Aaron Graft
Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead
Thank you, Todd. In March we saw a surge in our trucking business in spot market activity most notable in refrigerated and dry van categories and a mild increase in rates which was driven by restocking of retail inventories caused a sharp increase in stockpiling by consumers. As we look at the remainder of the year, there is a lot of uncertainty on both the supply and demand side.Publicly available market data confirms that widespread business closures, nearly 50% of small businesses and shelter and place orders covering 94% of Americans have already driven freight volumes to pre-surge levels with spot rates and subsequently carrier capacity expected to continue to soften into 2Q and widely throughout the rest of 2020. The speed and the degree to which U.S. economy returns to more typical levels, assuming it does at all in 2020, is a significant variable in projecting freight volumes.There are currently too many moving parts to predict how this will play out, but additional clarity will talk the form in the coming weeks in the Trump Administration and perhaps more importantly dozens of U.S. governors begin to announce state-by-state strategies to balance COVID-19 containment with efforts to reopen the economy.Amid all of the unpredictability, we are grateful that our new client prospect pipeline is completely full and each of the last three successive months have set all time highs with respect to new client applications. Transportation companies that need working capital and are facing issues with existing banking relationships are reaching out every day. We've seen this play out before.When the market is benign, banks and non-banks go after factoring clients with core new close quo product offerings. The second the market ceases up, weaknesses are exposed and these in turns retreat. Trucking clients have started to value our accounting analysis and collection efforts and they come back and do so generally for the long-term. This is sowing the seeds for further growth in one of our most profitable lines of business.Turning to TriumphPay, during the first quarter TriumphPay processed 504,000 invoices paying 45,000 distinct carriers. Payments processed totaled approximately $531 million or 12% increase over the prior quarter and a 277% increase from Q1 of 2019. TriumphPay's annual run rate payment volume now stands at about $2.1 billion.Additionally we have the top 20 broker in base testing with a small subset of their carriers and expect to go to full scale production with them in the next four to six weeks. There are also two more top 20 brokers who have signed contracts and are in the integration process with TriumphPay and we expect at least one of those to fund in Q2 as well. These large brokers have large and complex ERP systems and control environments which can take several months to work through before going live.COVID-19 has clearly caused a slowdown in the pace of integrations, but we continue to see really good progress. In addition, the market volatility has given us an opportunity to demonstrate the value of our TriumphPay platform. For example, we have offered a free QuickPay of temporary basis to provide liquidity to carriers and encourage engagement. Several hundred carriers have already signed up for this program and we expect a good portion of those to retain our QuickPay services as the default option driving revenues for us and our broker clients.We continue to enhance the user experience and are working on programs to build out the ecosystem and create network effects. And importantly we are investing to ensure the stability and scalability of our platform for the rapid growth ahead.Turning to Triumph Business Capital, total factoring revenue at Triumph Business Capital was relatively flat quarter-over-quarter at $24.8 million. Given the normal seasonal slowdown and the decline in invoices, that was a reasonably good overall outcome. The dollar volume invoices purchased was $1.45 billion during Q1 of 2020 a 9.5% increase over Q1 of 2019. We purchased 879,000 during Q1 2020 an increase of 89,000 invoices over Q1 2019 or 11%.As we move into 2Q and beyond, as noted previously, there is much uncertainty in freight markets. Disruption in global supply chains and a standstill in the sale of consumer durables and a potential for widespread business closures hang over the market like a cloud. This will inevitably impact freight volumes in the U.S. which we expect to see beginning early in the second quarter of 2020.Many current estimates project a significant decrease in GDP and freight during the second quarter of 2020 with the U.S. East and West coast bearing the brunt of the decline. Our recovery in freight volumes is not expected to occur until the first half of 2021 unless full production returns to the U.S. early in the third quarter 2020.We expect debtors overall to extend terms and payments to slow. We have already dialed back our exposure to certain verticals and are closely monitoring debtors for signs of stress. On the carrier side, we anticipate an exodus as fewer loads declines and spot rates and continuing high insurance costs take their toll. On the other hand, we expect market stressors to weaken some of our competitors and create opportunities to win new business.I often reference the enterprise strengths in general, but speaking specifically, the incredible disruptions caused by COVID-19 have surfaced several Triumph enterprise strengths within our factoring business. For example, in mid March we successfully deployed 96% of our factoring workforce, nearly 280 people based out of four business offices to remote home working environments within a 48-hour period. The technological and operational complexities involved in doing this cannot be overstated. I am incredibly proud of our team who is purchasing more than 12,000 invoices and dispensing more than $20 million each day to clients while working remotely.Turning from transportation to another bright spot, I want to talk about the driver for our loan growth in Q1. Our liquid credit team serves a couple of different functions for us. Number one, to opportunistically see that our market disruptions tactically in normal times, but aggressively when there are dislocations such as in March.Number two, we use this team to provide added capability to evaluate the credit worthiness of large account debtor concentrations in our factoring and TriumphPay portfolio and we may also expand the mission framework to hedge outside risk as appropriate. We think this capability will become more important as TriumphPay scales up and increases our exposure to top tier brokers.The liquid credit team involves invest in broadly syndicated leverage loans, corporate bonds, and structured credit. When conditions are benign such as until the beginning of March they do a lot of underwriting, but we don't do a lot of investing. When the market gets choppy we have a basket of names we have underwritten that we can move on quickly. We have had tremendous opportunities over the last few weeks buying quality names from sellers forced to the market due to redemptions.The opportunity set in liquid credit is the best it has been in years. Spreads are 150 to 350 basis points wider amidst the volatility leaving high quality credits yielding 5% to 6% or more. We have to ask ourselves in the management team would we rather match our competitor community based offer or an interest only 3.75% fixed 10-year commercial real estate loan in a secondary market or on a floating rate liquid credit at 6% yield. This is a pretty simple answer for borrower only relationships.During the first quarter, our settled liquid credit loan portfolio grew from $81 million to $172 million. In addition to those period imbalances we have another $127 million in trades that have not settled which would bring our total book to $299 million. Over half of this growth was during the month of March.In addition to loans in March we bought $63 million of AAA CLO securities which carry extremely remote credit risk at yields not seen since 2009 and $25 million of fully deceased tax exempt municipal bonds which carry no credit risk at all. And all of that was purchased at very attractive pricing. Much of this asset growth came at the end of the quarter, so we won't recognize the income from these investments until next quarter.Now this is not a primary line of business for us, nor will it ever be, but when given the opportunity to step into a market that is panic selling and diversify our income stream for the future, we will do so.Let me briefly hit a couple of other topics. During the first quarter we have expanded a couple of existing mortgage warehouse relationships to move in to the position of their lead lender and primary banking. Ironically the surge in lending brought on by low mortgage rates caused these clients lead banks to grow beyond their legal lending limits and operational capabilities creating an opportunity for us to step in and take the lead.With that said, given the rapid growth those clients have achieved, we are carefully monitoring their liquidity and strengthening our covenants. We want to be sure of the strength of their balance sheet supports their growth.I would also like to speak briefly about funding and liquidity. The opportunistic and unforeseen loan growth that we pursued late in the quarter, combined with our decision to allow some higher cost deposits to run off inflated our loan to deposit ratio at March 31 to 117%. We chose to fund the bulk of our late quarter loan growth with Federal Home Loan Bank advances. After this, we had over $400 million of undrawn capacity with FHLB at quarter end. Deposits funding was and is available to us, but as deposit rates remained stubbornly high in March it would have been much more expensive than FHLB borrowing.Deposit markets have begun to normalize and excluding the impact of funding PPP loans with the Federal Reserve facility we would expect our loan to deposit ratio to trend lower from here. I would anticipate the second quarter of 2020 non-interest expense to be flat with Q1 excluding the effect of the reserve for unfunded commitments. We recorded a state tax adjustment this quarter, but expect our effective tax rate going forward to revert back to just over 24%.Finally, we are committed to the safety, health and well being of our team members, customers and communities. Not just saying those words, but taking actions. We have implemented numerous programs to support our team members during these uncertain times. For our frontline team members in our branches operations and call centers we are we are adding a premium to their pay to acknowledge the extraordinary efforts in serving our customers. We have also modified staffing to allow options for those who need time away for illness, family member care, or childcare.And with that, we will turn the call over for questions.