Q1 2024 SB Financial Group Inc Earnings Call
Net interest income reached $9 2 million uninfluenced by obviously by the challenging rate environment.
by the, obviously by the challenging rate environment.
Loan balances saw an increase of 15.2 million or 1.6%.
Deposit displays stability ending a quarter of 1.11 billion reflecting a marginal increase of two basic points.
Our efficiency in operations led to a 4.6% reduction in expenses over the prior year. Mortgage origination volume reflects our strategic adjustment to market conditions with a strong quarter of sales, noted a fairly challenging rate environment.
Asset quality showed strong performance metrics and continued stability.
Our path forward remains hinged on our five key strategic initiatives, revenue diversity, balancing net interest income with fee-based revenue, remains a focus as we adapt to market shifts and seek to bolster non-interest income.
organic growth, we've experienced long growth in a tightened market, demonstrating our competitive edge and commitment to prudent underwriting.
Deepening relationships, our client relationships have been strengthened and evident in our stable deposit base and loan portfolio expansion.
Operations, we've honed our operational efficiencies as demonstrated by our proactive management of our expense base. And finally, asset quality. We've maintained strong asset quality as highlighted by our low non-performing asset ratio and robust loan loss reserve coverage.
Looking at our revenue diversity, our mortgage business originated 42.9 million in volume.
While this represents a market downturn reflecting the cooling in the housing market,
We've successfully navigated these waters with strategic mortgage sales and a focus on expansions into newer markets and more originators in those markets.
In addition, we've made changes to the senior leadership of the business line that will certainly ensure that all opportunities to grow in both new and existing markets remain the focus.
Non-Nusd income stood at 3.95 million, benefiting from increased mortgage servicing rights and a strong performance in customer service fees.
Our title business and wealth management services, though faced with market challenges, continue to be areas of focus for future growth.
We feel that the growth trajectory in both of these divisions will be possibly impacted by a holistic approach of joint calling and client referrals across all 10 of our regions and seven business lines.
On the scale front, we've managed deposit costs effectively, despite an aggressive market that is reflected in the modest growth of our deposit base.
The growth this quarter came from our public entities, a testament to our calling and relationship building efforts.
We've also embraced the Ohio Homebuyer Plus program, which we feel has great potential to drive deposits higher at a much lower weighted average cost than what we've experienced that's available on the retail deposit arena.
Lone growth was below our historical levels as we have begun to see some softness in several of our markets.
We were also impacted by a large relationship payoff in the quarter, which had grown beyond our financial capacity of service.
Given our diverse markets and capacity, growing our loan portfolio was certainly job one as we move on into the three quarters of 2024.
Pipelines continue to grow, but I would still expect that our second quarter growth will challenge our expectations as clients take a more methodical approach to their leverage position.
We've reassured our clients of our strong capital position, reflecting our preparedness to meet liquidity needs without over-reliance on external funding sources.
In terms of deepening in relationships, post-PP, our focus has shifted back to organic growth and capitalizing on opportunities in SBA lending, now with a pipeline in excess of 10 million and set to contribute meaningfully to future revenues.
We continue to believe in this product and that can assist our clients to properly structure their company's balance sheet for growth and can make a good credit better. We have never, nor do we expect to use SBA to ever make an unbankable client bankable.
As we discuss that length in our annual meeting and annual report, we are embracing technology to further our goals of providing relationship banking to all of our clients, whatever that might look like to each client.
The integration of our corporate sales champion, our new contact center, and more fintech platforms are poised to further our penetration across households and businesses alike.
We continue to look at expansion opportunities, especially in the high-growth cities and counties within our footprint.
We've added significant resources to our management team in the greater Columbus market, and we expect the growth from that region in 2024 to surpass any of the previous 15 years that we have been calling in this dynamic growing market.
Speaking of operational excellence, the mortgage business line remains a key driver despite the slowdown from higher rates.
As our numbers reflect, we sold in excess of 85% of our originated volume in the quarter.
Given the continued pressure on liquidity and margins, this is clearly the correct strategy to not only help our clients, but to ensure that we maintain a profitable residential mortgage business line.
Ongoing expense review and leveraging our technology spend are expected to deliver a more robust, tangible book value, and as always, ensure a higher probability that we remain on track to deliver positive operating leverage.
And finally, asset quality. We again had a strong quarter in this arena with net charge off annualized at just two basis points and improvements in the key metrics of non-performing and criticized loans.
Speaker Change: Thank you.
Speaker Change: Covers of our non-performing loans reached an all-time high that now stands in excess of 640% at quarter in.
Speaker Change: Our internal loan review program continues to be robust and proactive to ensure early identification of any impending client stress.
Speaker Change: I'd like to now turn the call over to our CFO , Tony Costantina, for a little more detail on our financials. Tony?
Anthony V. Cosentino: Thanks, Mark, and good morning again, everyone. For the first quarter of 2024, we recorded net income of 2.4 million with a consistent EPS of 35 cents.
Anthony V. Cosentino: Our disciplined approach towards long-term strategic investments as positioned as well for sustainable growth.
Anthony V. Cosentino: In the quarter, operating revenue experience a downturn due to pressures from the competitive interest rate environment, as well as alternative and money market fluctuations.
Anthony V. Cosentino: However, excluding certain non-core items, our revenue trajectory remains aligned with our growth objectives while we continue to manage costs effectively.
Anthony V. Cosentino: We did recapture mortgage servicing rights revenue in the quarter as the uptick and rates improved the valuation of our servicing portfolio.
Anthony V. Cosentino: At quarter end, that portfolio was 14.2 million.
Anthony V. Cosentino: up from the length quarter and higher by 4.7% from the prior year.
Anthony V. Cosentino: An interest margin has been managed prudently, ending the quarter at 2.99% on a tax equivalent basis, reflecting the asset mixed shift in market conditions.
Anthony V. Cosentino: We believe that this is the low point for our margin, as funding costs appear to be stabilizing and we have contractual loan repricing over the next six to nine months that will drive asset yields higher.
Anthony V. Cosentino: Again, the efficiency of our balance sheet has been a focus with a keen eye on maintaining a healthy loan to deposit ratio and cost-effective capital management.
Anthony V. Cosentino: With the homebuyer program that Mark outlined earlier, we think that the potential for 25 to 50 million and below market weighted average cost for funding
Anthony V. Cosentino: could be deployed effectively into the Columbus market.
Anthony V. Cosentino: We've optimized our investment portfolio preparing for anticipated loan growth and maintaining a strong liquidity profile.
Anthony V. Cosentino: We continue to anticipate the portfolio to amortize by approximately 25 million this year.
Anthony V. Cosentino: Currently, it's 16% of total assets with the trend line towards 12% where we expect to maintain.
Anthony V. Cosentino: With a current weighted yield of 2.76%, every dollar of amortization increases yield by a minimum of 300 basis points with allocation into loans or FedFUB.
Anthony V. Cosentino: Our capital strength continues to be evident, the tangible common equity of 7.63%, and common equity tier 1 ratio of 13.6%, underscoring our robust financial health.
Anthony V. Cosentino: Expense management reflects our strategic focus. Non-interest expenses down by 4.6% year-over-year, improving operational efficiency.
Anthony V. Cosentino: Total expense in the quarter of 10.28 million is the lowest of the last five quarters, and we remain focused on continuing to reduce our expense base.
Anthony V. Cosentino: As we turn to the balance sheet, we've managed our wholesale funding effectively, which has allowed us to support loan growth and manage deposit inflows.
Anthony V. Cosentino: We are especially pleased, cycle to date, the betas on our earning asset and cost of funds are nearly identical.
Anthony V. Cosentino: at 34 and 33 respectively.
Anthony V. Cosentino: Cycle to date loan and deposit betas are also closely linked at 31 and 24.
Anthony V. Cosentino: Although cost of funds increased compared to the link quarter,
Anthony V. Cosentino: The March monthly 2024 run rate was three basis points below the January and February cost of funds calculation.
Anthony V. Cosentino: And as we've said, we've also seen a slowdown in clients asking for interest increases, which we interpret potentially that cost of funds are beginning to stabilize.
Anthony V. Cosentino: Investment portfolio adjustments are in line with our liquidity strategies, as we discussed, ensuring support for anticipated loan growth.
Anthony V. Cosentino: Our loan loss allowance percentage remained level to both the linked and prior year quarters at 1.58%.
Anthony V. Cosentino: Criticized and classified loans remain under 1% of our loan portfolio at just 8.7 million.
Anthony V. Cosentino: Capital levels are strong, as Mark indicated, with tangible book value ending the quarter at 1493 a share, up over 7% from the prairie year.
Anthony V. Cosentino: We did continue with our buyback in the quarter, we're purchasing over 30,000 shares in an average price of 1436.
Anthony V. Cosentino: Overall, I believe our financial position remains strong and we're focused on sustaining this performance throughout the remainder of this year.
Speaker Change: I will now turn the call back over tomorrow.
Tomorrow: Thank you, Tony. In closing, I want to acknowledge our dividend announcement this quarter of 13.5 cents per share, which remains consistent with prior quarters and our strategy to return capital to our stockholders. Certainly demonstrates our commitment to shareholder returns.
Tomorrow: Despite economic headwinds, our performance this quarter speaks to prudent oversight of our operations and ongoing commitment to remain resilient in this challenging rate environment.
Tomorrow: We remain focused on our strategic initiatives.
Speaker Change: committed to delivering greater shareholder value and certainly fixated on opportunities that lie ahead. I will now open the call up for questions and answers.
Speaker Change: Sure. Thank you. Cindy, we're ready for our first question now.
Speaker Change: We will now begin the question and answer session.
Speaker Change: To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speaker phone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys.
Speaker Change: If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then to.
Speaker Change: At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster.
Speaker Change: The first question comes from Brian Martin of Janney Montgomery. Go ahead, please.
Brian Joseph Martin: Hey, good morning, guys. Good report. Hi, Brian . Hi, Brian . Thanks. Say, just a couple things to touch on. Mark, you talked about, you know, the loan growth, maybe still being a bit challenged here and in 2Q. Just kind of just,
Brian Joseph Martin: I wanted to see how your temperature is or how much, you know, how things have changed and your, you know, your loan growth outlet given, you know, the current, given the first quarter and then just kind of your, as you head into your, your commentary on second quarter and your outlook for, you know, the full year.
Speaker Change: Yeah, sure, thanks Brian . Steve could make some additional comments here, but you know, at a high level, as I indicated, we've taken certainly a bigger bite out of the greater Columbus market. We know there's certainly additional opportunities there to add to our, you know, 3 to 400 million we have on our balance sheet down there now, but
Speaker Change: We know directing our low-cost funding to low-share high-growth markets is really the job to be done.
Speaker Change: and we're going to ramp that up in that market. We need to jump back into the Indianapolis market, the gentleman we had there, just did not work out. But I would certainly hope, Brian , that we've budgeted in that
Speaker Change: You know, that middle, the upper single digit range and lung growth. It is getting harder, but our answer and response to that is that we just have to outwork the competition. That's just the way it is. We've been willing to...
Speaker Change: skinny up
Speaker Change: a margin marginally.
Speaker Change: to find more deal to drive revenue higher,
Speaker Change: But we certainly think that there's opportunities out there and we're finding them, but
Speaker Change: It's not as easy as it was. It takes twice as much work to get half as far, but
Speaker Change: Steve, I know you know the pipeline, I'm sure, is beginning to fill up a little bit, along with SBA, I mentioned. Yeah, Mark, I certainly agree with all your comments.
Speaker Change: Brian , demand certainly in January and February in particular was soft. I think that's consistent with other folks in the industry I've talked to, softer than we would have expected.
Speaker Change: March firmed up a little bit. We've seen that continue here into April . That's primarily our urban markets, as you might expect, the Fort Wayne, Toledo, certainly Columbus, as Mark mentioned.
Speaker Change: So that demand is fueling a stable pipeline right now, so there's some cautious optimism.
Speaker Change: But there's an awful lot going on the road, be it raised, be it geopolitical, there's just plenty. So borrowers are a little skittish, and I don't think it'll take much to push them back to the sidelines, as Mark had indicated in his earlier comments about borrowers being careful with their leverage position.
Speaker Change: But as Mark indicated, we will continue our calling efforts, and unlike some others, we feel good about our position, so we'll keep lending.
Speaker Change: Gotcha, okay, perfect, I appreciate the update in. Sounds like the outlook on margin and I know Tony maybe is a bit more optimistic if it's kind of bottomed here, but just in general, maybe how you're thinking about margin here with the rates being, rate cuts being pushed out a little bit, it sounds like.
Speaker Change: Yeah, I do think the million dollar question, Brian , is the stabilization on the funding side, which I do believe
Speaker Change: has kind of bottomed or troughed or whatever word you want to use. If you asked me 90 days ago, we had significantly more
Speaker Change: call it requests and volatility in the market for matching and people were competing left and right. That seems to have certainly slowed down in the last 30 days. I do believe as we've talked about, we maintained a policy that was probably painful a bit.
Speaker Change: to stay short.
Speaker Change: And, you know, maybe that caused us to have a few more increases on the funding side on those, as those short things rolled over. But I do think we've reached the end of that, and, you know, I do think the trend is down on funding costs.
Speaker Change: I do think our natural asset repricing both on the bond portfolio and the loan portfolio is going to be additive and that's where I feel good about where we are and what that trend line looks like.
Speaker Change: And Brian , just one follow-up comment, the Tony's statement there, just when we thought we would never buy into the adage of, well, we're from the government and we're here to help. The Ohio Homebuyer program shows up and all of a sudden, you know, we're...
Speaker Change: having goals of, you know, seven, 10, 15,
Speaker Change: 20-30 million of lower cost sub 1% deposit,
Speaker Change: base which we are now actively pursuing, which we think is certainly going to have some nice incremental effect that we didn't anticipate or think about 30 days ago.
Brian Joseph Martin: Yeah, okay, no, that sounds good on the on that,
Brian Joseph Martin: Excuse me on that program, you know, maybe just
Speaker Change: You know, I guess jumping to the just the mortgage Tony, maybe just any change or mark just on the outlook, you know, kind of given again, like I mentioned earlier, the change in, you know, potential rate cut timing, but how you're thinking about that, you know, for full year 24? Yeah.
Speaker Change: Yeah, from a production perspective, Tony can certainly talk about the margin piece and the selling piece, but certainly from the production perspective, Brian , you know, we've continued to ramp it up. You know, we'd like the business line. We have nearly 9,000 households now that are working diligently to try to find more services in.
Speaker Change: But generally speaking, we have
Speaker Change: more leadership in there now, and we expect to expand into some adjacent markets that are as vibrant as Columbus and Indy.
Speaker Change: which would be north and south from us. And again, we think it,
Speaker Change: We'll come back, but we're not holding our breath and we're not going to not grow our balance sheet just to wait for more non-earned income. We're going to get the organic growth and augment that with fee-based revenue from that business line. But Tony, on the margins?
Anthony V. Cosentino: Yeah, I think those are all spot on. You know, I think we've been, you know, kind of
Anthony V. Cosentino: in kind of this 225 to 230, you know, gain on sale at, you know, 85% of our volume really is saleable. You know, I think the pipeline is certainly
Anthony V. Cosentino: improved,
Anthony V. Cosentino: I do think we're going to have a decent second quarter. It feels like the pipeline continues to get refilled when a client falls out, which is usually a good sign of that there's activity out there. We'll see if it holds up.
Anthony V. Cosentino: You know, the little increase in rates actually drives volume a little higher because people get a little fearful that, you know, rates are going to continue to move. So if we can get any stabilization or slight move down, I do think they'll get even more...
Anthony V. Cosentino: flush.
Speaker Change: Gotcha, okay. And maybe just the last one for me was just on, you guys have done a great job on the expense side, just kind of trying to think about, you know, is there still opportunity to take that lower? Is it kind of at a good level today? Just given, you know, the heavy lifting you've already done.
Speaker Change: Just big picture how we think those trend here in the coming quarters or any initiatives you have in place on those.
Speaker Change: Well, we've certainly tried to right-size the mortgage business line, Brian , but as we've proclaimed before, and as you well know, you know, that we've built this thing for growth. And when the economy looks to be stalling a bit from the current levels of interest rates, you know,
Speaker Change: It's a particular conundrum to us because we have a fair amount of
Speaker Change: of a fixed rate commercial lending bases, if you will,
Speaker Change: that are not variable-based, they're fixed.
Speaker Change: And so, you know, this thing is built, and we built it consciously for production. So that's what we need to be doing, and that's the work that we have to put in. But generally speaking, we're bullish on what we can do, and we just got outwork the competition is what we've always proclaimed.
Speaker Change: Gotcha, okay. Well, that's all I had guys. I appreciate you guys taking the questions. Thank you. Thanks, Brian .
Speaker Change: Again, if you have a question, please press star, then one.
Speaker Change: This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mark Klein, CEO , for any closing remarks. Go ahead, please.
Mark A. Klein: Thank you, and certainly once again thanks for joining us this morning. We look forward to speaking with you in July for an update on our second quarter of 2024 results. Thank you for joining. Goodbye.
Speaker Change: The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
Speaker Change: you you
Speaker Change: you you