Michael J. Blodnick
Analyst · Sandler O'Neill
Thank you, Kate. Welcome, and thank you all for joining us this morning. With me here in Kalispell this morning is Ron Copher, our Chief Financial Officer; Barry Johnston, our Chief Credit Administrator; and Angela Dose, our Principal Accounting Officer. Last night, we once again reported record earnings for the first quarter of 2013. Earnings for the quarter were $20,800,000, that compares to $16,300,000 in last year's quarter; that's an increase of 27%. Diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $0.29 compared to $0.23 in the prior year's quarter, a 26% increase. There was just a small loss on the sale of investments in the quarter. Aside from that, there were no other extraordinary items recorded. We earned a return on average assets for the quarter of 1.11%, and return on tangible equity of 10.63%, both were the best quarterly earnings ratios since December 2008. From an earnings perspective, revenue growth is still a challenge. It has become increasingly difficult to grow earning assets at a pace fast enough to offset the earnings pressure being applied by this low rate environment. Fortunately, as I previously stated, we still possess a couple of levers that make up for the revenue decline. This past quarter, we continued to benefit from lower credit costs, both in the form of charged off loans and other real-estate-owned expense. And for the first time in 7 quarters, we finally experienced a reduction in premium amortization on our investment portfolio. We certainly hope both of these trends continue through the rest of this year. If they do, we should deliver good earnings even with the challenges to top line revenue growth. For us, the highlight of the quarter was the announcement of 2 additions to Glacier Bancorp that we feel will provide terrific opportunities to further grow and enhance our franchise. In February, we signed an agreement to acquire First State Bank of Wheatland, Wyoming, in a cash stock deal totaling $37.9 million. Followed a month later with the March signing to acquire North Cascades National Bank of Chelan, Washington, in another cash stock transaction valued at $29.3 million. We expect both of these new members of our family of community banks to make a significant contribution immediately to our performance. Both banks brought everything we were looking for in a merger partner, a talented and respected management and employee group, further diversification to our loan portfolio and an expansion of our economic and geographic base. We are thrilled to have both of these banks join us and believe they create additional opportunities to expand in these new markets, as well as add earning assets that are different and distinct for much of the rest of the company. We expect both transactions to be immediately accretive to first year earnings and, over the long term, to be great additions to GBCI. For one of the few times in the past 5 years we saw growth in our loan portfolio this past quarter. What was even more encouraging is it came in the first quarter, which historically, even in the best of environments, has been a tough quarter to grow loans. So we are hopeful that this is an indication of better things to come, and that as we enter the second and third quarters of the year, which traditionally have been stronger quarters for loan production, that this trend will continue. Beyond actually increasing our loan portfolio this quarter, we also had a $34 million increase in unfunded commitments, which is excellent for this time of year, and also bodes well for future loan growth over the next couple of quarters. Our goal for the year is to increase our loan portfolio by 2%. Posting a positive number in the first quarter, gives us confidence that we can realize this goal and possibly even exceed it. With the significant progress that's been made in improving our credit quality, we no longer face the challenge of trying to grow loans while at the same time attempting to dispose of other problem loans. Plus, we now have more resources that can be directed to once again grow loans versus cleaning up and resolving credit issues. Our investment portfolio decreased this past quarter by $25 million, as we chose not to replace some of the dollars invested in our CMO portfolio. During the quarter, we also continued to make changes to the mix of the investment portfolio by allocating additional dollars into corporate and municipal bonds, instead of mortgage-related product, as we have done in the past. This shift in the portfolio accounted for part of the reduction in premium amortization last quarter, with the other coming from a slowdown in the velocity of refinances. Barring any further government intervention or additional refinance programs put in place, we expect refinance activity to continue to decline through the rest of the year. Deposit growth in terms of dollars slowed in the first quarter compared to what we've experienced the past 2 years. Nevertheless, the number of new accounts, specifically checking accounts, was exceptionally strong considering the time of year. Noninterest bearing deposits decreased by 1% during the quarter. After careful review, we don't believe that the expiration of the transaction account guarantee program, better known as TAG, had much to do with the decline. It appears a stronger stock market and firming real estate values had more to do with the drop in checking account balances. Interest-bearing deposits increased by 0.5%, but even that growth came in the form of wholesale deposits. So core deposits were soft this quarter. Now that we are through the first quarter, I expect deposits to increase over the next 2 quarters, continuing a trend that we see most years, as the impact of tourism kicks in. We continue to maintain capital levels that are near historic highs. Our tangible common equity ratio ended the quarter at 10.7%, compared to 10.5% in the prior-year quarter. And our tangible book value per share was $11.14, that's up from $10.43 in the prior-year quarter. Our pro forma analysis of both pending transactions indicates that our tangible common equity ratio will decrease, but still remain near 10%. With this level of capital, we have plenty of capacity to further grow the franchise or explore other alternatives to deploy capital. Yesterday, the company paid a cash dividend of $0.14 for the first quarter. We will continue to analyze the adequacy of our capital and the level of earnings in the hopes of declaring additional increases to the cash dividend in the future. Our goal is, and always has been, to increase our cash dividend by 10% a year. Credit quality improved again this past quarter, as nonperforming assets decreased by $8 million or 6%, down to $135 million. Nonperforming assets are now 1.79% of total assets. We saw reductions in every loan category with the exception of consumer loans, which had a small increase during the quarter. Some of the larger decreases, once again, came from land development, unimproved land, and 1-4 family residential loans. The progress we made this quarter was somewhat unexpected after the success we had lowering NPAs in the prior quarter. Fortunately, we benefited from increased interest among buyers, and an improving real estate market, both of which have made it easier to dispose of some of our distressed assets. Hopefully, as we move into the prime selling season in our part of the country, we will move a couple more of our larger problem credits. Once again, our target for this year is to reduce nonperforming assets to below $100 million. The first quarter has us off to a good start to achieve that goal. With the progress made this past quarter, I feel we can expect additional improvement in credit trends in future quarters. If this year's sales activity is anything like last year's, we should be positioned to further lower nonperforming assets and enhance our overall credit quality. Typically this time of year we see an uptick in our 30 to 89-day delinquencies due to large seasonal workforce tied to construction and the tourist industry. Although early stage delinquencies were higher this quarter on a sequential basis, they were far below last year's first quarter number. At $32 million, these delinquencies were down 24% from the same quarter last year. Net charged-off loans were another bright spot this quarter. Through March, total charge-offs were $3.6 million with recoveries of $1.5 million, leaving net charge-offs at $2.1 million for the quarter. As a percentage of loans, net charge-offs were 24 basis points, just under 0.25%, on an annualized basis -- far below both our goal for the year of 0.5%, and last year, when our net charge-offs totaled 0.83%. In addition, OREO write-downs and losses for the quarter totaled $462,000. This compares to gains on the sale of OREO of $664,000 during the quarter. This is the first time in a number of years that we recorded a net gain in OREO dispositions, and hopefully, is another good indicator going forward as we continue to sell and write down other OREO properties. Our allowance for loan and lease loss ended the quarter at 3.84%, basically unchanged from the prior quarter and down from 3.98% at the end of the first quarter last year. In the most recent quarter, we provisioned $2.1 million, the amount of our charge-offs. This compares to a loan loss provision of $2.3 million the prior quarter, and $9.6 million in the prior-year quarter. If credit quality trends continue to improve, as we believe they will, clearly, we would again this year see a further decrease to the amount of our provision for 2013. One definite positive realized in the first quarter was the improvement in our net interest margin. For the quarter, our net interest margin increased from 3.05% the prior quarter to 3.14% in the most recent quarter. However, our margin was significantly below the 3.73% at this time last year. One of our biggest challenges this past quarter and year has been managing through an unprecedented low interest rate environment, which has and continues to cause significant declines in both our net interest income and net interest margin. This low interest rate environment has also allowed and sustained a wave of refinances which in turn caused a significant increase in premium amortization, greatly reducing our interest income. This past quarter's premium amortization of $21.4 million, although still high by historical standards, did increase -- or did decrease, excuse me, did decrease by $1.9 million from the prior quarter. This led to a 13 basis point improvement in our investment portfolio yield in the first quarter, and an 8 basis point increase in our overall yield on earning assets. Unfortunately, premium amortization was still $8.1 million greater than the same quarter last year. Nonetheless, there is some cause for hope that we will continue to see this line item decline further as we move through 2013. Most of what we read and track would suggest and point to a slowdown in refinance volume, which would subsequently lower premium amortization going forward. One issue we were not able to escape this quarter was the continuous pressure on loan yields. Although for the most part I thought our banks did a very good job of managing their loan portfolio yields, considering the competitive forces currently in play we continue to see pressure on our interest income. At quarter end, our loan yields stood at 5.10%, down 8 basis points from the prior quarter. We expect further compression in loan yields this year, but hopefully at a slower pace of decline. Offsetting some of the decrease in loan yield was a 2 basis point decline in funding costs during the quarter. At quarter end, our cost on total paying liabilities was 46 basis points. This reduction, however, has not been enough to offset the impact of lower-yielding earning assets on net interest income. Since it appears that these low interest rates are going to stay down here for a while, we expect to see continued pressure on our revenue growth, especially in net interest income. Competitive forces have made the task even more trying, as loan pricing continues to be extremely aggressive, not only impacting loan production but also both our net interest income and net interest margin. Total net interest income declined by $1 million during the first quarter, and decreased by $7.8 million over the same quarter last year, an amount very similar to the increase in premium amortization. We continue to attempt to protect our net interest income. However, this past quarter, there was not enough earning asset growth to offset the yield pressure. The decrease in premium amortization expense definitely helped. Unfortunately, it came late in the quarter. As I have previously mentioned, if we see a significant slowdown in refinance volume and subsequently premium amortization, it would directly benefit both net interest income and the margin. Noninterest income decreased $2.4 million on a linked quarter basis, but was up $2.6 million from the first quarter of last year, which was an increase of 13%. Fees on sold loans, primarily mortgage origination income, remained at historically high levels. For the quarter, we generated $9.1 million in this category, down only slightly from the previous quarter, and up $2.3 million from the same quarter of last year. The first quarter of each year is somewhat challenging in other fee income areas, primarily due to a shorter quarter and seasonal influences. Aside from fees on sold loans, most other categories of noninterest income were basically flat compared to last year. If we do see a decline in refinance activity as many again expect, it will most likely impact future quarters' fee income, especially gain on sale of loans. However, there should be a compensating reduction in premium amortization that could offset any other reduction in fee income. Our noninterest expense for the quarter decreased by $4.6 million sequentially, and $5.6 million from the prior-year quarter, due primarily to lower OREO expense. There was very little change in most of the other expense categories as our bank divisions continue to do an excellent job of controlling the cost of most other line items. OREO expense was down to $884,000 this quarter -- that's total OREO expense -- compared to $6.8 million in the prior-year quarter. Although OREO expense is volatile from quarter-to-quarter, our trend line in this area continues to improve. Compensation and benefit expense -- always the largest expense for a financial institution -- was also well-contained. Increasing by only 4% from a year ago. In summary, 2013 is off to a good start. We need to ratchet up our loan growth further to help offset the effects of lower loan yields. At the same time, we need to continue to work hard at maintaining the lower credit cost we achieved this past quarter. We're excited to bring on our 2 new banks the next 2 quarters and believe they will be very good additions to our family of banks. It's been a very busy and exciting first quarter for all of us. We definitely believe we made some significant strides towards positioning the company for more growth and higher earnings as we move forward. And these strategic initiatives we have put in place this quarter should enhance our company's performance for years to come. And those are the end of my formal remarks. So we'll now open the lines up and take some questions.