Bank of Marin Bancorp (NASDAQ:BMRC) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Andrew Terrell: Yeah. Totally understood. Really appreciate the color there. And if I could ask a question on just the presentation mentions the interest rate risk modeling assumption using a 35% interest bearing beta, I think if I recall correctly from the last quarter, Paul, we’ve discussed kind of a 45% beta on interest bearing for the prior kind of rate risk modeling assumption, but expectations to outperform that. I get there are a lot of moving pieces right now. But what drove the moderation to 35% in this presentation from I think the previous discussion of 45%? Is that kind of where you’d — I guess now that we’ve seen a lot of the catch up, is that kind of firmly where you think you’re going to shake out from a beta perspective?

Tani Girton: So that’s a little bit of apples and oranges. The 45% beta was on money market deposits only and the 35% is on all interest-bearing deposits.

Andrew Terrell: I see. Okay.

Tani Girton: So we have not — we’re not changing our betas. We’re definitely not taking the betas down. In fact, what we’re doing is we’re eliminating the lag in our modeling.

Andrew Terrell: Okay, understood, understood. And then it sounds like maybe getting close on some team hires, I’m just hoping to maybe get a sense on the non-interest expense kind of run rate moving forward? I don’t know how much you can share about the team hires or individual hires you might expect and how that influences the expense run rate, but just any help there? Any potential levers or give back on expenses we should be thinking about going forward?

Tim Myers: Well, I don’t want to jinx it or overpromise on the timing of the hires, but we are looking at ways to moderate those costs and the cost impact of that. I’ll just leave that one there just because I don’t want to — for disclosure reasons.

Andrew Terrell: Yep, understood. Okay. Thank you for the questions.

Tim Myers: Yes, there was David Feaster’s — I did fail to answer, I think part of your question around the growth in the loan yields. So if you look at the quarter, the loans that came on — or had a yield, a weighted average yield of about 6.6% which was considerably higher than the average of those paying off. Unfortunately, the ones that paid off were still high compared to our overall portfolio yield at around 5.95%. But that gives you a sense of the pickup as originations as we hope will improve.

Operator: Our next question is from Woody Lay with KBW. Please go ahead.

Woody Lay: Hey, good morning guys.

Tani Girton: Hey.

Tim Myers: Good morning, Wood.

Woody Lay: Just had a follow-up on that expense question. I know hiring can sort of move it around, but excluding any additional hires, I know there was some — a little bit of noise in the 2Q expenses with the charitable contributions. But if you adjust for that, I mean, does 2Q seem like a reasonable run rate going forward? Excluding…

Tani Girton: No, I think on depreciation — oh sorry, what was the last thing you said there?

Woody Lay: Sorry, I just said excluding any potential hires.

Tani Girton: Okay. So depreciation and amortization, occupancy and equipment, those two lines does reflect the branch closures now and are indicative of the go-forward levels. So most of the acceleration was in the first quarter. So you’ll see that continue. The FDIC base rate went up from 3 basis points to 5 basis points. So that’s about a 67% lift versus where it was. So what I would say is look at the first quarter FDIC and adjust for the change in deposits and then raise that by 67% because the second quarter included a look — an adjustment for the first quarter because we incorporated that later than we should have. And we should have accrued for it in the first quarter. And then it also included a higher accrual for the go forward.