second quarter. So you look at that six month change in personnel that should be a good run rate for growth, not just for the rest of this year, but sort of going forward on a per head basis. In terms of the growth in deposit branches, we expect to open two more by the end of this year and perhaps three, depending on the construction structure. And going forward next year, I expect we will open somewhere between three and six branches.

Okay. And generally how many people per branch inclusive of perhaps any back-office individuals you might need to add, how many would that do for your commercial TEs?

Roughly 4.5 per branch.

Okay. And then if I look at the change in your consumer and commercial employees this quarter, I'm assuming that obviously Simplicity drove the decline with cost savings and everything. Absent that part of it, was there a net increase?

Yes, because we opened a new branch and we added a couple of back-office personnel, yes.

Okay. And then just lastly, looking at your loan growth, I know that you've got the target of 5% and you more than hit that in commercial this quarter but the single-family was down a little bit, was that driven by just a desire to sell more rather than retain anything or was it just purely a lot of the pay-offs you were talking about?

Well, our prepayments have been pretty high but we are consciously constraining the additions of single-family to the portfolio. Long term, we'd like to get the single-family concentration down to around 33% and it's about 40% right now I think.

Okay. Great, thank you very much for the color.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Russell Gunther from Macquarie. Please go ahead.

Hey Mark, good morning.

Good morning Russell.

I just want to follow-up on some of the loan growth comments; I appreciate the color you guys provided on the new commercial team out in California with their production this quarter. They’re still in the early innings it seems like, do you have a sense for what their capacity could be once their kind of at full stride?

I do, I hesitate giving you the upper ends of it. We expect the SBA team to originate somewhere between $75 million and $100 million a year reasonably that's the Southern California team but doesn't include the Northern team. The small balance commercial group, we have near term target of them to reach about $200 million a year in the near term and hoping to get that number somewhere around double that over the longer term. That's a pretty competitive market and those are hoped for in numbers right now, but it's a type of operation that we are building to do those kind of numbers and it will remain to be seen how much of that we realize.

I appreciate that color. And then just turning to this quarter's growth, but nice job on the commercial side, double-digit organic growth. Could you just give us a little color on what drove sort of the production on the construction and development side this quarter? That was pretty strong and then maybe just your thoughts on how large you would consider growing that portfolio from a mix perspective?

Sure. It's a little lumpy. We carried over from the first quarter a fair amount of business that was almost ready to close and just couldn't for one reason or another. The other thing with our construction group, or the two groups really, right, there is both commercial construction and residential construction. On the residential side, we are really just now starting to get traction in the new markets that we entered when we hired origination groups in Salt Lake City, Utah and in Southern California and in particular I would expect the Southern California group to develop a substantially larger pipeline when you consider the difference and sizes of the market. Additionally, that industry as a whole has been constrained because of the entitlement process and the availability of buildable lands. So we expect that to improve as more land gets entitled as well. So that's a little lumpy. They had a great quarter this quarter. I think we are expecting another great quarter in the third quarter, the residential group in particular. On the commercial side, we've slowed intentionally. The amount of commercial construction in the first part of the year to focus a little more on the Fannie Mae business and on permanent lending. Since then we have begun doing a little more commercial construction, primarily apartments and mixed use projects, but we also have several other big office and retail projects. In terms of the total size, that total will not ever be a large part of the balance sheet. We target totals really in relation to tier-2 capital that we expect to not grow more than around 350 or so basis points in total commercial real estate. 350 basis points of risk-based capital and on construction somewhere in the 120 to 140 basis points on risk-based and tier-2 capital. So we think of it in relation to capital itself. As portfolio composition, I wouldn't expect to see those numbers greater than about 15% to 20% of the portfolio ever.

Alright. No, that's very helpful. Thank you. And then just if you happen to have the sort of dollar purchase accounting accretion impact this quarter with the full quarter of Simplicity in the numbers?

Can I get back to you on that number? I'm sorry, I didn't --

Yeah. No, absolutely we can follow-up on that. Then that's it from me. Just want to thank you guys for the increased color on the mortgage outlook going forward.

You are welcome.

Alright, take care. Thanks.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Tim O'Brien from Sandler and Partners. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Mark.

Hey, Tim.

So you talked about previous hires, commercial hires in SoCal in particular, SBA and such, I didn't catch, were there any hires this quarter done down there or is that kind of in process and you are in the hunt for those teams now or did you have any bank adds this quarter?

We did.

Non-mortgage.

Yes, we did. One, we hired the initial group in the small balance commercial business last quarter. That group, when it started, was only about six or seven people. I think we’re up to 12 or 14 people now. It’s going to grow to the low-20s in the near-term, right. So, we have some growth there to build out their origination and processing closing servicing capability. So, there is real growth there in the quarter. And I think that we added I think 1% of SBA growth maybe. So, there has been some.

And as far as -- it looks like there were some noise last week on the SBA front as far as government support or I don’t know the fiscal year funding that set aside for that bipartisan support this everybody loves SBA, but there is a -- historically there has been a stall a lot of the time at the end of a fiscal year and we’re kind of at that point or back to that kind of a dynamic due to what’s happening in the congress. Is that have an impact on your revenue outlook at all? Could that affect that?

It may. So, since referring to is the fact that nationally, we now hit the budgeted origination cap for SBA for the year pretty quickly here just finishing seven months of the year, there is a proposed bill to increase the cap. I’m sure it will have bipartisan support. This is not a political issue really and it shouldn’t be a problem. I mean this is a self-funding program that has done historically well and I can’t believe that would be delayed. So, we’re expecting an increase in the cap if not the new year starts in October, not December. And so, worst case, we may have to delay some loans or fund some bridge type loans in cases where businesses just can’t wait for the money, but we’ll have to see. We don’t think it’s going to be a material to your business, but it’s a great question, Tim.

And then last question, as far as what you’re working on in the Bay area, do you have anything planned for that market as far as commercial expansion is concerned or maybe construction, I don’t know, up in the Francisco Bay area?

We do. It’s a very good market. I mean it’s a very hot real estate market right now. Just as we continue looking Southern California for bank acquisitions, we look in the Bay area as well. They’re not as many opportunities as we’d like in both areas, but we continue to look at opportunities in both areas. It’s also very good home building market and we’ve looked at some business there. We haven’t done much yet but we’d like to. So, we’re interested and still working on it.

Thanks for answering my questions.

Thank you, Tim.

We have a follow-up question from Jackie Chimera from KBW. Please go ahead.

Hi, Mark, just one last quick one if I could and there was $1.5 million swing in the other income line in the quarter and I just wanted to be what the driver of that was?

Negative swing I’m sure you’re referring to. We had to write down some mortgage loans that we had moved from the held-for-sale portfolio to the held-for-investment portfolio. As held-for-sale mortgage loans, we were carrying them at fair value, which is required for the remainder of their lives. And while we are now hedging those loans, in the interim, those are slight moving rates and we had to write them down and that was $1.7 million in that line item.

Okay. And so, you moved them from held-for-investment into held-for-sale?

Vice versa.

Vice versa. Okay. And what was the total on those loans?

It was at the end of the prior quarter, it was about $40 million.

With last quarter, okay.

Yeah. Since then we’ve sold some of those loans. So, I think the total of that is now at around $24 million.

Okay. But the actual transport took place in 1Q?

Exactly, yeah.

Okay, great. Thank you. That’s very helpful.

So again, that should not be recurring.

Okay. Thank you.

Thanks, Jackie.

Having no further questions, this concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Mason for any closing remarks.

Again, we appreciate your time on the call this morning. Look forward to talking to you next quarter. Thank you, operator.

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.