West Bancorporation

Good day and welcome to the West Bank Corporation Quarterly Earnings Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jane Funk, CFO. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Welcome, everybody. Good morning. Welcome to our fourth quarter earnings call for West Bank Corporation, Inc. Thank you for joining us. I'm Jane Funk, the CFO. I've got joining me today Dave Nelson, our CEO, Harley Olofsson, our Chief Risk Officer, Brad Winterbottom, our Bank President, and Brad Peters, our Minnesota Group President. and I will start off by reading the fair disclosure statement. Comments made during this conference call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any forward-looking statement made by us during this call is based only on information currently available to us and speaks as of today's date. The company undertakes no obligation to revise or update such statements to reflect current events or circumstances after this call, or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. And with that, I'll turn it over to Dave Nelson.

Thank you, Jane. Welcome everyone. Thank you for your interest in our company. I have some general comments and then we'll turn it over to others for more detail. Another great quarter and another record year for West Bank, despite the pandemic and other challenges. West Bank achieved another record year by a significant margin as we increased earnings by 52%. We did this by growing loans 16%. We grew our investment securities portfolio by 77%, and deposits grew another 12%. We had return on equity of 20.3%, and West Bank stock appreciated 61% during 2021. As of year end, 12-31-21, We did not have a single loan 30 days past due in our entire $2.4 billion loan portfolio. This performance allowed our board of directors to declare an increase to our quarterly dividend of 25 cents per share, which is payable February 23rd to shareholders of record as of February 9th. We also have a number of initiatives underway, including four new bank buildings that are all in different stages of development. When we started our most recent Minnesota expansion during 2019 with new loan production offices in St. Cloud, Mankato, and Owatonna, Minnesota, all utilizing rented office space, it only took us nine months to achieve profitable operations. And our plan is, has always been to construct bank-owned permanent facilities in each market. Our Sartell location, which is a suburb of St. Cloud, Minnesota, is nearing completion. We have purchased our Mankato site. The design is complete with construction to begin this spring. We're still on the hunt for our perfect site in Owatonna. And the design phase for our new West Des Moines headquarters building is almost complete. The site has been purchased with construction beginning this spring as well in West Des Moines. With that, I'll turn the call over to Harley. Harley Oleson, our Chief Risk Officer.

Thank you very much, Dave. I'm going to make comments on our watch list, our specific reserve list, various credit trends, and then just some quick information on our eastern Iowa market and how they are doing. First, our watch list has declined from 100 million on September 30th to 73 million as of December 31st, 2021. That equates to less than 3% of total loans. $8.9 million of this total is substandard or non-accrual. All loans within all categories are receiving payments and are current. As Dave stated earlier, we had zero past dues over 30 days at year end. In fact, we had zero past dues on September 30th as well. We have a specific reserve on one credit in the amount of $2.5 million that we feel is adequate. We had anticipated that this credit would have declined to almost nothing by the end of this last year, but a sale to a third party did fall through on one piece of property. They're currently in negotiations with three other parties to purchase pieces of property for them. We still expect similar outcomes from what we anticipated before. Our current stress test on our portfolio suggests our portfolio has never been stronger. Overall loan-to-values have declined on a macro basis. Cash flow is good and companies have strong liquidity positions. We're in the same position as most financial institutions in the country right now that deposits are plentiful and a lot of those deposits are sitting in our customers' checking accounts. Brad Peters and Brad Winterbottom will discuss what's happening in both central Iowa and Minnesota. I'll comment that our eastern Iowa bank, located in Iowa City, Coralville, had a very strong 2021. They have a good pipeline going into 2022, and I think that they're in position to do very well in the coming year. With that, I will turn it over to Brad Winterbottom for his comments.

Hello. For the fourth quarter, our loans grew approximately 5% for the quarter, maybe a little higher, under 6%. We were anticipating and did receive several pay downs but we our sales activity was very robust in the fourth quarter helping drive that was a we hired a very experienced banker and he came on board in the third quarter and the things that he was able to move some relationships that he had from another bank to our bank that really assisted our growth in the fourth quarter and he's not done yet. We had a very busy December with a lot of payoffs and a lot of advances and new relationships. I would also say that our construction financing, we still have roughly $100 million that will get advanced over probably the next six to nine months. That will help with growth. We've had a couple of significant paydowns in January already, but we have some anticipated closings that should help us get a little growth for the first quarter. Again, no past dues, which we're very proud of, and our customers are doing very well. A lot of growth in all markets.

Mr. Peters? Thanks, Brad. Good morning, everyone. I'm going to provide a brief update on our market expansion into Minnesota. Our team continues to make good progress in growing our business in each of our Minnesota regional centers. Each of our markets are seeing solid growth. and our bankers are focused on building relationships, and those activities have created ongoing new business opportunities. Loan growth has been strong. The pipeline is strong. Our C&I focus has driven strong core deposit growth and treasury management business as well. As Dave mentioned, our new building in the St. Cloud market is nearing completion. and we expect to move in later this quarter. The Mankato Market has purchased a building site, and we're working on plans to begin construction of that site this spring. And the Owatonna Market is exploring potential new sites as well. That is the end of my comments. I will now turn it back over to Jane.

Thanks, Brad. I'm just going to make a few comments. From the financial perspective, first of all, our net interest margin for the year was 3.05%. That was compared to 3.20% last year. Certainly, like everybody in the industry, there was pressure on margin from the high levels of liquidity and trying to keep that money deployed either in the investment portfolio or the loan portfolio. And certainly as monies were invested, It was at lower rates than what was existing in the portfolio. So I think what we've seen as pressure on our net interest margin is consistent with the industry. Our provision for loan losses for the fourth quarter was zero. Year to date, we recorded a negative provision of $1.5 million. That compares to a $20 million provision last year. You know, the primary factors affecting provision this year related to we had a reduction in our specific reserves of about 500,000. We had net recoveries of over 400,000, and we did reduce some of our qualitative factors throughout the year that had been increased during the heat of COVID, and we've dialed some of those back a little bit. But all of those things were really offset by our really strong loan growth. So with loan growth of about 16%, that resulted in a small negative provision for the year. On the expense side, we did have some items in the fourth quarter that were one-time expenses. We made an additional $300,000 contribution to the West Bank Corporation Foundation for future grants out of that group. We made a $350,000 contribution to a housing fund that was organized by a local municipality. And we also had some elevated occupancy expenses related to the termination of a lease on one of our branches. So that lease was to run through May of 2024. We've accelerated that and made arrangements with the property owner to be out of that space in May of 2022. So the costs associated with terminating that lease amounted to about $440,000. So those were kind of the additional expenses in the fourth quarter. that normally we wouldn't see. With those comments, I think I will open it up to questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your touch-tone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, Please press star, then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster.

And while you're waiting to assemble the roster, I just want to make one correction. We did not have a $20 million provision last year. It was $12 million. I misspoke, so just clarification. Okay, now for the questions.

The first question comes from Brendan Nozzle with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, everybody. How are you doing today?

Good morning, Brendan.

Maybe just to start off on a couple of tiki-taki questions here. Could you provide the average balance for loans and average earning assets for the fourth quarter?

Again, let me grab that piece of paper. So average assets for the fourth quarter were $3,421,000,000. Excuse me, $3,421,000,000. And average loan balance for the quarter was $3,380,000,000. $2 billion? $2 billion. I'm working on my billions and millions. $2 billion, $380 million. Got it. And then I'm guessing the average earning assets were around $3.3 billion? Yes, $3,271,000,000.

All right, fantastic. That's helpful. Thanks. And then could you also provide some of the info behind PPP this quarter? I guess the quarterly average balances and then what the interest income was realized on PPP this quarter?

Yeah. So the PPP income for the quarter – was $912,000. All right. Fantastic. Thank you.

All right. Let's see. Kind of moving on to Probably some of the more interesting questions here. On the new branch locations in Minnesota, can you offer any color on kind of what additional expenses you might need to incur through the P&L over the course of the year related to those projects?

Well, the St. Cloud SARTEL branch will be opening in March. So we'll have start depreciation expense on that this year. All the other expenses on the building projects, there really shouldn't be any expense in 2022 as they'll either be under construction or just land purchases.

And the SARTEL location would be offset by not paying the lease expense there anymore either. Yeah. what would it be? Got it. $200,000 probably.

Yeah.

Got it.

And I would imagine that given you already have had any commercial teams there in place for, for, you know, years now, there's really no break even, right? It's more just kind of getting into a full location, uh, and keep doing what they're doing, but just from a more permanent base.

I, I would say that's correct. And, and really just from a, uh, on the expense side from payroll, the team is already in place, so we don't expect additional expenses. We do expect a spike in business, though, when we open the doors. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, that's helpful.

Yeah, we're basically trading rent expense for depreciation.

Yeah, that makes complete sense. Okay, wonderful. So turning to loan growth, I mean, this quarter was just exceptionally strong, and it sounds like you had most, if not all, of the kind of $75 million in payoffs that you were anticipating and just kind of pushed through it. It does sound like there's going to be some payoffs coming in the first quarter, but just kind of curious, you know, how do you think about the loan growth opportunity for the year ahead, just kind of given the strength of 2021 and the opportunities you see?

Well, I'll try to address that question. First off, the $75 million in anticipated payoffs is That did happen in the fourth quarter. We've had about three additional payoffs that have taken place in the first three weeks of this month that totaled roughly $40 million. And that would be due to the sale of the asset or the an entity just using liquidity to pay off some debt. However, we have three projects that we're working on right now that could replace that dollar and that could all happen before the end of the first quarter. And we are also talking to a lot of other folks in terms of our business development practices. I do think that we'll have some growth to talk about at the end of the first quarter.

And people are busy. I also think, just to add on to what Brad is saying, the total size of the pipeline may be bigger today than we've seen at any time in the recent past as far as just total dollars. The other part that's really encouraging is that the pipeline dollars and breadth of it having multiple locations comes from multiple areas. And so there's a good group out there finding opportunities that we're less dependent on any one location today than we have been.

And I would just add, from the Minnesota perspective, you know, we had our initial surge when we did our lift out. Now, I think looking beyond that, the pipeline's as strong as it's been, and that's really from new prospects and our existing client base.

Got it. That's super helpful, Keller. Thank you. And then turning to expenses, Gene, I just want to make sure I heard you right, that those three one-time items add up to about $1.1 million for the quarter, right? So kind of the core expense base is around $10.8 million? Correct. Got it. Okay. Well, wonderful. That was very, very helpful. given the initiatives you have in place, I mean, it sounds like most of the hiring is done and there won't be too many incremental expenses from the new branch locations, but just curious how you think about the expense run rate as we progress through 2022, given things like wage pressure and, you know, record inflation.

Well, I certainly... We certainly expect... you know, salary and benefits compensation to see the most pressure, I think, on the expense side for us. You know, we don't have, excuse me, we don't have a lot of turnover, but certainly when you hire people and we are, you know, kind of, we've hired a few bankers in the second half of 2021 for we are always looking for good, qualified bankers. And, you know, as we hire people, we're seeing the pressures in the market on compensation and even at the staff levels when we have to replace somebody. So we're expecting pressure there, not just from new hires, but then, you know, also rewarding our current staff base. So I think that's where we'll see the most pressure for us on expenses.

I think the other part of that, too, is that the beauty of our financial model is that the people that we're hiring are productive. And with productivity, the ability to cover their financial needs and salaries and benefits, those type of things, is great. more easily generated in our financial model than a retail model. So I think that bodes well. But there's certainly pressure on just inflation and expectations of salary increases.

And even with the increase in expenses this year and when we're looking at next year, our efficiency ratio is still extremely, extremely low. So we're able to manage those expenses through generating the revenue.

Yeah, absolutely. And I would add we're not – I mean, we still need to build out some of these other markets, so there will be a little bit of additional hiring going on. But St. Cloud is fully staffed. We will have to beef up Mankato as we get closer to a new building opening.

Fantastic. All right, good. Let's see, maybe turning to the net interest margin. I mean, Jane, based on your color on kind of TPP, I mean, it looks like the core underlying margin was pretty darn stable quarter over quarter, maybe even up just a touch. Just kind of curious for your thoughts on the the NIM this year, given the prospect for a couple of Fed rate hikes, how things like deposit beta might play into that, and if there's, you know, stability or perhaps a little bit of pressure if they're Fed raises rates?

You know, I think there'll be a little bit of pressure. I don't think it'll be really significant. You know, our cost base of our, like our borrowed funds is pretty well fixed because a lot of that's tied to interest rate swaps. Our deposits, you know, depending how quickly and significantly the Fed raises rates, you know, we'll have some increased deposit costs, but the betas on that I think will be relatively slow. And then, you know, hopefully, you know, we get the benefits with our loan growth on the loan side as we add new loans that there are more reasonable rates than what we're seeing currently. Okay.

Yeah, okay, wonderful. And then maybe last one from me, just thinking about reserve coverage and provisioning needs throughout the year. I mean, I guess your reserve is still quite a bit healthier than it was coming into COVID, but it kind of sounds like the outlook for loan growth is quite strong. So I would imagine there's probably the need to provision for loan growth, but maybe to draw down that reserve coverage ratio as the year progresses. Just kind of curious on your thoughts there.

Yeah, the provision, you know, is always a balance between growth and really the qualitative factors. Our quality is, credit quality is quite strong. You know, we've already reserved for the one credit that we know will have some challenges. And so really I think loan growth and the pace of loan growth will be the most significant factor for provisioning this year.

Wonderful. That is it for me. Thank you so much for taking the questions.

Thank you.

As a reminder, if you have a question, please press star then one to be joined into the queue. The next question comes from Roger Current with who's a private investor. Please go ahead.

Yes. My question is how much of EPP income was taken in in the fourth quarter? How much How much did that affect the earnings?

Yeah, so our PPP income in the fourth quarter was $912,000.

Is that pretty well the end of it then?

Yeah, I think at the end of the year, we had about $22 million of PPP loans left on the books that had unrecognized fees, deferred fees of about $500,000. So we would expect that $500,000 to kind of bleed in through the year and shouldn't have a significant impact overall on the financial performance.

Okay. You said on the loan loss provision you didn't make any for the fourth quarter? Correct. Did you claw any back from what you had before?

Not in the fourth quarter. We did earlier in the year. So year-to-date we had a negative provision of $1.5 million. Okay.

That's my only questions.

Thank you.

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Jane Funk, CFO, for any closing remarks.

Well, we just want to thank everybody for joining us today, and we look forward to having more great news in 2022.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.