Eagle Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:EGBN) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Christopher Marinac: Got it. And is some of that also loan yield in addition to deposits at necessarily follow the funder piece?

Eric Newell: Yes. I think there’s a little more visibility, at least from my perspective, having only been here for three or four months on the funding side and seeing how we could really increase spread income by improving the composition and the qualities of our funding. We’ve spent a lot of time as a management team over the last 60 days looking at spreads and really understanding how we compare to competition and making sure that we’re getting loan spread that the market is giving us and assessing ourselves that way and making sure that our relationship managers are being compensated on profitability. So I do think that it’s both sides of the spread calculation.

Christopher Marinac: Got it. And then, Jan, just a question for you on the sort of C&I migration. What’s your general sense of the VISA loss on those loans, maybe in general, just kind of using history and how Eagle with C&I in the past?

Janice Williams: Well, I’ll tell you, the migration is really, I think, a lot to do with the primary source of repayment focus and not really focusing on additional guarantor support. Obviously, the payments are being made or they’d be showing up on the past due report, they are not. So I think we’ve been pretty darn conservative in the way that we are assessing this and highlighting it in today’s economic and regulatory climate. I think there’s a huge focus on primary source of repayment and we’re following that. I don’t think it means that they are necessarily in worse shape than they were last quarter. It’s a change in the way that we’re evaluating them.

Christopher Marinac: And is this the first quarter of that? Or could you remind us sort of how long you’ve been instituting a new discipline?

Janice Williams: This is the first quarter of that.

Operator: Thank you. And I’m showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn it back to Susan Riel for closing remarks.

Susan Riel: We appreciate your questions and you taking the time to be with us on this call today. We look forward to speaking to you again next quarter. Thanks, and have a great day.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.