Gerry Host
Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead
Thank you, Joey, and good morning everyone, thank you for joining us. Also with me this morning are Louis Greer, our CFO; Barry Harvey our Chief Credit Officer; Buddy Wood, our Chief Risk Officer; Breck Tyler, President of our Mortgage Services Department; and Tom Owens, our Treasurer. We have another quarter of solid financial results revenue growth expanded to total of 146 million due in part to our successful merger with BancTrust. We continue to benefit from improvements in credit quality and we completed our purchase of two branches in Oxford Mississippi. Highlights for the third quarter include net income of $33 million which resulted in EPS of $0.49 a share, an increase of 6.5% from the prior quarter. Our earnings in the quarter resulted in a return on average tangible common equity of nearly 15% and a return on average assets of 1.11%. During the first nine months of 2013, our net income available to common shareholders totaled $89 million. I am pleased to report net income attributable to the BancTrust merger totaled 4.9 million in the third quarter, which includes net recoveries and impairments of 686,000 after tax. Excluding the net impact of recoveries and impairments, the earnings from BancTrust totaled $4.2 million in the third quarter relatively unchanged from the prior quarter. Although our Board declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.23 per share payable at December 15th to shareholders of record on December the 1st. Let’s look at our third quarter accomplishments in greater detail, first is balance sheet. During the third quarter average earning assets remain consistent at $10.3 billion and average deposits totaled $9.7 billion. Loans held for investments, our legacy loan portfolio, totaled 5.7 billion at September 30th, an increase of $119 million or 2.1% from the prior quarter. Growth was broad-based by type as well as geography. Our one-to-four family mortgage loan portfolio increased $68 million during the quarter with the uptake in interest rates and the tightening of secondary marketing spreads we resumed our practice of retaining select 15 year mortgages on our balance sheet. Construction, land and development lending expanded $53 million during the quarter due to growth in our Alabama, Mississippi and Texas markets. Increased lending to public entities in Mississippi and Tennessee was largely responsible for the $25 million growth in our other loan category. Other real estate secured loans grew $4 million principally due to growth in our Tennessee market. Commercial real estate loans increased to $1 million as growth in Alabama and Texas markets was offset by declines in the remaining markets. Consumer loans increased $4 million with the majority of that growth coming from the Alabama market. C&I loans declined $36 million due principally to two accounts that paid down line at the end of the quarter. These customers are routinely in and out of their lines. Aside from that, we experienced C&I growth in our Alabama and our Florida markets. We’re continuing to see organic loan growth and believe it will continue in coming quarters. Our loan pipeline is encouraging, and we continue to have loans in the books that are beginning to fund particularly CRE loans in Texas, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Deposits at the end of the quarter totaled $9.8 billion, down $30 million from the prior quarter. We experienced the favorable change in deposit mix as interest bearing deposits declined $153 million, while non-interest bearing deposits increased $122 million to represent a total of 27% of all our deposits. Turning to capital, at September 30, our tangible common equity to tangible assets was 8.01%, and total risk-based capital was 14.02%. Our solid capital base provides opportunity to support organic loan growth while continuing to enhance long-term shareholder value. As we look at credit quality, we continue experiencing improvement in credit quality as is evidenced by nominal net charge offs of $569,000 and negative provisioning of 3.6 million as a result of updated quantitative reserve factors. Please note that these credit metrics exclude acquired loans in other real estate covered by FDIC loss share agreements. At September 30, non-performing assets totaled $190 million, a decrease of 1.2% from prior quarter. Non-performing loans totaled 73 million, a decline of 1.3% from the prior quarter and foreclosed other real estate totaled 116 million, a decline of 1.2%. Our balance for loan losses totaled 69 million and represented 162% of non-performing loans excluding impaired loans. Each quarter, we re-estimate cash flows on acquired loans. As a result, we recognized approximately 3.3 million in impairments in the third quarter, most of which were in the BancTrust portfolio. Though the BancTrust acquisition is now the primary influence of acquired loan performance, all three acquisition portfolios are performing better than expected. Turning to the income statement, net interest income totaled 102 million in the third quarter resulting in a net interest margin of 3.94%. This 8 basis point decline from the prior quarter was primarily due to lower recoveries of acquired loans. The yield on acquired loans totaled 8.2% in the third quarter, and it included recoveries of 4.7 million for loan payoffs approximately 75% of which were attributable to BancTrust. Proactively, the recoveries on acquired loans represented approximately 2% of the total acquired annualized loan yield in the third quarter. Excluding the impact of acquired loans, the net interest margin totaled 3.52% compared to 3.55% in the prior quarter. Last quarter, we indicated that the net interest margin excluding acquired loans would decline 5 to 7 basis points. Clearly, the 3 basis point compression in the third quarter was slightly better than we anticipated. Looking ahead, we could expect to see a relatively similar decline in the net interest margin, excluding acquired loans in the fourth quarter. Non-interest income totaled $47 million, an increase of 7.8% from the prior quarter. Mortgage banking production in the quarter totaled 358 million, down 15.7% from the previous quarter due principally to the decline of refinancing activity following an extended low interest rate environment. In the third quarter, 61% of production was new money purchases and 39% was refis. Mortgage banking revenue in the quarter totaled 8.4 million, up 145,000 from the prior quarter, which reflected increased mortgage servicing income and effective mortgage servicing hedging strategies therefore offset in part by reduced secondary marketing gains. Insurance revenue for the quarter, totaled 8.2 million, an increase of 2.7% from the previous quarter and an increase of 9.2% relative to the prior year. This growth is due in part to expanded customer insurance sales as well as the continued firming of insurance rates. Wealth management revenue during the quarter totaled $7.5 million, an increase of 8.4% from the prior quarter reflecting expanded trust management revenue and brokerage sales. Fee income attributable to our banking business remained relatively flat as growth in service charges on deposit accounts was partially offset by a decline in bank card and other fee income. Service charges on deposit accounts totaled $13.9 million, up 7.1% from the prior quarter due in part to seasonality while bank card and other fee income totaled 8.9 million, a decrease of 6.1% from the prior quarter principally from a decline in commercial credit related fee income. Non-interest expense for the quarter totaled 101.5 million, a decline of 5.7 million from the previous quarter. Excluding non-routine litigation expense of $4 million in the second quarter, non-interest expense declined 1.7 million. Excluding ORE expense and CDI amortization, core non-interest expense totaled approximately $95.9 million in the third quarter, relatively unchanged from the previous quarter. We continued realignment of our branch network to enhance productivity and efficiency. During the second (ph) quarter, we announced plans to consolidate six additional banking centers where two of those being in the Alabama market, two in the Mississippi market, and two in the Houston, Texas market. These closures will occur during the fourth quarter of 2013. As previously announced, eight offices were consolidated earlier this year with five of those being overlapping offices in the Florida Panhandle as a result of the BancTrust merger. Since the beginning of 2013, we have opened three new offices; one in Houston, one in Jackson, and one in Memphis. During the third quarter, we completed our previously announced purchase of two branch offices in Oxford, Mississippi and welcome our newest customers, which now have access to an expanded array of products and services. As I mentioned at the beginning of our call, we had another quarter of solid financial results, revenues increased, credit quality continued to improve, we continue to be optimistic about our opportunities going forward in all our markets. So at this time, I would be happy to take any questions that you might have.