Hanmi Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:HAFC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Romolo Santarosa: I would just say I think what I would look to in the earnings release slide deck, we show the CD maturities. And so you’ll see about $1.2 billion, if I remember correctly, that will mature 4 quarters forward. And the average rate of that was 3.83%.

Tim Coffey: Okay. Great. Yes. Sorry. Okay. And then my next question is kind of looking at your loan-to-deposit ratio, is your expectation that you’ll be funding the loan production off of deposit growth?

Bonita Lee: Yes. Certainly, gathering deposits going forward, this environment will be a challenge. But we feel that whether it’s a Corporate Korea Initiative and as well as expansion — successful expansion into outside of California regions, that we can bring the additional deposits into — to fund our loans. So we are mindful, and we are looking at those numbers very closely when we build our loan pipeline.

Tim Coffey: Okay. And then just a — so we have heard from a number of competitors the last couple of days. And they’ve been talking about significant headwinds to margin expansion in 1Q and perhaps even first half of 2023. Do you think you’re immune to those headwinds or maybe just not going to face them at the same strength of those — your competitors will?

Romolo Santarosa: Not at all. We’re not immune whatsoever. So again, you saw a magnificent 1 point expansion. So I know a conversation previously about are we at the apogee yet? We tried to signal in the third quarter, looking back at our second quarter earnings, that it’s probably going to happen. We’ll continue to debate that. But at what point differential right now, I think we might be cresting.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Gary Tenner with D.A. Davidson. Please proceed with your question.

Gary Tenner: So my questions were largely asked and answered already. But just in terms of the tax rate, Ron, bounced around a little bit. It was lower this quarter. Where do you project at this point the full year tax rate for ’23?

Romolo Santarosa: Yes. I think for the full year of 2022, we ended up on the, I’ll say, the low end of 28%. And the year prior, we were at the high end of the 28%. So I still think the 29% is about right, spot me plus or minus, like 50 basis points, if you will. But I feel comfortable for judgment matters to use 29%.

Gary Tenner: Okay. And then just one more question on that Slide 14 that you just referenced a moment ago on the NII sensitivity. On the deposits where you’ve got the footnote #2, that cost of CDs as of December 2022 was 2.68%. I assume that’s the average for the month of December as opposed to the period end because the period end seems like it will be over 3%. Correct?

Romolo Santarosa: Yes. For the month, yes. We will work on propositions.

Gary Tenner: And I just wanted to make sure I was looking at it correctly.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Jason Stewart with JonesTrading.

Matthew Erdner: This is Matthew Erdner on for Jason. Good quarter all around. It’s good to see that credit quality is holding up well. But loans 30 to 89 days past due was up 52% quarter-over-quarter. Can you guys talk about where you’re seeing stress build there?