Brookline Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:BRKL) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Paul Perrault: I’ve long held that I would be comfortable up to as much as 20%, of the loan book would be in the Equipment Finance area. We’re well below that at this point. And I think that – they are carrying on business as usual. They are seeing consolidation in a lot of the areas where they operate. So, they see opportunities to bulk up for some of our customers. And with the inflation being as it has been, I think that their operators are able to take care of these deals, at the higher rates. It really hasn’t been a problem. We haven’t seen any uptick in delinquencies or anything.

Nick Cucharale: Okay. That’s helpful. And then just to follow-up on the deposit discussion. At this point in the quarter, are you seeing stability in your demand deposits?

Carl Carlson: We are. So, we’re still seeing some runoff, but not as aggressive as we’ve seen in the past. But I would have said that last July, too. So, I’ll couch that as we go forward.

Paul Perrault: And it jumps around.

Carl Carlson: It jumps around. It does jump around, but it’s slowing down.

Nick Cucharale: Fair enough. Thanks for taking my questions.

Paul Perrault: Okay.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Steve Moss of Raymond James. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Steve Moss: Hi. Good afternoon. Yes curious here – just curious here, if you just talk about loan pricing, you know where new loans are coming on the books and kind of that dynamic?

Carl Carlson: Sure. What would you like to know?

Steve Moss: Where are you pricing today and versus what did you put on in the third quarter? Let’s put it that way?

Carl Carlson: So third quarter numbers are on average for the third quarter. So things are comping in certainly higher than that. As you know, the five-year has moved substantially even since September. So, I don’t have specific numbers to-date, but all the pricing is doing much, much better on the loan side. And so, we’re very optimistic there. On the deposit side, the funding side, what I’m optimistic about is that we really haven’t moved our rates much – on the price – on the deposit side at all. Even though we’ve seen naturally, the longer part of the curve from two out of 10 move particularly around five to 10, moved quite a bit. We’ve not had to move our pricing on our deposit side, and we still consider – we’re still seeing growth – continue to grow our customer base there. So pretty optimistic in that sense.

Steve Moss: Okay. And then in terms of – just other question related to the margin, just curious what was purchase accounting accretion for the quarter?

Carl Carlson: One sec on that. $2.6 million almost $2.7 million on loans.

Steve Moss: Okay. And then in terms of just curious on expenses here, how are you guys feeling about expense trends into the fourth quarter, but also just even next year in the current environment?

Carl Carlson: We feel like, we’re going to be right around this area, around the $57 million quarter at this point with slight growth going into next year.

Steve Moss: And then just one more from me. I saw on the deck, you guys had your maturities, the first CRE over the next 24 months. Just curious kind of what’s coming due? Should we think about the maturities having a similar LTV, to what you show in the earlier slides as the overall composition of the portfolio? And do you see any stress in that CRE maturity pipeline?

Carl Carlson: I don’t have the maturities by quarter or by the maturity buckets in front of me. But as Paul mentioned earlier, I imagine they’re going to be very similar to the overall portfolio. It sounds like we have a lot of – pretty much steady of what we actually book.