United Community Banks, Inc. (NASDAQ:UCBI) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Robert Edwards: Yes, glad to. Hey Brad. So just on the NPA side, I would say the drivers for NPA that we saw Navitas was up a couple of million, and our manufactured housing was up a million. And then really, it was the C&I credit that we took a charge on that drove the rest of that. So those were the three elements in the NPA that drove the dollars up. On the provision, the economic forecasts really caught up with the Fed’s strategy around increasing rates. And when rates are rising, the investment in equipment and investment in real estate is expected to decline. And so we saw increases in our C&I and equipment finance and commercial construction categories driven by the expected increase in rates. So that was really the driver this time, of course, we had the loan growth is also a driver and the charge-offs play a role as well as they begin to normalize.

In terms of expectations, you just have to remember that the way CECL works, it’s procyclical. So you end up building before you get into a recession. If Moody’s expectation of the scenario is accurate, then I think absent changes in loan growth and asset mix and charge-offs that, it would feel like, I would expect the scenarios to be stable, but this quarter, they were catching up a little bit. And it’s not entirely as you know, it’s uncertain economic times. And so they’re trying to predict something as well that’s fairly uncertain.

Brad Milsaps: Got it. Thank you. And Jefferson, just a housekeeping question. That BOLI surrender charge that you noted in the deck, is that berried in other expense or is it — is that housed elsewhere?

Jefferson Harralson: It’s in the tax line.

Brad Milsaps: It’s in the tax line. Okay, great. Sorry. I missed that. Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Michael Rose from Raymond James. Michael, please go ahead.

Michael Rose: Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Just wanted to circle back into Navitas. Obviously, things are normalizing. Can you just remind us if you’ve changed kind of the mix of what they’ve done since you’ve acquired them both in kind of what you sell and what you keep on balance sheet and then also kind of what we should expect for kind of a normalized through the cycle level of charge-offs for that business? Thanks.

Lynn Harton: So I can maybe start on that. I think that when we bought Navitas, they were a standalone company. They had a higher cost of funds and as they came on to UCBI, over the years, they have moved upstream in terms of credit quality, so all in, they have a stronger credit quality than they had in 2018, where we bought them. Rob, do you want to take the credit piece of it?

Robert Edwards: Yes, so if you look at Slide 21 in the deck, Michael, we’ve kind of have included the ’19 and 2020 loss rates. So it would be, I could see us getting into the 70 to 80 basis points range as things normalize.

Michael Rose: Okay, helpful. And then I wanted to circle back to the kind of expense, some of the commentary there, obviously, understanding, there’s a lot of moving parts, but it seems like there’s potentially a lot of very variability from kind of a starting point. So would you be able to just kind of because, I think their expense run rate was somewhere around $13.5 million a quarter, I just want to see if you could, if you could verify that, and then kind of what would be kind of a core number without that, that base just to kind of begin to forecast off of again, I know, it’s hard, because there’s a lot of moving pieces and systems conversions coming up in the second quarter, et cetera. But just wanted to see if you could provide a little bit more finer point on the starting point for expenses this quarter? Thanks.