Banner Corporation (NASDAQ:BANR) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

David Feaster: Maybe just touching on the loan growth side, it’s, again great to see the increase in origination yields I am just curious where are you still seeing opportunity to bring good risk adjusted returns with rates kind of in that low to mid 8% range, how’s the pipeline and then obviously construction and land has been, a big driver ridden origination that’s still a big proportion of it. I am just curious what you’re seeing in that segment and how underwritings change it, if at all, and where are you still seeing projects pencil there?

Jill Rice: So, David, this is Jill. There was a in that question. So hopefully, I’ll – I’ll hit it all pipelines are currently about 20% lower than they were at this time last year but we continue to see good opportunities across the footprint, and, it really is important at this time because of the increased opportunities due to liquidity issues at other institutions that we just maintain our moderate risk profile. Our underwriting has not changed over the course of this cycle or really any in the past. We have been pretty stable in our method of underwriting. The construction book, as I indicated, performs really well. We are seeing some land development rebuilding in with our stronger developers because they need that lot – finished lot inventory when we come out of this say in the end of 2025 and end of 2026. They’re just trying to make sure that, they have that to go forward. So we will see some of that. I feel like I am missing one piece of your question, David.

Mark Grescovich: David, this is Mark [multiple speakers]. Let me just add I think – I think you were getting at the question the implication of hire for longer, what’s that gonna do to potential loan growth and clearly, if you’re hire for longer, you’re gonna have muted economic activity. I mean, businesses, have done a very good job of managing their balance sheets and they have utilized excess cash to help reduce their borrowings. Some of the capital investment areas that businesses were contemplating, maybe put on hold, not terminated, but put on hold. So higher for longer will definitely have an impact of muted loan growth from an economic standpoint, even in the high growth regions that we have on the West Coast. That being said, there’s a lot of market disruption out there that provides us great opportunity to take market share. And, Banner’s balance sheet and our liquidity position put us in a great position to take advantage of that market disruption.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Liesch of Piper Sandler. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Andrew Liesch: Good morning.

Mark Grescovich: Good morning, Andrew.

Andrew Liesch: Just on the back – back to the margin here. If the Fed hikes one more time, I guess, how would you expect the margin to react to that and then if we get a series of cuts later next year and then the 2025, how do you think the – how do you expect the margin to react to that dynamic?

Rob Butterfield: Yes, Andrew. It’s Rob. So I – I guess first on the on the rate hike. In general, we have about 30% of our loans that are variable. And so I would expect those to re-price essentially instantaneously with the rate hike there and then the other piece of it is that I don’t – I don’t think from what we’re seeing right now, Pure Bank’s competitors are not reacting to one additional 25 basis point increase in fed funds as far as reacting, increasing rate specials. Throughout the quarter, I’d say the rate specials that we’re seeing out there are from what I call pure banks have been pretty steady and there haven’t been a lot of increases in rate specials out there. There are a few outliers all always out there, credit union something like that, but not true competitors for us necessarily.