Prosperity Bancshares, Inc. (NYSE:PB) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Michael Rose: Helpful. And then maybe just on the production, you guys have had pretty decent growth this year, I think some of the dislocations in your Texas markets, especially for some of your competitors, but seems like some of those competitors are starting to get a little bit more aggressive on growth and just wanted to see where that leaves you guys. And should we consider kind of a mid single digit growth rate for next year, kind of what you’ve got to do for this year. Thanks.

Kevin Hanigan: Yes. I think, Michael, I would tell you low to mid and off from what I said was mid last quarter. And just by recapping part of that is our decision to sell mortgages rather than to portfolio them. And that’s brought us into that mid range. We’ve seen some relatively weaker loan demand, I’d say, over the last month or so. And there’s a lot of things that don’t pencil out real well at these rates or take so much equity into a deal, it’s just harder to get deals done. So, look, if it’s – on the lower side, that’ll be more money that can be used to pay down the borrowings, and if it’s on the mid side, that’d be great. So I’m just looking forward, I’d say low to mid.

David Zalman: And a lot of it has, as Kevin, don’t you think, when we were just flush with deposits, we were looking at all kinds of loans, whether people had relationship with us or didn’t have relationships with us. And now with deposits not being in the banks and everybody’s trying to reduce their borrowings. We ourselves kind of restricted loans a lot, because some loans that we would normally have made six months ago, we don’t make today because we’re not getting a complete deposit relationship. So some of this is by our own making, too. So I guess, we were at one end of the spectrum, we went to another end of the spectrum. And I guess, it depend where we finally how the dust settles, where we all end up.

Kevin Hanigan: There’s a lot of pluses and minuses, right? There’s a lot of people really restricted. They basically have shut down, which you think creates opportunity. And I think we’re into that period where the market’s adjusting and borrowers are getting used to having to pay up. And our requirements of, hey, while you might have done this historically with bank XYZ, if you’re coming here, you need to move your deposits from XYZ to us or we’re not interested. So we’re going through that adjustment period as we speak. And if people are willing to pay up and move us deposits, we’ll be there for them, but…

David Zalman: I just told yesterday, like, one of the lenders came to us and said that one of the deals that they’re in, two or three of the banks that are participating in their line of credit are not willing to participate anymore and ask if we would participate. And I asked what the rate was and it was still, I think, SOFR plus. Anyway, the total rate was about 7.5. And this guy’s always wanted to – good customer has always wanted to do business with us, but we’ve always been about a half a point short. So the lender has said he would really like to come back, he like us to do it. And he says, you’re always about a half a point higher. And I said, well, we still are. So if we do see the pricing where it becomes better and that we may take more risk also, I think, at the same time.

Michael Rose: Totally, got it. Great color. And maybe just one final one for me, David, you threw out a lot of potential drivers for M&A as we move forward. Just broadly speaking, how do you think this all plays out? And then if you could just give us kind of a quick update on the Lone Star deal and maybe what’s holding it up. I know you talked about it last quarter, I just want to see if anything has changed. Thanks.

David Zalman: Well, I was hoping if some of the FDIC people were on the line, maybe they could answer that about the approval on Lone Star. But we are still working with the regulators to get approval on the Lone Star deal. I’m hoping, it’s just times – all I can say is times are a lot different than when they were a year ago, but we’re still completely committed to it, we’re trying to get it done. And hopefully, if we can get that thing done and approved, hopefully, there will be some more opportunities out there that we’re looking at. We’d like to move forward with those also.

Michael Rose: Great. Thanks for taking my questions.

Operator: The next question comes from Peter Winter with D.A. Davidson. Please go ahead.

Peter Winter: Thank you. Tim, I just want to go back to the comment about selling resi mortgages. You had talked about that last quarter, but resi mortgage was a pretty strong quarter for loan growth this quarter. And I’m just wondering is that kind of happened towards the end of the quarter and it’ll accelerate from here in terms of originate and sell.

H. E. Tim Timanus, Jr.: I think a lot of that growth that you’re seeing was already in the pipeline. It’s not unusual to take 60 to 90 days from the date of application to getting a loan actually closed and funded. So a lot of what you’ve seen for this quarter was really a carryover from the prior quarter. And I think you’ll see more moderation going forward, if that makes sense.

Peter Winter: Yes, no, it does. Thank you. And then, can I just ask about what you’re seeing in terms of credit quality within commercial real estate, particularly multifamily and office, there has been a number of articles talking about office pressure, particularly in the Texas market.

H. E. Tim Timanus, Jr.: We have seen very few problems up to this point in time, really almost none. And I think there are a few obvious reasons for that. If you take office first, we typically have done owner-occupied as opposed to non-owner-occupied. And the projects that we’ve been involved in have been reasonably small, two to three-story type facilities. So we’re really not in the large non-owner-occupied office market, really never have been. So that has insulated us somewhat from the problems that you’ve referred to in office. And in terms of multifamily, we’ve always tried to be very careful, obviously with any loan, but certainly with multifamily. And I think our way of weeding through those opportunities and checking them out has benefited us.

So far, the developers that we’ve done business with have got pretty decent projects and are holding their own. There continues to be growth in our markets in terms of population. So that certainly hasn’t hurt the multifamily piece of it. So I think it’s stable right now and I don’t see any reason to think that that’s going to change overnight. Obviously, from a macro standpoint, out there in the world, so to speak, there are a lot of disconcerting things. But most of those really don’t directly affect the markets that we’re in, in Texas and Oklahoma. And we just don’t see a big change in that anytime soon. So we think it’s pretty stable going forward.