Preferred Bank (NASDAQ:PFBC) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

So we do not see any immediate threat to our office product or some other CRE side.Li Yu So — to further on that, we don’t have any nonaccrual or classified or even 30 to 89 days. Have been lost in the office sector.Operator And our next question will come from Andrew Terrell with Stephens.Robert Terrell Maybe just following up on the last point. I think it’s pretty reassuring to hear that only $8 million or so that would be considered true kind of downtown type office. I guess, the 10% of total loans are office properties. Can you size up maybe the chunkiness within that? Like what’s the size of the largest 1, 2 or 3 type loans in the office category?Li Yu Well, the largest 2 or 3 years on average about $40 million 3 of the I mean, and our average — total average loan is $4.1 million in our office properties, with average LTV of 61% at the entrant place.

Many of them is coming in — I mean in the early days. Each ones is underwritten with a complete underwriting process individually, especially those larger loans. The office building that is — one of the office building in the $50 million range is in one of the hardest areas in Los Angeles core, the City, which we have the creative and entertainment combination, the first floor are all upscale — I mean they have upscale the good restaurants that is assuming business. The second third floor is rented out to a new criticized type of company with LC support from a major bank. So that’s one. And also that we have a very rational, very reasonable sponsorship behind it. The next largest one is in — is one of the buildings [indiscernible] the owner of that is rearranges office building, make that office building near fully occupied and underwritten.

The owner of the of the us building is very, very, very substantial, very, very successful. And his credit in Los Angeles is it’s tough notch. Okay? Its cash flow is huge. So these are the top 2 as you have wanted to know, okay? And I might explain the third one is in a very rich area of Newport Beach, where a group of people bought office building and my view, that group of people have dealt with us for many, many, many, many projects there. And a substantial group of people bought the office building and vacated everything and it’s going to demolish it and convert into apartments. It is in the process of getting doing that. So it’s — right now, it’s really empty. But because the nature, when they come into us, it’s a office building, we put in the office building category.

And also the fourth one is in the same category. Okay? So these are the larger ones, but predominantly or building — majority of our loan is smaller ones, let’s say, in San Francisco downtown or as San Francisco area of the and the Brooklyn, if you know this area, the lifestyle and the things in those areas are all small commercial office unit sometimes has a retail downstairs sometime upstair. But if you know them, the real estate over there is it’s really good. It’s not like Manhattan.Robert Terrell Okay. Very good. I really appreciate all the extra color there. I want to go back to the deposit flows. For the quarter, I was wondering if anything specifically — I guess if you could quantify maybe the drop in the interest-bearing demand deposits, I think, down $540 million or so quarter-on-quarter.

Was any of that a move to time deposits? Or were those just exits out of the bank line. I’m just trying to get a sense of how much was more kind of geography across the deposit segments versus maybe relationships loss or those that left the bank?Li Yu Ed, do you want to answer the first Okay. Maybe I add to it.Edward Czajka Yes. The — from what we know and what we’ve looked at, Andrew, it’s not so much relationships as it is paring down balances. And to Mr. Yu’s point earlier, a lot of those were really centered in just a very few accounts. These depositors or clients that we call them have some form of fiduciary obligations with respect to their funds. And so in what they felt was their best interest, they moved them out following what happened with Signature in Silicon Valley.

However, we have been in constant contact with all of them and are working to either get them into a reciprocal deposit program to bring them back or going through and going through very diligently with their senior leadership and our senior leadership and going over what we’re doing as a bank to mitigate all the risks that have been brought forth through these 2 bank failures. And so we feel very good about that process and what we’re going through. And also to Mr. Yu’s point, a number of them have credit relationships with us. And so we fully expect to have a lot of that back.Robert Terrell Yes. Okay. Very good. And to the point, I think it was mentioned at the start of the call, deposits quarter-to-date, up 1%. I guess within that, should we expect that the bulk of that just is driven by time deposits.

And what I was specifically getting at is the NIB flows since quarter end. Does it feel like there’s been any kind of deceleration in the drawdown of NIBs?Edward Czajka Most definitely since the end of the quarter, Andrew, and that’s a good question. What we’ve seen since the end of the quarter is really more of a business as usual, I would say. And so that’s why we see the tick up of 1% from the end of the quarter. And obviously, I think we’ll have much better news to report at June 30 with respect to this subject.Li Yu Johnny, why don’t you want to add to that? I mean [indiscernible] nature of deposits increase in the first half — I mean, of the quarter. The first half to month.Johnny Hsu Yes, I think the nature of deposit inflows is just like I said, this is as usual for a lot of our clients, not — and we’re working on regaining back some of deposit loss like I said, but this is business usual clients coming in.Operator And our next question will come from Gary Tenner with D.A. Davidson.Clark Wright This is Clark Wright on for Gary Tenner.

Quickly, if I could. You previously indicated you had asked regulators for approval with regard to $150 million stock buyback. Could you provide any color on how you were thinking about capital and the buyback right now, given your valuation near tangible book value and the potential for getting that buyback approved by regulators?Li Yu Let me, first of all, I mean, describe the process. In order to get the regulators approval, they require us to share the approval for the buyback, okay? That’s the state of California with State Bank. Yes. So we have completed our proxy statement, which has just been released and then asking a shareholders’ approval for $150 million buyback authorization and from that point on, we will afford to decide when, how much amount will be the buyback happening and when they decided they want to do that, we will ask the Board regulator to approve.

Usually, it takes about — DPM takes about 2 weeks to in the past 2 months to approve it, okay? So in any event, that’s a process. So we are getting ourselves ready to do that. But in the meantime, that’s from the legality aspect. From the operation aspect is that I must tell you that in the last phone call, I’m fully confident that we’re going to buy back the stock, okay, because so cheap in our opinion. You must know we’re selling in 5.2x of 2023 earnings, okay, that’s obviously, I mean, advantage for us to buy back we will. But right now, we have a bigger picture of the liquidity issue and the so-called unstableness in the public’s vision about the banks. So most likely, in second quarter, we will be looking very carefully to make sure that the liquidity issue is done, we don’t need any additional liquidity to do that?

Okay. But long term, that will happen. Obviously, one thing will not happen is our stock price doubled, maybe we don’t do that, okay. We hope that’s the case. But most likely looks like with our trajectory of our stock value is concerned, it will be very beneficial to our shareholders.Clark Wright And then just in terms of loan growth for the full year, how are you thinking about it just given the economic uncertainty and fourth quarter contraction, about first quarter contraction balances?Li Yu Well, loan growth has 3 dimensional situation. I mean again, I cannot give you any guidance on that, because I truly do not know. On the micro side, you have a reduced loan demand, especially right after this meltdown or the — I mean, crises — so-called crises, it changed a lot of people’s investment priorities.