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Pinnacle Financial Partners, Inc. (PNFP)

Q1 2020 Earnings Call· Wed, Apr 22, 2020

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning everyone and welcome to the Pinnacle Financial Partners First Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. Hosting the call today from Pinnacle Financial Partners is Mr. Terry Turner, Chief Executive Officer; and Mr. Harold Carpenter, Chief Financial Officer.Please note Pinnacle’s earnings release and this morning’s presentation are available on the Investor Relations page on their website at www.pnfp.com. Today’s call is being recorded and will be available for replay on Pinnacle’s website for the next 90 days. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for your questions following the presentation. [Operator Instructions]Before we begin, Pinnacle does not provide earnings guidance or forecasts. During this presentation, we may make comments, which may constitute forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other facts that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Pinnacle Financial to differ materially from any results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.Many of such factors are beyond Pinnacle Financials ability to control or predict, and listeners are cautioned not to put undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. A more detailed description of these and other risks is contained in Pinnacle’s Financials annual report on Form 10-K for the year-ended December 31, 2019. Pinnacle Financial disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements contained in this presentation whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.In addition, these remarks may include certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined by SEC Regulation G. A presentation of the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of the non-GAAP measures to the comparable GAAP measures will be available on Pinnacle Financial website at www.pnfp.com.With that, I’m now going to turn the presentation over to Mr. Terry Turner, Pinnacle’s President and CEO.

Terry Turner

Analyst

Thank you. For those of you that have previewed today, you can see we’ve got a lot of information to cover today, envision the topics we’ve ordinarily cover on the call. We’ve got a lot of information on the COVID-19 pandemic impact and our response to it, which I believe has been bold and aggressive. We’ve got color commentary on our adoption of CECL and assessment of reserve build during the quarter. A much more in-depth look at the makeup of the segments of loan portfolio that are likely more impacted by the pandemic, including a deep dive into BHG and how we expect it to whether the storm, and an update on our entry into the Atlanta market which we remain excited about. So, we’ll try to move quickly.We’ve begun every quarterly call for a good number of years with our financial dashboard, primarily because it gives a view of our long-term focus and our ability to execute. I recognize that this quarter many are focused on immediate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and their responses to it, which are obviously the most newsworthy items and honesty in our first draft of this presentation we led with the impacts of the pandemic.The truth is, we’ve been in dialogue with investors over the last number of years regarding items like our ability to attract revenue producers gathering low cost core deposits, lowering cost of funds, and growing fee income, those items did produce long-term shareholder value and so, while we’ll cover the COVID-19 pandemic in great detail, I just felt like it will be beneficial to begin where we left off and try to offer brief insides into underlying financial performance despite the impacts of COVID.As we go through the material, hopefully you will be able to see that our…

Harold Carpenter

Analyst

Thank you, Terry and good morning everybody. Loan growth was solid for the quarter. End of period loans increased by 608 million during the quarter with about 250 million attributable to commercial loan growth with most of those we believe in response to the pandemic of our commercial borrowers. As a result, organic loan growth we believe was in the $350 million range for the quarter with results in about 7% annualized loan growth which we believe is admirable given the environment.Now to deposits, as Terry mentioned it was a big deposit quarter for us. End of period deposit is up almost 23%, our core deposits where 22% over December 31. To the point, as many of you know we modified our annual cash incentive plan incorporated core deposit growth and rate deployment. First quarter was a great quarter for core deposit growth, so as we sit today we thank our modification is working well. More on incentives later when I talk about expenses.Next is the usual update to our loan pricing loan spreads held up really well in the first quarter, so we are pleased to see that and hopeful spreads will continue to hold in the second quarter. Impacting first quarter LIBOR loan yields with absolute spread of LIBOR to Fed Funds, LIBOR spent a lot of time in the first quarter pricing below Fed Funds and at the beginning of March LIBOR was around 40 basis points less than Fed Funds.Since substantially all of our LIBOR loans reprice on the first of the month. March was negatively impacted. Now, going into the second quarter, we finished March at 3.8% on LIBOR loans with LIBOR well above Fed Funds, we’re anticipating that LIBOR will work its way south towards Fed Funds so we will see absolutely yield compression…

Terry Turner

Analyst

Okay. Thanks, Harold. In my view, isolating out the inputs of the pandemic, Q1 was an excellent quarter for us in terms of operating fundamentals, but obviously, by the end of the quarter, we were consumed with protection, protecting our associates, our clients, our communities and our shareholders.I can't tell you how proud I am with the leadership and the aggressiveness of our response. As you can see on this timeline, we actually activated our pandemic response team on January 30; it’s just 10 days after the first known case in the U.S. and the same day that the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency.We had already begun ordering supplies like hand sanitizer before we had the first cases of community spread in the U.S. In early March, we began restricting business travel, [inventorying to] personal travel plans of our associates as we headed into the spring break season and communicating with associates and clients about health safety prior to the World Health Organization declaring the pandemic.On March 12, we limited meetings and events to less than 15. That was three days before the CDC suggested limiting groups no more than 50 and well before subsequent safer-at-home ordered by a number of governors and our footprint suggested limiting gatherings to less than 10, which of course, we complied with.On March 18, I believe we were one of the first in our footprint to convert all offices to drive-through-only-service and we already had greater than 50% of our back office associates working from home. And on March 20, we rolled out a relatively aggressive loan deferral program to assist impacted borrowers; I’ll talk more about that here in just a few minutes.I don't want to rattle down through each of these actions since so many of them by now…

Tim Huestis

Analyst

Thank you, Carrie. Good morning, everyone. From a credit perspective, first quarter 2020 was a continuation of our solid performance for metrics such as past due, non-performing assets, classified assets and net charge offs. As Terry mentioned earlier, we did experience an increase in net charge-offs from 10 basis points to 20 basis points. This spike was a result of the single credit that was directly impacted by COVID-19. Absent this credit, our net charge-offs would have been in line with prior quarters, little more color on that credit later.Before I get into the following slides, first, a few overarching comments. What we don't know with certainty is when economic conditions will stabilize. It largely depends on flattening of the pandemic curve, how high unemployment ultimately gets and whether the rebound is a V-shaped or a U-shaped curve. What we are focused on today are those things we can do to help our borrowers and minimize loan defaults.Our strategy is the best offense is a good defense. You've all heard Terry say many times over, we hire experienced bankers who know their clients. The same principle has always held true as we've grown our credit team. We only hire very experienced senior credit officers. We currently have 24 senior credit officers and their average tenure is 28 years or years of experience. We have our senior credit officers paired with our financial advisors in virtually every one of our markets. Credit officers go on client and prospect calls with the financial adviser.Further rounding our credit discipline is our credit analyst team of 96 employees. Our credit analysts have an average of 20 years of experience. We believe our largely unique line of credit model of partnering experienced credit talent right next to the banker will serve us well during these…

Harold Carpenter

Analyst

Thanks, Tim. I've got several charts here on BHG, but I want to move pretty quickly. So, in the top left chart on this slide, we've shown on several occasions. Our opinion is that there has been no loosening, but actual tightening of credit standards at BHG, and through all of that, volume growth has been exceptional. The quality of BHG’s borrowers has improved steadily from the early years of the firm. They continue to refine their scorecards and increase quality of the borrowing base. As you know, there’s ramped up sophistication of the credit process as they continue to aim at segments that have high quality borrowers.Perhaps the bottom right chart may be the most powerful chart I have to offer related to BHG’s steadily improving credit quality. As you look at the losses by vintage, losses continue to level out in earlier months since origination, thus pointing towards a lower loss percentage over the life of a borrowing base. Recent pandemic related deaths will likely cause these lives to point upward, but the quality of the borrowing base, in our opinion, is much higher than the borrowing base from just a few years ago.Now more on historical charge-offs and reserve bills. These are for loans that they sold to their network of community banks. The green bar shows that currently, they've got about $2.8 billion in credit with banks who acquired their loans. The orange line shows their annual loss rate while the blue line on the chart details the recourse accrual as a percentage of outstanding loans with these other banks. They've been keeping the recourse reserve for substitution losses in the mid-to-high 4s over the last few years, basically constant with annual losses.As many of you know, BHG has been billing their balance sheet, thus maintaining…

Terry Turner

Analyst

Thanks, Harold. Quickly, as Harold mirrored earlier, in concert, we generally adopted a more defensive stance. We're substantially slow in our recruitment efforts for the foreseeable future, along with the associated expense bill with the exception of Atlanta. We continue to believe that the opportunity at Atlanta is a once in a generation opportunity and that the timing is perfect. Indirect impacts of COIVD like social distancing may slower our efforts to some extent, but our early associate client recruiting success brings confidence that we should stress ahead.And here’s why we see so much opportunity in Atlanta. This is greatest data from both the national and Atlanta markets. It covered businesses with annual revenues from $100 million to $500 million in each. The Cross Hairs represent the main performance across each market. And so, above average performers are above the horizontal line and to the right of the vertical line. It seems to me as the goal for any institution would be to get to the Northeast corner as quickly as possible.As you can see, what we’ve done in Nashville is just that. We have capitalized on relatively poor client satisfaction among clients in the largest banks in the market. Those that had the most share had the greatest vulnerability. Clearly in Nashville, we were at the right place at the right time.Now looking at this chart on the right, Atlanta, I want to make two observations. First of all, you’ll notice that the Cross Hairs in Atlanta would suggest that the average satisfaction among clients with the banks in Atlanta is generally less strong than in Nashville. In other words, Atlanta is less competitive in terms of client satisfaction. And more importantly, all of these banks who possess the vast majority of all the business clients in Atlanta, suffer…

Operator

Operator

Thank you, Mr. Turner. The floor is now open for your questions. [Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Jennifer Demba with SunTrust. Please go ahead.

Jennifer Demba

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning.

Terry Turner

Analyst

Good morning, Jennifer.

Jennifer Demba

Analyst

You mentioned several higher [Technical Difficulty] detail on all those, as well as BHG. [Technical Difficulty] 44% of your restaurant borrowers have requested deferrals to-date, can you talk about [Technical Difficulty]?

Tim Huestis

Analyst

Jennifer, this is Tim Huestis. Your question was breaking out. Was the question we had 44% of payment deferrals from restaurants, are you asking what the deferral rates on the other segments have been?

Jennifer Demba

Analyst

Yes, exactly.

Tim Huestis

Analyst

Okay. Well, I don't have all the different segments with deferral rates. We did include the deferral rates for these key categories, but I don't have at my fingertips for the different segments.

Terry Turner

Analyst

Jennifer, if you can see there, the deferral rates are concentrated in those segments given that you've got an overall 60% deferral rate as opposed to very elevated deferral rate in those highly impacted segments.

Jennifer Demba

Analyst

Okay. Can you just talk about what your expectation is in terms of reopening throughout your footprint? I know the Tennessee Governor has already [Technical Difficulty]?

Terry Turner

Analyst

Yes, that's a great question. Thank you. I think we're encouraged by an offensive posture. It looks like in the State of Tennessee, the State of Georgia, and the State of South Carolina, and those are, you know, principle operating areas for our firm. [Rob McKay] is the Chairman and my partner here, is active on the Governor of Tennessee's taskforce to figure out how to reopen the economy as well as the city of Nashville. And so, it looks to me that you're going to get an aggressive restart, and as I said, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida, excuse me, South Carolina.I think, when you think that – so what does that mean to us? I think that you ought to anticipate that we’ll work not dissimilar to the President's guidelines. In other words, he sort of got a phased reopening and it’s based on watching the decline in cases and then stepping back in and escalating the progress from there. I think you will see the same thing in the State.I know in the State of Tennessee that will be the case, rapid opening in some places, slower opening in the more urban markets like Davidson County, Shelby County, Hamilton County, Knox County and Sullivan County, which is up in Tri-Cities. So again, Pinnacle would then be a function of that and we will do the same thing. We sort of expect phase reopening. As you know, we kept all our branch offices – fundamentally our branch offices open with drive-through service.So there's not a huge service degradation, but we'll stagger it and we've already begun building the re-opening kits and we'll use shields for towers – protective shields, not dissimilar to what you're seeing in some of the grocery stores. There are a variety of things that are included in the supply kits. We're building to actually reopen on a full service basis.

Jennifer Demba

Analyst

Okay, thank you very much.

Terry Turner

Analyst

Alright.

Operator

Operator

Alright. Our next question comes from Jared Shaw with Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead, Jared.

Jared Shaw

Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead, Jared.

Hi, good morning, everybody. Thanks for all the great detail. Really appreciate [indiscernible] you broke out in slide deck. I guess maybe the question on the provision, you know, what we have seen so far in April, is there any expectation for changing the weightings of your different scenarios? Or is that too early to tell for [indiscernible]?

Harold Carpenter

Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead, Jared.

Yes, Jared, this is Harold. You know I don't think we’ll be changing the weightings just right now. We'll probably be getting new economic projections in short order and then we'll likely get some more before the end of the quarter. So, we'll just have to see what those look like, but, you know, as it sits right now, we're not planning on changing those weightings.

Jared Shaw

Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead, Jared.

Okay. And does the provision fully impact incentive comps doing as we see higher provisions? Is that fully flowing through the incentive comp? Or is there some type [Technical Difficulty] provision?

Harold Carpenter

Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead, Jared.

Yes, I'm not sure I got all your question, we're having a bad connection today, but I think you were trying to ask a question around our provision and how it correlates with incentives. Is that correct?

Jared Shaw

Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead, Jared.

That’s correct, yes.

Harold Carpenter

Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead, Jared.

Alright. Yes, currently, the way the incentive program would work is we don't have any kind of exception for provision expense. So that would be included in our – you know however, we ultimately end up with respect to the incentive plan.

Jared Shaw

Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead, Jared.

Okay. And then, on BHG, when we look at the recourse obligation that's on Slide 33, should we think of that it’s similar to a provision? Is that forward looking and based on our expectations or [Technical Difficulty] already been through?

Harold Carpenter

Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead, Jared.

Yes, I think so. Excuse me, the recourse accrual is bigger for eventual substitution risks that may exist in the portfolio that's been sold to community banks. And so, it is forward looking and it is an attempt to kind of cover whatever that future loss rate may be as of March 31.

Jared Shaw

Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead, Jared.

Okay. And then, do BHG loans that are in deferral? Do those qualify [indiscernible] or does there need to be additional deterioration besides just accrual based deferral?

Harold Carpenter

Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead, Jared.

Now, BHG is not subject to CECL. So, a lot – those community bank loans would be included, you know, with a kind of a similar thought process as the loans that are on BHG’s balance sheet. So, the way BHG looks at the loans off balance sheet is the way they look at it for loans on balance sheet. There's substitution risk and that's just merely in lieu of credit risk for the loans that are on the balance sheet. Did I answer your question Jared?

Terry Turner

Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead, Jared.

Jared I think…

Jared Shaw

Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead, Jared.

Absolutely, but…

Terry Turner

Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead, Jared.

Jared, this is Terry. I think if I understand the question, the loans that are on bank’s balance sheets, and therefore, subject to the substitution, will be treated like any other buying asset, meaning that the deferral is looked at differently for those loans and it would have been in the past as it relates to TDRs. And therefore, substation put back and all those kinds of things.

Jared Shaw

Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead, Jared.

Alright. Thank you. That was exactly what I was looking for. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Okay. And our next question comes from Stephen Scouten with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Stephen.

Stephen Scouten

Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Stephen.

Hi, guys, good morning.

Terry Turner

Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Stephen.

Good morning.

Harold Carpenter

Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Stephen.

Good morning.

Stephen Scouten

Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Stephen.

[Indiscernible]

Terry Turner

Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Stephen.

Yes, it is. Yes, I'm not sure.

Stephen Scouten

Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Stephen.

Okay.

Terry Turner

Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Stephen.

Everybody's questions are breaking up. So, it's not you, it's something between you and us, so.

Stephen Scouten

Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Stephen.

Okay, I'll try to keep it shorter then. Can you talk about how much an additional time [indiscernible]?

Terry Turner

Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Stephen.

Yes. I think that number is somewhere in the $2 billion range as far as what's left to draw, but Harold…

Harold Carpenter

Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Stephen.

But I think, as it relates to land utilization, it goes up and down. And today, the land utilization would be at a lower level than it was at quarter-end.

Terry Turner

Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Stephen.

Yes. In April, it’s – the $250 million has come back to like $180.

Harold Carpenter

Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Stephen.

Is that what you're asking, Stephen.

Stephen Scouten

Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Stephen.

That is. Thank you.

Harold Carpenter

Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Stephen.

Yes.

Stephen Scouten

Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Stephen.

Moving back to BHG, I know you gave the recourse reserve, do you have a level of reserve, or is that what would be the equity on balance sheet?

Terry Turner

Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Stephen.

Yes, that reserve is about, I think, 2%.

Stephen Scouten

Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Stephen.

Okay. And I guess why would that be so much lower than the [indiscernible]?

Terry Turner

Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Stephen.

It’s about 3%. While would it be less than the reserve for the…

Stephen Scouten

Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Stephen.

Replacement?

Terry Turner

Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Stephen.

[Indiscernible] of the community bank loans? Is that a question?

Stephen Scouten

Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Stephen.

Yes.

Terry Turner

Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Stephen.

Yes. I think what they're doing is they're looking at it – first of all, there's prepayment losses in the off-balance sheet book. So, if a loan prepays, they reimburse the bank for that. And with the loans on balance sheet, they haven't recognized any prepayment gain. So that runs about a 1.5%.

Stephen Scouten

Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Stephen.

Okay.

Terry Turner

Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Stephen.

So, that’s how…

Stephen Scouten

Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Stephen.

Okay. And last thing for me, I believe [Technical Difficulty] extent that, I know you gave a lot of detail how you think the reserve is justified, but with your exposure to C&I, can you talk a little bit about just kind of lost expectations in C&I, the 130 basis points in the presentation, kind of maybe could you frame it up to where that was flat cycle, or what the assumptions are in the loss given fall potentially, just to frame up the reserve that might explain a little bit lower than peers on a percentage basis?

Terry Turner

Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Stephen.

Alright. Well, I've been looking at several disclosures regarding CECL and the allocation of reserves. I think by and large, the credit card books are getting closer to 9% and 10%. I'm not seeing many disclosures yet on what the C&I and the CRE books may be allocated for our peers, but as it sits right now, the way our models work, that the allocation for C&I, I think you mentioned 1.3 seems to be reasonable.

Stephen Scouten

Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Stephen.

Okay. Thanks for the color. I appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Tyler Stafford with Stephens. Please go ahead, Tyler.

Tyler Stafford

Analyst

Hi, good morning, guys. Can you hear me, okay?

Terry Turner

Analyst

Yes, we can hear you.

Harold Carpenter

Analyst

Yes, we can hear you as you loud and clear Tyler.

Tyler Stafford

Analyst

Perfect. I've got a couple more on BHG, if I can. And I guess, first, thanks for all the details in the slide deck last night. I think that was extremely helpful and much appreciated. I appreciate the earlier comment around spreads around BHG in the first quarter remaining strong and the demand there still being, I think, record levels. But I guess, later on in the quarter and even so far into the second quarter, have you seen any decline in the willingness of those thousand or so downstream banks to buy BHG paper more recently?

Terry Turner

Analyst

Tyler, we got an e-mail this morning from Al Crawford, the CEO of BHG, I think, he believe and is April will be as strong as it's ever been. Their paper is still in strong demand. And so it looks like the one in the second quarter thus far of BHG will hold.If I could – if I can follow back up on the Steve Scouten’s question regarding the reserve between allowance and recourse obligations. The allowance also includes joint venture loans, where they share the credit risk with the bank. And so that does dilute the old balance sheet reserves. So anyway, I know I kind of mixed you up there with a couple of responses, but did I get to your question, Tyler?

Tyler Stafford

Analyst

Yes. I think so. I guess I'm just trying to understand how the dynamic with BHG and the purchasing banks are going to play out this year. I mean, if default rates do begin to accelerate, what happens to the demand from those purchasing banks? And conversely, I guess, BHG’s willingness to make those banks whole with losses?

Harold Carpenter

Analyst

Yes. I think what they'll do is, they'll continually modify their scoring models. They – they've told us that they’ve tweaked those models a little bit. They're aimed at higher FICO scores currently and is what – and they're not getting into any kind of new disciplines. So, they won’t have to introduce new disciplines to the banks and their track record has always been to substitute.So, I don't think they really feel that they'll have that much difficulty getting a BHG loan that's gone through the approval process downstream into the banks. I think what BHG is going to have to do that might be a little more of a challenge for them this year is find those higher caliber borrowers to satisfy their business flows. And so thus far, that seems to be working just fine.

Terry Turner

Analyst

Hey, Tyler, let me give you a comment on this. As you know, I think might be your answers are – I mean, your questions are notable might be, so I'm not trying to say I know, this is how it's going to play out. But my belief is that if you go back to what the way that model works, what they're doing is generating a high-quality asset that a lot of banks in this country serve markets that don't produce that high-quality and asset nor at any acceptable volume.And so my belief is a lot of those smaller community banks will continue to buy that paper, because it's the best asset alternatives they have. And their experience, as you know, is having gone through 19 years here, no bank has ever taken $1 loss on those credits. They're highly regarded credits by these smaller banks and smaller markets. So, I don't know the answer and I came here and see what's going to happen, but my bet is that bank network will hold up very well.

Tyler Stafford

Analyst

Yes. No, I appreciate that, Terry. And I guess, what we're just all trying to figure out is, if – as we enter a recessionary environment and losses out of that paper potentially accelerate dramatically, does the liquidity dry up in these banks stop buying the paper, or does BHG continue to make those banks whole as they historically have to keep that high-quality aspect of that paper, but take on significantly more losses and less profitability to do so? And again, I hear you loud and clear that you may not know that answer and how it's all going to play out. I think that's just what we're trying to figure out. So maybe just lastly for me then, given that said in terms of Harold’s comment about how April is trending so far, what's the underlying, I guess, drag on BHG’s net earnings growth this year? Is it less gain on sale margins? Is it assumption for higher put back risk or losses? What's ultimately driving that that lower net earnings growth?

Harold Carpenter

Analyst

Yes. I think it might be all that, but primarily, I think, what they're trying to do is get prepared for maybe additional recourse builds, as well as maybe some pull back on business flows. I think they reduced their guidance to us on where they think their loans will end up for the year. So, I think it's a little bit of all of that, but I still think they'll be – they'll weather this storm pretty well.

Tyler Stafford

Analyst

Okay. And then just lastly, for me on expenses, just a clarification question. The earnings release talked about low to mid single-digit expense growth relative to 2019. The slide deck talks about low to mid single digit expense growth relative to 4Q 2019 annualized. It's about a $20 million so difference. So, I'm just curious what the baseline that we should be thinking about if it is 4Q 2019 annualized, which is $522 million of baseline expenses to grow on top of us?

Terry Turner

Analyst

It’s 4Q 2019.

Tyler Stafford

Analyst

Okay. Alright. Thanks again, guys. I appreciate all the color.

Terry Turner

Analyst

Thanks, Tyler.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And our next question is from Catherine Mealor with KBW. Please go ahead.

Catherine Mealor

Analyst

Thanks. Good morning. Can you hear me?

Harold Carpenter

Analyst

Yes, we can.

Terry Turner

Analyst

Yes, we can. Thank you.

Catherine Mealor

Analyst

Alright. Question on the PPP program, great to see how active you work. Can you help us think about how to model that $50 million in fees? I'm assuming we'll see most of it in the second quarter, assuming that most of it turns into a grant. At – the one on geography, do you expect to come in the margin or in fees? And then also, how are you thinking about how much of that will come in the second quarter versus trail off over the life of the loan? Thanks.

Terry Turner

Analyst

Yes, that's a great question. I wish I knew all the answers to it. But what we're modeling is the revenue to come in some in the late second quarter and some into the late early third quarter, and about 75% of the loans being, call it, forgivable and then recognition of the fees of the remaining 20% to 25% over the next, call it, year-and-a-half after that.Now, we've asked a lot of people about how they're modeling it. And we can't really get a strong consensus one way or the other, but that's kind of where we – we've taken a first stab on collection of that revenue. As far as…

Catherine Mealor

Analyst

And so your….

Terry Turner

Analyst

Go ahead.

Catherine Mealor

Analyst

Go ahead, go ahead.

Terry Turner

Analyst

As far as fees or margin, I think right now we're leaning towards a fee recognition, but we'll wait to see what the accountants say about that. It may be a margin thing. I think, I'm not really sure right now to be totally positive, Catherine.

Catherine Mealor

Analyst

Okay. But – so your margin and your fee guidance does not include anything from the PPP program then?

Terry Turner

Analyst

That's right.

Catherine Mealor

Analyst

Okay, perfect. And then on your reserve bill, is there any way to think about how much of your reserve bills came from the higher-risk categories that you work out? You gave – now I guess it’s about 20% of your book is in the retail CRE hotel restaurant? Can we think about how much of the incremental provision we saw this quarter came from just as portfolios or that’s just simple of a number to pull?

Terry Turner

Analyst

Yes. I don't think we know – when we ran the models, it was against the – the way the modeling works is against, call it, four categories. And so we don't have it allocated within the models to the various NIAT codes like that.

Catherine Mealor

Analyst

Alright. Okay. Thank you for all of the disclosure last night. Super helpful.

Terry Turner

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Steven Alexopoulos with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Anthony Elian

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Hi, guys, good morning. This is Anthony Elian on for Steve. [Technical Difficulty] the willingness of these small community banks to purchase BHG [Technical Difficulty] payment deferrals going on [Technical Difficulty].

Terry Turner

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

I don’t – can you go back through that one more time? It was like…

Harold Carpenter

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

It was a great one to know as the BHG – demand for BHG [indiscernible] from corresponding banks diminished as a result of deferral activity.

Anthony Elian

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Yes.

Terry Turner

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

No, they're still able to flex every loan that they send the auction to all of these community banks are still high demand with respect to the auction platform. And so there's a lot of bid traffic on the website for it. So, they don’t believe they’re seeing any diminishment in the appetite for that credit.

Anthony Elian

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Got it. And then on the 20% high-risk loans that you called out, which was most impacted by pandemic. Do you have the reserve against the loans for each of the four segments that you called out?

Harold Carpenter

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Yes. We don't have that degree of specificity. The CECL models are built around call report categories. And so we don't have it broken down into the individual NIACS. And what we tried to do on the slide deck this morning was aggregate exposure through various products. So, we've got a C&I exposure, CRE exposure, all considered within those individual slides. So, we can't really differentiate or allocate the loss exposure assigned to those.

Anthony Elian

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Okay. And then finally for me, on deferrals, so it looks like eight of your top 10 borrowers in hotels have requested some sort of deferral. You mentioned about 34% of the restaurant book is deferrals. What are you hearing from these borrowers when talking to them about the likelihood of deferrals under payment once the deferral period ends? Thanks.

Tim Huestis

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

How I could understand that.

Terry Turner

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

I think the question had to do with all the deferrals that we're having, what we hearing from our borrowers about their ultimate ability to make payment.

Anthony Elian

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

[Indiscernible].

Tim Huestis

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

This is Tim Huestis. I'd say that it's still early. I think our conversations with the clients about payment deferrals will pick up in earnest in early May, as they start approaching the 60-day with any of the clients that want another 90-day deferral will be asking for a fair amount of information from them with the purpose of trying to determine, how much of a portfolio may not make it versus those that are simply wounded. But as of this moment, we don't really have feedback from clients on deferrals when they might be able to make payments.

Anthony Elian

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you.

Terry Turner

Analyst

Operator, are there any more questions? Hello, operator? Are there any more questions?

Operator

Operator

No one is on the queue. I guess, no one is pressing.

Terry Turner

Analyst

Alright. Well, let me offer my apologies. We've had a difficult time on the line being able to hearing, and we're a little uncertain as to where we are right now, but we're not hearing any questions. And so, I would just thank you for joining us. Again, our view is that, we had a really solid quarter, operating well on fundamentals and we think we've been aggressive and bold in our responses to the COVID pandemic, including our loan loss allowance bill. So, thank you very much. I appreciate you being here.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today’s conference. We apologize for the technical difficulties. You may now disconnect.