Banner Corporation (NASDAQ:BANR) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

So loans are coming in accretive to our existing portfolio yield, and there’s a carrier lag effect that will continue to have a positive effect on average loan yields quarter-to-quarter for the next several quarters. And at the same time, the pace of funding costs will continue to be less than the increase in earning asset yield. It’s just going to continue to slow down. We’re not going to see the big pace we had in the last couple of quarters, but we do anticipate some room to run here before it peaks out, but it’s likely it will peak out in the — towards the second half of ’23, assuming the Fed does another 50 basis points of short-term hikes that would likely peak sometime in the second half of ’23.

Andrew Liesch: Okay. That’s really helpful. A little bit longer than I would have thought. And then just you also mentioned funding some of the deposit outflows or loan growth with security sales or borrowings. I guess, how do you balance that? Because I would imagine a lot of the securities would result — sales would result in additional losses, but then the funding might be higher rate on the borrowing side. So how do you balance that decision?

Peter Conner: Yes. We’ve got — our securities book is we’ve characterized it as a barbell in nature in the past with a component of short-duration security along with some more traditional long-duration MBS and CMO securities. There’s an adequate amount of liquidity available in the securities portfolio at modest fair value losses that we have — we’re planning to use to fund both loan growth and deposit outflows without any inordinate realized losses as we sell it. So, securities will be the primary source of liquidity. Secondarily, we’ll look to the FHLB, but that will be very much of a secondary need. We don’t expect a lot of leverage or FHLB borrowings to support both additional deposit outflows or loan fundings here, and we expect very modest losses on any security sales that we need to generate to support that.

Andrew Liesch: Got you. And then can you just remind us what the monthly or quarterly cash flows off the securities book are?

Peter Conner: Yes. I think we’ve said in the past that the run rate amortization on the securities book (ph) about $25 million a month. So, I think about $75 million to maybe $80 million a quarter and just natural amortization and prepayment activity on the securities book.

Andrew Liesch: Got it. Got it. All right. Thank you for taking the questions. I’ll step back.

Mark Grescovich: Thank you, Andrew.

Operator: Perfect. Thank you, Andrew. Our next question is from Andrew Terrell from Stephens. Andrew, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Andrew Terrell: Hey, good morning.

Mark Grescovich: Good morning, Andrew.

Andrew Terrell: I wanted to go back to some of the discussion on just like the fixed and adjustable loans. I think both are 36% of total and just the repricing dynamics there and maybe some margin tailwinds longer term there. I was hoping, I guess, do you have a breakout of roughly per year, how much in fixed and adjustable rate loans either reprice or mature? .

Peter Conner: Yes, I don’t have any exact number for you, Andrew. The duration on our fixed rate loan book is somewhere between 12 and 18 months on a weighted average basis. So you can kind of think about those loans repricing around that level of frequency. We have — obviously, we’re taking a bit more duration overall on the loan book and encouraging our bankers to do that. We’ve been doing that since the beginning of the rate cycle as to get more duration as we hit the top of the rate cycle. And so, we’re seeing some of that effect in the extended duration in the loan book as we get further into the rate cycle by design. The addressable loans are typically FHLB or treasury index loans that reprice between three months and five years.