Boston Private Financial Hldg Inc (BPFH)’s Fourth Quarter 2014 Earnings Conference Call Transcript

2014 was a pivotal year for our company. In early October, we closed on the acquisition of Banyan Partners. The combination of Banyan Partners and Boston Private Bank Inc. Trust results in a nationally significant private client wealth management business with a more differentiated and integrated product offering across the private banking and wealth management spectrum. Integration of the businesses is well underway and we expect it complete by mid-year. With Banyan, core fees and income will now account for 47% of our consolidated revenue. We continue to see sustained momentum in the build out of our West Coast private banking operations. Mark and his team had done a great job identifying and attracting talented private bankers to our organization and it’s really showing in our results. In 2014, Southern California in the San Francisco Bay Area, accounted for nearly 64% of the company’s total core deposit growth.

Finally, our four non-bank affiliates grew revenue 10% and operating income 16% in 2014 year-over-year. I would specially like to salute our San Francisco Bay’s Wealth Advisory Affiliate Bingham, Osborn & Scarborough who received the 2014 Best In Business Impact Award from Charles Schwab. This prestigious award recognizes one firm each year with a track record of 10 plus years of growth and excellence. It’s voted on by independent panel of leaders from the financial services industry. We are extremely proud of Bingham, Osborn & Scarborough for this well-deserved and hard-earned recognition. Finally, we are very aware that our shareholders wants to better understand how we think about our performance targets in the current environment. I would like to talk about 2014 end of quarter, and then come back to you on how we are thinking about the year ahead. At this point I would like to turn you over to Dave and Mark for more detail on our financial performance and then I will be back to discus the wealth management affiliates and make some concluding comments on how we are thinking about performance attainment. Dave?

Dave Kaye, Chief Financial Officer

Thanks Clay. Good morning everyone. My comments will begin with Slide 3 of the earnings presentation. That can be found in the Industrial Relations section of our website, bostonprivate.com. On Slide 3 we look through the linked quarter reconciliation of the consolidated pre-tax income. Banyan acquisition had a positive net dividend impact of about $700,000 on the fourth quarter results. Banyan’s expenses were abnormally high in the quarter due to increase professional fees, some seasonality for compensation and other one-time expenses. In the fourth quarter, we recorded a $2.4 million provision expense versus a $2.6 million provision credit in the prior quarter. The provision expense was driven by a downgrade of three unrelated relationships. One in Southern California and two in New England.

Net Interest Income per quarter fell $700,000 due to reduced interest recapture and slightly lower, lowering yields. We also have a number of step ups in our expense base mostly due to seasonal marketing expenses, new office space for our wealth advisers, as well some of the depreciation and amortization of intangibles related to the Banyan acquisition. All in all the step-ups set a negative $2.1 million impact on the fourth quarter. And finally, we incurred about $2.2 million of one-time expenses in the quarter. $1.4 million of that is attributable to the Banyan transaction while the remaining $800,000 was the result of a liability restructuring. On Slide 4, we look at the consolidated P&L highlights. Core fees and income increased 21% year-over-year to $39.6 million. Excluding the impact of the Banyan acquisition, core fees and income increased 2% year-over-year. Total operating expenses for the fourth quarter of 2014 $63.8 million and that is up 15% year-over-year. If we exclude the impact of Banyan and the one- time charges, fourth quarter 2014 operating expenses were $54.9 million and that is down about 1% year-over-year.