Bank OZK Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
October 18, 2024

There are 12 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Bank of ZK Third Quarter 20 24 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

Operator

I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Jay Staley, M. D, Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Good morning. I'm Jay Staley, Managing Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development for Banco ZK. Thank you for joining our call this morning and participating in our question and answer session. In today's Q and A session, we may make forward looking statements about our expectations, estimates and outlook for the future. Please refer to our earnings release, management comments and other public filings for more information on the various factors and risks that may cause actual results or outcomes to vary from those projected in or implied by such forward looking statements.

Speaker 1

Joining me on the call to take your questions are George Gleason, Chairman and CEO Brandon Hamblin, President Tim Hicks, Chief Financial Officer Cindy Wolfe, Chief Operating Officer and Jake Munn, President, Corporate and Institutional Banking. We will now open up the lines for your questions. Let me ask our operator, Marvin, to remind our listeners how to queue in for questions.

Operator

Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Stephen Scouten of Piper Sandler. Your line is now open.

Speaker 2

Good morning, everyone. I appreciate all the guidance and the management comments, especially the potential for NIM inflection in late 2025, I think was interesting. I'm hoping you might be able to give some color on kind of the puts and takes, obviously a lot going on there. Maybe

Speaker 3

talk a

Speaker 2

little bit about the CD yields on repricing and beta expectations on the way down, kind of the impact of the floors and that lag effect you talk about on tenone. And then sort of the potential drag of the on the NIM from the handoff of RESG to CIB and the other verticals and just that coupled with any debt maturity, just that holistic picture of the puts and takes around the NIM and what gives you confidence around that potential for inflection in the back half of twenty twenty five?

Speaker 1

Tim, since Stephen's question touches everything on the balance sheet and income statement, would you like to take that? Sure. Thanks, Stephen. How are you doing?

Speaker 2

Great. Thank

Speaker 1

you. You. Great. Yes, I mean a lot of different variables happening. Obviously the pace of bed moves is a big component on the timing of and the magnitude of the changes in our NIM.

Speaker 1

The floors, we gave you a good schedule on our floors when those are expected to be impacting our loan yields and those are on figure 27. And then, really the pace of the cost of interest bearing deposits and how quickly we can reprice those, you can see that on page 24, figure 26, a big component of that is going to be our time deposit and the maturity schedule there. You can see $5,900,000,000 of time deposits repricing this quarter. The weighted average rate there is $5.19 and you can see $6,200,000,000 in Q1 weighted average rate of $5.10 So that's a big component. Currently our current special is well below that 7 month CD at $4.60 13 month CD at $4.25 So as those come over and reprice, we've got a good opportunity to move down deposit costs pretty quickly over the next two quarters.

Speaker 1

And then we mentioned our securities portfolio having a pretty good impact of cash flow coming in Q1 and early in Q4 and a little bit in Q1 with a good amount of cash flow that's going to be repriced at higher yields too. So a lot of different moving parts, the Fed moving, how quickly they move really is dependent will depend on really the pace of our the impact of our NIM on the way down and the inflection point and hopefully good result in the back half of next year. I mean our Fed assumptions assume 25 basis point decline for the next six meetings. So if the Fed moves slower than that, then that's a good situation for us. If the Fed moves quicker pace, then that's more headwinds for us.

Speaker 1

If they move even after into the back half of twenty twenty five, we'll have more of our floors at more of our loans at their floors. We'll have more opportunity to reprice our CDs even more at that point. So that's not a bad situation for us either. So we feel like our guidance we've given is pretty good in a lot of different scenarios. Perfect.

Speaker 2

Very comprehensive answer to a comprehensive question.

Speaker 1

Yes. Let me add a little color to that and Tim make sure you agree with this that I'm thinking right. The assumption our base case assumption is that our margin will be under pressure in Q4 and Q1 because of the 25 basis point decreases in each meeting and the fact that deposits were repriced, but loans were repriced faster. We saw the benefit of that on the way up. We'll catch the headwind of that on the way down.

Speaker 1

If the Fed were to move 50s in 50 chunks, that would be more impactful in a negative sort of way on Q4, but we would reach the floors much more quickly. So we would hit the inflection point and NIM would start improving more quickly next year. So that's a point that needs to be understood because those floors are going to begin to kick in pretty quick here with another couple of Fed moves or with and Tim referenced you to that chart. But that will lead us to an inflection point when we start catching a lot of those floors.

Speaker 3

Perfect, perfect.

Speaker 2

Great. And it seems as though you guys feel a little bit more confident around this handoff strategy and the ability to grow loans nicely. I think you said mid to high single digits in 2025, which is great. And I like that you have Jake here on the call. So can you talk a little bit about that handoff, the confidence, maybe the incremental investments, if you can frame those up within CIB from a headcount perspective that gives you that level of confidence?

Speaker 1

Yes. Why don't we start out and let Brandon Hamlin talk about the overall expectations for loan growth and then he can introduce Jake and Jake can comment on some CIB specifics.

Speaker 4

Yes, absolutely. Good morning, guys. Great to be on with you. Yes, a lot of moving parts as we look forward in respect to loan growth. Obviously, I mean RESG has had coming off 2022, dollars 13,800,000,000 in originations has had a lot of funding that sustained a great growth trajectory.

Speaker 4

But as we move forward, we all know that those construction loans complete and that level of originations will start to turn back around in terms of repayments. And you still got some deferred payments from sort of the COVID error loans as well. So, we've had great progress from our ESG, but that will start turning its way around. It's chunky. It's not easy to be spot on with when some of these moves occur.

Speaker 4

But we've got a great asset management team. I know we've said it many times, those guys have on average about 15 loans a piece. They spend a

Speaker 1

lot of

Speaker 4

time focused on the projects and a really important part of that is forecasting those funding and repayment forecast, 36 month forecast that we do every single month. So, we do a really good job of focusing on accuracy there. But based on what we see, we know that the RESG will be coming back the other way and we're extremely excited to have Jake and his team on board. I'll obviously let Jake talk about what they've done there, but I've spent a lot of my time this year sort of assisting Jake get that team up and running. And it's when we came to the year, we probably had,

Speaker 5

I don't know, 10 or

Speaker 4

15 folks in that group. And he's been working hard and fast to expand that by a factor of 3. I think he's close to mid-40s now in terms of employees. So the timing, we think we have really nailed pretty perfectly. And he's I'll turn it over to him to let him talk about what he's seeing there and what opportunity he has to take the baton, as we said, from RESG?

Speaker 1

Thanks, Brandon. I appreciate it and a great question. The CIB was formed in March of this year and really most of it came to fruition just last quarter with the launch of our corporate banking and sponsor finance group as well as our loan syndications and corporate services group. And so what you're seeing in the Q3 numbers is really just in a sense a teaser for what's to come. We feel confident.

Speaker 1

We have great pipelines as it relates to our legacy asset based lending group. We provide additional staffing there on the origination side to really help propel growth there. In addition to that, our equipment finance and capital solutions team is really on a roll. We provide additional portfolio management operational support over the last quarter there too to free them up from some of the administrative oversight, so they could really focus again on building up a nice pipeline of opportunities for the future. And then finally, our fund finance group underneath the CIB as well is really off to a great start.

Speaker 1

We have a new leader in from a nice institution who's come in and rolled up her sleeves and is really adding to the overall growth profile there. So we're excited about what's become, optimist, they can feel good about it.

Speaker 2

Fantastic. And if I could squeeze in one quick one on kind of an accounting question. Can you give any color on what causes the

Speaker 1

transfer of like a construction loan into

Speaker 2

maybe a more permanent CRE classification? And loan from a rating perspective internally?

Speaker 1

Brandon, do you

Operator

have that?

Speaker 4

Yes. Stephen, I'll take that. It's really a very simple two criteria that make that move. A, the property is complete and has a certificate of occupancy and B, the loan structure includes within a monthly amortizing feature. With respect to your the second part of that question, does it change how we look at it or rate it?

Speaker 4

We are constantly reevaluating our risk ratings on a quarterly basis. So nothing really changes there. We're taking into account before it's complete what's going to happen after it's complete, what leasing has occurred, what we expect to occur, valuations, all those sorts of things. So not really a big change there.

Speaker 1

Got it. Thanks for the

Speaker 2

color and congrats on more record earnings.

Speaker 1

Yes. Steve, I want to give a little additional color on this handoff in addition to what Brandon and Jake said. A couple of things. While our Corporate and Institutional Banking Group under Jake's leadership is new and he has tripled plus the size of the team there over the course of this year and really brought in veteran high quality, very experienced, very talented people. He is also building on something that is 3, 4 5 years old in our company.

Speaker 1

Our fund finance business, our asset based lending business and our Equipment Finance and Structural Solutions businesses have been here 3, 4, 5 years each. And all those team members are staying and those are businesses we built and proved up and now Jake is and his team are taking those, integrating them, expanding them, adding more talent. But all of our existing team members that were here at the beginning of the year are still here because they're great team members, they're doing a great job. So we're adding strength on top of strength there. And the second thing that we need to cover in regard to this handoff is that it's not just corporate and institutional banking.

Speaker 1

Alan Jessup, Ken Roniker, Dennis Poor, the guys who are doing our commercial bank lending through our community bank structure that includes all sorts of different types of lending and Dennis Poor over the indirect lending and the consumer lending business. Those guys are likewise really stepping up their game. And again, we've been building the infrastructure for that step up and for this handoff for a couple of years. So it's a broad based deal with broad based contribution from CIB, indirect lending, commercial banking and an increased emphasis on small business banking, consumer lending through our branch network as well. So we are feeling really good about it.

Speaker 1

And as Brandon accurately said, we think we've got the timing of this just right that just as we're at the point where RESG funded balances are probably going to be more or less flat through year end next year, and that will vary quite a bit from quarter to quarter, more or less flat. We're still projecting mid- to high single digit growth because of the contribution from all these other business units that are getting a new emphasis, but certainly not new to our company.

Speaker 2

Thanks for all the incremental color, George. Appreciate it.

Speaker 1

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Menin Gossalia of Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Speaker 5

Hey, good morning.

Speaker 1

Good morning.

Speaker 6

I was just trying to think through the relationship between pay downs and floors and the impact that might have on NIM. As capital markets open up, more loans get paid down, Is it more likely that some of the older loans that were made with lower floors get paid down first or that some of the more recent loans that were made with higher floors get paid down sooner, right? So I recognize that there's a prepayment penalty, but at some point with 200 basis points of fed rate cuts, does it become NPV positive for some of the people that have higher floors to pay down the loan and pay the prepayment penalty?

Speaker 1

That's a good question and certainly a possibility, Manan. But what I would tell you is that our experience and Brandon may want to comment on this, but our experience is that customers have some degree of reluctance. It's not unprecedented and certainly not unheard of or impossible, but there's a degree of reluctance and inertia for customers to not pay off loans mid construction. Typically, where you get an early payoff that generates a minimum interest on that credit is at the time that you've got the billing substantially complete and so forth. So most of these things will go to a full completion term.

Speaker 1

And if they don't go to the point that we would earn our target minimum return on equity, we'll be protected by minimum interest. So that would actually be very favorable from a yield point of view. And I think your first part of that question relating to older loans with lower floors, yes, our expectation is that we'll have a higher level of older loans with lower floors pay off as opposed to newer loans with higher floors.

Speaker 6

Got it. So as a figure 27 is a good metric to look at as rates come down, what portion of your loans will hold at their floors? And then we can use that to model our NIM going forward?

Speaker 1

Yes. Got

Speaker 6

it. And in that chart, I know it's based on commitments, but it should be pretty similar for loans that are actually on the balance sheet?

Speaker 1

The loans on the balance sheet because they are the older loans probably have lower floors than the commitments on average.

Speaker 6

Got it. Okay, perfect. And then separately, I saw you launched a new loan syndications desk and reduced the whole limit, would you consider reducing the whole limit further in the future? Or even if you don't reduce the aggregate whole level, does this give you the opportunity to be a little bit more flexible syndicating smaller loans in the future?

Speaker 1

We have no plans or thoughts or discussions about reducing the whole limit further and have not had any discussions about syndicating any of our RESG loans that are smaller than that. This simply reflects the fact that as we've talked about extensively for a number of quarters and actually a couple of years now, we're focused on more diversification within the portfolio and less concentration risk. Obviously, when you've got a big credit out there, it creates an environment where people can make that a target and spin a story that may have no foundation and basis. In fact, it may not be completely accurate, but still create a lot of drama about a single credit. And we just decided that wasn't worth the headache of having to deal with that sort of crap honestly.

Speaker 1

And we've only had 5 loans in our history that were above $500,000,000 We only have 2 now. We grandfathered those 2. So it's not going to be a material impact on our business to do that and actually probably opens up the door for us to do more loans. There are loans that we have passed on in the past that were too big for our whole limit that would now be in the strike zone for us to syndicate. So I may let our syndications desk, our capital markets desk is part of our corporate and institutional banking group, and it's a new part of that.

Speaker 1

So Jake, if you would take just a minute and give a few sentences on what that desk is and what else it does other than potentially syndicating RESG loans. Right. I appreciate that, George, and good color and good question. The loan syndications group and the desk falls underneath loan syndications and corporate services within the CIB, which is a relatively new business line and candidly, something we're very excited about. Our loan syndications desk is fully functional.

Speaker 1

This allows the bank to now serve as admin agent and lead opportunities. And as you all know, with coming and leading opportunities results in additional typically fee income and potentially spread skimming on multi bank deals. And so we view it as an overall benefit. It allows us to, George's point, have more levers to pull. So we can chase larger deals if we want to and then sell them down in a very credit minded way and as well as pursue more syndicated opportunities across the bank as needed.

Speaker 1

Aside from the syndications desk that I mentioned, and again, all this rolls up to Tim Newhouse within our LSCS, we've also launched an interest rate hedging desk. And so the bank has historically pushed off all of our hedging opportunities, whether those are caps or swaps or other derivative instruments to a third party. We now have the opportunity and the abilities and capabilities to handle those in house through a desk that we've stood up. And so that combined with our addition of permanent placement solutions where we can now assist our real estate clients in accessing other sources of capital when they decided to go permanent. So placing those with institutionals, with REITs, etcetera.

Speaker 1

Those expanded capabilities under LSCS, we're very excited about. We view it to be, again, a step in the right direction for diversification for the bank. It allows us to chase additional clients, but it also allows us to keep our eye on, over time, continuing to improve our additional fee income for the institution. So excited about it and what Tim Neuhaus and his team has brought to the bank for us. Thanks, Jay.

Speaker 6

Great. I appreciate a holistic response. Thank you.

Speaker 1

Of course.

Operator

Thank you. We'll open it for next question. Our next question comes from the line of Matt Halney of Stephens. Your line is now open.

Speaker 7

Hey, thanks for taking the question. I want to ask about credit quality and I guess specifically the Chicago land loan that drove the higher charge off in the quarter. I think you've been waiting on that sponsor to recap the project. So just any more color on these efforts that ultimately drove the action to charge down a portion of the loan and move the remaining portion to the non accruals?

Speaker 1

Yes. Good question, Matt, and thank you. And our sponsor there continues to be very actively engaged, and we're in discussions with them now about putting up additional reserves to continue to give them time to work that. Those discussions are ongoing and that's all I'm going to say about them at this time. But we're growing less patient with the progress that our sponsors are making and just given the fact that the progress has been slow despite the sponsors' serious and hard work toward accomplishing it.

Speaker 1

They are making progress, but just not as much progress. We had expected to have something resolved on that by the end of Q3. And when they didn't get to a resolution, even though they're continuing working, we just decided the prudent thing was to write it down given the what was the elevated appraised value on it at that time and take a write down. We had the reserve built for it and we still got a sizable reserve on it And all that, the reserve plus the charge down that we the current reserve plus the charge down we took are about equal to the reserve we had on it last quarter. So it's really not a big move as far as our allocation for this credit.

Speaker 1

It just simply just seemed like it was time to recognize the slow pace of that progress by putting it on non accrual. You asked about asset quality. I would tell you, we view the quarter as a very positive quarter of asset quality improvement. Our large piece of OREO out in Los Angeles, the sponsor for the 3rd consecutive quarter paid $1,000,000 fee to extend their contract, put up another $1,000,000 They've now got $3,000,000 and hard earnest money up on that contract. The reports we're getting on that is they're making great progress and moving through all the city entitlement redesign, so forth related to that project.

Speaker 1

So every quarter when they put up another $1,000,000 fee that doesn't apply to the purchase price and put up another $1,000,000 non refundable earnest money that does, our assessment of the likelihood of that transaction closing and that loan pay or that property paying off next year increases. The sponsor on our Arch District Los Angeles building that we put, I think, in the 2nd quarter on non accrual or maybe Q1 and charged down $9,300,000 That sponsor continued to pay, so we got close to $1,000,000 in additional pay downs last quarter on that. We're not going to get additional pay downs on that, I don't think, except the sponsor has continued to stay with this and has the project sold under contract at a price that would fully pay off our current loan balance and provide a substantial recovery and possibly a full recovery of the $9,300,000 write off we previously took on that back in Q2. So we view that contract as significant progress. And I'd tell you, this tells you a lot about our portfolio.

Speaker 1

This sponsor's equity in this project is gone. The sponsor has made the last payments that they're obligated to make under the transaction, which they made in the last quarter, and yet they are staying engaged to successfully sell the property in a transaction that essentially pays off our loan, the principal part of our loan and so forth. And the sponsor is not going to get anything out of this, but they're doing this because it's the right thing to do and they're people of integrity and so forth. So that just tells you a lot about many of the sponsors we've got in our portfolio. The 3 other classified loans that are in the RESG portfolio all had payments and progress on them or additional reserves posted and so forth.

Speaker 1

So we thought it was a very positive quarter on the asset quality front.

Speaker 7

Okay, great. Thanks for the color on all the res g credit details there. I guess switching gears on the loan pricing, I think it was maybe alluded to earlier, but just looking for more color as far as how the loan pricing at res g compares to the CIB loans. I know there are several segments that roll up into CIB, but just take a kind of a way of average within CIB. I'm curious how these spreads compare to the res g spreads.

Speaker 1

Well, the loan pricing in RESG, and we've talked about this a number of times is our RESG loan spreads are going to be higher in the vast majority of cases than the pricing in our corporate and institutional banking group loans. But with that said, our CIB loans come with treasury fee opportunities, collateral inspection fee opportunities, unused fee capabilities and there are various other fees and benefits including deposits and other cross sell opportunities that come with those CIB loans. So when you look at the required capital allocations for the different loans, I think your return on equity numbers are not materially different between RESG and CIB. Our RESG loans require us to hold some ambiguous amount of additional capital because of our CRE concentration. We obviously on our CIB loans can be more capital efficient as well as taking advantage of the deposit opportunities that are more prevalent and significant with the CIB loans and the other fee and cross sell opportunities that are more significant.

Speaker 1

So net net, I think you're coming out to about the same return on equity on those lines of business if you properly run both of them as we expect to do.

Speaker 7

Thanks for taking the questions.

Speaker 1

All right. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We'll open for our next question. The next question comes from the line of Catherine Mealor of KBW. Your line is now open.

Speaker 8

Thanks. Good morning.

Speaker 1

Good morning.

Speaker 8

I noticed in your loan outstanding chart, there was a shift out of construction and land development and into the non farm, non residential, more than we've seen in past quarters. Just curious what drove that shift? It was just a reclass or if there's any kind of change going on in there?

Speaker 1

Brandon, you want to take that one?

Speaker 4

Sure. Sure, Catherine. As we said earlier, there are really 2 criteria for moving from construction or moving out of the construction category. 1 is projects complete and has a certificate of occupancy and the loan structure includes a monthly amortizing feature. And so we talked about the significant originations back in 2022 and before and those are starting to move through the completion process.

Speaker 8

Okay, great. So that wasn't a reclass, that was just the natural process of those loans moving?

Operator

Correct.

Speaker 8

And then would those be the loans that we would you could in theory think would be at higher risk of paying down as rates continue to go down?

Speaker 1

Yes, I would say that's certainly true. As I mentioned earlier in response to a previous question, it's not unprecedented for a loan to pay off mid construction, but the normal mindset of sponsors is to look at bridge or refinancing opportunities when a project is completed. So I think you're thinking about that correctly as these mature and migrate from an active construction to a post construction phase and particularly as amortizing payments kick in, those are things that promote a sponsor to look at their opportunities to refi that.

Speaker 8

And as you examine the loans that are moved into that CRE bucket out of construction, is there more of an emphasis on kind of a cash flow analysis versus just LTVs in terms of as you're looking at risk rating? Well, I mean Or is the analysis the same?

Speaker 1

The analysis, I mean, obviously changes, evolves. I don't know that, that's a it drops off a cliff, but there's an evolution in your analysis because obviously once you get post construction, there's a greater emphasis and focus on what are their sales doing or what is their leasing doing and what's going on in the market. So those are all factors that go into our assessment of risk rating. That's not singularly the factor though as we've talked about in previous calls. Just because project is not leasing as quickly as we thought doesn't mean it's problem project.

Speaker 1

It could be a problem project if commitment of the sponsor to support the project is not there. But we gave you some significant data points on the history of our sponsors putting additional money into projects paying for extensions, renewals, rebalancing reserves, making principal pay downs and so forth on Page 12 of our management comments document. And sponsor support is the critical thing that really drives our determination. If we're absolutely confident that our sponsors are going to defend their asset and carry that asset through an extended leasing time, then that's just not a problem of credit. It's unfortunate for the sponsor and it costs them money, but it doesn't become a problem for us.

Speaker 1

And certainly, we've seen tremendous support from our sponsors on their projects.

Speaker 8

Okay, great. And if I could do one follow-up on just your bubble chart. You added some disclosures on your special mention loans. And I know that there's you showed there's 4 in the special mention category. There's that one line, 3 of them are pretty easy to see in the bubble chart.

Speaker 8

There's one that points to kind of the massive bubble. So it's hard to see kind of the type of credit and the size, but it would seem that that would be a fairly large credit. Is there any kind of color or kind of indication you can give us to what kind of size and type of credit that might be?

Speaker 1

Catherine, I'm not going to talk about the special mention credits. They're not as you and I had a conversation, I think about 3 months ago on this subject. And as I told you then, our special mention credits, we don't view as problem credits. And when we talk about credits, that's an unfair invasion of our customers' privacy and so forth. So we give extreme details on our substandard credits.

Speaker 1

And I think we're very transparent about everything going on in the portfolio and give a lot of information, you got to draw the line someplace and getting into detailed information on those substandard credits is just not fair and appropriate for our customers.

Speaker 8

Understand. I thought with adding figure 31, you may be more open to giving us a little bit more disclosure on it. I think it and again, we don't need to know where it is or anything, just I think the size and maybe what type of credit would be helpful just because you can't really tell in the bubble chart.

Speaker 1

We've given you

Speaker 8

I appreciate but I appreciate.

Speaker 1

Yes. We've given you because we got some questions about it last quarter, we've given you the Appendix B information that gives you property types and the breakdown of the portfolio between past special mention and substandard. This is data that's previously been in our 10 Q and annual report, but we had some questions about it. So we went ahead and put that in Appendix B that's on Page 43 of the management comments. So I think you've got the information you need on that page as to the breakdown of special mention credits.

Speaker 8

I see that. Okay, that's helpful. Yes, I see that. Thank you, George.

Speaker 1

I think that gets to what you're looking at looking forward.

Speaker 8

Yes, it definitely does. It does.

Speaker 1

Okay.

Speaker 8

And that's Appendix B. Thank you for that. All right, that's all I got. Appreciate it.

Speaker 1

All right. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for next question. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Rose of Raymond James. Your line is now open.

Speaker 1

Hey, good morning, everyone. Excuse me. Thanks for taking my questions. Just on the CIB build out, is there any sort of deposit opportunity there? I assume that there would be.

Speaker 1

And maybe if you could quantify what you'd expect that to be kind of over time. And I know it's going to depend on different types of loans, verticals, things like that. But any way to kind of think about that or size it? Thanks. The answer, Michael, is yes.

Speaker 1

And I'm going to ask Jake Munn if he would provide a little color on that and how they are thinking about that and approach that. So Jake, you up to another question? I'm up for it. I appreciate it, George, and good question at that. If we look across the CIB, there's obviously certain verticals that are going to be more deposit rich than others, just given the inherent nature of what they do and the customers they provide.

Speaker 1

If we're looking at working capital intensive customers that we'd find underneath Mike Sheff's ABL team for instance, we would anticipate smaller deposits there simply because they typically are on sweeps, right? And so there's pay downs, their associated debt on a reoccurring basis. If we look across the board to equipment finance and capital solutions, which Jim Lyons runs out of Little Rock and does a fantastic job at, we do see a healthy amount of deposits there. And Jim and his team continue to push hard to generate additional opportunities as it relates there. As it relates to our newest vertical there, our corporate banking and sponsor finance, that's where you're going to see a good amount of depository growth.

Speaker 1

These are bread and butter C and I clients located across our footprint and associated with our footprint, public companies, private companies, sponsor backed companies, and it's a mix of both asset based type lending as well as enterprise value lending. And so with this vertical that's coming online and you all are just getting a little bit of a taste of initially, we also anticipate great growth kind of in the similar footprints of ABLG and EFCS. That vertical typically has a little bit better yield to answer some of its prior question. And so we typically see spreads of 50 to 100 basis points in excess of the other verticals that I mentioned, which is nice. But in addition to that, these are typically companies that are very low levered and they have a little bit more cash on their balance sheet.

Speaker 1

And OZK has a fantastic treasury management platform underneath Mr. Jessup. And as a result, we're starting to see a lift in deposits within the CIB. These verticals are not necessarily intended ever to be a 1 to 1 self funded vertical by any means, but we're starting to see some steady lift there. And over time, for instance, within CBSF, I would foresee tracking closer to a 30% self funded ratio with that business line as they continue to come online and build out.

Speaker 1

That's great color. Very helpful. I appreciate it. Just as a follow-up, as you guys do kind of shift the loan book and I think the target is to get RESG to about 50% of total loans over the next couple of years. Can you just talk about what that could potentially mean from a credit standpoint?

Speaker 1

Obviously, other verticals are going to have and other silos are going to have higher default frequency and severity versus what we've seen with res gee, which is really just a handful of losses over a very long period of time. Is there a way to kind of think about that? Obviously, the economy is in a good spot, but I would think some of those other verticals would be a little bit more economically sensitive and given the shifting mix. Could we expect to see a little bit higher just kind of run rate, just generally speaking of non performers and charge offs as we move forward? Thanks.

Speaker 1

Michael, I appreciate the fact that you mentioned and acknowledged the outstanding long term history of our RESG portfolio quality. As you look back over the years, RESG has had a lower net charge off percentage than any of our other verticals in almost every period since we went active with RESG back in 2003. So it is a great track record and has certainly contributed to our consistent below average below industry average charge off ratios every year. So I think you're right in that other business lines will have a somewhat higher net charge off ratio and that's true of all other business lines within OZK, not just the CIB group. With that said, each of the guys that has come on board and Jim or Jake mentioned Jim Lines and Mike Sheff who run a couple of those units and have run them for several years for us.

Speaker 1

These guys were attracted to OZK and we were attracted to them because they share that same philosophical ban on high credit quality. Credit quality is paramount. Profitability is secondary and growth is tertiary sort of mindset that is just at the core DNA of Banco ZK. So I think the net charge off ratios that we'll experience from each of those units that we're building in Corporate and Institutional Banking and the same philosophy runs through Alan Jessop and Ken Roanacker and Dennis Poor's business units and Commercial Banking and ILD. I think that same commitment to excellence and asset quality and making that priority number 1, profitability priority number 2, and growth is totally a tertiary consideration.

Speaker 1

Means that you just don't do things that don't meet your credit standards. And that discipline is why over our 27 years as public company, we beat the industry's charge off ratio every year, average just about a third of the industry's charge off ratio. And if RESG is 50% of the book as opposed to 64% of the book, yes, charge offs may be a couple of basis points higher, but that fundamental culture of asset quality is always paramount, always the focus, should continue to keep us at roughly a third of the industry's charge off average. That's our goal and that's our expectation. And real quick, to echo George's sentiment there specifically to the CIB, if you look at the types of opportunities that we're pursuing, it's really relationship focused and that's where we're getting the yield and the cross sell he mentioned, but it's also relationship focused and a very similar light to RESG where we understand management's vision, we understand the underlying sponsors.

Speaker 1

We've looked at these deals, we understand them. We're not chasing exotic sectors. We're being very picky and choosing our plays, if you will, of what industries we want to dive into that have better risk profiles that suit OZK's credit first philosophy. In addition to that, if you look at our ABL lending, for instance, a lot of institutions out there, their ABL book is chock full of distressed assets or quasi distressed assets. That's not the case for our ABL group.

Speaker 1

We focus on high quality, larger scale ABL deals where they are not distressed ABL. Same can be said for our CBSF. If you were to look at the leverage points on those opportunities we're pursuing or the LTVs or LTVs, I should say, for our enterprise value deals, we have not onboarded any leverage loans to that group and we don't intend to do so either. And so lower leverage points, better quality sponsors and we're picking our place. That's very helpful.

Speaker 1

I appreciate the detailed answer. I'll sit back. Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. We'll move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Brian Martin of Janney. Your line is now open.

Speaker 9

Hey, good morning, everyone.

Speaker 1

Good morning, Brian.

Speaker 9

Hey, George, just a follow-up to maybe a last question. I guess, just kind of as you look at this handoff from RESG to CIB, I guess, the how to think about you started I guess, recovered some of it on just how to think about provisioning as you kind of go into those different business units, given your comments about how good or how well the performance has been at RESG over the years relative to CIB, which certainly sounds like from what Jake just said, pretty high quality relationship, low leverage. So maybe not a lot of difference in how we think about the provisioning given kind of comments that have been made?

Speaker 1

Brian, that's a great question. And we run models on every loan. And we run those models through our various macroeconomic models and our scenario selection for that and calculate an appropriate ACL for every loan in the portfolio as a whole every quarter. So we will continue to do that. And if that obviously in the current environment where our commercial real estate customers are feeling stressed from the higher level of interest rates that have endured over the last couple of years, particularly the last year for those customers.

Speaker 1

We've got higher reserve allocations, higher ACL allocations for our commercial real estate loans now than we've had historically because it's a more challenging environment for our sponsors. And that's reflected in the fact that we've nearly doubled our ACL over the last 9 quarters from $300,000,000 to just almost $600,000,000 So I would expect as rates decline and that stress abates in our commercial real estate that will tend to free up some of the reserve allocations for some of those loans. And we'll put appropriate reserve allocations up for the CIB loans based on a loan by loan, quarter by quarter analysis of the quality and condition of those loans and the macroeconomic environment in which we are operating. Will those reserves be higher than our historical RESG reserves in normal non stress times? I don't know the answer to that.

Speaker 1

I think that just depends on those individual credits and how they perform. So it wouldn't surprise me if there was a modestly higher level of ACL reserve associated with those loans long term than our RESG loans where we have very hard clear cut collateral backing for those loans that is a little easier to understand than a complex enterprise value or

Speaker 3

more

Speaker 1

transitory asset base for those loans. But we're structuring them well. We're structuring them very cautiously and conservatively with the same sort of structures and the same sort of approach to credit quality in our CIB business that we have applied to get the good results in RESG. So I don't think there's going to be a material difference in that. It may be a little difference, but not a material difference.

Speaker 9

Got you. Okay. I appreciate the color. And maybe just 2 other quick ones here. Just the in terms of the scaling and the build out of CIB, if you kind of talk about a roadmap of 3 to 5 years kind of where you see this business contributing to OZK, can you give a little, I guess, big picture commentary on how you see it unfolding or kind of where that will lead to what your expectations are?

Speaker 1

Well, I'll just say what we've said a number of times and maybe give a little additional color. At its near its peak RESG was about 70% of our funded balances. It's at the end of the last quarter was 64%. It rounded up to 64%. So it was like 63.55%, I think.

Speaker 1

And we expect RESG to continue to come down, not that we expect those balances. As I said, we're probably going to be more or less flat on funded balances over the next year because we're going to take this hit from this payoff wave. It's going to keep RESG from growing. And during that period of time, I think we see these other lines of business. And again, it includes our commercial bank and our ILD businesses, not just CIB.

Speaker 1

CIB is a big part of it and will probably grow faster than the others, but these other units are going to be big parts of what we do as well. So I think we will get to a period of time even having RESG grow as much as it can grow and do every deal that meets our RESG standards. I think over 2 or 3 years, we'll get to a point where RESG is less than 50% of our total outstanding book. It may be and probably will be bigger than it is today, but it will be less than 50% of our book because these other units will make big growth contributions. So our guys there understand the strict credit standards they've got to adhere to.

Speaker 1

They completely embrace and agree with those standards. But we've got high performing teams over each of these verticals in CIB as well as our commercial banking and indirect lending units. And those guys see lots of opportunities for us to grow out there.

Speaker 9

Perfect. Okay. I appreciate that, George. And then the last one for me, just maybe for Tim. Tim, on the maybe just run back through or just give you an overview on you were kind of talking about the best case scenario in terms of rates movement down on the margin and kind of the worst case scenario.

Speaker 9

Can you just walk back through what that was quickly and where you have the biggest upside to the margin rebounding?

Speaker 2

Yes. Hey, Brian.

Speaker 1

Our comments and guidance that we've given in the document assumes that the Fed is moving 25 basis points over their next six meetings. And so if they move slower than that, then that's obviously a better situation for us. If they move quicker or move in 50 basis point increments and that's a more challenging environment for us. If they are more challenging in the upfront quarter, yes, more helpful in the lighter quarter. That's correct.

Speaker 1

Yes. So our floors will start to kick in as you can see in that chart we gave you. Floors will start to kick in pretty meaningful in those scenarios too. So and then the timing of when we can reprice our cost of interest bearing deposits obviously is all dependent on the Fed moves as well. So yes.

Speaker 9

Okay. Got you. And then and Tim, you didn't I know you commented about the buyback in the slides, but in terms of M and A, any change in kind of the outlook in terms of M and A today or just how you're thinking of how you're viewing that today?

Speaker 1

No change. I mean there's not a lot of activity from the traditional M and A standpoint at this point. I wouldn't be surprised that kind of opens up next year. We'll be active in looking at opportunities, but we've got such a great track record with our organic growth and the momentum we've got with CIB. We don't want to do anything that's disruptive to that organic growth that we've got.

Speaker 1

But we're very interested in growing our bank and if there's an opportunity that fits our very disciplined M and A strategy that's something that we would look at.

Speaker 9

Perfect. Thanks for taking the questions guys.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Samuel Bargo of UBS. Your line is now open.

Speaker 10

Hey, good morning.

Speaker 1

Good morning.

Speaker 10

I just wanted to switch over to deposits very quickly. You noted the branch expansion plans by the end of 2025. And I was just curious if you have any particular or specific deposit production targets for those branches that are coming online and also what sort of geographies are you thinking?

Speaker 11

Sure. This is Cindy. Thank you for the question. We don't have a specific deposit target when we open a branch. We know we have a general idea of what the market opportunity is when we select those sites.

Speaker 11

We select them for any number of reasons. It could be that we have a hole in the marketplace that we're trying to fill because our customers want us to be there and we get feedback from our customers. It could be that we need to have better coverage in a low to moderate income area and so forth. So, we know about what each branch should do, but we don't I can't paint each one with the same brush. Each branch has a very individual approach to why we selected it, what our expectations are of the growth.

Speaker 11

But overall, if we're as it says in the management comments, we're growing roughly 10% over the next 18 months or so. And a lot of that timing depends on things like entitlements of the site, construction timelines, regulatory approvals and the like, we know that generally, I'm going to say, a minimum of eventually $20,000,000 to $50,000,000 in deposits per branch and beyond. But again, that's just highly dependent upon the market and really the micro market that that branch is located in.

Speaker 1

The branches we're looking at adding are within our existing states of Arkansas, Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida and North Carolina. So we're not looking at any branches outside of those 6 states at this time. And as we said in the comments, we would expect that branch network to be up plus or minus 10%, roughly 10% by between now year end 2025. So our 230 number would be 250, 255 something in that range, would be where we would expect our branch count to be. It takes a while to get a branch to build a significant customer base.

Speaker 1

You just don't open it and get to full capacity in a year or six months. It's a long term process. So these branches we're adding are primarily expected to support our deposit growth needs in 2026, '27 and 'twenty eight. They're not going to have a meaningful impact on deposits next year. We'll continue to achieve that growth we need through our existing network.

Speaker 1

But this these will be important to our growth numbers 3 to 6 years out.

Speaker 11

I'll add some color about the geography that the biggest concentration of the new branches is in Texas. So those branches are in higher population areas and presumably would have a much higher deposit opportunity long term than some of the ones that we're opening in smaller areas in North Carolina and Georgia, for example.

Speaker 10

Got it. Thank you both for the color on that. And I guess my last one would just be around fee income. It's not been a very significant part of the revenue pie, but you've touched on a number of drivers here, whether it's the syndication desk or the hedging desk or treasury management even. So I just wanted to get a sense for what you might think what you think the run rate or the ramp might be, because these seem to be meaningful new opportunities.

Speaker 1

Yes. We're not giving any forward guidance on that, except I would tell you that over the course of 2025, we expect a nice upward trend in that. Now what that is and how you quantify that, I want to be cautious about that. But earlier this year, we launched a mortgage business. Those guys are it was a year or 2 in planning.

Speaker 1

We launched it. We're very pleased with their initial results. They've got all the infrastructure built. They started taking applications sometime right around the end of Q1 or beginning of Q2. Of course, we're losing several $100,000 a quarter in that as that start up infrastructure headcount cost and all exceeds revenue.

Speaker 1

But we are beginning to have a really nice ramp up in origination volumes. And we have an internal projection that we're certainly not going to share, but it shows a decent positive trajectory for that and that business becoming profitable next year as a contributor to net income. Swap hedging cap part of that business. And then, Jake gave some pretty good color about their syndications desk and the interest rate swap hedging cap part of that business. And there are some other elements of that capital markets desk that could generate some nice fee income opportunities.

Speaker 1

It's too early for us to quantify and give any projections on that, but we're hopeful and I think cautiously optimistic that those are going to become both mortgage and that capital markets desk, nice fee income contributors. And we've been spending a lot of money and a lot of resources on really growing and amping up the talent and our trust in wealth business. And while that's a very small business for us, we expect it to grow nicely between now year end 2025 and also be a contributor. So we've got a lot of things that don't get much airtime in any of our public comments because they're relatively new or relatively small. But I think 3 years, 5 years from now, we'll look at those and see them as pretty important parts of our business.

Speaker 3

Got it. Thank you, George, for all that color. I appreciate it.

Speaker 1

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We'll move on for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Timur Brazier of Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Speaker 5

Hi, good morning. Circling back to Catherine's question around construction loans going into permanent financing. I'm just wondering, are those going from variable to a more typical perm kind of 5.1 type structure? Are those staying on as variable? And then I guess historically OZK didn't seem to do much of their own permanent finance of the construction book, as those loans tended to get refied out kind of 3 years into the construction process.

Speaker 5

I'm just wondering this change, is this more indicative of what's going on in the broader kind of secondary market for these loans? Or is this more inclined of clients waiting maybe to refi into something at a less punitive

Speaker 1

rate? No, it's none of the above. A, we're not converting from variable to fixed. They're all with the same exact variable rate loan structure and minimum interest structure and so forth they had as a construction loan. We're not re leveraging the loans or extending additional credit to the customers.

Speaker 1

And the permanent loan opportunities or the bridge loan opportunities that are attractive to our customers most of the time, not all the time, but most of the time are at substantially higher leverage points than our loans, sometimes as much as 200% or 2 25 percent of our loan amount. So we're certainly not a permanent loan solution for a customer that's going to come out of our loan and go into a permanent loan on the same asset at 150% to 2 25 percent of our loan amount. So that's just not our business. With that said, one of the elements of our CIB's Capital Markets Group is the ability for a fee to place permanent financing for our sponsors. This is a piece of business we have never tapped and we would not be the lender on that.

Speaker 1

But we do have relationships with those customers and our CIB group believes that we can capitalize on the existing relationships we have with our customers and the ability of our team and experience of our team in placing credits on a bridge or permanent financing market to help our customers arrange that refinancing and generate some good fee income in the process. So that is an additional part of that capital markets test that could become a nice contributor to profitability in the future.

Speaker 5

Great, thanks. And then as a follow-up, the comment about reducing the hold limit on newly originated loans to $500,000,000 The placement of that in the paragraph and talking about CIB, I think would imply that maybe you're seeing some larger credits coming through that portfolio or you're expecting to see some larger credits coming through that portfolio. I mean, that's a really competitive space, it seems like right now with private credit and everything else. I guess, what's the typical deal size that we should expect to see out of CIB? And then just I know you've touched on it a little bit through the comments already, but just what's the competitive advantage that OZK is bringing to the space and maybe some of these other private players don't have or aren't willing to do?

Speaker 1

Jake, you want to talk about the relationship and the relatively diverse deal size we're looking at? That'd be great. And again, another good question. The average relationship size really depends on the business line. If you look at our ABLG group, those relationships are typically, call it, dollars 50,000,000 to $150,000,000 that the bank might be holding, all the way down to that and some of our fund finance and then all the way down to our corporate banking and sponsor finance group, where in some cases we're doing sponsor finance in the sense of providing leverage for providing debt, I should say, for M and A financing for family offices and private equity groups.

Speaker 1

Those loans are typically smaller. If you look at what was originated last quarter, we were averaging OZK hold size of right about $50,000,000 I'd say our CBSF group again is going to be holding on average $30,000,000 to $75,000,000 per transaction. We'll go above and beyond if we're going to be agent of a larger syndication than need to, but it's really within the C and I side as you know striking the balance between commitment for the bank and capital commitment, but also with best overall yield and best in use of our dollars. And so it's a balance that we walk associated with it there. Again, a lot of our additional yield will continue to come through fantastic cross selling opportunities.

Speaker 1

And so we talked about our charge rate management platform that's been upgraded and renewed and it's really something fantastic for the institution to our interest rate hedging services all the way to private client and private banking services for the principles of these underlying firms. And so when you take all that into consideration, it allows us to really develop some deep relationships that other institutions might lack. It allows us to, for lack of better terms, Mark Simoes tells me this all the time on our team, we can out local the nationals and out national the local banks. And so we have the product services and capabilities and also the credit shops to run with the big dogs with you, if you will. But we also are nimble enough and competitive enough where we can compete with our local and regional peers.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Ben Guranger of Citi. Your line is now open.

Speaker 3

Hey, good morning everyone. Just curious, how do you guys think about some of the more stressed pockets of commercial real estate, specifically something like life science or office? I mean, JLL put a report recently that said that the life science market, if you assume no new supply could take up to 5 years.

Speaker 1

Is there anything that we should

Speaker 3

be looking at in terms of like your sponsors that you might be putting more ACL towards those specific loans in general? Or how you guys are approaching just the credit standards of the, let's call it, more stressed pockets of construction?

Speaker 1

Then the key to our portfolio is really the fact that we have it designed on high quality assets with strong sponsors in a way that ensures strong sponsor support in the vast majority of cases. So as you know, even with the reappraisal process that we've been going on in an environment where cap rates have gone up and values have come down, our weighted average loan to value on the entire RESG portfolio is still 51%, Tim, is that right? And our weighted average or that's loan to cost, loan to value is 43%, yes, 43%, 51 loan to cost and 43% loan to value. So those very low leverage points mean that our sponsors and their capital partners have a ton of skin in the game that they need to protect. Now if you've got a crappy old office building from the 60s or 70s or 80s that has no future, you might not be willing to protect that even if you put 50% of the money in it.

Speaker 1

On the other hand, if you've got a high quality modern construction built for modern standards, very desirable property that is ultimately going to lease or ultimately going to sell, you've got an incentive to defend that. So the low leverage points of our assets and the fact that the vast majority of our loans are on new construction, not all of them, but the vast majority of them are on state of the art new construction projects ensures that our sponsors have a in most cases, our sponsors and capital partners have a very high motivation to defend those assets. And we've seen that with sponsor after sponsor who has paid the loan down when we got an appraisal that showed a higher loan to value, posted additional reserves for 1 or 2 or 3 year extension, paid fees and so forth to extend. So the sponsors by and large have been very committed to protect these assets. The quality of the asset and the quality of the sponsors are the key differentiators in these loans.

Speaker 1

And we feel really good about the quality of our assets and the quality of our sponsors by and large across the portfolio. And that's why even though we've got a heavy CRE book concentrated, it has performed very well throughout this period of rising rates on the heels of the COVID pandemic and the other challenges that have faced commercial real estate is because we got strong sponsors and quality assets and the sponsors are motivated, willing and in most cases capable of staying in there and defending these assets long term.

Speaker 3

Got you. And then in the prepared commentary, you guys gave some remarks towards NII for 2025. And then with the presumed pay down and payoffs of your RSU portfolio, I know you guys front load some of the early payoff fees and all those break things. So it temporarily boosts net interest income because you market on that day. Is that included within your NII outlook?

Speaker 1

Yes. Our NII outlook includes everything that would normally be under GAAP accounting calculated as part of net interest income. It's all in accordance with GAAP accounting.

Speaker 3

Got it. Okay. I appreciate it. Thanks.

Speaker 1

All right. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn it back to George Gleeson, Chairman and CEO, for closing remarks.

Speaker 1

All right. Thanks, guys. Thanks for all the great questions. Thanks for your interest in Bancozk. We look forward to talking with you and reporting some good Q4 results in about 90 days.

Speaker 1

Thanks so much. Have a good one.

Operator

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.

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Earnings Conference Call
Bank OZK Q3 2024
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