Yahoo Finance Eagle Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:EGBN) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript
Eagle Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:EGBN) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript April 26, 2024
Eagle Bancorp, Inc. isn't one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).
Operator: Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Eagle Bancorp, Inc. First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Eric Newell, Chief Financial Officer of Eagle Bancorp, Inc. Please go ahead.
Eric Newell: Good morning. This is Eric Newell, Chief Financial Officer of Eagle Bancorp. Before we begin the presentation, I would like to remind everyone that some of the comments made during this call are forward-looking statements. We cannot make any promises about future performance and caution you not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Our Form 10-K for the 2023 fiscal year and current reports on Form 8-K, including the earnings presentation slides, identify risk factors that could cause the company’s actual results to differ materially from those projected in any forward-looking statements made this morning, which speak only as of today. Eagle Bancorp does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information or future events or developments unless required by law.
This morning’s commentary will include non-GAAP financial information. The earnings release, which is posted in the Investor Relations section of our website and filed with the SEC, contains reconciliations of this information to the most directly comparable GAAP information. Our periodic reports are available from the company online at our website or on the SEC’s website. With me today is our President and CEO, Susan Riel; our Chief Credit Officer, Jan Williams; and our Bank Chief Financial Officer, Charles Levingston. I would now like to turn it over to Susan.
Susan Riel: Thank you, Eric. Good morning, everyone. The management team and I have worked through the first quarter to continue executing on our strategies that I discussed on our last earnings call in January. I will update you on these in a moment. But first, while our first quarter results reflect continued stability in pre-provision net revenue from the fourth quarter, net income was impacted by a loss recognized in our office portfolio. As Eric and Jan will review in more detail, the quarter’s net income was impacted by a charge-off on the Central Business District office relationship. We are continuing to be proactive in identifying and addressing challenges. Eric will discuss how our allowance for credit losses is evolving, informed by more timely information about our markets.
We’ve been proactive with our customers that have maturities upcoming to address the credit posture of EagleBank. The challenges of the first quarter demonstrated the benefits of the company’s prudent approach to capital preservation. Our common equity Tier 1 ratio at March 31 stood at 13.8%. Based on December 31 capital ratio, Eagle’s capital levels are in the top quartile of banks greater than $10 billion in total assets. We are highly confident that our focus on preserving and growing pre-provision net revenue and our strong level of capital will allow us to work through our office portfolio challenges. The team has been hard at work during the quarter on executing on our strategies. Last quarter, I mentioned our strategy to diversify our deposit portfolio.
To that end, last year, we introduced our direct banking channel as a soft launch. We’ve expanded that to our local markets in the first quarter and just two weeks ago started to market more widely outside of our footprint. The early results are promising. Over the last 6 months with our deposit promotion strategies, we’ve opened 558 new relationships through all of our acquisition channels, including our new digital channel. Most of these customers are new to Eagle and our teams have been developing strategies to cross-sell these customers into other products to deepen the relationships. During the quarter, we also on-boarded a new team that has developed and built expatriate banking programs at their former organizations. Once up and running, we expect this line of business to nicely augment our deposit gathering efforts.
Another important strategy is the growth of C&I loans. This includes expanding the breadth and depth of services offered by our Treasury Management business to better support the growth of C&I loans. Our C&I pipelines are growing as we are seeing more activity in our government contracting and education segments. Our government contracting team was a source of revenue growth in the first quarter, and we continue to win new relationships in our Charter School segment, where we are establishing a strong presence. In late February, we announced the July 2024 retirement of Lindsey Rheaume, who leads the C&I team. I am excited for Lindsey on his next chapter and appreciate his contributions to EagleBank. We expect to have identified a new leader later this spring.
While I am disappointed at the quarterly results, I’m excited about the future. EagleBank was built on the premise of serving commercial real estate investors and commercial business customers in the metropolitan area around Washington, D.C. Our expertise allows us to better partner with our customers through challenges. In combination with the new initiatives just discussed, we remain committed to our customers, providing them concierge service through our Relationship First culture. As we work through the cycle of credit, our strategies and focus will also be on growing pre-provision net revenue through growth of net interest income and fee income. Our objective is to have a strong foundation and be well positioned for sustainable growth with improved and consistent profitability regardless of the interest rate environment.
I am confident that we’ve identified the actions needed to set us up for continued success. With that, I’ll hand it over to Eric.
Eric Newell: Thanks, Susan. We reported a net loss for the quarter totaling $338,000 or a loss of $0.01 per diluted share. Driving the loss in the quarter was the $35.2 million provision for credit losses in the quarter. While net charge-offs totaled $21.6 million, the allowance for credit losses increased to $99.7 million at March 31 from $85.9 million at December 31. The resulting coverage to the ACL to total loans increased to 1.25% at March 31 from 1.08% at December 31. In our earnings release and deck, we are disclosing the ACL attributed to our performing office loan portfolio. The ACL coverage to performing office loans is 3.67% at March 31, increasing from 1.91% at December 31. OpEx loans that are rated substandard have an ACL nearing 15%, reflecting new information we’ve received through appraisals on office properties.
While Jan will touch on it more, the methodology for the ACL relating to office loans has been designed to incorporate new information as it becomes available. We remain focused on comprehensively considering risks as we establish the ACL. With the information available to us at March 31, we believe the ACL is appropriate. Inputs relating to office loans are dependent on a data set that has limited information on recent evaluations. And so as price discovery continues, we may see changes to the ACL associated with this portfolio. Notwithstanding the higher provision expense, pre-provision net revenue remained relatively flat in the quarter at $38.3 million from $38.8 million in the linked period, reflecting the benefits of our recent strategic initiatives.
Net interest income before provision totaled $74.7 million in the first quarter, increasing from $73 million in the fourth quarter. NIM in the first quarter was 2.43%, declining 2 basis points from the fourth quarter. While the cost from interest-bearing liabilities increased early in the quarter when market rates had fallen, we took some opportunities to reduce rates paid on certain deposit types, which drove an improvement of 4 basis points in our savings and money market rates. I would note, while period-end deposit balances showed a seasonal decline due to tax payments, the average balance of total deposits increased by $190 million in the first quarter from the quarter ending December 31 and deposits increased $1 billion or 14% from March 31 last year.
Non-interest expense totaled $40 million, increasing $2.9 million from the previous quarter. Seasonal increases in salaries and benefits were only a portion of the driver of the increase with the majority attributed to a reversal of incentive compensation in the fourth quarter that did not reoccur in the first quarter. For the comparable period in 2023, salaries declined $2.4 million attributed to lower incentive accruals in 2024. FDIC insurance expense increased, reflecting in part our strategy to use modifications on portions of our loan portfolio, which increases our assessment. During the quarter, we had relatively flat loan growth with loans up $26 million, driven by existing construction loans funding at quarter-end. In our quarterly investor deck, along with earnings, we updated our view for the remainder of 2024 performance.
We provided the components of pre-provision net revenue and the effective tax rate. Our view of PPNR for the full year remains largely unchanged from what we communicated in January 2024. We augmented our disclosure this quarter in the investor deck on our office portfolio on pages 17 and 18. Our 2024 expectations mirror Susan’s comments on the strategic goals. We do not model any changes to interest rates in our forecasting, but expect that betas on our deposits have generally flattened. Of the $112.5 million of loan originations in the quarter, we had a weighted average rate of 7.56%. Lastly, capital remains a core strength of the company. Our tangible common equity ratio at quarter-end was 10.03%, which was impacted by higher interest rates and its impact on AOCI.
Our consolidated CET1 ratio is 13.8% at March 31. Senior management has been evaluating our options as it pertains to our subordinated debt maturity in September. Key factors as we consider those options include capital deployment opportunities, the interest rate environment and market conditions. Jan?
Jan Williams: Thank you, Eric. As mentioned, we recognized a loss on one Central Business District office relationship during the quarter. It’s important to note that the loan was current and accruing as we entered the quarter, but was nearing maturity and as a standard practice we ordered an appraisal. The appraisal had a cap rate of 8.5% and a discount rate of 10% – rates materially higher than other recent appraisals we’ve seen on office properties. At March 31, we individually evaluated the loan and charged off the collateral deficiency after cost of sales as well as reverse the $522,000 of collected interest from interest income during the quarter. To-date, we’ve seen appraisals at the source of charge-offs rather than cash flows from underlying properties.
The subject relationship is the largest we have in our Central Business District office portfolio. For the remainder of 2024, there are no other Central Business District office loans maturing, which would result in an updated appraisal. Our expectation is that price discovery will continue in the Central Business District and make appraisals more predictable going forward. It’s important to note that we believe Central Business District office is not indicative of our total office portfolio and our office portfolio is not indicative of our income-producing CRE portfolio. On Page 17 of our earnings presentation, we visualized the change of our internal risk ratings for office and non-office income-producing CRE. Office loans weighted average risk rating at March 31 was 4,500 compared to 4,600 at December 31 and 3,700 at March 31 last year.
The most severe risk rating we have for loans is 9,000. While the loss recognition is disappointed, it’s not entirely unexpected. We expect and are preparing for additional losses recognized through the cycle. We’ve been working as a team to identify anticipated losses through our ACL. We’re now 1.25% of total loans, an increase from 1.08% of total loans at December 31. As data and information emerge that helps us inform our ACL methodologies, we will incorporate as deemed appropriate. To emphasize what Eric previously mentioned, and as we illustrate in our earnings presentation, we have significant loss-absorbing capabilities for expected and unexpected losses and taking into account our ACL and CET1 capital. We’ve also enhanced our office disclosure to include maturities.
We are actively reviewing all CRE loans with maturities over the course of the next 18 months and taking action where appropriate to mitigate maturity risks. Such mitigation action may include cash flow sweeps, paydown requirements and return for extensions, enhanced guarantor support, payment reserves and additional collateral. Thus far, one of the most significant risks we have seen is the risk associated with office appraisals and the wide discrepancies in valuation over relatively short periods of time, largely as a result of differing perspectives on discount rates and cap rates for office assets, which have been somewhat unpredictable due to ongoing price discovery and market rates. We are creating solutions for our clients as well. We’ve designed a bespoke evaluation process with our office portfolio maturities, and our goal is to have a mutually acceptable solution for our clients as well as an improved credit posture for the bank.
Our solutions to-date have included our borrowers keeping control of their properties. We have worked with our borrowers whenever possible to collaboratively sell assets and pay-off associated debt, provide paydowns and interest-only periods, bridging rent commencement on new leases, provide extensions on existing performing debt and reposition property to residential use. Each resolution is unique to the asset under evaluation. Total classified loans increased $26 million to $361.8 million at March 31, and total criticized loans increased $84.3 million to $627.1 million at March 31. We noted in our disclosure on Page 20 of our earnings presentation that 85% of classified and criticized loans are performing at March 31. Of the total increase in special mention loans, income-producing CRE was $47.7 million, of which $10 million was office and C&I was $10.7 million.
Nonperforming loans increased to $91.5 million at March 31 from $65.5 million at December 31, with the aforementioned office loan migrating into nonperforming. NPAs were $92.3 million which was 79 basis points of total assets. Loans 30 to 89 days past due were $31.1 million, up from $13.6 million at the end of the prior quarter. The increase was due to two loans. One has been brought current, and we have assessed the other as posing little risk of loss as it’s a residential construction project for which we received paydowns as units are sold, and there are more than sufficient units to satisfy the debt. With that, I’ll hand it back to Susan for a short wrap-up. Susan?
Susan Riel: Thanks, Jan. I previously said our team showed its tenacity, client focus and perseverance over the last year. This quarter and this year are no different. We are committed to our continued heightened surveillance of and our engagement with our office portfolio. Our just over 25 years as a commercial lender in this market gives us the expertise to work with our clients challenged by higher interest rates. Our strong levels of capital give us the ability to be flexible and serve our customers and communities for another 25 years. Our strategies are intended to drive growth in pre-provision net revenue, which in turn supports returns on assets and equity that can be invested in products and services designed for our customers and our communities, while providing appropriate returns on capital for our shareholders.
In closing, our senior management team and I would like to thank our employees who work hard every day to make Eagle a success and the strong partnerships we have made with our customers and we will make with our future customers. With that, I will now open it up for questions.
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