Earnings Labs

Univest Financial Corporation (UVSP)

Q1 2023 Earnings Call· Sat, Apr 29, 2023

$38.12

+1.03%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.
Transcript

Jeff Schweitzer

Management

Good morning, and thank you to all of our listeners for joining us today. Joining me on the call this morning is Mike Keim, our Chief Operating Officer and President of Univest Bank and Trust; and Brian Richardson, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone of the forward-looking statements disclaimer. Please be advised that during the course of this conference call, management may make forward-looking statements that express management's intentions, beliefs or expectations within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Univest's actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements. I will refer you to the forward-looking cautionary statements in our earnings release and in our SEC filings. Hopefully, everyone had a chance to review our earnings release from yesterday. If not, it could be found on our website at univest.net under the Investor Relations tab. We reported net income of $21 million during the first quarter or $0.71 per share. While this past month and a half has been turbulent in the banking industry after the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, our diversified deposit sources and ample access to liquidity has served us well. While we do not see any significant unexpected shifts in our deposits, we are not immune to the accelerated rise in deposit and borrowing costs. As a result, we did experience an 18 basis point decline in our net interest margin during the quarter with continued pressure expected throughout the year. It is more important than ever that we stay disciplined in our loan pricing and expense management during what we anticipate will be an extended period of higher funding costs. Staying disciplined on loan pricing will slow down loan growth during the year. However, we are focused on ensuring we get an appropriate return on these future loan closings given the increased cost of funding. Before I pass it over to Brian for further detail on our financials, I would like to thank the entire Univest family for the great work they do every day. While it has been a volatile period in the industry, they continue to focus on serving our customers, communities and each other. I'll now turn it over to Brian for further discussion on our results.

Brian Richardson

Management

Thank you, Jeff. And I would also like to thank everyone for joining us today. I would like to start by touching on five items from the earnings release. First, as Jeff mentioned, we experienced increased funding costs during the quarter due to a mix shift of deposits as well as increased deposit betas and borrowing costs. Reported margin of 3.58% decreased 18 basis points compared to last quarter. Asset yields increased by 31 basis points to 5.01% and the cost of interest-bearing liabilities increased 71 basis points to 2.21%. Our cycle-to-date interest-bearing deposit beta was 36% for the quarter. Our cost of funds, including the benefit of non-interest-bearing deposits was 1.53%, up from 1% in the fourth quarter of 2022. Second, I would like to discuss our liquidity and funding position. During the quarter, deposits decreased by $78.9 million. While we saw certain expected outflows during the quarter, we saw net deposit inflows of $81.1 million during the month of March. Non-interest-bearing deposits decreased $248 million during the quarter, of which $47.3 million occurred during the month of March. As of March 31, non-interest-bearing deposits represented 30.8% of deposits compared to 34.6% at December 31. During the quarter, broker deposits grew by $25 million to $127 million, which represented 2.2% of total deposits as of the end of the quarter. At March 31, uninsured deposits adjusted to exclude internal accounts and collateralized trust and public fund deposit accounts totaled $1.6 billion and represented 27.2% of total deposits. The corporation and its subsidiaries had committed borrowing capacity of $3.1 billion at March 31, of which $1.9 billion was available. We also maintained uncommitted funding sources from correspondent banks of $410 million as of the end of the quarter, of which $320 million was unused. Third, during the quarter, we recorded…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We are now ready to begin the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] [Technical Difficulty] Our next question comes from Frank Schiraldi from ABC. Frank, please go ahead.

Frank Schiraldi

Analyst

Good morning.

Jeff Schweitzer

Management

Good morning, Frank.

Frank Schiraldi

Analyst

Wondering if, you talked about obviously pulling back loan growth a bit, which seems prudent. And just curious about where you pull back. Is it difficult just given that you're entering these new markets, is there a significant change to your expectations in these expansion markets or is the change in your legacy markets or both?

Mike Keim

Analyst

Yeah. So Frank, it's Mike Keim. You're really going to see it across the whole footprint, which includes the new markets. And what we're really doing is, we're making sure that we're priced for an acceptable return given the current market conditions. Now in the new markets, it doesn't mean any less of a commitment to grow those new markets over time? We just need to be patient and prudent in how we do it. Our teams understand that, and that's what we're going to focus on as we move forward.

Frank Schiraldi

Analyst

Great. Okay. And then just curious on the provisioning guide, what does that sort of entail in terms of the macro picture. Can you share with us any sort of detail on what that implies, what that expectation would imply for things like unemployment, GDP, is there some significant deterioration baked in or is that more steady state? Thanks.

Mike Keim

Analyst

Sure, Frank. So as we build the CECL reserve, we utilize a weighting normally of Moody's scenarios. We're currently weighted with 75% towards the Moody's S2 downside scenario and 75% baseline -- with 25% baseline. So there's inherently kind of more downside built into that based on that weighting. The provision guidance that was provided really assumes a static coverage ratio, give or take, for the remainder of the year and then you factor in any potential credit events as well as loan growth is how we end up with the provision guide that was provided.

Frank Schiraldi

Analyst

Okay. Great. Appreciate the color. Thanks, guys.

Jeff Schweitzer

Management

Thanks, Frank.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Matthew Breese with Stephens Inc. Matthew, please go ahead.

Matthew Breese

Analyst · Stephens Inc. Matthew, please go ahead.

[Technical Difficulty] deposit mix. Just curious, so far this month, how have -- how has the mix held up, your DDA still in kind of that 30% range? I just wanted to get a sense for, as we've kind of put some separation between now and the events earlier this quarter, have things slowed down and stabilized.

Brian Richardson

Management

Sure, Matt. This is Brian. Well, it's a little early in the quarter to determine kind of any trends off of what we've seen so far when you consider things like cyclicality and seasonality of certain customers. Deposits have decreased approximately $60 million since March 31 through the close of business yesterday and non-interest-bearing was down as a commensurate amount over that same time period. So while we've seen some stabilization and there's seasonality and cyclicality in there. So it's a little bit hard to draw a full conclusion for the next 60 days, but that's what occur -- has occurred thus far.

Matthew Breese

Analyst · Stephens Inc. Matthew, please go ahead.

Got it. Okay. And then maybe flipping to the securities portfolio. We saw a little bit of growth this quarter. We haven't seen that for the prior three quarters. I just want to get a sense for the outlook there and whether or not you're reinvesting cash flows or is it a portfolio that we should largely think of as stable in kind of that $500 million range?

Brian Richardson

Management

You should definitely think about they are stable. We have always targeted 7% to 9% of total assets. We're currently on the lower end of that range. And in the middle of that range when you adjust for the mark-to-market. So really replacing cash flows, of course, we do anticipate on cash flows and purchase and that's why you might see a little bit of movement from time to time. Our replace speed ends up slowing down during the quarter. But all things equal, we look to keep that relatively stable as a percentage of assets going forward.

Matthew Breese

Analyst · Stephens Inc. Matthew, please go ahead.

Got it. Okay. Do you have on hand, your office commercial real estate exposure? And then within that, some of the relevant metrics that service coverage ratios, LTVs, cap rates, et cetera.?

Brian Richardson

Management

Yeah. So Matt, office and it's in the earnings release is around $308 million. And that represents about 6.1% of the commercial portfolio closer to 5% of the overall portfolio. At the current time, LTVs are in the 60, mid to upper 60s, and debt service coverage ratios are a little bit north of 1.5.

Matthew Breese

Analyst · Stephens Inc. Matthew, please go ahead.

Okay. And as you -- as some of this has come up for reset and renewed either whether you're underwriting something that's in a transaction or you're reappraising something. What has been kind of the change in value, particularly from pre-COVID advantages?

Brian Richardson

Management

So just so you understand too, of that $308 million or so and 2023, a little less than $20 million is coming up for renewal/end of its term. And even in 2024, its slightly less than $25 million. So we haven't seen a lot of it, Matt, to be honest with you. And we have not added significantly at all to our office portfolio. In fact, it's down quarter-over-quarter.

Matthew Breese

Analyst · Stephens Inc. Matthew, please go ahead.

Okay. All right. Maybe last one for me, just given the slowdown in loan growth guidance. You do have some excess capital as measured by tangible common equity. Could you just give me some color around appetite for buybacks here?

Jeff Schweitzer

Management

Yeah. Matt, this is Jeff. Right now, we aren't in the -- while we totally believe our stock is undervalued, we are not in a buyback position mainly because we want to see what any fallout is from regulatory guidelines on capital as a result of Silicon Valley and Signature and what's going to come from that combined with we want to make sure that we are able to continue to support our customers because we are still seeing loan demand. And while we're going to ratchet our pricing, there still is a lot of activity on the lending side in discussions with customers and we want to make sure we can support them and also react to any fallout on the regulatory side from expected capital or elevated capital ratios that might be coming down the pike.

Matthew Breese

Analyst · Stephens Inc. Matthew, please go ahead.

Understood. Okay. I'll leave it there. That's all I had. Thank you.

Jeff Schweitzer

Management

Thanks, Matt.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We have no further questions. I'll now hand back over to the management team for closing remarks.

Jeff Schweitzer

Management

Thank you, Candice, and thank you, everybody. I apologize for the technical difficulties, but we appreciate you participating on the call today, and we look forward to talking to you next quarter. Have a great day.