ConnectOne Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:CNOB) Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

ConnectOne Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:CNOB) Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript October 24, 2024

Operator: Hello, and welcome to ConnectOne Bancorp Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. Please note that all lines are in listen-only mode. At this time, it is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Siya Vansia, Chief Brand and Innovation Officer. You may begin.

Siya Vansia: Good morning, and welcome to today’s conference call to review ConnectOne’s results for the third quarter of 2024 and to update you on recent developments. On today’s conference call will be Frank Sorrentino, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Bill Burns, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. I’d also like to caution you that we may make forward-looking statements during today’s conference call that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from expectations are detailed in our SEC filings. The forward-looking statements included in this conference call are only made as of the date of this call and the company is not obligated to publicly update or revise them.

In addition, certain terms used in this call are non-GAAP financial measures, reconciliations of which are provided in the company’s earnings release and accompanying tables or schedules, which have been filed today on Form 8-K with the SEC and may also be accessed through the company’s website. I will now turn the call over to Frank Sorrentino. Frank, please go ahead.

Frank Sorrentino: Thank you, Siya, and we appreciate everyone joining us this morning. So throughout 2024, we remain committed to our strategic priorities, including supporting our clients, extending our competitive position, driving profitable growth and investing in our valuable franchise. Before discussing our third quarter performance, I’d like to take a moment to review our recently announced merger agreement with First of Long Island Corporation. The prudently structured transaction brings to strong complementary financial institutions that are well positioned in their respective markets. Expected to close during the first half of 2025, we believe it’s a compelling financially disciplined transaction that creates meaningful synergies and a significantly enhanced platform for continued growth.

The feedback so far has been excellent. Since the announcement, I personally heard from many clients, employees and shareholders from both companies and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. With the transaction, ConnectOne will size up to more than $14 billion in assets and $11 billion in loans and deposits. In addition, we’ll have an improved balance sheet mix and expanded market reach. The transaction increases our pro forma market cap to $1.3 billion, placing us in a larger higher valuation peer group while also leveraging the benefits of economic and market tailwinds and already expected for our liability-sensitive positioning. Like ConnectOne, First of Long Island is commercially focused with a highly compatible client-first culture and a strong credit track record.

The teams are energized and we expect to have a smooth process with integration planning already well underway. This combination meaningfully enhances ConnectOne’s presence on Long Island, a region we’ve been organically focusing on over the past few years. As a result of the merger, the combined franchise in Nassau and Suffolk Counties will immediately establish us as one of the top community banks on Long Island, furthering our position as a premier New York Metro community bank. In addition, the transaction is ripe with potential revenue synergies. There’s minimal client overlap and First of Long Island’s client base in operating areas likely to be a sizable source of new business opportunities, both spread and fee based. Some of those areas will include additional products and services including residential mortgage origination and SBA lending.

Deeper commercial lending expertise, which will round out their C&I relationships and offer robust treasury solutions to enhance commercial deposits. And finally, just like at ConnectOne, there are numerous opportunities to leverage geographical synergies and between our Southeast Florida team and First of Long Island’s clients who have a presence in Florida. Next, turning to our 2024 third quarter operating performance. we remain laser-focused and committed to our client-first culture and relationship banking model. As we previously reported, we’ve been actively reducing our non-relationship loans from our balance sheet during the first nine months of 2024. And these efforts have served to improve our loan-to-deposit ratio and lower our CRE concentration.

As such, there was a slight reduction in our portfolio this quarter, which really doesn’t tell the whole story. Loan originations remain solid, and we continue to build a steady and diversified loan pipeline. Going forward, we expect loan growth may be relatively muted, slightly up or slightly down during the next two quarters. And beyond that, we see a return to mid- to high single-digit growth. Meanwhile, we continue to grow our core deposits through both existing and new client relationships. Average client deposits since the second quarter were up by approximately $100 million — $130 million, or 8% on an annualized basis, partially offset by a decline in average broker deposits of $60 million and non-interest-bearing DDA continues trending upward.

At the same time, third quarter net interest margin on a core basis was flat. However, we ended the quarter with a spot margin wider, upwards of 10 basis points wider as a result of the Fed’s 50 basis point cut in September. Bill will provide some more detail on our current margin expansion in a few minutes. We’re highly confident that ConnectOne is well positioned to drive increased profitability through the fourth quarter and into 2025 and post merger completion. Turning to credit. Coming off the transition away from a zero loss environment, the industry is starting to see isolated instances of credit impairment. At ConnectOne, we fared well, reflecting solid and consistent underwriting standards while also maintaining a proactive approach to portfolio management and selective credit resolutions.

This lending and credit philosophy has served us very well. With that as a strategic overview, I’m going to turn the call over to Bill. Bill, take it away.

Bill Burns: All right. Thanks, Frank. Good morning to everyone on the call. So I’m going to start right in there with the net interest margin. I try to give you some color, both through the third quarter and where we are today and post the Fed’s first rate cut. On a reporting or GAAP basis, the margin did compress slightly during the third quarter from the sequential third — second quarter. However, on a core basis, the margin was actually up slightly. The GAAP to core adjustments for the sequential quarter comparison include higher average cash in the third quarter, which took the margin down by 3 basis points this quarter. And in the second quarter, we had unusually high prepayment fees and non-accrual interest income we capture, which took the margin up by about 4 basis points in that second quarter.

So taking those two items into account, we calculate our core margin up slightly from quarter two after being up 2 basis points from quarter one and 3 basis points from the fourth quarter of 2023. So the margin has been expanding at a modest clip over the past three quarters. And going forward, we are now seeing more meaningful margin widening as the Fed has begun its interest rate cuts. The spot net interest margin as of today is up approximately 10 basis points, putting our projected fourth quarter margin at about 2.80 [ph]. Now let me dive a little deeper into our margin projections. As of today, the spot cost of our total deposits is nearly 20 basis points lower than it was during the third quarter. That resulted from a 40 basis point lowering of rates on nearly $3.7 billion of non-maturity interest-bearing deposits, and that’s about 50% of our total deposit base.

On the asset side, we have a much lower amount that’s repricing immediately just 19% of our loan book or $1.5 billion is pure floating rate, which we priced downward immediately by 50 basis points late in the third quarter. So if you do the math on just those two items, it calculates out to about nine basis point margin improvement as of today. But that’s not all. We have several other items working to our advantage namely got continued growth in core deposits with noninterest-bearing demand growing since the end of the third quarter. CDs will continue to be renewed at lower rates over time with approximately $200 million maturing each month. The rates on CDs returning over the next 12 months averaged 4.75. So you could figure about a 50 basis points improvement on that.

And we have some $1.5 billion of adjustable rate commercial loans, which most commonly reset of five-year intervals and they will reprice upward over the next couple of years. And then finally, the spread between newly originated loans recently being booked at rates above 7% and maybe 750 is about 100 basis points more of the loans coming off. The impact so far has been less significant than it could be, but that’s going to grow as loan originations increase. Other than that, I’m going to refrain right now from specific guidance for 2025. We’ve got a lot of tailwinds out here, which are helping but I want to be cautious especially in light of uncertain Fed cut timing, as well as competitive pressures that could slow down our deposit betas in a decreasing rate environment.

Now, I want to comment a little further on the transaction with First of Long Island. We’ve all seen a lot of mergers, but this one in my opinion is as compelling as they come, checks all the boxes, pricing discipline, acceleration of our strategy and it’s a great cultural fit. To add to some of Frank’s previous comments, the First of Long Island balance sheet is highly complementary, accelerating the positive trends ConnectOne has been realizing over the past couple of years. This transaction lowers our CRE composition by five percentage points and lowers our loan-to-deposit ratio by five percentage points. It improves our noninterest-bearing deposit composition also by five percentage points from 17% to 22%. And then our allowance for credit loss percentage will be strengthened.

We are at 1.02 today and that ratio jumps to 1.33 on a pro forma basis. And that higher loan loss ratio combined with First of Long Island’s well-known foreseen asset quality creates an enviable credit reserve position. Like ConnectOne, First of Long Island is also positioned to benefit from lower short-term rates resulting in no change to our forecast of widening net interest margin. In addition, First of Long Island’s 35-plus branch retail network will enhance our ability to drive additional revenue opportunities particularly in residential and SBA lending. And lastly, I want to mention that that interest rate mark of 6.5% when we announced the deal is likely to improve to lower market rates today and the passage of time. And right now we estimate a one percentage point drop in that rate mark.

Now turning back to ConnectOne on a stand-alone basis. I just want to comment on a few items. Core noninterest income and expenses are each expected to increase modestly in the fourth quarter and into early 2025. And our credit quality remains sound with the level of non-accrual loans and charge-offs fluctuating but remaining within our expectations. We had a modest uptick in non-accrual loans. One loan was paid off while two were placed on non-accrual, but both of those are secured and appropriately valued. Criticized and classified totals increased to 2.2% of total loans, largely a result of loan modifications that were related to special mention. Those loans are well secured and on a path to full restoration. And before turning it back to Frank, I want to emphasize that our capital CRE concentration and loan deposit ratios have been trending in a positive direction over the past year.

These favorable trends are expected to continue premerger and then accelerate post-closing. So, Frank back to you now.

Frank Sorrentino: Thanks Bill. So, to wrap things up our earnings profile remains solid, our balance sheet and credit are in a good place, and we remain focused on our relationship-driven business model. We look forward to the transaction with First of Long Island, the growth opportunities related to that expansion, ongoing market opportunities that drive organic growth. Our combined efforts all contribute to building ConnectOne Bank into a highly valuable franchise that’s well-positioned to take advantage of our expanded market opportunities driving sustainable go-forward growth. I want to thank you again for joining us today. And now we’d be happy to respond to any questions. Operator?

Q&A Session

Operator: Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. [Operator Instructions] Great. Our first question comes from Matt Breese with Stephens Inc. Your line is now open.

Matt Breese: Hey, good morning.

Frank Sorrentino: Hi Matt.

Bill Burns: Hey Matt.

Matt Breese: Frank just wanted to clarify you discussed loan growth being a bit muted here near term before accelerating back to a mid-single digit high single-digit pace. Can you just clarify around timing? Is it more muted for another two, three quarters? Or is it expected to be longer than that?

Frank Sorrentino: No, I think there’s a couple of things that go into that. One, I think as you’ve seen across the banking sector. The economy is a little bit on the slow side relative to loan growth. C&I generation is sort of slow, although it is beginning to come back to life, CRE originations are definitely down in a lot of different areas. We are seeing some increases in places like construction and some of the owner-occupied areas. And we are — because of our internal efforts in conjunction with that being a bit disciplined about renewals for non-relationship type clients. So, while we have a pretty strong pipeline and we see it growing over time we’re also — that’s also being offset somewhat by some of the relationships or non-relationships rather that we’re trying to work out of the company.

I don’t think that goes beyond another quarter or maybe two. I’m not even sure if it goes out that far. I do see signs of a pickup both organically because of ConnectOne’s efforts, but also because of the combined efforts with First of Long Island. So, I would expect certainly by the second quarter of 2025 that we would again regain our more normalized growth path. It could come sooner. I could be wrong. A lot of it depends on how quickly payoffs come in and how quickly loans close and what the balances are at closing date. But maybe I’m being a little bit conservative here pushing out two quarters but probably for the next quarter or so I would say could be slightly up, slightly down.

Matt Breese: Okay. And then Bill just turning to the NIM, I would just love to hear your thoughts and expectations around loan and deposit betas, if we follow kind of the Fed dot plot and whether or not you expect those figures to be fairly similar to what they were on the up cycle?

Bill Burns: Yeah. Our betas were a little bit higher on the upside cycle. So it just gives us more room to keep those betas high on the way down. And we were — as I think I mentioned in the call 80% beta for the first shift. Going forward, I forgot you get a question on that. It could range anywhere from 60 to 100 beta on the next cut okay? So I’m sticking with the 80% of beta for now.

Matt Breese: Okay. And then last one for me. With the deal there was talk of I think it was $100 million sub debt raise. Could you just update us on whether this remains intact timing expectations on pricing and whether or not this kind of remains the chosen course of capital just given how expensive update has been recently? Thank you.

Bill Burns: Yeah. Look the expectation is to do that transaction a little bit before closing. So sometime in the — hopefully in the first quarter of next year. We have a $75 million sub debt repricing. I think, it’s in June or July. And so we’ll probably put those two together for $175 million offering then. I think, right now the rates are $850 million to $875 million, hopefully, they’ll come down that. But whatever it is I think we’ll be in your models I think we’ll be committed to doing it at those levels.

Matt Breese: Okay. I appreciate it all that. I’ll leave it there. Thank you.

Bill Burns: Yeah. Thanks, Matt.

Operator: All right. Great. Thank you. The next question comes from Dan Tamayo with Raymond James. Your line is now open.

Dan Tamayo: Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Yes maybe first just a clarification. I know, you guys mentioned the spot interest margin was up 10 basis points. Can you just give us a sense for what that was? I’m not sure, if you were saying up from prior three months or from the third quarter average.

Bill Burns: Yeah. So from — yes from the third quarter average is what I’m talking to — there’s always some fluctuation in non-core items, but I feel comfortable with the spot margin plus the way the other items are coming through that we could get to $280 million for the third quarter. And that — sorry for the fourth quarter and that right now is assuming one more cut.

Dan Tamayo: Okay. So $277 million. End of the third quarter you’re saying $280 million in the fourth quarter with one more cut so it seems like?

Bill Burns: On kind of other things that are working to our favor, okay? Because we have more CDs repricing. There’s a whole bunch of — there’s a whole bunch of things going into the margin. But when I put it all together, we’re coming out as a projection of $280 million. So possibly a little bit lower rules and possibly a little bit higher.

Dan Tamayo: Okay. Okay. Thank you. And I guess a related question in the third quarter it looks like loan yields were actually down a little bit. Just curious what drove that given that it…

Bill Burns: Well, it wasn’t really on a coupon basis, but it was because of having — we had a large non-accrual interest recapture. So that had a lot to do with that part. And obviously, the cut in the 50 basis points cut did reduce loans — loan yields at the end of the quarter. So I think I said it — I may have said on the call we had — like right now, it’s a 20 basis point reduction in the deposit costs and a 10 basis point reduction in the loan from the cut.

Dan Tamayo: Okay. All right. That’s helpful. Thanks. And then finally just moving over to credit. So just looking at the criticized loans doing some back-of-the-envelope math, it looks like that number was up a decent amount in the third quarter. I wonder if you could provide any color on the drivers of that number.

Bill Burns: Yes. We just – we did some loan modifications that put the loans into special mention, which is the best of the classified criticized categories. And those loans are in our view are a better position and will be restored in due course.

Dan Tamayo: And these were I think you mentioned a CRE loan, I think relative to a year ago in the release. How much of that move was that one loan?

Bill Burns: I don’t recall, Dan. In this release or in the prior release?

Dan Tamayo: This release. You said increase is primarily due to a loan modification of one CRE relationship that was special.

Bill Burns: Yes, that’s what I’m talking about. It was one relationship with many loans.

Dan Tamayo: Understood. Okay. So that was really the big driver on a quarter-to-quarter basis as well?

Bill Burns: Yes. But I guess as I said the loans are valued appropriately on our books.

Dan Tamayo: Got it. Okay. All right. Thank you for all the color. I’ll step back. Appreciate it.

Bill Burns: Thanks, Dan.

Operator: The next question comes from the line of Frank Schiraldi with Piper Sandler. Your line is now open.

Frank Schiraldi: Good morning.

Frank Sorrentino: Good morning, Frank.

Frank Schiraldi: Just on the another one on the margin Bill, in terms of the – just curious if that $280 million still assumes kind of similar liquidity levels to what we saw in 3Q?

Bill Burns: We’re going to pick up a couple of basis points because we’ve already begun to reduce some of that liquidity. So some of that is in there. I can’t predict exactly what the margin is going to be but we’ll probably pick up a couple of basis points from reduced liquidity. And that’s in my $280 million projection. As I said before, it could be a little bit higher to be a tiny bit lower, it could be higher.

Frank Schiraldi: Sure. And then just that 80% beta you talked about is that these basically – it seems like the NIM is troughed here even in a steady rate environment and with the rate cut that’s still a pretty immediate five basis point benefit per…

Bill Burns: Yes. We’re still good with that. We try to be as precise as we can. It’s like four or five basis points on that. But the margin when we look at it on a core basis has actually been trending upward by a couple of basis points each quarter. So yes, kind of flat in a way but I’m willing to tell you that it’s been with even without cuts our margins going up slightly.

Frank Schiraldi: Got you. And then just on the expenses you mentioned moderately higher in the fourth quarter. Any sort of guardrails you can put around that? Do you think you can hold it in sort of that $38 million range in the near-term?

Bill Burns: Could be a 1% to 2% increase sequentially.

Frank Schiraldi: Okay. Great. And then I guess just lastly on the click deal obviously, brings down the loan-to-deposit ratio a bit, so there’s less pressure or less focused on reducing that. I mean, it seems like you’re kind of within your sweet spot or allowable range the flip deal. So, is there — would you say there’s a little bit less emphasis on moving that lower in the near term?

Bill Burns: Well. No, I was going to say that I think this transaction with all the benefits on the balance sheet gives us more flexibility to opportunistically capitalize on growth opportunities in the marketplace in the second half of next year. So, we’re in a much better position than we were before — before the transaction from a balance sheet perspective.

Frank Schiraldi: Okay. Yes. I mean…

Frank Sorrentino: It also — Frank, it also gives us the capability to rely more on the core deposit base, which has a better pricing dynamic to it and reduce our reliance on brokered or borrowings or whatever and give us the firepower to continue to grow the balance sheet on the lending side which we’ve really never really felt we’ve had a constraint before, but I’ll tell you it feels better with a lower loan-to-deposit ratio.

Frank Schiraldi: Okay. All right. Great. I appreciate it.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Tim Switzer with KBW. Your line is now open.

Tim Switzer: Good morning. Thanks. I wanted to ask, is there any opportunity with the FLIC merger and your guys’ strong capital and the sub debt rates to maybe do a little bit of securities restructuring particularly with FLIC portfolio that be taking on at fair value and what’s the potential earnings upside you guys see there?

Bill Burns: There certainly is some potential after their balance is mark to do restructuring. I don’t think it’s necessary to make our numbers, but the extent improves any of our ratios it provides additional capacity to grow. That’s something that we consider. So we’re in a good position in that portfolio is going to be mark-to-market both in terms of securities and loans.

Tim Switzer: Okay. That makes sense. And I want to ask both ways. What’s kind of the long-term growth outlook and revenue potential here? Any updates you can provide? Like does that improve at all with rates moving lower? And then, is there any opportunity to kind of leverage the FLIC merger as well in some of their customer base in the new market?

Frank Sorrentino: I think the answer to that is yes on all counts. Lower rates obviously, promote more business start-ups which is with the business that BoeFly is really in. We’ve actually seen a fairly decent uptick recently in the last quarter or so on franchisors that are utilizing the platform for BoeFly. And then the pull-through business that winds up in the SBA portfolio which I think will dramatically be improved by the branch network that’s available at First of Long Island and the fact that they do not do any or virtually no SBA lending. So I think there’s a lot of great opportunities.

Tim Switzer: That’s great. I appreciate it. Thanks for taking my question.

Operator: At this time, there are no further questions. I would like to turn the call back over to the management team for closing remarks.

Frank Sorrentino: Well, thank you. I’d like to thank everyone for their time today. And of course thank you for all the questions. We look forward to speaking with you again during our year-end conference call in early ’25. So with that have a great day.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.