Good day, everyone. Welcome to the earnings call for Western Alliance Bancorporation for the Second Quarter 2020. Our speakers today are Ken Vecchione, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Dale Gibbons, Chief Financial Officer. You may also view the presentation today via webcast through the Company’s website at www.westernalliancebancorporation.com. The call will be recorded and made available for replay after 2:00 p.m. Eastern, July 17, 2020, through August 17, 2020, at 9 a.m. Eastern by dialing 1-877-344-7529 using the passcode 10146019. The discussion during this call may contain forward-looking statements that relate to expectations, beliefs, projections, future plans and strategies, anticipated events or trends and similar expressions concerning matters that are not historical facts. The forward-looking statements contained herein reflect our current views about future events and financial performance and are subject to risks, uncertainties, assumptions and changes in circumstances that may cause our actual results to differ significantly from historical results and those expressed in any forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from historical or expected results are included in this presentation, the related earnings release and our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by law, the Company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Now for the opening remarks, I would like to now turn the call over to Ken Vecchione. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, and welcome to Western Alliance’s second quarter earnings call. Joining me on the call today are Dale Gibbons and Tim Bruckner, our Chief Financial Officer and Chief Credit Officer. I will first provide an overview of our quarterly results and how we are managing the business in this current economic environment. And then, Dale will walk you through the Bank’s financial performance. Afterwards, we will open the line to take your questions. I’d like to focus on three trends that were present this quarter and will continue throughout the year: PPNR strength; credit provisioning expense; and balance sheet growth. Combined, these trends will support earnings and capital growth and dividend distribution throughout 2020 and 2021. Starting with our second quarter results. Western Alliance generated net income of $93.3 million and EPS of $0.93, which was up 12% over the previous quarter. Tangible book value per share of $27.84 was an increase of 4.2% over the previous quarter and 12.9% year-over-year. Driving these results was record operating pre-provision net revenue of $194.7 million, up 27.7% year-over-year and 19.1% quarter-over-quarter, with operating PPNR ROA growth of 18 basis points to 2.56%, which benefited from recognition of $13.9 million of payment protection program net fees. These results demonstrate that the long-term earnings power of Western Alliance core business remains strong under the current economic and market volatility and will support significant ongoing capital accumulation, provide financial flexibility to fund balance sheet growth and accommodate changes to the allowance for credit losses for revisions to the economic outlook. In the quarter, we recorded provision for credit losses of $92 million versus $51.2 million in Q1, which was primarily attributable to changes in macroeconomic forecast assumptions and net charge-offs of $5.5 million. Dale will go into more detail in a bit on the…

Thanks, Ken. Over the last three months, Western Alliance generated net income of $93.3 million or $0.93 per share. As mentioned, net income was impacted by elevated provision expense for credit losses, driven by the adoption of CECL in Q1, and changes in the economic outlook during the quarter. Net interest income increased $29.4 million, primarily as a result of loan growth and lower rates and liabilities as interest expense was cut in half. Operating non-interest income fell $5.2 million to $11.1 million from the prior quarter as lower levels of financial activity generated lower -- fewer fees. We also benefited from several non-operating items during the period, including a recovery of approximately 40% or $4.4 million of the mark-to-market loss on preferred stock holdings we recognized in Q1. Additionally, bank owned life insurance was restructured, resulting in an increase of $5.6 million as we surrendered and reinvested lower-yielding policies. In addition to this gain, this should moderately increase BOLI revenue prospectively. Finally, non-interest expense declined $5.7 million, primarily from an increase in deferred compensation expense of $3.3 million related to PPP loan originations, plus a 52% decrease in deposit costs and a 64% decline in business development and travel expenses. Strong ongoing balance sheet momentum, coupled with diligent expense management drove operating pre-provision net revenue of $194.7 million, which was up 27.7% year-over-year. We believe it’s the most relevant metric to evaluate the ongoing earnings power of the bank. Our strong PPNR covered an 80% increase in provision costs from Q1 to $92 million, while driving EPS, up 12% to $0.93 on a linked quarter basis. Turning now to our interest drivers. Investment yields increased 4 basis points from the prior quarter to 3.02%. However, the overall quarterly portfolio yield decreased by 32 basis points from the prior year,…

Thanks Dale. I would now like to briefly update you on the current status of a few exposures to the industries generally considered to be the most impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. During the last two weeks of the quarter, Tim Bruckner, the credit administration team and I conducted the most extensive quarterly portfolio review process in the Bank’s history. The review covered 95% of WAL’s outstanding loan balances, excluding purchase residential mortgages. Our $2 billion Hotel Franchise Finance business focused on select service hotels represents approximately 8.2% of the loan portfolio. The financial flexibility of these borrowers is maximized by working with financially strong institutional operating offers, the deep industry experience expertise and conservative underwriting structures focused on loan to cost. Occupancy rates are tracking national averages currently around 46%, which have tripled compared to the lows in April of around 15% and are now only a few percentage points short of fully covering estimated operating expenses. At approximately 55% occupancy, select service hotels are also estimated to cover amortizing debt service. As a testament to the operating models of the select service hotels, revenue per available room has fallen 55%, but they have been able to shrink their cost structure by over 40%. And as a result, the typical hotel is operating at breakeven. Nearly 85% of our hotel portfolio is either paying as originally agreed or on a proactive payment deferral plans that bridge into 2021. We feel positive about the trajectory of the portfolio and that our proactive deferral strategy will produce relatively stronger credit performance given the active support of our sponsors have demonstrated through the material upfront payments made to receive deferral plans. To augment the strategy, we nearly doubled the reserve of the portfolio this quarter and increased the ACL to loans ratio…

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] First question today comes from Casey Haire of Jefferies.

So, first question on the hotel book. The deferral strategy, you guys there, it looks it’s more than six months. Can you just give us some color on what the average term is? And how far in advance have you guys deferred these? And then, what is -- the occupancy sounds like it is near sort of breakeven levels? What is in your reserve build forecast going forward? Do you have it reaching that 55% level? Just some color there, given that this obviously is of concern?

Yes. I think the hotel franchise finance book of business is the most misunderstood, and our approach is not fully understood as well. So, let me take a half -- a step backwards and give you a larger picture as to what we’re doing and why we’re doing it and then get directly to your questions there, Casey. One, first misconception is deferrals are a good thing. Okay? Payment deferrals require cash collateral or paid out of debt upfront. They prove or provide liquidity to the project. They show from the borrower’s point of view, project commitment, which is very important, or they flush out any early problems we need to deal with. So, when we say we have a six plus six program, what that means is our borrower gave us six months of payments upfront that we deposited into a bank account, which we pull out on a monthly basis as debt service coverage ratio -- debt service coverage is due -- principal and interest, I should say, is due. And they don’t get to their six-month deferral process until six months from today. So, that’s what six plus six means. All right? And what we’re trying to do here as we look for people who provide the liquidity and commit to the projects, again, it helps us understand if they do not want to do those things, then we need to take fast action to preserve the 40% of equity that’s sitting in front of our debt. That is the philosophy around our approach. A specific answer to your question today, about 51% of our portfolio is in the six plus six referral bucket, 19% is in the 3 plus 3 bucket, about 9% is in the -- is paying as agreed, and another 3% is in…

I would add a couple of things, Tim Bruckner. First, I’d say, this was not the easiest thing to execute. I don’t want to downplay that. This took a concerted effort of our people. And initial discussions with borrowers were difficult, because we’re solving for a period significantly longer than most viewed COVID in the first 90 days of the crisis. And so, we went out from the start and said, let’s solve for periods sufficient to return to stabilization. And that’s what we did. And we solved that not just with our money and our deferral, but with contributions from our very-significant sponsorship in the space. We did it because it was the right thing to do. Our borrowers did it because they could do it. And I think, that’s a very important point on this. And we have so many now that come back and say, I’m so glad that we took this approach.

So 50% of our portfolio, slightly more, we’ll have to deal with these issues again in middle of 2022, all right, another 20% -- 2021 sorry. Another 20% or so, we’ll deal with towards the end of the year. Okay? So, we’ve given enough of a runway here. And this was the most important thing that we could do to help our clients is to give them a long runway to come back to us at the operating levels that they previously experienced. Additionally, as Tim said, they resisted. But once they talked to us, once they saw what was happening, they saw some of the wisdom in the approach that we deployed. Casey, did I answer your questions there?

Yes, yes, yes. No, that was pretty comprehensive. I’ll have to go back and read it myself, but that was very good. Dale, a question for you on the NIM. Slide 6, by my math on the spot rates, it looks it really gets about -- it exited the quarter at 3.90. Does that sound about right? Number one. And then, number two, what is that loan yield spot rate of 4.66%? What does that presume for, for the PPP loans? At 5.02 in the quarter in 2Q, that’s a lot higher than what we’ve seen from peers. So, just some color there?

Yes. So, that assumes 5.02% for the quarter as well. So, what we did in terms of recognizing PPP revenue is, we’ve estimated doing the effective interest method in GAAP, how long are these loans going to last. And from information what we have and what our borrowers are thinking and how they’re behaving, we think that the average life of these is going to be about 8 months. And so, we’re taking this PPP average loan fee, which is about 2.7% and we’re recognizing two-thirds of that really over this 8 months and then there’s a tail for the part that might not pay off. So, you should expect us to show something of a level low yield on the PPP that I think some others are doing maybe a little different approach. I would hope that our number would be on the higher side of where you are in the higher 3s for the quarter. But frankly, it kind of remains to be seen a bit. I mean, we’ve had this massive increase in core deposit. We think that we’re on track for another strong quarter of core deposit growth in the third quarter, while the low balances won’t be moving as much, because we’re dealing with the pay-downs on PPP as we originate credit in other high-quality categories. So, that’s going to help us in terms of inventory build, but it doesn’t help us in terms of the NIM, but we think that’s going to be really important in 2021.

Great. Thank you. I’ll step back.

The next question comes from Brad Milsaps of Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Hey. Good morning, guys.

Good morning.

Dale, I just wanted to make sure I understand the PPP fees on a go-forward basis. $1.9 billion of loans should imply $57 million in gross fees. I think you mentioned that. Net of origination costs, you had about 43 left, you recognized about 14 this quarter. Can you help me understand for the geography of where some of those fees will show up in terms of NII versus the reduction in operating expenses going forward? I mean, I think you’d get to the same place overall, but maybe starting from a little lower point than I thought.

Yes. I think that’s probably the biggest delta. So, we did $1 billion -- just under $1.9 billion, $1.860 billion in loans. We had some people surrender at a couple of early pays. And so, that number is down to about $1.7 billion today. We’ve received fees of $49 million from the SBA, not 57. And then, we netted certain costs against that. And that’s how we get to the $43 million. Going forward, I’m not looking for any cost relief obviously, because origination process has ended. But, I’m not looking for it. But so, the $3.3 million that we’ve highlighted in the release, yes, I think that’s going to come back up in compensation expense. So, that is going to rise again. And then, the remaining -- so that gets to a net $43 million, which we took a third of that in the second quarter; we’re probably going to take another third of that in the third quarter; and then, we’re going to have a tail into the fourth and maybe dribble down a little bit into the first of next year in terms of the kind of recognition. So, I think the two things, one is maybe that dollar amount was a little bit higher because some of these were very short term or refunded; and then, two, the average loan fee was shy of 3%, it was about 2.7.

So, bottom line you’ve still got $29 million to recognize, most of that’s going to come through net interesting income?

Yes. That will come through net interest income.

Got it. Understood. And then, just to -- the follow-up on the margin. You noted in the deck, you’ve got 78% of the loan book essentially acting as a fixed rate. Thus far, I mean, I know it’s early, but how challenging has it been to defend some of those floors? Obviously, there’s probably not a lot of loans moving from bank to bank right now. So, just kind of curious, kind of your thoughts on being able to defend those loan floors as we kind of move through the year?

Actually, it has been less challenging than it has been in other downward environments. And I will tell you that today -- and this is unusual. I mean, two or three years ago, when we put on a loan with the floor, we’ve had -- the loan docs are in there. And it forces to disclose and discuss with the borrower. But, it triggers 25 basis points to 50 basis points below the variable rate. And so, it’s like, it’s a little bit of an afterthought. It’s probably not going to hit me. Most people thing loans are -- rates are going to plummet as they did. Today that’s not the case. Today how we reduce written is it’s usually as a LIBOR floor assumption of 1%. Well, LIBOR is under 20 basis points today. So, they go in knowing, okay, this loan is priced at L plus 325, and L is never considered to be below one. So, out of the gate, the floor is what’s active and it’s going to be active for until LIBOR gets above 1, and then we can go to variable rate structure.

Surprisingly, we’re not losing business because of the floors.

Got it. And then final question, just looking for some of the segment data. I did notice, there was -- it looked like a negative provision in the other NBL category, in the quarter that reserve actually went down. Any color there to kind of relative kind of what you did with the rest of the portfolio?

Yes. It’s not so much a portfolio thing. It’s that -- when we updated for the CECL outlook and the migration from Mark Zandi’s analysis to a consensus forecast, it resulted in different allocations for certain sectors. And C&I loans in particular kind of came down in part in that regard.

Okay, great. Thank you.

The next question today comes from Timur Braziler of Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning, guys. Maybe we can start on the credit migration into special mention this quarter. It certainly didn’t seem like that was the primary reason for the second quarter provision, I guess, looking ahead, how should we think about future credit migration relative to the current allowance? If there’s future migration in the special mention, is that already pretty much included in the existing expectations? And I guess, more specifically, if there’s migration out of special mentioned and into classified, would that drive incremental necessity to build allowance from here?

Yes. So, as I kind of alluded to, the loss rates from SM loans does not have a high correlation in terms of migration. And that’s reflected in our formulas. We don’t see that in the math and in the emergence of lots. And so, migration to SM is usually driven by a liquidity question. So, even if we had a loan that was at a 20% loan to value, but there’s a liquidity tightening going on at that borrower, that’s going to go to SM, even though the risk of loss most people would say would be essentially zero. So, in terms of what could migrate to SM, I think we kind of highlighted that we thought we’d see some SM migration in the hotel book, because they’re under liquidity stress, as those -- as occupancy rates really dropped in that quarter. Now, if you go from there to classified or to non-performing, it has become a different category. And those loss assumptions do generally climb. When we move to a classified asset, we’re going to look at the collateral behind it and we’re going to recognize a reserve, based upon are we underwater or not relative to expectation. So, that could be a different result. But, SM migration really has almost no effect on provisioning.

Okay. That’s helpful. Thank you. And then, maybe switching to the technology portfolio, certainly encouraging to see that over 50 clients, over a $1 billion was raised in the quarter. I’m looking specifically at the 14% of tech loans last quarter that had under six months of liquidity. Were those included in $1.4 billion of capital raising activity? And I guess, those companies that are coming up to that kind of deadline, are they having as easy success raising incremental rounds, and what’s happening to the valuations, if they are?

Yes. So, some of that money was raised for those customers that were in SM last quarter that were able to raise liquidity and then move out. That’s a constant number that kind of moves in and moves out. Relatively speaking, the Tech & Innovation book stayed relatively flat in terms of the SM movement. So, that was very encouraging to me, because it means that the investors are continuing to be confident in the projects or investments they’ve made, and are continuing to put capital into their companies. So, I hope that answers.

I would add just -- Tim Bruckner Quarter-over-quarter, we actually saw improvements in businesses with RML, less than 6 months, if you look quarter one to quarter two. And so, what we’re seeing is a high level of activity. In some cases, the rounds are smaller. But, we’re seeing sustained sponsor support and really strong activity in the sector. So, quarter-over-quarter, RML less than 6 improved Q1 to Q2.

Yes. I’ll give you two pieces of interesting facts about our book, which -- for the Tech & Innovation. The median equity invested in our portfolios is six times our loan commitment today. And it is 10.6 times the current outstanding loan balance. So, it gives you a sense of how much equity is going into the companies and also, on the fact that even though we give a commitment -- about half of that commitment is not drawing down on at all, because they have so much equity. And that leads us to why we have 2 to 2.5 times, depending on what time of year you look at, deposit to loans in the Tech & Innovation business.

And then, in the gaming book, I guess I’m kind of surprised to see the level of allowance allocated for that portfolio relative to currently adversely graded loans. Is that an indication that things could still get choppy in the future or is that formulaic? Because it didn’t seem like there was much expected loss content from your prepared remarks?

Yes. So first, we have no Las Vegas Strip exposure. Okay? And we mostly have drive to and local markets. And what’s interesting here is, they are outperforming the same period of 2019 in their initial re-openings. So, May 2020 was better than May 2019. We do have one or two properties where they’re just performing at COVID plan. And that is not -- that’s the worst that we can say that we’re pretty happy about that. Some of our gaming establishments are posting win per day at their slot machines that are 3 times the normal average level. So, in this book, we have -- 36% of the book has had an interest only deferral. We have not had any principal deferrals. Part of what you see on our calculation is manually driven by the model. Of course, there are some subjective input put in on top, overlays for what we think is occurring in our book of business. But, our book has fairly strong -- I should say lower leverage than you think. Generally, the leverage in our book is just under 3 times debt to EBITDA. You go back to the last crisis, and anything over -- or under a 4.5 to 5 times debt to EBITDA has 90% survival rate. So, right now, we like our book is doing well. We are encouraged that there is a return here by our gaming clients, customers. And I also think, it shows well for that when the economy opens up again, how quickly people want to come back out and socialize and be in settings with other people.

I think part of what you’re referring to Timur is basically the process of using formulas that were developed during the financial crisis and extrapolating them to today, which has a different circumstance and a different underwriting and different kind of risk profile entirely. With 95% of our properties open and what we’re seeing in the low LTV, we are in this sector. I would put my bet that when we’re done with this pandemic and as we look past, look backward in terms of what happened, the ACL will sector will have been shown to be higher than it needed to be.

Go ahead.

I’d just add. the pace of all these things in the currency of these events. We’re seeing in late May and then in June, there’s very robust response to the industry, the high volumes. And though very, very positive, as Dale was saying, the ACL is based on historical. We’re seeing results that are outperforming what we have seen historically. And that’s another way to look at it.

And then, just sorry, one more modeling question for Dale, just average PPP loans for the quarter?

I’m sorry what was that? Average PPP?

Average PPP balances for the quarter.

$1.8 billion.

The next question comes from Chris McGratty of KBW.

Dale or Ken, I just wanted to go back to loan growth for a second. Completely understand that the near-term low-risk growth strategy and PPP dynamics, perhaps it lasts couple quarters. I’m wondering kind of your thoughts on how we should be thinking about loan growth beyond maybe the next couple of quarters and remind us kind of the targets that you’re setting forth for growth?

Yes. So, I think as I said in my prepared remarks, it’ll be somewhat stable to where we are now when you consider the runoff of the PPP as Dale talked about being replaced by our traditional organic loan growth. As we emerge out of Q4, we haven’t done our full planning yet, but I would think that it’s going to be no less than what we normally do, which is $600 million to $800 million per quarter. Right now, I am encouraged that our pipeline is beginning to build. And I arrived at that conclusion by looking at the number of loans that come into our senior loan committee. Those are the largest loans in the bank. They’re coming in with -- from what I’ll call brand name companies that you would know very well at better terms, okay, and at better pricing. And so, we are encouraged by that right now that -- we have to wait for those loans to be approved and we have to of course wait for them to be drawn down. But as we emerge out of Q4, I would think we’re back to our normal run rate of $600 million to $800 million a quarter. And we’ll update you as we get closer into Q4 as we normally do for the next year out.

I think, this is going to firstly depend upon what happens to the situation. I mean, I’ve been encouraged by what seems to be a number of firms worldwide that claim to have an efficacious vaccine. And if that’s the case and if that is a rollout around the end of this year, maybe into Q1, I think that puts confidence in a different level. And I think, we have the background and we’re ready with the infrastructure and we’ve got the deposit capacity that we’ll be able to take advantage of an increase in demand as confidence resumes.

That’s great. Dale, in terms of deposits, so it sounds like loan growth treading water until the end of the year and then resumption. The comments about deposit growth just coming in, if I take out the PPP of $1.1 billion, you still grew $1.5 billion or so in the quarter. Could you just help us with the magnitude of what you’re likely to see in Q3 and Q4, just how big of the balance sheet is going to be I guess I’m trying to get my arms around?

Well, it’s not going to replicate what we did in the first half of the year, but we’re getting traction in our specialty business lines, we’re getting traction in mortgage warehouse, we’re getting traction in homeowner associations and we’re getting traction in tech plays. And all of those have demonstrated historical momentum. And the Q is good for what we’re seeing coming in.

Great. And then, if I could sneak last one. I just want to make sure I got the expense outlook right. So, the deposit costs came down to 3.5. Is that the right run rate that we should be using from here?

I think that’s fair.

Okay. And then, the moving pieces with the PPP’s comp, how do we think about just overall expenses? You were kind of flat quarter-on-quarter, but I know you’re making some investments, but any kind of direction on expenses?

Yes. I mean, we’re at 115 that included a credit for PPP originations. Of course, we’re not doing any more PPP originations. And as you mentioned, we’re going to be fairly flattish with paydowns from that program and expectation of offsets of development elsewhere. So, I don’t think we are going to be below 40% on efficiency for a long. I’m not sure we’re going to go right back to 42. I think that that may be a little bit. But, I don’t think we have many quarters that begin with the 3. As we see that come back, I mean, some of the expenses we saved, travel expenses, business development, that’s really kind of the circumstance that we’re in today. We do think that travel helps. We think it helps close deals. And so, we’re going to get back into that, when that’s feasible from a social distancing and state regulation scenario allows. So yes, we’re going to be back. And so, I wouldn’t look at the 115. I would look more at the 120 where we were before in terms of something closer to a run rate.

That’s perfect. Thanks, Dale.

The next question comes from Michael Young of SunTrust. Please go ahead.

Hey. Thanks for the question. I wanted to follow up first on the reserve. I think that’s gotten a lot of attention. I’ve had a lot of questions about it. I’m trying to get to a more comparable figure to maybe other banks, if we kind of back out mortgage warehouse and maybe the large resi mortgage purchase portfolio and PPP loans. And I think you guys might be more on par with other bank. But I didn’t know if there was a way to kind of disaggregate that where we could maybe see it on the more comparable basis.

Yes. This is talking our own book a little bit. But, when you think through our loan loss reserve and compare it to other banks, first, we always recognize that we don’t have a consumer franchise, and that’s where a lot of losses will begin to mount. That’s number one. Number two, I break our book into loan categories where we’ve had no losses, resort finance for $900 million, capital call lines $500 million, HOA services $300 million, warehouse lending $2.9 billion, that’s $4.5 billion that we’ve never had a loss in. Then, we’ve got another $4 billion where we’ve had limited loss in residential loans, consumer muni loans and nonprofits. That too adds up to about $4 billion. So, as you think about our funnel of $25 billion, you can take roughly $8 billion almost off the top for either no or low losses. Now, of course, you’re not going to do that, but I think you could add a small percentage of basis points to cover your losses against that $8 billion and then recalculate a reserve ratio, and I think you’ll find it will rise considerably above the 1.24%. Another thing that I think is helpful for you to think through when you look at our book, and this is how we look at it, our construction land and development which is about $2.2 billion. The book there is looking very strong and it is responding and acting differently than the prior cycle. First, we have about a third of that book sitting in lot banking. Right? And in lot of banking, we have a LTV of about 55% with well capitalized, highly liquid sponsors, i.e. private equity or hedge funds that are our guarantors here. So, that business is performing very well. We have no deferrals…

That makes sense. And just as we move forward, I mean, the main thing that would drive a big delta in the reserve would be losses in some of those historically low loss categories. Is that kind of the right way to think about that, or would it be the more significant downgrades in other categories that have had historical losses in the past?

Well, I mean, effectively, we’re in a scenario that you think you pay as incurred, right? Your ACL cover is what’s still in the book out there. Now, if we had a loss in a category that previously has been zero loss and we expected it to have zero that that would inform the analysis and the expectation of loss and what’s still out there. And, gosh, maybe you got that wrong, maybe there is a defect in what you’re doing there that is embedded in other loans. And so, in that sense, it can drive a higher provision. But for the most part, it’s almost pay as you go and sustain your level of reserve, based upon your outstanding balance and changes in the outlook of the economy.

Okay. And maybe just one last follow-up. I think, you guys have outlined a lot of detail on some of the most in-focus loan segments. But, are there any other sort of tangential categories that we should have on our radar screen? Maybe C&I relationship or something that might be related to one of the underlying categories, just that we should be thinking about or that should be addressed?

Yes. I think that’s a fair question. And inside of our CRE book, we have three components to it. We have industrial, and there 99% of our borrowers customers are paying their rent. We feel comfortable there. We have office, there 90% of our borrowers customers are paying rent. Great. But we have a CRE book for retail, about 700, just a touch over 700 million, there, 66% of our borrowers customers are paying rent compared to a 50% national average. Now, I’m not saying there’s a problem there. But you asked what are we focusing on, what has our elevated attention today? That is an area that has our elevated attention. We don’t have to move quickly on it, we’re watching it. It has -- it’s got a very -- it has a very strong debt service coverage ratio coming into the downturn of 1.8 times. It has a very low LTV of 48%. We don’t have much speculative loans there at all. So, I want to make sure I’m clear. Don’t run away saying there’s a problem. You asked where are we also watching? That is an area that we’re watching.

Okay. Thanks for all the color. I appreciate it.

The next question comes from David Chiaverini with Wedbush Securities. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks. My first question is on the mechanics of the deferral program. If we use the 6 and 6 program as an example, so the first six months, they’re accruing interest, you pull the P&I from the accounts that they deposited, everything’s normal. But after the first six months, as we get into 2021, what happens to those loans in terms of the treatment of it? Do they go on non-accrual or do they move to special mention or classify them? Just curious as to whether or not they’ll continue to accrue interest in the second half of the deferral period.

So, the loan docs have been modified. And so, the contractual payments now allow for that. There’s no new payment done -- due until, I am going to say, May of ‘21. So you’re right. I mean, we take the six months they paid up front of P&I and then we debit that. And we recognize that liability and we pay the loan down over that six months. Then for the next six months what we do is, payment regarding principal is deferred and interest payments that otherwise would have been due are now passed on to principal that do due usually at the end of the maturity of loan, could be earlier, could be a year out or two years out or something like that when that’s going to become due again. So, we’re going to continue to accrue income and increase effectively the balance on that loan for the next six months. It doesn’t move to any classification, unless we have information that there’s another problem with the situation that has since developed. But, otherwise it would stay like that. And then, after that expires, then they’re back to their standard P&I payment, as originally agreed.

I would add one -- just one thing on the interrelationship of our strategy and risk rating, because I don’t want this point to be messed. We -- one, there is not a direct relationship, is the deferral in effect or not, does not directly affect the risk rating. The weekly dialogue with our borrower and verification of liquidity to work through that plan, that is the important calculus in our risk rating methodology. So, all the time, we’re in constant and ongoing dialogue with the borrower, ensuring that they’re closing the gap and that there’s sufficient liquidity through the cycle. So, if we get to a point where those mechanics change and we feel differently about that, that’s when we would affect the risk rating. I wanted to be clear.

And then, shifting gears to the provision. As we think about the third quarter and clearly there’s a lot of uncertainty on the macro outlook. But, if we were to assume the macro outlook is stable, from here, you mentioned about how you’re expecting flat or low loan growth. What would that translate to in terms of provisioning? Are we thinking back towards -- I mean, I don’t want to be too optimistic and think of 2019 levels, but what should we, how should we think about provisioning over the next couple of quarters?

Yes. I wouldn’t go back to 2019 either, but I would think that it would fall off fairly significantly. And that is, as you saw this quarter. I mean, the entire reserve increase in provision resulted from a deterioration in the outlook from March 27th, the last Mark Zandi deal in the first quarter to where we are today. So, if that’s fairly stable, will be maybe as a bit of a pay as you go in terms of losses. So, if we incurred losses, we’re going to recognize that. If we have migration downward -- not into FM, but into substandard, into non-performing, that to trigger additional provisioning requirements and charge-offs. But other than that, if charges don’t really materialize, I think that number could drop rather dramatically actually over time.

Next question will come from Brock Vandervliet of UBS. Please go ahead.

Dale, how did you kind of thread the needle with the -- especially in the hotel book, the restructuring that you’re -- the deferral that you’ve structured, especially the longest term ones out to mid-21? How is that not a TDR?

Well, so, the kind of the special dispensation that came out from the FRB extended that window a little bit. So, prior to that rule change, banks could essentially do a 90-day deferral on anything without having a fall into a restructuring. So, there’s some temporary hardship. You can dole out go out over the life of a loan one 90-day push out. And that’s been the case -- gosh, since I’ve been doing this for decades. What they allow is that you could instead for this -- for credits that have been impaired by the pandemic, you could double that and you can take at six months. And so that’s all we’ve done is we said okay, well, that’s -- we can do six months, so we will allow the longest you can go and not have to fall into a restructuring situation. And then -- but then you’re paying again. And so, the amount of time that they go on a deferral is within that window and within the guideline that was allowed. Because even though it’s a year, they’ve prepaid six months of it.

There’s a difference between a solution to how we bridge the gap over the next year with them versus the deferral time. So, the solution is for a year. The deferral is six months of that year and the other six months they give us the cash up front.

And any more color on that negative provision? You touched on it in one of the earlier questions and one of the national businesses. And I think that there’s a 2 million one in the HOA business, it seems just unusual timing…

Yes. So, again, I mean, we go through this process and then, when we have all these multiple regressions and then you come back and you look at it say, okay, is this helpful? Are we learning something about this or is something kind of overstated? Well, the HOA loan portfolio is quite small. And so, it had been in a kind of a separate category caught up in C&I loans. Well, when you look at the HOA loans on a standalone basis, the idea that they’re going to have loss behavior, anything like a C&I loan or that kind of risk profile is really overstated. I don’t know, I’m sure there’s somebody somewhere. I don’t know anyone that’s ever lost $1 in an HOA loan. Because when you make an HOA loan, if the HOA becomes delinquent, you get to jump in front of the first position lender on whichever house it is and then HOA that’s delinquent. So, as if I don’t pay my HOA fees and that causes my HOA association to not pay, they can come after me and they get a lean in front of my first mortgage. So, your LTV on that loan is less than 1%. I mean, that’s just ridiculous. That’s just going to sit there forever. So, you get your money eventually. And so a loss rate really on HOA loans should be darn near zero. The reason why it wasn’t originally is because it was embedded in a larger group of C&I loans because it was so small, highlighted that change and addressed it with segment in that particular target.

The next question comes from Gary Tenner of D.A. Davidson. Please go ahead.

I just wanted to ask a question on the hotel deferral strategy. Ken, I think you mentioned that you had some sponsors, basically coming to you and saying, I’m glad we did it this way, the six plus six. That said, I’m sure they all would have happily taken a six-month deferral without paying six months of accelerated cash. So, how can you be confident that kind of post COVID there’s not any negative fallout in terms of business or relationship versus some of the sponsors with the Bank?

Okay. I think that’s a fair question. 66% of our book is with large sponsors, and those are sponsors with 25 or more hotels. And they generally deal with about -- 88% of their book is all connected to the top brands, the Marriott, the Hiltons the Hyatts. Right? And what they have seen from us is our deep knowledge of the industry. And people like working with other folks that have an understanding or the knowledge of the industry. I’m going to move to a different group for a second to highlight this as well. We are gaining a lot of share in warehouse funding. One of the most, if I had to pinpoint the most familiar reason, why we’re getting new customers is because our new customers are telling us that some of their incumbent banks don’t understand the space the way we do. And they don’t want to be dependent upon a lender that doesn’t understand the space and may do something irrational. Right? So, back to the hotel, we didn’t do anything that was irrational. We actually started with the relationship very early by saying, you always need to have a lot of equity in this relationship. That’s the first thing. We then worked through the models. Of course, we make sure there’s the right debt service coverage ratio, make sure they have the right NOI margins, make sure they’ve got a model that works in downtimes. And you’re seeing that now. You’re seeing the model work in down times as our customers are able to lower their ADR and take market share from the lower brands, alright, and move that market share to their hotels, because people will like to go to a nicer hotel for a lower price. Now, all those things connected together indicate that our customers like working with us and they know that we understand that market. And I think what you’re going to see here, and this will play out over time. So, you can ask me this question 6 months or 9 months from now, assuming that the economy is returning to normal. I think you’re going to see a lot of our smaller competitors that just do one or two hotels here and there smaller banks, I think they’re going to lose business to us. Because over the long-term, I think our clients want to deal with someone that know how to grow. And by the way, we’re still in business. We’re not shutting down lending. Okay? We’re not doing any right now because there are no deals. But, we have told our clients, if you’ve got a good deal, if you have an opportunity, we’re there to finance you, if you are working with us and showing commitment to your existing projects.

I call this tough love because I don’t think they didn’t like it to begin with, but I think we’ve kind of earned some respect with some of them. And the large majority of our borrowers have resources that are here for the long haul.

I think of it this way. There comes a certain point where your kids think you’re smart, then all of a sudden your kids think you’re really dumb, and then they return to say, boy, how did my dad and mom get so smart again? Well, I think this is what you’re going to see with our clients. They’re going to say, gee, we didn’t agree with this approach at first, but you know what? These guys have a smart approach to this, and it was a differentiated approach. And what was interesting that people don’t understand is, it put our clients in front of us to talk to us, right, before the other banks even had a conversation. So a lot of these banks did a 90-day open-ended deferral cookie cutter. You’ve got it. I’ll see you in 90 days. We came in with a solution. We said, wait a minute, you have a bigger -- problem we have a bigger problem. The industry has a bigger problem. The economy has a bigger problem. This is our viewpoint. This is why we see -- this is how we see it playing out. And good or bad, at least they can respond to your viewpoint and your vision of tomorrow and how you want to solve for it.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Ken Vecchione for any closing remarks.

Thank you all for your time today. We appreciate it. We went a little bit longer, but we were happy to do so to make sure that all of your questions were answered thoroughly. So, we’ll be in touch. We look forward to seeing you again in person one day. Thank you all.

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.