Heritage Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:HFWA) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

David Feaster : Okay. That’s helpful. And kind of maybe following up on that. Could you maybe touch on — you gave the pipeline numbers, obviously, were down a little bit. First off, just curious how much of that is demand driven versus your appetite for growth may be slowing? And then if you could just talk about the pricing dynamics that you’re seeing in the pipeline. But then to your point, are you seeing more opportunities for — you guys have been pretty active in the disruption with new hires and market expansion. I’m just curious whether you’re seeing any additional opportunities at this point?

Bryan McDonald : So on the loan pipeline decline, it’s really — we’ve seen a surge in investor real estate requests, which we can only do a certain percentage of those anyway. So as we’ve closed out our existing pipeline of those opportunities we’re just bringing less new non-owner occupied investor real estate request into the pipeline. That’s the primary reason for the change, continuing to add C&I and owner-occupied opportunities to the mix and some investors, it’s just less than what it was in prior quarters. In terms of kind of overall market demand, we are still seeing customers interested in borrowing and expanding just overall a little bit of slowing as we’ve come into this year. And then on the pricing side, as I alluded to in the comments, we were working through pricing quotes, spreads and some commitments that we made that were in the pipeline coming into the year.

We’ve got a few more to close out in Q3. New pricing has been higher than what I referenced in terms of our numbers for closing rates this quarter. So we would expect to see the average rates move up as we continue through the year, similar to what we’ve seen in the last couple of quarters.

Jeffrey Deuel : David, to Bryan’s comment about there’s only so much non-owner occupied real estate we can do. We do have the concentration management process that we adhere to. If you go to Page 23, you’ll be able to see our — how we stack up against interagency guidance from the standpoint that you’ll see constructions popped up a little bit. That’s part of what the new loan growth was tied to its deals that closed last year that are funding now. So it popped up to 49% in comparison to 100% guidance. And then you can see also on the total real estate, we’re watching that closely because it has crept up to 268%, guidance is 300%. I think that, that’s acting as a bit of a governor. Although I would add to that, we are still doing CRE. We’re just being a lot more selective about what that is.

David Feaster : That makes sense. Maybe just the last part of that question, Jeff, I know it was a big one. But just — are you seeing more opportunities for hires and market expansion. Obviously, you’ve had a lot of success, but just curious what you’re seeing there from your perspective?

Jeffrey Deuel : Sorry, we missed that. We — where we’re sitting now is we’re always open to opportunities to add to the team if it’s high-quality folks that fit culturally. But right now, while things are relatively quiet, people are not necessarily moving around in this environment. We have a lot to focus on with Boise and Eugene and what we’ve got down in the Portland, Vancouver area. I think anything that you might see us do in the near term is probably going to be kind of onesie, twosies probably not a lift out like we’ve done over the last year.

Operator: Our next question comes from Matthew Clark with Piper Sandler.