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

Operator: Our next question comes from Jennifer Demba from Truist. Jennifer, please go ahead.

Jennifer Demba: Thank you. Good morning.

Jefferson Harralson: Hi, Jennifer.

Jennifer Demba: Curious, you just closed the Progress deal. Curious how you feel the Reliant transaction has gone after a year. I know you had an unexpected leadership change. But was your largest acquisition, I think your most expensive just curious how you think is going so far versus your plan?

Lynn Harton: So I’ll start and then let Rich run with that. I mean, we’ve been pleased with it. Certainly, the vans passing was a blow to all of us and all the team there. But they’ve really banded together. We think it’s a long-term. Great place to be, we think we’ve got the great, right people to be there. Rich is heavily recruiting together with John Wilson there. So look, we’re very pleased we’re there. We’re very pleased that this was the franchise that got us there. Yes, we hit a few speed bumps along the way. We don’t mind saying that. But long-term is going to be a great spot.

Richard Bradshaw: Yes, and I would add that I do feel that John Wilson and Mark Ryman have turned the ship around, it took a little bit, but we’re seeing it both. And the other comment I would make is there were certain credits in there that weren’t our credit appetite. And we believe that we’ve kind of worked through almost all of that during this past year and feel really good about 2023 and the opportunity.

Jennifer Demba: Great. Second question is on asset quality, you said loan losses are coming closer to normal levels? What do you think normal levels are for UCBI with the loan portfolio mix it has today?

Robert Edwards: So that’s an interesting question, I would say, I’ve always sort of targeted through the cycle losses of 30 basis points. For where we are today, in a normal environment, if I go back to 2020, we were at 18 basis points this quarter, we came in at 17 basis points. I felt really good in 2020 with the 18 basis points, but somewhere in that 18 to 30 range seems like a sort of through the cycle, normalized type range.

Jennifer Demba: Thanks so much.

Operator: And we have a question now from Christopher Marinac from Janney Montgomery Scott. Please, Christopher, go ahead.

Christopher Marinac: Thanks. Good morning, Jefferson on the loan yield improvement we saw this quarter, did the SBA had any influence on that just retaining those? I didn’t know if that was meaningful at all?

Jefferson Harralson: I don’t think it’s big enough to affect the whole yield there.

Christopher Marinac: Okay, fair enough, and Rob, just a big picture credit question, kind of continuing Jenny’s line of credit, or thought rather, do you think that the stress testing that has now gone on higher yields and possibly being higher down the road, to what extent does that influence just the way you think about the reserve, the ability for customers to sustain these levels, LTVs, cap rates, et cetera.