Mike Hagedorn
Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open, please go ahead
Thank you, Ira. To begin, I'll continue on the topic of the income statement. Turning to Slide 5 and quarterly net interest income and margin trends; as Ira mentioned, our net interest margin declined 5 basis points from the prior quarter to 2.91%. While interest rate spread only declined 4 basis points from the previous period, we experienced higher amortization expense during the quarter, which led to an additional 1 basis point of NIM compression. Though the current environment continues to place pressure on net interest income, we remain encouraged by our forward re-pricing gap as illustrated on the left hand side of Slide 6. We have continued to place more emphasis on the shorter end of the curve on liabilities over the past 18 plus months. This was done in part due to the increasing floating rate nature of our loan portfolio and was accelerated as the Fed was signaling the end of the tightening cycle. Additionally, as you can see from the 12-month forward maturity schedule on Slide 6, there should be substantial ability to re-price both retail CDs and other wholesale borrowings meaningfully lower should the current rate outlook remain. As illustrated on Slide 9, we have already begun to see the efforts of lower re-pricing begin to affect our monthly deposit rate averages. This trend should only become more prevalent in coming quarters. Furthermore, the addition of Oritani's balance sheet should position the combined NAV to a more liability sensitive direction. Moving to assets, we expect the current environment will continue to negatively impact portfolio yields. While approximately 55% of our loans are adjustable rate at the end of the quarter, only 32% of total loans are scheduled to reset within the next 12 months. Approximately 16% of total loans are indexed to one-month LIBOR and another 12% are tied to prime, which re-price either daily or monthly. Additionally, almost 21% of loans priced off of varying CMT indices, the bulk of which contractually re-price every five years. As you can see on the bottom left chart on Slide 8, lower LIBOR rates over the past six-plus months had a more defined negative impact on the new loan yields we've been originating in more recent quarters. While much of this is driven by market pressures, we are actively adding lower yielding with shorter duration jumbo residential mortgages to the balance sheet. This is a deliberate action to offset the lower reinvestment yields we are facing in our investment portfolio. While there is some capital impact of these actions, we believe the comparable risk versus the relative rate are currently a better alternative to many Securities. Moving on, our non-interest income grew 49% linked quarter, driven by strong swap fee generation, improved mortgage gain on sale and trust and investment services. As a percentage of adjustable operating revenue, adjustable fee income was 16%, which is a significant improvement from the prior quarter's 12% level. While this quarter's outcome was in line with our long-term goals of 15% to 20%, we recognize the volatility in the stronger contributing product lines during the period. Diving into the results in more detail, we generated record swap volume during the third quarter of 2019, originating back to back swaps on approximately $455 million of notional underlying collateral. This is almost 3 times the prior two-quarter levels, which is driven in part by volatility in the rate environment. While this product will continue to be a driver of fees in near future, it's important to note we believe this quarter's swap results will most likely not be repeatable in the near term. Our mortgage gain on sale income increased 32% from the second quarter of 2019. These results were boosted in part from one portfolio bulk sale of jumbo mortgages. This was a proactive and opportunistic transaction allowing us to sell longer-duration mortgages with high prepayment characteristics at favorable pricing levels. We have seen a pickup in conforming business, primarily due to elevated levels of refinance activity given the decline in interest rates. Our conforming gain on sale margins improved approximately 30 basis points from the prior quarter. Moving on to Slide 7 and an overview of operating expenses, our reported expenses increased approximately $4 million from the prior quarter. Included in that number are infrequent items related to merger expenses equaling approximately $1.4 million. Our adjusted expenses exclusive of tax credit, amortization and previously mentioned infrequent items, were up $3 million from the previous quarter. Approximately $2 million of this can be seen in the quarterly salary lines driven by increases from higher levels of bonus accruals and mortgage origination commissions. As previously mentioned, mortgage gain on sale income far outpaced the elevated commissioned during the quarter. Other notable differences in operating expenses from the previous quarter were an increase in net loans on other real estate owned of $1.3 million and a pickup in telecom expenses related to the relocation of our next-gen data center. These two items collectively added about $1.6 million to operating expense from the previous quarter. While we continue to look for and find ways to invest in initiatives that drive positive operating leverage, it's important to note that our efforts to maintain, innovate and grow, and can add volatility expenses on a quarterly basis. That said, our adjusted efficiency ratio was 53.5% for the quarter, down 109 basis points from second quarter 2019 and below our full year target of 55%. More impressively, this quarter our adjusted efficiency ratio was down 436 basis points from the same period just one year ago. Our loan growth for the quarter was an annualized 12%, well above our previously cited target of 6% to 8% for the year. As illustrated on Slide 8, much of this growth came in commercial real estate, C&I and auto. This is more evidence of the great momentum we continue to build in our C&I vertical, which has certainly been aided by our ability to hire strong talent. Our indirect auto business continues to experience significant growth through expansion of our dealer networks. As a reminder, the quality of this portfolio is pristine with the average FICO score above 750 during the quarter and charge-offs being de minimis. From a geographic perspective, our growth was well distributed. Approximately 41% of total quarterly commercial growth came from Florida and Alabama, while New York and New Jersey made up approximately 52% with the balance coming international commercial leasing lines. It's worth noting that while New Jersey growth has been materially slower than the other geographies. For some time, the area has been demonstrating signs of improvement in economic activity. For example, the labor force participation rate has been rising in New Jersey reaching a two-year high in September, which is historically correlated to higher home ownership levels. This bodes well for our residential mortgage group, which realized increased volume and gain on sale income during the quarter driven primarily from a tailwind of lower interest rates and increased refinance activity. We sold approximately $220 million in loans, approximately 39% of which came in the form of a jumbo portfolio bulk sale in which we retained servicing. Conforming loans sold increased 29% from the previous quarter, which generated the balance of gains by sales through our standard GSE outlet. Deposit trends were more mix during the quarter. On the favorable side, non-interest bearing deposits grew 3.3% annually for the quarter, while our core branch deposits have grown almost 5% year-to-date annualized. Time deposits expanded 29% on a quarterly annualized rate; however, much of the growth came in the form of brokered CDs. Notably, we witnessed accelerated loan closings toward the end of the quarter, which exacerbated the use of brokered CDs. That said, we recognized a favorable term relative to other forms of wholesale funding that fit well within our interest rate positioning. As illustrated in the average deposit balance and rate trends chart on Slide 9, we've been managing deposit rates lower across both business and retail segments. As shown on the monthly average rates for savings, now and money market accounts have declined for five of the past six months, while CDs have begun to show signs of low re-pricing as well. Worth mentioning is our ability to consistently realize retention rates well above 80% for the related CD maturities. With that said, the use of brokered CDs may continue to be a useful tool to offset any future slippage as we continue to realign our core deposit pricing. Finally, where there is always a lag to the effects of lower pricing has seen in the averages, we do expect more noticeable declines over the course of the next few quarters given the forward re-pricing dynamic, as we previously highlighted on Slide 6. During the quarter, we saw our reliance on short-term borrowings diminished by approximately $562 million, driven by a combination of adding modest duration at favorable long-term funding rates combined with the addition of $300 million of inverse floating rate repo to the balance sheet. The impact of these actions can be seen in the linked quarter decline of our average long-term funding costs of 41 basis points and the average balance increase of $536 million. On a combined basis, we saw total short- and long-term borrowings including brokered CDs increased only 100 basis points to 19.6% of total assets. Moving to Slide 10, I want to spend a few minutes talking about credit and the anticipated impact of CECL. Our total non-performing assets increased approximately $4 million from the previous quarter; the majority of this increase was related to one commercial real estate loan, which we believe is well collateralized in the event of further degradation. Our accruing past due loans saw more noticeable increase from the previous quarter; however, most of this was due to non-credit-related issues delaying a few large loan renewals. While we are required to report these matured performing loans as accruing past due loans, we believe the loans are well secured in the process of collection and do not present a material negative trend in our credit quality trends. Notably, the bulk of the increase from the quarter-end has since been returned to current status. During the third quarter of 2019, we recorded an $8.7 million provision for credit losses. This was an increase of $6.6 million from the previous quarter. As we had mentioned on previous calls, we are anticipating an additional allocation of reserves related to non-impaired taxi medallion loans previously identified as TDR loans coming up for renewal in the third quarter of 2019. Accordingly, these actions drove approximately $4.7 million of the quarterly increase. Currently, we do not expect a similar provision related to medallion loans for the fourth quarter. As you know, we're approaching the adoption of CECL, the new accounting standard for credit losses, which will go into effect January 1, 2020. We've completed our third parallel test today and based on our expectation of the forecasted economic conditions and portfolio balances as of September 30, 2019, we estimate that CECL could result in an increase to our non-PCI allowance of approximately $50 million to $70 million as compared to our current reserve levels. This addition would be exclusive of the balance sheet transfer that occurs within the PCI-related credit portion that exists today. The PCI-related reclassification will not have any impact on the pro forma capital or regulatory phase-in period. We continue to expect the increase in reserves to be driven by several factors including our economic outlook and geographic diversification. Notably, the estimated impact is also exclusive of potential impacts from Oritani; however, based on our previous diligence, we do not expect a material deviation on a relative basis. Importantly, this remains in approximation and we'll further refine this estimate through year-end. Finally, moving to Slide 11 of our presentation to cover some targets and outlook, you'll notice, we are narrowing and revising the range for our net interest income projection for the full year from 4.5% to 6.5% to a range of 3.5% to 4.5%, which encompasses a greater emphasis on a prolonged flat yield curve environment. This range does not encompass any potential impacts for Oritani should the transaction close in the fourth quarter. Additionally, we are lowering our fourth quarter effective tax rate range to 24% to 26% from the previous range of 25% to 27%. Now, I will turn the call back over to Ira for some additional commentary.