Eastern Bankshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:EBC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Laurie Hunsicker: Great, okay. That’s helpful. Tax rate, how should we be thinking about that for 2023?

James B. Fitzgerald: Right, I think good question. And I would say what we’ve got — at the end of the third quarter, we’re guiding 22% to 23% and I think that would be my updated guidance for you.

Laurie Hunsicker: Okay. And then a question here in fee income, you had a drop in insurance revenue linked quarter. Maybe any thoughts around that and then I know March is typically your strongest month or strongest quarter rather for insurance, are we still thinking that we would see maybe a $4 million to $5 million build to increase or can you help us think a little bit about that?

James B. Fitzgerald: Sure. What I would suggest and what we do internally Laurie is, I wouldn’t look at a linked quarter — I wouldn’t look at the insurance revenues linked quarter because of the seasonal — seasonality changes. I would look at the prior year, and you’re absolutely right, there was a big increase in the first two quarters, but in particular, the first quarter. That’s when many of — used to be called profit sharing. It’s — that’s not quite the technical term now. But a lot of that is realized, and there’s a very — there’s a noticeable increase. So I would look at the prior year and look at the growth rates that you’ve seen this year and use that rather than linked quarter because of that seasonality.

Laurie Hunsicker: Got you, okay. And I guess, any thoughts about the drop in the December quarter, I’m just looking again at a linked quarter, but any thoughts on that?

Robert F. Rivers: No. I think it was very much in line with our expectations, and it was 5% ahead of the prior year, which, again, I think is the appropriate benchmark.

Laurie Hunsicker: Got it, got it, okay. And then just last question on loan loss provisioning. Was there anything that was a specific reserve set aside in that $11 million, I realize $7 million was growth, you had no charge-offs, anything specific the rest of it?

Robert F. Rivers: No, I would consider — I would describe it as sort of modest changes in our ACL factors that the provision itself as a percentage of loans were up three basis points. So very modest. I know there were no specific items or no specific problems in the quarter.

Laurie Hunsicker: Okay, great. Thanks for taking my questions.

James B. Fitzgerald: Great, thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Next question comes from Damon DelMonte at KBW. Please go ahead.

Damon DelMonte: Hey, good morning guys. Hope everybody is doing well today.

Robert F. Rivers: Good morning.

Damon DelMonte: Great, kind of sticking on the margin topic because it’s been pretty popular this morning. I wanted to comment a little bit differently. Could you provide a little color on the asset yield side of things, earning assets had only gone up 33 basis points with loans going up about 32 basis points, why wasn’t there more lift in the loan yield this quarter?

Robert F. Rivers: So I think, Damon, that’s interesting because we looked at — our view is the loan yields were up 32 basis points when we think about the rate moves in the quarter itself. We thought that was in line with our expectations. Obviously, the securities portfolio is fixed rate and that didn’t move. That’s why the interest-earning assets are below the loan yields. But when we look at the — and we provide information on the fixed variable and the amount of the variable that has been hedged, we thought that 29 basis points was sort of in line with our expectations.

Damon DelMonte: Okay. And then could you just give us an update on the Embrace Home loan relationship, are you still active with that, or is that — was this quarter just like a onetime?