Bank of America Corporation (NYSE:BAC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Brian Moynihan: Yes. So, you’re aware, the main driver there is commercial real estate. And it’s specifically around about $1 billion of it is office. Obviously, there’s a significant amount of change going on in office. And what we’ve chosen to do is as rates are rising here, we’re pushing that through the models. And just with the debt service coverage it comes down, we pushed through the downgrade. So, we’ve chosen to do that. The performance is still okay. So, we’re not concerned with the performance, but we’re just making sure we’re being tight on the modeling there. It is obviously a portfolio where I think you know this, we’re pretty focused on making originations into office buildings that are leased up, generally at 55% LTV at origination and 75% of that book is Class A office building. So, we’re not alarmed there. We’re just following our own process with respect to making sure we’re current on the debt service coverage.

Alastair Borthwick: Just remember that we’re talking about office with very high-quality underwriting characteristics, all A Class, et cetera. And so we just have a conservative rating process, frankly. And it’s well viewed out there and well looked at by many people. But remember, office is $14 billion to $15 billion of the total portfolio. So, we feel very comfortable where we are. And then, obviously, we built reserves against the portfolios across the board that are strong and reflect, as I said earlier, basically a mild recession in the base case and the worst recession in the adverse case that we wait 40%.

Operator: We’ll go next to Gerard Cassidy with RBC.

Gerard Cassidy: Thank you. Alastair, on the loan loss reserving and Brian just talked about the adverse case being about 40%. Can you guys share with us how much of the reserve building is what may be referred to as management overlay relative to what the models are specifically dictating on reserve building?

Brian Moynihan: Don’t disclose that. You might assume that there’s a fair amount. There are three components to this. One is what the model say, two is basically uncertain in precision and other things we overlay and then a judgmental, and you might think that there’s a fair amount of that right now with the uncertainty. But — so the model piece, that would be a portion of it.

Gerard Cassidy: Very good, Brian. And then when you look at your deposit behavior of the consumer, the past cycles, is there any material differences in the way they’re moving money around or not moving money around from their checking accounts or low-yielding savings accounts?

Brian Moynihan: I think — when you look at that higher-end consumer, not really, they move to when the rate in the market yields money market funds, we move them to it, and it’s part of what we do. And that sort of investment cash, Gerard, as we call it, moves, the checking accounts don’t move. The difference, frankly, is that there was a lot of stimulus that was in addition to the earnings power of consumers. So, we’ve never had that in history, but — and so that amount of stimulus. The question is, will they spend it down or will they keep storing it up? And they’ve been spending it down very modestly across sort of medium income households or so and the general consumer business. Give you an example, the cohort that was $2,000 to $5,000 in average balances pre-pandemic at $3,400, they’re still sitting at $12,800, but they peaked early in €˜22 at $13,400.

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