Berkshire Hills Bancorp, Inc. (NYSE:BHLB) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And I think the portfolio as a result the loans portfolio went up by 29 basis points in portfolio yields.David Bishop Got it. And then just a housekeeping to make sure I heard you right. I hear that 1.2 million shares were repurchased this quarter under the current authorization.Nitin Mhatre No –David Bishop Okay.Nitin Mhatre No, in dollars. So modest share repurchases in dollars.David Bishop Got it. Okay. I was going to say I was trying to flip to the — that makes more sense. Okay, great. I’ll stop there. Get back in the queue.Nitin Mhatre Thanks, Dave.Operator Thank you. Our next question comes from Chris O’Connell of KBW. Chris, your line is open. Please proceed.Chris O’Connell Good morning.Nitin Mhatre Good morning, Chris.Chris O’Connell I was hoping to follow up on the prior question on the origination yield from the loan portfolio.

The portfolio yields at like 5.57. Did you expect that increase in the loan yields going forward to kind of moderate a bit from here?Nitin Mhatre Chris, they did go up 29 basis points I think — I think the beta was 29 on loans. I think we expect that to go up because the new production that we’ve seen so far this quarter still has improved yields. So by natural extension, we expect the portfolio yields to go up in the quarter, yes.David Rosato Chris, I would just chime in and say about 60% of the aggregate loan book, so across commercial as well as retail is floating for adjustable rate. So you have two components, right. You obviously have 6% in the book that’s moving with Fed funds changes as well as we’re seeing better spreads across the books.Chris O’Connell Okay, got it.

And then on the deposit side, the CD growth is pretty robust this quarter. Do you expect that to be one of the primary drivers in the near term of deposit growth? And what are like the spot rates that you guys are putting on right now for CDs?David Rosato Yes, good question. That’s the money question for banks this quarter and probably for this year. So, yes, we’re going to — I think the whole industry is going to continue to see non-interest bearing and low interest rate paid, meaning now and legacy money markets move to both CDs as well as any money market specials that might be run [ph]. The good news there from my perspective is still seeing good account openings in non-interest bearing DDA, new relationships, people banking with us. That only moves the needle so much against industry headwinds.

But that will play out more over time. But there’s definitely — interest rates have reached the level and there’s enough competition now that we’re competing with money funds and it’s impacting the whole industry as we all know. We’re competitive in CD offerings. Relatively short terms, meaning six months out to 13 months at about 4.5% — 4.25%, 4.5%. And the good news there, from my perspective, is we know we can drive growth with price. Not that you want to do that and you got to be careful about internal movements of funds, but we’re seeing it just as everyone else is.Nitin Mhatre Chris, if I may add — hi, Chris.Chris O’Connell Yes, go ahead.Nitin Mhatre Chris, I was just going to add, I think the point David made is very important. I think our deposit production, and these are activities that we had been planning over last quarter or so, are translating into good results.

Our DDA production, for example, is up by 35% year-over-year. And as those balances season, we expect to kind of see that flow into that bucket as well. So while they will be campaigns on — promotional campaigns on CDs and money market, we are also pushing on the DDAs. And we have a laundry list of new segments that we’re going after that we could serve better, and those will be less price sensitive. And then the other thing that goes in our favor, which you already know, Chris is six out of eight markets that we operate in are in Tier 2 towns where we have been a bank for them for over 175 years. And it helps us to that extent kind of relatively insulate ourselves from the pricing pressure. So I think all of those combined, we hope to outperform CPR banks [ph].Chris O’Connell Yes, I appreciate the color there.

And I guess just one more on the deposit side. I think in the prepared comments you mentioned a lot of the flows this quarter were into the wealth side of the business to money market type of funds there. Have you seen some of that transfer off balance sheet into the wealth business flow as we’ve gotten into the second quarter here?David Rosato Yes, absolutely. There was a flurry of activity in that week to week and a half period of time, but it was kind of amazing to me how quickly things settled down. And we spent a lot of time internally as we were thinking about this is this happened within the context of heightened competition for deposits as well, right? We had a crisis within a tough environment for deposits anyway, just because of the Fed’s tightening actions.

But the “crisis” for us really didn’t last very long at all and was looking back now over a relatively short period of time, it was very quick live.Chris O’Connell Yes. Got it. And just kind of putting it all together here with the margin, given the expectation for cash and borrowings to come down pretty substantially in the second quarter, I know a lot of it will depend on timing. And I know that you guys have a NII guide out there. But can you help us think about how you’re thinking about the trajectory into the second quarter and then going from there?David Rosato Sure. You used the word substantially. I used the word about a third. So we can decide if that’s substantial or not. My about a third was referencing roughly 900 million increase in home loan.

And that — when I say we’re backing that down a third, that’ll be 300 million less of on balance sheet liquidity we plan on carrying going forward. Getting back to normal levels pre-SVB is the way we’re thinking about it. So that liquidity did drag on our margin in the first quarter. We would put that about 3 to 4 basis points, really driven by just carrying higher average balances on the balance sheet. Back to my kind of comments on net interest income, the pressure is certainly downward, not upward on the margin. So as you know, we don’t give margin guidance. But the 3.58, there will be pressure on that in the second quarter and realistically into the third. And then a lot of it’s going to have to do with what the Fed winds up doing it market forwards around the Fed tightening cycle being over or not is it winds up being true.