Amerant Bancorp Inc. (NASDAQ:AMTB) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Look, we book good-size relationships, right, and to your question about chunky, we do think that it’s really important to recognize that that was–and this kind of goes back to one of the earlier questions, why we’re doing so much diversification in terms of the type of loans we’re booking going forward, and there’s more emphasis on the private banking side, we’ve ramped our emphasis up on business banking, we’re ramping our emphasis up in diversification in C&I, particularly the addition of equipment finance and doing more middle markets. The question, we’re evolving the portfolio, the composition of the portfolio. The emphasis, I guess in the past, and you know this, that was a $740 million portfolio two years ago when we made the decision to stop, and it’s a commercial real estate portfolio, so if there is some chunkiness that does happen, it was just basically a result of these past two credits that have happened and flow through the P&L over the course of ’22.

There really has been a significant reduction in commercial real estate retail, I can tell you that, as it relates to in the portfolio, and certainly it’s very selective if we would have done anything like that production-wise.

Carlos Iafigliola: I guess the other comment is consumer, and as Jerry referenced, we changed the policy; but still, the behavior of that portfolio, its losses are below our expectations. It’s probably in the 1.5% to 2% losses, and pretty much we run models that take that to 3.5% or 4%, so still the behavior is below those parameters, so performing well compared to that, even though we changed the policy and you see additional charges this quarter in that concept.

Michael Rose: That’s great color. Thanks for answering all my questions, guys.

Jerry Plush: Sure.

Operator: Thank you, and one moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Feddie Strickland with Janney. Your line is open, go ahead.

Feddie Strickland : Hey, good morning everybody.

Jerry Plush: Hey Feddie.

Feddie Strickland: Just sticking with credit for a second, it looks like overall criticized balances were down, which is a positive, but it looks like there was some migration from special mention to substandard, potentially. Could you walk us through a little bit more of what you’re seeing in that criticized balances?

Carlos Iafigliola: Yes, that was specifically the loan that we mentioned that was downgraded from–so special mention to substandard, and that is the source of the additional reserves that we took this quarter. That loan was dropped from $24 million to $20 million based on a specific reserve, and then it will transition into OREO this quarter, so. We made that comment on the call that that will go into OREO with no additional changes in valuation. That was the biggest item.

Feddie Strickland: Got it. Sorry, I was having some technical difficulties with my phone earlier, so I missed that.

Carlos Iafigliola: No problem.

Feddie Strickland: Then curious where do you see the most opportunity on the non-interest income side, and just wonder what should we expect there as we go through the year? I know it’s obviously a challenging environment for mortgage still, but it seems like wealth management accounting has been a bright spot for you guys in the past. Just if you could walk through a little bit more of what you’re seeing there.