Good morning, and welcome to the Origin Bancorp, Inc. second quarter 2020 earnings conference call. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Chris Reigelman , Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thank you for being with us. We issued our earnings press release yesterday afternoon, a copy of which is available on our website, along with the slide presentation that we will refer to during this presentation. Please refer to slide two of our slide presentation, which includes our safe harbor statements regarding forward-looking statements and the use of non-GAAP financial measures.
For those joining by phone, please note the slide presentation is available on our website at www.origin.bank. Please also note that our safe harbor statements are available on page five of our earnings press release, filed with the SEC yesterday. All comments made during today's call are subject to the safe harbor statements in our slide presentation and earnings release.
I'm joined this morning by Origin Bancorp's Chairman, President, and CEO, Drake Mills, our Chief Financial Officer, Stephen Brolly , President and CEO of Origin Bank, Lance Hall, our Chief Risk Officer, Jim Crotwell, and our Chief Credit and Banking Officer, Preston Moore. After the presentation, we'll be happy to address any questions you may have. At this time, I'll turn the call over to you, Drake Mills.
Thank you, Chris Reigelman, and good morning. In my 37 years of being part of Origin and running this company for the past two decades, I've seen many different cycles throughout my career. As we continue to live and learn through a period of time that no one expected or predicted, I know that leadership, strategic planning, along with strong talent acquisition, is what will lead us through this period of time and not just survive, but end up in a position of strength with an opportunistic attitude.
I can point to multiple strategies that were put in place a couple of years ago that significantly enhanced revenue during the second quarter. Our community bank mortgage model and our mortgage warehouse strategy are two examples of this.
Our community bank mortgage strategy provided a 71.7% increase in revenue compared to the same period in 2018, when we began implementing our new strategy. Year-over-year, mortgage banking revenue has increased approximately 2.5 times with a similar size staff. Our mortgage warehouse strategy positioned the company to take advantage of dislocation in the market to enhance our portfolio with quality relationships while driving strong growth in non-interest bearing balances.
We believe that our ability to execute on our strategies is what makes us unique in the marketplace. During the last earnings call, I closed my remarks by highlighting four strategic areas of focus for our company as we navigate through the rest of 2020. First, and most importantly, is the health and safety of our employees and customers.
This has been at the forefront of our decisions throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and we continue to balance the health and safety of our people, while maintaining a first-rate customer experience. Our drive-throughs remain open, and our lobbies are serving customers by appointment. We also have effectively leveraged our technology infrastructure, which has led to an increased usage of our online and mobile banking channels.
These strategies have been successful in managing the health of our employees and customers, as well as highlighting the strategic focus we have in partnering with fintech to provide a better than peer customer experience with our digital platforms. Next is our continued commitment to serve our customers and communities. Throughout the PPP loan process, our bankers did an incredible job of supporting our customers and being responsive to their needs during a critical and challenging time, and they will continue to do so.
Lance will get more into the details of where we currently stand with PPP, but again, I'm extremely proud of how our bankers have responded. I'm also proud of the fact that we are standing by one of our core values of corporate and individual commitment to our communities by taking a portion of our PPP loan fees and making contributions to a broad range of local charities, food banks, service organizations, and educational institutions, including historically Black colleges and universities throughout Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.
Times like these are when our customers and communities need us most. Throughout our history, we've been leaders in our communities, and we continue to do that today. Balance sheet protection is our third strategic area of focus, and we took steps in the second quarter to strengthen our position.
Our results for the first two quarters have been impacted by provision expense and increases in allowances for credit loss, but our credit quality remains sound. The non-performing and past due percentages remain stable during the quarter. We have not experienced credit strain. I am comfortable with our current portfolio, and we're well-positioned to defend our balance sheet. The fourth strategic area of focus is expense management.
In our last call, we told you that expense management was a continued focus of ours and even more so in the current environment. We continue to evaluate all aspects of our business, as well as developing plans to reduce expenses in the near and long term. Stephen Brolly will discuss the details around expenses later in the presentation. We'll get into the results of the quarter, starting on slide three.
Total assets increased to $6.6 billion during the quarter, with one of the drivers being over 3,000 companies to which we made PPP loans totaling approximately $563 million. Net income for the quarter came in just under $5 million or $0.21 per share diluted EPS. We had our highest quarter ever in pre-tax, pre-provision income at $27.1 million, which is 44% higher than our first quarter results.
As you can see, our net interest income is up nearly $3.5 million a quarter, driven by PPP and mortgage warehouse income. Our non-interest income is up nearly $7 million for the quarter. I'll turn it over to Lance to provide more details on our PPP loan process and our COVID-19 lending response.
Thanks, Drake Mills. Origin's community banking market model gives us a competitive advantage in that our executive market leaders and bankers are incredibly close to our clients. You saw this manifest itself in our aggressive and quick actions throughout the pandemic in getting loan forbearances to these clients.
Our bankers are actively engaged, proactive, and are consistently communicating with our clients about their unique operating and financial situations. As governments in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi have opened for more business from Q1 to Q2, our focus has been on supporting our clients and communities through loan forbearances and PPP loans.
As you can see on slide five, Origin had just over $1 billion in COVID-19 forbearances outstanding, which represented 21% of our loans held for investment, excluding PPP loans. We have spent significant time the past two weeks talking directly with each of these clients to understand industry-specific COVID-19 deferral needs. Our clients are currently indicating significant reductions in the level of forbearances needed over the coming months. We expect to see our COVID-19 forbearance levels decline to about 8% of loans held for investment over the next several months.
As you can see where we anticipate our forbearance concentrations to be for the deep dive sectors, Jim will cover later in the presentation. Looking at PPP results, we have funded $563 million in loans through the end of the second quarter, which has supported over 3,000 companies and 63,000 employees across our communities.
With an average PPP loan size of $185,000 and a median loan size of $38,000, we feel that this program has been a very strong success in supporting our small business community. As we move to slide six, we highlight our success in continuing to grow core deposits. Total deposits ended the quarter at $5.37 billion, which was an increase of $816 million, or approximately 18% compared to the previous quarter.
While a large portion of this growth was clearly driven by PPP funds, we continue to see a nice increase in organic deposits throughout our markets. We have specific and meaningful examples around new deposit relationships we have created during the quarter because of our execution around PPP, when certain competitors could or would not. As a strategy, we feel we can continue to grow organic deposits while continuing to also reduce deposit costs. As we think about future loan growth levels, I think it's important to focus on our lift-out strategy that has served us well.
We believe stressed environments provide us with an incredible opportunity to attract talent because of our award-winning corporate culture and community banking market model. We believe the lift-out strategy is the smarter way to grow loan relationships, as these bankers have deep insights into our desired prospects. You'll continue to see Origin leverage our culture advantage as we continue to increase the talent level across our markets. I'll turn it over to Jim Crotwell to take a deeper dive into our loan portfolio.
Thanks, Lance Hall. Before we get into the industry deep dive, I briefly want to point out slide seven, where you can see that our loan portfolio continues to remain well-diversified, with no significant changes in concentration from what we have previously disclosed. We continue to monitor industry sectors that may experience a more protracted recovery from the ongoing economic downturn, specifically the sectors of hotels, energy, non-essential retail, restaurants, and assisted living.
The list of sectors is not as broad as those in the presentation for the first quarter, which indicates strong asset quality across our portfolio prior to COVID-19. If you will turn your attention to slide eight, you will see that the selected sectors total approximately 11.4% of our total loans held for investment, excluding PPP loans at quarter end.
The first segment broken out is our $64 million hotel portfolio, which totals 1.3% of loans held for investment and has historically performed well, as evidenced by no non-performing or past due loans as of quarter end. As mentioned on the call for the first quarter, we are confident in our hotel portfolio, which had an overall loan-to-value of 41% going into the pandemic.
All of our hotel loans have personal guarantees from strong individuals with cumulative liquidity in excess of $200 million. On slide 10, we have a breakdown of our energy credits, which represents 1.3% of our loans held for investment. As we disclosed in the first quarter, we have no direct exploration or production exposure in our energy portfolio. Our non-performing balance in energy services comprise of one relationship that has been a long-term workout and has a remaining balance of $2.3 million.
On slide 11, we provide information on our non-essential retail portfolio. This segment represents 3.1% of our loans held for investment, with 61% of the sector consisting of loans supported by national credit tenants. As reported last quarter, the non-performing loan in this segment represents a single credit that was placed on non-accrual during the first quarter of this year.
As a result of the significant impact by COVID-19 on this particular property, we charged off $1.6 million during the quarter, $1 million of which was reserved for in the prior quarter. As to the total portfolio, overall pre-COVID-19 loan-to-values are low at 56%. On slide 12, we have a snapshot of our restaurant sector, which accounts for 2.8% of our loans held for investment. You can see we have no past due or non-performing loan balances as of June 30th.
Moving to slide 13 is assisted living, which currently represents 2.9% of loans held for investment at quarter end, with an outstanding balance totaling $140.2 million and a reserve allowance of approximately $4.2 million. During the quarter, we were successful in selling one of our non-performing loans within this sector for $3.2 million, which resulted in a write-down of $1.8 million, with a loss being fully reserved for in the prior quarter.
In addition, we elected to take additional write-downs totaling $2.5 million, which was also reserved for as of March 31st, on two non-performing loans in this sector due to the potential negative impact of COVID-19. As of June 30th, 2020, classified loans within this sub-sector totaled $11.7 million, representing an increase of $1.5 million. As mentioned on our last call, we are actively evaluating opportunities to reduce our exposure in the sector.
Slide 14 reflects trends in several of our asset quality ratios. 30 days past dues to loans held for investment, excluding PPP loans, improved to 0.50% at quarter end. Non-performing loans reduced to 0.63%. As we continue to assess the impact of the continued economic uncertainty on our portfolio, we saw an increase in the ratio of classified loans to loans held for investment, excluding PPP loans, from 1.67% to 2.02%.
While we did experience an increase in the quarter, our current level of classified loans are in line with the levels reflected a year ago. Charge-offs increased to 58 basis points annualized for the quarter, net of PPP loans, primarily driven by the relationships mentioned previously. In total, of the $6.6 million in charge-offs during the quarter, $5.5 million were reserved for as of March 31, 2020. Again, given the economic uncertainties, we elected to take these write-downs.
At the bottom of the slide, we have some information on reserve for the quarter. During the quarter, we built our reserve to approximately $70.5 million, which represents 1.75% of our loan portfolio, net of PPP loans and mortgage warehouse. The primary drivers in our increased reserve were the downgrades mentioned previously, as well as an assumption change within our CECL model, specifically the increase of the reversion period within the ACL model.
Based upon review of forecasts provided by Moody's Analytics, we adjusted the reversion period from one year to one and a half years, which contemplates that we would return to historical loan loss averages in 2023, with reversion to this level during the second half of 2021 through 2022. Now I'll turn it over to Stephen Brolly.
Thanks, Jim Crotwell. Starting on slide 15, you can see trends related to our net interest income and margin. Our net interest income for the quarter was $46.3 million, an increase of $3.5 million over the linked quarter. The largest increase in net interest income was a reduction of our deposit cost of over $3.6 million, followed by $3.1 million in PPP loan interest and fees earned during the quarter.
Also positively impacted by the increase in both yield and volume on our warehouse loans. We have talked before about our asset sensitivity. The net interest income results for the quarter were reflective of falling interest rates. In the bottom right, you can see a NIM waterfall where we see decreased loan yields contribute to a reduction in NIM of 66 basis points, was partially offset by 37 basis points lift in NIM from deposit cost reductions.
PPP loans had an impact on our margin of six basis points. On slide 16, we report trends of yields and costs. You can see the impact of falling rates had on our loan yields, declining 63 basis points when excluding PPP loans. With a focus of reducing deposit costs, we were able to decrease our overall cost of deposits by over 40% during the quarter to 54 basis points.
Our mix of fixed and floating rate loans at quarter end had not changed significantly from the prior quarter. On slide 17, I want to go over some of the changes in our non-interest income. We typically have about 20% of our net revenue from non-interest income, but this quarter we performed particularly well in mortgage banking revenue and saw our non-interest income increase by nearly $7 million as a result.
Other changes in non-interest income category included a reduction in insurance commissions quarter-over-quarter, which is expected due to seasonality of the business. Our insurance revenues this quarter were greater than the same period last year. Also, swap fee income this quarter was extremely positive for us, as our customers were able to take advantage of the low interest rate environment.
Slide 18 covers our non-interest expenses. As we look at the trend over the past five quarters, you can see the progress in our operating leverage, especially in the most current quarter. While we see improvement in these metrics, our expenses did increase in the current quarter based on a few factors. Our mortgage bankers earned $1 million more in commissions due to the high mortgage production during the quarter.
As Drake Mills mentioned in our earnings call for the first quarter, we took a small portion of our PPP loan fees to pay incentive to bankers who worked around the clock to deliver to our customers. Lastly, we experienced higher medical insurance expense of approximately $600,000 due to increased claims this quarter. One of the areas of focus is centered around technology strategy, and the pandemic has given us a stronger focus on this strategy.
Lance and his team are consistently examining how our customers are engaging with us through our online and mobile channels, and we are focused on providing value and building loyalty through those channels, as well as looking at ways to enhance our service delivery. We believe that in the future, we will be able to hold our expenses in line or see reductions from the Q1 2020 and Q4 2019 levels. Now I'll turn it back over to Drake Mills.
Thank you, Stephen Brolly. On slide 19, as we look at our capital ratios, we remain well-capitalized going into the second half of the year. When we funded the PPP loans, we were able to retain most of the resulting deposits on our balance sheet, and the increase in our average balance has caused a reduction in our leverage capital ratio.
As we evaluated a number of factors late in the quarter, we began to use the Federal Reserve's liquidity facility for PPP loans, which we anticipate providing a lift in our leverage capital ratio in the second half of 2020. Significant temporary increases in our mortgage warehouse lines of credit toward the end of the quarter caused what we believe is a temporary decline in our total risk-based capital ratio, and we believe our capital ratios will increase throughout the year as we begin to normalize our mortgage warehouse balances.
Considering the unprecedented nature and global challenges of the past several months, I'm pleased with the performance of our company for the quarter. Historic pre-tax, pre-provision earnings, historic levels of mortgage production, and historically high non-interest income, all because we remain focused on our strategic plan and delivering for our customers and communities.
While there is uncertainty in the markets and what will take place over the next several months, we are putting ourselves in the best position based on what we know today. That is how we've operated the company for over a century. I believe in our team and our strategy, and I'm proud that so many of you have chosen to partner with us as we continue to build long-term value. Thank you for your relationship, We'll now open it up for questions.
We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question will come from Matt Olney with Stephens. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys.
Morning, Matt Olney.
I wanted to start on slide eight, the selected sectors that you guys provided. I think the overall balance was around $547 million in the second quarter. I think the same slide a quarter ago was around $1 billion. Just walk us through how you further refined your focus list on these selected sectors, and does this imply you're feeling better about credit today than three months ago? Or is this just a statement that you've had more time to work through this over the last three months?
Matt Olney, when the pandemic started through the first quarter, we got very aggressive and transparent on areas that we believed could be impacted through the downturn, this health crisis, let's say. We included transportation, we included all of healthcare and a few other areas.
Through the second quarter, we became, because of deep dives and a lot of work with individual credits, talking to these clients, actually going out and visiting them during this time, we recognized the strength in the transportation portfolio and the overall strength in the health portfolio, less assisted living. As we continued to work through the second quarter, we saw those trends and our comfort in those areas that they surely weren't what we would call a COVID-impacted asset class. We removed those and feel very comfortable and confident in that.
Okay. Got it. In the assisted living book, I believe there were some charge-offs in the second quarter. The remaining book is, I think, around $140 million. What color can you give on the existing credit profile of the remaining book? What's the risk of further downgrades? Just trying to understand if those credits that were charged off in Q2 have any similarities to the remaining book. Thanks.
Matt, this is a point I want to make and be very clear here. We talked about, even in the fourth quarter of 2019 and first quarter of 2020, our concerns about assisted living, especially those assisted living credits we had that were developer-run. Now our assisted living credits that are supported by nursing home operators appear to do better, and the ramp-up periods are quicker. What we did was, and I want to make this point, these charge-offs that we took in the second quarter, 93% of that was reserved in the first quarter. These are legacy credits, primarily four legacy credits that we decided, and use the term, clean the slate.
We decided that we were going to get aggressive because two of these credits, one assisted living credit and one retail credit, were deals that we had basically ready to close that would've got us out at par, and COVID-19 basically impacted both of those deals where they walked off.
We decided to get very aggressive, had an offer on the assisted living center that was going to close, so we went ahead and cleaned that off the books, went ahead and took it, and I think that was a smart thing to do. The other retail deal was actually a retail space that was going into self-storage. We decided to go ahead and right-size that one and get it behind us so we didn't have any further concerns or problems there.
The other two credits. Our assisted living centers that are, again, operated by the developer that we thought the write-down and the loss of the sale impacted the valuation, and surely it did on the other two. We decided to write those down as we continue to exit this assisted living centers that are developer-run.
We do have some deep relationships in our other assisted living centers that are supported by nursing homes and also supported by patient flow out of those nursing homes. When we look at the overall portfolio, we feel that we have addressed this appropriately. We have another credit that we certainly are working out of that we feel at this point comfortable that we could exit that without significant loss. I believe that we have addressed those.
It is important for us to, as I said, clean the slate and put ourselves in a very good position as we look at what COVID-19 impacted classes or portfolios might bring in the future. This was a very, what I think, confident, strong move to make sure that we take care of things. I understand that and we don't want it to be an indicator of what we think is coming in the quarters ahead.
We are very aggressive as we classify credits, as we write things down, that we take care of these, we put ourselves in a position that they don't linger. At this point, we feel comfortable that we're addressing this, and hopefully, we don't see some further deterioration in our assisted living. Again, this is an area that we will be exiting.
Okay. The last question from me around the hotel portfolio. Certainly not a very large book at Origin by any means, we're hearing some mixed industry data points based off type of property, and you definitely give us a nice breakdown on slide nine. Can you give us an update on occupancy levels? Specifically, does the portfolio have any extended stay properties? How do those occupancy levels compare to other parts of the portfolio? Thanks.
Yeah, Matt Olney, our portfolio is first off, primarily in Louisiana. It's not an extended stay portfolio at all. It's, I think, brands that are economy and overnight type stay. What's interesting about a hotel portfolio, and this is what I think differentiates us, is that 100% of our hotels have personal guarantees. Now, we have, at this point, a portfolio of $64.04 million.
Out of those personal guarantees, there's personal liquidity in that group of loans of $216 million. Significant support for those. We're seeing right now about a mid-40s% occupancy level, and that mid-50s% kind of puts us in a position of being able to cover interest payments and principal payments. We continue to work with these.
We have so much confidence in this hotel portfolio because of the strength of the operators and liquidity of them. Every time we do a deep dive, which we just got completed with another one, we just come out very confident because of not only the ability for them to support, but their attitude and desire to support these properties outside of what we're doing.
Got it. Thank you.
Our next question will come from Brady Gailey with KBW. Please go ahead.
Hey, thanks. Good morning, guys.
Good morning, Brady Gailey.
Let's talk a little bit about the lift-out strategy that you guys mentioned. I know you've had a lot of success in Texas with the old Encore franchise. As you think about M&A is not likely just as an industry, at least in the near term, I think people like the idea of lift-outs. Is there a geography that you're focusing on? Then try to help us frame out how big this lift-out strategy could be from here.
Yeah. Hey, Brady Gailey, this is Lance Hall. I would say that as a strategy for us, that's worked out well, and we've talked about it in the past, the success we've had across all markets, North Texas, Houston, Mississippi. We're going to continue looking there. The way we look at it, we're in the talent acquisition business, and that's a key driver for us.
From a credit perspective, we love the insight of being able to drag over credits versus cold calling into industries. We had the opportunity to pick up an experienced individual in our Dallas market over the quarter, as well as in our Fort Worth market. We've also done a really good job of improving our mortgage warehouse. I'm sorry, our mortgage MLO talent as we've added a lot of talent in North Texas and North Louisiana and Mississippi.
We're going to continue to focus on that, and we think that our culture is a strong attractor. The way that we sort of build our business through our geographic model is an advantage for us. Going all the way back to 2008, 2009, we thrived during a downtime, during a stressed environment because of our ability to attract bankers, and we think that's going to be the case here again.
All right. That's helpful. If you look at the first half of the year, the provision level has been running around $20 million a quarter, and reserves have been built aggressively. How do you think about the need for additional provisioning and additional reserve building for the back half of the year?
Brady Gailey, this is Drake Mills. We spend a tremendous amount of time. I think when we started midpoint first quarter, and we started projecting based on portfolio growth, the strength of the portfolio, we did some early projections.
I would say that at this point, due to the significant uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, we feel the major change moving forward will be in key factors and duration of the pandemic, which could push our ACL to a range of, let's say, 2%, which would be consistent with our first quarter projections. I want to make a point. We don't feel or expect core credit trends to be a driver in our increase moving forward.
Okay. Finally from me, if you look at the net interest margin, excluding the noise from PPP, it is down to about 315 in the second quarter. Excluding PPP, how do you think the margin will trend here? You think it will be stable at that 315 level, or do you think there could be some more downside?
No. Again, you can imagine the work that goes on internally where we are today. Our model is driven by strong C&I, and we'll continue driving that model. Stephen Brolly and Chase and our team has done a lot of work, so I'm going to turn that over to Stephen Brolly and let him address NIM trends.
Brady Gailey, we expect NIM in the third quarter and the fourth quarter to be flat to a couple basis points decrease. I'm going to give you a little range there.
Okay. All right, great. Thank you, guys.
I want to add to that, Brady Gailey, that there are some scenarios that we see two basis points up and down. Primarily, we're projecting it flat.
Got it. Thanks, Drake Mills.
Our next question will come from Brad Milsaps with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, guys.
Good morning, Brad Milsaps.
Appreciate you taking my question. Drake Mills, I wanted to maybe dive into some of the mortgage performance a little bit more. I know you guys have been working hard to make some changes in that group, but just kind of curious if you had maybe production or loan sales this quarter versus what you did a year ago, and then maybe the change in the gain on loan sale margin. Just trying to get a sense of how much of this quarter's performance is because of all the refi that's going on and what part of it is maybe more permanent at a new higher run rate from some of the changes that you've made.
Again, the strategy we put in place two and a half years ago and really got running two years ago was put us in a position because had we not done that, we wouldn't have been in a position to take advantage of the marketplace. We're running at this point with strong pipelines and strong origination, about 50/50 origination to refi.
Our markets, and this isn't just DFW and Houston. Shockingly, our North Louisiana market is really booming from an origination standpoint. Mississippi is doing very well. We expect similar activity as we can see through the third quarter from a pipeline, and what we're projecting is a decent fourth quarter. Stephen Brolly, give them a little numbers around sale.
Sure. Loans originated, I'm going to go back to the fourth quarter of 2019, was $145 million. First quarter, $110 million. This past quarter, $258 million. You can see the vast improvement in loans originated. In the pipeline, December, our pipeline was $68 million. March, it was $165 million, and in June, it was $168 million.
The pipeline is slightly bigger than it was last quarter. With that pipeline, we feel that we're going to have a really good third quarter, almost as good as the second quarter, but definitely higher than historical numbers. On the gain on sale, there are two things. One, with a little bit more refinance, you typically get a little bit better gain on sale.
We also had a very good sit down, make sure that we're getting as much money as we can on these, and we wanted to make sure we had a concentrated effort this quarter. Going forward, we think the gain on sale will be pretty good. If we go back to historical purchase versus refi, that may go down a little bit. Because anytime you have a refi business, you're going to have better gain on sale.
Great. That's helpful. Drake Mills, just to follow up on the forbearance discussion. You noted in your comments and in the deck that you expect deferrals to come down from 21% down to 8%. Can you kind of talk through what gives you some confidence around that? I know some, I think almost all, are making some form of payment. Just any additional color there on what kind of gives you the confidence that you'll see that kind of improvement here over the near term?
Well, I think it goes back to the relationship and management relationship. Each one of our forbearances, our relationship managers and portfolio managers have been in discussion with them. We got aggressive, and I want to make this point, early on, and we were there to support our customers. Well, as the investor climate looked at those as potential losses moving forward, we decided to have very good conversations with our customers.
I believe this 8% and that range is conservative based on what we know today in those conversations. I will make a point that 70% of that 21% forbearance level made payments during that first 90 days, and we just feel very confident that that number, that 8%, is very conservative. I will make this point.
With a resurgence and being in the position we're in from an economic standpoint with uncertainty, we are still going to be here to help these customers get through this period of time. I'm not saying that to say, "Hey, we know there's an increase," but we're going to do what we have to do, and we're going to be here for the customers and not necessarily just look at a percentage of forbearances.
Got it. That's helpful. Maybe just final question for Stephen Brolly. Can you remind us how much you have left to recognize in PPP fees over the balance of the program?
We do. As of the end of June, we had $14.5 million net fees remaining.
Okay, great. Thank you, guys.
Thank you.
Again, if you have a question, it is star then one. Star then one to ask a question. Our next question will come from Kevin Fitzsimmons with D.A. Davidson. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, everyone.
Morning, Kevin Fitzsimmons.
Morning, Kevin Fitzsimmons.
Just a quick follow-up to Brad's question on the PPP fees. What's your best guess on timing? I know you have to wait until the SBA actually puts a platform out there for the forgiveness process to work. Are you visualizing, assuming it happens mid to later fourth quarter, that you would recognize the lion's share of the remaining PPP fees coming through the margin in fourth quarter, or does that bleed into first quarter 2021?
2/3 of our PPP portfolio is less than $150,000. I would say at that point, there's no expectations on our part that anything's going to happen in the third quarter, but in the fourth quarter. That's why we've taken the position these PPP loans to us are to our customers, and we are not going to essentially sell these, especially servicing released at this point with the thought that 2/3 of our portfolio could be forgiven under 150.
We would think at that point, 2/3 of those fees well, that's not going to be accurate because the larger ones have larger fees. I think that's fair, the thinking, the lion's share of those would be brought into income after the forgiveness of those.
I totally agree. One thing I'm going to have to add is you really have to look at the SBA procedures. If they turn around tomorrow and give us full procedures, we'll work on it, and then we will have the forgiveness as soon as possible. If it continues to drag and they come out with changes and revisions, I could see some into the first quarter of next year. That's not because we're not ready, it's only because of the procedures from SBA.
Right. My understanding is even if they come out with the procedures, they have 60 days or so to process it, and they're in total control about the timing. Correct?
Correct. That's why it's difficult for us to say whether it's going to be the fourth quarter or the first. If it was totally up to us and our customers, I would say the fourth quarter. We have to give that timing and also the timing at the back end. Just to be conservative, I would say the vast majority will be in the first quarter. If we could get them quicker, we would.
Okay. Thank you. Just a quick follow-up. Drake Mills, in your initial comments, you had mentioned on focus on expenses, and obviously this quarter, it's a bit of a byproduct of the success in mortgage that you have some of the incentive comp from that. Are there anything that you could tell us at this point, that initiatives or things you're looking at to more permanently take down the expense run rate that you guys are taking an early look at or starting to implement?
Yeah, let me turn that over to Lance Hall. He has been kind of the ring leader and driving the bank from an expense reduction standpoint. Lance Hall?
Thanks. Obviously, with our asset sensitivity, being mindful and smart about expense control and reduction is critical for us. Yes, we have multiple initiatives going on. Starting with really digging into vendor contracts and finding opportunities, looking really closely at all of our leased real estate and opportunities we may have there, working through all of our expense structure analysis on ATM analysis, on branch profitability. It's all undergoing right now, and we feel like we have some strong opportunities.
Okay, great. Just a very quick point of clarification, the waterfall that you show on the NIM change with the 66 basis points on loan yields, is that really entirely the effect of low rates on your fixed and variable rate loans, or is that also reflecting the mix, the excess liquidity, the impact of that? A lot of banks have talked about that impact of excess liquidity.
That is not excess liquidity. That is really the decrease in the rates over our fixed and floating rate loans.
Okay. I assume then the guidance of the margin being roughly stable, going forward, ex-PPP really implies that the progression of reducing deposit costs is really starting to catch up with that, what's probably going to be an ongoing effect as loans continue to reprice downward.
Yeah, that's a strategy that we have in place. We potentially see our ability to drive down total cost of funds to historical level as we saw several years ago. That's going to be the challenge that we drive this next couple of quarters to get to that point. I think it's extremely important that we manage that, and are successful with that deposit reduction, expense reduction.
Okay. All right, great, Drake Mills. Thank you, everyone.
Thank you.
Our next question will come from Matt Olney with Stephens. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for taking the follow-up. Just want to go back to the outlook for operating expenses. Stephen Brolly, you know there were some unusual items in Q2 as far as some of the payouts for the PPP work, the mortgage payouts, the healthcare. I think you mentioned, I want to make sure I got this right, that you said that the third quarter operating expenses would be more in line with the Q4 or Q1 2020 levels. I guess it'd be closer to around that $30 million, $36 million, $37 million dollar range. Am I interpreting that right, Stephen Brolly?
Absolutely. If we do have another really good quarter for mortgage, then the mortgage commissions will also increase. If you look at Q1 at $36.1, that would be the base. Without any increased mortgage commissions, it may be $36.3, $36.5. We don't see a drastic increase at all in there.
Okay. Understood. Circling back on the allowance levels, I believe, Drake Mills, you mentioned the possibility that the allowance, the ACL ratio moves towards that 2% level, and there's obviously lots of noise around PPP and warehouse. Does that 2% commentary, is that compared to the 1.33% that was reported allowance in Q2 or the 1.75% that excludes PPP and excludes mortgage warehouse?
Matt, thank you for that clarification. It excludes PPP and mortgage warehouse.
Okay. Got it.
We're at 1.76%, 1.77 now. We see that continued potential build to what we think would be adequate based on the position we're in today and the data that we have, would be adequate.
Okay. Just the last question, thinking about loan balances in the near term, it seems like you've got some nice tailwinds that will continue for a few more months, whether it's PPP or mortgage warehouse. At some point, those will start to pay down, and my guess is it's the fourth quarter. Am I interpreting that right that these loan balances could remain elevated in Q3, but then move lower at some point in Q4 and into Q1? Is that your assumption as well?
That is right on target.
Got it. Okay. That's all from me. Thank you.
Thank you, Matt Olney.
This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Drake Mills for any closing remarks.
Well, I want to thank everybody, and a couple points. Historically, our organization thrives in crisis situation, and I think we are in an opportunistic position to really build relationships and take advantage of dislocation. I'm very comfortable in our current position. I'm very comfortable in our balance sheet, confident in our leadership team and our ability to navigate through this health crisis.
I'm extremely pleased with the commitment of our people and the strength of our culture to lead our customers and communities through this crisis. Sincerely, thank you for your support and your partnership, and I truly appreciate your participation and interest today. Thank you for attending.
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.