Cadence Bank (NYSE:CADE) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Dan Rollins: I’ll take the second half of that one and then Valerie can give you some numbers on the expenses side. I think we want to have all the tools in our toolkit. And so we would not want to say that we’re not interested in doing buybacks. I think we want to make sure that we’ve got that option in front of us but we want to make smart decisions. So I think where we have not been in the buyback game, I think this gives us the opportunity, should the market move against us to be able to execute on a buyback if we wanted to. Valerie, you want to talk about expenses?

Valerie Toalson: Yes, sure. So Mike, I want to make sure, too, that you saw the updated deck that we sent out has the updated slides that include not only our earnings release side but also the 3 different insurance slides at the beginning of that. And on Page 6 of that deck at the core headquarter, there’s some discussion there on the adjusted revenue and adjusted net income for the last 12 months. So if you look back at the last 12 months, the total expenses were about $140 million.

Michael Rose: Sorry, I missed that. Thanks for pointing that out. Maybe just separately, if you could just give a little more detail on the securities restructuring, maybe how you came up with that amount, just the process there. I certainly appreciate the benefit that the transaction provides you.

Dan Rollins: Well, I think this is our estimate today. We haven’t closed the transaction. It’s going to take some time to get the transaction closed. We certainly want to make sure that we take advantage of the opportunity in front of us to offset this tax loss in the same quarter. And so depending upon when we close which we currently expect that we can do this quarter, then we would want to make sure that we can execute in this quarter and the market can move between now and then. So you’ve got a whole bunch of what ifs built into this. And as the last question from Manan was there’s no right size here. This is just an example that we’re committed to do a securities repositioning. What we’ve shown in here was the lowest yielding quickest payback that we could do and then we can look and see what else we could do.

Michael Rose: Helpful. I’ll step back. Thanks for taking my question.

Dan Rollins: Yes, the new deck was posted out this morning if you didn’t pick it up.

Operator: The next question comes from Kevin Fitzsimmons with D.A. Davidson.

Kevin Fitzsimmons: Maybe shifting gears, looking at the funding side. So you guys highlighted that proactive reduction in brokered deposits. I’m just curious if that you got it down to a level you’ll probably keep or could there be further proactive reductions there?

Dan Rollins: I’m not a fan of brokered CDs in any form or fashion. I think the team here knows that well. I’m really proud of what we did in the last quarter in growing deposits. The corporate bank, the community bank, the whole team is focused on deposits. You heard in my comments, if you pull back the loss of brokered CDs and the seasonal decline in public funds, core customer deposits was up $500 million in the quarter. We’re really proud of that. I think we’ve got the ability to continue to play in a highly competitive deposit gain. And I would like to see our team continue to win those customer deposits in and I’d like to see us move those brokered deposits further down. That clearly is dependent upon what we can do on the loan desk and you saw loans were flat this quarter.

We clearly intend to continue to grow loans. We’re seeing opportunities out there but it’s much slower than it was before. But on the funding side, I’m really proud of what the team is doing. Chris or Hank, do you want to jump in on deposits?