Washington Trust Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:WASH) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Ron Ohsberg: Yes. Yes, Mark, I know we share your concern about GAAP capital as it is. And we agree that regulatory capital still is fine. I do believe we have enough capital to support the kind of growth that we’ve been booking. As far as the residential that those have favorable regulatory capital implications. So I don’t see any reason either on the funding side or on the capital side for us to necessarily curtail our lending activities.

Mark Fitzgibbon: Okay. And then, last question is on the wealth side. It looked like you had $600 million leave with those full relationship people, and there’s another $55 million coming this quarter, it sounds like. How much realistically beyond that is at risk in your view of leaving?

Mark Gim: So Mark, this is Mark. I’ll take that as best as we can. It’s difficult to predict how much will leave. As you know, having non-compete non-solicited agreements in place doesn’t necessarily ensure clients will remain with us even though we have been very active in reaching out to clients to a firm that they will — they know that we’re continuing to service them and that they — for the time being are remaining with us to be serviced. So it’s hard to predict. I think we would certainly say we’re much closer to the end of that runoff in the beginning, but we don’t have any — it’s difficult to give specific guidance.

Mark Fitzgibbon: But did that group of four people have a book of $1 billion. I mean we sort of know that it’s not going to go past that? Or can you give us a sense for what’s the size of the total relationships were?

Mark Gim: Yes. As disclosed, collectively, they managed or were associated with about approximately $1 billion in assets as of September 30, 2022. And I think Ron has disclosed how much of client asset withdrawals are there. As a practical matter, we measure and continually refresh our outreach to existing clients, those who have affirmed that they will stay with us for the time being. But we — and while we’re confident in our outreach efforts, I think we’re very reluctant to try to give a guidance number as to how much is at risk out of what remains.

Operator: Thank you, Mark. . Our next question is from Damon DelMonte from KBW. Damon, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Damon DelMonte: Hey, good morning, everyone and echoing everybody’s thoughts here. Congrats, Mark, and welcome Mary, look forward to getting to meet you and work with you in the future.

Mark Gim: Thank you.

Damon DelMonte: So I just wanted to start off by circling back on the margin guidance and outlook. Ron, I think you said you’re expecting $250 million to $255 million here in the first quarter. Can you give a little bit more forward guidance assuming the Fed stops raising rates here in the first quarter, maybe two more 25 basis point hikes? Does the margin stabilize at this point? Or does it actually reverse course and start to trend up? Or how should we kind of think about that?

Ron Ohsberg: Yes. I think best case; it kind of stabilizes over the next couple of quarters. We still have quite a bit of liability re-pricing to come, a lot of that in the first quarter, which explains kind of the dip between Q4 and Q1. So we’re a little guarded about this. I mean there’s a number of different ways interest rates could play out over the course of the year. So that’s why we really just kind of prefer to stick to one quarter at a time right now.

Damon DelMonte: Okay. Can you give a little color on the rate of new loan production? What the new loans that are coming on the books, what kind of yields you’re getting on those?

Ron Ohsberg: Yes. So in the fourth quarter, total commercial loans came in a weighted average of about 5.66%, mortgages came in at about 4.84%.