4/27/2026

speaker
Chrissy Meyer
Corporate Secretary, Bank of Marin Bancorp

Good morning. Thank you for joining Bank of Marin Bancorp's earnings call for the first quarter ended March 31st, 2026. I'm Chrissy Meyer, Corporate Secretary for the Bank of Marin Bancorp. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After the call, we will conduct a question and answer session. Joining us on the call today are Bank of Marin President and CEO Tim Myers and Chief Financial Officer Dave Bonacorso. Our earnings news release and supplementary presentation which were issued this morning, can be found in the investor relations section of our website at bankofmoran.com, where this call is also being webcast. Closed captioning is available during the live webcast as well as on the webcast replay. Before we get started, I want to note that we will be discussing some non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the reconciliation table in our earnings news release for both GAAP and non-GAAP measures. Additionally, the discussion on the call is based on information we knew as of Friday, April 24, 2026, and may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those set forth in such statements. For a discussion on these risks and uncertainties, please review the forward-looking statements disclosure in our earnings news release, as well as our SEC filings. Following our prepared remarks, Tim, Dave, and our Chief Credit Officer, Misako Stewart, will be available to answer your questions. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Tim Myers.

speaker
Tim Myers
President and CEO, Bank of Marin Bancorp

Thank you, Chrissy. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our quarterly earnings call. We are very pleased that our execution in the first quarter across a number of key areas resulted in continued improvement in year-over-year profitability metrics, loan production, net interest margin expansion, and improved credit quality. I'd like to discuss our first quarter highlights. Compared to the first quarter of 2025, net income and earnings per share grew by 75% and 77%, respectively, in the first quarter of this year. Largely due to the repositioning of our balance sheet, our net interest margin increased six basis points on a sequential quarter basis and 47 basis points over the prior year's period. During the quarter, we originated $81 million in new loans, $61 million of which was funded, an almost 30% increase over the prior year's period. While the first quarter is a seasonally slower period for production, the additional hires we made to our banking team, the generally favorable economic conditions we continue to see in our markets, and a healthy increase in commercial real estate loan demand led to our strongest first quarter in a number of years. New loan product allocation was roughly in line with our existing portfolio with a slight skewing towards CNI. During the quarter, we worked diligently to improve our credit quality. We sold our longest tenured classified and non-accrual loans totaling $16.3 million, which were downgraded to substandard in 2021 and moved to non-accrual in 2024. At that time, we took specific reserves of $7.3 million based on property valuations. The no-sale proceeds validated our reserve assumptions with the charge-offs equaling the specific amounts reserved. While other workouts were offset by new downgrades, the impact of the no-sales on credit metrics was substantial. Non-accrual loans declined from 1.27% of assets to 0.41%, and the ratio of classified to total loans decreased from 1.51% to 0.85%. Notably, following the no sales, virtually all of the remaining non-accrual balances are comprised of one non-owner-occupied commercial real estate loan that has no loss expectations based on underlying valuation and cash flow. Despite strong seasonal loan originations, Q1 loan growth was negatively impacted by our non-accrual loan resolutions. Excluding these purposeful exits, loan payoffs were roughly in line with the prior year's period and were generally driven by asset sales and cash payoffs. We continue to experience elevated payoffs in consumer-related loans, primarily within acquired portfolios, including auto and mortgage loans. Despite these dynamics, our net interest margin benefited as new loans came onto the books at an average rate that was 40 basis points higher than the average rate on payoffs. The Q4 interest recovery of $667,000, not repeated in Q1, and the decreased number of days in the first quarter masked that rate spread benefit. Excluding other unique transactions, we believe our loan portfolio will positively impact the net interest margin in 2026 going forward. Our banking team continues its relationship-based approach to attract lending opportunities and drive to cultivate new, deeply rooted relationships with particularly strong momentum in the first quarter in the greater Sacramento area. While we continue to navigate a competitive market environment on pricing and structure, we have attracted a significant amount of new client relationships while maintaining our discipline underwriting and pricing criteria. Our total deposits increased in the first quarter due to a combination of increased balances from longtime clients, as well as continued activity bringing in new relationships. The rate environment remains competitive and clients remain rate sensitive. However, they continue to bank with us for our service levels, accessibility, and commitment to our communities, allowing us to continue reducing our cost of deposits while growing our deposit base. With that, I'll turn the call over to Dave Bonacorso, to discuss our financial results in greater detail.

speaker
Dave Bonacorso
Chief Financial Officer, Bank of Marin Bancorp

Thanks, Tim, and good morning, everyone. Our net income was $8.5 million, or 53 cents per share. Our net interest income increased from the prior quarter to $30.3 million due to average balance sheet growth and higher investment security yields and reduced deposit costs, as well as the positive churn in the loan portfolio that Tim discussed, resulting in a six basis point increase in our net interest margin. Adjusting for the fourth quarter recovery of interest and fees on a paid-off non-accrual loan relationship, our sequential quarter net interest margin growth would have been even more impressive at 14 basis points. During the quarter, the expansion of a deposit relationship with a relatively high cost was a headwind to net interest margin. At quarter end, we moved a portion of these funds off balance sheet to take advantage of a relatively high one-way sell rate, which boosts our overall net income and contributes to non-interest income. This opportunity has persisted into Q2, and we will continue to look for opportunities like these to actively manage our balance sheet to improve shareholder returns. Moving to non-interest income, most areas of fee income were relatively consistent with the prior quarter, although we did receive a special dividend on FHLB stock as well as a bowling debt benefit, which positively impacted our total non-interest income in the first quarter. Our non-interest expense increased by $2.5 million from the prior quarter, primarily due to higher salaries and employee benefits related to seasonal salary and benefit accrual resets, including payroll taxes, incentive compensation accruals, profit sharing, insurance, and 401k matching. The first quarter also included a higher level of our annual charitable giving, which we expect will comprise almost 70% of the total for 2026. Overall, Q1 non-interest expense was broadly in line with our expectations. Though charitable giving is expected to return to more normalized levels, during the coming quarters, we otherwise expect non-interest expense to continue near current levels as we continue to invest in people and technology, which we believe will fuel our growth and ultimately drive shareholder returns. Due to the improvement in asset quality in our loan portfolio and the substantial level of reserves we have already built, we did not require a provision for credit losses in the first quarter, and our allowance for credit losses remain strong at 1.08% of total loans, which we believe is an appropriate level following the sale of our non-performing loans. Given the continued strength of our capital ratios, our board of directors declared a cash dividend of 25 cents per share on April 23rd, the 84th consecutive quarterly dividend paid by the company. With that, I'll turn it back over to you, Tim, to share some final comments.

speaker
Tim Myers
President and CEO, Bank of Marin Bancorp

Thank you, Dave. We continue to see stable economic conditions in our markets, Our credit quality continues to improve. Our loan pipeline remains strong amid healthy demand, and we continue to expect to generate a solid loan growth in 2026, while also continuing to grow deposits through the addition of new relationships and expansion of existing client relationships. Given the positive trends we are seeing in many key metrics, we expect to continue to deliver strong financial performance for our shareholders as we move through the year. With that, I want to thank everyone on today's call for your interest and your support. We will now open the call to questions.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

If you would like to ask a question, please click on the raise hand button at the bottom of your screen. Once prompted, please unmute your line and ask your question. We will now pause a moment to assemble the queue. Our first question will come from Matthew Clark with Piper Sandler. You may now unmute and ask your question.

speaker
Matthew Clark
Analyst, Piper Sandler

Hey, good morning, guys. Morning, Matthew. How much was the interest reversal that negatively impacted the loan yield on a dollar basis?

speaker
Dave Bonacorso
Chief Financial Officer, Bank of Marin Bancorp

That was probably the one in Q4. It was, I believe, $667,000. Oh, okay.

speaker
Matthew Clark
Analyst, Piper Sandler

I'm sorry. I think I misheard you. I thought there was another one here in one queue.

speaker
Tim Myers
President and CEO, Bank of Marin Bancorp

There's not. It was over a quarter, and... part of the decline was impacted by that $670,000 interest accrual reversal in Q4. Got it. Okay.

speaker
Matthew Clark
Analyst, Piper Sandler

Okay. Thank you. And then saw the spot rate on deposits. How are you thinking about deposit costs kind of beyond that spot rate with the Fed on hold? And what would you suggest is your your marginal cost of new deposits these days?

speaker
Dave Bonacorso
Chief Financial Officer, Bank of Marin Bancorp

So I think similar to what we've done in recent quarters, we'll continue to look at targeted adjustments away from Fed cuts. Obviously, probably fewer Fed cuts expected than compared to what the market was expecting to start the year. So that's how we'll continue to address that. We also have time deposit repricing happening in the background. I believe that was a 24 basis point decline sequential quarter. So those are Those are a couple of data points. Anything else you want to add, Tim?

speaker
Tim Myers
President and CEO, Bank of Marin Bancorp

No, I think some of the total or the pressure on total deposits continues to be just large existing clients that have, you know, relationship rates that continue to go up. Some of that's, you know, we're managing with one way cells, et cetera. But no, overall, we continue to look for off cycle reductions. And as you noted, the spot rate is, you know, four bits lower than the total price. deposit rate at the end of the quarter or sorry, end of the year. So.

speaker
Matthew Clark
Analyst, Piper Sandler

Yeah. Okay, great. And then you haven't bought back stock for the last couple of quarters. You've got credit, you know, a lot of your credit pretty much resolved here. How do you think about, how should we think about the buyback here going forward?

speaker
Tim Myers
President and CEO, Bank of Marin Bancorp

So as we described when we did the balance sheet restructure, given that we got support from the regulators and all our constituents to do it without any equity raise just with sub-debt, we had said we were going to earn our way back into a median leverage ratio or CQ1 ratio coming back towards peer level. And certainly at the time, the perception was holding more capital is better in the event that the credit situation with those loans worsened. As you noted, you know, taking that off the table brings us closer to having a comfort level to do that. So, you know, it's a conversation we're going to start having, but we still want to earn our way back into a bit of a higher ratio before maybe embarking on that. But certainly not needing to keep capital for the risk inherent in those deals we shed during the quarter, you know, we'll feel better about having that conversation. So I don't want to overpromise, but, you know, that did remove a big hurdle for sure.

speaker
Matthew Clark
Analyst, Piper Sandler

Okay. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Your next question will come from Jeff Rulis with DA Davidson.

speaker
Jeff Rulis
Analyst, DA Davidson

Thanks. Good morning. Good morning, Jeff. I guess kind of following the restatement you had during the quarter, trying to get my bearings on the margin and expense levels, I think you kind of outlined the expense expectation. Sounds like pretty flat from here, a pretty front-end loaded Q1 and then leveling off, but I guess if I've tried to get into NII and the margin, I think we had sort of had discussions of a terminal margin level in the high threes given kind of the adjusted number is sort of a mid three figure. I'm trying to get a sense for, you've had a lot of restructuring and repositioning. It sounds like still an upward bias to the margin, but kind of all in. whether specific or not, kind of a margin level you think that's indicative of the balance sheet today?

speaker
Dave Bonacorso
Chief Financial Officer, Bank of Marin Bancorp

I think on a full year basis, mid threes is probably still appropriate or appropriate in line with the comment you just made, obviously adjusted downward given the restructuring. And we covered deposit costs a little bit, but we still think there are decent tailwinds with regard to loan repricing.

speaker
Jeff Rulis
Analyst, DA Davidson

So, Dave, the step up this quarter, link quarter, I guess, you know, for the jump off rate of March is 326. And you're sort of say by the end of the year, a mid threes is doable. I guess that would put kind of the link quarter margin increase. Is that give or take a pretty good proxy?

speaker
Dave Bonacorso
Chief Financial Officer, Bank of Marin Bancorp

Yeah, well, I guess I would look at it a different way. I mean, you're probably looking at a handful of basis points a quarter. I mean, there's some movements comparing off the prior quarter with that non-accrual loan payoff, etc. But that's how I would think about it moving ahead is... With the benefits to loan repricing, that's probably worth a few basis points. And then any other deposit repricing benefits we have along the way would add to that, such that you get to potentially up to a mid threes number for the year.

speaker
Jeff Rulis
Analyst, DA Davidson

That's great. Thank you. And then maybe just one other question on the credit side. The timing of the large loan resolution, is that Is that its own independent path or do you find that's indicative or something moving in the market that you feel like you can move forward on this other larger $8 million owner-occupied CRE? Or do you view them really independently? That's something that you are chasing down separately and this remaining loan, you expect the workout phase to continue for quarters to come?

speaker
Tim Myers
President and CEO, Bank of Marin Bancorp

Yeah, so they're completely different animals, Jeff. The notes we sold were the ones we downgraded. That was our pandemic special that we've been talking about ad nauseum for a number of years. The market just wasn't going to recover in time for that to be properly restructured. We're not going to maintain a book alone on our books anymore. where we need to take a charge off, so we elected to sell the note, and Masako had done a really good job of estimating value and negotiating that sales set so we didn't have any further provisioning impact. The other loan we've mentioned on the calls is something where, again, the loan-to-value, the debt service coverage ratio, all the metrics are adequate. We're in a dispute over terms of an extension or renewal – I'm sorry, extension – And so that's really what's keeping it. So we're in the middle of a legal process on that. And so there really isn't. They're not. It's not apples to apples. And so we will look to continue to look to resolve that. But we don't have any loss expectations on that credit, whereas the other one had a serious valuation impact, as you know.

speaker
Jeff Rulis
Analyst, DA Davidson

I appreciate it, Tim. Maybe most importantly, interested in your view of just the general market on the CRE side and as you view vacancy rates in the general kind of broader Bay Area sort of firming up, or how would you characterize kind of recent CRE trends in the area? Yeah.

speaker
Tim Myers
President and CEO, Bank of Marin Bancorp

Yeah, so I would continue to bifurcate Bay Area between San Francisco, particularly for office and the rest of the Bay Area. We never saw the significant value degradation or lease rate declines in the outer markets that we saw in San Francisco, which, as you know, plummeted. The trends continue to be very positive, certainly a lot of that driven by AI-related investments and Even on the property, on the note we sold, we were looking at 20% to 30% a year of improving NOIs. So the market is rebounding. There's news about retail coming back in the retail areas. It had to hit a bottom. You see people being opportunistic now. But for those of us that had assets at prior valuations, that was going to take a long time. But we certainly see more opportunism in the market. Some of our activity over the last couple quarters has been related to people taking advantage and making purchases. And so I view all that as a positive. So, again, I would bifurcate between dealing with an asset that was on the book before the value degradation and what's happening now. But overall, the trends remain very positive in San Francisco.

speaker
Jeff Rulis
Analyst, DA Davidson

Thanks. Appreciate it.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Your next question will come from Woody Lay with KBW.

speaker
Woody Lay
Analyst, KBW

Hey, good morning, guys. I was just hoping that you could sort of walk through the higher expenses in the first quarter, the jump from, you know, one Q to four Q. And then it sounds like the forecast, you know, excluding the charitable contribution should remain relatively flat. Does that embed any additional hiring from here?

speaker
Dave Bonacorso
Chief Financial Officer, Bank of Marin Bancorp

Sure. I'll start that one off. So Just zooming out a little bit, I think the company has a longstanding history of very strong expense management. If you go back the last 10 years or so, our non-interest expense to average assets has been in the favorable top 30% of peers. So it's important to what we do. I think we're pretty thoughtful around it, and that's despite operating in some pretty expensive markets. I think where the deviation may have happened is... If an estimate was jumping off of Q4 for personnel expense, keep in mind we did have some incentive bonus reversals in Q4. And I think historically Q3 has probably been a better predictor of Q1 than Q4 has. And so our Q3 actually looks, relative to Q3, our Q1 looks better. similar to where it has been the last couple of years. And then you put on top of that the annual resets that we discuss in our earnings materials like payroll taxes, profit sharing, et cetera. You know, that's how we get to the key driver of our overall number this quarter, which is in personnel. And then you hit on charitable contributions. We expect that to normalize. I think one other area that was a little bit of an outlier this quarter was the FDIC insurance expense. And Due to the repositioning, we had a lower leverage ratio and negative earnings in our last assessment because of those losses. That was applied to a higher assessment base and given the balance sheet growth and also lower tangible equity. So that, I think, explains some of the expense you're seeing in Q1, and we expect that to normalize as more of the benefits of the repositioning flow through.

speaker
Woody Lay
Analyst, KBW

Got it. That's helpful. And then maybe just last for me sort of putting some of the moving pieces together i mean it sounds like there's continued tailwinds to the margin you know you've got a slightly higher expense base but it should be um relatively stable versus one q so i mean the expectation is still for positive operating leverage throughout throughout the year yes i agree with that yeah i believe that's the case

speaker
Tim Myers
President and CEO, Bank of Marin Bancorp

We are looking to be opportunistic, though, and continue to add higher and help us drive the growth. I can't really predict the timing for that, but we are looking to make, you know, strategic growth efforts in some of the markets that maybe have been lesser performing for us to kind of round out, get more pistons firing. And so, you know, if we can... make some hires that can help drive the growth, certainly would be doing that with a mind towards adding interest-bearing assets to the books. But that could impact the run rate over the year. But as Dave said, I think when you take all the noise out, it starts to flatten out minus any ads.

speaker
Woody Lay
Analyst, KBW

Got it. All right. Well, I appreciate all the coverage. Thanks for taking my questions.

speaker
Tim Myers
President and CEO, Bank of Marin Bancorp

Yeah, thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Your next question will come from Andrew Terrell with Stevens.

speaker
Andrew Terrell
Analyst, Stevens

Hey, good morning. Andrew. Maybe going back to the margin, I was hoping we could maybe get a finer point on some of the loan repricing dynamics and maybe just curious where new origination yields are coming in today, how that compares to what's rolling off and if you have kind of the cadence of you know, what you expect to reprice or turnover on the loan book throughout the year?

speaker
Dave Bonacorso
Chief Financial Officer, Bank of Marin Bancorp

Sure, I'll start. So, you know, the usual statistic we give is a 12-month look at monthly loan yields, you know, and that number is probably 15 to 20 basis points comparing the monthly loan yield in March, 2027 to March, 2026. That's, uh, interest rates flat and a flat rebalance, a flat balance sheet. So, um, uh, so there's that. And then, uh, I think you asked about yields on new loans. Uh, those were 591 most in Q1, which, uh, compares to 551 for, uh, paid off loans. We have, um, About 17% of the portfolio repricing the next year and 34% over the next three years. And that is on page 25 of the deck. Not much change in those numbers and then still a relatively low level of loading rate. Yeah.

speaker
Tim Myers
President and CEO, Bank of Marin Bancorp

Yeah, I think one of the headwinds is, you know, obviously nice because I think for the prior couple of quarters, it was a pretty flat trend to new asset yields or loan yields versus those paying off. As we continue to have headwinds in the payoff of some of the acquired mortgage or auto loans that we've talked about, and that was great. one of the larger payoff categories in the quarter again, and those are at higher yields. And so getting a 40 basis point lift despite that is encouraging, but that has been a headwind because those were some of our better yielding loans and the payoffs on that because of the rates have been slightly higher.

speaker
Andrew Terrell
Analyst, Stevens

Yep. Okay. Great. I appreciate it. And then If I could shift over to – I know it was talked about a little bit in the question around the buyback, but your CT1 and capital ratios have normalized post the restructure last year. It seems like you're relatively in line with peer levels. I guess can you just reframe post the restructure now that the credit picture looks a lot cleaner right now post this quarter? Sure. You know, where would you like to be from a CT1 or leverage ratio standpoint? I guess, can you remind us kind of the North Stars there, the binding constraints?

speaker
Tim Myers
President and CEO, Bank of Marin Bancorp

We really haven't established a level where we need to be. It's all relative, relative to the risk on your balance sheet, obviously. And so... As I mentioned before, that's a conversation we're going to be more willing to have now that we have less risk within our loan book and less of a chance of large surprising provisioning or charge-offs. So I'm reluctant to give a target there, but I would say a conversation we're going to be more willing to have as a management board.

speaker
Dave Bonacorso
Chief Financial Officer, Bank of Marin Bancorp

And I'll just add, because I think a lot of attention gets paid to holding company capital ratios. An important consideration for us is our bank-level capital ratios and relative to peers there. And I think that's where we have probably more to do in terms of rebuilding those.

speaker
Andrew Terrell
Analyst, Stevens

Got it. Okay. Makes sense. And I guess just last question for me is, your earnings, your profitability is up quite a lot since the restructure, but the ROTC on an operating basis is still around that 10%-ish level. I'm just curious your thoughts. You'll obviously improve as the margin continues to move higher throughout the year, but as you step back and look at your forecasts, where do you see the incremental levers to pull to to improve profitability closer to peer levels?

speaker
Tim Myers
President and CEO, Bank of Marin Bancorp

So, I mean, the two where we're most intently focused is building loan activity, and particularly while yields are where they are. and also driving more fee income. And we have some strategic initiatives around that. And so I can't remember if it was you earlier in this or someone else mentioned building more operating leverage into the model. That's really what we're looking to do. So if we make ads, it will be mainly around, ads to staff, sorry, mainly around driving loan growth. If that happens quickly enough and you get that almost immediate positive operating leverage, And again, some strategies around driving fee income that, you know, would rather not give any color on, but, you know, nothing overly dramatic, but things that we think can add, you know, meaningfully to the bottom line. So we'll continue in that area. I don't see any big cost reduction activity. The goal at this point is not to cut our way into more profitability.

speaker
Andrew Terrell
Analyst, Stevens

Got it. Okay. Thank you for taking the questions. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please click on the raise hand button at the bottom of your screen. Our next question will come from David Feaster with Raymond James.

speaker
David Feaster
Analyst, Raymond James

Hi, good morning, everybody. Good morning, David. I want to talk on the growth side for a minute. You know, there's some really encouraging trends there, you know, with the originations and the pipeline growth. I was hoping you could maybe elaborate a bit on some of the drivers behind this, right? You've alluded to new hires. That makes obvious sense as to increasing productivity. But you also discussed in the deck, you talked about comp program enhancements, updates to calling programs. So if you could elaborate on what you did there and how much of the growth and originations you're seeing this quarter is from the new hires versus increasing productivity from existing hires, just as we think of the success on some of those adjustments that you've made.

speaker
Tim Myers
President and CEO, Bank of Marin Bancorp

Yeah, thanks, David. I would say the majority of the production came from those hires we've been referencing over the last year. The top people continue to be the top people. We've made some leadership changes in our Sacramento market that certainly realizing we need to do better post the American River Bank acquisition to capture the opportunities out there. And that is paying dividends. I would say the Sacramento market overall, because a good portion of the growth that was booked in other offices are loans to borrowers that are in Sacramento, just other people's relationships. So I think it's doing a better job in Sacramento. It's doing a better job with the hiring. It's having an incentive plan that, that pays people fairly with not out, maybe so many caps so that you're incenting a more of a hockey stick approach I think was key to that. So maybe people have to do more to enter into the incentive component, but if they accelerate or exceed their higher hurdles, then the payouts get bigger. And I think, you know, you combine good people with a better plan and you're going to get results. And that's, That's what we're seeing. We're starting to see life in the construction market. Our construction group has gotten a lot more active. Going back to my comments earlier, I think Jeff Rulis' question about activity in San Francisco, a lot more people stepping in to buy properties for development for condos and or single-family residences. So we're starting to see that come back as well. So it's not any one thing. It's a combination of all those things. Okay.

speaker
David Feaster
Analyst, Raymond James

um maybe just such touching on the credit side you know it's nice to see the credit clean up this quarter exclusive of that with that in the rear view i mean things look pretty benign at least on your balance sheet i'm curious which if you could touch on what you're seeing on credit broadly i know the wine industry is under a bit of pressure you've done a deep dive into kind of some upcoming cre maturities um curious if you could just talk away you know some of the takeaways from that high level credit commentary and just whether you're seeing more um, pressure on underwriting just, or credit broadly just given increasing industry competition?

speaker
Tim Myers
President and CEO, Bank of Marin Bancorp

Well, I'll start at your end of there. I think competition has picked up loan to value debt coverage, recourse versus non-recourse. We certainly see the market getting frothy at times, particularly in certain asset classes like multifamily, um, Wine is a big weak spot. I think we're managing that well and our exposure is not all that big there anymore. But in terms of headwinds to part of the North Bay economy, yes, that industry is struggling. We don't see a lot of impact within our customer base or prospects of things that are making the national news like tariffs or cost of oil or transportation. Not that it's not out there, but we're generally seeing stable and healthy economic trends with what we're looking at. So I would say we feel good about our commercial real estate and minus some ups and downs and individual performance, I don't see any trends that caused me to worry that we're going to see, revert back to some of these larger downgrades into substandard or non-accrual. And again, if you took out the legal aspect of what we're dealing with, with pretty much the singular non-accrual loan we have, we'd be back to almost zero, which as you know, is where we love to be.

speaker
David Feaster
Analyst, Raymond James

Yeah, that's helpful. And then just looking at your slide deck, you know, on slide six, you got those four top priorities for y'all that are to drive long term value. Number three, scaling through efficiency gains in M&A. You know, we've already talked a bit about, you know, number four. uh and number one and you said you're not going to talk about number two so uh i was hoping you could talk a bit about number three um and where you're where you're seeing opportunities for efficiency gains and any thoughts that you might have on on m&a yeah so i i will talk about number two it's not that i won't it's just you know giving guidance is something that you know we uh

speaker
Tim Myers
President and CEO, Bank of Marin Bancorp

are very reluctant to do, but we do have specific initiatives around treasury management, fee income, wealth management, trust income. There's a number of components to that that will add up to a meaningful increase in that component, but no one thing that's, you know, overly dramatic to discuss all part of getting better. M&A, you know, obviously getting our valuation back and continuing to build on that opens more doors for us. So it's certainly something we remain open to. And I haven't shut the door on that at all. It's just for a while it was challenging on deal metrics or deal economics with where we were trading. But again, we're hoping that continues to make improvements and that can become a more realistic opportunity for us. We are looking at efficiency. You know, over the last couple of years, we have done some staff adjustments. We've closed some branches. And now we have added, well, going on a second year now, pretty significant efficiency strategies within the technology or back office world. And now going forward around AI. using that intelligently to build efficiencies into the system and more operating leverage. So, again, it's lots of arrows in the quiver as opposed to any one or two big things, but those are the main things we mean in that number three.

speaker
David Feaster
Analyst, Raymond James

Okay. That's helpful. Thanks, everybody.

speaker
Tim Myers
President and CEO, Bank of Marin Bancorp

You're welcome.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Your next question will come from Tim Coffey with Breen Capital.

speaker
Tim Coffey
Analyst, Brean Capital

All right. How are you guys doing today? Good morning, Tim. Morning, Tim. Hey, okay. So I've got a couple of questions on kind of the loan side. When it comes to the spreads in the market right now, are you at all concerned about some of those spreads starting to compress given one, the general level of competition, but also some of the new entrants to the market?

speaker
Tim Myers
President and CEO, Bank of Marin Bancorp

There's no question. There's been pretty incredible compression in pricing. You know, we really... try to stick hard to an approach that meets our, our, our away hurdles. You know, generally loans priced in the 200 over treasury, depending on the type of loan or above. are going to meet that. We regularly see people bidding at the one and a half to 175 level. And so our job is to parse through, or what we've been doing is parsing through those really attractive opportunities, get as much as we can, not race to the bottom, but get high quality credit at as high a spread as we can. But there is no question the market's very aggressive on pricing.

speaker
Tim Coffey
Analyst, Brean Capital

And as you grow loans this year or book new loans, are you agnostic to the type or do you prefer, you know, one over the other, like commercial over commercial real estate for instance?

speaker
Tim Myers
President and CEO, Bank of Marin Bancorp

Well, I, you know, I've been saying for a while, I would love to do a higher proportion of CNI. You know, that's not, that's a slow shift to turn in terms of more aggressively building that, but we are seeing a higher proportion. If you look at the breakdown of loans we booked this quarter, pretty much mirrors the that of the overall portfolio. But within that breakdown, there was a skewing towards C&I as a percentage. So we're hoping to have almost 9 million of unfunded commitments within that C&I bucket for the quarter. So we'd love to continue to drive that. We are seeing a higher mix over the last few quarters of multifamily, I think all of which has been CRA qualified. And so that accomplishes a number of things. So if we can win a multifamily deal at a good spread, and get that. That's something worth being moderately aggressive over. I expect construction to pick back up. Obviously, there's always risk in that book you have to manage, but that's been a piece or a piston that wasn't firing given the kind of construction projects we did in the geographies we did them. It's nice to see that coming back as well. You're right. We are generally agnostic, but I think if we continue those trends It'll help from both the concentration standpoint, but also just, you know, the growth aspect of it. I think where we're doing a good job and where the growth in the market is right now seem to align pretty well.

speaker
Tim Coffey
Analyst, Brean Capital

Okay. Further growth in C&I and construction, all else equal, would probably put upward pressure on your allowance ratio. Is that about right?

speaker
Tim Myers
President and CEO, Bank of Marin Bancorp

Say that last part again, put upward pressure on what?

speaker
Tim Coffey
Analyst, Brean Capital

Oh, if you see more production in CNI and construction, that would probably put an upward bias on your allowance ratio.

speaker
Tim Myers
President and CEO, Bank of Marin Bancorp

Well, I guess possibly, yes. I guess it depends on the individual credits, but yeah, it depends is almost always the answer, but that's possible, yes.

speaker
Tim Coffey
Analyst, Brean Capital

Okay. Okay. And then one for you, Dave. What's the appropriate tax rate to use?

speaker
Dave Bonacorso
Chief Financial Officer, Bank of Marin Bancorp

What we experienced this quarter, I think is pretty indicative for the full year.

speaker
Tim Coffey
Analyst, Brean Capital

Okay. All right. Great. Those are my questions. Thank you much.

speaker
Dave Bonacorso
Chief Financial Officer, Bank of Marin Bancorp

A little easier year from a tax perspective than last year.

speaker
Tim Coffey
Analyst, Brean Capital

All right. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

We have no further questions at this time. I will hand back to Tim Myers for closing remarks.

speaker
Tim Myers
President and CEO, Bank of Marin Bancorp

Thank you again to everybody. If you need any follow-up information, by all means, please reach out to Dave and or myself, and we will get you answers. Looking forward to see you guys on the next quarterly call.

Disclaimer

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