Webster Financial Corporation (WBS)’s Q4 2014 Earnings Conference Call Transcript

It was about a million and 4.

Matthew Kelly – Strategy

What are your thoughts around the loan related fee income fixed by this quarter? do you think that gets back to the 5 million dollar run rate you had been running at last couple of quarters or we’re gonna see an increase there?

Joseph J. Savage – President

It’s more and better I guess would be the better way to describe it. I think it might not be at that level. I always like to think in terms of the year rather than specifically with respect to a quarter. Last year we did very very well on the slot side. We did very well on the prepays to very very well on amendments. And we’re always looking for that year over year performance. Will it be as good as 8 or as low as 5? It’s something that we look at all the time. There’s good momentum, swap side, on the amendments fees. It’s a little stickier and slower with respect to syndication. So there’s so many elements push for better associated with it. That it’s really hard to predict that on a quarter to quarter basis. Cash management stepping up very very nicely for us so we’re happy with that. We saw 7% year on year lift not with-standing loosing a large client. So these are good things that are heading our way.

Matthew Kelly – Strategy

Follow up question for Joe. On slide 36 looking at the 380 million of commercial real estate origination. What was the yield on your per-origination on the fourth quarter?

Joseph J. Savage – President

I’ll have to look for those originations. While we’re trying to find the information we’re doing a lot of multi-family in that so we came in at.. 266 was the yield on that business. Remember that’s heavy swap and it’s all flow essentially. So we’re pretty happy with that.

Matthew Kelly – Strategy

Okay. Question for Glennn, you talked about earlier about premium amortization expense will be flat in the first quarter. Obviously long rates are down quite a bit. What’s driving that confidence level when the game’s flat?

Glenn I. MacInnes – Chief Financial Officer

Part of it is the spread between a ten year and thirty year and the lag. So there’s sorta two factors. So we’ve seen the spread widen and we look at this and we look at the 10 year versus the 30 year and that’s sort of used as a benchmark for CPRs. And how we think they’ll either decrease or accelerate. So that’s a big factor I think. The spread is now at 150, 160. You go back a year and a half ago it was 125, 140 or somewhere around there so it’s actually widened so you see the decrease in the 10 year but you don’t necessarily see atleast as far as an indicator the 30 year coming down as much. It’s not moving a lot so it’s widening. That’s part of it and then there’ the lag. So we might see more of it. I think we could see 13 but you could see it accelerate as we get into the second and third quarter.

Matthew Kelly – Strategy