Michael J. Blodnick
Analyst · D.A
Thank you. And welcome, and thank all of you for joining us today. With me this morning is Ron Copher, our Chief Financial Officer; Don Chery, our Chief Administrative Officer; Barry Johnston, our Chief Credit Administrator; and Angela Dose, our Principal Accounting Officer. Last night, we reported earnings for the second quarter of 2013. Earnings for the quarter were $22,700,000. That compares to $19 million in last year's quarter, or an increase of 20%. Diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $0.31 compared to $0.26 in the prior year's quarter. That's a 19% increase. On May 31, we closed the Wheatland Bankshares transaction. During the quarter, there were $571,000 in one-time, nonrecurring acquisition expenses. Those costs were somewhat offset by a small gain on the sale of investments of $241,000. Aside from that, it once again was a straightforward quarter with little or no extraordinary items recorded. We earned an ROAA, or return on average assets, for the quarter of 1.17%, and a return on tangible equity of 11.32%. Both were the best quarterly earnings ratios since December of 2008. It was a good solid quarter on a number of fronts. Loan growth was the strongest we have seen in over 5 years. And the outlook remains favorable for the second half of the year. Revenues improved on both a linked and prior-year quarter basis. An increase in interest income during the quarter was especially encouraging as premium amortization declined further. Credit quality continued to trend in the right direction as delinquencies, nonperforming assets and net charge-offs all decreased from the previous quarter. One area of credit cost that did increase this quarter was other real estate owned, with the write-down of 1 property. For us, the highlight of the quarter was the closing of Wheatland Bankshares and their main subsidiary, First State Bank. We have acquired a terrific group of people, and are excited with the potential they create. We've also begun the integration process of incorporating them into our company. This project is moving forward as scheduled. As with any acquisition, some noise is created in both our balance sheet and income numbers. For some of the more significant sectors of the financials, I've removed the impact of First State Bank in order to give a clearer picture of our performance without the impact of our new bank. We are also preparing to close on the second of the 2 bank acquisitions we announced last quarter. The completion of North Cascades Bancshares transaction, with its main subsidiary, North Cascades National Bank, is on target. We will close next Wednesday, July 31. We're excited for the possibilities that these 2 franchises bring to further enhance our growth and earnings potential for years to come. As I stated previously, one of the pleasant surprises of the second quarter was the level of loan growth our banks were able to produce. Our goal for the year was to hopefully increase the size of our loan portfolio by 2%. After this quarter's performance, we are optimistic that we will surpass that target. Loans grew by $98 million or 12% annualized, excluding the addition of First State Bank. So we far exceeded our expectation, and I believe demonstrated our ability to grow loans now that many of our production staff can commit more time and effort to this activity. Both real estate and commercial and industrial loans made up most of the increase during the quarter. In addition, most of the increase in construction lending also came in the commercial area. We have still [Audio Gap] continues to improve. We hopefully can gain additional traction in this segment of our portfolio. With the addition of First State Bank, our ag portfolio grew 63% to $238 million, and will increase significantly again next quarter with -- as North Cascades joins the company. The growth of loans allowed us to slow down our security purchases during the quarter. Excluding the investments acquired from First State Bank, the security portfolio increased by $42 million or 1%. Once again, this quarter, we chose to decrease our exposure to CMOs by changing the mix of our portfolio by reallocating some of this cash flow from the CMO portfolio into municipals and corporate bonds. This shift in the mix, along with a slowdown in refinance activity accounted for the reduction in premium amortization during the quarter. With a steep drop-off in refinance activity in recent weeks, we expect to see continuous and even greater reduction in premium amortization during the third and fourth quarters. Noninterest-bearing deposits increased at an 8% annualized rate in the quarter, excluding the addition of First State Bank. We continue to have excellent growth in a number of new checking account relationships. But the growth in dollars, although still good, has slowed from the torrid pace of the past 2 years. Historically, the second and third quarters of the year are our best quarters for generating additional checking account relationships. This past quarter was no exception as accounts grew at a rate of 5% annualized, a nice increase to our customer base, which expands our opportunity to cross-sell more of our products and services to a larger group of individuals and businesses. Excluding the impact of First State Bank and excluding wholesale deposits, our interest-bearing deposits decreased 1% on an annualized basis during the quarter. The decrease was primarily due to a reduction in retail CDs as the current interest rate environment has made it more difficult to maintain these balances. We continue to maintain significant amounts of capital and have worked hard this year to find effective ways of deploying it. The acquisitions of First State Bank and North Cascades National Bank are great examples of how we intend to leverage this capital in the future. In addition, on June 27, we announced an increase of 7% in our cash dividend at $0.15 a share. This was the second increase to our dividend in the past 6 months and 35th time the dividend has been increased since our initial public offering in 1984. Our goal is to prudently manage our capital levels, being mindful of our growth potential, the quality of our assets and any and all regulatory standards and considerations. However, it has always been our conservative policy and philosophy to carry higher capital levels than what is required. Strategically, this has served us well especially during downturns in the economy. And I do not see that changing in the future. Credit quality improved in a number of areas this past quarter as nonperforming assets, delinquencies and net charge-offs all moved in the right direction. NPAs decreased by $5 million or 4% to $131 million. Nonperforming assets are now down to 1.64% of assets. Although we saw further reduction in NPAs during the quarter, we will have to accelerate the pace of dispositions if we hope to hit our goal of reducing nonperforming assets below $100 million by year-end. In order for this to occur, we will have to move a couple of our larger OREO or other nonperforming properties. Fortunately, there continues to be increased interest among buyers and an improving real estate market, both of which have made it easier to dispose of our distressed assets. Hopefully, as we enter the second half of this year, we will see the same level of interest we saw last year and sell a few more of our larger problem assets. Early stage delinquencies, those 30 to 89 days past due, ended the quarter at $22.1 million. That's a 32% reduction from the prior quarter and down 55% from the same quarter last year. Our banks continue to do a great job of working these credits and keeping borrowers current. Net charged-off loans were another bright spot this quarter, totaling only $1 million. Through June, total charge-offs this year were $5.9 million with recoveries of $2.7 million, leaving net charged-offs at $3.2 million for the first 6 months. As a percentage of loans, net charge-offs for the first half of 2013 are tracking at a 16 basis point annualized rate, far below both our goal for the year of 50 basis points, and last year when net charge-offs totaled 83 basis points. If net charge-offs continue at this run rate in the second half, they would approach levels we customarily achieved prior to the credit crisis. OREO expense increased by $2.1 million in the quarter to $3 million, with $1.6 million of the increase coming from the write-down of 1 property. We expect this expense will continue to fluctuate each quarter depending on the volume of sales and the timing of appraisals and evaluations of our OREO properties. Nevertheless, OREO expense through the first half of the year of $3.9 million is 57% below where we were at this same time last year, and also below our internal projections. Our allowance for loan and lease loss ended the quarter at 3.56%, a reduction from the prior quarter's 3.84%. The acquisition of First State Bank resulted in a 17 basis point reduction in the ALLL because no loan loss reserve was carried over after the transaction was closed. The allowance for loan and lease loss will be impacted in a similar way this next quarter as we bring on North Cascades National Bank's loan portfolio without an accompanying loan loss reserve. The most -- in the most recent quarter, we provisioned $1.1 million, slightly more than our net charge-offs this quarter. This compares to a loan loss provision of $2.1 million to prior quarter and $7.9 million in the prior-year quarter. As credit quality trends continue to improve, we should see loan loss provisions remain at these lower levels through the rest of 2013. Once again, this quarter, we saw further improvement to our net interest margin. For the quarter, our net interest margin increased 16 basis points from 3.14% the prior quarter to 3.30% in the most recent quarter. The past 2 quarters' increases to our net interest margin have been directly attributable to higher yields on our investment portfolio, primarily driven by lower premium amortization. After declining by $1.9 million in the first quarter, we saw premium amortization drop an additional $3 million in the second quarter. With refinance volume declining significantly during the latter half of this last quarter, we would expect a corresponding decrease in premium amortization to take place this next quarter. This should set the stage for additional expansion of our net interest margin in the near term. In addition, we can continue to grow our loan portfolio at a reasonable growth rate. This would also allow for an increase in the margin. So as we begin the second half of the year, the net interest margin should be one ratio that continues to get better. Although the net interest margin had a nice increase in the quarter, loan yields continued to decline. For the quarter, yield on our loan portfolio averaged 5.04%, a decrease of 6 basis points. About the only positive takeaway is the pace of the reduction in loan yields is beginning to slow down. As we stated last quarter, our expectations were that the compression in loan yields would decline at a slower pace. And that seems to be holding true. Unfortunately, the pricing competition for good quality loans remains intense, placing constant pressure on loan yields. And I don't expect that to change much in the foreseeable future. Offsetting some of the decrease in loan yield was a 3 basis point decline in funding costs during the quarter. At quarter-end, our cost on total paying liabilities was 43 basis points compared to 46 basis points the prior quarter. Although the reduction still lagged behind the 6 basis point decrease in loan yields this quarter, the gap did narrow, which definitely helped us out. In this interest rate environment, we battle for every additional basis point of yield or reduction in interest expense that we can get. Net interest income increased substantially in the second quarter to $55 million. That's an increase of $4.5 million or 9%. This was the first increase in net interest income in 8 quarters and the main reason for our increased performance. The combination of loan growth, better investment yields and lower funding costs all contributed to the vast improvement in net interest income. Interest income on commercial loans increased by $1.2 million. And investment income was $3.5 million higher in the quarter. Going forward, if we maintain the momentum established this quarter on the loan front, we see continued expansion of revenues from our investment portfolio. Our net interest income could accelerate further in the second half of the year. Noninterest income increased by $272,000 on a linked-quarter basis, to $23.3 million, and was up $1.4 million from the same quarter last year, which is an increase of 7%. Service charge fee income increased by $1.3 million or 11% during the quarter, and just about offset the decrease in fees on sold loans, which declined by $1.6 million as a result of the reduction in refinance volume. The increase in service charge fee income was encouraging and demonstrates the value we receive from an expanding customer base. In addition, the second and third quarters are traditionally stronger quarters to generate that type of fee income. We expect fee income from refinance activity to drop further in the second half of the year. Already, in the latest quarter, our purchase volume overtook refinances 55% to 45%. This was a significant swing from the prior quarter when purchases only represented 36% of total originations compared to 64% in refinances. Once again, the reduction in premium amortization should hopefully offset any reduction in mortgage origination income going forward. Our noninterest expense for the quarter increased by $5 million from the prior quarter. As previously stated, $2.1 million of the increase came in OREO expense. And $2.6 million of the increase was in other expenses, a majority of which was due to increases in New Market Tax Credit expense of $816,000 and again, acquisition expenses of $571,000. Our bank divisions continue to do an excellent job of controlling the cost of most other line items under their direct control. Compensation and benefit expense, also the largest expense for a financial institution, was also well-contained, increasing by only 5% from a year ago, including the addition of First State Bank. In summary, it was a very good quarter and a strong first half of the year. It was great to see the volume of loan production generated in the quarter. And the pipeline looks good as we begin the third quarter. There's a cautious optimism that premium amortization could see further significant declines in the second half of the year, which would further enhance revenues. First State Bank has now joined our family of banks. We're excited to close the North Cascades National Bank transaction on July 31. Both of these banks are going to be great additions to our company. So in closing, it was a fun quarter with a number of positive trends that we think can continue through the rest of 2013. And that ends my formal remarks on the quarter. So we will now open the lines up and take some questions.