Aaron Graft
Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please go ahead with your question
Thank you, Luke. We have a lot of things to cover in this call. To signpost the presentation, I am going to use three categories: the unusual, the unexpected and the unique. First category, the unusual, three unusual items created noise in our Q4 numbers; first, accounting for our acquisitions, which is the most usual of these unusual items. The fourth quarter results include the impact of our acquisition of nine Independent Bank Colorado branches, which closed on October 6 and the acquisition of Valley Bancorp Inc., which included 7 Colorado branches which was effective on December 9. These acquisitions further strengthened our position in growth markets of the Northern front range region of Colorado. In addition, these acquisitions improved our core deposit base and funding capacity. TBK Bank now operates 53 branches, with 32 located in Colorado. We acquired $267 million in loans and $454 million of deposits in these two acquisitions and recognized a total of $9.3 million of core deposit intangibles and $16.3 million of goodwill. We incurred $1.7 million in transaction costs, which reduced our diluted earnings per share by $0.05. We have added back this expense in calculating our adjusted earnings per share. Second, once in a generation unusual items, the effect of the new tax legislation, we recognized a non-cash charge of $3 million in the income tax expense in Q4, which reduced earnings per share by $0.14. That fact aside, we expect our future earnings to benefit greatly from a new lower expected effective tax rate of approximately 23% in 2018. We expect that a material portion of this benefit will fall to our bottom line. The third unusual item is the impairment charge of $1.3 million on core deposit intangible assets, which reflects the entire remaining unamortized core deposit intangible asset associated with the acquired public deposit funds. This adjustment to the CDI is a non-cash item that accelerates the timing of an expense we would have incurred in the future and it is the result of our plan to reduce public funds as we discussed on last quarter’s call. Given the composition of our balance sheet, it is not financially practical for us to continue to hold public funds. This adjustment reduced earnings per share by $0.04. Now, let’s talk about the unexpected. We have made the decision to exit the healthcare finance business. We have made this decision to simplify our organization. We are going to reinvest the capital and attention we previously allocated to our healthcare finance business into our core businesses specifically transportation factoring and traditional asset-based lending. As a result of this decision, the carrying amount of Triumph Healthcare Finance assets, including loans with a recorded balance of $68.7 million net of allowance for loan and lease losses of $2.1 million was transferred to assets held for sale. As of January 19, we have executed agreement to sell materially all the assets associated with our healthcare finance business. And the final category, the unique. By unique, I mean, the things that make TBK unique to its competitors. These are the things we are most proud of. First, exceptional loan growth and solid asset quality, our organic loan growth, excluding the impact of the acquired loan portfolios and Triumph Healthcare Finance, was $186 million, an increase of 7.9% from the end of the third quarter. This included organic growth in our CRE portfolio of $84 million and included $77 million of growth in our mortgage warehouse platform. I am very proud of the organic growth our team has produced this year. We also drove organic growth in our equipment lending, asset-based lending and factoring lines of business. Excluding Triumph Healthcare Finance, our commercial finance lending portfolio grew $79 million or 10% during the quarter. Again, the team we have put in place in our commercial finance business continues to excel at growing niche loans without sacrificing yield or credit quality. Year-over-year, our total loan growth was $854 million or 42%. This includes the acquired loan portfolios. Excluding our healthcare asset-based lending portfolio, our total organic loan growth for the year was $595 million or 30.6% and total organic loan growth in our commercial finance loan portfolio was $284 million or 46%. I would be surprised if many or any of our peers outperform these metrics. As a result of our loan growth in Q4, our net interest margin improved over the prior quarter. This happened on an absolute and an adjusted basis. With respect to asset quality, our fourth quarter metrics remains solid. We recorded a provision for loan loss of $1.9 million primarily to provide for the quarter’s organic loan growth. This quarter’s net charge-offs were a manageable $1.4 million or 6 basis points of average loans for the quarter and 28 basis points for the year. Of the total net charge-offs experienced this quarter, $1 million had previously established reserves. Our past due non-performing loan and non-performing asset ratios all experienced improvement during the fourth quarter. The next point, continuing strength in our transportation factoring business, Triumph Business Capital, our factoring subsidiary contributed approximately $30 million of loan growth for the quarter. I sound like a broken record, but I want to point out that TBC once again achieved record highs in the number of invoices purchased, the dollar value of invoices purchased and the number of clients served in the fourth quarter. TBC purchased 512,000 invoices or a dollar value of $872.4 million during the quarter, which is an increase of $140 million or 19% compared to the prior quarter. For the year, TBC purchased $2.8 billion of invoices, which is an increase of $938 million or 51% compared to the prior fiscal year. That is incredible growth for this segment that continues its winning ways. TBC added 233 net new clients in the fourth quarter to reach 3,158 clients at December 31. Average net funds employed were $310 million during the fourth quarter and the average invoice size purchased this quarter increased to $1,705 versus $1,537 in the prior quarter. To give some color on what has happened since the end of the quarter, January 2018 purchases which are normally affected by downward seasonal trends have been surprisingly strong to-date and are 70% higher than the same period in 2017. We are also encouraged by the fact that our average invoice size today continues to trend higher from where it finished the fourth quarter. While the sample size is too small to draw substantive conclusions, we are experiencing early confirmation of strong economic forecast for the transportation industry in the first half of 2018. The last thing to mention and sticking with the You Work theme is upcoming initiative to watch for in 2018. First, our Dallas retail branch, we are investing in the establishment of a full service retail branch in Dallas. For those of you who are familiar with TBK, you know it will be like no other. We have significant relationships in the Dallas market. Our vision is to leverage those relationships to grow core deposits and bring full-service commercial services to Dallas. Early results are very promising as over $50 million in deposits have already been raised in advance of an anticipated soft opening later this summer. We envisioned the Dallas branch becoming our largest full service retail branch in our entire franchise within 1 year of opening. Second, Triumph Business Capital Technology initiatives, since its soft launch in the third quarter of 2017, TriumphPay continues to gain traction with freight brokers and factoring clients. Ahead of any aggressive marketing for the TriumphPay product, several clients have been signed under the platform and we have a pipeline of potentially significant clients. We will continue to focus on our proprietary technology platform development such as TriumphPay, third-party application integrations such as transportation management software and transportation data providers and an enhanced client user experience through things such as updated websites and mobile applications. We expect this investment to enhance our position as the leading transportation factor in the nation. A closely related technology application, which we are exploring aggressively, is Blockchain. Triumph is a charter member with board representation on the newly formed Blockchain in Transportation Alliance or BiTA. BiTA’s mission is to bring transparency and velocity to supply chain transactions. With over 750 members, the aggregate trade volume of the association’s membership represents over 85% of all domestic freight tonnage and Triumph is honored to support transformative technologies in this key market segment. I will say here what I have said before. I believe that TriumphPay both in its original intended application and its potential Blockchain integration could be transformative for the industry and certainly for our institution. At this point, I would like to turn the call over to Bryce to provide some additional color on our financial performance in the fourth quarter. Bryce?