East West Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:EWBC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Manan Gosalia: Fair enough. And then just on credit, in November, you emphasized like everyone else, you’ve been watchful for a normalization on credit. And you’re focused on early detection of any cracks, in the reviews that you’ve been making, have there been any covenant breaches or any other cracks to note?

Irene Oh: I mean, I think certainly on an individual loan basis, that is happening, right. But overall, I think we’re very positive from the perspective that on credit as we do continue to do these reviews on our commercial books, our consumer books throughout, what’s positive is there are not a lot of new problem loans, same loans that we’re working through last couple of years continue to be things that we work through. Not a lot of new problems in that process. So that’s certainly something that we feel is positive and positions us well.

Dominic Ng: Yes, we’ve been actively managing the loan portfolio overall. So, as you can see in the criticized asset percentage, is relatively benign. So far, surprisingly asset quality very, very good. And we look at the rising interest rate, obviously, that’s why we’ve been aggressively managing the portfolio and see how it goes and I always do this ongoing loan review and so far, so good.

Operator: The next question comes from Ebrahim Poonawala with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Ebrahim Poonawala: Hi, good morning. I guess maybe just sticking with asset quality. So, I appreciate that what you just said, Dominic, you haven’t seen any within the portfolio, but is that a timing issue or in Slide 15, you’re showing how interest rates yields have gone up on these loan portfolios? Is it a timing issue or do you feel good about the loan book and your ability of these borrowers to absorb where €“ if the Fed funds were to peak out at 5%, they should be able to handle this where it doesn’t become a credit issue for East West? Like, do you feel good about that? Do you have visibility into that?

Dominic Ng: Well, when it comes €“ when you say timing issue, we obviously €“ when we do our stress tests on these real estate, we’re obviously projecting. So, it’s not something that we’re just looking at as of today, whether they can handle and so forth. So, from that perspective, we feel pretty good about the liquidity level of our clients in terms of the cash flow that they’ve been getting from the existing business. So, I guess in a way that what we notice is that the cash flow is still pretty good. I think it’s really coming back down to the economy. The economy is still strong. Now, if you looked at it €“ we project a much more deteriorating economy, that will be very different. At this point, we don’t see it. Things are going pretty well.

Ebrahim Poonawala: Got it. And I guess just separately, in terms of loan growth, so I appreciate the lower growth guidance, but just talk to us in terms of what are the pockets, I know Irene mentioned you expect loan growth across categories, but any particular verticals, any markets where you’re seeing more strength and more market share opportunities as we think about growth and maybe potential for upside surprise on that growth?

Dominic Ng: I think, overall, we have always been very focused in having a more diversified group. So, from that standpoint, there’s always going to be one particular industry vertical or here and there that seems to do a bit better than the others. However, overall, if it gets too far, we ran it in any way. So, in that standpoint, that’s why you always see a much more even till more diverse type of loan portfolio that we have here is because we actually manage it. So €“ but I would say that, I mean, just looking at maybe a couple of weeks so far, we do have a few more like private equity, capital call line commitments that we have originated, but I would expect that if we continue to go in that direction, we’d probably have a stronger PE loan growth.