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spk03: Good morning. My name is Simona and I'll be your conference operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to the Blue Foundry Bancorp Q1 2022 earnings call. Today's call will include forward-looking statements, including statements about Blue Foundry's future financial and operating results, outlook, business strategies and plans, as well as other opportunities and potential risks that management foresees. Such forward-looking statements reflect management's current estimates or beliefs and are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results or the timing of events to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements. Listeners are referred to the disclosures set forth under the caption forward-looking statements in the earnings press release, as well as the risk factors and other disclosures contained in the company's recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. For more information about such risks and uncertainties, Any forward-looking statements made during this call represent management views and estimates only as of today. While the company may elect to update forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so, even if management views or estimates change. And you should not rely on such statements as representing management views as of any date subsequent to today. During the call, the company will refer to non-GAAP measures, which exclude certain items from reported results. Please refer to today's earnings release for reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures. Please note this event is being recorded. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Thank you. I'll now turn the call over to Jim Nessie, President and CEO.
spk01: Great. Thanks, Operator, and good morning to everyone. Thank you for joining us for Blue Foundry's first quarter earnings call. I am joined today by our controller and interim chief financial officer, Alex Agnoletto. He will share the company's financial results and participate in the Q&A segment of the call. In the first quarter of 2022, we made great progress towards our goals of growing core deposits and growing higher interest earning assets. Our core deposits increased by $64.8 million in the quarter, gross loans increased by $55 million, and our investment book grew by $57.3 million. We also worked diligently to reduce our core operating expenses which decreased by over $1 million in the quarter. This will position us well for Q2 when our asset growth produces a full quarter of interest income. On the retail front, we continue to grow our deposit franchise, specifically within our business customers. In the quarter, our team grew core business deposits by over $40 million. New branches opened within the last year have seen strong growth and new customer acquisition success as our refreshed brick-and-mortar locations provide an inviting and exciting customer experience. Moving to our lending efforts, our team onboarded over $147 million of new loans in the first quarter. Excluding PPP, quarterly gross loan growth came in at a net of $64.1 million, with strong performance within our commercial lending team. We are and we will continue to benefit from the rising rate environment as we put excess liquidity to work and as we fund new loan growth with low-cost core deposits. Total cash was $101.6 million at the end of the first quarter, which represents our management team putting over $90 million to work during the quarter. The first quarter shows evidence of our core strategy and capability beginning to come to fruition. with our migration to becoming a larger, more commercial bank funded by Core Deposits. I'm also pleased to announce the appointment of our new Chief Financial Officer, Kelly Pecoraro. Kelly joined Blue Foundry Bank from Investors Bank, where she most recently served as the Chief Accounting Officer. She began her career in KPMG's audit practice and brings a wealth of accounting, finance, and regulatory knowledge from her 30-plus year career that will support our growth objectives. Kelly will be formally appointed in mid-May and will work to transition responsibilities with our interim CFO, Alex. Alex will return to serving as our controller following Kelly's deployment. I'd like to turn the call over to Alex Agnoletto to discuss the company's financial results.
spk02: Thank you, Jim, and good morning, everyone. Our gap net income for the quarter was $553,000, or two cents per share. Core operating expenses decreased $1.04 million, or 7% quarter over quarter, to $13.4 million. This decrease was driven by a $418,000 reduction in professional fees, combined with a reduction in advertising expense of $276,000 and a reduction in occupancy expense of $199,000. This marks a significant reduction in our operating costs and will enable us to return to profitability in the coming months, as we previously announced. Quarter over quarter, net interest income decreased 397,000, or 3%, to $11.9 million. This decrease was driven primarily by a reduction in PPP fees realized, which was offset by loan and investment growth, and a continued reduction in our cost of funds. our net interest margin decreased by one basis point to 2.62% for the three months ended March 31st, 2022, as compared to the prior quarter. Net interest margin increased by 54 basis points year over year, from 2.08% to 2.62%, representing a 26% increase. Our adjusted PPNR was a loss of $520,000 to the quarter, compared to a loss of $1.4 million in the prior quarter These results represent progress of nearly 900,000 toward our break-even point, which we expect will come in the next few months. Interest income decreased by 641,000, or 5% during the quarter, which was driven primarily by 600,000 lower realization of PPPB income in the quarter, coupled with the timing of loan and investment portfolio growth being later in the quarter. Interest expense continued to decrease from last quarter, 4,000 to 1.7 million. This decrease was driven primarily by continued maturities of time deposits as well as slightly reduced average FHLV volume. The fourth quarter contained a partial month of higher balances prior to the October FHLV pay down. Quarter over quarter, gross loans excluding PPP increased by 64.1 million or 5%. primarily due to strong origination performance across our CRE portfolios, coupled with the continuation of the residential loan purchase program. Gross loans, including PPP, increased by $55 million, or 4.3%. Currently, we have $8.1 million of PPP loans remaining on our books and $251,000 of fees left to be realized. Our total pipeline was over $130 million as of March 31st, with an average expected yield of 3.9%. Our real estate portfolios experienced strong growth in the quarter, driven by originations of over $147 million. Our residential portfolio grew through a mixture of organic originations and the continuation of the loan purchase program that was enacted last year. During the quarter, the bank purchased approximately $45 million of high-quality residential loans originated to Fannie Mae standards and to borrowers in our principal market. This purchase program is expected to continue through the next two quarters to offset higher-than-average prepayment levels. Our securities portfolio grew by $57.3 million during the quarter, which was the result of utilizing excess liquidity to capture incremental yield as rates rose. we plan to continue to reinvest excess liquidity into a mixture of loans and shorter-duration securities over the coming quarters. We have been reinvesting in securities that yielded roughly 2.65% over the past quarter, and as rates rise, we plan to put more excess liquidity to work. Our current portfolio has a weighted average life of 4.7 years. We view our asset quality as stable and improved. Our non-performing loans to total loans decreased 16 basis points from 0.94% to 0.78%. Loans 90 days or more past due decreased by 2 million or over 20% from 9.6 million at year end to 7.6 million as of the current quarter. During the quarter, our allowance to total loans decreased 13 basis points from 1.13% to 1% as the economy continues to stabilize and improve. As a reminder, We expect to adopt CECL as of January 1st, 2023, and are currently operating under the incurred loss model. Now I would like to turn it back to Jim for concluding remarks.
spk01: Thanks, Alex. The first quarter marks significant progress in positioning our balance sheet to deliver strong future results, and I am encouraged by the continued improvement in our core operating costs. We recognize the work ahead of us, and we believe we are well-positioned to return to profitability in the coming months. We also would like to thank everyone for their time today and for their interest in Blue Factory Bank. We look forward to sharing our operating results next quarter. The operator can begin the Q&A session now. Thank you.
spk03: Thank you, Jim. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by 1 on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press star followed by 2. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your phone is unmuted locally. And if you're listening on a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before asking your question. Our five question comes from Laurie Hunsicker of Compass Point. Laurie, your line is open. Please go ahead.
spk04: Yeah, hi, thanks. Good morning, Jim and Alex. And Kelly, congratulations to you. I was hoping that you could go back to loan growth. It looks like your commercial real estate loan growth was very, very strong. What's going on there and how are you thinking about that? And is that also a purchase?
spk01: So, good morning. And just to clarify, Kelly will be starting with us in a couple of weeks, and I think you can refer back to the K that we released to give the exact dates and times, but we're excited to have her joining the team shortly. On loan growth, it's been an exciting quarter. It's been a lot of... Cree deals coming in at good prices. It's a lot of non-residential Cree deals as well. But I'm happy to answer questions on it if you want to be more specific in the question.
spk04: Yeah. So I'm just looking, LinkWater, you went from $142 million to $187 million. That's really a pretty big jump. What type of Cree are you adding, and are you originating that, or are you working with other banks? How are you thinking about that?
spk01: So it is our originations. They're not purchased. Some are with other banks and some are direct from our lenders.
spk04: Got it. And sorry, I mean, I can follow up with you, but this is very high level. What type of CREE are you adding?
spk01: It's a mix. It's industrial. Okay, you know what? It's just a mix of industrial and other spaces in New Jersey. It's It's a good mix is what I would tell you.
spk04: Okay. Okay. Yeah, and so on to net interest income, I just wanted to verify this. The amount of PPP gains you realized this quarter was 265. Is that – did I get that right?
spk02: Right around there, Lori. It's actually just a nick higher, right around $320,000. We have about $250,000 left to go in Q2. But I don't think all of it will be realized in Q2. I think it's going to take a few quarters for all of that to come to fruition.
spk04: Got it. Okay. So just stripping that out, very back of the envelope, you were $262,000 margin, so asking that. your 255 core. Can you help us think a little bit, as you talked about, you know, putting that to work, purchasing more resi, more securities? It looks like your interest rate sensitivity as of December 31st and 100 basis point up is a 3% on NII. Can you just help us quantify that a little bit more? In other words, what is margin going to look like as we head into this rising rate environment? Do you have Any sort of data point you can give us on every 25 basis point height, yield X, any more color you can give us around that, maybe even thoughts on your deposit?
spk02: Sure. So in an up 100 scenario, out 12 months, we're seeing NII at up 4.45%. I think we still have some bits of cash left to deploy. Q1 was deployed at a mix for our purchases, a mix of some lower yielding investments that were shorter duration, high credit quality. As we go into Q2, those rates are obviously going to be priced a bit higher as rates have moved a lot in the last two months. So I think in the short term, margins will continue to expand slightly. And then as we get into Q3, cost of funds will be challenged slightly as we will move off of where we are right now in the 40s and move up towards a higher number.
spk01: It's just to clarify, Laurie. The purchases, I think you will see us slowing down on investment purchases over the next quarter. But as far as one to four residential, high-quality residential loans, we'll probably still fill in with a few more tranches of those in the next quarter. That's where I think we will be. It just depends on what the market is doing.
spk04: Great. Okay. That's helpful. And then Can you talk a little bit about the loan loss provision line? Obviously, you have very, very strong loan growth. You're now sitting at a 1% reserves to loans or 101 extra PPP. How should we be thinking about that in terms of provision normalizing? And I realize CECL isn't coming until 2023, but can you just help us think about how that looks going forward where you have a reserves to loan target? Sure.
spk02: Sure. So I don't know at this time that we're willing to put out a necessary target. I think each quarter we consider the economic factors relative to each portfolio. What I can say about the current quarter is that a lot of the reserve was related to reductions in the construction portfolio. Those loans are riskier assets and they come with higher reserve ratios. But our underlying credit quality across the rest of our portfolios remain strong. We've not had any charge-offs in the last few quarters, let alone years. So I think a strengthening credit quality in our broader portfolio mixed with some good fundamentals in collateral values and broader economic fact patterns for each portfolio type has led us to where we are today. It's hard to say exactly where that lands in the future, but you're right in that it's hard to compare us to some of our peers because a lot of our public peers are all on the CECL model, which we will not be on until later into a few quarters from now.
spk04: Got it. Okay. Okay. And then your non-interest income, obviously strong. Your fees and service charges, a nicely linked quarter. You know, maybe just some color around how we should be thinking about that. And also, will you refresh us in terms of what your overdraft and NSFCs are and any plans to become a little bit more consumer-friendly there and just how that would impact your fee income, how you're thinking about that?
spk02: Sure. So I don't think our business model is very consumer fee-driven. I think a lot of our products are built around low-cost fee models, and I think that's reflected in how much of those fees are currently included in our non-interest income. So on a quarterly basis, we have under $100,000. In the 10Q, we will put out an exact number for that, but it's not overly significant to the numbers that you're seeing here, and I don't think that it will be in the next quarter or two.
spk01: And to add on to that, you'll continue to see us become more consumer-friendly. I think those are your words that you're using. So you will see us following along with others on items like overdraft fees. It's not a big line item, as Alex has suggested, but it will continue to improve for consumers.
spk04: Got it. Okay, and that $100,000, that's annual or that's for the quarter?
spk02: It's under that number, the exact number I will publish in the 10Q, but that is a quarterly number.
spk04: Quarterly. Okay, great. Okay. And then just last question for me. Can you comment a little bit on expenses? Obviously, that came down nicely. There's a lot of one-time items when we compare link quarter, but can you just refresh us on your thoughts around expenses? If you happen to have what the seasonal payroll tax was in this quarter versus how it looks next, And then also any plans we should be thinking about in terms of de novo branching either for this year or next and how we should think about expenses around that.
spk02: Thanks. Sure. So I'll let Jim speak to the de novo branching. But as far as expenses go, I think next quarter we're looking to see expenses relatively flat. I think the reduction has come at the way of a lot of our consulting costs rolling off. But I don't see a significant continued reduction there. I think it's going to be fairly stable as we look into the next quarter or two as we continue to build out our products and services and hire key team members.
spk04: Okay, and what about any DeNovo branching plans we should be aware of, or how are you thinking about that?
spk01: We continue to look for opportunities in the marketplace where we think our business model fits in well. I just don't have anything further to give you on that, but we are looking in the marketplace to continue to DeNovo.
spk04: Great. Thanks for taking my question.
spk01: Of course.
spk03: Thank you, Laurie. We have no further questions registered at this time, so I'll hand back to President and CEO Jim Nessie for any closing remarks.
spk01: Thank you, Operator. Appreciate everyone's time this morning, and we look forward to speaking to everyone again next quarter. Have a great day.
spk03: This concludes the Blue Foundry Bangkok Q1 2022 earnings call. Thank you all for joining. We hope you have a great rest of your day. You may now disconnect.
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