Earnings Call: Q2 2021

Jul 27, 2021

Good morning. My name is Chuck, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Second Quarter 20 21 Earnings Call for the Bank of N. T. Butterfield and Sun Limited. All participants will be in a listen only mode. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Noah Fields, Butterfield's Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Today, we will be reviewing Butterfield's Q2 2021 financial results. On the call, I'm joined by Butterfield's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Michael Collins and Chief Financial Officer, Michael Schrum. Following their prepared remarks, we will open the call up for a question and answer session. Yesterday afternoon, we issued a press release announcing our 2nd quarter results. The press release and financial statements, along with a slide presentation that we will refer to during our remarks on this call, are available on the Investor Relations section of our website at www.butterfieldgroup.com. Before I turn the call over to Michael Colmes, I would like to remind everyone that today's discussions will refer to certain non GAAP measures, which we believe are important in evaluating the company's performance. For a reconciliation of these measures to U. S. GAAP, please refer to the earnings press release and slide presentation. Today's call and associated materials may also contain certain forward looking statements, which are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by these statements. Additional information regarding these risks can be found in our SEC filings. I will now turn the call over to Michael Collins. Thank you, Noah, and thanks to everyone joining the call today. Butterfield continues to produce strong financial results during the Q2 of 2021 with profitable and long standing core banking and wealth management businesses in Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and the Channel Islands, as well as Singapore, the UK, the Bahamas and Switzerland, where we offer a variety of specialized financial services and products. All of our operating jurisdictions fared reasonably well during the pandemic, despite the closure of airports and sea borders, which is a testament to the resilience and strong domestic economies of the small island nations where we operate. International businesses in our jurisdictions were largely unaffected due to the success of remote working models. This backdrop has aided us in our efforts to keep banking services open and available and to continue to produce long term growth. I will now turn to Slide 4, where we provide a summary of 2nd quarter highlights. Butterfield reported net income for the 2nd quarter of $39,600,000 or $0.79 per diluted common share and core net income of $40,100,000 or $0.80 per diluted common share. This resulted in a core return on average tangible common equity of 18.7 percent despite a sustained low interest rate environment. Our credit portfolio has performed well, and in the Q2, we had a credit provision release of $1,000,000 primarily due to an improved economic forecast. The Board of Directors again declared the $0.44 per share dividend, which is in line with our target through cycle dividend payout ratio of approximately 50%, with flexibility around share buybacks depending on market conditions and potential M and A opportunities. We continue to evaluate potential acquisition targets in Private Trust, Wealth Management and Banking. As we have stated previously, from the point of initial discussions, these deals can take 9 months to a year before they are announced. I cannot offer a specific timeline at the moment, but can say that M and A growth remains a priority for us and we are committed to pursuing deals that meet our strategic and financial goals. I will now turn the call over to Michael Schrum to provide more details on the Q2. Thank you, Michael. I will start on Slide 6 with a summary of net interest income and NIM. The Q2, we reported net interest income of $74,700,000 which was in line with the prior quarter as higher volumes mostly offset lower yields. NIM of 2.01% was 8 basis points lower than the prior quarter due to continued deposit growth and elevated MBS paydowns that were similar to the prior quarter at around $350,000,000 which in turn resulted in redeployment of assets at market rates below the current book yield. Lower deposit costs help offset some of the NIM decline. Loan yields were down 9 basis points in the 2nd quarter due to jurisdictional mix shift while portfolio balances were stable. During the Q2, the blended rate for loan originations was 3.57 percent for CAD234,000,000 of new loans, down from 4.15 percent for $212,000,000 of originations in the Q1 of 2021. During the quarter, the net average balance in the investment portfolio increased $307,000,000 as we continue to put new money to work in U. S. Agency MBS Securities and U. S. Treasuries. New money yields averaged 1.66 percent in the Q2 of 2021 or 4 basis points higher than the 1.62% in the prior quarter. Turning to Slide 7. Noninterest income increased CHF 1,300,000 to CHF 48,800,000 compared to the prior quarter. Higher credit card volumes and higher credit facility fees drove the growth in banking revenues as the Q1 tends to see less transaction activity. The bank's higher non interest income resulted in an increased fee income ratio of 39.4 percent in the Q2 of 2021. Slide 8 provides a summary of core noninterest expense, which increased to CAD 83,400,000 in the Q2 of 2021 compared to the prior quarter. The increase in core expenses was a result of a number of factors, some of which are not expected to repeat in future periods. We had a onetime voluntary opportunity for our colleagues to receive payment for a portion of unused holidays during the pandemic. In competitive business locations, market salary adjustments were also implemented for retention purposes. We saw some insurance renewal cost increase as well as increased client engagement and consulting costs due to return to more normal business activity levels. As we continue to work our way out of the pandemic period, we expect core non interest expense to settle back into the $82,000,000 to $83,000,000 range per quarter. Slide 9 summarizes regulatory and leverage capital levels. Butterfield continues to maintain conservative capital levels that continue to exceed regulatory requirements. The continued growth in deposit levels kept our TCE to TA ratio below our targeted range of 6% to 6.5%. Expect this to build back over the coming quarters. Turning now to Slide 10. Butterfield's balance sheet continues to be strong and conservatively managed with a very high degree of liquidity. Deposit levels have continued to grow this quarter, and we will monitor the duration of these deposits and offer complementary off balance sheet investment products for transitory flows. As deposits season, we continue to deploy liquidity in the 2nd quarter through growth in the investment portfolio. On Slide 11, we show that Butterfield's asset quality remains exceptionally high with low credit risk in the investment portfolio, which continues to be 99% comprised of AAA rated U. S. Government guaranteed agency securities. We've been pleased with the performance of the loan portfolio so far despite the challenges presented to borrowers over the past 18 months. As a reminder, 2 thirds of our loans consist of manually underwritten full recourse residential mortgages in Bermuda, Cayman and the UK. We are also seeing increased demand for our residential mortgage products in the Channel Islands. The underwriting in those markets is similar to those of Bermuda and Cayman, and that will allow us to activate our sterling deposits. We continue to expect that book to grow to as much as $500,000,000 over the next 4 to 5 years. Non accrual loans have improved marginally down to 1.3% of gross loans from 1.4% in the prior quarter. We continue to actively monitor credit with outbound calling programs and are working with any customers who may experience difficulty. On Slide 12, we discuss the average cash and securities balance sheet with a summary interest rate sensitivity analysis. Butterfield's weighted average life in the AFS investment portfolio declined to 5.0 years from 6.1 years last quarter due to lower market yields, which increased prepayment speeds in the portfolio. Consistent with prior quarters, Butterfield continues to expect a potential increase to net interest income in both up and down rate scenarios. I will now turn the call back to Michael Collins. Thank you, Michael. On July 1, 132 countries and jurisdictions agreed to join a new 2 pillar plan to reform international tax rules. Under pillar 1, taxing rights of more than $100,000,000,000 of profit are expected to be reallocated to market jurisdictions each year, excluding regulated financial services and extractive industries, such as mining, oil and gas. Under Pillar 2, there is a proposed global corporate income tax with a minimum rate of 15%. After much speculation, it is helpful to now understand the initial framework, which has an ambitious time line for implementation with an expected effective date of 2023 and with significant further work and negotiation to come. All of Butterfield's key operating jurisdictions have joined the agreement and are actively participating in discussions, highlighting their important role in global capital flows for insurance and reinsurance as well as the international hedge fund industry. All of our locations are blue chip financial centers with track records of transparency and adapting to new regulatory requirements. In summary, I am proud of Butterfield's financial and operational performance and the proven resilience of our business model through a very challenging environment. We have consistently produced high returns even through the pandemic with a business model characterized by low credit risk, substantial liquidity and capital, strong fee income and favorable competitive dynamics. We have been able to generate a consistent 15% to 25% core return on average tangible common equity throughout the interest rate cycle, while only lending in our home markets and investing excess deposits in U. S. Government treasuries and agencies. As our economy is fully open in the second half of twenty twenty one and into 2022, I have confidence in Butterfield's long term value proposition and growth prospects, and I look forward to updating you in the coming quarters. Thank you. And with that, we'd be happy to take your questions. Operator? Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer And the first question will come from Alex Twerdahl with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead. First off, just wanted to ask a little bit more color on what's driving the deposit inflows that you guys are seeing in your jurisdictions. And then I think you touched on looking at some opportunities to move some of those deposits to off balance sheet items. Maybe you can elaborate a little bit more on what that could actually do for deposit balances over the next couple of quarters, please? Sure. And you're right, Alex. We've seen a significant amount of deposit inflows over the last couple of quarters, really starting in Q4. So the balance sheet has really kind of ballooned with some of the surge deposits. About 50% of the deposits are retail between Bermuda and Cayman. And it's driven by some of the fiscal stimulus in those two jurisdictions, which is really consistent on of pension withdrawals that's put onto our balance sheet as well as in Bermuda, in particular, there was a transaction whereby the local electricity company was sold and that was all local investors and they put that into onto our balance sheet. The other half really is quite transitory, what we would term search deposits. They're very temporary. They're transaction related, and they come from the fund businesses in Cayman and some of the legal intermediaries that we're dealing with in Cayman, as well as some of the captives in Bermuda. And so we see those coming in and out, but they seem to always be replaced with more deposits coming in. So that's really in those two categories. And in the Channel Islands, we also see some deposit flows, particularly from PE funds around quarter end, but they tend to be very transitory in nature. In terms of the money fund, we're obviously talking to clients about not parking large sums of deposits onto our balance sheet when they want to clean up their own balance sheets. And so talking to clients about the availability of the money fund on a selective basis to ensure that they have access to the money fund as well as on balance sheet products, where we see clients sort of repeatedly parking money on our balance sheet. We try and encourage them very strongly to fill in application forms and help us manage our balance sheet and their balance sheet as well. Neither of which is neither is very accretive, I would say, for the client at the moment. But obviously, we also want to be careful that we keep our core clients happy during this period. And I think it's really something that everybody is seeing across the industry. And we did see further deposit growth this quarter, but it wasn't at the pace that we saw in Q4 and Q1. Okay. So as you kind of look out over the second half of the year, I mean, do you have a way of sort of modeling deposits? And really what I'm getting at is that deposits keep growing that TCE ratio, it's going to be hard to get that above 6%, which is going to, I would think, limit your desire, your appetite to do things like buybacks. And so maybe you can sort of tackle both sides of that question. 1, the sort of the balance sheet size and 2, is that going to be prohibitive to stock repurchases and other capital actions later this year? Yes. I mean, I think we've said we expect those deposits to be temporary in nature, but I think how long is temporary is the question really that we're facing at the moment. Certainly in Q4, we were expecting the transactional flows to kind of not necessarily repeat in Q1, but actually we had stronger flows coming into Q1. And so to the extent that we can avail ourselves or the clients can avail themselves of our money fund, obviously, that's going to alleviate some of the pressure that is an ongoing discussion. I would say we've seen some stabilization in deposit levels more recently, but it's just hard to say how long it's going to be around for because it seems like the market is flushed with liquidity and everybody is searching for a place to put them. So I think it's good to have the tools in the toolbox. I also agree with you that if we're below the target range, although it's very explainable and it's directly associated with deposit growth, it is hard to contemplate other capital actions. So but we are building back about $400,000,000 of organic capital to support positive growth per quarter as well. So, I don't think it's going to continue for a lot longer in terms of growing it. So, we should be catching up. But it's just hard to say, really. Got it. And then, can you just on the expense expenses this quarter, there's a couple of items that seem like maybe they're non core, non repeatable, including paying out the vacation days that you alluded to in the press release. Can you break out the exact amount that's associated with that? Yes. I mean, there were probably there were just a bunch of or a combination of some smaller individual items. We, I think, called out a non core severance cost in our Mauritius office as we transferred the remaining banking operations functions to Guernsey and Halifax. And so that was the $1,400,000 of non core expenses there. And then we have some contracted costs that were associated with the transfer of those businesses. Obviously, we wouldn't expect those to repeat. Correct, the vacation buyback, I think was a good engagement driver for us. And we're really trying to avoid a problem later in the year where we've had people working on shifts and teams and have accrued vacation, haven't been able to travel, trying to avoid a problem around Christmas where we don't have adequate coverage, etcetera. And so this was an opportunity really for them to sell back a portion of that. I think the total cost was probably in the $500,000 range. Some of that was obviously accrued and carried forward from prior year. And some of it was this year's vacation days. And then we have some consultant costs for a couple of smaller projects in Guernsey and Cayman, which are now wrapping up. Again, we're not expecting that to repeat. And then we had the adjustments to staff incentive accruals for 2021. Obviously, that will continue through the year. Market salary adjustments, few offices where we've seen increased turnover. So that's more of a permanent thing. So I think overall, we should be getting back into the 82%, 83% range for the remainder of our quarterly range for the remainder of 2021. But I sort of hopefully gives you some color around the items and a sense of why we believe some of those are actually not repeatable. Right. And then as you look forward into 2022, if I remember correctly, your range is a little bit below that on the last quarter. Is that 82% to 83%, is that kind of the right level to be using kind of permanently going forward? Or are there some other projects like the moving in the Mauritius office, I think is at least new to me. Is there some more things that are being contemplated that could actually push that expense level a little bit lower as we look forward into next year? Yes, there are. So as we've talked about maybe a year or 2 ago, we're coming up to the end of the amortization period for the core IT infrastructure, the 1 Butterfield system, and that's starting to abate in Q4 this year. So as we look forward into 2022, that should push the run rate down a little bit. However, we also upgrading systems and so that will probably offset or recapture some of the cost savings effectively, but it is fully self funded just over a short period. But I think we'll come back and give some more guidance in the coming quarters around expense levels. But I think that's right, a little bit lower in 2022, but then probably coming back up. And maybe just to clarify, Mauritius, we ceased doing some activities there in terms of operational banking and brought that back into Guernsey. It just was much more efficient to do it out of Guernsey. But we still have a decent sized team there that does trust financial statements, just not the banking side. So we will retain at this time a presence in Mauritius. And we're still working in Halifax. So we've got a good team up there, about 150 people, and we've added 37 new positions this year, which will save us about 1,500,000 dollars compared to having those positions in more expensive jurisdictions. And obviously, we reduced headcount in Bermuda, Cayman, the Channel Islands as we build on Halifax. So that will help, but it's gradual and will take some time. Our next question will come from Timur Braziler with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning everyone. Good morning, Deaver. Maybe just following up on the last commentary, what's the total number of folks in Halifax now? So it's roughly 150. It's 150. Okay. And then I think last we spoke, I think the kind of capacity at Halifax is around 200. Is that, A, still the right way to think about it? And B, how aggressive or how fast are you looking to kind of fill in that Halifax capacity? So it's not I wouldn't say there's a real upper limit on capacity. I mean, there's plenty of office space. We've got excess office space. I think our feeling is to grow it gradually because as we put if you put account opening in Halifax from Bermuda and Cayman, we want to make sure that's working before we add new functions. We really have the majority of our compliance and AML and alert monitoring people up there. So that's been good. I would say the experience in Halifax has been fantastic. It's a great workforce, all young coming out of university, thrilled to be working for Butterfield. It's gotten a little more difficult because it's a really hot market. So post pandemic, a lot of Canadian companies have moved operational processing centers there. So there is a bit of competition in wage pressure for these students coming out of universities. But we will continue to grow it, and I would think we will get above 200 at some point, but but it's going to take some time. Okay, thanks. And then maybe going back to the deposit conversation, I think you guys have been rightfully so fairly conservative in modeling deposit assumptions and how fast you're willing to put those to work. And especially recently, it seems like the deposit flows have been very strong. I know the reinvestment environment isn't the greatest, but as you look at future rate potential, current asset sensitivity profile, is it making you reconsider what you're doing with some of the on balance sheet cash or is conservative still the name of the game and kind of that $125,000,000 net deployment is still the right way to think about it? Yes. I mean, we're a bit more aggressive this quarter as we put a little bit more than the advertised 150 to work. And obviously, given where rates are today, it seems like that was a good decision. We are sitting on a lot of cash. I do think some of it is a lot of it is temporary. If you think about the underlying business that we're in, it's retail and mid market corporate banking. We're in jurisdictions where GDP is probably on average growing 2% to 3% Bermuda, 4% to 5% Cayman. So that's kind of what we would expect from loan balances and deposit balances. So it leads me to think that what we're seeing at the moment is probably the same trend that we're seeing for most of the other markets in that central banks are printing money and it's sitting on our balance sheet and part of it is fiscal stimulus, etcetera. But I think at some point, pension balances have to go back into pensions. And so then that means we won't necessarily count that cash and ladder it out. I think as we sit here today, we're kind of comfortable where we are. The reinvestment rates are pretty close to our AFS portfolio running book yields at the moment. We'll just keep pace and continue to be conservative. And obviously, if there is an opportunity where the tenure goes back to the $175,000,000 or $190,000,000 level, we'll grab that opportunity and bank some of that. Okay. Thank you. And then just last for me, maybe for Michael Collins. And looking at the proposed international tax rule change, are there any preliminary thoughts on what that can do to some of your jurisdictions? Is it still kind of too early to see what some of the lasting impact of that would be? And then you made it seem like the 2023 expected rollout is quite ambitious. Maybe talk to that and when you actually think something like this could be implemented? Sure. So all of our jurisdictions actually join the agreement. So we're trying to be as helpful as possible. Pillar 1, I guess, is really targeted at tech companies, which we don't have, generally offshore. So that's not going to affect us. Pillar 2, in terms of the 15% minimum tax, may have some impact, but we still think the tax differential between offshore and onshore will be good enough to keep companies here. This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks. Please go ahead. Thank you, Chuck. I know it's a busy morning for Kohl's today. So thanks to everyone for dialing in. We look forward to speaking with you again next quarter. Thank you very much and have a great day.