Operator
Operator
Good day, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Zions Bancorporation Second Quarter Earnings Call. This call is being recorded. I will now turn the time over to James Abbott. Please go ahead.
Zions Bancorporation, National Association (ZION)
Q2 2014 Earnings Call· Tue, Jul 22, 2014
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Operator
Operator
Good day, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Zions Bancorporation Second Quarter Earnings Call. This call is being recorded. I will now turn the time over to James Abbott. Please go ahead.
James Abbott - Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and External Communications
Management
Thank you. And we welcome you to this conference call to discuss our second quarter of 2014 earnings. Our primary participants today will be Harris Simmons, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Doyle Arnold, Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer. I would like to remind you that during this call we will be making forward-looking statements, although actual results may differ materially. We encourage you to review the disclaimer in the press release dealing with forward-looking information, which applies equally to statements made in this call. A copy of the earnings release is available at zionsbancorporation.com. We intend to limit the length of this call to one hour, which will include time for you to ask questions. During that section, we ask you to limit your question to one primary and one follow-up question to enable other participants to ask questions. With that, I will now turn the time over to Harris Simmons. Harris?
Harris Simmons - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Management
Thank you, James and we welcome you to the call today. We continue to make substantial progress on a variety of fronts, including credit quality, certain elements of fee income, generally stable net interest margin and net interest income. We are also making solid progress on efforts that are taking place behind the scenes, including the ongoing and significant upgrade to our risk and credit management practices, which is a process that has been going on for sometime now since it’s a crisis and an area where great progress has been made, but there is always more to do. A key challenge for Zions is holding the expense level at or near current levels at a time when the current interest rate environment has placed the pressure on net interest margins across the industry. And when the systems need to be replaced and we continue to need to invest to meet increasing compliance, stress testing and other regulatory requirements. Although all banks face the spread compression challenge, Zions is somewhat more sensitive to his pressure than some of the nation’s largest banks, because spread income is a larger portion of our total income statement or total revenue. Turning to the financial results for the quarter. Net interest income, excluding the income from FDIC indemnified loans, increased about $7 million or about 2%. As we have guided in the past, loan growth and reduced debt expense acted as offsets to natural pressures from loan pricing pressure and the declining source of earnings from loans purchased from the FDIC back in 2009 are so-called covered loans. With regard to loan yield pressure, the primary challenge has been new loans coming on at yields that are below those of loans that are rolling off. The competitive pricing environment has been difficult for all…
Doyle Arnold - Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer
Management
Thank you, Harris. Good afternoon everyone. A brief overview for the second quarter 2014, Zion’s posted net earnings applicable to common shareholders of $104.5 million or $0.56 per diluted common share. This compares to net earnings applicable to common of $76.2 million in the prior quarter or $0.41 per diluted common share. There were kind of two big swing items between the quarters. First, recall that first quarter results included a net $31 million pretax gain on fixed income securities that resulted from CDO sales that we did that quarter. That added about $0.10 per share to earnings in that quarter and a higher preferred dividend level that quarter reduced earnings by about $0.05 a share. The other big swing is in the second quarter due to continued strong improvements in credit quality that was referenced by Harris earlier we had a net negative provision for the combined – combination of funded and unfunded lending commitments of approximately $448 million negative. There is one other much smaller item that some of you will want to be aware of. We have a one-time or specific tax accrual of about $2.3 million or $0.01 a share this quarter related to some older tax years which we do not expect to be included in the tax line going forward. Now, I will move on to a brief review of some of the key revenue drivers. Average loans held for investment increased $419 million compared to the prior quarter. Period end loans held for investment increased a similar amount $432 million. The primary increases were driven then by commercial and industrial loans of $293 million and consumer loans primarily residential mortgages of $103 million. We are experiencing loan growth in July and expected to continue based on reports from various lending groups. But as…
Operator
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Brad Milsaps with Sandler O'Neill. Your line is open.
Brad Milsaps - Sandler O'Neill
Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Your line is open
Hi, good afternoon.
Harris Simmons
Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Your line is open
Hi Brad.
Brad Milsaps - Sandler O'Neill
Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Your line is open
Doyle, just want to ask about the balance sheet, some of the – you talked a lot about the reduction in cash, but looking at the deposit base, foreign deposits came down quite a bit in link quarter, can you talk a little bit about that and some of the movement you might see in the liquidity as you look out over the back half of the year, what your plans might be there, how they may have changed?
Doyle Arnold
Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Your line is open
We debated about whether to talk about deposits in the opening remarks and wait or wait for the question and the question is number one. So there were two – there were kind of two unusual items in deposits. One, is we closed a Cayman Islands branch which reduced the foreign deposits, but they were all re-booked domestically. So if you look at I believe it was mostly went into savings and now accounts, was it David. Savings and money market accounts, so that line item increased slightly, so that was just a shift. We did the next reduction in deposits of I think it was between $800 million to $900 million was driven primarily by the departure of one large institutional customer that we had – it was a college savings plan customer that we effectively no bid the renewal because it was costing more than deposits were worth. So and there was no other real relationship with that party. So it was a result of decision that we actually had plenty of liquidity and so we exited. That was our choice to exit that account. I will give you a chance to follow-on on that one if that was clear.
Brad Milsaps - Sandler O'Neill
Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Your line is open
No thanks. Maybe just to follow-up just in terms of liquidity, the $7.5 billion of money market on average I guess was down to a little more than $6 billion on a period end basis, any change in how you are going to manage that going forward?
Harris Simmons
Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Your line is open
No, I mean we are beginning to track against some of the new liquidity metrics that will become binding I think in January, particularly liquidity coverage ratio, we don’t – the final rules are not yet published as you know, but as best we can calculate, we think we are in pretty good shape on that metric, but there is a lot less than $7.5 billion of true excess liquidity that we will have to hold a number of billions of dollars of liquidity in the form of cash or very low risk, very liquid assets like treasuries, for example, going forward anyway. So, I think the best outlook is that loan growth will continue to erode into that cash amount at an incremental rate, but there are no plans given the flatness and lowness of the yield curve to move a lot of that cash out. David, would you – anything you would like to add on that?
David Hemingway
Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Your line is open
No, I would agree with that.
Harris Simmons
Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Your line is open
Okay.
Brad Milsaps - Sandler O'Neill
Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Your line is open
Okay, great. Thank you, guys.
Harris Simmons
Analyst · Sandler O'Neill. Your line is open
Yes.
Operator
Operator
Our next question comes from Steven Alexopoulos with JPMorgan. Your line is open.
Harris Simmons
Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open
Hello, Steve.
Steven Alexopoulos - JPMorgan
Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open
Regarding the stress test, Harris in your prepared comments you indicated larger banks directing capital away from C&D loans, based on what you guys are seeing from this stress test is now resubmissioned, is there anything you had flagged for us as a change in the way you guys plan to run the business?
Harris Simmons
Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open
Well, I just – I mean I just underscore what both Doyle and I, I think said that is that one of the things we are certainly focused on is the capital consumed by construction and development. And so we are actively trying to manage down exposures there. Ultimately, it’s a business that will always be in here in the west. It’s an important line of business to us. And we may find other ways to conduct some of this business through and originate and sell kind of the model, but that in particular is a near-term focus. We are interested to see the results – our own results and those of the Federal Reserve in the 2015 CCAR exercise, that will probably provide some additional color to us in terms of how we are going to think about this, but we do understand that commercial real estate generally is consuming more capital than some of the other loan types in the context of stress tests. And so we are trying to think about that accordingly as we establish concentration limits.
Doyle Arnold
Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open
I just add if you go back to the Federal Reserve’s published CCAR results for all the banks, the stress losses on commercial real estate loans were pretty high compared to other types. And while the Fed does not provide a breakdown between construction and development and term and owner-occupied, we and investment banks and consultants have all tried to estimate what that breakdown might be. And it looks like that construction and development are maybe doubled or more, the loss rates that the Fed published is for overall CRE, which makes it pretty painful from a capital utilization standpoint relative to as I mentioned pricing that has actually come down over time. And so that’s what we are dealing with.
Steven Alexopoulos - JPMorgan
Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open
Maybe to follow up what’s your annual spend running now tied to compliance-related cost as a CCAR bank and are you at a stage now where it sounds like you are still building on that, we shouldn’t be thinking of any room for efficiencies here at least over the near-term?
Harris Simmons
Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open
Well, I think it’s – this is Harris, but it’s the slope of the line is leveling I think. I mean, it’s not – we are not adding at the pace that we were two, three years ago, but it’s – and it’s actually something that I would be reluctant to try to nail down an actual cost. We have added, I mean the last time I tried to track this, we have added something over 300 full-time equivalent staff. This sort of this goes back about a year ago and that was over the prior couple of years, that numbers continued to grow, but not at the same pace. So if you read some of speeches by Federal Reserve governors particularly Governor Tarullo, lately he indicates publicly what we are experiencing directly which is the Fed’s level of expectation, it does continue to grow – increase. And it would appear you have got another maybe another couple of years of continued heightened expectations. Well, not having to add as much staff to meet those expectations, just redeploy them into addressing the current year’s level of top concerns is they are expressing to us in the industry. I don’t know if that makes – if you follow that but that’s we are all – they describe it as a glide path upward to a spot they want us all to get to.
Doyle Arnold
Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open
I would just – I would only say I mean heightened expectations I think is always going to be with us, that’s just a new environment that I think all banks sort of find themselves in. I think in a couple of years that (Joel) is talking about is probably a couple of more years of some building spend. We also as we have talked about some of these big systems projects, we are becoming more encouraged as we get those in place that we will be able to see some savings and so we see some silver linings on the horizon.
Steven Alexopoulos - JPMorgan
Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open
Okay. Thanks for all the color.
Operator
Operator
Our next question comes from Joe Morford with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.
Joe Morford - RBC Capital Markets
Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open
Hello. Good afternoon.
Doyle Arnold
Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open
Hi Joe.
Joe Morford - RBC Capital Markets
Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open
I guess I was just curious if you could give us any color on regional trends in loan growth this quarter?
Doyle Arnold
Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open
You want to talk about that James.
James Abbott
Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open
Yes. Joe this is James here. I would say we saw really the strongest growth came from the Amegy and the Utah banks. Utah had a very strong C&I growth in the quarter. On the small business front in Utah there was a lot of optimism today. Just really a good overall market I believe the unemployment rate in Utah is 3.6.
Doyle Arnold
Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open
3.5.
James Abbott
Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open
3.5 that is going, and so it’s been very strong on those fronts. We saw a very good consumer loan growth across most of the franchise. So it really is pretty a broad based growth. And so I would just say that a couple of the areas that we did experience some attrition is on obviously on term commercial real estate. Some of that was in actually was across some of the several places in the footprint we did experience growth in construction and land development across about four or five of the affiliate banks. And but again the commitments have come down in virtually all of the affiliate banks compared to prior quarter.
Joe Morford - RBC Capital Markets
Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open
Okay, that’s helpful. I guess the other question is just a couple of things on expenses, I have recognized some of the finance bounce around, but provisions around funding commitments was up from last quarter to a slight recovery though the overall level of commitment seem like it was stable, so wondered what was going on there maybe something unusual last quarter. And then similarly with the elevated provision on legal services now that we are through the resubmissions, do you think we will start to see that level start to tail down a little bit?
Doyle Arnold
Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open
I would think in order provisions for unfunded lending commitments, is it gets moved around by a number of things. There were actually some very late quarter increases right at the end of the quarter increases in commitments last quarter that weren’t picked up in our methodology. They were not deemed material but that added – basically it did add to the provision for unfunded commitments this quarter. We had a little bit of deterioration in one credit quality metric in a couple of loans, but there is no – I think the best thing I could tell you there is that overall in this environment, the growth – the provision for unfunded commitments ought to be somewhere around zero to a very small positive number with the driver being growth in new commitments or unfunded commitments driving the number to be positive and continued improvements, general improvements and credit quality pushing it back down towards zero. On consulting and legal and whatnot, yes, the resubmission is in, but we like all bank sales, as I mentioned, a number of to do items from – as a result of the last CCAR – the Federal Reserve expects further qualitative improvements out of all banks and so we are spending to address those further improvements in our stress testing processes. I do think the rate of spend on that will be less this year than last and it should be less next year than this year.
Harris Simmons
Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open
And I’d just note that, I mean, this quarter last year was $70.1 million, that’s actually down $5 million from where it was in this quarter last year and that does reflect the fact that we’re spending less on CCAR related pretty much, but it’s going to be there probably for a while as we continue to refine that process.
Joe Morford - RBC Capital Markets
Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open
Okay, that’s helpful. Thanks guys.
Harris Simmons
Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open
Yes.
Operator
Operator
Our next question comes from Ken Zerbe with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Ken Zerbe - Morgan Stanley
Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open
Hi, guys.
Harris Simmons
Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open
Hi, Ken.
Ken Zerbe - Morgan Stanley
Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open
I guess first question is just in terms of the small business demand, it seems like you guys have mentioned that small business demand has picked up or is picking up for last several quarters. How much of the loan growth this quarter actually came from what you defined as small businesses versus the larger businesses? And also when you are looking into what you are seeing in July sort of same question, what is being driven by small versus larger clients?
James Abbott
Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open
What we saw, we saw – Ken, this is James, we saw a pickup in the line utilization rate as mentioned in the press release and it’s although it’s small, it was a pickup, the commitment rate for large business has actually declined. Our syndicated credit balances declined on a linked quarter basis and so – and then in terms of overall production volume, it was up for small business. In terms of balances, I will have to get back to you after the call. I have got a sheet that’s not with me here, but basically the smallest in the $1 million to $5 million size credits with the ones that definitely experienced some of the bigger increases in volume on the production side. And the optimization is definitely – is definitely there, it’s – the approval rates on small business credit for example is probably up 10 to 15 percentage points compared to couple of years ago. And we are now in the 75%, 80% approval rates of those that are applying, so that’s a meaningful increase over the past couple of years.
Ken Zerbe - Morgan Stanley
Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open
And what that basically result from is their balance sheets and the income statements have kind of completed the heeling process from the deep recession and there is now built up two or three years of better financial performance that can be years to justify or lending?
Harris Simmons
Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open
I don’t suggest, just a little footnote that is we were just named this last week as the recognized as largest SBA lender in the Houston, MSA which is a first for us after working at that for several years and for any of our people listening in it, they kudos for that, but I – that puts us kind of in a lending position in SBA production in Houston and in the state of Utah and up to Idaho, couple of the very best economies in the United States where we are really doing it, I think a really good job with SBA production and that’s kind of a bellwether for all kinds of other small business loans that we are doing in these markets.
Ken Zerbe - Morgan Stanley
Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open
Got it, okay. And then a follow-up question just in terms of the potential equity raise after you hear back from the Fed, are you guys in a position that we could actually execute on the equity raise as soon as you hear back or just hoping to get an update on the timing of when that is likely to happen if you had also any thoughts on the form that, that might happen in terms of either dribble out or something else? Thanks.
Doyle Arnold
Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open
Yes. I think we are going to – we are just going to defer any discussion of the equity raise until there is one. If there is one and that won’t – we won’t be in a position to discuss that until after we have heard back from the Fed. We all want to avoid tripping over securities law issues about hiking a deal or anything like. So, let us talk that one please.
Ken Zerbe - Morgan Stanley
Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open
Fair enough. Alright, thank you much.
Operator
Operator
The next question comes from Jennifer Demba with SunTrust Robinson. Your line is open.
Doyle Arnold
Analyst · SunTrust Robinson. Your line is open
Hi, Jennifer.
Jennifer Demba - SunTrust Robinson
Analyst · SunTrust Robinson. Your line is open
Hi. Actually, Joe just took my question a second ago, I tried to queue out, but could you guys talk about – I think you have talked in the last few quarters you have talked about kind of bumping up against your concentration limits in certain categories, notably energy. Can you talk about where you are in that process right now?
Harris Simmons
Analyst · SunTrust Robinson. Your line is open
Well, we have – under the limits we have in place, we still have some room. So, we are not – we are not ducking under the ceiling yet, but….
Doyle Arnold
Analyst · SunTrust Robinson. Your line is open
We were phasing out the growth so that we can manage effectively concentrations and serve good customers.
Harris Simmons
Analyst · SunTrust Robinson. Your line is open
Yes.
Doyle Arnold
Analyst · SunTrust Robinson. Your line is open
Scott McLean sits here with us. So, we will let him.
Scott McLean
Analyst · SunTrust Robinson. Your line is open
Sure. Jennifer, this is Scott. And the concentration limits really are not constraining at the moment. There is a lot – as you know, there is a lot of churn in the oilfield service business and in the reserve base business, in terms of private equity firms selling and repositioning their businesses. And so there is a lot of opportunity to be very active in both reserve base, midstream and oilfield service, while total outstanding, total commitments, they stay relatively constant. There is a lot of opportunity to generate additional income.
Harris Simmons
Analyst · SunTrust Robinson. Your line is open
Yes. I think what I would say is that, I mean limits are, they are causing us to probably think twice about the kinds of – we are not just growing willy-nilly, but there is still room for kind of prudent growth there, but it’s something we watch.
Jennifer Demba - SunTrust Robinson
Analyst · SunTrust Robinson. Your line is open
Thank you very much.
Doyle Arnold
Analyst · SunTrust Robinson. Your line is open
Okay, Jennifer.
Operator
Operator
The next question comes from John Pancari with Evercore. Your line is open.
John Pancari - Evercore
Analyst · Evercore. Your line is open
Good afternoon guys.
Harris Simmons
Analyst · Evercore. Your line is open
Hi, John.
John Pancari - Evercore
Analyst · Evercore. Your line is open
On the CCAR front, just a couple of very quick questions there. Just want to see if you have any color on the Fed’s extension request, which I am assuming you may not, but I figured I would ask? And then also on the PPNR differential between where you are expecting and then where you came out, wanted to see if you have got any additional color from the Fed on that front? And that’s my main two things around the CCAR.
Doyle Arnold
Analyst · Evercore. Your line is open
Yes. I wish I could provide you color, but I think you heard from us consistently and others, that anything communications related to the whole stress testing in CCAR process, the Federal Reserve considers to be part of their supervisory process and supervisory communication and information sharing is confidential. So, I simply cannot provide you with any color. When we know something more definitive, we will – it would be material and we will have to say something publicly at that time. But in terms of sharing information about the process of getting to that definitive answer, I simply can’t.
John Pancari - Evercore
Analyst · Evercore. Your line is open
Alright, that’s fair. But I guess in the – you have mentioned your efforts to control your concentration risk, particularly as you are looking at commercial real estate and as you are doing that, I know you have talked about some considerations, including potential securitizations, potential CDS against your CRE underwriting. Can you talk to us what developments have you completed on that front? How far along the path are you in terms of developing your own securitization capability, how real is that opportunity?
Doyle Arnold
Analyst · Evercore. Your line is open
We continue to explore a number of options and there are some that are probably take longer to bring to fruition than other securitization probably falls into the – that’s going to take us a little longer, I mean, may be year or two to really build up the capability and also the pipeline of loans that have all of the standard characteristics that the CMBS type market is looking for. We continue to work on those, but we are also looking at nearer term ways to manage particular concentration risk sold down some of our commitments or portfolio by offsetting portfolios of other types from other players, etcetera. So, you may see more of that kind of activity in the near-term, but overtime I think we remained convinced of what we have here is a strategically as a very high quality commercial real-estate origination capability both for term loans and for construction development loans and we want to not only maintain, but actually grow that capability overtime in a very good market, but it’s going to require developing on those capabilities more robustly to – cannot keep all of that risk on our balance sheet under a stress testing environment so, is that kind of address your question?
John Pancari - Evercore
Analyst · Evercore. Your line is open
Yes, it did. If I can access one more quick thing around expenses, Harris, I know you mentioned that you’re still struggling with the expenses here or remained challenges you put it and in terms of your efficiency ratio given your flattish expense expectations, it is fair to assume that the efficiency ratio was relatively stable here at this 74%, 75% level or can we see a come down a lit here in the next couple of quarters?
Harris Simmons
Analyst · Evercore. Your line is open
I mean some of the moving parts, the provision lending commitments, you have to take that out, I think that we fair about thinking about the ratio. Beyond that, we’re working hard at some particular elements of non-interest income which we know we need to get to a little higher place we – our fee income mix looks like more like that of probably typical $15 billion bank or doesn’t some of our larger peers. And some of those things take a little time to address, but we’re working really hard on several aspects of that that we think over to the next few years will really help. The big driver is going to be just restoration of more traditional net interest margin levels as interest rates rise. That makes – that’s going to make the big difference is getting back into a little more normal interest rate environment that will really change the number and we are continuing to work at cost control. And I in the last couple of weeks have been in discussions about probably up to roughly 10 to 12 locations that I would expect that we will probably be closing in coming months or consolidating into other nearby branches etcetera. So, I mean, we are working on that front and doing what we can, but it’s really a numerator, denominator problem rather on the revenue side more than it is, I think on the expense side in terms of what we can address. And we have got and we have some of these systems projects that are going to put some pressure on it for probably the next few quarters, especially until we can start to see some of the cost savings that come along with these projects.
John Pancari - Evercore
Analyst · Evercore. Your line is open
Okay, thank you.
Operator
Operator
Our next question comes from Ken Usdin with Jefferies. Your line is open.
Ken Usdin - Jefferies
Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is open
Thanks. Good afternoon. Doyle, I was wondering if you can give us an update on how you are thinking about those higher pieces of higher cost debt, we have got the one coming due this year and then a couple of pieces next year and so can you layout for us whether at this point you just intend to just let those mature and whether or not just normal maturity would cause you to have to also reissue to keep kind of flat on a funding cost basis?
Doyle Arnold
Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is open
No. Our current expectation, Ken, is that we will pay-off that debt, the senior debt in September and the additional two tranches of sub-debt in the latter half of next year as they mature. And that the total amount of unsecured debt issued by the parent would come down over that time period, but probably we may issue small amounts of senior debt during that process, but the net amount of debt should come down. We are basically going to pay it off.
Ken Usdin - Jefferies
Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is open
Okay.
Doyle Arnold
Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is open
No more tenders are expected and we don’t think though it would be very particularly productive.
Ken Usdin - Jefferies
Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is open
Okay, that makes sense. And then secondly, just from a balance sheet asset side efficiency perspective to your earlier points about the need for keeping excess liquidity and then the uncertainties about deposit outflows. Can you talk about where you stand in terms of just waiting for loan growth versus reinvesting in the securities portfolio in terms of waiting for those final rules and maintaining an adequate buffer on the liquidity side?
Doyle Arnold
Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is open
I don’t think we have changed our stance really from what we have been saying for a number of quarters now. There are no plans to buy significant amounts of longer dated securities, particularly mortgage-backed securities. I am not saying we won’t do any, but the plan is to incrementally grow loans. And we think that the deposit – at the same time, deposit growth will – which has already slowed down and flattened will likely continue to do so. And we have anecdotally heard of and seen instances of customers beginning to draw deposits down to redeploy cash internally within their businesses. So, we are not planning to go out and invest a lot of that cash.
Ken Usdin - Jefferies
Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is open
Okay, right. So, you guys just getting up the sort of the governance of slowing the loan growth in pockets does not necessarily make you think about that any differently?
Doyle Arnold
Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is open
No, because we still expect net loan growth. I think at this point we are probably going to allow one question each we want to get, but defer the follow-ups to James to handle after the call just so we can get – we got about five more people I think queued up. So, we will try to do bam bam bam.
Ken Usdin - Jefferies
Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is open
Lightning around.
Doyle Arnold
Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is open
Lightning around, yes.
Operator
Operator
Our next question comes from Dave Rochester with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.
Doyle Arnold
Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is open
Hi, Dave.
Dave Rochester - Deutsche Bank
Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is open
Hey, good afternoon guys. Just a follow-up on the cash position, I was just wondering how much excess cash you think you have at this point over which you might need for the LCR and how long do you think it’s going to take for loan growth to use up that excess assuming that your assumptions play out there?
David Hemingway
Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is open
This is David Hemingway. First is there has been suggested we do not have final rules for the LCR. So, what I have to say is totally based upon our assumptions as to what the final rules might be, but we could have excess cash in the range I would think in the $2 billion to $3 billion range. And so you can actually do the math just how many quarters it would take to chew that up without any loan shrinkage. The big uncertainty is this if and when or when higher interest rates come is the $19 billion of non-interest bearing demand going to stay or are the depositors going to act rationally and pull some of that money out. And those are the issues that we deal with in asset and liability management and liquidity management, so….
Dave Rochester - Deutsche Bank
Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is open
For how much of it converts into interest bearing?
David Hemingway
Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is open
Well, how much of it converts into interest bearing and if we need the money we can probably keep it, but if we don’t need the money, it will probably go.
Doyle Arnold
Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is open
Yes. There is no circumstance under which I would see deposit funding as constraining loan growth, because you can always go out and buy it. Okay. We will move on to the next question.
Operator
Operator
Next question comes from Geoffrey Elliott with Autonomous Research. Your line is open.
Geoffrey Elliott - Autonomous Research
Analyst · Autonomous Research. Your line is open
Hello, there. So, my question is on the deposit base, particularly the $19 billion of non-interest bearing, what is your latest thinking on how those deposits behave as rates increase, but the interest bearing and the non-interest bearing and then how do you think the mechanism of that tightening in bank’s deposits behavior, whether it’s raising reverse repo rate, raising interest of excess reserves doing something else?
Doyle Arnold
Analyst · Autonomous Research. Your line is open
I would, Jeffrey, I’d refer you to the investor presentations that we have given in the second quarter. There are a couple of them out there, one of which at least was filed as an 8-K where we lay out pretty explicitly our thinking and the assumptions that underlie our IRR modeling, but basically if you want to refer to somebody else’s and tune with our thinking, I will refer you to the CFO of JPMorgan Chase, who laid out pretty explicitly what she thinks is going to happen, but I think kind of we are directionally in the same place she is, which is that the Fed will drain a lot of liquidity out of the system and that rates may rise. When rates rise, they may rise faster than people are expecting and a lot of this, I don’t know, we have laid out some modeling assumptions about how much of our non-interest bearing DDA would have – would flow out and be replaced by interest bearing funds, but it’s – and I think we are being more conservative on that front than a lot of peers and more explicit in publishing what we are modeling. So, I just refer you to that.
Geoffrey Elliott - Autonomous Research
Analyst · Autonomous Research. Your line is open
And to the mechanism?
Doyle Arnold
Analyst · Autonomous Research. Your line is open
As to the specific mechanisms the Fed might use and how much reliance on repos and other tools, I am not – that’s for them to decide not for me to convince.
Geoffrey Elliott - Autonomous Research
Analyst · Autonomous Research. Your line is open
Thank you.
Operator
Operator
Our next question comes from Brian Klock with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. Your line is open. Brian Klock - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods: Hey, good afternoon guys.
Harris Simmons
Analyst · Keefe, Bruyette & Woods
Hello, Brian. Brian Klock - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods: I guess, you mentioned earlier about the small business lending award in Houston, but I think knowing you guys are one of the biggest small business lenders in the country and it sounds like there has been a lot of traction there, I guess not just for you guys within the second quarter, but it still feels like that’s something that’s carrying into the third quarter. I am kind of wondering why you are being a little bit more cautious for the loan growth outlook in the third versus a good second quarter and is this anything to do with the 504 run-off? And I guess second part of that question is can you update us on where the 504 national commercial real estate portfolio balances are quarter-over-quarter?
Doyle Arnold
Analyst · Keefe, Bruyette & Woods
No. It’s not – the caution wasn’t related to any expected change in the rate of 504 run-off, that’s kind of its glide path that we have talked about. I guess it’s probably more tempering just – some of it’s tempered by the CRE limits that we are kind of enforcing for the time being until we get another read on stress testing at least and you have seen in the (EHA data), some pretty – three, three out of the last four weeks have been down for the industry for lending and we’re despite the fact that pipelines remain pretty good and small business remains pretty good. We are hearing a little caution in overall and other aspects of the portfolio. James, you want to add any other commentary on that?
James Abbott
Analyst · Keefe, Bruyette & Woods
No, I was just filling the blank on the change. The portfolio of national real-estate loans is about a little over $3 billion, about $3.07 billion. It’s divided between term commercial real-estate and owner occupied is about 60% owner occupied, 40% term commercial real-estate. The linked quarter decline on that portfolio was about $150 million. So, without that, our loan growth would have been a little bit obviously about $150 million stronger. Brian Klock - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods: Okay. And just – this is going to probably stabilize at $2 billion, is that what your guidance has been for the glide path?
Doyle Arnold
Analyst · Keefe, Bruyette & Woods
Current production levels, we’ll put it about $1.5 billion, but we are starting to hear some green shoots. I would, it sounded this as I discussed it with the people in that group, it sounded like the green shoots of loan growth and credit quality back in 2009, you may have one or two blades of grass I think would be the description, but we are starting to hear some inquiries from community banks looking, they are starting to bump up against their liquidity ratio issues and are looking towards national real estate group as a source for that. Brian Klock – Keefe, Bruyette & Woods: Okay. Thanks for your time guys.
Operator
Operator
Your next question comes from Kevin Barker with Compass Point. Your line is open.
Kevin Barker - Compass Point
Analyst · Compass Point. Your line is open
Given when you have gone through all the CCAR process and it’s been back and forth and you have given a high level of compliance, have you ever considered rather than raising equity capital looking to spin off a bank that where you can get a higher valuation than where the stock is trading now. And that would also lower your asset size below $50 billion, so you wouldn’t have to deal with CCAR on a go forward basis, have you considered something like that rather than raising equity?
Doyle Arnold
Analyst · Compass Point. Your line is open
Let me I have been answering this question a number of times Harris and I as well. I mean spinning off a bank even if we were to contemplate it – it probably doesn’t get you where you are suggesting we might want to try to be. If you got down to $40 billion to $45 billion then normal growth is going to take you back to the $50 billion mark which is cast in law currently. Within a fairly short period of time and the last thing we are going to do is blow up the capabilities that were built at great cost and great pain even assuming the Fed would say yes you have escaped, you are off the hook. I think even that point is debatable. I think you have giving – taking that path is highly, highly uncertain to achieve the outcome you are suggesting.
Kevin Barker - Compass Point
Analyst · Compass Point. Your line is open
Okay. Thank you for taking my question.
James Abbott - Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and External Communications
Management
Okay. That’s the end of the questions that we have in the end. We are over time at this point, anyway. We thank you for participating in the call today. And if you have follow-up questions please email me it’s James Abbott and I will be happy to respond. And thank you for your time and see you very soon at a conference.
Operator
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today’s program. This concludes the program. You may all disconnect.