Glacier Bancorp, Inc. (NYSE:GBCI) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Jeff Rulis: Thanks, Byron. I appreciate the rundown there. That’s helpful. Maybe if I could just jump back to Randy on the capital side, just checking in, your building capital. M&A has been quiet. In the past, you’ve used special dividends, that’s been a bit — maybe protecting some capital with the macro environment. But anything to touch on, on capital, Randy?

Randy Chesler: Not in particular. As it relates to M&A, we still have the doors open and want to have conversations. There are some headwinds to putting deals together as everybody, as you know, but still having those discussions. Regarding a special dividend, that’s completely up to the Board. I would tell you, we put a lot of effort into building the capital and feel like, at this point in the cycle, that’s where you want to be, sailing into this with a fair amount of capital, and then, we’ll see what unfolds in ’23.

Jeff Rulis: Appreciate. I’ll step back. Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Kelly Motta from KBW. Your line is open.

Kelly Motta: Hi, good morning.

Randy Chesler: Good morning, Kelly.

Kelly Motta: I’d like to continue on the kind of balance sheet side of things. I appreciate all the color on how you anticipate on funding the growth ahead with the deposit flows moderating and cash flows off the securities book. Just wondering if these funding considerations are helping to guide maybe your outlook for loans bit lower, as well as any changes in demand at this higher rate point in the cycle?

Randy Chesler: So, Kelly, you broke up a little bit there. I just want to make sure I have the right question. Maybe you could just restate it for me.

Kelly Motta: So, the essence was, if these funding considerations are impacting, how you’re managing loan growth going forward, as well as I’m sure demand is coming in at this point in the cycle, just wondering maybe if you could hit on both sides of the things, as well as what your outlook is for loan growth over the next few quarters?

Randy Chesler: Yes. Let me ask Tom to cover that.

Tom Dolan: Yes, good morning, Kelly. From a demand perspective, we’ve seen that kind of continue to reduce over the past couple of quarters. Fourth quarter was no exception. So, we saw our pipelines reduce again. We saw our top-line production reduce, but at the same time, so did our payoffs. And so, actually, net-net, between the two of them was about the same dollar amount of reduction. All of which reflect of — I think, of the interest rate environment. Cap rates are still low. So, with rising interest rates, it’s a little bit more difficult to make those to our conservative underwriting guidelines. And just as a reminder, we underwrite not only to loan-to-value and debt service coverage, but also the debt yield. And so, when you’ve got low cap rates, that typically requires a lot more equity, especially in this higher interest rate environment.

So, I think that’s been a headwind there as well. But in terms of loan growth outlook for 2023, we’re thinking in the low to mid-single digits for the year.

Randy Chesler: Yes. And Kelly, we’re not throttling back growth. We have more than enough rolling off the investment portfolio to fund the level of growth that we see organically coming at us in ’23. So, we feel like we’re well positioned to take care of our customers.

Kelly Motta: Understood. And on the deposit side, I appreciate the color about this being 100 accounts, and you’re very well aware of who they are. Can you just remind us about like the typical granularity of your deposit portfolio, maybe average account size and things like that? Because it seems like it was concentrated in just like the larger-balance accounts.