The Bank of N.T. Butterfield & Son Limited (NYSE:NTB) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 3 of 3

Eric Spector: Just curious, you talked a little bit about M&A, but just kind of curious about capital return more broadly. We’ve obviously been pretty active repurchasing stock the last few quarters. And TCE is now above that 6% to 6.5% level in regular capital. Very strong. Just curious how you think about capital priorities and your appetite for repurchases. Do you expect a similar pace that we’ve seen in the last couple quarters? And just kind of any color there would be helpful.

Michael Schrum: It’s Michael Schrum. So, yeah, we’re actually calling in from Cayman at the moment. We just we were down here just for our board meetings and board is very supportive at these levels, very attractive – reasonably attractive valuations. Obviously, half an eye to what’s the M&A pipeline, organic growth opportunities and there’s certainly quite a bit of opportunity here on the lending side in Cayman. The economy is booming, tower cranes everywhere. So that’s a positive in terms of obviously capital consumption and at least replacing the amortization that we’re seeing in the loan book at the moment. But, yeah, very supportive in terms of the current strategy, which is, obviously, first priority is the dividend.

And we kept that at $0.44 a share. Secondly, obviously, supporting our core markets in terms of organic growth and/or any credit deterioration which we’re not really seeing. We’ve seen a little bit of migration. Again, a few lumpy loans there and some legacy positions. But very confident about the underpinning valuations there, so it shouldn’t attract a lot more risk with assets. And then, thirdly, obviously, M&A and/or buybacks. And I think we spoke about the pipeline for M&A, which we are kind of sitting on a lot of capital. And so, we want to return that capital to shareholders. And so, we’ve been pretty active and I would expect us subject to market conditions to continue. And if we need to be up later in the year, we’ll do that.

Eric Spector: Just one last one from me. Curious if you could provide just an update, given that the core banking system upgrades was completed this quarter, just curious how that went. And then maybe just some color on the Credit Suisse acquisition. It’s the first full quarter since the final tranche closed. Just curious if you could provide some colors on just trends broadly there and how the team brought on has been doing.

Michael Collins: Maybe I’ll kick off and Craig can pitch in as well. Core banking system upgrades are always difficult, right? So, nobody’s really – it’s not something that’s necessarily positive unless you’re rolling out a bunch of new functionality. So what we did was a like-for-like conversion. It’s a fairly major upgrade. It was a move into a cloud infrastructure, as you can see the expenses, and the capital picture has changed slightly in terms of software as a service rather than the capital depreciation in those lines. I think generally speaking, it went well. There’s no write-offs. There’s obviously a few client impacting things and we apologize to clients, but they’re all still with us. And I think what we’re excited about is the opportunity to roll out additional functionality now.

And we have a pretty good steady platform, seems to be operating, it’s a lot faster for clients. So there’s not a lot of noise. Our call centers broadly were able to deal with the elevated volumes. Most of the volumes from the implementation came from the OTP functionality. So one-time password functionality, inability to log in, new splash screens, et cetera. And so, it was really kind of user walkthroughs on that side. Internally, it went very well, like all our staff – the training program was very good. And we ended up, as I said, not having any real reconciliation issues at the backend or process issues. So I think at this point, I think everybody’s feeling like that was probably more of the operational risk moment when we went live, and that’s kind of in the rear view mirror, and now we can add new functionality.

And in terms of Credit Suisse, Craig can just talk a little bit about that.

Craig Bridgewater: Depending on the IT piece, like I said, kind of go on according to plan, that it’s working. We’re starting to amortize the expenses related to that as well as the hosting fees. And really, one of the important things in the IT upgrade was to kind of get all the current version and remain current. So I guess a positive thing is that we’re now looking to apply – planning for the application kind of a new pet set [ph]. So kind of getting that into kind of the regular routine when it comes to maintaining that system, so that’s a positive. On the Credit Suisse side, again, that’s going well. The assets came over, the client relationships have come over, the people have come over, and they’re all settled into the teams.

Our head of trust has been very active, kind of getting around to see those teams, having town halls, and just making sure everybody’s settled in. And so, that’s going well. And really, it’s just a matter of making sure we service those clients well, get to know them, and then see how we can leverage those relationships.

Operator: Thank you. This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Noah Fields for any closing remarks.

Noah Fields : Thank you, Dorwin, and thanks to everyone for dialing in today. We look forward to speaking to you again next quarter. Have a great day.

Operator: Thank you. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.

Follow Bank Of N.t. Butterfield & Son Ltd (NYSE:NTB)

Page 3 of 3