Peter Bartholow
Analyst · KBW
Thank you, George. Beginning in Slides 4 and 5 for the financial review. Net revenue, net income and EPS were all very strong linked quarter and year-over-year. This resulted from very favorable performance, building on the -- during the seasonally strong quarter on the great growth we had at the end of Q1.
In terms of quarter earnings power and NIM, this is exceptional performance again, resulting from superior operating leverage and the improvement in credit costs.
Net revenue growth was driven by obviously growth in loans with a relatively stable net interest margin. Our solid NIM results from the strong growth in both LHI, loans held for investment, and loans held for sale and has provided for us a much improved composition of earning assets and the growth in net interest income. I will have more to say later on the net interest margin.
We had good growth in noninterest income, primarily in the mortgage warehouse, also with loan swap fees and a gain of $400,000 from the sale of ORE.
In terms of expense management, we've seen a significant reduction in legal, professional, problem asset recovery and ORE credit [ph] costs with the improvement in credit quality metrics.
Loan growth showed strength across a wide range of lines of businesses and regions, reaching $6.2 billion at quarter end. That's near record growth for us of $442 million or 7.6% from the very high level at the end of the first quarter.
Loan held for sale balances remained very high, with a small increase from Q1, net of $100 million in average participation sold during the quarter. Obviously, we've designed our business to build a larger customer base while managing the balance sheet concentration. With growth to $2.4 billion at quarter end, net of $245 million in participations sold, we expect strong performance in Q3. And we anticipate the addition of new customers and loan purchase participants in Q3.
For Q2, we had continued improvement in the funding profile, with small growth -- with a small reduction in costs of both deposits and total funding. The change in the funding mix was very important, with DDA growth of 10% from Q1 and 28% year-over-year in average balances and reflecting the success of our Treasury Management focus.
The balance at June 30, I'll note, was $155 million or 8% above the average for Q2, also giving us a great start for Q3.
Credit quality cost and trends, the trends obviously remained very favorable. Total credit costs including ORE valuation charges, have improved 28% from Q1 and are down 53% from the year ago quarter.
We're seeing significant improvement in NPA and net charge-off ratios, and George will cover those in more detail.
On Slide 6, the quarterly income statement reflects excellent progression quarterly in the year-over-year growth in net revenue, net income and EPS I mentioned. We see EPS growth of $0.44 to $0.76 over those 5 quarters, producing a 5-year CAGR of 19%. Obviously, the performance is driven by the growth in held for investment and held for sale loans, coupled with very good spread and NIM.
Provision is approaching normalized levels and down sharply with improved outlook for credit metrics over the remainder of the year. George mentioned that our ROA at 1.40% and ROE at 18.1% reached new record highs.
Slide 7, average balances, yields and rates, loan growth and the funding profile were drivers of a very high NIM and the growth in net interest income.
Loan growth has had a major impact in maintaining the yield on earning assets compared to industry trends. Yield reductions directly related to growth in LHI and LHS were noted, but they were very modest. The effective use of growth in DDA and all deposits, coupled with the ability to utilize borrowed funds to support held for sale balances has obviously been beneficial. We did see a minor increase of 5 basis points in the net interest margin from Q1 due exclusively or primarily to the growth and changes in held for investment yields and the effect of national mortgage rates.
We saw LHS yields down just 10% -- excuse me, 10 basis points and held for investment yields, just 6 basis point decrease.
Held for investment has grown by $1 billion from the second quarter of '11, with yields maintained at almost 5%. Pricing is more competitive, but we've been successful with yield-related fees, enhanced spread to the index and floor protection. I think this clearly demonstrates the benefit of our growth model, where strong growth in loans has had an impact on NIM, not as a result of business weakness.
Average balances on Slide 8. You see held for investment growth has remained well above industry levels and ahead of our own expectations. Held for investment growth of 5% from Q1 again was building off very strong growth at the end of Q1. DDA and total deposit growth are strong in this seasonally important quarter, and linked quarter growth in equity, 20% annualized, occurred because of very strong returns.
On Slide 9, on quarter imbalances, we saw exceptional growth in the stockholders' equity again of 21% year-over-year and 20% annualized in the second quarter. As good as those numbers are, they did not keep pace with the growth in loans and did factor into the equity offering that we've reported.
The excellent LHI growth that occurred over the course of the year leaves us in great shape for Q3. We had a quarter imbalance of $284 million or 4.8% over the second quarter average. We had very high held for sale balance at quarter end. We do see that those balances build at the end of the quarter. But we kept them partially in check with an increase in participation sold of $245 million. Obviously, we've had very strong growth in deposits, especially in DDA.
We refer you now to Slides 11, 12 and 13. The CAGR in net revenue and net income are exceptionally high, 22% and 36%, respectively, obviously driven by the growth in loans and deposits, shown on Slide 12 -- or 13, excuse me, and with the EPS growth CAGR in the 6 months growth rates, depicted on Slide 12. George?