Preferred Bank (NASDAQ:PFBC) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Nick Pi: Yes, as the most recent appraisals, the cap rate has gone up a little bit because of the current CRE market situation, but has not yet that out of control. So valuations still maintains pretty good for our bank because normally, we maintain our loan-to-value ratio around 55% around. So even with a little bit high cap, I believe our cushion is still there and our credit should be performing well.

Operator: Our next question comes from Andrew Terrell from Stephens.

Andrew Terrell : If I could start maybe on the nonaccruals this quarter. I appreciate all the commentary you gave there. I think you gave the LTV for the second smaller loan, sub-20%. For the $16.1 million loan that you referenced, do you have the LTV for that specific credit?

Nick Pi: Yes. Stack credit is the most recent appraisal. That is around under 50%.

Edward Czajka: And Andrew, just to clarify, that’s a classified not a nonaccrual loan.

Nick Pi: That’s a classified.

Edward Czajka: Yes. That’s not part of the nonaccrual. So.

Andrew Terrell : Okay. Okay. Got it. And then if I can move over maybe to deposit growth. You guys had some good deposit growth this quarter. It’s good to see. I hear some of the commentary around the loan growth and the challenges there right now. But could you maybe talk about the pipeline for incremental deposit growth? What you’re seeing there? And then more specifically on the pricing front, where new time deposits are being priced at today?

Li Yu: Well, so far, what we see is for us. And even in the immediate marketplace we’re dealing with, deposit rate offering has been stable. And I don’t see — think there’s much there’s much can change basically their deposit rates offering to their customers. Therefore, the fluidity of the interbank, I mean, deposit transfer and so on, is much limited in this quarter compared to previous quarter, okay? I guess it’s a matter of opening up new accounts in our offices, meeting new people and opening new content cost, the $94 million increase, okay? So we do not see if the Fed does nothing. We do not foresee the big deposit rate changes in the next quarter — meaning forth close quarter.

Andrew Terrell : Okay. And what’s the kind of level that new CD deposits are being priced at today?

Li Yu: We have priced at the $5.03, after CD amount. That’s the highest rate we have. But there’s different categories that’s lower. So it’s ranging from $4 to that, okay?

Operator: Our next question comes from Eric Spector from Raymond James.

Eric Spector : This is Eric on the line for David Feaster. Probably, we’re on the CD front. I’m just curious if you could provide some color just on the maturity schedule.

Edward Czajka: Well, generally speaking, they — most of the CD matures are a year. So we have basically a constantly rotating maturity schedule of the entire portfolio. For the fourth quarter, I think we have about $400 million to $500 million, I believe, maturing for the fourth quarter.

Eric Spector : Okay. And then that’s laddered out kind of similarly by quarter?

Edward Czajka: Yes.

Eric Spector : Okay. And then just curious on the demand front, it looks like growth was primarily from resi mortgage and resi construction. Just curious your appetite for resi growth at this point? And what’s driving the growth there?

Li Yu: On the demand side?

Edward Czajka: Yes.

Eric Spector : Yes, on the demand side.

Li Yu: Well, we’re highly dependent on our customers that on a daily basis, meaning the commercial customers, business customers are dealing with us. So you see after last scale that we had in March with the meltdowns and so actually, everybody is putting so much attention in uninsured deposits so on. We are a business bank, and we’re dealing with business. And business — the deposit is basically uninsured, okay? And they don’t want to be cutting up in 2 pieces into ICS, I think they can operate that way, okay? So we have a couple of very — several very large customers, their departers, they sign up all the conversion to ICS, but not being break down. They don’t want to actually use it, but they want to have the activity to turn into ICS when — if they need it.

But the fact is that for the community banks, there may be regional banks, too. I mean if that issue doesn’t get resolved, everybody will have to worry about the large DDA they are getting from our customers in changing the nature of liquidity and coverage. So I don’t know that issues still out there. We don’t have an answer to you. But as the pure dollar amount of DDA, we’re just like everybody else seeing that small migration into the higher cost area but we hope the pace has slowed down. In fact, I hope pace will end in this quarter, but time is to tell that.

Eric Spector : Okay. I just wanted to touch on more on the loan demand side. Like growth this quarter was driven by resi mortgage and resi construction. Just curious what drove the growth there?