WSFS Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:WSFS) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Russell Gunther: Last one for me. On the net charge-off outlook, again, bigger picture, you mentioned core kind of 19 basis points ex NewLane and Upstart, just to have a general sense for your expectation for consumer charge-off trends in the near term.

Rodger Levenson: The consumer charge-off trends have been pretty much within our expectations. The last two quarters, they’ve been consistent. So I think we’re kind of normalizing at a pretty steady rate for – and those being mostly the Upstart portfolio and the NewLane portfolios, even though that’s more of a leasing small business, but those seem to have kind of leveled out at this level.

Operator: Your next question will come from the line of Feddie Strickland with Janney Montgomery Scott.

Feddie Strickland: Can you update us on expectations for earning and total asset growth as you allow the investment portfolio to run off? I think in the slides, it says you’re targeting 18% to 24% today. And then, along those same lines, should we should we see the balance sheet relatively flat, or maybe even shrink from here in the near term, just trying to get a sense for where total assets could go?

Rodger Levenson: I think we would see total assets pretty much remain flat. I think our mortgage-backed securities portfolio had been elevated because we had the excess liquidity over the last few years, and we’re allowing that to run down to more traditional levels around 20% or so and that’s going to take a few years. But we’re seeing, as we said in the supplement, about $1 billion of runoff in that portfolio over the next two years to kind of look at that as $1 billion of runoff that can be redeployed into our loan portfolio and a nice pickup in yields on that transition and mix shift.

Feddie Strickland: Just one more for me. Can we see overall fee income come down some in the fourth quarter, just given the guidance of mid-single digits for the year? And if so, was that driven by any business line in particular?

Arthur Bacci: I would tell you that the fee income has a little bit of noise at times just because of the income we generate from some BOLI derivative cost. The core components of it – wealth, Cash Connect and the core banking fees – continue to have gone up. It’s a range we’ve projected. We did have a strong quarter in our capital markets area, which helped drive up this quarter’s fee revenue. So that’s why you see the 9%. I wouldn’t expect it to continue to grow at 9%. I think back to our normal expectations of mid-single digit would be more appropriate.

Operator: Your next question will come from the line of Manuel Navas with D.A. Davidson.

Manuel Navas: Just circling back up to the loan growth expectations. I understand selectivity in some portions of the book and the opportunity in others. How do you include the expectations for a bit of that recession at the end of the year in your growth projections?

Arthur Bacci: I would just generally say, as we mentioned, Manuel, most of our growth is coming from taking market share. And so, even if there was a contraction from the run rate when GDP growth – which is obviously what we would expect, we don’t believe that would have, in the near term, an immediate impact on the loan growth. Longer term, it would depend on the path of the economy. But most of where we’re seeing our growth is from taking market share and, to a lesser degree, expanding existing relationships.

Manuel Navas: And you talked about a pipeline of construction and there was some nice construction gains in the quarter. Can you just kind of talk about that a bit, just what trends you’re seeing there?