SmartFinancial, Inc. (NASDAQ:SMBK) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Rhett Jordan: Yes. And that [Technical Difficulty] Will, and I don’t know how. You say — I guess your comment about a few quarters. I don’t think. I think we’re just dealing with a couple of quarters here where we think this thing kind of stay, we kind of grind here a little bit because you think about, going to have a little more deposit pressure probably this quarter. We can offset that as we talked about with the asset yield reset with some growth. So it will stabilize. First quarter is always going to be typically a little bit softer just with fewer days. So I think the first couple — these next couple of quarters is where we see kind of that grind. It picks back up pretty, we see it picking back up pretty nicely from there.

Will Jones: Okay, that’s super helpful. I know last quarter we kind of talked about maybe deposit beta’s peaking in the 38% to 40% range, but if we just forecast the 3% higher that we’re talking about here maybe deposit beta’s end in the 45% realm. Is that the right way to think about it?

Billy Carroll: I think we’re looking at — yes, I would say low to mid-40s, probably max mid-40s at this point. But we’ve been probably wrong on our deposit betas in the past, but I know they’ll escalate slightly, but our asset repricing will minimize or mute some of those effects going forward. This quarter is our first quarter that we’re looking at for Q4 where our growth in interest income is projected to outpace the growth in deposit expense. That’s the first time we’ve seen that quarter-over-quarter. And it’s all predicated on what the Fed does going forward.

Will Jones: Yeah, I understood. That’s very helpful. Thank you for that. And then just switching over to credit, I mean, it still remains just remarkably clean. The provision really has been fairly low here for the past handful of quarters, and you guys feel pretty comfortable with the reserve at the 1% level. Is the messaging on the provision that it’ll just be kind of steady as she goes until maybe credit turns or loan growth picks up or is — what would be the messaging on the go-forward provision?

Rhett Jordan: Yes, I think that’s probably the best outlook at this point. It’s kind of a — you use the term steady as she goes. I think that’s a pretty good depiction. I mean, as we said, with the seasonal model, the different factors that impact it can move it slightly from period to period. But as Billy said, that single-digit long-growth profile, we don’t really see any considerable credit weakness in the near term. So I think that’s a good outlook.

Will Jones: Yes. Okay, great. And then lastly for me, there was a bit of excitement earlier in this year on bank M&A, and we’re still hearing chatter that conversations are fairly active and we might just be right on the cusp of seeing any kind of real deal activity materialized, but could you just give us a refresher on where you stand on M&A, maybe from the perspective of both upstream and downstream partners?

Miller Welborn: Will, The only color we can give is probably the same as we’ve done the last couple of quarters. Yes, there seem to be a lot of conversations out there, and you see a couple of deals getting announced along the way, a couple of smaller deals and maybe one or two bigger MOEs. But I don’t know until you see — until we get some clarity on credit and what that looks like and a little bit of Fed clarity. I don’t know that you’ll get any real escalation. But yes, we’re continuing conversations upstream and downstream. We love those relationships. And Billy and I and the rest of the team enjoy those meetings. So that’s really about all I can say.