BankUnited, Inc. (NYSE:BKU) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Leslie Lunak: Sure. We don’t spend a lot of time obviously focusing on any one particular quarter. But typically, compensation expense is higher in the first quarter just due to the impact of certain payroll taxes and benefits and whatnot. But as we’ve been investing in people and bringing new sales teams and support people on to support growth of the business, you may have seen that trend move out a little more because those people tend to come on over the course of the year, and headcount may not be held constant. So again, don’t spend a lot of time and energy trying to figure out what the quarter-to-quarter forecast is. I’m more concerned with the year as a whole. But you will see that spike in benefits, but the trend maybe smooths out a little bit by new FTEs coming on more evenly over the course of the year.

Ben Gerlinger: Got it. Okay. That’s helpful. Appreciate the time, everyone. You guys have done a great job kind of remixing the deposit side of the balance sheet. So it clearly sets you guys up in a much better position than where we were a few years ago. Thank you.

Raj Singh : Thanks.

Operator: Please standby for our next question. Our next question comes from Will Jones with KBW. Your line is now open.

Will Jones : Great. Thanks. Good morning guys.

Raj Singh : Good morning.

Leslie Lunak: Good morning.

Will Jones : Yes, so I wanted to step on the expenses first. Raj, just to clarify, you said expense guidance is the same as last year, which would be mid to high single digits, correct?

Raj Singh: Yes.

Will Jones : Okay. And just as we think about the base was with — that mid high single-digit growth of, is the right way to think about it to annualize the fourth quarter and grow from there, or is it really just cumulatively?

Leslie Lunak: Yes, take the full year. Take the full year and apply that to the full year.

Will Jones : Okay. Now that’s helpful. Thank you. And then, Raj, I know you called out maybe one or two maybe non-recurring or one-time charges that happened in the third quarter. Was there anything similar that happened in the fourth quarter? I know there’s still a fairly big pickup in expenses?

Raj Singh: Not really.

Leslie Lunak: I don’t think there’s anything particularly unique in the fourth quarter.

Raj Singh: Yes, right.

Will Jones: Got you. Okay, great. Thank you. And then just moving to — I appreciate all the great commentary of the allowance and the bumped-up linked quarter there. Just as it relates to the one charge-off you guys took, I was just hoping to get a little more color around that. I appreciate there were some specific reserves tied to that charge-off. It looks like maybe based on the way your NPAs moved, those CRE loan, but I was just hoping to get a little more color?

Raj Singh: So, that loan, it didn’t work out. So, I have to be careful what I say. What I will tell you is in a situation where we lose faith in the financials of the company, the certified financial of the company, we intend to charge-off the loan. We basically write-off the target. This is a developing situation. It’s only three months in terms of when we really found this out and a little more than three months into this. And we just took the most conservative stand, which is we can’t — we don’t really know — there’s some — it looks like there will be some regularities in financials of the borrower, and we’re just going chalking off the loan, which is what we did. Now, there are recoveries that have come back. I’m hoping there’ll be some recoveries, but not knowing that with any confidence, we just quite often talk about.

Will Jones: Great. Digging deeper, is there any in a specific industry or any kind of specifics around the nation?

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