Bank OZK (NASDAQ:OZK) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Brian Martin: Got you. Okay, thanks for taking the questions and the next quarter.

George Gleason: Thank you very much.

Operator: And thank you. [Operator Instructions] And our next question comes from Brody Preston from UBS. Your line is now open.

Brody Preston: Hey, good morning, everyone.

George Gleason: Good morning. I wanted to start maybe just a question for Cindy, just on the just on the deposit costs. Have you guys had to increase your new offering rates at all during the quarter? And if so, could you kind of give us an indication as to how much?

Cindy Wolfe: Sure. We increased slightly during the quarter from — our 13-month went from [5.50% to 5.60%] (ph) and that was as a result of a little bit of movement in the competitive space.

George Gleason: And Brody, that is APY that you report to the customers, so the actual rate is probably more like went from like 5.30% something to 5.40% something, high 5.30s to 5.40s on the actual rate.

Brody Preston: Got it. Okay. Thank you for that. And then maybe one for Tim. I just wanted to better understand the loan yields, the beta slowed quite a bit on a quarterly basis this quarter. And so I wanted to ask what drove that? Was it kind of new production coming in at lower yields? Or do — does any of the RESGs have rate caps?

Tim Hicks: No rate caps that — some of the RESG loans have rate caps as a part of their structure where a third party is the counterparty, we are not the counterparty. So we benefit in all of the rate increases. So nothing, nothing capped on our yields there. Brody, I’d have to go back and look at what SOFR did in Q2 compared to what SOFR did in Q3, if that had any impact. But generally speaking, it was a little bit lower increase quarter-over-quarter than we’ve seen in other quarters, but there’s nothing capped from an RESG perspective, certainly had — payout volume has been at the subdued level that we’ve talked about, sometimes that generates minimum interest. There are other fees that are associated with that. That was probably at the lower end of a normal range but still within a normal range that may have contributed to it a little bit.

George Gleason: I think the biggest factor is just the slowing rate of Federal Reserve rate increases. Our loan yields are variable rate, and they mostly adjust either daily or monthly. So as the Fed has slowed the rate of increases, the rate of increase in our loan yields as has moved proportionally.

Brody Preston: Got it. I wanted to move back to RESG. I really appreciate you guys giving us the stats on the refis, on the pay downs and all that stuff. I want to ask, Brannon, did you take a look back as to how that compared to kind of year-to-date trends from prior periods? How that mix kind of looked between like straight payoffs versus third-party exits or anything like that?

Brannon Hamblen: Brody, I would be guessing if I told you that. The guess would be probably more refis, but I don’t know what the pure mix was. We started paying a little bit more attention to that recently. I think we got a question last quarter, and we’re all incredibly curious here. So we did have those stats ready for you, but I’d be stepping out there too far to tell you how much I think that’s different. But I felt like roughly, well over 50% of the payoffs coming from refi was a pretty positive result in today’s world.

Brody Preston: Got it. Okay. Can I ask you to speak maybe to the land loan in OREO? I’m sorry, if somebody asked this already, I didn’t, I thought I didn’t hear anybody ask you about it, the one that’s — the big one that’s in there, and I think you got it under a sale kind of process. I know you got to be sensitive to kind of that process at this point from a confidentiality perspective, but you noted it was subject to standard due diligence. So I was wondering if you had a sense for how far into the due diligence process you actually are at this point?

George Gleason: Yeah. Let me address that. We’ve got, at September 30, we had a total of six pieces of foreclosed real estate. They’re in five different states, and we were very pleased to have gotten three of those, and it just so happened it was the three largest of those six under contract. So 99% of our OREO balances are under contract for sale. As you mentioned, Brody, all of those are subject to standard due diligence and closing conditions and requirements, as is always the case. Each of those three contracts would clear our book value. Each of them is scheduled to close sometime before March 31 of 2024 and we’ll see what happens. Sometimes contracts close, sometimes they don’t close. But typically, people don’t go to the time trouble and legal expense to put them under contract unless they intend to close them.

So we’re very pleased about that. In fact, that all of them clear our book balance and it’s the vast majority of our OREO is a good thing. These contracts all have various provisions about confidentiality in them as is customer in these contracts. So we’re going to limit our commentary on it to that general comment at this time.

Brody Preston: Got it. I appreciate that detail. And then I did want to also ask just getting the quarterly appraisal data is very helpful. And I just kind of tried to quickly aggregate it last night. And I guess when I looked at it, it’s about 50 projects that you reappraised year-to-date. At least that you’ve disclosed and that’s like $4.7 billion. So either way you cut it, that’s about like 14% to 15% of your commitments either from a number or a dollar perspective? Is that kind of normally what we should expect it to be on a pace to reappraise 20% per year?