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Earnings Call: Q1 2021

Apr 23, 2021

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the Glacier Bancorp first quarter earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. If anyone should require assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your touch tone telephone. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Randy Chesler, President and CEO. Please go ahead.

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

All right. Thank you, Carol, and good morning, and thank you all for joining us today. With me here in snowy Kalispell is Ron Copher, our Chief Financial Officer, Angela Dose, our Chief Accounting Officer, Byron Pollan, our Treasurer, Tom Dolan, our Chief Credit Administrator, and Don Cherry, our Chief Administrative Officer. Yesterday, we released our first quarter 2021 earnings, and today, we are ready to review them. We finished the first quarter of 2021 well-positioned for the rest of the year. We do business in some of the strongest markets in the country, have record liquidity, and our business model and people continue to attract new customers. I'm also happy to report that most of our 193 locations are now fully open for business across our eight-state footprint as COVID cases decline and vaccination rates increase.

I'll touch on some of the business highlights and then provide additional observations on the quarter. Net income of $80.8 million, an increase of $37.5 million, or 86% over the prior year first quarter net income of $43.3 million. Diluted earnings per share of $0.85, an increase of 85% from the prior year first quarter diluted earnings per share of $0.46. Gain on sale of loans of $21.6 million, an increase of $9.8 million or 82% compared to the prior year first quarter. Non-interest expense of $96.6 million, a decrease of $14.6 million or 13% compared to the prior quarter, and an increase of $1.1 million or 1% from the prior year first quarter.

Bank loan modifications related to COVID-19 decreased $13.5 million from the prior quarter and decreased $1.4 billion from the second quarter of 2020 to $81.3 million or 79 basis points of loans excluding the payroll protection or PPP loans. Non-performing assets as a percentage of subsidiary assets was 19 basis points, which compared to 19 basis points in the prior quarter and 26 basis points in the prior year first quarter. Core deposits increased $1.3 billion or 35% annualized during the current quarter and increased $4.5 billion or 40% from the prior year first quarter. The loan portfolio increased $147 million or 5% annualized in the current quarter and increased $1.1 billion or 12% from the prior year first quarter. The company funded 6,500 PPP loans in the amount of $487 million during the current quarter.

The company received $426 million in PPP loan forgiveness on 6,800 loans from the U.S. Small Business Administration during the current quarter. We declared a quarterly dividend of $0.31 per share, an increase of $0.01 per share or 3% over the prior quarter regular dividend. The company has declared 144 consecutive quarterly dividends and has increased the dividend 47 x. Further highlighting the company's core strength, pre-tax, pre-provision net revenue for the quarter was $100 million, which was up from the prior quarter of $99 million and up $28 million or 39% from the first quarter a year ago. We think this is a very good measure of the health of our core franchise. We saw loan growth in most of our markets, with Montana, Wyoming, and Washington leading the way, and we are trending to our 4% to 6% growth forecast that we've talked about previously.

Our pipeline of customer relationships larger than $5 million grew significantly in the first quarter and now stands at almost twice the level it did at the end of the first quarter a year ago. As I noted, the loan portfolio of $11.2 billion grew $147 million or 5% annualized in the current quarter. If you exclude the liquidation of our residential mortgage portfolio, the loan portfolio grew $252 million or 9%. We continue to build on the 3,000 new customer relationships we picked up as part of round one PPP, with about $135 million of this quarter's commercial loan volume coming from this group. All of this growth is even more impressive when you consider that the Glacier team processed over 4,300 regular loans and over 13,000 PPP loans, including new and those forgiven.

Core deposit growth was incredibly strong, driven by excess liquidity due to the unprecedented government stimulus and lack of spending due to the pandemic. Core deposits increased $1.3 billion and at the end of the quarter totaled $16 billion, most importantly, at a cost of 8 basis points, down 1 basis point from the prior quarter. Non-interest-bearing deposits increased $586 million or 11% over the last quarter. We know that this substantial growth in low-cost core deposits will continue to add to our net interest income and position us extremely well to reinvest in new loans as the economy recovers. Total debt securities of $6.4 billion increased $900 million or 17% from the prior quarter, and are up $2.8 billion or 77% from the prior year first quarter. We continue to purchase debt securities with the excess liquidity from the increase in core deposits and the forgiveness of PPP loans.

Debt securities represented 30% of total assets, compared to 30% at the end of 2020 and 24% a year ago. The return on our debt securities reflected the impact of lower-for-longer interest rates, ending the quarter at 1.81%, down from 2.12% at the end of the prior quarter, due to purchasing new securities at lower market rates. Debt security income was $27.3 million, which is about flat to the prior quarter. We continue to fully invest excess deposits, taking a cautious approach to new investments given current low rates and risk at some point of deposit outflows. As a result, we are targeting a short average life with high quality and highly liquid investments. Non-interest income was strong due to our better-than-expected mortgage business performance. The hot housing market and refinancings continued at a stronger than expected pace across our footprint.

It was a record first quarter for new locked volume, and our gain-on-sale margin was up slightly over the prior quarter. We expect those margins to decline in the next quarter slightly based on interest rate trends. Our biggest concern in our mortgage business is the availability of an ample supply of homes for sale. Non-interest expense was lower than expected due to the $5.2 million of deferred compensation expense from new PPP loans and good expense management by our divisions. Some of our expense saves were due to COVID. We have open positions due and not able to find a ready supply of new hires, and our travel and branch expenses reflect less activity. We expect these saves to subside and expenses to return to a more normal run rate as the economy gets back to normal.

The company's net margin, interest margin as a percent of earning assets on a tax-equivalent basis for the current year was 3.74%, compared to 4.03% in the prior quarter and 4.36% in the prior year first quarter. The core net interest margin of 3.56% compared to 3.76% in the prior quarter and 4.30% in the prior year first quarter. The core net interest margin decreased due to a decrease in earning asset yields. Earning asset yields have decreased from the combined impact of the significant increase in lower-yielding debt securities and the decrease in yields on both loans and debt securities. Debt securities comprised almost 36% of earning assets during the current quarter, compared to 32% in the prior quarter and 24% in the prior year first quarter.

Going forward, our margin will continue to be dependent on the incoming flow of new deposits, loan growth and the yield curve. The efficiency ratio was 46.75% in the current quarter and 50.34% in the prior quarter. Excluding PPP, the ratio would've been 52.89% in the current quarter, which was a 300-basis-point decrease from the prior quarter efficiency ratio of 55.96. The Glacier team, all 3,000 from Montana to Arizona, once again demonstrated the commitment, strength, leadership, and performance that sets them far apart from other bankers in their communities and in the industry. That ends my formal remarks today, and I'd now like Carol to please open the line for any questions that you may have.

Operator

Thank you, Randy. If you have a question at this time, please press star, then the number one key on your touchtone telephone. If your question has been answered or you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press the pound key. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the roster. Your first question comes from the line of Mike Young with Truist.

Mike Young
Analyst, Truist

Hey, Randy, how's it going?

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

Morning. Good.

Mike Young
Analyst, Truist

Wanted to start maybe just with the high-level trends. You kind of touched on it a little bit with the mortgage commentary, just big picture, you guys saw a lot of influx of activity and in-migration as a result of the pandemic and the kind of closing down of the West Coast. Have you seen any of that sort of flow back the other way, or is it still a pretty strong, enduring trend even as the reopening starts to take place?

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

From everything we can see at this point, that trend seems to be sticky. The housing market, as I noted, continues the home sale market. Homes continue to be in very short supply. When they do come on, they're snapped up pretty quickly. A fair amount of that is still outside buyers, as we would say, not from the end market coming in and buying homes. We've yet to see really any kind of a retrade where people decide they want to go back to the markets in which they came here from. Still watching it, but I'd have to say in the first quarter, no, we did not see any signs of that happening.

Mike Young
Analyst, Truist

Okay. I guess secondly, just on the large amount of deposit growth and liquidity flowing into the bank. Just curious, from what the conversations you've had with other market presidents, et cetera, does it seem like permanent liquidity or temporary liquidity? How are you guys thinking about deploying that and leveraging that going forward?

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

Yeah. Well, let me just kind of talk about our outlook there, and I'll have Ron talk about our investment strategy tied to that because obviously, we see this liquidity. I think the team has done a very good job taking advantage of it and getting some nice net interest income growth on it. We had an incredible quarter of growth on deposits. We think that's probably going to tail off a bit because the stimulus payments that fuel the fair amount of that are looked to be at their end. We're seeing the PPP forgiveness come in, which is building it, yet as the economy gets stronger, and people have more places to spend money and feel more comfortable taking trips and doing other things, we expect to see some of that flow out a bit. Overall, I'd say we feel it's very sticky, most of that.

That's why I stress the core relationships or the core deposits are in our core, what we would call core deposits. We feel like they're in a relationship account. If there is a slower growth rate there, I think we'll see that over time. Ron, do you want to comment on our investment strategy with those excess deposits?

Ron Copher
CFO, Glacier Bancorp

Right. Yeah. Hi, Mike. Just to be clear, we strongly prefer loan growth. In the meantime, as deposits are flowing in, we will park them into the investment securities portfolio. As you've seen, the dollars have increased because that's the best yield we can get other than through the loan portfolio. The yields that we're getting were slightly higher than what we were getting in the fourth quarter. We're up to 110 to 115 basis points, and we're also sticking in the residential mortgage-backed security agency-backed. We've moved off the 10-year into the 15-year. Again, a short weighted average life, and that's really key to the strategy going forward. We're getting cash flows off of that, and as rates rise and as they rise more, and we can all predict what that will look like over the course of the year.

We think we will bode well by what we've put to work. One thing I want to point out is we're not trying to time the market. We're not holding back large amounts of cash. Timing the market, you get lucky or you can even lose big. We're pretty pleased with that. One thing I'll point out, with the cash flow, the federal stimulus that came in, we were in the month of March, put $750 million to work, only had 15 days of that. We think that'll bode well for the full quarter next quarter.

Mike Young
Analyst, Truist

Okay. It sounds like just assume sort of a ratable deployment of that excess liquidity as it flows in and there's a willingness basically, or there's no hesitancy about kind of the margin compression that'll be associated with that.

Ron Copher
CFO, Glacier Bancorp

No. I mean, I'm not thrilled with that, but that's the result of what we're doing. We're much more focused on

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

Net interest income to grow earnings, to grow EPS, ultimately fund dividends. That's where we are. I can't defy gravity. I think I've said that the last four quarters, so I'll just keep repeating that.

Mike Young
Analyst, Truist

Fair enough. Thanks.

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

Sure.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Rulis with DA Davidson.

Jeff Rulis
Analyst, DA Davidson

Thanks. Good morning.

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

Morning, Jeff.

Jeff Rulis
Analyst, DA Davidson

Randy, maybe I just kind of dip into the markets a little bit. You mentioned that Montana, Wyoming, Washington kind of leading the charge. It's not as if your other states are economic laggards, however you think nationally. Maybe it's just a timing thing, but Nevada, Utah, Colorado, do you feel like it's just, again, a few of those states leading? I guess the balance of the footprint, what else are you seeing on a growth perspective?

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

The footprint is extremely healthy. If you look at Idaho, Montana, Utah, Arizona, Washington, they're one, two, three, four and six in terms of home price appreciation. We think that we're in some of the best states in the country to just be doing business. The leadership of those states, that surprised us. When we talked about it internally, we think it's probably not going to hold. I think it was a first quarter event, but a fair amount of that is because those states probably came out of COVID much quicker than the rest of our footprint in that they were open sooner, they had less restrictions going through it, and I think that's why we're seeing the loan growth, the leading in the first quarter coming from those states.

Jeff Rulis
Analyst, DA Davidson

Got it. Yeah. Particularly, I guess, Eastern Washington versus the Western side.

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

Exactly.

Jeff Rulis
Analyst, DA Davidson

On a related front, I guess you mentioned real estate and typically, bank M&A can follow that activity as well. I guess, as we've seen deals in the Southeast and California have been pretty active. I guess, are you surprised that the Rocky Mountain, the region has been less active? I know there's less charters, but your thoughts on M&A. You guys have been quiet for a bit, but any thoughts on the acquisition outlook?

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

Yeah. I'd start the timeframe because of the pandemic in 2020, we lost a year. As we previously commented, really started to pick things back up in kind of the December timeframe. I don't think you'll see much difference over time that the West, you'll see a fair amount of activity. Just measured by the amount of phone calls that we've received and people who want to talk about transactions, it's very busy. I think some of the other parts of the country maybe moved a little quicker. I just think that's timing. I think maybe some of the folks in the West were just a little less in a hurry and wanted to see the full result of get fully comfortable with the outlook due to COVID and making sure that you could not only. There's two sides to this.

There's the buyers being comfortable that they can assess a good quality bank and understand the risk, and the sellers' interest in making sure that they sell at a time when they can get closest to their full value. I think those two things are coming together, have come together here recently, and I think over time, over this year, I would expect you won't see a big difference between the West and the rest of the country.

Jeff Rulis
Analyst, DA Davidson

Got it. Okay. Maybe last one, just a housekeeping and maybe for Ron. The deferred comp, the release says it's an increase of $5.2 million. What was the total and maybe what is your generally historical level there just to try to peg? I got your comments on total expenses, maybe a return to more of a normal rate with COVID impacted, I guess, benefit to the cost side. First the deferred comp and then maybe just kind of overall expense levels.

Ron Copher
CFO, Glacier Bancorp

Yeah. On the deferred comp, as we originate these PPP loans because of their a bit unique how we have to comply with all the SBA rules. We've assigned a cost to the origination of those. If you take the $5.2 million divide by the units, you'll see what we basically put out there on average. PPP is its own unique set of loans. When you then look at any other loans that we have, commercial real estate, name your category, we have a compensation charge that we defer over the long-lived assets and that happens every month. All banks do that except for the very small banks. That's-

Jeff Rulis
Analyst, DA Davidson

Ron, okay, go ahead.

Ron Copher
CFO, Glacier Bancorp

Go ahead. No, you go ahead.

Jeff Rulis
Analyst, DA Davidson

Just I'm trying to understand the mechanics there, the increase, the $5 million, I'm assuming is heavy PPP impact. I guess, what was that last quarter? I'm trying to get a level of generally historical deferred comp as the PPP runs away. What is that level revert to? Ballpark.

Ron Copher
CFO, Glacier Bancorp

Yeah. Just looking at the PPP, if I'm understanding your question. In the fourth quarter, since we didn't really originate any PPP loans, there was zero deferred comp associated with that. Are you looking beyond the PPP?

Jeff Rulis
Analyst, DA Davidson

No, I guess that helps.

Ron Copher
CFO, Glacier Bancorp

Sure.

Jeff Rulis
Analyst, DA Davidson

If you're basically saying deferred comp related to PPP was effectively zero last quarter, and you saw a $5 million increase, which was largely PPP, then the other deferred comp that's in the number, we don't really dimension that. That's basically the piece that would effectively normalize going forward.

Ron Copher
CFO, Glacier Bancorp

Exactly. Yep. Exactly.

Jeff Rulis
Analyst, DA Davidson

All right.

Ron Copher
CFO, Glacier Bancorp

On the expense, everybody saw our non-interest expense went down just to get to the bottom line. We're estimating a normal run rate of 105 million, give or take a little bit either side, but 105 would be a good run rate. The way I get there is, just for everybody's benefit, I'm looking at our non-interest expense summary. The comp in employee benefits, it went down to $62.5 million. We'll add five, 5.2. Let's call that $67 million, 67 and a half. I think that that'll hold because in that number, we had an increase in headcount during the first quarter of 2014. Those salaries were front-loaded. We were able to put people on to work at the start of the year. You also noticed that we had the FTE count went up by 24.

That reflects the overtime pay. You heard Randy talk about the work we've been doing on the PPP 1 forgiveness, round two, getting the new loans in from the customers we picked up from round number one. Everybody's been really busy. Plus, we've had the higher FICA, higher employment taxes. With all that said, I'm comfortable with $67 million, $68 million run rate for comp. I'm going to move to the other expense line. It's a six million reduction there. Three million, about half of that is not sustainable. Part of that is we have been so busy taking care of our customers on PPP round one, round two, and then just think about just the COVID impact. We haven't spent as much money on what I would call the business development side of the house, the travel, third-party consulting. We have been just very busy doing that.

Keep in mind also, in the fourth quarter last year, we talked about this in January. We did a lot of year-end cleanup so we could start the year clean for 2021. Of that $6 million in other, only about $3 million of that will occur again. I just want to go back for a second on comp and employee benefits because we were down $8.1 million. I've explained 5.2. That remaining 2.9 or 3 million, that is not sustainable because that really relates to the fact in the fourth quarter, we had higher accrued expenses for the really good performance that we were seeing. That won't happen again. When you boil that all down, that just leaves all those other expenses, advertising, occupancy fees. We think those are the right levels. They'll stay there. Everybody can see that other real estate owned is only $12,000.

We don't have a lot of OREO. That's a real blessing. I'll leave it there. 105 is the real run rate we think everybody should go with.

Jeff Rulis
Analyst, DA Davidson

Great. Thanks, Ron and Randy. Appreciate it.

Ron Copher
CFO, Glacier Bancorp

Welcome.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Matthew Clark with Piper Sandler.

Matthew Clark
Analyst, Piper Sandler

Hey, good morning.

Ron Copher
CFO, Glacier Bancorp

Good morning, Matthew.

Matthew Clark
Analyst, Piper Sandler

I just wanted to circle back to the kind of balance sheet growth related question. I think 4% - 6% loan growth ex-PPP is still the guide for the year, and you're kind of on pace for that. What I'm trying to get at is just your overall thoughts on NII growth, whether it's on a reported basis overall with PPP or without.

Ron Copher
CFO, Glacier Bancorp

Yeah, Matthew, it's Ron here. Basically, net interest income was pretty much flat compared to the fourth quarter. We see that we're still going to be able to hold the loan yields, let's say, around 420 for new production. As well, when we put more dollars to work in the investment securities portfolio, we think that's the way we're going to be able to maintain the net interest income. As I mentioned, we put a lot of money to work in the third quarter, excuse me, in the third month, March. We will pick up that benefit as well. No, we feel comfortable that we'll be able to maintain growth, I should say, our net interest income.

Matthew Clark
Analyst, Piper Sandler

Okay. Can you remind us just how much in the way of round one PPP fees that you have left, and how much in round two? Just not sure what the kind of gross coupon there, or maybe net coupon.

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

Yeah.

Okay. The net deferred fees remaining on PPP round one at the end of March is roughly, call it six and a quarter million, 6.25 million. That's round one. On round two, we've got just under $22 million remaining.

Matthew Clark
Analyst, Piper Sandler

Great. Thank you. That's over a longer life though, right?

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

Yes.

Matthew Clark
Analyst, Piper Sandler

Okay. just lastly, on the mortgage banking piece, can you give us the amount of loans sold in the quarter, this quarter, maybe last? I'm trying to get at a gain on sale margin, and just wanted to also verify if there were any kind of MSR related marks in there. I can't remember if you guys do any servicing.

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

Ron, do you want to talk about the MSR and then I'll cover the sale?

Ron Copher
CFO, Glacier Bancorp

Yes. On the MSR, we're using lower cost on markets, so we're not writing those off. The fee associated with that is for 25 basis points in the margin calculations. That's been pretty steady for us. Again, some banks mark to market quarterly. We have not made that election at all.

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

Yeah. in terms of loans sold for the quarter, residential loans sold, that was about $490 million for the quarter.

Matthew Clark
Analyst, Piper Sandler

How did that compare to last quarter? I just want to look, trying to get the sense for the g ain on sale margin was up slightly, so.

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

Yeah.

Just slightly. Yeah. We sold last quarter just about $680 million.

Matthew Clark
Analyst, Piper Sandler

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Jacque Bohlen with KBW.

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

Morning, Jacque.

Jacque Bohlen
Analyst, KBW

Good morning. I noticed that you repaid just a real small amount of sub-debt in the quarter. just wanted to get the thoughts behind that and if you might look to do any other pieces.

Ron Copher
CFO, Glacier Bancorp

The only sub-debt we paid was $7.5 million, and really was Tier 2 debt. It was something we picked up when we acquired Intermountain Bancorp First Security Bank in Bozeman and had a very high coupon, six and five-eighths. We paid that off on January the fourth. I'm happy to report that was $500,000 we will not pay out because we were able to retire it. It got to the call date, and so we promptly paid it. All of the other sub-debt is really trust-preferred securities, very dirt cheap capital by any stretch. We're going to keep that of course, and that really is a liability for GAAP purposes in our financial statements, but it's Tier 2 capital.

Remember, it used to be Tier 1, but because we crossed $15 billion and we did an acquisition, it got reclassed to Tier 2, but it's still in our total risk-based capital.

Jacque Bohlen
Analyst, KBW

Okay. Great. Thank you for the color, and that's it for me.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of David Feaster with Raymond James.

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

Morning.

David Feaster
Analyst, Raymond James

I just wanted to start on the increasing in demand and just the trends in the pipeline. Just curious how much of this is from existing clients that are just more confident in the economic improvement and starting to invest versus new customer acquisition from new hires and maybe just an update on the migration of new clients from the PPP program.

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

Sure. Tom, do you want to cover that?

Tom Dolan
Chief Credit Officer, Glacier Bancorp

Sure. On the existing pipeline, little difficult to nail down exact, but I would say about two-thirds of the pipeline is existing customers. Last year there were projects that were put on hold until our customers got more comfortable with what they were seeing in the market. Now that with everything for the most part reopened, customers comfortable spending capital, that's what we see. About 2/3, 1/3 split. On the PPP, we've made some nice volume there. Of the 3,000 customers, we've been able to bring over a pretty large share of that. Total loans to date on those customers that we've been able to bring over with round one PPP is about $207 million total since the start of the program.

David Feaster
Analyst, Raymond James

Okay. That's great. then just, Randy, following up on your commentary about the pipeline of customer relationships over $5 million being up pretty significantly. Just curious how much of that is strategic, looking to go maybe upstream a bit versus just market demand and some fallout from some of the larger banks not servicing the lower end of that middle market well, or in customer migration from PPP?

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

Yeah. It's not a change in strategy. I think it's just a reflection of the activity levels in the market. We are picking up some good loans from some of the other players in the market. Some of the larger banks continue to be distracted, so that's been very good for us as well. Really no change there, just something we talked about this quarter because of how significantly that particular area has grown. It's almost double, when you look at that pipeline where it was a year ago. I think it's more a reflection of the growing strength of the markets than it is a change in our direction.

David Feaster
Analyst, Raymond James

Okay. just wanted to touch on any upcoming investments that you might have, whether on the technology front or just any other projects. We've talked in the past about kind of an ATM upgrade and deploying more ITMs. Just wanted to get an update maybe where you were at on that and any other strategic investments or opportunities that you might have on the horizon.

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

Sure. Well, we continue to make strategic investments, and specifically in technology. We do that trying to keep, without the PP P, 54%-55% range on the efficiency. We feather those investments in, and we like to keep our efficiency stable and not experience any kind of cliff effect of big investments at one time. Also because we believe these projects are better executed in a bite-size fashion than just making big bets on technology in what we call a raise-the-curtain strategy, where everything is put together. It's worked very well for us. We are evaluating investments in the ATM fleet, and that's underway. I think we're going to bring some consistency there, and I think position ourselves well for the future.

That distribution outlet, pretty generic today, but we want to make sure as things change, we're well-positioned to use that distribution more strategically if the need arises. That's one area. We've talked about our commercial card business, the investment we've made there. That's continuing to grow very nicely at a very strong rate as we really penetrate existing customers with that product. Rather than a brand-new business line, we're just going to customers we already have and displacing people who are offering that product to them. That investment is going well. Probably the third big one is our account opening process. We launched a virtual account opening process in the middle of the last year, very well-received. We're now going to roll that out to our branch system and deploy that. I think that's another area.

Again, David, we do all these against the backdrop of managing to that 54%-55% efficiency, and we'll continue doing that.

David Feaster
Analyst, Raymond James

Okay. That's great color. Thank you.

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

You're welcome.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Tim Coffey with Janney.

Timothy Coffey
Analyst, Janney

Great. Thanks. Good morning, everybody.

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

Morning, Tim.

Timothy Coffey
Analyst, Janney

Hey, Randy, can you maybe provide a little bit of color on the forward direction of your on-balance sheet residential mortgages?

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

Yeah. We do service. We both portfolio, and then we service for the agencies. We've been very opportunistic in how we've grown that. It's really based on our assessment of when we originate loans, what's the most favorable economics for us in how to deploy that mortgage. Whether we hold it, whether we sell it, or whether we sell it servicing retained, really just drives that portfolio.

Timothy Coffey
Analyst, Janney

Okay. All right. Thanks. That's helpful. This question's been asked a couple different times for this call, but I'm kind of curious about how long you think the current air pocket that we're in terms of, say, stronger loan growth, on-balance sheet excess liquidity, how long you think that period lasts?

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

Well, the first part, the growth aspect, we don't view that as an air pocket. We view that as a very longer-lasting trend. If you back up and look at the strength of the markets that we're in, and again, this is relative to our geographic footprint. We have a lot of activity in our eight states that's very positive, all the way from Arizona up to Montana. Arizona, it's number fifth in the nation in tech job growth. That's what they're projecting. Utah economy ranks number one among all 50 states in U.S. News & World Report. Reno's ranked number four of 25 best-performing large cities. Five of the eight states we're in, the unemployment rate's lower than U.S. average. All those things I think bode extremely well for growth.

We've had in-migration of population, and we think the business investment follows that to serve a bigger population. That's a longer-lasting, multi-year dynamic that we feel very good about. On the deposits, I think that's probably going to be certainly the quarter we had this quarter was exceptional. That kind of deposit growth we just see that tailing off over the next couple of quarters a bit, because the stimulus payments aren't coming in. That was part of what fueled that deposit growth. We got a tape of a quarter of a billion dollars of stimulus payments in as part of that. The pent-up demand is there, and I think as people have more ways, both businesses and consumers have more ways to spend their money, I think you're going to see some of that outflow.

So those, the deposits probably, we do see that trending down a bit. The market growth rate, as I said, we feel good about over a long period of time here.

Timothy Coffey
Analyst, Janney

Okay. On just the deposit side. Far this month, have you seen any change in the velocity within those deposit accounts?

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

Just in April?

Yeah.

I'd say from what we can see at this point, we have not seen a big change. I think it's a bit early. I think as for the factors I cited, we're likely to see a bit of a downshift.

Timothy Coffey
Analyst, Janney

Right. Okay. Those are all my questions. Thank you very much.

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

You're welcome.

Operator

We have a follow-up question from the line of Matthew Clark with Piper Sandler.

Matthew Clark
Analyst, Piper Sandler

Hey, just a quick one on the round two of the PPP fees. Are you guys assuming a five-year life? Are you assuming something shorter, more something maybe more realistic?

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

No, round two, we put those on a five-year schedule.

Matthew Clark
Analyst, Piper Sandler

Okay. Thank you.

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

Yep, you bet.

Operator

Okay, I'm not seeing any questions in the queue at this time, so I'll turn the call back over to Randy for any closing remarks.

Randy Chesler
President and CEO, Glacier Bancorp

All right. Well, thank you, Carol, for managing the call today. I want to thank everybody who dialed in for spending some time with us today. Have a great day and a wonderful weekend. Thank you.