BankUnited, Inc. (NYSE:BKU) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Tom Cornish: The credits that we have exited did not have depository relationships. We have a portion of our book — the shared national credit book breaks down into kind of different categories. For example, if we are the lead bank in the shared national credit, which we are, then we have the depository relationship and many of the shared national credits we’re in, we may not be the lead on the credit, but we’re the depository agency — agent for the relationship. In some we have — it’s not one broad statement across all lines, but I would say, in shared national credits, where we are neither the agent nor the depository bank, our general bias would be those are relationships that are probably going to be de-emphasized going forward.

Woody Lay: Got it. That’s helpful commentary. That’s all for me. Thanks, guys.

Operator: Thank you. And our next question coming from the line of Steven Alexopoulos with J.P. Morgan. Your line is open.

Steven Alexopoulos: Hey, good morning, everybody.

Raj Singh: Good morning.

Leslie Lunak: Good morning, Steve.

Steven Alexopoulos: I know you’ve had a bunch of questions on office CRE, but I had a bigger picture question for you guys. When investors or analysts ask the larger banks, like what’s your outlook? Where’s the risk? Inevitably the answer is the regional banks are holding the risk on office CRE. I didn’t really hear that in your response to all these questions, and time you working through some of these challenges. Do you guys agree with that, that the regional bank — I mean, you see what your peers are doing, do you think you’re an exception to the rule and your peers are in trouble as asset class or what you’re experiencing, do you see as fairly typical?

Raj Singh: Yeah. So I’ll start, and Tom, you chime in. I think the first place where I would somewhat agree is the fact that regional banks do have more CRE exposure in general than the Top 10 banks, for example. So just look at CRE to risk-based capital ratios like that, yes, smaller banks, community banks, all the way up to regional banks do have more CRE exposure. But from there on, I actually will start to disagree. Different banks have different types of CRE and you can have a regional bank with average ticket size of $1.5 million another one at $15 million, $18 million like we do, and then there are regional banks that have very large exposures, and each one of them will have a very different risk profile. So generalizing it beyond just saying, yeah, generally speaking, regional banks have more CRE, that’s the only statement that applies, but beyond that, you really have to dig into what kind of lending each bank is doing, and it can be quite different from one regional bank to the next.

We obviously know our book better — best, and I can’t really talk much about another bank that might be doing very small ticket CRE or very large ticket CRE, those risks might be quite different. But with the risk profile that we have, starting with the fact that we have much lower CRE than typically a bank our size would have. And the kind of CRE we’ve done, it’s sort of $15 million to $18 million type of average ticket size. We don’t have very super large loans, but we also don’t have very small $1 million, $1.5 million loans either. And the mix that we’ve formed and the markets that we serve, we feel pretty good about our portfolio. But to your bigger point, I think it’s more complex than making a very generalized statement.

Tom Cornish: Yeah, I would — Steve, I would add, I would agree with what Raj said. I also think, when you look at our portfolio in total CRE, and you scope out all of the banks in the $10 billion to $100 billion range, we’re clearly at the lower end of overall CRE exposure, and we have always, I think, maintained a good discipline around asset diversification within that book, no one asset is more than 25% or so of the entire base, and we spend a lot of time thinking about asset allocation within that book, and asset allocation within the total portfolio, and also project limits. So as Raj said, generally, our portfolio across all asset classes within CRE is what I would kind of call a middle-market real estate portfolio. We’re not typically in loans above the $15 million to $30 million range.

We’re not sitting with $100 million loans on towers and major construction loans. And the last part is, I think generally, over a long period of cycles, most people would agree that your risk is in the construction. Loan portfolio is a higher risk element and that’s always been a very modest part of our overall portfolio. I think right now it sits at about 8% of the portfolio.

Leslie Lunak: The CRE portfolio.

Tom Cornish: The CRE portfolio, correct.

Raj Singh: Just one more thing. The difference between CBD and suburban is pretty stark, and I think paying attention to that, two banks with the same exposure, same numbers, but if it’s CBD versus suburban, that makes the difference between banks, it can shed a lot more light about where the risk is.

Tom Cornish: Even within submarkets, I’m staring at this piece of paper that we keep referring to and we break it down by submarket, no submarket is over-weighted in any area. So we pay attention to what’s in Tampa, what’s in New York, what’s in Miami, what’s in Fort Lauderdale, because all of these economies do have some levels of difference, different types of business mix, and we — so we keep it at asset levels, asset allocation levels, submarket levels, project levels. We have pretty disciplined approach to this.

Steven Alexopoulos: Got it. All other questions have been answered. Thanks for that detailed response.

Raj Singh: Thanks, Steve.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question coming from line of David Bishop with Hovde Group. Your line is open.

David Bishop: Yeah. Good morning, everyone.

Raj Singh: Good morning.

David Bishop: Hey, Leslie, quick question. I think you mentioned that there were some maybe waterfall payoffs or repricing on the CD book this quarter. Just curious, maybe what that looked like and maybe what the repricing looks like over the next quarter or two on that book, and what the average rate is looking like currently?