Primis Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:FRST) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Dennis Zember: I mean, Panacea produced what 45 this quarter? I think Panacea give 45 in commercial, Matt’s going to look it up. I think Panacea could — there’s no question in my mind, they could hire — we could hire two or three more bankers and probably maybe even double that. So now finding buyers for all that, I think we’ve got a quite few windup and several that are nearing the very end. Payment fees, commercial production on a floating rate basis is kind of right on top of prime. And so these are high-quality commercial loans to medical professionals with strong credit metrics any way you look at it. So I mean, yeah, I think there’s a lot of interest in this.

Matthew Switzer: They originated about $75 million in the quarter, a little less than half of that actually funded in the quarter.

Dennis Zember: Okay. So $75 million in the quarter. I mean it’s a good problem to have, having something this robust, but it’s just — so I think it’s a good opportunity — I think it’s a real good opportunity for us to step out and find this — something like this. But right now, it’s just — this is not something we can do, even if yields were great and the yield curve was right. Tyler and his staff and Matt and I, we all understand, we just don’t have the balance sheet or the capital to do that. So this is — I think this is a real good opportunity. Again, we got $1 million in there. I think it’s — yes, I think it can be a lot more than that. We’re just being careful.

Matthew Switzer: And frankly, I mean we talked about this last quarter, we thought there was going to be more gain on sale income in Q2. It’s just taking a little bit longer to get to the finish line with some of these buyers, but that’s why we think, we’re pretty confident about the third quarter.

Russell Gunther: Understood. No, I appreciate that, guys. And then as I just kind of marry that with the balance sheet expectations. I think you said core loan growth in the single digits kind of on an aggregate basis near term, sort of still thinking of what that could look like in ’24 again as we let the gain-on-sale model mature, how are you guys thinking about total loan growth going forward?

Matthew Switzer: I mean if we stay in the environment we’re in right now, that it will — we will target at low to mid-single-digit loan growth next year as well. But with — like we’re not — with these loan sales, it’s not a requirement to sell everything we produce. So if the curve changes, we have the flexibility to hold more, we have the flexibility to bring funding back on balance sheet out of the sweep program so we can manage balance sheet size basically quarter-to-quarter. So — but if we’re were sitting in ’24 like we are right now, the goal will be to manage balance sheet and maximize spread as much as possible.

Dennis Zember: And I don’t want to overplay this, but it’s probably obvious. I mean we’re unique really, especially in our region for having some money to lend. And we have not completely pulled our horns in, and we’re getting looks at some pretty decent deals on the community bank side. I think, in fact, the place where we’re raising money on the community bank side on the deposit from a deposit standpoint compared to where we’re able to put some money out on really good customers is probably the widest spreads we’ve had on the community bank side, I haven’t probably yet, since I’ve been here. So — and honestly, getting some looks at customers that we probably wouldn’t get to normally look at. Now we’re not trying to — we’re still on the national platform.