National Bank Holdings Corporation (NYSE:NBHC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Jeff Rulis: Okay. Thanks, Aldis. My other question kind of relates to the credit quality. The net move from NPAs was not significant quarter-to-quarter. Just want to double check that adds and deletes within that if there were any additions that were brought on from the acquisition, and maybe you had net payoffs on the legacy portfolio, just trying to see if there was anything under the hood what looks like a pretty modest increase in NPAs?

Aldis Birkans: Really nothing material. And clearly, if you adjust — clearly the NPA ratio came down. So we will look at on an overall portfolio basis. So clearly there’s some stuff that came across from the acquisitions. But we’re all portfolio improved on kind of a core basis.

Tim Laney: And really across a broad set of credit metrics. We do feel like the portfolio is positioned to perform very well.

Jeff Rulis: Got it. And then just kind of as a jump off from that then, Aldis, I think you’ve mentioned, that’s absent the CECL deal-related provision I think something approaching 6 million to support growth. If we read into, growth could pull back into the mid-to-high single digit, we could expect barring other changes macro wise that that core provision could come in if growth were to slow?

Aldis Birkans: Yes, I think the way I will look at it is our sort of total losses is 1.24%. And that’s the — with the information that we have, that’s the level that we would maintain all else equal. So if the loan growth were to slow down as we’re projecting here into mid-to-high single digits, then the provision expense would slow down as well accordingly. But we would still look to maintain the same loan loss coverage.

Jeff Rulis: Fair enough. Thank you.

Aldis Birkans: On the ACL going up, again, the credit book can be in a better shape. It really is driven by the CECL and the Moody’s outlook. It is deteriorating throughout the quarter the forecast scenarios to be using and that’s driving some of this increase. Now having said that, what we said and starting this year with the uncertainty that exists around the economy, we certainly didn’t fight or would mind that type of increase. So we like that increased provision allowance.

Tim Laney: Yes, I would echo that I don’t have an issue carrying 124 on an allowance for credit losses in an uncertain environment. At the end of the day, obviously, the two drivers that are really going to dictate that level will be the CECL process and to be more granular, the economic forecast that that are submitted and to your question, loan growth. So I think it will moderate on the CECL front if we start to see different economic projections, and it will moderate on the loan growth front if in fact we see the kind of levels of growth that we’ve projected for ’23.

Jeff Rulis: Okay, and it sort of drew out another question, sorry about that. 124 is a pretty big number, but Aldis do you have like a trued up reserve if you were to include credit marks on deals, is there a figure that inclusive of that would be a higher coverage level?

Aldis Birkans: There would be. We have about $34 million of loan loss reserves that goes up and beyond that that protects us from future losses as well. So that’s another number which is equal about 45 basis points of total loans or 1.83% on the acquired loans.