Good afternoon, and welcome to the Home Bancshares Incorporated 4th Quarter Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen only mode. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Donna Townsheil, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Gary. I'm Donna Townsheil, Director of Investor Relations, and our management team would like to thank you for joining our Q4 conference call. Reporting today will be Tracy French, our President and CEO of Centennial Bank Brian Davis, our Chief Financial Officer Kevin Hester, our Chief Lending Officer Chris Poulton, President of CCSG John Marshall, President of Shore Premier Finance Stephen Tipton, Chief Operating Officer and our Chairman, John Allison. Before we dig into another record setting quarter, I wanted to provide you with an update on Home's ESG efforts in the year of 2020. We have increased our focus on the pillars of ESG and you will be able to read more about that in our upcoming proxy disclosures.
We have increased our shareholder engagement through 1 on 1 calls, as well as posting a series of fireside chats, while we dug into the different segments of our loan portfolio. We have also implemented performance metrics for our named executive officers and our Chairman that includes both short term and long term incentives as well as peer comparisons. Our Chairman took over the role of President and CEO of the holding company and he elected to take a reduction in his salary. We are also actively working on our 2nd corporate social responsibility report. These are just some of the activities taking place at home while simultaneously running a great bank.
So our first report on the quarter today will come from Tracy French for Centennial Bank.
Thank you, Don, and good afternoon to all. A year ago, we did not know what PPP was and Johnny has not invented PPPP or what we know now as the P5 in our calculation. Trust me, we all know in this company what that is. Our talented team of bankers continue to deliver great numbers as our group will share with you today some color following our announcement this morning. While some groups across this country can't seem to work together at all, this year all bankers, accountants, associations with banks and regulators have shown what can happen when you respect and get on the same wagon no matter where you're headed.
I've been in banking, let's just say a while now, and I've seen a lot. This year is the most impressive in what I see in people working together. It's a proud time to call yourself a banker in America as all banks have stepped up above and beyond to help our staff, our customers, our businesses this past year. Our regions, and I mean all of our regions, wrapped up a great year for our company. Tip of the hat to all of ours that work within this company that we've serviced and supported the customers this past year.
I'd like to compliment our Northeast Arkansas region for having a great year in Arkansas and also we'd like to mention Central Florida region, we're having its best since joining our company. Our group here today will give more details on New York and Shore and the holding company in a bit, but I'd like to share with you some Centennial Bank numbers with you. I call the old traditional Johnny ROA averaged over 2% for the quarter with improvement each month. The efficiency ratios stayed around 38%, which I think is still a little high for you, but we're getting there. Our FTE margin was 4.13% average for the quarter with improvement each month.
The old return on equity stayed right at 12% average for the quarter with improvements each month. And the new Allison ratio or the P5NR had an average of 60.72 percent for the month and ended the year at 61.53%. I mentioned improvement each month and that's what your Centennial Bank team has done this year and we will continue doing going forward. Thank you, Donna.
Thank you, Tracy. Another great year for the bank. Congratulations. Now we will turn to Brian Davis for a finance report.
Thanks, Donna. I'm pleased to report $148,000,000 of net interest income and a 4% net interest margin for Q4 2020. Our 4th quarter net interest margin increased 8 basis points from Q3. Today, I'd like to give you some color on the Q4 NIM. 1st, during the Q4, we had $157,000,000 of PPP loans forgiven.
This forgiveness caused the acceleration of deferred fee income for the loans forgiven. Deferred fee income increased $3,100,000 from Q3 to Q4. The acceleration was 8 basis points accretive to the NIM. 2nd, the COVID-nineteen crisis and the resulting governmental response has created a tremendous amount of excess liquidity in the market. As a result of excess liquidity, we had $102,000,000 of additional interest bearing cash in Q4 to the NIM.
3rd, for Q4, we recognized $5,700,000 of interest accretion from acquisitions versus 6,900,000 dollars of accretion for Q3. The $1,200,000 reduction in accretion income was 3 basis points dilutive to the NIM. In conclusion, the 8 basis points increase for PPP loans plus the 3 basis points decline for excess liquidity and the 3 basis points decline for less accretion income resulted in a 2 basis points of noise when compared on linked quarters. With that said, our net interest margin is actually up 6 basis points on an apples to apples comparison. I'll conclude with a few remarks on capital.
Our go at home bank shares would be extremely well capitalized. Dollars Total risk based capital was $2,100,000,000 and risk weighted assets were $12,000,000,000 As a result, the leverage ratio was 10.8%, which is 116% above the well capitalized benchmark of 5%. Common Equity Tier 1 was 13.4%, which is 106% above the well capitalized benchmark of 6.5%. Tier 1 capital was 14.0%, which is 75% above the well capitalized benchmark of 8%, and the total risk based capital was 17.8%, which is 78% above the well capitalized benchmark of 10%.
With that said, I'll
turn the call back over to Donna. Donna?
Thank you, Brian. Those are impressive capital ratios for sure. Now for an update on our loan portfolio, Kevin Hetzer.
Thanks, Donna. I'm happy to say that 2020 is in the books, easily the oddest year of my banking career, but I'm very proud of all that we have accomplished despite the global pandemic. It seems like years ago, but rounds 12 of PPP were a big success for Centennial Bank. Again, I want to thank the over 400 employees that contributed to this truly monumental effort. We closed over 8,500 loans totaling over $850,000,000 and helped to save likely tens of thousands of jobs.
We purposely began the forgiveness process slowly in September, yet we have submitted over $410,000,000 or 48 percent of our round 1 and 2 PPP loans to the SBA for forgiveness. The response from SBA has been strong with over $285,000,000 forgiven, and we are seeing a forgiveness rate that currently exceeds 99.5%. The December stimulus act provides yet a simpler forgiveness process for loans under 100 and $50,000 which we will implement very soon, and that should provide us the impetus to complete this round of forgiveness in a timely manner. PPP 3.0 kicked off on Tuesday. It's a bit early to estimate how many loans that we will do, but we can definitely tell that the interest from our customers is very strong.
It's targeted at the businesses that were the most affected and it will come at a crucial time as the pandemic drags on. We finished 2020 on a strong note in the area of loan deferrals as well, reducing them to only $330,000,000 or 3 percent alone at December 31. Hospitality remains the hardest hit segment of the portfolio and it consists of over 50% of the loans that remain on deferral. The vast majority of our deferrals were able to follow what I considered to be our Plan A, which was paying all deferred interest up to date and entering into a 1 to 2 year interest only modification, then converting back to regular P and I for 1 to 2 years. They also include financial reviews no less frequently than quarterly and a moratorium on distributions while they're on interest only.
However, the brightest light in 2020 may be mortgage, where we flirted with $1,000,000,000 in loans closed, falling only $4,000,000 short at the end of the year and posted the highest net income ever at over 22,000,000 dollars They have set a very high bar for themselves, but I believe that they're poised for another year of success in 2021. Finally, I'm very pleased to share very strong asset quality numbers with you today. Nonperforming loans are 66 basis points, only up 16 basis points pre COVID and 3 basis points on a linked quarter basis. Non performing assets are even better at 48 basis points, only up 5 basis points pre COVID and 1 basis point on a linked quarter basis. The allowance coverage of non performing loans is strong at 3 31 percent and early stage past dues remain low at 0.62%, which is very close to where we were pre COVID.
We are committed to remaining disciplined in pricing and underwriting given the reasonably low number of quality projects and unprecedented levels of liquidity in the system. I believe that Oliver Cromwell's Trust in God and keep your powder dry is an appropriate one for today's uncertain times. On that, Donna, I'll turn it back over to you.
Thank you, Kevin. Hearing how many customers we helped with CT Living is very satisfying, and I agree with your growth. Next is Chris Pothermuth, our CCSG division.
Thank you, Donna. Like many, I'm happy to put Q4 and 2020 behind us since it looks to be getting hard but far more enjoyable work preparing for an emerging recovery in 2021. Before I discuss that topic, I'll share a few highlights from this past quarter year. For the most of the year, we directed activities to harvesting the portfolio with specific focus on portfolio composition and pricing. As a result of those efforts, our returns and margins increased throughout the year, while assets declined.
Loans were down approximately $150,000,000 in Q4 and about $65,000,000 for the full year. Our commercial real estate portfolio was flat to slightly up, while we continue to reduce exposure to certain C and I credits. Throughout the year, we remained active in the commercial real estate market. New originations volume was just over $700,000,000 for the year, which is approximately 30% down from what we would generally expect in a normal year. We estimate the transaction volumes in the overall market were off by about 25% to 50% depending on the product type and geography.
We did see a slight acceleration in activity in the Q4, which is carrying over into the Q1 as projects that were on hold slowly begin to work their way through the pipeline. Relatedly, payoffs were down from prior years but slightly outpaced originations this year. Payoffs accelerated in Q4 as we took the opportunity to move a few credits out of the portfolio towards year end. The benefit of focusing on portfolio composition, while continuing to be moderately active in the market, is that we're positioned to benefit from a recovery when that occurs. While still early, the shape of the recovery is beginning to come into focus.
Recovery may be uneven and will likely be nonlinear, but having continued to lend through the cycle prepares us for the coming quarters and years. In particular, our 2 newest offices, Texas and Florida, are and should benefit from the acceleration in jobs and inward population migration in these two expanding markets. Both Texas and Florida will continue to be a priority area for us in the coming quarters and year. Throughout 2020, I stated that we had built CCFG for just this sort of market, a platform built for durability in all weather. Thus far, our results have proven this out.
While I remain hopeful that we're closer to a recovery, we will remain our same cautious and opportunistic selves as we explore the coming post COVID environment. Donna, I'll turn the call back to you.
Thank you. And now, Don Marshall will update us on the Boating World.
Thank you, Don, and good afternoon. The performance of the boat business in the 4th quarter certainly didn't disappoint and provided the punctuation for a full year of unusual COVID-nineteen activity. We received 369 retail applications in the quarter, down just a bit compared to 510 in the Q3 when the boat buying surge was at its peak. That resulted in funding $44,000,000 in new retail loans, down from $90,000,000 in the 3rd quarter. Our credit standards and asset quality remained high despite the COVID frenzy in the year.
Average FICO score in the quarter was 776 and average loan to value for originated loans was 60 percent. The challenge remains prepayment speeds. Early payoffs totaled $52,000,000 in the quarter, up from $46,000,000 in the 3rd quarter, totaled $144,000,000 for the year. At the same time, we were able to add 6 months to the average duration of our retail loans in 2020 compared to 2019. So as the COVID economy stabilizes, this should help reduce early payoffs and stretch the lives of these interest earning assets.
As COVID closed both factories around the globe, depleted North American inventories could not be replenished. Our floorplan line utilization at year end was 31%, far below the historical average of approximately 60%. This represents $80,000,000 of potential funding. Shipments are beginning to resume as manufacturers are able to find space on freighters. But domestic dealer, euphoria has caused factories to skeptically review the 2021 order log.
Certainly, the U. S. Political and economic environment has also introduced uncertainty. Factories are accepting aggressive orders from more optimistic dealers, but also demanding more significant non refundable deposits to cover potential cancellation. An encouraging sign for Shore was positive net inventory fundings in the month of December.
So we closed out with an increase of $3,800,000 This was the 1st month of net fundings versus net payoffs since April could point to a commercial ending rebound in 2021. The potential for scaling our business through acquisition and rapid growth was realized as our ROA improved to 2.8% in the 4th quarter compared to 2.7% prior quarter, 1.3% in the prior year prior to our acquisition of our largest competitor. We continue to be a lean organization. Shores efficiency was 16% in the 4th quarter compared to 22% in the Q4 of 2019. And we delivered $29,000,000 to the bank's bottom line full year 2020.
NIM improved by 4 basis points in the month of December by 18 basis points quarter over quarter. The integration of LH Finance acquired in the first quarter has also improved our NIM during the course of the year from 2.57% to 3.96%. Just at I'll close with a few milestones for the year. We received 1627 retail loan applications for the full year, nearly double the 982 received in 2019, resulted in a record funding of $227,000,000 in retail loans compared to $145,000,000 in 2019. When we joined Centennial back in 2018, our goal was to rebuild from scratch our commercial lending platform.
In 2020, we eclipsed the $100,000,000 mark in organic non acquired floor plan commitments and enjoyed diversified partnerships of 50 dealers across North America, 15 manufacturers worldwide. While our combined portfolio contracted $25,000,000,000 for the full year, I'm optimistic that rebounding commercial inventories will catapult us back to growth in 2021. So with that optimistic outlook, I turn it back to you, Tom.
Thank you, John, and congratulations on a great year. Now Stephen Tipton will provide us an update on deposits and other operational information.
Thank you, Donna. I will give color on deposit activity, repricing efforts and trends and a few additional details on the balance sheet. On the deposit side, what a year we had in 2020. Total deposits ended the year up 13% or $1,450,000,000 Most importantly, our non interest bearing account balances increased nearly $900,000,000 or 38 percent from the year end 2019. While the increase is certainly attributable to the government's response to the pandemic, we believe the growth is also a result of the business development efforts of our bankers and the resiliency of our customer base and geographic footprint.
On a linked quarter basis, total deposits declined $212,000,000 as we allowed a total of $471,000,000 in higher cost time deposits to roll off. The shift to digital banking continues as transaction volume for mobile, treasury management and debit card transactions trends higher. This has allowed our bankers to focus on supporting our customers, both in branch, in person and virtually. And we continue to review our product set and look for opportunities to generate fee income at home. Switching to funding costs, interest bearing deposits averaged 44 basis points in Q4, down 10 basis points on a linked quarter basis and exited the quarter in December at 41 basis points.
Total deposit costs were 33 basis points in Q4 and are down to 30 basis points in the month of December. We continue to monitor liquidity levels and look for opportunities to lower rates in line with the market. Switching to loans, we saw total production of over $725,000,000 in the 4th quarter, with nearly $500,000,000 coming from the Community Bank footprint. Payoff volume appears to be a record at $886,000,000 with over $300,000,000 from CCFG and feel this to be a sign of strength in the capital and secondary markets. In Brian Davis' remarks, he discussed the comparison of the NIM to Q3.
For additional color, on a linked quarter basis, excluding accretion and the impact from PPP loans, we are proud to see that net interest income increased by over $400,000 despite the decline in average loan balances. Focusing on the proper risk adjusted return on loans and managing interest rates on deposits, our presidents and bankers have done a fantastic job in defending the net interest margin in 2020. And with that, I'll turn
it back over to you, Donna.
Thank you, Stephen. These have all been impressive reports on another amazing quarter for Home. Congratulations to all. And now our final report comes to you from our Chairman, John Allison.
Thank you all for attending Home Bancshares 4th quarter year end conference call today. We didn't bring out the slopies or the kazoos, is that what it was Kevin, kazoos? Or we didn't have any marching bands, but we should have had all three today after the quarter that we've had. And as you can see by the numbers produced in the Q4 that we certainly raised the bar to a new level. The company was almost perfect hitting on 7.5 out of 8 cylinders and exceeded our expectations for revenue, profit, efficiency, margin, PP and R and EPS.
The only downside was loans were down about 460,000,000 dollars as $155,000,000 of PPP, about $150,000,000 up from New York and about $150,000,000 from legacy. Actually, our attitude is probably not that this was a time to be aggressive on commercial loan side. Really, there's really nothing wrong with sitting tight while this blows over. I'd like to thank our long term bank investors that have endured the unfavorability for banks over the past several years and want you to know that we felt the pain with you. In spite of all that, that has happened in the last 3 years, Home has continued to perform with best in class metrics, earning around $300,000,000 adjusted income per year.
2018 was $310,000,000 2019 was about $290,000,000 and 2020 was $305,000,000 if you adjust for CECL. Speaking of CECL, it appears that some people are taking the mathematical calculation and treat it as a piggyback. I think the jury is still out on this program. We'll continue to evaluate and we'll continue to evaluate over time. I think that we're slightly over reserved, but I'd rather be in that position and have a cushion than be under reserved that nearly all banks were before the program started.
I prefer to maintain reserves of 2 plus percent over the next 5 or 10 years and let this program see if it can prove itself out. It's my experience that 2% has worked over the past 30 years. That's a number I prefer. The bad was the pandemic causing a number of loans, projects to be canceled or postponed as a result of uncertain times. The good was 2 sources of income that have shown rock star status for our shareholders.
Many of our sources income, particularly new construction and C and I critics slowed considerably. Not that a slowdown really concerned us because sometimes it's better to back up and take a look at what you have and get your arms around it before you do something else. We did that through a series of fireside chats and what we said then is the same as what we would say now. I love to take credit for anticipating the health pandemic, but we know that's not true. When I look at the good side of our 2020 performance, we have to credit Marine Finance Business and our Home Mortgage Business because both were much, much stronger than ever anticipated.
Recreational vehicles, ATVs, bicycles, marine and home purchases boomed and we had 2 of those opportunities in our statement and what run it has been and we're still having every month. The decision to enter the marine business has been a great business decision. John and his team are producing record levels of origination. Earlier, we purchased an additional platform as platform number 2, somewhere in size and once added to our existing platform, we have doubled our size, while at the same time improving efficiency and increasing our yields. Not only did we purchase a competitor, eliminated one of our biggest competitors.
We entertained exiting home mortgage business after Jamie Dimon said, banks cannot be profitable doing home mortgages. However, we found out just the opposite. Our profitability has gone up over 300% last year alone. I'm glad we stayed with the business. I think it was a good decision.
You take approximately $11,000,000 of quality loans already on the books yielding over 5 percent, adding few equity investments that paid off handsomely for us in 2020, adding $900,000,000 of PPP loans, plus never give up on charge offs that resulted in a few natural recoveries for 2020 and you add down our watch stars and more premium margins and then our increased adjusted income for 2020 without CECL of $305,000,000 for the year or $1.85 a $1.85 a share. I guess it's better to be lucky than smart sometimes. Let's go with the performance. Revenue was $181,900,000 that's an all time record. PP and R was 100, I don't know, I talked to one of our friend in St.
Louis, works in St. Louis, said we shouldn't use record, record, record. So I think we'll go back and say that $181,900,000 is the best ever. How's that, is that good? PPNR was 100 and 7.7%.
And I watched I read a research report this morning, it went out and someone was bragging on somebody's PPNR and said that their pretax pre provision PP and R was 2.2%. Well, I'm proud to tell you that Home Bank shares was 2.6 1%. Also net profit was $81,800,000 return on assets 1.97 dollars and our first $0.50 quarter ever, first time in the company's history to earn $0.50 during the quarter and return on tangible common equity of 20.96%, just a hair under 21%. And as you heard on the margin, it's 4% and that's increasing. Plus P5NR, Tracy gave you the bike a while ago.
This is the bike and the holding company came in at 59.16. So we brought down 59.16 to the shoe box. I think that's pretty good. And another interesting factor that I want to share with you is if you take the revenue of 181,900,000 dollars and divide that into the after tax net profit of $81,900,000 you come out with 44.96%. Think about that.
44.40 call it 45% of the revenue fell to the bottom line after tax. Great job by all the company continues to go. With profitability of about 300,000,000 dollars in the last 3
years, our management team has
decided it's time for us to acquire some additional assets. When we get approximately $300,000,000 in a $197,000,000 ROA 3 years in a row, that's about all the juice you can get. It's time for us to make an acquisition and take those new assets and turn them into a $197,000,000 97 ROI producer. We will be active in Florida to capture the consolidation savings and huge demographic shifts that Florida is enjoying. We believe with no state income taxes, business friendly environment and warm weather, Florida franchise will continue to be the most valuable franchise in the U.
S. We're also open to other locations, but it's hard to compete with the attributes of Florida. With the strong earnings power, great asset quality, long term prudent management team and a more than adequate reserves, I think it's time to become more aggressive in the M and A if we can find the right opportunity. With about $16,500,000 of PPP profit left to harvest in the field and a new PPP program already in motion, this will give a nice kick to the continued extra profitability for the year. Not to get overoptimistic, but yesterday's executive loan committee, we approved over $100,000,000 in loans at GoodRights.
Thank you again for your support. As the volume of vaccines begins to flood the market, I think by June, we'll be looking at the crisis in the rearview mirror and back to business as usual. And I'm certainly ready for that some good old times again and hope to see all of you soon. Thank you. I think we're ready for Gary now.
We will now begin the question and answer Our first question is from Jon Arfstrom with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good afternoon.
Hi, John.
Hi. Just want to last comment, John, you made on loan committee approving $100,000,000 in loans. And then Kevin, some of your comments on loan growth, what's really going on there? Is it just are you seeing increases in activity? Is it just low quality activity?
And when you kind of sit through and you think about what Chris said as well, how do you guys think about loan balance trajectory for the year?
I'll make a comment and we'll let Kevin talk and Chris on what he sees also because that's the people that really see that every day. We have not been I think in 'five, 'six, 'seven and 'eight, I said I don't give a damn if I ever see another loan. Kind of built that way this time. Sometimes it's good just to catch your breath and we did the deep dive into all our loan book. I there's a little activity going on out there now, but there's not much.
So somebody is getting loan growth and got to be stealing it from somebody else because there's really not a lot of construction or development going on. So and there's some of the banks are stepping up a little bit, which pleases us. We've got about a $15,000,000 credit going out of the bank that there's probably a loss in, probably a good sized loss in. Another bank committed to it and they're doing it to be closing out of here in a couple of weeks. So this is a good time to back up and sit tight and pick your battles and pick your loans that you want to pick.
And meantime, clean up and push out. And I'll let Chris can comment on what he's done. We pushed out a few loans here that were on the marginal side. We've had more focus on that. I think that puts us with lots of dry powder and ready to move forward in the future.
I mean, if there's not a lot out there to get, then what happens? Somebody's got to buy steal a loan from somebody else and what does that mean? That means low rates. And my comment on low rates is I don't think the Fed's going to be able to hold it where it is. I mean, we're up 21% on the 10 year, 21.9% on the 10 year this year alone.
I think we're inflation is running much higher than 2% at the present time. And I think the only way they're going to stop is raise rates. So those that are doing long term fixed rates at low rates will pay for it in the future, I think. And meantime, I don't know Kevin, you want to roll Wendy?
Yes. I mean, you were going to let Chris talk about it. I don't really have anything specifically to add. You said everything that I would say from the footprint perspective.
I'll just ask Chris that question in the last day or 2. Chris, you want to comment?
Yes, sir. Hi, it's Chris. Hey, John. Yes, I'd say a couple of things. One is transaction volumes nationally were down anywhere depending on who you talk to 25%, 30% is a good safe bet over the course of the year.
So the fact that we were down a little in volume makes sense because I think as Johnny said, if you were up in volume and everybody else is down in volume, you were taking it from somebody. The second is, Johnny mentioned, we moved some credits out. We shrank in the Q4 largely because our payoffs were up. And some of that was expected because early on in the year, as we got into the understanding the shape of the recession and the pandemic, we went to some borrowers who had some credits where it was clear they weren't probably going to be able to execute their planned strategy. And we gave them some time to find another home, going to somebody in May and tell them they got to leave right then.
That's not a very good way to handle it. We put a lot of pressure on the system, put a lot of pressure on the borrower. But we were very clear with some of our clients that we probably weren't in it for the long haul with them since their plan was going to change. We gave them to the end of the year to come to an alternate arrangement and it took until the end of the year for some of those to come to an alternate arrangement. And so I think about 40 percent of our payoffs for the year occurred in the Q4, many as a result of that.
We talked about harvesting. Part of that is part of harvesting is crop rotation. So we rotate some loans out, create some opportunity for us to refill. And what we think are better times, we did see an acceleration activity in the Q4 that is rolling over into the first quarter for us. I like where we are on our pipeline.
We talked in previous quarters where we liked where we were in the pipeline, but we thought it would take some time. We're seeing those loans come through now, and we're seeing those loans close now. There is a lag between signing up a deal, closing a deal and funding a deal. And so we'll continue to see a little bit of that lag, but we've been talking about the fact we will lean into a recovery here that we expect that's certainly being aggressive, but I think we will lean into the recovery. And we'll leverage our footprint in Dallas and Florida to take advantage of those two markets, which are exceptional markets.
Okay. And Kevin, you feel like we're seeing some recovery in some signs of life?
I think it's going to be a little bit. I think you will see it as we go into the rest of the year and the vaccine gets further implemented and we get a little further along and outside of the pandemic, I think you will see particularly in our Florida footprint, I think you'll see just as Chris said, it's a great market and the inflows are even better than they've been in the last several years, I believe. So I believe you will see it, but it will take a little while into this year, I believe.
Okay.
All right. Thanks a
lot for the help. Appreciate it.
The next question is from Will Curtis with Hovde Group. Please go ahead.
Hey, good afternoon.
Hi Will.
Maybe Brian or Steven, I appreciate your kind of comments about the margin. I'm just curious how you're thinking about the margin excluding the PPP and accretion. Any help that you can provide on kind of the core NIM, that will trend in the near term, that would be helpful.
Hey, Will, this is Steven. I'll take that. I mean, I think around the table here, we think of it as stable from here. We've gotten deposit costs down 10 basis points each of the last couple of quarters. We're down to kind of fine tuning some of that, but there's still opportunity there.
The loan yield seems to have stabilized somewhat. So I think really deposit costs potentially can offset what happens in the investment portfolio as we go from here.
Okay. And then I may have missed this, Kevin, in your remarks, but do you have an update on kind of the timing, forgiveness for the remaining portion of PPP that's on the books right now?
Yes. So we've submitted half. We've been we received back about a third if you take broad numbers.
I kind
of put everybody on hold a little bit with forgiveness as we were, 1, approaching this 2nd round or 3rd round of PPP funding and because the December Act, our stimulus further simplified the 150 and under. We just got that form yesterday from the SBA. Our provider has to have a little time to put it in the solution. So I'm still holding people off of forgiveness for a little bit here while we take care of that and PPP funding. So I would expect that you're probably submitting in addition customers have until I mean if they choose they don't have to submit until sometime around October.
So there are only some folks that kind of hold off closer to the end. So I suspect it's going to be kind of linear between here and Q3. We'll keep submitting as customers are ready. Once we get this funding phase of the 3.0 done and the forms end of the forgiveness portal, we'll keep submitting. But it will be it will take second, third quarter to get there.
Okay. Thank you very much. The
next question is from Matt Olney with Stephens. Please go ahead.
Hey, thanks guys. Good afternoon.
Good afternoon, Matt.
Want to start on credit and it looks like the 4th quarter metrics look really good, non performers flat, net charge offs immaterial. I'm curious if you guys have some updated thoughts around charge offs in 2021. And we're hearing from other banks this week that are providing some commentary or some guidance on their charge offs for the year. And for a home bank, I'm showing that the consensus forecast is around 60 bps of charge offs in 2021, which would be around $60,000,000
for the year. Any commentary you can give us on that? I'll give you a little commentary, at least some hedge, but if we lose $60,000,000 I can tell you that. That's not going to happen. I don't know who's giving 63 basis points or whatever.
I mean, we don't what we said to you when we did our deep dive is exactly what we say to you now. We don't see any losses. I mean, we don't see any losses that we expect. So I don't know where that $63,000,000 came from. Stephen and I were talking about it before.
Kevin, Stephen, why don't you all got a comment on that?
Well, I mean, I think if it's 63 basis points, you probably won't be talking to me in the 2nd
or third quarter. It's going to
be somebody else's estate. But there's going to be some fallout as we come to the end of this and we don't know exactly what it is. But we've got our deferred loans down to $300,000,000 just a little over $300,000,000 and half of that is hotels that are really just needing the vaccine to be more widely accepted and get folks moving again. And outside of that, we really don't see the issues. So it's hard for me to see $60,000,000 this year.
I'm not ready to give you a number yet, but I just don't see that number.
Steven, do you work with all seasonality?
Yes. I mean, agree with what Kevin said. I mean, it's things may pop
up in the future that
we don't see today, but trying
to estimate
4 or 5 times what we've seen on an annual basis the last 5 years seems unlikely.
We have been reaching into next quarter to try to a loss that I mean, the book's been so good, we've been stretching into next quarter to see what we saw coming up and we've been taking on see if we can get that front really because we didn't have really everything to charge off. Bryce, you got any comment on that? No, sir. I'm with all you all as far as the projected number that wouldn't be on the radar screen today. We're still we've identified and we call it is what it is whenever we look at them and we'll specifically look at that and there's not anything today.
Again, we want to jinx this over there. We're comfortable with our position.
Okay, great. That's great commentary. And then just, I guess, shifting over towards M and A and taking a step back, the stock has performed well and you've regained a nice premium multiple. Walk us through how you view M and A for home banking and just remind us of some of the more important parameters that you're focused on when it comes to your M and A program.
Well, it's accretive, accretive AAA. We're looking for AAA deals. We're looking for people that want to be part of Home Bank shares and the history of Home Bank shares and believe in what we believe in. We look at 1, I mean, you got to pay the pipe for some time. We looked at 1 this week, nice little operation, but their margin is 3%.
And you can fix lots of things. You just can't fix. It takes a while to fix the margin. You can't asset quality in the bank is good. It's in Florida.
It makes sense. It's we could get some consolidation savings out of it. But you just have to put a yield mark on it. This guy was the low cost low cost operator in the market. So but that's a good one.
There's 4, 5 in the Florida market that makes some sense and maybe one outside of that. But the problem when you get out we get outside of Florida is we don't get the consolidation savings. That's the problem. We can we blame we're running one deal outside of Florida. We're running at a 10% or 15 percent cost reduction because they're pretty good bank.
They run pretty good. We just don't get any savings out of that. We're in Florida. We model it at 33% and I think the least we've done is 50. So we get lucky.
It really adds to your bottom line. So my goal is to find the right trade hopefully in Florida that we can do that makes some sense. But it's we're bringing about 1.4 right now. It's about where banks are bringing about 1.3, 1.4. That's about the price.
So hopefully somewhere we can go a little higher than that because of our stock. But we've got a limit to where we can go and where to Hampshire is not going to be the highest priced buyer in the marketplace. So we are looking. I can tell you, we are aggressively looking for the next opportunity for home bank shares.
Okay, perfect. That's great commentary. I'll hop back in the queue.
The next question is from Michael Rose with Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Just wanted to get an update on some of the at risk exposures. There's been a lot of talk around the hotel portfolio over the past couple of quarters. Can you give us just an update on kind of where you stand with things?
Thanks.
Michael, this is Kevin. Like we said, we got the deferred loans down to a little over $300,000 About half of that or $175,000,000 ish, let's say, are hotels. So that's roughly 20% of the book in deferment, which is in my mind is not a bad number at this point of where we're at. I mean, you're just beginning to come back into season in Florida, so you'll see those areas pick up. But since the last quarter, this would be the probably the weakest quarter for all of our markets in the hotel business would be the Q4.
So I don't think I could expect to report anything earth shattering to you since the last 90 days. I think everybody's been pretty much where they thought they would be. You'll begin to see the Florida markets pick up as we go into January, February, March and then certainly as you get into the summer even in the Panhandle. So that's our hope is that we're our expectation is that we're going to see the Florida markets pick up back to their come back to where they expected to be.
Okay. And then it sounds like you guys generally feel pretty good about credit at this point. But going back to your comments, Johnny, about keeping the reserve above 2%. I mean, is the plan really here to just to grow into it at some point when growth picks up and expect low levels of provisions going forward, maybe not negative provisions, but do you really plan to keep that reserve under CECL over 2%? I'm just wondering how you can actually do that.
Thanks.
I don't know. It just the problem is not proven. We don't know if it works. We may run a parallel system, but 2% reserve has worked, that has worked good times and bad times. And I think we continue if our accounts will allow it, it's our plans.
Let me back up and say this, if you see me lower it and bring in profits, you know they put a gun to my head because I just I'm adamant on not touching it. Why touch it? We've taken the hit. We've done that. We're running fine without it.
Everything's good. And why would we miss? We just leave it alone. Just let it sit there and leave it alone. We got other things to pay attention to.
There might be something jump out of the woodwork somewhere. I mean, somebody got us at 63 basis points. I mean, maybe that could happen. I guess stranger things have happened, but if it does, we've got plenty of reserve to handle it. And I don't want to I mean, I'm seeing these people pull $2,000,000 out or $2,000,000,000 out of reserve, stick into income, we could have done that.
I mean, we could have stuck in, I guess, I don't know how much in the income this time, but we just didn't do that. And we're not going to do that. We've already taken the hit. We've done it. It's there.
We can report what CICE would be, but maintain it's our call, it's our shareholders' money, it's not anybody else's call or anybody else's shareholders' money. It belongs to the investors and shareholders of this company
and they're comfortable with our
first analyst that came out and asked about ESG. We've been working diligently on ESG here in the company for the last year. They didn't like my sale pay last year. If you remember, Granny Sams retired in November and they put me I took the role. I took the President, CEO and Chairman's role.
So they took the multiple of my salary and said it wasn't fair, it wasn't right. But anyway, I just we've worked hard on that. There's new metrics out for the executive committee, new metrics out for myself
that if we hit
the numbers, they get our people get paid. If they don't hit the numbers, they don't get paid. So anyway, I thought I'd comment, you're the first one that asked about ESG.
I appreciate it. Just one last follow-up question. You guys still have some buyback authorization. I understand where the stock is, but you guys have also bought stock when your currency has been pretty valuable. How should we think about that going forward, especially if we don't see a transaction here in the next couple of quarters?
Thanks.
We'll continue the buyback stock. We're in the buyback business. I'd like to use some money hopefully for an acquisition. We usually use a little cash in the acquisition. So we try to use as much cash as we can, so we don't issue as many shares.
So I think that's probably it. Steven, you got to comment on that?
I agree. We've got about 3,800,000 shares left under the authorization and cash balances continue to grow throughout the year. So I mean, there's obviously 17 plus percent capital ratio. There's we've got several levers to pull there.
You may
see us do something with that shortly here.
Fair enough. Thanks for taking my questions.
You bet. Thank you.
The next question is from Brady Gailey with KBW. Please go ahead.
Hey, thanks. Good afternoon, guys.
Good afternoon. Yes, I wanted to follow-up on the topic of M and A. I mean, homes now $16,000,000,000 in assets. It's not like a little $200,000,000 in asset bank can really move the needle for you guys much anymore, unfortunately. Florida feels kind of rolled up already.
I mean, there's just not that many larger targets of size, especially ones that
I think are for sale right now.
So maybe just update us on kind of the size range as far as what ideally you'd like, how big you'd like or small you'd like your target to be?
Probably the 1,000,000,000 probably the first one, we've done one in a while, probably the first one somewhere in the $1,000,000,000 $2,000,000,000 $3,000,000,000 running, somewhere in that market probably would be better than and we do a small deal. If it's an infill for us, we'll do one. But as Kevin said, it's not as hard to do a big one. There's much work to do a big one, there's a little one. So something in that range that would help a little bit.
It has to move the needle. If it doesn't move the needle efficiently, we don't do it for the sake of size. We're not interested in that. So everybody thinks their baby is prettier than the other baby. So we just have to for the first stepping out the first time in several years, it's going to
be hopefully it will be
a nice trade. It will be extremely accretive to the company and the stock will go up. This is one guy the other day, I said, I'm trying to get the last nickel of everything. You know, you can get the last nickel. You got to make room for the investors to see what kind of transaction you made and see it's got some upside and some it kept the stock move up.
Yes. And Johnny,
I know you considered the idea of an MOE in the past.
Is that still on
the table? Or is that really not very likely for you guys going forward?
We never could figure out what the E was. We could never figure out what the e meant. There is no such thing as a merger vehicle. There's some people trying to put some banks together, but somebody is buying somebody else and somebody is in charge. So I don't think we have I don't know how well those have worked.
I don't know how well those have worked. I don't know how well those have worked hard a little bit, I guess, but probably not. We're probably not we looked at some of those. We're probably not ready to do an MOE. I was on one the other day, it's a good size when he talked about MOE and I said, it won't be an MOE.
This will be an acquisition. We'll be buying you. That I mean, in reality, that happens, right? And somebody got to own somebody having to break, somebody got to use their stock, Somebody's got to be in charge. All right.
And then finally for me, you all have given some good color
on what happened in 2020 related to loans. I mean, bigger picture, do you think you'll be able to grow loan balances in 2021?
I don't it may be the last half, I really don't think, I don't think you're going
to see
a lot of big moves in the first half of this year. I think we'll be able to grow in the second half. We'll get our fair share. We've always gotten our fair share and we don't chase it. It depends on I mean if the market is selling and they're doing low rate, long term fixed stuff at high leverage, we won't get any of it.
But I mean just like right now, I talked about a loan earlier that it's going out of the bank, another bank has approved it and there's a loss in that loan. And they're just as happy to get it and we're happy for them to get it. Brady, the only color I can give is Chris gave excellent for the national credits that he works and the community bank credits. I mean, it's our community bank loans, like subdivisions and construction loans, they've done really well this past year. It's just been good and steady.
They certainly have sold their homes, not held them long. If you build a house, you've sold it real quick. A lot of them have a waiting list on lots. So that's more of a steady. It's not where they're growing the loans, but they're replacing them in the production side of it.
It's been good. And I think it's fair that Kevin and John and myself and some are we're communicating with customers that are great, solid entrepreneurial customers in the past that we've had and they probably have been sitting quietly also for the last 6 months and are beginning to want to reach out and talk and come talk to us about their plan, what they want to do in 'twenty one. When will that happen? Time will tell. And so maybe there's a spark there, but even our great customer base that we have, they've all been pretty smart on not jumping out here with the unknowns that we've dealt with.
I just think it is a little scary to be growing a loan book in this market when people are not doing a lot of the projects. I guess you have to go back and say where did where are they getting that loan? And what how did they price it? And if I'm right on inflation, these people that are doing these 3% and 2.5% loans are going to we're just not going to do that. We just absolutely will not do that.
We're not going to sell our future today. Just like the bank I was looking at in Florida the other day, they just don't have any margin. They just tried to buy the market and they don't have any margin and now they're trying to sell it and the return sucks and it's pretty obvious why it sucks. So we're not going to get into that game. We have never done that.
We've never started it. There's no need to start it now. We have no intention of doing that. I mean, we can do it. Don't get me wrong.
We can crank up that press and we can crank up a bunch of loans at long term fixed rate cheap prices. But why would you do that? Why would you sell your future? Someday we'll sell this company and I want somebody walking in telling me that, well, your margin sucks. Our margin doesn't and we work hard on it every day.
Tracy says, I don't say good morning to him. I say, what's the margin today? So anyway, we work hard at the margin. Stephen's on it. He's working on the cost of funds every day in the bank.
So we're not we don't work and run the company as well as we run it to give it a one.
Got it. It's good color. Thanks guys. Thank you.
The next question is from Stephen Scouten with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.
Hey, good afternoon everyone.
Hi Stephen.
I'm curious on the liquidity side with loan growth trends, sounding like at least for 1Q, they're probably not going
to pick up materially. What do you do with some
of this excess liquidity? Are there you rethinking about paying down any borrowings, increase in securities? What's kind of the thought process there with $1,200,000,000 in cash?
Brian, you want to? I can take a little of that.
We really don't have any borrowings we can pay down. We have $400,000,000 at the Federal Home Loan Bank. But unfortunately, they have a significant prepayment penalty that would be punitive for us to do that. We have talked about increasing the investment book and we have done that to the tune of about $400,000,000 over the course of the year. But we're not really excited about locking in a lot of the investments at this low rate environment.
As Mr. Allison has indicated, he believes that inflation is coming. So we did do about $400,000,000 of that this year, but we're not eager to lock up the additional $1,000,000,000 that we have at the Fed. I never thought I'd be in a position where we had over $1,000,000,000 at the Fed every day in 2021 so far. So I hear you, but we're just trying to be cautious with it and not lock ourselves into something that we regret later in life.
Yes, that makes sense. Okay.
Yes, I mean the
investment portfolio, you're yielding 1.25%, 1.5%. I can't get excited about that. We can do some loans at 2%, we want to, but we're not going to do that. So this too shall pass at some point in time and there's not a lot to do with. We have bought some trust preferreds.
It would Sported debt.
Sported debt, I'm sorry. We bought some subordinated debt in banks that we know. So we've done a little of that We bought some stock in a bank that went down on us, but the dividend is good. We still got it. So it's a tough call.
I don't know if this liquidity is going to stay at this level. You got to believe people were very conservative in the first PPP and if they remain conservative in the second PPP, then there's going to be the world's going to be a wash in cash, right? And all the bikes are full. And what happens at that point in time is that that's where your inflation starts popping out and people start chasing asset classes and that's my fear. That's what it means.
When you got senior up 21%, that's just scary. You got commodities running up. It's just all the signs, the bets are I think I said earlier, the bet on the dollar is to go down is the highest it's been in 10 years. However, gold is not acting the way you would think it would act. I guess, bitcoin is the new game.
We're not ready to buy bitcoins yet, so
I'd say that's a good plan. So I guess maybe one other question for Brian would be just on the expense side. It looks like maybe salaries jumped about $1,500,000 and other non interest expense jumped about $1,500,000 Was there anything unusual there or is this kind of a good expense run rate as we head into next year?
I'll give you a little color
on that. One thing that did happen
in Q3 is we were truing up some of our stock awards expense and we wound up with about a negative $940,000 in Q3. So there was kind of an anomaly in Q3. As far as what's in Q4 on the salary employed benefits, that is
of the things that we
did this quarter was that we bought into One of the things that we did this quarter was that we bought into a tax credit. And so it's profitable overall, but it's got a real funky accounting in it and then we got a tax credit at a discount and we picked up a positive $250,000 in income tax expense.
But the negative of it was we had
a couple of 100,000 in expense for the tax credit and it goes in other expense. It's not a net where you just have a net of 50. So taxes are improved by about 250 and other expenses negative about 200. And then we had about 200,000 and probably a couple other things that probably non recurring in there on top of that, just kind of miscellaneous things.
Got it. Perfect. Okay. And then maybe last question for me is, Johnny, you guys showed good pretax provision growth this quarter. Do you think that could be sustainable through 2021?
And then do we start talking about home $2 again here?
Well, yes, we want to talk that. We never give up around here on anything. Home2 dollars is kind of ran out on us a little bit and then we had CECL popping at Woodcharted. So we're actually going to adjusted earnings here. I mean, I can show it's at 220,000,000 we estimated 305,000,000 for the year with CECL that we took out.
And I guess we put it back in the income, I guess we'll make the 305.
Okay.
I'm done with that. Like you've got something else.
No, that's it. Thank you guys for the time. I appreciate it.
The next question is from Brian Martin with Janney Montgomery. Please go ahead. Hey guys, good afternoon.
Good afternoon, Brian. Hey, just a couple
of things for me. I guess just number 1, maybe for Kevin, just on the asset quality, just kind of the criticized and classifieds level, I guess what would be I guess sounds like the trends would have been better this quarter, but just kind of wondering if you can give some color on what you were seeing there this quarter?
Yes. Classified has gone up $30,000,000 or $40,000,000 I think is the number. I don't have it in front of me, but I think that's the number. Criticized has gone up more than that because we've moved a lot of the deferred credits have landed in that criticized class category for now as we kind of go through the next quarter or so and see how they match plan. If you remember in my in the comments earlier, our plan for those deferred loans, plan A was to get deferred interest paid and that and we did that almost in almost 100% of the circumstances.
We had very, very little where we're carrying some interest going forward. So to be able to start into this longer term modification with the interest fully paid, we felt was a real positive. And so a lot of those moved down into the criticized category for a while while we monitor those both monthly and quarterly depending on size.
Got you. Okay. And Kevin, would you think it's peaked at this point, the criticized level? Those removed this quarter and the rest of the portfolio, it sounds like that could be the case. Maybe this is an inflection point in 4Q?
Yes, we're close. Maybe another quarter because we're going to have a there will be a few other people I think that we see struggle a little bit as they see what stimulus they're going to get and what's left as far as health goes. So I wouldn't say that we're we may not be quite there yet, but I think we're pretty close.
Got you.
Okay. And then I think Johnny mentioned it earlier, but I guess for whomever, just on the PPP, if that primarily runs out or at least in the 1st round here, run out here in the next couple of quarters, What are the remaining fees? Is the unearned fees to be collected yet? So just so we can have that in the model.
It's $16,500,000 Okay. Dollars 16,500,000
Okay. And do you guys how has been the applications been thus far with the new program? I mean, do you anticipate being anywhere near what you guys did before? Any color on that thus far?
We're 18 hours in and we've taken nearly we've sent nearly 3,000 applications to our mostly almost all round 1 and 2 customers and we're about 1,000 coming back that have been returned, and that's over $100,000,000 so far. You.
Okay. And that's probably stale.
I looked at that before we came before I came in here and that's probably stale now. Yes.
That's pretty quick. It's they're jumping on that amazingly fast. That was a great problem that the government did and hopefully it saves lots of small businesses. It's an opportunity to survive.
Yes. Okay. And then just the last one, maybe just for Stephen on the margin, Stephen, I guess it sounded like last quarter, there was some more likelihood that the margin core margin kind of ex PPP, ex accretion maybe had some more of a downward bias than more stability. Just kind of wondering the puts and takes or maybe just something that's really changed that or did maybe I just have it wrong as far as your outlook for kind of that margin or the core margin going forward?
Yes. I mean, I think deposit costs came down like we anticipated they might. I think really more just the stability of the overall loan yield, the core loan yield there over the course of the quarter, the last really 4 months or so, I think we've talked about kind of the 5.15% range is really where it's landed. I think that was really maybe a little bit of a surprise. Renewal rates have been good.
And then obviously, yield on production has been solid, too.
Okay. Yes, what are the new yields on production today that you're relative to the existing yield?
Yes, the coupon in Q4, I think was 5.10 if memory serves me right. And then that doesn't account for origination fee income that will amortize in over the term of the loan. So we're hanging
in that area where the core yield is. Okay. About where we were, we're going
to look at the book yield is about 5 $10,000,000,000, $5,000,000,000
Yes, sir.
That's good. Okay. We're not going to, yes.
Yes. Okay. All right. Good report, guys. I appreciate it.
Thank you.
You bet. Thank you.
This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to John Allison for any closing remarks.
Thank you, Ingrid. Thank you for your attendance today. It was a fun quarter. I'm glad to have 2020 behind us. Hopefully, we'll all see each other soon somewhere at some conference, maybe in June, July or August.
We get everybody getting their vaccines and I think we're going to have the pent up demand that's out there. I think you're going to see some good business coming down the road. I don't think it's really going to happen that strong in the Q1. I'd say that. We just approved a large apartment complex at loan committee this week for a pretty aggressive individual, does good building.
So anyway, so far so good. We'll talk to you in 90 days.
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.