Heritage Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:HFWA) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Matthew Clark : Got it. And then last one for me. Just wanted to clarify the spot rate on deposits. Was that interest-bearing — that $104 million was interest-bearing, not total right?

Donald Hinson : Correct.

Operator: We now turn to Jeff Rulis with D.A. Davidson.

Jeffrey Rulis : A question on the — you covered the loan growth pretty well on both pipeline and expectations and sort of where we’re headed. I think one of the wildcards as you called out this quarter on the advances or existing lines and draws on that. Is there any seasonality to that? And any visibility that — is it maybe Q2, Q3 are generally stronger there? Just trying to layer on an element based in addition to your kind of guidance comments.

Bryan McDonald : Yes. Jeff, if you look at Slide 20, it has the detail on the construction commitments at the bottom, and that’s really what’s driving the bulk of the net advances you see on Page 21, which was really the difference quarter-over-quarter. We had really similar balances on originated loans, similar levels of prepays payoffs. So it was really the difference in those net advances that drove the higher loan growth versus last quarter. So with the level of construction commitments where they are something similar to last quarter would be pretty reasonable.

Jeffrey Rulis : So yes, I’m looking at 20. I mean if those are kind of trending up, this may be a bigger piece in terms of maybe advances and combining that with Jeff’s comments about as a percent of capital, you got some room to comfortably grow there. Is that fair to say this is a piece that we could talk incrementally more about?

Bryan McDonald : Yes, you’ll see the balances on those construction loans move back up to something closer to what would be a little bit more normal level that you can see back in 2020 was quite a bit higher. So we obviously came into the pandemic and then didn’t do a lot of new construction commitments through the pandemic. Those loans funded out and we ended up at a lower point coming out of the pandemic and so building back up. And then, of course, you — a lot of those loans are paying off to perm options outside of parities in some cases. There’s a chunk of low-income housing, a big chunk of low-income housing that we finance and most of the component we finance don’t have perm debt or if they do, it’s very nominal. So it’s really that when do you peak and then see the prepay activity pick up again coming out of the pandemic when does it turn? But we have more room to run up before that happens.

Jeffrey Rulis : Yes. I guess, Bryan, if I look at 2020, I mean that’s more like a 60% outstanding balance to commitments and you’re less than half of that today? Or basically saying that you would expect it to revert to historical levels?

Bryan McDonald : Yes.

Jeffrey Rulis : Okay. Okay. And maybe just a quick one for Don on the margin. I think you said expect some compression on the margin in the third quarter, not at the magnitude of the second. But then you talked about margin stabilization thereafter. Can I get sort of the time that was just Q4 and beyond? Or what was — I didn’t get the time line on that expectation?