CrossFirst Bankshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:CFB) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Andrew Liesch: Got it. That’s helpful. And then, on the non-interest income side, recognizing there could be some volatility on the gain on sale number, but if I look at like the other core items like service charges and interchange, I guess, how should we be looking at fee income from here? This $6 million kind of a high watermark or do you think it could turn a little bit lower? It seems like it was a pretty good fee quarter.

Ben Clouse: Andrew, we think it clearly will build from there. This quarter had a little bit of moderation in our gain on loan sales to more of a normalized rate. I expect a fairly similar amount of gain on sale in that $500,000 to $600,000 range for Q4. We continue to focus on expanding that as we leverage our SBA platform across the rest of our markets. And I know Randy’s team is very, very focused on continuing growth in treasury and credit card going into ’24. I don’t know, if you want to add?

Randy Rapp: Yeah, Andrew. I would just add to that is, we’ve made significant investment in our treasury and credit card platforms in the last 18 months and that we really feel like we can scale up as we move forward and so — and we think there’s good opportunity there.

Andrew Liesch: Got it. Everyone, this is all really helpful. Thanks so much, I’ll step back.

Mike Maddox: Thanks, Andrew.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question will come from Matt Olney with Stephens. You may now go ahead.

Matt Olney: Hey, great. Thanks. Good morning, everybody.

Mike Maddox: Good morning, Matt.

Ben Clouse: Hi, Matt.

Matt Olney: I want to ask about the securities portfolio and I appreciate Slide 11 in the deck, just kind of highlighting some of the updated strategy you guys have undertaken so far this year, just help us appreciate how much more transition do you see or I guess, can I ask another way, what inning are we in — in this transition and what kind of cash flows do you see in the near term? And I guess the second part to that is, under a scenario of recognizing some of the unrealized losses and some kind of restructuring, help us appreciate what were your tolerance level is for losses that you would recognize? Thanks.

Mike Maddox: Sure. Good morning, Matt. I would start off by saying, we’re probably somewhere in the fifth or sixth inning out of nine, and we continue to expect to work toward adjusting the mix of munis. The environment has changed so significantly with much more emphasis on liquidity after the events in March, and in our case, much more emphasis on capital and both of those present some challenges with the muni mix that we have previously managed. That portfolio was very, very successful for us in the prior environment. And as you see there on the slide, we’re really shifting our focus a little bit. In regard to potential restructuring, we are thinking about two guiding principles really. One, we want to ensure that we are not compromising our capital ratios by taking a significant loss and beyond what we think we can sustain and make up with a short earn back, say in a one to two-year range.

The other thing that — the other guiding principle we have is we believe, we can restructure that portfolio just given the higher risk weight for munis, we can restructure that portfolio in such a way that it’s neutral or perhaps even improves our ratio as we will redeploy proceeds from a potential restructuring into something, into products with a lower risk rate. Underlying all of that, we believe we can continue our trajectory of improving yield there, as I’m sure, you can appreciate the interest rate environment, particular in the five-plus year portion of the curve has been very volatile and so we’re just going to be prudent about thinking about executing against a restructuring to make sure we do it in the best way we can. But those are kind of the parameters that we’re using to think about that.