CrossFirst Bankshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:CFB) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Randy Rapp: Yes. Hi, Matt. It’s Randy. As Mike said, we are seeing good growth across the platform. And you referenced earlier, we’ve made investments in markets, you referenced Frisco, Fort Worth that are just really starting to get going. And you look at Arizona and they’ve had outsized growth and been very successful in that market. And we are excited to be in the Denver and Colorado Springs markets and think those also provide growth. Our sponsor finance group has reported good growth and has a very robust pipeline. He talked about energy. We’re seeing really nice opportunities in the energy space with some of the best structure and pricing that we’ve seen in recent period. And we continue to grow our real estate portfolio, but being very selective in that space. But again, in our higher growth markets, they’re still presenting some very nice real estate opportunities.

Matt Olney: Okay, sounds good. Appreciate that color. And then going back to the margin, I think you gave us the guidance range for 1Q, the 3.55%-3.65%. I guess the question is, if deposit competition remains intense, I’m curious if you expect weakness below that beyond the first quarter?

Ben Clouse: Matt, absolutely. That’s a big factor. The range I gave you, 3.55% to 3.65% is pretty consistent with where we sit today. So we’re not anticipating a lot of change in that for 2023 as we see it so far. If we get a couple of rate increases, we do expect a couple basis points of potential margin expansion, balance sheet being equal and as you noted, the headwind to that is can we maintain our deposit mix. As Randy and I mentioned in our comments, we’re very much focused on that and we will have our people focused on that through incentives for this year.

Mike Maddox: Matt, I’m really proud of the way the team maintained our mix in 2022. We lived through a rapidly rising rate environment in ’22. And we actually with the acquisition ended up growing DDA as a percentage of our deposits. And we’re able to keep our deposit beta within I think a fairly reasonable range. So we’re going to keep fighting in ’23 and really, really focused on DDA growth, as I know, everybody is, and we’re doing some things from an incentive standpoint and strategy standpoint to continue to really grow DDA.

Matt Olney: Okay. Thanks for the commentary. And then lastly on capital, I think coming into last year, I think one of your goals was to deploy a chunk of the excess capital. It looks like you accomplished that with a buyback, with the growth, organic and inorganic. I guess I’m thinking about the capital of 2023 if you’re assuming the loan growth high single to low double digit loan growth, do you expect to accrete capital ratios from here? I’m just trying to appreciate it if there could be a need for external capital.

Ben Clouse: We do, Michael, expect to accrete them from here through earnings. I’m sorry, Matt. We do expect it to accrete through earnings. And as we’ve modeled out the year, we believe our earnings growth will outpace our balance sheet growth as we built our model.

Mike Maddox: Matt, we don’t have any sub debt today. We’ve got some different levers that we could pull if we needed to go get some additional capital to support our growth.

Matt Olney: Okay. Thanks, guys.

Operator: The next question comes from Michael Rose of Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Michael Rose: Hi. Good morning, guys. Hopefully, don’t call me Matt, Ben.

Ben Clouse: I had already written down your name in anticipation of you being next.