National Bank Holdings Corporation (NYSE:NBHC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Andrew Terrell: Maybe just to follow up on expenses, I hear that kind of color and guidance for I think it’s 243, 247 for 2023. If they’re kind of 10 million to 12 million of two unify expenses coming through in the coming year, I guess should we think about those as more transitory implying that the 2024 expense run rate kind of moderates, or would you build off of this 243, 247 into ’24?

Tim Laney: I think you should look at that possibility for ’25 and beyond. And what we haven’t talked about that I’ll add given your question is where we’re increasingly optimistic is around taking some of the low cost new technology that we’re putting in place to unify and applying it to our core bank and the ability to lower that operating cost over the next few years. So we’re not in a position at this point to provide guidance on that front. But if you’re asking about ’24 and thinking about ’25, I will tell you our optimism around leveraging, for example, the challenger core that we are leveraging to unify gets really interesting. We will remain as hyper focused on our operating efficiency as we’ve ever been. And I think we’re going to end up being able to make some real interesting tradeoffs in terms of historical cost versus a future way of operating the business.

Andrew Terrell: Okay. I appreciate the added color there. If I could just clarify on the loan growth guidance, mid to high single digits, is that referring specifically to the originating loans, so not excluding what you would expect from the acquired runoff?

Aldis Birkans: No, that’s the net loan book. That’s covering also the acquired loan book runoff.

Andrew Terrell: Got it. Okay. And then for Aldis, just going back to the 4% NIM expectation by the end of the year, I was hoping to just get maybe some incremental color on moving pieces there specifically as it related to kind of deposit costs increases you’re expecting? And then does that guidance reflect any change in deposit composition, so any incremental kind of non-interest bearing deposit mix change for here?

Aldis Birkans: In terms of deposit composition, I think Tim hit on it, because I think — and it does feel like as we’re reading through some other bank releases that at least the consumer is gravitating to highest earning asset for them, liability for banks, which is time deposit. So I do expect that we probably will increase some of the CD balances here. We are down to 10% of total balances and time deposits historically we’ve been closer to 20%. So we’re building some of that forward balance sheet, again, is probably in the cards slowly of course. In terms of non-interest bearing deposit mix, I don’t see that changing much. Again, our go-to-market strategy is always a relationship. We always start with a checking account.

And I do not see that changing. So we expect that balance to be core there. Now having said that, if you look at the flows, we haven’t seen anything specific or one large or specific kind of movement that would be unique. We’ve seen rate movements, we’ve seen still people spending down there stimulus checks, so how much that yet to go, who knows? So give or take a couple of percentage points around that. But the mix otherwise I think will stay unchanged.

Andrew Terrell: Okay, very good. And then just to maybe clarify. I think I heard this right in the discussion, but outside of just the NIM fluctuations we should expect, you think you can grow net interest income every quarter off of this base of, call it, 96 million in 4Q? Did I get that right?