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

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Li Yu: Yes. We — obviously, I mean, outcome commercial real estate market, which is our biggest loan and biggest category. And it depends on the maturity schedule of pay downs and so on and also that we have a number of full construction loans being paid down, okay? So these are the things that the changes on quarter-to-quarter is we have never treated the mortgage as the main cause of our new generation. In fact, we had — you may not know that, but we have previously disclosed that our internal goal is to keep our mortgage product to less than 10%.

Eric Spector : Okay. I appreciate the color. And just wanted to get an update on the SBA department expansion in the Houston LPO. Are you looking at additional expansion opportunities? And just kind of any color there would be helpful.

Li Yu: Can I bring in another level, okay, in changing from a more macro basis? To me, at this point in time, doing a new normal is a lot less profitable than buying back the stock. But new loan will give us long-term growth. But since the loan demand is not there, we’d like to concentrate our efforts in managing our liquidity, managing our profitability and managing our return to our investors. Opening new locations is not an immediate endeavor at this point in time.

Operator: Our next question comes from Gary Tenner from D.A. Davidson.

Gary Tenner: Bunch of my questions have been answered, but just wanted to ask in terms of kind of balance sheet management. You’ve continued to allow the AFS portfolio to run off, paid down the FHLB debt this quarter. So as you think of the liquidity on the balance sheet, which is ample, any thoughts in terms of putting any of that to work in the securities portfolio in anticipation of locking in some yield potentially for the longer term?

Li Yu: We — this is something and is continuously looking into it. and we continue to talk to each other about that. It seems to be every time we did something we were wrong there because 3 months ago, we were talking about large some treasury paper. I’m glad we didn’t.

Edward Czajka: There will come a time.

Li Yu: Yes, sometime, just I guess for us, that’s not the major income of us. It’s small diversification. So we like to believe we will tell forte little bit more cautious so that it wouldn’t allow a lot of adjustment, the write-down of our portfolio.

Edward Czajka: And Gary, the profitability of the overall bank is really one of the main drivers behind having such a large cash position that we’ve had over the last 10 years. We have not had to go after that last dollar of income and put that money at risk. And so we find ourselves in a very good position right now with our liquidity because we haven’t done that and with respect to our tangible capital levels as well.

Gary Tenner: Yes. I mean, certainly, it’s been a huge advantage to have a small portfolio in this environment and not thinking so much about current profitability, but down the road profitability. But I appreciate the thoughts on that. And then just I missed some of the numbers are on the buyback. I have the total shares purchased the last couple of quarters. But what was the average price per share?

Edward Czajka: The average price per share through the total buyback is just a hair over $58 a share.

Operator: And ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we’ll be concluding today’s question-and-answer session. I’d like to turn the floor back over to Mr. Yu for any closing remarks.

Li Yu : Well, thank you very much that we — everything that in this quarter seems to be more stable than the previous quarter, okay? And from my side, I’m just got to see some of the legacy, when you said the legacy, loans is getting resolved gradually. These things do take time. But I’m also happy to see the new migration into the category is very, very limited. So with that, I hope that we can continue to be this way. Thank you.

Operator: And ladies and gentlemen, with that, we’ll conclude today’s conference call. We do thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.

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