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

Chris Bagley: Nothing to add on the deposit side, man. I think you explained it well. I think on the loan side, I think rates have definitely clearly moderated some of the opportunities that we’re still seeing opportunities but we’re also focused on deposits as part of those opportunities. And we’re assessing the economic impacts that are out there right now. And we still have good year-to-date loan growth. So, I think we’ve got the engine. I think it’s just been a bit of a — we’re picking and choosing right now. Hank?

Hank Holmes: I just build on that a little bit. I would say, certainly, loan activity is down, I would call it moderate activity. But really the focus and the drive on the deposit side and when you look at the pipeline, especially on both corporate and community bank, they’re very active in gathering the deposits. So I’m optimistic. And obviously, we had a good quarter in loan or deposit growth as well.

Valerie Toalson: I would just add that of the cash proceeds from the insurance sale, we do intend on bringing down our borrowings. And that would include brokered CDs.

Kevin Fitzsimmons: Right. That’s in that base case, Valerie?

Valerie Toalson: Yes, exactly. We’ve got about $830 million of brokered CDs that mature in the fourth quarter in January.

Kevin Fitzsimmons: One quick follow-up just with that one lumpy credit issue which helped a number of banks. I’m just curious what your shared national credit exposure is now, if you can have it handy in dollars or a percentage of loans or both, hopefully.

Dan Rollins: Billy, do you want to jump in on that? Valerie?

Valerie Toalson: Well, I’ll give you the numbers and then Billycan jump in with a little more color. We’ve got $4.3 billion in our shared national credit portfolio at 13%. That’s pretty consistent with where we’ve been running. Can you add any color to that?

Billy Braddock: Yes. The one color I would add is, usually, the follow-on is how active are we? And shared national credits is just one piece of our multibank exposure. The bulk of our multibank exposure is actually smaller clubby deals that aren’t shared national credit. And within those, we’re almost 30% of those we lead. So we have a controlling basis in a lot of our multibank deals that fall outside of that shared national credit exposure.

Operator: Next question comes from Catherine Mealor with KBW.

Catherine Mealor: One question on expenses. Appreciate the comments here to keep flat expenses year-over-year. Just as we think about the fourth quarter, I think we’re going to see more, I assume, of the range closures and the cost of the initiatives that you’ve put through. So any near-term guidance where you think the fourth quarter expenses should land within the range?

Dan Rollins: With the noise that we’re going to create in the insurance world, it’s going to be a noisy quarter, I can assure you. So let’s just talk through the things that you’ve already seen. So the headcount reduction that you saw with the lower headcount at the end of the third quarter, we’re seeing benefit of that this quarter. Salaries and benefits should be off. We’ve still got more headcount reduction that will take place in this quarter outside of the insurance change. So as we get to 1Q, we’ll see the full benefit of the people piece of that puzzle. On the branch side, those branches all closed on July 31, I think. And so, that’s fully baked into the fourth quarter run rate altogether. So there’s no more to do there; so you’ve got some down pressure there. Valerie, do you want to talk numbers?

Valerie Toalson: No. I think you’re exactly right. And those will drive the core expenses down in the fourth quarter. To Dan’s point, it is going to be a noisy quarter. So just bear with us and we expect the first quarter at 24%. That’s some that the insurance transaction does close in the fourth quarter as we anticipate that first quarter should really be much, much cleaner.