M&T Bank Corporation (NYSE:MTB) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Ebrahim Poonawala : I guess just maybe on the balance sheet. So you mentioned about $4 billion in securities purchases from $25 billion at year-end. If you don’t mind reminding us like what that implies for the cash balance as we think about — on a steady state, I think cash was about $25 billion over the fourth quarter. Is $20 billion the right place for you or where the bank expects to be? And how much of that might go away from like deposit runoff. So just thought process around that?

Darren King: Yes. There will be some movement, Ebrahim, between cash and securities over the course of the year. If you look at the as-at the end of the year, probably down in the $9 billion range. If you look at the average for the year, probably think in the slightly below $20 billion, between $20 billion and $19 billion is probably the spot. That number is going to move around a little bit, obviously, depending on outflows in deposits, as well as our funding needs to support loan growth as well as to make sure we’re managing the bank’s liquidity profile. And so those will move around a little bit over the course of the year, but those are kind of round numbers where we’re forecasting 2023.

Ebrahim Poonawala : Got it. And I’m sorry if I missed it, you talked about issuing some debt. Did you quantify how much in debt do you expect to issue through the course of the year?

Darren King: I didn’t mention a number, obviously, that this is dynamic, right? And that the amount is going to be a function of what’s happening with deposit funding and runoff and whatnot. But right now, we think it’s in the $3 billion to $4 billion range over the course of 2023.

Ebrahim Poonawala : And what would be the cost of the debt today given just the shape of the yield curve? I’m just wondering if it’s better to lock in term funding relative to short term right now based on the market?

Darren King : Well, it’s a great question. There’s — obviously, the rate isn’t depending on the tenor, right? And right now, there’s a — you like the opportunity to reprice the shorter-dated notes but they’re trading higher than the longer-term debt. And so we think low to mid-5s is the range of yield on that depending on the term. And what we’ll be trying to do since we’ve really brought down the level of wholesale funding at the bank will be to not lock in all-in-one tenor, but to start to build a more balanced maturity profile as we think about the funding of the bank, so that we don’t have massive amounts coming due all at the same time. And so I think as you think about it, think about not being all one tenor and one type of but something that starts to build a little bit of a profile that is spread out over the next few years.

Ebrahim Poonawala : Got it. And just on a separate note, the CRE book or the CRE office, do you have the debt service coverage ratios handy in terms of where they were at the end of the year?

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