Banc of California, Inc. (NYSE:BANC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 3 of 10

Jared Wolff: I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect zero provision this year. I think that we’re going to have to look at the landscape. And we feel really, really good about our credit quality. There’s an uptick in (ph) and some SFRs, but we’ve never seen any loss in that portfolio. And we don’t expect it now based on how it’s underwritten. Overall, our quarter was really solid. We do, as Lynn laid out, I thought really well in her comments, like our coverage ratio is pretty darn high. It’s certainly relative to peers with similar portfolios and every time we stress our portfolio, we come out well. I’d like to have some loan growth this year that makes sense. And if so, we’ll have to look at whether provisions are appropriate and they would be for growing our portfolio.

If the portfolio stays flat and the economic climate deteriorates, I would think that provisioning would be appropriate. And we just haven’t seen it yet and so it’s a little bit economy dependent to more, but I see what everybody else sees in terms of where things are going right now.

Timur Braziler: Yes, that all makes sense. And then maybe just circling up again on DDA, which you guys have done an excellent job in keeping in house and appreciate the comments that it will keep kind of the mix shift unchanged, while the liquidity picture plays out. I guess how much liquidity is still at risk here? Is there much visibility and does that kind of outflow lag the last rate hike or is much of that already effectively in the numbers?

Jared Wolff: Let me — Lynn, I don’t know if you have any immediate thoughts, but I would say that we’re continuing to see pressure on — if I’m answering your — if I understand your question correctly, we’re continuing to see pressure on deposit pricing. It’s not fully baked in. I mean, there was an interesting article that came out yesterday about what could happen if the government defaults on debt and how that could cause liquidity problems for banks? We feel obviously very good about all of our sources of liquidity, primary, secondary and tertiary and they’re meaningful and very, very healthy. We are managing at a 100% loan to deposit ratio, I think extremely comfortably and holding earnings to where we want them to be.

But I would say that liquidity stress still exists in the market. It doesn’t concern us based on all the things that we’ve been able to do and the ways that we can pivot. One thing I think it’s really important to keep going back to is our tangible book value growth and our lack of ACI — AOCI impairment relative to others. I mean, we really have true very, very little and Lynn and her team have done an exceptional job of managing our securities portfolio and that’s real liquidity for us. We don’t have these big marks that would keep us from having to sell it or cause a big drop in capital if we chose to tap into that. We don’t see any of that coming to play. We think that things are stable for us and we think we’re managing it well, but I think it’s a differentiator that’s worth pointing out, especially with our existing high levels of capital we have that on top of it.

Timur Braziler: Great. And then just last from me, looking at the expense base at $48 million to $50 million range. Is that encompassing the investment needed to stand up DeepStack? And then I guess how should we be thinking about that investment both in magnitude and kind of timing?

Jared Wolff: Lynn, do you want to take that?

Page 3 of 10