Zions Bancorporation N.A.

Greetings and welcome to the Zion Bancorp Q3 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce you to your host, Shannon Draves, Interim Director of Investments. Thank you, Shannon. You may begin.

Thank you, Alicia, and good evening. We welcome you to this conference call to discuss our 2023 third quarter earnings. My name is Shannon Drage, interim director of investor relations. I would like to remind you that during this call, we will be making forward-looking statements, although actual results may differ materially. We encourage you to review the disclaimer in the press release or slide two of the presentation dealing with forward-looking information and the presentation of non-GAAP measures. which applies equally to statements made during this call. A copy of the earnings release as well as the presentation are available at zionsbankcorporation.com. For our agenda today, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Harris Simmons will provide opening remarks. Following Harris's comments, Paul Burtis, our Chief Financial Officer, will review our financial results. Also with us today are Scott McLean, President and Chief Operating Officer, Keith Mayo, Chief Risk Officer, and Derek Stewart, Chief Credit Officer. After our prepared remarks, we will hold a question and answer session. This call is scheduled for one hour. I will now turn the time over to Harris Simmons.

Thanks very much, Shannon, and we want to welcome all of you to our call this evening. Zions Bank Corporation recently celebrated the 150th anniversary of what we think of as its ancestral bank, which was Zions Savings Bank and Trust Company. which opened for business in October of 1873. I'd like to think that this is a bank that's been built the right way, steadily and prudently over many decades, with a persistent focus on developing deep roots in the communities we serve and helping customers develop their own strong financial foundations. As one of the West's most prominent pioneer institutions, we look forward to a great future building on this history and demonstrating a continued commitment to the values that has served us so well over these many years. One other thing that I want to comment on before we get into the numbers, during this past quarter, Michael Morris, who has very capably served as our chief credit officer for the past decade, retired from the role due to some recent health challenges that led Michael and his family to conclude that he should reduce his workload somewhat. I'm very pleased that Michael will continue with us in a role focused on affordable housing and related projects where I know he'll add a great deal of value. Michael's close and very capable associate over the past decade, Derek Stewart, has assumed the chief credit officer role, and as Shannon noted, he's with us on the call today, and we welcome Derek into this really important position in the company. So going into the slides, financial performance for the quarter was marked by sustained stabilization of our net interest margin as well as significant customer deposit growth. both of which have been very encouraging. On slide three, you'll see some of the themes that are particularly applicable designs this quarter, and these remain fairly consistent with our messaging from the prior quarter. Customer deposits grew $3 billion during the quarter and resulted in reduced reliance on both short-term borrowings and broker deposits. We continue to actively manage our balance sheet at our hedging in response to changes in our interest rate risk profile. We've had a pretty dynamic and proactive response to changing conditions, and this has contributed to the stabilization of the net interest margin and net interest income. We recognized $14 million in net charge-offs during the quarter, which is in line with the prior quarter. Loss-absorbing capital increased with common equity Tier 1 capital up 7% compared to the prior year. Capital levels remain healthy, particularly relative to our risk profile. Turning to slide four, we've included some key financial performance highlights for the quarter. Circled on the slide, we reported total deposit costs of 192 basis points for the quarter, compared with 127 basis points in the second quarter. Period end customer deposits increased 5%. Broker deposits declined 22%, bringing total deposit growth to 1%. over quarter. Period end loans were flat for the prior quarter as we observed softening loan demand in the third quarter. Moving to slide five, diluted earnings per share was up two cents over the second quarter to $1.13 on net income of $168 million as lower expenses offset slightly lower revenue. Turning to slide six, our third quarter adjusted pre-provision net revenue was $272 million, down from $296 million. The linked quarter decline was attributable to lower non-interest revenue, while adjusted non-interest expenses were flat. Versus the year-ago quarter, PPNR was down 23% as the increase in the cost of funds exceeded the increase in earning asset yields. With that high-level overview, I'm going to ask Paul Burtis, our Chief Financial Officer, to provide some additional detail related to our financial performance. Paul?

Thank you, Harrison. Good evening, everyone. I will begin with a discussion of the components of pre-provision net revenue. Over three-quarters of our revenue is from the balance sheet through net interest income. Slide 7 includes our overview of net interest income and the net interest margins. The chart shows the recent five-quarter trend for both. Net interest income on the bars and the net interest margin in the white boxes were consistent with the prior quarter as the repricing of earning assets nearly kept pace with rising funding costs. Additional detail on changes in the net interest margin is outlined on slide eight. On the left-hand side of this page, we provided a linked quarter waterfall chart outlining the changes in key components of the net interest margin. The 109 basis point adverse impact associated with deposits, including changes in both rate and volume, was offset by fewer, more expensive borrowed funds and the positive impact of loan-free pricing. Our success in continuing to grow customer deposits contributed to the reduced level of broker deposits and borrowed funds as we moved through the third quarter. And non-interest-bearing sources of funds continue to serve as a significant contributor to balance sheet profitability. The right-hand chart on this slide shows the net interest margin comparison to the prior quarter. Higher rates were reflected in earning asset yields, which contributed an additional 157 basis points to the net interest margin. This was more than offset by increased deposit and borrowing costs, which, when combined with the increased value of non-interest bearing funding, adversely impacted the net interest margin by 189 basis points. Overall, the net interest margin declined by 31 basis points versus the prior year quarter. Our outlook for net interest income in the third quarter of 2024 is stable relative to the third quarter of 2023. Risks and opportunities associated with this outlook include realized loan growth, competition for deposits, and the path of interest rates across the yield curve. Moving to non-interest income and revenue on slide 9, customer-related non-interest income was $157 million, a decrease of 3% versus the prior quarter due to strong capital market fees in the second quarter. Customer fees were in line with the prior year as a year-over-year decrease in capital markets was offset by improved treasury management swap fees. Our outlook for customer-related non-interest income for the third quarter of 2024 is moderately increasing relative to the third quarter of 2023. The chart on the right side of this page includes adjusted revenue, which is the revenue included in adjusted pre-provision net revenue and is used in our efficiency ratio calculation. Adjusted revenue decreased 8% from a year ago and decreased by 3% versus the second quarter. due to the factors noted previously and a $13 million gain on the sale of property recognized in the second quarter. Adjusted non-interest expense, shown in the lighter blue bars on slide 10, was essentially flat to the prior quarter at $493 million. Reported expenses at $496 million decreased $12 million due to $13 million in severance expense recognized in the second quarter. Our outlook for adjusted non-interest expense is slightly increasing in the third quarter of 2024 when compared to the third quarter of 2023. This outlook excludes any impact associated with the proposed FDIC special assessment. While we have made headway in our effort to flatten expense growth, as seen in the current quarter, we expect a timeline for fully achieving our expense objectives to take longer than originally planned. Highlights and trends in our average loans and deposits over the past year are on slide 11. On the left side, you can see that average loans were somewhat flat in the current quarter. As loan demand continues to soften, our expectation is that loans will be stable in the third quarter of 2024 when compared to the third quarter of 2023. Now, turning to deposits on the right side of this page, average deposit balances for the third quarter increased 9%, while ending balances grew 1% compared to the end of the second quarter. Ending customer deposits, which exclude broker deposits, grew 5% in the third quarter. We continue to see deposit growth coming from both existing and new customers. The cost of deposits shown in the white boxes increased during the quarter to 192 basis points from 127 basis points in the prior quarter. As measured against the fourth quarter of 2021, the repricing beta on total deposits based on average deposit rates in the third quarter was 36%, and the repricing beta for interest-bearing deposits was 57%. Slide 12 includes a more comprehensive view of funding sources and total funding cost trends. The left-hand chart includes ending balance trends. Short-term borrowings have decreased $8 billion since the first quarter of 2023 as customer deposits have grown and earning assets have declined. On the right-hand side, average balances for our key funding categories are shown along with the total cost of funding. As seen on this chart, the rate of increase in total funding cost at 22 basis points in the current quarter has notably declined from the first and second quarters. Slide 13 shows non-interest-bearing demand deposit volume trends. Although demand deposit volumes have been declining as more customers move into interest-bearing alternatives, the contribution to the net interest margin and therefore the value of the demand deposit portfolio continues to increase. Moving to slide 14, our investment portfolio exists primarily to be a ready storehouse of funds to absorb customer-driven balance sheet changes. On this slide, we show our securities and money market investment portfolios over the last five quarters. The investment portfolio continues to behave as expected. Principal and prepayment-related cash flows were over $800 million in the third quarter. With this somewhat predictable portfolio cash flow, we anticipate that money market and investment securities balances combined will continue to decline over the near term, which will be a source of funds for the balance sheet. The duration of the investment portfolio, which is a measure of price sensitivity to changes in interest rates, is slightly shorter compared to the prior year period, estimated at 3.5% currently versus 3.9% one year ago. This duration helps to manage the inherent interest rate risk mismatch between loans and deposits. With the larger deposit portfolio assumed to have a longer duration than our loan portfolio, fixed-rate term investments are required to bring balance to asset and liability durations. Slide 15 provides information about our interest rate sensitivity. A comparison of our modeled depositor behavior to recently observed depositor behavior suggests shortened deposit durations. This change in assumption reduces model asset sensitivity, which we are showing on this page with the bars labeled adjusted deposit assumptions. In light of this change, we are actively managing our asset duration to the emerging liability duration. During the third quarter, we added an additional $1 billion of pay fixed interest rate swaps. As a reminder, the $3.5 billion of portfolio level pay fixed swaps on our books serve to hedge the value of our investment portfolio designated as available for sale in a rising rate environment. On the right-hand side of this slide, we've included detail on the impact current and implied rates are expected to have on net interest income. As a reminder, we have been using the terms latent interest rate sensitivity and emergent interest rate sensitivity to describe the effects on net interest income of rate changes that have occurred but have not yet fully been reflected in the repricing of our financial instruments, as well as those expected to occur as implied by the shape of the yield curve. Importantly, earning assets are assumed to remain unchanged in size or composition in these descriptions. These estimates utilize the adjusted deposit assumptions described earlier. Regarding latent sensitivity, the in-place yield curve as of September 30th will work through our net interest income over time. Assuming a funding cost beta based on recent history, we would expect net interest income to decline approximately 2% in the third quarter of 2024 when compared to the third quarter of 2023. Regarding emergent sensitivity, if the September 30, 2023 forward path of interest rates materializes, the emergent sensitivity measure is estimated to be immaterial in the third quarter of 24 when compared to the third quarter of 2023. As noted previously, our outlook for net interest income for the third quarter of 2024 relative to the third quarter of 2023 is stable, as we expect balance sheet composition changes to be accretive to net interest income. Moving to slide 16, credit quality remains strong. Classified loan levels remaining stable and low. Non-performing assets increased $64 million due primarily to two suburban office loans in the Southern California market, which added $46 million, and one C&I loan, which we expect to sell in the fourth quarter. Net charge-offs were 10 basis points of loans for the quarter. Loan losses in the quarter were associated with borrowers that have struggled with idiosyncratic supply chain issues, $3 million in losses on two office loans, and other small losses distributed throughout the portfolio. The allowance for credit losses is 1.30% of loans, a five basis point increase over the prior quarter due largely to increases in reserves for the CRE office portfolio. As we know it is a topic of interest, we have included information regarding the commercial real estate portfolio with additional detail included in the appendix of this presentation. Slide 17 is a reminder of the discipline we have maintained over the last decade as it relates to commercial real estate in the context of credit concentration risk management. Our growth has remained well below peers over this time. Slide 18 provides an overview of the CRE portfolio. CRE represents 23% of our loan portfolio, with office representing 16% of total CRE or 4% of total loan balances. Credit quality measures for the total CRE portfolio remain relatively strong, though non-performing assets increase in the quarter to 2.3% of the office portfolio. As mentioned, we recognize $3 million in losses on two office loans in the quarter across the CRE office portfolio. Overall, we continue to expect the CRE portfolio to perform well with limited losses based on the current economic outlook. Our loss-absorbing capital position is shown on slide 19. The CET1 ratio continued to grow in the third quarter to 10.2%. This, when combined with the allowance for credit losses, compares well to our risk profile as reflected in the low level of ongoing loan net charge-offs. As the macroeconomic environment remains uncertain, we would not expect share of purchases in the fourth quarter. We expect to maintain strong levels of regulatory capital while managing to a below average risk profile. Slide 20 summarizes the financial outlook provided over the course of this presentation. As a reminder, this outlook represents our best current estimate for the financial performance in the third quarter of 2024 as compared to the actual results reported in the third quarter of 2023. The quarters in between are subject to seasonality.

This concludes our prepared remarks. As we move to the question and answer section of the call, we request that you limit your questions to one primary and one follow-up question to enable other participants to ask questions. Alicia, please open the line for questions.

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment please while we poll for questions. Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Menand Ghazalia with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, good afternoon. Hello. I wanted to ask about NII. You know, when we look at the NII monthly data that you provided earlier in September versus what you have here for the full quarter, it looks like NII declined in September. Just wondering if you could talk about what drove that and how you're thinking about the path of NII between now and the stable outlook you outlined for 3Q24.

Sure. I'll start. This is Paul. So the purpose of the monthly net interest income that we provided in both the second and the third quarter was meant to provide some inter-quarter guidance, which we don't typically do, on the sort of level of where net interest income and the net interest margin was coming out. And so you may recall at the end of the second quarter, during the second quarter call in July, we stated that we expected the net interest margin to begin to stabilize in the third quarter when compared to the second quarter after seeing several quarters of net interest margin decline. And that net interest income outlook was meant to sort of support that. I wouldn't read too much into monthly net interest income figures. I think that that can get a little squirrely. I would rely on our overall outlook, which is that as we look ahead over the course of the next year, we expect our net interest income to be approximately flat in the third quarter of 24 when compared to the third quarter of 23.

Would you, Harris, would you like to add to that? Well, yeah, I think there's also one fewer day in the month versus August. I mean, you'll get a little fluctuation for things like that as well.

Yeah, thank you. So that's kind of my purpose of my statement, saying that it's hard to read into any given month.

Yeah, I appreciate that. And just as we think through the trajectory for NII over the next year, In a higher for longer rate environment, I know you do get benefit from utilizing the securities pay downs as well as the loans repricing. But given the pressure on the deposit side, should we think about just NIM and NII maybe coming down a little bit in the near term and then starting to move up as we get closer to 3Q24? Or maybe you can help us with the trajectory there.

Sure. I'll tell you how I'm thinking about it. And that is that as the yield curve has steepened, we've seen a continued steepening that is kind of flattening from inverted to flat here over the last several months, particularly in the last couple of weeks. Our earning assets are continuing to reprice. And so the earning asset pickup, if you will, I expect it to be in the sort of range of 5 to 10 basis points a quarter over the next couple of quarters. You also saw our funding costs and the increase in our funding costs begin to really flatten out in the third quarter when compared to the prior two quarters. My expectation, therefore, is that the improvement in earning assets will keep pace with change in funding costs such that my expectation is that the net interest margin would not decline much from here, consistent with the outlook we provided in the second quarter. Again, as I think about our earning asset and liability repricing, it feels like based on the current rate outlook that we've hit a spot where I'm expecting net interest income to flatten from here, as we say in the outlook. And then the opportunity for improvement will be really largely predicated on our ability to actively manage those deposit rates.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Dave Rochester with CompassPoint. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, good afternoon, guys.

Hi.

Back on the NII guide, what are you guys factoring in for deposit flows and beta the bottom for the GDA mix and the timing of that, if you've got any thoughts around your base case there.

Yeah, I don't have the slide number in front of me, but in the inter-sensitivity slide in the materials, you'll see that we actually provided an expectation of continued increase in deposit rates. That's slide 15 of the earnings materials. You can see there in the latent sensitivity that that outlook, that kind of minus 2% outlook in latent sensitivity, provides a total deposit beta of 50% kind of accumulating over time throughout the next year. That is to say, if interest rates stop rising, we're expecting in that outlook for deposit rates to continue increasing marginally.

And in terms of DDA mix, where do you think that bottoms and when? That would be great.

Yeah, that's a little more difficult to predict, but what I will say is that sort of all-in funding beta includes further migration of non-interest-bearing demand into interest-bearing deposits. So, therefore, my expectation is that we will continue to see some DDA migration, but that's all incorporated into our outlook.

Got it. Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of John Promocardi with Evercore ISI.

Good afternoon.

Hi, John.

Actually, I want to ask a question on the loan growth front, believe it or not. It looks like the I know your loan growth outlook is stable. I wonder if there could be upside to that. We're seeing some other banks that are below the $100 billion Basel III threshold that they're able to, acknowledging they're able to step up and gain some share. Some of the bigger banks are all busy with their RWA diets and balance sheet optimization. So, I mean, would you think that maybe there could be an opportunity to pick up some quality loan growth here that you otherwise wouldn't have had the opportunity to or opportunity to gain share and perhaps that loan growth outlook might be a bit conservative.

John, I'll jump in. Harris, I've always believed loan growth is the trickiest thing possible to try and forecast because it's so dependent on payoffs and rate and everything else, but You know, there may be some. I don't think we may even have some differences of opinion around the table about where we think loan growth is headed. I think none of us think it's going to be, you know, that we're going to see anything much. But there could be some. We also just note that during the third quarter, it was pretty weak. I think it's, I mean, very recently we've seen a little bit of pickup. But, you know, you can't make much. out of a very short period of time in terms of trying to extrapolate that very far. That's why we've got it stable. It probably represents the mean of where we're all prognosticating around here.

Thomas Scott, I would just add to that that I think whatever pulling back the global banks are doing, I don't know that it's producing a granular sort of benefit in the marketplace. Particularly when you think about the size of our clients and the size of their books, to the extent they're pulling back on really large commitments, that's not necessarily where we play. I would just say to Harris' comment, I think our loan flatness right now being cautious and, you know, compared to where they were two, three, four quarters ago when we were seeing, you know, historic loan growth coming out of the pandemic.

Yeah, no, I got it. Understood. And then lastly, I know the, you had indicated, I think Paul, you had indicated in a pair of remarks, the expense objectives are taken longer than, originally planned to execute. Could you just talk about that or what is taking longer in terms of any expense rationalization efforts? And maybe if you could tie into that is the core system upgrade, is that at all impacting that? Thanks.

Yeah, I'll start and then I'll turn it over to Scott and Harris to supplement that. So you saw us take a severance charge in the second quarter The run rate improvement associated with that I would expect to occur kind of in the fourth to first quarter. But when I speak to sort of taking longer than expected, what I'm speaking about is the inflation headwinds. We're seeing that, you know, across the board in, you know, contracts and other things. And so, you know, as we continue to fight expenses, you know, we're actively working those expenses down. But the tide, you know, inflation, I hope, is turning the corner. But, you know, the sort of inflation tide isn't out yet. And we just continue to fight that. And it's the reality of the environment that we're all dealing with today.

I would just add to that that the other thing we're seeing is that the inflation in, you know, in 2022, even though it's softened a little bit this year, in terms of major technology vendors and their renewals and extensions of contracts. We're seeing probably the most vigorous rate pass-throughs that we've seen in years. And I think it's symptomatic of the fact that the inflation occurred last year, things were doing this year and going into 24, quite a bit of pressure on those kind of baseline technology

They've all been watching Hulu and Disney Plus, I think.

And on our core transformation project, I would just say that, and we have commented for years, that when we go live with the final deposits release, which we did go live with a pilot, one of our affiliates, in the second quarter, that during this period it'll take us 12 months to fully convert all of our affiliates. During that conversion period, just because of the way the accounting works, our P&L impact will get worse by about $10 to $15 million. Then in the following year, the following 12 months after that, they drop by a commensurate amount. there's a little bit of a timing issue related to actually the period we're going live in.

Got it, Scott. Thank you very much for that.

Thank you, John.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Chris McGrady with KBW. Please proceed with your question.

Oh, great. Thanks. Paul, maybe we could come back to the – the deposit beta slide, slide 15. I just want to make sure I fully understand. I'm comparing your assumed full cycle beta last quarter of 40 to the new 50. And I'm trying to reconcile the 70 basis points of additional deposit pressure from here. So I guess if the Fed's done, why would you see that big of an increase in deposit costs from here?

Yeah, so there's two things going on there. As I said, you know, there's sort of the lagging effect of deposit rates. Again, this is what we're assuming in the model. You know, I'm hopeful that we can do a little bit better than this. But based on recent history, our expectation is that there are some, you know, interest-bearing products will continue to float up. But another big part of that is an assumption of continued migration of non-interest-bearing demand into interest-bearing. That's sort of, you know, we don't normally think of that as beta, but it has the practical or economic effect of of a repricing beta. And so all of those things combine into that 70 basis points.

Okay. Maybe separately, I think John asked about the growth opportunity under 100. I mean, you're about 10 or 15% under the 100 threshold. I'm interested in the costs that you're beginning to budget. I think one of your peers said it's $100 million a year from crossing. You have a time to remix and stay under, but how are you thinking about the costs to ultimately go over $100?

Well, yeah, so I'll start with that and invite Harrison Scott to jump in. You know, recall we were a CCAR bank a few years ago, and sort of all of the muscular activity that we put in place to be compliant with, you know, CCAR and being a SIFI and all those things, that's all still in place. I mean, we put in some really great risk management things that continue to be in place. So I don't foresee, personally, anywhere close to $100 million of incremental cost. In fact, I think that we sort of have the things in place today to be able to comply. The biggest change for us, you know, I think there will be some changes in risk-weighted assets around the edges that we need to pay attention to. But the biggest change for us will be the incorporation of AOCI into into the numerator of capital. And as I think we previously stated, the relatively short duration of our investment portfolio, which is the source of the AOCI that we have on the balance sheet, we expect to be, you know, that impact we expect to be largely gone by the time that those rules become effective for us.

I guess I just, you know, I think that's very true with respect to capital. I think the one place it's going to cost is on the debt requirement. And we've got about half a billion dollars of debt. If you put the proposed debt requirement into place today, that would go up to about four billion, roughly. So that incremental three and a half billion, the credit spread on that relative to the cost of funding with either wholesale, any other wholesale source, home loan, larger deposits, et cetera, is going to create some drag, I think. You kind of do the math, whatever you think that credit spread is, on times our risk-weighted asset number. So that, I think, to me, is going to be the primary sort of new thing that we'll hit. Okay.

That's very helpful. Thanks a lot, Harris.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brandon King with Truist Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, good evening. So with the expectation of stable loans over the next 12 months and the runoff of the securities book, what's the outlook for deposit growth?

Well, yeah, we... We historically have stayed away from deposit growth outlooks. I think what you've seen, though, over the last couple of quarters is substantial deposit growth as our continued conversations with our customers have paid off in the form of increased deposits on the balance sheet. Deposit growth has been very good over the last two quarters, and in the third quarter in particular. I wouldn't expect that level of deposit growth to continue, but I do expect I do expect Zions to be able to maintain a very solid loan-to-deposit ratio and continue to see deposit growth probably at least into the next quarter.

Okay. And within that, is there a meaningful delta between the rate on new customer deposits versus existing customers?

Yes. The deposit growth that we've seen in the third quarter has definitely been on the higher end of our deposit sort of offering rates. And so you see that in the continued increase in the interest-bearing deposit rate. That's largely coming from the new money coming on the balance sheet at higher rates.

Okay, so it's more of that as far as existing customers, you know, bringing back funds and mix shifting into higher interest-bearing accounts.

Yeah, this is Scott. I would say that what we've seen is that as we became much more active in our pricing of interest-bearing deposits, that our clients have become much more active in bringing their deposits back. As we've said, we had approximately $11 billion in deposits off balance sheet, client deposits that were in off balance sheet money market funds, because the industry was awash with liquidity. As we started continuing to talk to those clients about bringing those deposits back on balance sheet, it was very easy conversation. We got more aggressive about what we were paying. They're not only bringing back what they had in our off-balance sheet money market sweeps, but they're bringing other deposits they've had in other institutions in meaningful amounts. So I wouldn't so much say that the growth has come from new customers as much as it has come from existing customers that just had a lot of deposits that were not on our balance sheet going into this year. Got it.

Thanks for taking my questions.

Thank you, Brandon.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brody Preston with UBS. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, good evening, everyone. How are you?

Hi, Brody. Thanks.

Hey, I wanted just to follow up on the fixed asset repricing commentary. If I heard you correctly, I think you said it was 5 to 10 basis points a quarter positive to the earning asset yield over the next couple. I was hoping you could maybe unpack that a little bit for us and say, what are the assumptions driving that? Like, what's the amount of loans that are repricing over the next, you know, 12 months? And, you know, what's the back book yield that's coming off versus, you know, new origination yields?

Yeah, I'm going to answer that slightly differently than the way you asked it. And that is to say that we've got a really sophisticated balance sheet simulation tool where we are sort of analyzing our loans and securities on a note by note or CUSIP by CUSIP basis. We put in the forward curve, and then we turn all of that around. And as we look at those model results here for the next couple of quarters, what we see is that the earning asset yield in the aggregate, so that's investment portfolio, sort of cash flow out of investments, any repricing of cash, Uh, and then in addition to the loans, you know, which would be generally speaking longer resets, uh, that are resetting to the now prevailing higher rates, you know, all of those things combined are creating an accretion in the yield of earning assets in the range of five to 10 basis points over the course of the next couple of quarters.

Okay. Understood. And then I wanted to switch gears to credit. I had a couple of generic questions and one that was a little bit more pointed. I was hoping you could tell us what portion of the loan portfolio were shared national credits and of that, what you're the lead on. And then I also wanted to ask on the non-performing assets, they increased 68 million and you called out it was due to two suburban office loans. I wanted to ask, you know, what geographies those were in and what drove those to non-performing?

This is Derek. So let me start with the second part of the question first. The two office loans in question were actually in California. Southern California, and they just had leasing, lease rollover issues, and they were actually value-add properties where they weren't able to re-tenant as fast as the sponsor was hoping for.

Got it. Do you have the shared national credit data?

I think on SNCCS, if you don't mind, Eric, I think on SNCCS the total shared national credit proportion of the loan portfolio is in the range of 10% to 15%. And I don't have the sort of number of agents in versus non-agents deals on that. But that's sort of the ballpark in our portfolio.

Yeah, we agent about 10% to 15% of what we participate in. The rest we're... in terms of SNICs, and then we're a participant in the others. It's also a very balanced portfolio. It's very diverse, and the portfolio has performed well for us over the years.

Okay, just to clarify, was it 10% to 15% of the portfolio is SNICs, and of that, 10% to 15% you agent?

Yes.

Okay, and just... If I could sneak one more in, just on the re-tenanting of those offices.

Yeah, the other thing you need to understand, too, is that somewhere in the range of 90% to 95% of these customers are in our footprint. They're not out of footprint transactions. And in those where we are not the agent, in almost all cases, we have ancillary business. So these are clients that we know in our markets. This is not buying paper outside of our markets.

Okay, great. That's helpful color. Could I just ask one last one on those office loans with the re-tenanting? Did the slow kind of re-tenanting process cause, like, the debt service coverage ratio to go below one or anything like that?

Yes, it did.

Okay. Thank you very much for taking my questions, everyone. I appreciate it.

Thanks, Brody. Thanks, Brody.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the floor back over to management for closing comments.

Thank you, Alicia, and thank you to all for joining us today. If you have additional questions, please contact us on the email or phone number listed on our website. We look forward to connecting with you throughout the coming months. Thank you for your interest in Zions Bank Corporation. This concludes our call.

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