Kulicke and Soffa Industries Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
April 21, 2023

There are 5 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the SB Financial First Quarter 2023 Conference Call and Webcast. I would like to inform you that this conference call is being recorded and that all participants are in listen only mode. We will begin with remarks by management and then open the conference up to the investment community for questions and answers. I will now turn the conference over to Sarah Mickus with SB Financial. Please go ahead, Sarah.

Speaker 1

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. I would like to remind you that this conference call is being broadcast live over the Internet and will be archived and available on our website atir.yourstatebank.com. Joining me today are Mark Klein, Chairman, President and CEO Tony Cosentino, Chief Financial Officer and Steve Walz, Chief Lending Officer. Today's presentation may contain forward looking information. Cautionary statements about this information as well as Reconciliations of non GAAP financial measures are included in today's earnings release materials as well as our SEC filings and other investor These materials are available on our website, and we encourage participants to refer to them for a complete discussion of risk factors and forward looking statements.

Speaker 1

These statements speak only as of the date made and SP Financial undertakes no obligation to update them. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Klein.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Sarah, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our conference call and webcast highlights for the quarter And recapping our recent earnings release, net income of $2,500,000 up 3 100 and 3,000 or nearly 13% from prior year quarter, but would have been up just 296,000 or 14%. When you exclude the effect of the OMSR recapture that Tony will speak of shortly. Return on average assets, 0.73 Return on tangible common equity, dollars 10,500,000 net interest income of $10,300,000 was up $1,800,000 or 22% from the prior quarter As loan growth, better asset mix and increasing earning asset yields have offset the increase in deposit and other funding costs, Loan balances from the linked quarter rose $14,000,000 with loans rising now $126,000,000 or 15% compared to the prior year quarter. Deposits grew from the linked quarter by $24,000,000 but were down $28,000,000 year over year.

Speaker 2

Expenses up slightly from the linked quarter, but down from the prior year. Mortgage origination volume just 49,000,000 Asset quality metrics remaining strong with NPAs at just 35 basis points. As with prior quarters, We discussed a number of times our path to deliver. Our 5 key strategic initiatives remain:

Speaker 3

revenue diversity,

Speaker 2

The balance of net interest income with fee based revenue, more scale with organic growth and potentially M and A, For the quarter, our mortgage business line originated $49,000,000 in volume, just slightly below the level from the linked quarter. While the level of sales in the quarter was Our expectations, the trend in the production arena is strongly moving towards our traditional model to primarily originate and So loans into the secondary market. We do expect sales to increase above the 60% level in the 2nd quarter Anthony, our historical 80% level in the latter half of the year, given the expectation of continued higher funding costs, Limiting our level of residential portfolio loan growth is the plan. Overall, non Interest income was $3,700,000 level to the linked quarter, but down from the prior year quarter of $5,800,000 or a reduction of 37%, primarily due to a significant decline in residential loan volume. The current quarter included a mortgage Servicing recapture, as I mentioned, of 56,000 compared to a recapture of 890,000 in the Q1 of last year.

Speaker 2

When we exclude the full impact of the mortgage business line for both years, our year over year decline would have been 16%. The title business is also off due to the decline in residential volume as you would expect. However, we remain confident of our ability While we have made resource reductions to more closely aligned expense with expected revenue, We've also made provisions to more consciously drive a greater share of State Bank's title insurance policy revenue to big title. Our Wealth Management division showed growth from the linked quarter as both revenue and assets under management increased. We understand as we would before the lumpy nature of this business line with the value of the equity markets being one of the main drivers of our success.

Speaker 2

As such, we continue to identify a more holistic client experience and one that includes a complete banking relationship to complement our management of their 401s and individual retirement assets. 2nd key initiative, more scale. Funding concerns and the need to grow and maintain client deposits remain center stage for A recent bank failure conversation highlighting the potential concerns of liquidity and meeting client needs. We worked Very hard to grow deposits in the quarter. And in fact, we have now grown total deposits in each of the last three quarters.

Speaker 2

This growth has come at a cost to our margin as total funding costs are up nearly 300% compared to the prior year on what was essentially a flat balance sheet. The market has been very competitive and the desire of our clients to accelerate returns on their cash has driven the marginal cost of funding up to that 4% to 4.5% level. Loan growth in the quarter was again fairly strong as we were up $14,000,000 from the linked quarter and up now nearly $126,000,000 or nearly 15% from the prior year quarter. The bulk of that loan growth came from our residential Loan business line as the saleable Freddie Fannie product pricing due to the inversion of the yield curve remained elevated and certainly less desirable to our clients. This pricing began to change later in the quarter, making sale of product to our clients preferred.

Speaker 2

When we include the growth of our residential variable rig products On our books, we have now grown our loan book each of the last five quarters. We were singularly focused in the quarter on reassuring our clients that we have a strong, well capitalized bank with Many avenues to meet all of their liquidity needs. Undersured deposits at our institution have averaged in the low to mid teens and currently stands at 14%, which is at the low end of Midwest Banks between $1,000,000,000 $3,000,000,000 in size. Our average deposit size per account of 25,000 is at the median level of that peer group, and we are not reliant on any geographic region for the majority of our deposit funding. In fact, our largest region comprises only 27% of the total deposit balance sheet.

Speaker 2

We have not had access either the Fed discount window or the bank term funding program to meet any of our 3rd is our strategy to develop deeper relationships, more scope. The PPP story has been completed, and we are focused on getting our teams back into the market and calling our clients prospects that will undoubtedly need working capital to grow, albeit in a bit more challenging market. We closed over $7,300,000 in SBA credits in the quarter, but due to timing, we were unable to get them sold and the gains realized in the quarter as we anticipated. We expect meaningful fee income from sales in the 2nd quarter With the pipeline of scheduled closings of nearly $6,000,000 we continue to expect 2023 The corporate sales champion we hired late last year is being integrated into the fabric of our sales culture. The impetus here is to gain better utilization of our newer FinTech platforms, including more and better data as we reported in prior quarters and to optimize the relevancy of each of our 7 business lines.

Speaker 2

As a result, we expect to expand our household penetration and add additional products and services and are now over 36,000 households throughout the coming year. Operational excellence, our 4th key theme. The mortgage business line has been and continues to be a Key entry point for us into the household throughout our entire footprint. Over the last 10 years, we have originated now $3,900,000,000 in residential loan And the gain on sale during the several of those very low rate years drove the increase in our tangible book value and certainly earnings per share. Clearly, the impact of the rapid rise in rates in 2022 and the lower available housing stock in a number of our markets has hurt our profitability.

Speaker 2

This quarter's production was the lowest level that we've experienced in over 9 years. We believe that the market is showing some signs of life, And we are growing our pipeline almost exclusively in the salable purchase market. We continue our quest to right size the level of resources Operating expenses were down from the prior year quarter, but increased from the linked quarter. We acknowledge that our Efficiency and expense to average assets ratio are too high given the potential headwinds on the prospects of incremental revenue growth. We have done a full review of our expense base and are confident that the coming quarters will show meaningful reductions from the baseline.

Speaker 2

In fact, we recently developed a dynamic model that revealed cuts in expenses that for lack of revenue enhancements for 2023 will deliver a more meaningful improvement in tangible book value improvement for our stockholders. As such, This initiative will provide us positive operating leverage anticipated for 2023. Our client driven contact center staff has continued to expand its reach and has allowed us to forego adding open positions to our retail network, Particularly important as we have constrained hours of operations in some offices reflecting the flight of the client to the digital platform. Contact center also allows us to do positive outreach and handle customer need with a seamless consistent message from a staff of 6 professionals. This focus along with the goals of our corporate sales champion We'll be in part to expand single service households and expand our deposit footprint without an expensive client acquisition strategy.

Speaker 2

5th and finally, asset quality. Charge offs were slightly elevated in the quarter compared to the We have begun to see some weakness in our small credit card portfolio And the rise in interest rates has put strains on the household with the escalation of interest payments on our prime based HELOC portfolio. A significant additional provision we have set aside over the last several years that now includes the 2023 CECL adjustments of nearly 3 Additional $1,000,000 puts us in a very strong position with allowance coverage of non performing loans that now stands at nearly 400%. Delinquencies ended the quarter at $3,600,000 or 37 basis points. But when we exclude the identified NPLs from the delinquency The percentage drops to just 3 basis points.

Speaker 2

We continue to have a robust internal review program that Continually uncovers problem credits and what is expected to be a bit stiffer headwind with a potential recession on the horizon, but we are prepared. At this time, I'd like to turn it over to Tony Constantino for some additional details on the quarter. Tony?

Speaker 3

Thanks, Mark, and good morning, everyone. Again, for the quarter, we had GAAP net income of $2,500,000 with EPS of $0.35 per share. When we exclude the servicing recapture and the non core expense items, core diluted EPS was $0.36 up 20% compared to the similar core earnings in the Q1 of 'twenty two. Total operating revenue was down from both linked quarter and the prior year quarter. However, when we exclude the servicing rights that capture from both years, Operating revenue would be up 4.1%.

Speaker 3

Also, the continued lower level of mortgage gain on sale, which was down nearly $1,100,000 had Significant impact on our ability to grow total operating revenue. Margin revenue was up 22% from the prior year And the efficiency of our balance sheet improved this quarter as our loan to deposit ratio rose to nearly 90% and total loans to assets rising to 73%. Now as we break down further the Q1 income statement, getting with margins. For the quarter, our net interest margin came in at 3 0.337%, which is up 69 basis points from the prior year due to the shift in our earning asset mix and the net positive beta of earning assets versus funding. Compared to the linked quarter, the impact of much higher funding costs as Mark discussed could not be overcome by our loan growth and the improvement in earning asset yields.

Speaker 3

Cash and securities as a percentage of total assets continued the reduction in the quarter as they are now just 19.5% of total assets. This compares to 20% 30% for the linked and prior year quarter. Pre pandemic, we averaged just over 12% of assets in these lower yielding instruments. This shift in mix has benefited our interest income and is reflected in our earning asset yield improvement. For the quarter, we had loan yield of 5.04 percent, up 21 basis points in linked quarter and our overall earning asset yield improved 22 basis points from the linked quarter.

Speaker 3

The betas on these two key measures were both 25% for the quarter And interest income as a result of the improvement in these metrics was $13,800,000 up 7% from the linked quarter and 47% from the prior year quarter. For the first time since the Fed began to raise interest rates, our funding betas were higher than our earning assets and loan betas. For the quarter, our deposit beta was $48,000,000 and our overall cost of funds beta was $55,000,000 both approximately 2 times the earning asset and loan betas referenced earlier. We were able to raise deposits primarily in the 1 year window of roughly 50 basis points below the marginal wholesale funding rate. Deposit costs, ZECOMEX VAC rose substantially in the quarter, up to 94 basis points from 53 in the linked quarter and up 22 in the Q1 of 2022.

Speaker 3

Non retail funds, which are approximately 17% of total assets, provide a diverse mix of funding for our operation. Predominantly using the Cedars and ICS product with some term and overnight FHLB The borrowing, this pool of funds has a weighted average rate of 2.65%. Fee income as a percentage of average assets was flat to the linked quarter at 1.1%, driven by lower mortgage gain on sale and the absence of any SBA loan sales. As Mark indicated, we expect a strong second quarter in SBA fees as we have several large credits that we are in the process of pricing in secondary market. Any kind of prior year comparison on fee income would not be meaningful given the large servicing rights we captured in the prior year and the strong mortgage activity we experienced in early 2022 prior to interest rate increases that began in March of last year.

Speaker 3

Mortgage gain on sale yields came in at the mid-2s for the quarter, which are not a harbinger of the future state as the volume of loan sales in the quarter was quite small. At these current levels of Freddie pricing, we would expect the prudent use of our hedge will allow us to realize yield levels between 2.25% and 2.5% moving forward. At that level, our breakeven origination volume assuming a seventy sale factor is roughly $350,000,000 of annual originations. At this point, we are below that level when factoring in our current The upcoming quarter will be very important to us in settling the future direction, as regards to the business line. The market value of our mortgage servicing rights continue to move higher with the decline in refinance volume and ended the quarter with a calculated fair value of 126 basis points.

Speaker 3

This fair value was up 9 basis points in the linked quarter and up 21 basis points from the prior year. Our servicing rights balance remained level in the linked quarter, $500,000 and remaining temporary impairment was down to just $121,000 with a recapture of $56,000 in the quarter. It is likely we will recapture the remaining impairment sometime this year. Our expenses in Q1 amounted to $10,800,000 which was Our focus on technology spend, which was a significant factor in closing the digital gap and advancing our company further along the technology path It's largely $1,000,000,000 Now as we turn to the balance sheet, wholesale funding levels declined in the quarter by nearly 14% We were able to not only fund higher loan growth, but also reduce borrowings with our deposit gathering activity. These deposits did come at the higher end of the scale and we did see a larger than normal movement of deposit funding and term certificates in the quarter.

Speaker 3

Time deposits now comprise over 21% of our deposit book, up from approximately 13% in the prior year as clients Sought to move liquid funds into predominantly the 1 year term window. Most of our new growth also came in that 1 year bucket. One of our strategies was to price a bit aggressive at the margin, but that came with the stipulation that new funds from competitors were required. We were pleased with our results as total deposits at quarter end were up $23,000,000 over 2022 year end. Pay downs in the investment portfolio continued as scheduled with the portfolio on pace to decline by roughly $25,000,000 this year through normal amortization.

Speaker 3

Should rate declines accelerate, cash flow from a predominantly mortgage backed portfolio will provide the liquidity for anticipated loan growth. The AOCI negative mark improved in the quarter as anticipated. Tangible common equity, including the AOC Impairment improved in the quarter to 7.29 percent with a tangible book value per share up to $13.93 Total equity net of AOCI of $149,400,000 was up from the prior year and represent 11.1 percent of total assets. Regulatory capital continues to be strong with Common Equity Tier 1 and total risk based capital estimated to be 13.5% 14.8%, respectively, at the end of the quarter. We did buy back a small number of shares in the quarter at an average price of $14.54 below our current adjusted TCE per share of $18.23 As Mark mentioned, our loan reserve improved significantly in the quarter ending at 1.58 percent of total loans.

Speaker 3

During the quarter, we adopted CECL, which added $1,400,000 to our reserve and additional $1,300,000 to our unfunded commitment liability. Even with the limited charge offs in the quarter of just 3 basis points, we decided to add to our already peer leading reserve with a net provision of 250,000 In addition, we had positive momentum in our classified loans as for the quarter. Our criticized and classified loans now stand at just $9,400,000 and are down 25% versus the linked quarter and 53% from the prior year quarter. I will now turn the call back over to Mark.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Tony. I want to We'll conclude with acknowledging once again the dividend announcement we made in the earnings release last for this week of $0.13 per share, A recent high at 36% of our earnings in the quarter. We expect to maintain our current common dividend methodology in Even though it represents a greater percentage of our net income as liquidity, asset quality and capital are all well positioned. No doubt a tough quarter for the overall industry with the economic and operational headwinds. Conversely, for SB Financial, given our high level of FDIC insured deposits at over 86% of total deposits, Low average balance per deposit account of just $25,000 and our diversified and market balanced client base, We do remain confident that overall direction will deliver meaningful returns for each of our stakeholders.

Speaker 2

Now I'll turn it back over to Sarah Michas for

Operator

Thank

Speaker 1

While we're waiting for any questions, I would like to remind you that today's call will be accessible on our website at ir. Yourstatebank.com.

Operator

Our first question comes from Nina Burns from Jenny, Nina, please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Hi. This is Nina. I am filling in for Brian Martin this morning. I know he made you guys aware that he had another call to join But we do want to know more about what your NIM outlook is and what your margin was for the month of March.

Speaker 3

Yes. Hi, Nia. Thanks. Yes, we did 3.37% fully taxable equivalent In March in the Q1, excuse me, that March number was approximately $325,000,000 as it obviously got Lower as the quarter moved out. As we look going forward, April is probably going to be in that 3.20 range And probably stay in that 3.20 ish range in Q2.

Speaker 3

Obviously, loan growth, we feel good about our pipeline And we feel like the latter half of the year, we're going to start to accelerate Markman again. We are hopeful that Rate increases at the Fed have kind of stabilized and we have a number of Clients that will be coming off what we might call premium pricing in some of our transactional products in the latter half of the year and we think we're going to be able to Retain those clients at a slightly lower level than what we're paying them today, the bulk of our Term certificates are probably going to be in the Q1 of 2024, but we do think deposit costs will move up In the Q2, but then moderate to slowly move down latter half of the year and loan growth will provide some bonus in our margin going forward. So we do think Slight move down in Q2 on margin and then from there acceleration higher.

Operator

Okay. Thank you. If there are no further questions, I will now turn the call back to Mark Klein.

Speaker 2

Thank you. And once again, thank you all for joining us

Remove Ads
Powered by Quartr
Earnings Conference Call
Kulicke and Soffa Industries Q1 2023
00:00 / 00:00
Remove Ads