Q1 2024 Hope Bancorp Inc Earnings Call

Participants

Angie Yang; Senior Vice President - Director of Investor Relations & Corporate Communications; Hope Bancorp Inc

Kevin Kim; Chairman of the Board, President, Chief Executive Officer; Hope Bancorp Inc

Julianna Balicka; Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President; Hope Bancorp Inc

Gary Tenner; Analyst; D.A. Davidson

Chris McGratty; Analyst; KBW

John Deysher; Analyst; Pinnacle

Presentation

Operator

Good day and welcome to the Hope Bancorp 2024 first quarter earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Angie Yang, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Angie Yang

Thank you, Nicholas, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the Hope Bancorp 2024 First Quarter Investor Conference Call. As usual, we will begin, we will be using a slide presentation to accompany our discussion this morning, including an earnings call presentation and a merger agreement presentation, both of which are available in the Presentations page of our Investor Relations Website beginning on slide 2, let me start with a brief statement regarding forward-looking remarks.
The call today contains forward-looking projections regarding the future financial performance of the company and future events as well as statements regarding the proposed transaction between hope, Bancorp and territorial Bancorp, including the expected time line for completing the interest transaction, future financial and operating results, benefits and synergies of the proposed transaction and other statements about the future expectations, beliefs, goals, plans and prospects of Hope Bancorp as well as the combined entities. These statements constitute forward-looking statements and are not guarantees of future performance and actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed or forecasted in such forward-looking statements.
The closing of the proposed transaction is subject to regulatory approvals, the approval of the shareholders of territorial Bancorp and other customary closing conditions. If the transaction is consummated, we may not achieve anticipated synergies cost savings and other benefits from the transaction as a result of higher than anticipated transaction costs, deposit attrition, operating costs, customer loss and business disruption following the merger, including difficulties in integrating the two operations.
In addition, some of the information referenced on this call today are non-GAAP financial measures for a more detailed description of the risk factors and a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures, please refer to the Company's filings with the SEC and as well as the Safe Harbor statements in our press release issued this morning. We Hope Bancorp assumes no obligation to revise any forward-looking projections that may be made on today's call. And now we have allotted one hour for this call.
Presenting from the management side today will be Kevin Kim, Hope Bancorp's Chairman, President and CEO, and Julianna Balicka, our Chief Financial Officer. Peter Cole, our Chief Operating Officer, is also here with us as usual, and will be available for the Q&A session. With that, let me turn the call over to Kevin Kim, Kenan.

Kevin Kim

Thank you, Angie. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. So let us begin on Slide 3 with a brief overview of the quarter. For the first quarter of 2024, we earned net income of $25.9 million or $0.2 per diluted share compared with net income of $26.5 million or $0.22 per diluted share for the fourth quarter of 2023 excluding notable items, our net income was 27.4 million and our earnings per share were $0.23. Notable items this quarter comprised merger related costs of $1 million or $752,000 after-tax, an incremental FDIC special assessment of $1 million or $721,000 after-tax and the restructuring costs of $143,000 or $103,000 after-tax last quarter. Net income, excluding notable items, was $38.3 million or $0.32 per diluted share. Notable items in the fourth quarter comprised restructuring charges and on FDIC. special assessment.
Moving on to Slide 4. This morning we announced a definitive agreement to acquire territorial Bancorp, the parent company of territorial Savings Bank, a 2.2 billion in assets institution based in the state of Hawaii. This transaction creates the largest US regional bank catering to multi EssNet customers across the continental United States and the Hawaiian Islands founded in 1921, territorial has been supporting their local communities and providing personal financial services to their customers for over a century. Pope is excited to be partnering with a bank that shares our values, and we intend to preserve and continue to build on territorial long and storied legacy to ensure continuity of service for the customer base and employees.
After the close of the transaction, the legacy territorial franchise will continue to do business under the territorial Savings Bank brand as a trade name of Banco Poland. The partnership with territorial expands our footprint into the attractive Hawaii market, which has a large Asian American and Pacific Islander community. It will contribute a stable, low-cost core deposit base to the combined company. Spot cost of territory of total deposits was 1.61% as of December 31st, 2023 or 1.2%, excluding public fund deposits. Pro forma territorial residential mortgage loans was more than double the size of Hope's residential mortgage portfolio greatly enhancing our loan mix diversification.
We believe the transaction will strengthen territorial savings bank for the long term and create meaningful opportunities to grow customer and market share by being part of a larger organization with greater resources and an expanded array of banking products and services. The transaction is expected to close by year end 2024 and is expected to be immediately accretive to earnings after the close at a double digit percentage growth rate sustainably strengthening our profitability.
On slide 5, you can see that we ended the quarter with strong capital and all our capital ratios expanded from December 31st of 2023. As of March 31st, 2024, our total capital ratio was 14.19%, up 27 basis points from December 31st, and our common equity Tier one ratio was 12.47%, up nine 19 basis points quarter over quarter, and our tangible common equity ratio was 9.33%, up 47 basis points from year-end 2023. Adjusting for the allowance for credit losses and including hypothetical adjustments for investments security Imarex, all our capital ratios remain high. Our Board of Directors declared a quarterly common stock dividend of $0.14 per share, payable on May 23rd to stockholders of record as of May ninth, 2024.
Continuing to Slide 6. At March 31st, 2024, our total deposits were 14.8 billion, essentially stable quarter over quarter. Our line of business groups exceeded their customer deposit growth goals for the quarter, offsetting a planned reduction of brokered time deposits. As of March 31st, our gross loan-to-deposit ratio was 93%.
Moving on to Slide 7. At March 31st of 2024, our loan portfolio totaled 13.7 billion, a decrease of 1% quarter over quarter. Commercial and commercial real estate loans decreased, partially offset by growth in SBA and residential mortgage loans. The negative rate of change in our loan balances has decelerated from recent quarters with our team's regaining momentum following the reorganization, our pipelines are increasing.
On Slides 8 and 9. We provide more details on our commercial real estate loans, which are well diversified by property type and granular in size. Loan to values remain low across the portfolio with a weighted average of approximately 46% at March 31st, 2024, the vast majority of our commercial real estate loans have full recourse with personal guarantees. Asset quality remains strong, with 98.2% of the commercial real estate portfolio being passed rated at March 31st, 2024.
With that, I will ask Juliana to provide additional details on our financial performance for the first quarter. Julianna?

Julianna Balicka

Thank you, Kevin, and good morning, everyone. Beginning with slide 10, our net interest income totaled 115 million for the first quarter of 2024, a decrease of 9% from the fourth quarter. This largely reflects a decline in average loans and a higher cost of interest-bearing deposits, partially offset by a decrease in average CDs and wholesale borrowings.
Net interest margin for the 2024 first quarter contracted 15 basis points to 55. At the end of the first quarter, we paid off $1 billion of our bank term funding program borrowings and the remaining $695 million was paid off. In early April. We used interest earning cash for the payoff. The positive spread earned on BTFP. borrowings contributed approximately $3.6 million to net interest income in the first quarter. All else equal to payoff of the BTFP. should be a positive to our net interest margin going forward.
Moving on to Slide 11. Our average loans of 13.7 billion decreased 2% linked quarter. The average yield on our loan portfolio increased one basis point to 6.25%. As Kevin referenced, our lending teams momentum is rebuilding and loan growth trends are improving. Average deposits of 14.9 million decreased 3% quarter over quarter, and the weighted average cost of interest-bearing deposits increased 19 basis points in the first quarter of 2024. We absorbed the renewal of promotional CDs from the year ago, first quarter. I would like to highlight that month to date, in April 2024, the spot cost of our deposits has decreased slightly as we benefit from an improved pricing approach following our line of business focus reorganizations.
On to Slide 12. Our noninterest income was 8 million for the first quarter compared with 9 million for the fourth quarter of 2023 growth in deposit service fees was offset by a decrease in other noninterest income. Similar to prior quarter, we did not record any gain on the sale of SBA loans in the first quarter. Secondary market premiums have improved by April 2024 compared with the beginning of the year, and we are likely to resume a small volume of SBA loan sales in the second quarter. We are continually We continually evaluate market pricing conditions for selling or retaining SBA loan originations.
Moving on to expenses on slide 13, our first quarter 2024 GAAP noninterest expense was 85 million compared with 99 million in the fourth quarter of 2023. Excluding notable items from both quarters, which Kevin outlined our first quarter non-interest expense of 83 million, down 2% quarter over quarter from 84 million in the fourth quarter of 2023 and is down 7% from 89 million in the fourth first quarter of 2023. First Quarter 2020 for salaries and employee benefit benefits expense increased 1% quarter over quarter to 48 million, up from $47 million, reflecting seasonal increases in payroll taxes and vacation accruals, partially offset by reduced salary and benefits costs following our restructuring in the fourth quarter year over year. Our salaries and employee benefits expense was down 16% for the first quarter of 2024. The effective tax rate was 28% compared with 25% for the full year 2023. For the full year 2024, we expect the effective tax rate will be approximately 26%.
Income tax provision for the first quarter was $10 million and included $1.1 million of true up adjustments which are not expected to recur.
Now moving on to Slide 14. I will review asset quality. Our nonperforming assets at March 31st, 2020 fourth increased to $107 million compared with 46 million as of December 31st and $80 million as of March 31st, 2023. The quarter-over-quarter increase was largely attributable to one relationship consisting of three commercial real estate loans that were accruing and 90 days past due as of March 31st, 2024 exposure is fully secured and sales agreements are in place with the collateral properties with no expected loss net charge-offs for the 2024 first quarter were $3.5 million or 10 basis points of average loans annualized compared with five basis points in the prior quarter. For the first quarter, our provision for credit losses was 2.6 million compared with $2.4 million in the prior quarter at March 31st, 2024, our allowance for credit losses was 159 million, representing 116 basis points of loans receivable compared with 115 basis points as of December 31st, 2023 and up from 109 basis points as of March 31st, 2023.
With that, let me turn the call back to Kevin Thank you, Juliano.

Kevin Kim

Moving on to the outlook on Slide 15. Our pending transaction with territorial Bancorp is expected to close by year end 2024 and does not impact our fourth quarter 2024 outlook.
In terms of our fourth quarter 2024 outlook relative to the fourth quarter 2023 actuals, we have the following updates fourth quarter to fourth quarter, we still expect average loans to grow at a percentage rate in the low single digits, up from 14.05 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023.
In terms of net interest income, we utilize the current implied forward interest rate curve in our baseline. Therefore, we are factoring in one Fed funds target rate cut of 25 basis points in September. This compares with five fed funds target rate cuts implied by the forward curve in January of 2024. Accordingly, we now expect net interest income for the fourth quarter of 24 to decline between 5% and 7% from $126 million in the fourth quarter of 2023. This includes the net impact of the off of the bank term funding program, which contributed a positive $4 million to our net interest income in the fourth quarter of 2023 year to date, secondary market premiums for SBA loan sales have improved and we are likely to resume SBA loan sale activity with a small volume in the second quarter. Fourth quarter to fourth quarter. We still continue to expect operating expenses to decrease by over 5% from 85 million in the fourth quarter of 2023. Our outlook translates into positive operating leverage when comparing the fourth quarter of 2024 with the fourth quarter of 2023, with the decrease in expenses plus the gains from the resumption of SBA sales exceeding net interest income pressure.
Finally, in our 2024 outlook, we continue to assume an essentially stable coverage ratio of allowance for credit losses to loans, which was 116 basis basis points of loans as of March 31st, 2024, and 115 basis points of loans as of December 31st, 2023.
With that, I will proceed to discuss our pending merger with territorial Bancorp and switch to the transaction related slide deck available on our Investor Relations website.
Beginning with slide 3 of the merger presentation. The transaction with territorial Bancorp is strategically compelling and financially attractive, bringing together two culturally aligned organizations. I reviewed the key highlights in my opening remarks and will now review some of the details.
The aggregate consideration of 79 million based on the closing price of April 26th of 2024 is equivalent to 31% of territorially December 31st, tangible book value. The exchange ratio is fixed at 0.8048 of shares for a territorial share. The estimated earn-back period for holds tangible book value dilution is approximately three years. We expect the transaction to be immediately accretive to earnings after the close at a double digit percentage growth rate. No capital raise will be needed to complete the transaction and the combined company will have strong capital and capital ratios to support growth after the close.
On slide 4, we provide a closer look at territorial Banc-Corp, headquartered in Honolulu, Hawaii territorial Savings Bank has the fifth largest market share in the state operating 28 branches on the island of Oahu, Mali, Kawai and Hawaii with 2.2 billion in total assets. As of December 31st, 2023, territorial had gross loans of 1.3 billion and total deposits of 1.6 billion. Territorial has very strong capital and its tangible common equity ratio was over 11% as of December 30 2023. Territory's asset quality is excellent and nonperforming assets represented just 10 basis points of total assets at the end of the year, 97% of territorial loan portfolio are residential mortgages, which have a low weighted average loan-to-value ratio of 63%.
On Slide 5, we show the pro forma loans and deposits of the combined company. You can see that the transaction accelerates the prudent diversification of our loan portfolio with territorial contribution more than doubling homes residential mortgage loans to approximately 15% of total loans outstanding of the combined company pro forma Hawaii will become the combined Company's third largest market in terms of deposits by state.
On Slide 6, we highlight territorial low-cost, stable and granular core deposit base costs. The cost of total deposits was 1.61% as of December 31st, 2023 and 1.2% excluding public funds deposits. The average account size is $30,000 and the median account size is a little over $4,000. 73% of territorial deposit balances, excluding public funds are from accounts equal to or less than $250,000 in size 93% of the non-CD deposit balances at territorial are from consumer accounts.
Slide 7 recaps the financial details of the transaction, which I have already covered in my remarks, but are presented here for your easy reference. The merger will require the approvals of regulators, the approval of territorial shareholders and the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.
Moving on to slide 8, upon completion of the transaction. We intend to continue operating in Hawaii under the territorial Savings Bank brand with any merger. Cultural integration is a very important aspect that must be addressed with great care. We are pleased that hope and territorial organizations share similar corporate and cultural values that emphasize a strong commitment to employees, customers and the communities that we serve. We look forward to building on the long-standing legacy and positive impact, positive impact that the territorial franchise has made to the Hawaii market. We have a deeply experienced Board and management team with proven histories of successfully completing and integrating M&A transactions with diverse business models, we fully expect to have a smooth and seamless integration process, which will enable us to quickly begin realizing the benefits of this combination for our shareholders, our customers and our employees. With this transaction, we are taking another strong and purposeful step to fortifying the long-term growth prospects of old Bancorp and ensure the success of the franchise for many, many years to come.
With that, operator, please open up the call for questions.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Gary Tenner, D.A. Davidson.

Gary Tenner

Good morning. I wanted to ask for some more color if possible, in terms of some of the your financials around the deal of including what your expectations are for one-time merger expenses, thoughts around credit marks and projected cost saves and timing of this?

Julianna Balicka

Hey, Gary, this is Julianna on the deal marks, as you know, are something that is going to reflects the forward rate curve, but are the evaluation at that point in time. So those will shift. But right now we are assuming the remarks of approximately 15% of the loans, approximately 17 percentage change of the securities. And on the loans, we are assuming that the accretion from now will be lower in the first couple of years.
The accretion income, because this is the residential mortgage portfolio, right? That's going to be a little bit more longer dated. The average life of it will be seven years, but we expect to prepay back-end loaded when interest rate changes change in life events. So we're not assuming a front-loaded accretion from the and deal expenses were assuming deal expenses and we're still working out some of the related expenses as we go through.
Our trends are on integration planning process will be in the 25 to $30 million range and the cost saves were assuming 75% in the 1st year and then 100% in the subsequent year and I will say that this is not necessarily a cost saves transaction. This is a strategic market expansion transaction that provides us and excellence our high-quality core deposit base. And on the and we are focused on making sure that the customer experience and transition period is seamless. So And unlike maybe in-market transaction, the cost saves are going to be the number that I just told you about.

Gary Tenner

Okay. I appreciate that. And then just more broadly as it relates to the territorial franchise and how you're thinking about that market longer term, I know if you go back several years, growth of territorial deposits have lagged the state of Hawaii in total. I wonder if you guys could provide any kind of color in terms of why that may have been the case and kind of how you're thinking about approaching that market. Longer term?

Kevin Kim

We believe that territorially long legacy in the state of Hawaii has established a very good market presence in Hawaii and with our larger balance sheet and our broader array of banking products and services, I think we have really good market share expansion opportunities in Hawaii. And this will also become a varied have beneficial experience with the customers of territorial.

Julianna Balicka

I think, Gary, if I can just add real quick to that, you asked about the transaction expenses. What I quoted you was the pretax number. So I just want to make sure that's clear. Did you share that 27.5% of territorial F'09 interest expenses will be the expected cost saves and the cost savings will be 27.5% just happens to be in the same range as the deal comes down.

Gary Tenner

Thank you.

Operator

Chris McGratty, KBW.

Chris McGratty

Great morning, Kevin and Julie. On Adesto going to go to slide 3 for a second. The double digit earnings accretion that you referenced, Julia, you mentioned that accretable isn't going to be notably higher front run that front loaded, if you were to kind of unpack that double digit, like how much is purchase accounting versus just core?

Julianna Balicka

I would say, well, I mean, in the current interest rate environment, accretion is core. But between the three, it's going to be mix between the kind of three components of EPS accretion, it's going to be a combination of cost saves.
Right, and what you're going to be phased in over time as we do the transition to accretion on the balance sheet. And then the third component will be on balance sheet restructuring, repositioning territorial does provide us on balance sheet liquidity optionality with their securities and their cash position. So we'll be there will be some redeployment of that as well built into our earnings accretion. And we're going through our transaction and the integration planning process right now. So as we kind of tighten up the on the model in the sense of going through this process, we will share more details.

Chris McGratty

Okay, great. And if I could just add one more. The interest rate marks are understandably large, but aside from from that maybe a little bit more color on just the perception of their credit portfolio, develop the diligence you did any portfolios that might come not be core to legacy Hope Bancorp as an excellent asset quality portfolio.

Julianna Balicka

We took a look at it in multiple ways through the due diligence process. Obviously, we needed to make sure that we had the marks on the balance sheet correctly, estimated between interest rate and credit, I mean, with NPA ratio of only 10 basis points, I mean this is like 97% of that is the residential mortgage portfolio at a low LTV. It's a clean asset quality portfolio book.

Operator

John Deysher, Pinnacle.

John Deysher

Good morning. I was just curious if you could tell us how this deal came about, how you found territorial and or are there any other competitors for the bank?

Kevin Kim

Well, hi, this is Kevin. Well, my counterpart that territorial and I have had a casual interactions over the years and in the current interest rate environment, both of us concluded that a strategic partnership between hope and territorial would be very, very compelling. So we had engaged a serious conversations from from toward the end of 2023, and we came up with a announcing the deal signing this morning. So I understand that a territorial has talked to other potential buyers, but from strategic strategic perspective, they must have concluded that hope would be the most ideal our deal partner for this for this deal.

John Deysher

Okay, thanks. That's how you're going to keep the franchise intact. What about the management team at territorial?

Kevin Kim

We cannot guarantee to you that we plan to maintain most of the customer facing and frontline employees at a territorial. And we believe that capitalizing on their very good reputation and and traditionally good services and loyal customers, that territorial would be very important for us to continue after the closed. So we will we will retain most of the employees and the cost save is the cost savings will come from mainly cumulative corporate and public company expenses that will be redundant after the close. Like we said, this is not a deal for mainly a cost savings or elimination of competition. This is a more of a strategic merger to improve our market share growth opportunities in the new market.

John Deysher

Understood. Thank you very much and good luck. Thank you.

Operator

Gary Tenner, D.A. Davidson.

Gary Tenner

Thanks. I had a quick follow-up drilling on in terms of your comment regarding the deposit rates month to date, April re referencing that relative to the full quarter average from the first quarter just in the March 31st spot. So from March end use by turning on our guy, did you did you give us the March 31st spot if I missed it, I apologize.

Julianna Balicka

Now our March 31st spot was three 67 for flat for total deposits and were down several basis points from that as of right now in April.

Gary Tenner

Thank you.

Operator

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks.

Julianna Balicka

Actually, excuse me, may I make a comment on the spot that I just quoted to Gary at three 67 excludes some cost benefits that we have from our hedge accounting on our deposit book. So the gap, the hedge adjusted spot that is present in our average balance sheet is three 42, and we down several basis points from that three 42. So I wanted just wanted to clarify, apologies.

Kevin Kim

Hey, once again, thank you all for joining us today, and we look forward to speaking with you next quarter. Hello, everyone.

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.