Fulton Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:FULT) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

That gives the loan to value on the original balance. We currently have it on the books at $8 million, so you’re correct. It is a drastic adjustment in value. So a specific impact on rent role based on COVID, the re-ramp ability in that market and then the contributing factor of a land lease is just a fee simple exit in a workout. It’s just easier than somebody jumping into a land lease. So we feel we wanted to get this credit at a bulk amount that gave us maximum flexibility to maximize the value over time.Matthew Breese Okay. And then stepping back, on your reserve at large, what kind of economic scenario does it contemplate and could you go through some of the high points, the unemployment, GDP, interest rates, and I just want to get a sense for if that kind of scenario were to play out, what kind of charge-offs are baked into there?Mark McCollom Yeah, so we assume the Moody’s base case, but then from there adjust for certain overlays for any piece of the portfolio like office, where we think there may be heightened risk.

Matthew Breese Okay. And is there an assumed charge-off amount in there that we should be contemplating?Curt Myers Well, ultimately charge offs I mean, in the model we calculate every quarter just assumes what the allowance needs to be, right? It doesn’t mean – so you’re taking the net present value of all your future cash flows and all your loans that you have charge-offs implied in there, but ultimately you’re calculating a balance sheet charge. I can tell you that our 10-year plus net charge off going back to – coming right out of the great financial crisis averaged about 17 basis points.Matthew Breese Okay. Okay, and this is more of a nit-picky one. Mark, one thing I noticed this quarter was that overdraft fees held down quite a bit and a lot obviously happened this quarter, so I could make up a narrative on forgiving a lot of what went on from a consumer standpoint.

Should we expect that line item to come back to a normal kind of $4 million run rate as things get back to normal here?Mark McCollom No, as a reminder, we had made some changes to our overdraft programs, and we had implemented some of those in the fourth quarter and then the remainder of those changes were implemented in the first quarter. So we had highlighted for the last three quarters I think now that we would be doing that, and that it would impact that line item on a run rate basis going forward.Matthew Breese Okay, so the $2.7 million is probably a bit of a run rate here?Mark McCollom For that line, yeah, we think so.Matthew Breese Got it. Okay, I’ll leave it there. Thanks for taking my questions.Mark McCollom You bet.Operator Thank you.

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Frank Schiraldi from Piper Sandler.Frank Schiraldi Good morning!A – Curt Myers Hey Frank! Good morning.Frank Schiraldi Just a couple of a balance sheet questions. Just in terms of, Mark you mentioned that the mix shift at a non-interest bearing really sort of stabilized through March. I’m just wondering what your outlook assumes. Do you assume basically stabilization in that percentage of total loans or do you see it falling further, and if so, what kind of levels do you assume there?Mark McCollom Yeah no, we still assume that there’s going to be some rundown of non-interest bearing DDA, but at a slower pace than what we saw from sort of thanksgiving through the end of February.Frank Schiraldi Okay.

And if you could just remind me, what is your loan growth? You talked about the 8% is quarter and kind of maybe slowing from there. So is that sort of still mid-single digits I’m thinking for the full year.Mark McCollom Yeah Frank, we’re looking at a pretty typical year for us, 4% to 6% loan growth. Certain categories we do expect to moderate as we move forward. So that’s a pretty consistent organic loan growth rate for us than we would expect to be in that 4% to 6%.Frank Schiraldi Okay. And then on the credit side of things, just on that one property, is there any – sorry if I missed it, but is there any recent appraisal on that property, the value of which you can share with us?A – Mark McCollom Yeah, current appraisal on it is roughly $15 million, but it has come down over the last year and we are looking at just a conservative book balance to give again, us maximum flexibility as we go forward.

But our current appraisal on that property is $15 million.Frank Schiraldi Okay. And as far as the ground lease, I mean I guess that appraisal takes that into account. I know those leases are generally pretty long, you know very long term. So just wondering, the timing of any sort of lease termination there or any buy-outs coming up that you can share with us as it pertains to the ground lease?Curt Myers Yeah. So the appraisal does contemplate the ground lease. The ground lease is long term in order to keep the property available that the building is located on. So we should require the ground lease to be long term. Termination or dealing with the ground lease or buy out the ground lease would be – would potentially be part of the workout plan going forward, but it does create unique circumstances.

Just so you all know, we only have one other in the entire portfolio that’s on a ground lease, and we’re very comfortable with the dynamics of that loan. So it is a very discrete and unique attribute given that overall portfolio.Frank Schiraldi Okay, great, that’s helpful. And then just lastly on the LTVs, you gave up the office book a weighted average of 60% and you say on the deck that’s as of most recent appraisal. Can you talk a little at all about what percentage of these underlying buildings have been re-appraised, call it last year or so or since the pandemic.Mark McCollom Well, the appraisal policy and how we worked through that from a – we’re focused on getting the risk ratings accurate. We have a very disciplined approach to that.

We would get updated appraisals if there is a credit reason to get that, where it’s a rent change or some change within the dynamics. So that would be what would lead to in a new appraisal. So the weighted average of all the appraisals is portfolio, so some of those are at origination and then we would get updated appraisals as the credit would need those. Our range in those appraised values are 35% to 75% with that average then that we have more in the investor deck on a weighted average basis. Frank Schiraldi Okay. And does that LTV, weighted average LTV change markedly at all for – if I just look at the larger size, either above $10 million or $20 million, are those LTV’s pretty consistent – weighted averages pretty consistent.Mark McCollom Yeah, the larger the credit, the more conservative we are on loan-to-value and loan-to-cost.

So if anything, they would be less. Frank Schiraldi Okay, all right. Thank you.Mark McCollom Thanks Frank.Operator Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line ofManuel Navas from D.A. Davidson & Co. Manuel Navas Hi! Good morning.A – Curt Myers Hey Manual!Manuel Navas Hey! So that NIM that was around 3.45% in March. Does that have some stress on it or is that a good place to start going into April, going forward? I know some of the movements in the mix shift happened earlier in the quarter. Just wondering how much of leeway on the run at 3.45% in March we should use going forward. Mark McCollom Yeah, I think 3.45% is a good place to start from. I mean we had – we did see our non-interest bearing DDAs stabilize a little bit in March.

As I mentioned, we still anticipate that there’s going to be some runoff in there going forward, but at a slower pace than what we saw. And in the month of April, you would also then see the full effect of a 25 basis point rate increase that occurred in March. Manuel Navas Okay, that’s helpful. And going forward as loan and deposit growth is a little bit more balanced and it looked like borrowings were already coming down by end of the quarter versus the average. Is most incremental dollars going towards borrowings? Could you just kind of talk about that mix of borrowings versus maybe brokered CDs, kind of your thoughts going forward there. Curt Myers Yeah, we thought it was important in early March to just really have a stabilized, diversified funding base.