Western Alliance Bancorporation (NYSE:WAL) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And we think the original tie is because of Bridge and the relationship that we have is the prime competitor to Silicon Valley Bank. But for us, it was only 16% of our total versus for Silicon Valley Bank, it’s basically their entire business.So, — but — so what happened is that issue when they run started on SVB, I think they looked around who else is in the space, but that perception quickly metastasize into a short narrative.And if you look at our options activity, we a lot of days, we wouldn’t trade options at all. But on that Friday, March 10th, we traded about 1,000 times our normal volume. And the most common issue was somebody bought $30 put. Mind you, this is what our stock is trading at $50. So, they’re $20 got the money, and they expired next week, the March 17th week.

somebody that had an agenda, and then on Monday morning, before the market opens at 5:00 A.M. New York Times, there was a premarket session selling. And nobody treats premarket us, so it’s pretty easy to move the stock price around and push it down, down, down. And so we’ve opened a $12 on Monday morning.Well, that’s what the print was. And so when depositors saw they say, oh my gosh, you’re down 75% over the weekend, hence that triggered an $8 billion withdrawal on that Monday. Now, we traded down into the $7s and then on nearly quadruple and closed at $26 per share. That’s not typical bank trading in terms of what goes on.But I think the stock price recovery calmed down depositors and so we had a sharp drop about 85% in terms of withdrawals on Tuesday and then — since it been basically flat.

And after that entire week, we’ve been on this kind of uptrend again.Steven Alexopoulos Got it. I appreciate all the color.Operator The next question comes from the line of Ebrahim Poonawala with Bank of America. Please go ahead.Ebrahim Poonawala Thank you. I guess maybe forward-looking, thinking about just your deposit growth outlook, given sort of the new perspective, talk to us around where you expect deposit growth to come from in terms of business segments? And what’s — and how are you thinking about just the incremental of the deposit cost that’s coming into the bank? Yes, if we can start there?Ken Vecchione Okay, I’ll put this up. I’ll take the first half and I’ll get Dale the second half. In terms of deposit growth, we see deposit growth coming from our HOA segment, which was unaffected and one of the lessons learned here, by the way, when you take our technology, use APIs to connect to the management company’s technology and then they connect to the HOAs back office or technology, those accounts and dollars can’t move.

That’s a nine-month to a year conversion.And so one of the things that has informed us and what we’re looking at is where else can we find channels to do just that and be very deeply rooted into the back offices of our clients. But HOA is one place where we expect growth.Our new business lines, I’ll take you back to 2018 and early 2019, building settlement services, building escrow services, while we just launched corporate trust. All those should contribute during the course of the year. And then we also have the natural build warehouse lending group and the regions have very strong brand recognition, actually stronger than I would have thought.And so during the outflow, we only saw a 3% to 5% in that range for the regional bank brands, Torrey Pines, Bank of Nevada, Alliance Bank of Arizona, First Independent Bank, and Bridge Bank on the non-tech side.

And so we’re going to make also a deeper commitment and a concerted effort to bring in more of that metro banking there because that, for us, is like our consumer deposits, okay?We’re not a consumer shop, but those deposits were very sticky. And to combine your question with Steve’s question from before, one of the things that we’ve learned, this is really interesting, if someone called us up and said during the crisis on Monday and Tuesday. And really, it was just Monday and Tuesday, mostly Monday, to be honest with you, right, and said, what’s going on? If we had that conversation, that was a conversation that nine out of 10 times, we can hold on to the client.But if you are a larger corporate and you move your money really quick, it is hard to rationalize a person out of a position that they did not rationalize themselves into.

So, if we move — if you made a decision out of fear, it’s hard to get to that person.Well, our metro banking clients and depositors. That’s a conversation that they know, Dale given who called on them every couple of weeks. They trusted that, all right? And that’s a way to grow.Additionally, I think one of the things we also learned is more information in terms of times of trouble really is very helpful. The 8-K that we put out were certainly important for the market, but really, it was done so that our business development officers could talk very specifically to our clients and give them very specific data. But more specific to data, the more concrete and finite, the better they felt.If you said, gee, we’ve been here for 40 years, and we believe in customer service and all that, great.

But they needed to see things like what is your loan — I’m sorry, what is your insured to uninsured? How much coverage do you have? When you have that data put into the marketplace and then the BDOs could then taken and talk to clients, that was very helpful. So, I went a little further than just your question there. I’ll let Dale take on the cost side here on thisDale Gibbons Yes. Yes. Regarding the costs, as we talked last year, we were not playing the beta game. We were trying to say that we’re doing better than others perhaps because our beta is lower in terms of how fast we’re raising our funding cost. We were there where the market was where the price was all along, and we know what that is. And so today, that’s kind of where we are.Well, I don’t think many banks can really pull in much in deposits as something meaningly different than effective at funds.

And so that’s what we’ve dialed in, in terms of what we can do, but we do have these — a variety of initiatives as well as our current array of deposit gathering divisions, whereby we can continue to execute on that, and I think that’s demonstrated by what we’ve done for the past three weeks.Ebrahim Poonawala And maybe, Dale, I guess, a different way, when you look at the NIM outlook, 3.65%, 3.75%, how do you think about if the Fed is done with the rate hike sale next quarter and rates remain flat from there, where do you expect the margin to exit 2023?Dale Gibbons Yes, I mean, it’s really kind of where that is — where that guide is. As I mentioned, the volatility we have around our margin net interest income in different rate environments is almost nil, less than 1%, whether up or down, shock or ramp.

So, that’s intact. I mean in terms of what we go from this 3.79% to this guide of just a little bit lower than that, I think it’s important to revert that 3.79% has a couple of things in it that are depressing that number.One is it has a very large cash position that we had for three weeks of March, basically, whereby we took down large dollars from the FHLB or the FRB and we had it in cash. I mean our balance sheet was close to $90 billion on some of those days, and we ended the quarter at $71 billion. That was at an upside down spread. That caused our margin by 11 basis points.In addition, we talk about the HFS loans that are coming out of here that have a spread of 2.3%. You take that out of our margin at 4.79%, our margin rises about 20 basis points.

So, the 4.79% is already depressed. And so going — holding that level or declining slightly, I think that maybe helps with the modeling.Ebrahim Poonawala Understood. I’ll leave here. Thank you.Operator Our next question comes from Casey Haire with Jefferies. Please go ahead.Casey Haire Yes, thanks. Good morning guys. I wanted to touch on the borrowing paydown. By my math, you guys — if you guys continue to grow loans, deposits at $500 million, $2 billion, respectively, you get to that mid-80s by the end — by summer 2024. Can we expect the borrowing to be the use of the excess liquidity as you get there ratably and to what level?Dale Gibbons Yes, I mean I think your bottoms are going to come down, obviously, to a level. I don’t have a dollar figure for you, Casey.

But yes, we’ll take them down. I mean, we operated last year with the borrowing position in kind of the mid-single-digits, could be lower than that.But we still expect to be using the FHLB and also are a good accordion basically for day-to-day liquidity is as people withdraw, deposits come in and things like this. And so that’s a pretty stable source to do something like that. What we don’t want to do is we don’t want to rely on the FHLB for just standard operating liquidity.Ken Vecchione I think your numbers are about right. We could maybe get to that loan to deposit ratio a little bit sooner. That will be informed by our deposit activity, right? So, if we do a better job, it will come down quicker. But I think your numbers — your direction is about right.Casey Haire Okay, great.

And on the efficiency ratio guide, I got that. I just — obviously, there’s a lot going on in the near-term or in the last month. Just wondering if you could give an expense run rate for the second quarter just as a starting point?Ken Vecchione I’d rather say — yes, I think what I’d rather say is — the guide is in the mid to high 40s. And the expense run rate for us or the efficiency ratio, I’ve said this on many calls, is really the exhaust fumes that comes out from the business. So, we know where we want to get to in terms of EPS. And you can kind of then back into certain things we won’t sacrifice. We’re not going to sacrifice the build that we’ve been doing in risk management programs and technology and technology itself and by the way [ph], it was because we put so much money into our technology, our payment systems, all work really well.

We had no fail. So, we’re very pleased with that.And also the reason why we’re able to have some confidence around going — the go-forward in the deposit growth is from new businesses that we have cultivated since 2018 and 2019, specifically on the deposit side. So, those things are going to continue.If we don’t put money into the company to grow, then you’re not going to have sustainable deposits and sustainable loan growth. So, I didn’t give you a very specific answer to Q2, but I’m just telling you, mid to high 40s is what we’re going to do inside of the overall outlook that I presented.Casey Haire Got you. And just last one for me. If I take the spot rates that you guys provided in the slide deck and then give you credit for all of the HFS sales and layer in that high 40s efficiency ratio, I get about 1.4% ROA and an 18% tangible ROE.

Does that sound about right?Dale Gibbons 1.4% ROA, you said for the — for the year, you mean, more or less?Casey Haire Yes. Well, yes, like a run rate of 3.31% with all the spot rates that you guys give and then giving credit to the balance sheet restructuring, the $6 billion fully offloaded.Dale Gibbons Yes. So, maybe you’re a little bit off and I think it’s because you’re jumping to the efficiency ratio instantly. And you said, high, I don’t know what a high means.Casey Haire Yes. Exactly.Dale Gibbons I mean — yes. So, remember, we’re still going to have a lot of these — the $3 billion is already contracted, that’s coming in this quarter in terms of dispositions, some more will probably as well. But that’s going to linger a little bit.