Aaron Graft
Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Please go ahead
Thank you, Luke. I will discuss the material items noted in our earnings release and give you some thoughts on our first quarter results. Bryce will cover a few additional components of the financial results and then we're happy to take your questions. Let's start with the two items we called out in our earnings release that we consider unusual and noteworthy. First, we completed the sale of TCA, our asset management subsidiary, on March 31. This transaction resulted in a pretax gain on sale of $20.9 million. Offsetting this gain, we incurred $4.8 million in incremental compensation costs to recognize TCA team members for their contribution to this transaction, as well as 325,000 of other indirect transaction-related costs. On the whole, this transaction generated a net contribution to after-tax earnings of $10 million or $0.53 per diluted share. To put this transaction into perspective, TCA contributed approximately $0.04 per diluted share on an after-tax basis for the entire 2016 fiscal year. Notwithstanding the nice multiple on earnings, the logical question is why did we sell? There were three factors in this decision. First, the risk retention rules that went into effect at the end of 2016 make our growth of this business as an off-balance sheet business unpredictable at best and impractical at worst. When we founded this business, our intent was for it to be a fee income business with minimal balance sheet impact. The risk retention rules turned it into a balance sheet business and whatever our thoughts are about the efficacy of the risk retention for CLO assets, we were faced with relying on third parties to issue new CLO securitizations and then hoping for them to hire us as a service provider. We found this program to be too unpredictable to commit to it for the long term. The second reason we sold is that we found the sale price to be attractive in light of our ability to recycle that capital. We believe we will have opportunities to deploy the capital created in this transaction into an acquisition in the near future that will be accretive for our shareholders. The last reason we sold is that it simplifies our business model. We're now entirely focused on community banking and commercial finance. We expect that to remain the same for the foreseeable future. We do thank our TCA colleagues and wish them the very best in their new endeavor. The second material item of note relates to our credit results for the quarter. We recorded a provision for loan loss of $7.7 million. The total provision expense is significantly larger compared to our historical standards and is disappointing. But while it is disappointing, we do not believe it is a trend. We recorded total net charge-offs of $4 million and an additional net increase in specific reserves of $1 million. Approximately $1.4 million of the charge-offs had specific reserves previously recorded. Five individual loan relationships make up the majority of these adjustments contributing $3.1 million of charge-offs and $1.8 million of additional specific reserves. We have talked about some of these credits on prior calls and have reported them as nonperforming assets. Of these five credits, two of the loan relationships were originated by our healthcare finance unit and three were acquired in the ColoEast acquisition. The charge-offs and specific reserves related to the healthcare credits represent substantially all the remaining balance sheet exposure we have to these two borrowers and we believe there is no additional exposure on the three acquired ColoEast credits. In addition, our ALLL increased by $2.3 million due to increases in the general loss factors recorded against the remaining portfolio to incorporate the first quarter charge-offs into our overall estimates for the allowance for loan loss. While we believe the problem loans are isolated, the outcome is disappointing. Some of these losses were due to underwriting, but a significant portion were due to fraudulent activities of two borrowers in our healthcare ABL business. We pride ourselves on the operational integrity and intensity of monitoring of our entire ABL portfolio, including maintaining cash dominion to mitigate losses due to fraud. With respect to one healthcare loan in particular, we did not execute up to our standards and, as a result, we paid for it with this loss. We consider it expensive tuition that has caused us to revamp and continue to improve our procedures in this area. While we're working to realize some recoveries related to these loans, we're also focused on taking actions to improve all of our credit ratios. Now on to other thoughts for the first quarter. We have historically experienced a seasonal slowdown in the first quarter in several of our lending businesses, particularly at Triumph Business Capital, our Factoring subsidiary and in our mortgage warehouse lending. The period-end balance of mortgage warehouse loans declined by $60 million this quarter. In fact, excluding mortgage warehouse lending runoff, total loans grew $70 million or 4% this quarter. Triumph Business Capital generated strong volumes in the first quarter despite the seasonality. TBC fared better this year than in the first quarter of the two prior years which we find encouraging. To put that into specific context, the dollar value of receivables purchased did decline from the fourth quarter but by less than 1%. We experienced declines in receivables purchased of approximately 10% in the first quarters of 2015 and 2016. Triumph Business Capital purchased 376,000 invoices or a dollar value of $521.8 million this quarter. We added 103 net new clients in the first quarter to a record high of 2,539 clients at March 31, an increase of 17% over the prior year. The average invoice size purchased this quarter increased to $1,388 versus $1,366 in the prior quarter. As a result of our continuing growth in clients and invoice size, total purchases in Q1 of this year versus Q1 of 2016 grew a very respectable 37%. We remain very pleased with this business, its growth and potential. On the M&A front, we continue to engage with potential strategic and opportunistic acquisition targets. As soon as we're ready to announce something, you will be the first to know. You can expect any deal or deals will be along the lines of what we have said in the past, an in or near market franchise or branch deal that improves our deposit footprint; a strategic move into Texas; or a commercial finance company that will tuck into our existing lines of business. At this point, I'd like to turn the call over to Bryce to provide his thoughts on our financial performance in the first quarter. Bryce?