OceanFirst Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:OCFC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Daniel Tamayo: Okay, terrific. Thanks, Pat. And then maybe on the fee income side, a little bit below what we’re all looking for. The swap fees certainly impacted that. So maybe your thoughts on the swap fees from here and how the rates play into that? And then on Trident as well, a little bit below the range, if there was some seasonality there? Or how are you thinking about that going forward?

Christopher Maher: Yes, I’d say a couple of things just on swaps and the outlook there and then Joe may chime in on both loan volume and Trident. Look, our clients are smart. That’s a good thing. So they are resistant to buying swaps in a market where they think that rates may be going down over the next couple of years. So it’s a combination of the appetite for our customers to want to be in swaps as well as the aggregate amount of loan volume. So while loan growth has been pretty good, the origination volume has come down quite a bit. So we’re seeing kind of slower prepayments, and that’s what’s affecting growth. So if you looked at the swap income that’s going to vary with your new originations, not with your portfolio growth. So Joe, any comments on swaps or Trident or

Joe Lebel: I think you hit right on the head. Relative to swaps, relative to Trident, I’d say that there’s always a little seasonality in the fourth quarter, but I think there’s also a mechanism that rates have gone up substantially in the residential market. While we’re still doing the commercial business and we are doing more and more of penetration there of our own book into Trident, that we expect that run rate may be a little bit muted over the next year until we get a little bit more normalized, less volatile rate environment in the residential space.

Daniel Tamayo: Okay, perfect. Thank you. And then lastly, just on the — I guess, on CRE loan growth, in particular, just curious, the interest cap renewals, I mean, there was an article in Wall Street Journal recently about how that may impact values of real estate in the industry and that potentially loan demand there. But just curious what you’re thinking about that dynamic in the current environment?

Christopher Maher: So a couple of things I would just point out. We’ve always been very disciplined about stress testing every credit we put on. So at the very beginning, we are looking at how interest rate changes over time will affect that borrower’s ability to kind of roll that loan. I think that the article you’re referencing focused in on central business district office and the ability for those kind of the cap rates and vacancies, how could you roll that? We have very low exposure in that segment. So we have less than 1% of our assets, in central business district office underwritten CRE. So we don’t feel we’ve got a significant exposure to that. Most of the exposures we have been well stressed tested at the beginning and have enough room that we don’t think rollover risk is going to be material, at least if rates kind of top out where the market expects now.

Any thoughts you have about other segments, Joe, you’ve seen outside the office segment and kind of continuing strength.

Joe Lebel: Yes. I mean if you look at the balance sheet and the way we’ve reported the credit metrics are very strong. We are not seeing any noise in any one segment. I think one of the things we do well is, and especially in the CRE book is we have diversified not only within asset classes. So office and industrial, retail, multifamily and a bunch of other stuff. We’ve also diversified by geographic region. So in the last few years, with the advent of our New York offices, which are now already 4 years old and more recently, Boston, Baltimore, we’ve really diversified the portfolio.

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