Michael J. Blodnick
Analyst · SunTrust Robinson Humphrey
Welcome, and thank 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 third quarter of 2013. Net income for the quarter was $25,600,000, an increase of 32% compared to the $19,400,000 earned in last year's quarter. Diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $0.35, that compares to $0.27 in the prior year's quarter, a 30% increase. On July 31, we closed the North Cascades Bancshares Inc. transaction and are excited to have North Cascades Bank as part of the company. As with First State Bank of Wheatland, we believe both these franchises will bring great things to Glacier Bancorp in the future. During the quarter, the company incurred $335,000 in onetime, non-recurring acquisition expenses. In addition, we recorded a loss on the sale of investments of $403,000. This total of $738,000 in expenses was the extent of our onetime non-recurring items recorded during the quarter. We earned a return on assets for the quarter of 1.27% and a return on tangible equity of 12.85%, as our performance ratios continue to improve, as they have each quarter so far in 2013. Looking back on the third quarter, just about everything we track or score moved in a positive direction. It was another strong quarter, operationally, that produced increased earnings, improved performance metrics, solid balance sheet growth, a much higher net interest margin and better credit quality. Loan growth once again surprised to the upside, as we produced organically the largest increase in over 5 years. The last 2 quarters we have generated a 12% annualized increase in our loan portfolio, excluding the 2 bank acquisitions. If we include the 2 new banks, our loans are up 18% since the first of the year. In the near term, we don't expect to replicate this level of growth as we enter into what normally is a slower period for generating loans. Nevertheless, the last 2 quarters' loan production has been excellent and far exceeded our projections for this year. Although we believe loan growth was likely to slow down in the fourth quarter, the pipeline still has some decent volume that should allow us to maintain some of the momentum we've built in the first 9 months of the year. Top line revenue growth, primarily our net interest income, increased dramatically on both a linked and prior-year-quarter basis. The significant increase in interest income during the quarter was especially encouraging, as premium amortization once again decreased and the growth in loans for the past 2 quarters, especially commercial loans, both helped to increase interest income from the prior quarter by 12%. Credit quality continued to trend in the right direction, as delinquencies, although slightly higher than the previous quarter, remained at a low level. Non-performing assets and OREO expense also decreased from the previous quarter. During the quarter, we added another quality bank, with a very talented group of individuals and directors, to Glacier Bancorp. North Cascades Bank became our 13th bank division, and as with First State Bank last quarter, we've already begun the integration process of incorporating them into our company. As always, with any acquisition, some noise was created in both our balance sheet and income numbers. For some of the more significant factors of the financials, I have removed the impact of both new banks' additions in order to give a clearer picture of our performance without the impact of the new banks. As I stated previously, for the second quarter in a row, we've produced terrific loan growth that exceeded our expectations. Our goal for the year was to hopefully increase the size of our loan portfolio by 2%. Through the first 9 months of this year, loans have grown by 6%, excluding the loan portfolios we acquired from the 2 new banks. In the third quarter, loans grew by $112 million or 12% annualized, again, excluding the addition of North Cascades Bank. Most of the gains in loans during the quarter came from commercial real estate and commercial and industrial loans. In addition, most of the increase in construction lending also came from the commercial area. Another positive during the quarter was the stabilization in residential construction lending, where for the first time in over 5 years, we saw an increase of 9% for the quarter to $79 million. We hope this will be the first of many quarters that this category moves higher. With the addition of North Cascades Bank, our ag portfolio also grew an additional 19%, up to $284 million and has nearly doubled in size since the first of the year. With the growth we experienced in ag and commercial and industrial loans this year, we've done a nice job of diversifying our loan portfolio away from our reliance on real estate. The growth in loans also allowed us to significantly slow down security purchases, especially CMOs, and notably shrink the overall size of the investment portfolio by $402 million during the quarter. The few dollars of securities we did purchase were in municipals and corporate bonds. One of our goals at the beginning of the year was to reposition our balance sheet and reduce our dependence on the investment portfolio. I think we've done a good job so far in this area, as investments, in the latest quarter end, made up 41% of our assets versus 47% in last year's third quarter. Our goal is to further decrease securities as a percent of assets and, over time, move that percentage to a more normal historic range of between 20% and 30% of assets. However, as refinanced volume has slowed dramatically, we won't see the same level of decline in the CMO portfolio in the near term that we saw this past quarter. Non-interest bearing deposits increased by $85 million or 7% during the quarter, once again, excluding the addition of North Cascades Bank. We not only had terrific growth in the balances of these accounts, but the number of new checking account relationships also exceeded our expectations during the quarter. All of our banks put a lot of hard work and effort into generating and maintaining these core account relationships, and that effort shows up in these results. In addition, as we analyze the growth in our non-interest income the past couple of quarters, much of the credit could be directly attributed to the great number -- the greater number of transaction accounts we have generated and the fee income that they produced. Excluding the impact of North Cascades Bank and wholesale deposits, interest-bearing deposits decreased $81 million or 2%. 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, and we continue to see a shift into other more liquid types of accounts. Credit quality metrics this quarter were mixed compared to the prior quarter, as we saw a further improvement in non-performing assets and OREO expense, but a slight uptick in delinquencies and net charge-offs, although non-performing assets decreased again this quarter to $125 million. We will probably not achieve the goal we established for ourselves at the beginning of the year of reducing our non-performing assets below $100 million by year end. NPAs are now down to 1.56% of assets, and although we saw a further reduction in NPAs during the quarter, the pace of decline has definitely slowed. Nevertheless, we continue to work these credits hard and believe that we will continue to lower the dollar amount of NPAs the next couple of quarters. Net charge-offs nearly doubled from the previous quarter, however, remained at a very manageable level of 13 basis points through 9 months of 2013. At this current pace, we should end the year far below the amount we thought we would charge off and, at the same time, have recovered a greater amount of past charge-offs than what we expected so far this year. Through September, total charge-offs this year were $9 million, with recoveries of $3.8 million, leaving net charge-offs at $5.2 million for the first 9 months of the year. Other real estate owned expense, which does tend to fluctuate, nonetheless, this past quarter was one of the lowest levels recorded by us since the credit crisis began. OREO expense decreased by $1.9 million in the quarter to $1 million. And year-to-date, we've expensed a total of $4.9 million, compared to $15.4 million in the same period last year, or a reduction of 68%. A stronger real estate market has limited the charges and expenses required to move some of the bank-owned properties this year, and as values continue to improve, we're seeing greater interest in many of these projects and properties. Hopefully, this trend will continue, since we still have $37 million of OREO to dispose of. Early-stage delinquencies ended the quarter at $26.4 million, that's up from $22.1 million the prior quarter. Most of the increase in delinquencies came from the legacy banks, since both of the new banks have very few delinquent loans. I think our delinquencies are now at their normal historical range and don't expect noticeable improvement from these levels. However, as we enter the winter months, it would not be surprising to see delinquencies rise the next 2 quarters, as seasonal workers and weather factors slow employment and usually cause past dues to increase. Our allowance for loan and lease loss ended the quarter at 3.27%, a reduction from the prior quarter's 3.56%. The acquisition of the 2 new banks the past 2 quarters has resulted in a 33 basis point reduction in the ALLL due to the accounting treatment which does not allow the loan loss reserves from these banks to be carried forward after the transactions were closed. In the most recent quarter, we provisioned $1.9 million, slightly less than our net charge-offs of $2 million this quarter. This compares to a loan-loss provision of $1.1 million the prior quarter and $2.7 million in the prior year quarter. If credit quality trends continue to improve, we should see loan-loss provisions remain at these lower levels through the rest of 2013 and into 2014. This quarter, we saw substantial improvement to our net interest margin. For the quarter, our net interest margin increased 26 basis points from 3.30% the prior quarter to 3.56% in the most recent quarter. This was the third consecutive increase to the margin, driven primarily by a shift in earning assets away from securities and into higher yielding loans and a reduction in premium amortization, which has given us significant boost to the yield on our investment portfolio. After declining by $1.9 million in the first quarter, we saw premium amortization drop an additional $3 million in the second quarter and $3.2 million in the third quarter. With refinanced volumes slowing significantly during the latter 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, if we can continue to grow our loan portfolio at a reasonable growth rate, this would also allow our margin to expand further. During the quarter, the net interest margin benefited by 6 basis points as a result of the purchase accounting adjustments attributed to the 2 bank acquisitions. So as we begin the final quarter of the year, the net interest margin, hopefully, will be one ratio that continues to get better. The yield on our loan portfolio increased for the first time since March of 2011. For the quarter, the yield on our loan portfolio averaged 5.06%, up 2 basis points from the prior quarter. As we stated last quarter, our expectations were that the reduction in loan yields would continue but at a slower pace. We were pleased to see an actual increase in loan yields during the quarter and hope this trend continues. Unfortunately, competition for good, quality loans remains intense, placing constant pressure on loan yields, and we don't expect that to change much in the foreseeable future. In addition to the higher loan yields, the margin also benefited from a 2 basis point decline in funding costs during the quarter. At quarter-end, our cost on total paying liabilities was 41 basis points, compared to 43 basis points the prior quarter. If we stay in the current low-rate environment, which appears likely, we should see further small reductions in funding costs coming primarily from retail CDs and Federal Home Loan Bank borrowings. One of the main highlights of the quarter was the significant improvement in net interest income. For the quarter, we generated net interest income of $69.5 million, that's an increase of $7.4 million or 12% from the previous quarter and an increase of $7.5 million from the prior year's quarter. This was the second consecutive increase in our net interest income after 8 consecutive quarters of decreases. Once again, a combination of loan growth, better investment yields and lower funding costs all contributed to the vast improvement in net interest income. A majority of the increase in interest income this quarter came from commercial loans, which gained $4.4 million, and investments, which were up $2.1 million. The growth in our commercial loan portfolio and the reduction in premium amortization were the key drivers for both of these asset categories producing greater interest income. We don't expect this same heightened level of increase again this quarter, but do look for interest income to continue to move higher from here. Non-interest income increased by $651,000, on a linked-quarter basis, to $23.9 million and was down $100,000 from the same quarter last year. Excluding the loss on the sale of investments, we had an increase of $1.3 million over the prior quarter and an increase of $300,000 in non-interest income over the year-ago quarter. Service charge and other fee income were up substantially, increasing by $2.1 million or 17% during the quarter, and more than offset the decrease in fees on sold loans or, otherwise, our mortgage origination fees, which declined by $451,000. Although we did see a reduction in mortgage origination fees during the quarter, the bigger story I felt was the terrific job our banks did in diminishing the impact to our fee income by maintaining a significant portion of the fee income for mortgage originations. With the slowdown in refinanced volume this past quarter and to only drop $450,000 in fee income, I thought was exceptional. As refinances have slowed, the percentage of purchases versus refinanced volume has completely flip-flopped since the first quarter. This past quarter, 64% of the dollar volume of mortgage originations came in the form of purchases, with refinances making up 36%. In the first quarter of this year, the percentages were exactly the opposite, with refinances making up 64% and purchases 36%. Our banks continue to work very hard at capturing more and more of this purchase volume, and their success was evident in this past quarter. Nevertheless, we still expect further decreases in mortgage origination income in future quarters, even if we successfully generate more purchase volume. The increase in service charge fee income was very encouraging and continues to demonstrate the value we receive from an expanding customer base. In addition, the third quarter is traditionally our best quarter to generate service charge income, as we benefit from tourist visiting our markets, as well as more activity among our own customer base. We continue to do a good job of controlling our non-interest expenses. Our expenses increased by $1.9 million from the prior quarter, but only $190,000 from the prior year quarter, with compensation and benefits as a result of the acquisitions accounting for all of the increase. The most recent quarter benefited from a decrease in OREO expense of $1.9 million, and $5.3 million when compared to the prior year quarter respectively. Our efficiency ratio of 54% was an improvement from both last quarter's 56% ratio and last year's 55% efficiency ratio. Our bank divisions continue to focus on operating as efficiently as possible, and again this quarter, those efforts paid off. In summary, with one quarter left in 2013, to date, we've been very pleased with what we have accomplished and hope to continue and keep this momentum going into 2014. We have now closed and are in the process of integrating our 2 new banks. We believe both additions will make significant contributions to the future success of Glacier Bancorp. It was great to see another quarter of surprisingly strong loan production, and the pipeline for this time of year remains encouraging. We think premium amortization could see further declines over the next couple of quarters, which would further enhance our net interest margin and interest revenues. Overall, it was a very good quarter and one that our people should be very proud of what they have been able to accomplish. And those are the end of my formal remarks, so we'll open the lines up for questions.