BankUnited - Q2 2024
July 18, 2024
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Good morning, and thank you for joining us today for BankUnited Inc.'s second quarter 2024 results conference call. On the call this morning are Raj Singh, Chairman, President, and CEO; Leslie Lunak, Chief Financial Officer; and Tom Cornish, Chief Operating Officer. Before we start, I'd like to remind everyone that this call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, that reflect the company's current views with respect to, among other things, future events and financial performance. Any forward-looking statements made during this call are based on the historical performance of the company and its subsidiaries or on the company's current plans, estimates, and expectations. The inclusion of these forward-looking information should not be regarded as a representation by the company that the future plans, estimates, or expectations contemplated by the company will be achieved.
Such forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties and assumptions, including without limitations, those relating to the company's operations, financial results, financial condition, business prospects, growth strategy, and liquidity, including as impacted by external circumstances outside the company's direct control, such as adverse events impacting the financial services industry. The company does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or review any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future developments, or otherwise. A number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements. These factors should not be construed as exhaustive.
Information on these factors can be found in the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023, and any subsequent quarterly report on Form 10-Q or current report on Form 8-K, which are available at the SEC's website, www.sec.gov. With that, I'd like to now turn the call over to Mr. Raj Singh.
Rajinder P. Singh (CEO)
Thank you. Welcome everyone to our earnings call. Thank you for joining us. I'll start out by saying this, this really has been an outstanding quarter. You know, there's always some variability on how things will end when you're coming towards the end of the quarter, and sometimes things fall your way, sometimes they don't. This quarter, I think everything fell our way, whether if you look at loans, deposits, NIDDA, whether you look at cost of deposits, margin, expenses, credit, capital, liquidity. I mean, I really couldn't have asked for a better end to the quarter. And just as we were celebrating, of course, India won the World Cup on the last day of the quarter. So like I said, I really couldn't have asked for more. I still haven't stopped celebrating. So thank you, Team India, for making my day.
Let me quickly go into the numbers, and I'll highlight a few, and then Tom and Leslie will jump in with more details. Just to highlight, of course, EPS came in at $0.72. I think I checked a couple of days ago, consensus was around $0.65. Margin, as we've been telling you for some time, that we expect margin to grow, which it did very nicely. I think last quarter we were at 2.57%. We're up at 2.72% this quarter, so very happy about that. That margin grew simply because we are seeing success at transforming the balance sheet, both on the left and right side of the ledger here. So talking of the right side first, deposits. Deposit cost actually came down for the first time.
So last quarter, we told you we're kind of getting to the place where deposit costs would not grow. Happy to report that actually, we dropped deposit costs from 3.18 down to 3.09. You know, if you peel the onion back a little bit more, you know, a lot of that drop really came. Not all of the drop came from DDA growth, which was phenomenal this quarter. But if you look at interest-bearing deposit costs, while they were up a little bit from 4.21 to 4.26, it's also beginning to plateau out. Last quarter, by the way, they were up 17 basis points, and this quarter up to only 5 basis points. But overall, deposit costs were down from 3.18 to 3.09. We're very happy about that.
Deposit growth, which is the big story here, non-broker deposits grew by $1.3 billion this quarter, and off that $1.3 billion, $826 million was non-interest DDA, which is just a very, very solid number. That's, by the way, on top of a pretty solid DDA growth that we had in the previous quarter as well. I think for the first half of the year, NIDDA is up $1.2 billion. So that transformation that I'm talking about to the right side of the balance sheet is well underway, but of course, the job is not done. We're going to keep at it and keep improving the deposit mix. We did take this opportunity to pay down more of the broker than we had originally planned.
So net of pay down in brokered, our deposit growth was $736 million. If you look at wholesale funding, if you define wholesale funding as brokered and FHLB combined, we brought that down by $1.2 billion this quarter. I had Leslie just yesterday look at this. You know, where was this wholesale funding a year ago or a year and a half ago? And when were we at this level or lower? You really have to go back to the beginning of this rate cycle, so early 2022... to see numbers as low as this. So despite the fact that we're still at 5.5% Fed funds rate, we've taken our wholesale funding down all the way back to when the Fed was at zero.
So that's quite an achievement in a short period of time, basically in the last year. Asset mix also improved, just as we had been guiding to, while resi declined by $212 million. Our corporate business, commercial business, small business, CRE, everything grew. And if you combine all of that, the growth was $589 million in those categories. Resi, like I said, declined a little over $200, and the leasing business continued to run off as it has been for several quarters now. Overall, credit strength trends are still solid. Actually, this is the first quarter in some time where our criticized and classifieds declined just a little bit. But, you know, we've been proactive in risk rating credits down over the last few quarters.
So this quarter, actually, the trend went the other way just a little bit. There was some migration in office CRE. We actually had NPAs go up a little bit. The most notable are two loans in office CRE, which amount to about $50 million, one in New York, one in Florida. But we're fully reserved for this, and none of this came as a surprise. We've been tracking this for quite some time, and feel pretty good about the reserves that we've already taken on these loans. In terms of, you know, Leslie will talk more to you about expenses, but even in fee income, I just wanted to point out that we've been making investments over the course of the last couple of years that have not been very noticeable, but they're beginning to now pop up.
We've -- we're having good success with commercial card, we're having good success with capital markets products, stuff that we've launched over the course of the last couple of years, and the numbers are beginning to be noticeable, and I'm very happy about that. And a big shout-out to the teams who've worked on this over the last two years. Capital, liquidity are all robust. Tangible book value continues to grow. The mark on the bond portfolio continues to come down. So like I said, nothing but good news, and I'm very happy with how things turned out. In terms of guidance, not much in terms of, you know, we're not changing strategies mid-year. We've got to keep our heads down and keep delivering. DDA growth is still the most important thing for the success of the company.
Let me take a minute to mention, you know, this $1.2 billion of growth that we've had in DDA. A large part of this has come from bringing in new customers, okay? This is. This doesn't happen without bringing in new clients, and we've had a lot of success with broad-based, both New York, Florida, and our national businesses. And when you look at pipelines, which Tom will talk about, we feel very optimistic about continuing that growth. It has also been helped by some seasonality, as we have talked to you in the past about. The first half of the year, seasonality helps us. The second half of the year, not so much. Towards the end of the year, it actually hurts us.
I think similar trends will happen again, so I don't think you will see a, you know, $1 billion a quarter type of DDA growth, for one reason only, which is seasonality. But other than that, in terms of the core growth, you should expect similar level of new relationships coming on, for at least the next six months that we can foresee based on our pipelines. What else, Leslie? Am I missing anything? Oh, yes, one very important topic also. While we're doing all of this, you know, we built this bank by attracting like-minded people who want to be, you know, part of a sort of organic growth story. And this whole bank has been built on bringing in people like that over the years.
Our most recent add to our team, we announced this a couple of months ago, is Ernie Diaz, who's not in the room with me here. But, Ernie came to us from TD Bank, where he was head of the consumer bank, ran the entire retail footprint, ran the, the wealth management business, the auto finance business, and, and before that, he's done just about every job at the bank. So we're very happy that someone of his caliber would join us. He's been with the bank, like I said, only a couple of months, but he's already bringing ideas to the table that we probably wouldn't have, thought of, if he wasn't with us. So a big welcome to Ernie, and I'm happy that the people are choosing to join BankUnited.
Let me turn this over to Tom, and, you know, he'll go over the numbers in a little more detail, and then we'll move to Leslie after that.
Tom Thomas M. Cornish (COO)
Great, Raj. Thank you. So as Raj mentioned, total deposits were up $736 million for the quarter, including the reduction in brokered. Non-brokered deposits grew total by $1.3 billion, NIDDA by $826 million, and NIDDA is up 11% quarter-over-quarter. As, as Raj alluded to, as we look forward, the pipelines, I think, remain, you know, very robust across all of the operating teams. New account business, I think, looks very good for the quarter. As he mentioned, the back book is always, you know, subject to seasonality and issues, but I think the new relationship pipeline continues to look, you know, very strong for not only the third quarter, but, you know, we track opportunities out 180 days, kind of into the fourth quarter.
We are taking some advantage of this and looking at reducing some rates on higher price deposits. Some of these were relationships or deposits that we increased during the financial disruption of the previous year. And, you know, we think now is a good time as we are moving down cost of funds and continuing to increase deposits at the clip we're doing, to take advantage of that and look at opportunities to reduce some very specific relationships and, you know, higher rate-type deposits. On the loan side, overall loans were up $402 million quarter-over-quarter. Again, core C&I and CRE segments, growing $589 million in total, $475 million for the C&I segments, $114 million for CRE. Mortgage warehouse was also up $83 million.
And consistent with our strategy, residential was down $212 million, and the leasing and municipal finance subs were also down. I would say that when we look at the growth for the quarter, both on the C&I side and on the CRE side, you can see from the information that you can pick up in the supplemental data, it was pretty broad-based growth across, you know, segments. I would say seven or eight of our largest C&I segments all grew for the quarter. The ones where we have our practice teams, where we have our geographies predominantly focused, we saw a nice broad base growth.
If you look at CRE for the quarter, it grew within the asset segments, you know, that we're predominantly focused on now, which would be, you know, industrial, multifamily and urban kind of core, retail, grocery anchor type business. And so you'll see the overall distribution of the CRE portfolio largely stayed almost exactly as it was for the previous quarter, except with some growth and everything, with the exception of obviously, office, we did not grow. But overall, very, very healthy quarter for us. Commercial pipeline looks very good going into Q3. We continue to expect high single growth in the core commercial portfolios for the year, consistent with prior guidance. More C&I than CRE. Resi, municipal and equipment finance will continue to decline.
The operating lease equipment portfolio declined by $62 million this quarter, and we took advantage of some opportunities to selectively sell some assets as we've been moving away from that business. I was looking at it yesterday. Over the last two years, we've declined our lease exposure from $702 million to $266 million over that period of time, and we're gonna continue with that strategy. The loan-to-deposit ratio improved from 89.6% to 88.7%. Let's dig a little bit deeper into CRE and talk about office as well. You can look at slides 12 through 15 in the supplemental deck, where we've added some additional disclosure. So overall, big picture, you know, our CRE exposure remains, I think, relatively modest to 24% of total loans.
CRE to total risk-based capital is 165%. I think, compared to others in our peer group, in the $10 billion-$100 billion range, you know, their numbers were 35% and 222%, respectively. So overall, you know, we've continued to keep the CRE portfolio kind of within the risk parameters that we've always focused on, and that 24% and 165 is kind of a number that we're comfortable with. At June thirtieth, the weighted average LTV of the CRE portfolio was 56%, and the weighted average DSCR was 1.77. 56% of the portfolio is in Florida, and 27% is in the New York Tri-State Area. Spend a little bit more time on office.
As I told you on the last call, we track every single office loan. They're all right in front of me right now, and we break it down by submarket and follow all the submarkets. Just in general, you know, I would say if we look at this quarter over last quarter, we have CRE office loans in 16 different submarkets that the company operates in. The credit statistics this quarter compared to last quarter were better in nine of the 16 submarkets that we're in, and they were better in seven of the eight submarkets where we have exposure greater than $100 million. So it was a positive quarter as we look at tracking the credit metrics across the different business segments that we're in. And that was really primarily for one reason.
Occupancy generally remained pretty strong across the portfolio, but what we really saw was abatement roll-off. And so, you know, a lot of the leasing activity, obviously, over the last couple of years, has, you know, contained abatement periods of time. And during that abatement period of time, we don't, you know, we don't count that in the NOI, and we saw, you know, pretty broad improvement in debt service coverage ratios this quarter in the major segments that we're in, largely because of improving abatement situations. So specifically, we have $1.8 billion in office, with 58% in Florida, which is predominantly suburban, 24% in the New York Tri-State Area.
Of that, $309 million of the total CRE portfolio is medical office, which really has pretty different debt service coverage ratios and debt yield dynamics from an industry perspective. The construction portfolio also includes an additional $87 million in office-related exposure. $84 million of that is in Manhattan. Neither of those are ground-up construction. They're really renovation, you know, of existing buildings. The weighted average LTV of the stabilized office portfolio was 66%, and the weighted average debt service coverage ratio was 1.59 as of June 30. There's also additional breakdown of those numbers by geography on slide 12. $402 million of the office loans mature in the next 12 months. $191 million of this is fixed rate.
Rent rollover in the next 12 months is 9% of the office portfolio, so we have relatively light rent rollover in the next 12 months. With respect to the stabilized New York Tri-State portfolio, 43% is in Manhattan. This is approximately $180 million and has a 96% occupancy and lease rollover in the next 12 months of 6%. We continue to see some encouraging signs in the Manhattan market. If you look at total leasing for the first half of the year, it was 15.5 million sq ft, which was up about 9% over the previous year, predominantly in Class A space. And, you know, this is certainly not at the level prior to the pandemic, but it is, we have seen a consistent improvement in the leasing activity in Manhattan over the last 2 years.
This was the strongest quarter that we've seen increases over the last, over the last 12 months. Demand and demographics continues to be, you know, generally favorable in Florida. We are seeing a couple of weak spots in certain segments in the Orlando market, predominantly suburban, North Orlando, where we have one of the loans Raj mentioned. There are some charts on slide 16 that give you a further geographic breakdown of the Florida and New York Tri-State portfolio by submarket. I would say that all other markets in Florida, you know, are pretty strong. I was, I was mentioning to Leslie this morning that I looked at the Tampa numbers for the quarter, and, there were 1.4 million sq ft of lease space, and only 6% of that was sublease activity.
So you're generally seeing sublease activity go down, you know, fairly consistently in Florida. You're seeing more positive absorption in most of the markets, and virtually all the major submarkets in Florida for second quarter saw rent year-over-year rent increases. Modest, but year-over-year rent increases. We did have some CRE loans, as Raj mentioned, move to nonaccrual this quarter for the first time. Non-performing CRE loans totaled $51 million as of June thirtieth. Total criticized and classified loans increased by $88 million during the quarter. This was all predominantly in the office segment. Overall, the portfolio continues to perform comparatively well and is generally characterized by strong sponsors, long-term asset owners, low basis in the assets who continue to support the underlying properties.
To date, concerns generally seem to be very asset specific, renovating periods and delays in completing build-out of lease space, and in some cases, lower occupancy levels contributed to whatever risk migration we did have. And overall, we continue to believe the ultimate loss content from this portfolio will be very manageable for us. So with that, I'll turn it over to Leslie.
Leslie Lunak (CFO)
Thanks, Tom. Just a quick summary of the quarterly results. As Raj said, net income for the quarter was $53.7 million, or $0.72 per share. Net interest income was up $11.2 million this quarter, and the NIM increased 15 basis points to 272. The most significant contributor to this increase in margin was obviously an $888 million increase in average NIDDA. Average NIDDA grew to 27.5% of average total deposits, and that's compared to 24.7% for the prior quarter. The yield on loans was up from 5.78 to 5.85 as new production came on at higher rates, and the portfolio composition continues to shift into higher-yielding assets. The yield on securities, as expected, was essentially flat quarter-over-quarter.
We're very happy to see the average cost of total deposits decline to 3.09 for the second quarter, compared to 3.18 last quarter, along with a slower pace of increase in the cost of interest-bearing deposits. On a spot basis, the cost of interest-bearing deposits is stable quarter-over-quarter. The average cost of FHLB advances did go up this quarter to 4.28 from 4.18. That's really just due to the expiration of a couple of cash flow hedges. From a guidance standpoint, we continue to expect the NIM to expand over the back half of 2024, although I don't think we'll see 15 basis points per quarter. I would, I would love that, but it's, it's not what I'm expecting.
But still continue to expect NIM to end the year in the high 2s, and given that we're already at 2.72, I guess now you have a little better idea of what I mean by the high 2s. Higher than that. So we do, and we expect net interest income to be up mid-single digits to low-high double digits year-over-year. Provision and reserve. The provision this quarter was $20 million, and the ACL, the loans ratio, continued to increase from 90 to 92 basis points. The commercial ACL ratio, which includes C&I, CRE, franchise and equipment finance, stood at 142 at June 30th.
This quarter's provision and the increase in the ACL were driven by risk rating migration, an increase in some specific reserves, new loan production, changes in portfolio characteristics, partially offset by some improvements in the economic forecast. The reserve on CRE office was $247 million at June 30. That's up from $226 million at March 31. This build was prompted by some of the risk rating migration that you see and changes in commercial property market forecasts. You might recall that last quarter, we put up a pretty large qualitative reserve on CRE office over $20 million in anticipation of the fact that we were likely to see what we saw this quarter, some of that negative risk rating migration.
This quarter, you saw some of that move from the qualitative reserve to the quantitative reserve and getting picked up in the quantitative calculation. We do expect the ACL to gradually build as a percentage of loans over the rest of 2024, likely getting closer to 1%. Some of that's gonna be driven by the expected shift in portfolio composition. As Raj mentioned, criticized and classified assets declined by $52 million overall this quarter, with the $69 million increase in CRE being offset by a decline of $121 million in other commercial categories. A few comments on non-interest income and expense. Non-interest expense was pretty much flat quarter-over-quarter. Lease financing income was down about $5.8 million.
That's due to two things, just the reduction in the size of the asset portfolio, as well as fluctuation in residual income, which was a small loss this quarter compared to a small gain last quarter. Other non-interest income, we did have an increase in income this quarter from our customer derivatives business, our commercial card business, and syndication fees. Going forward, I'd expect an overall gradually increasing trend in that line item, but there are some things in here that can cause some quarterly volatility. I'll reiterate our mid-single-digit guidance for the year-over-year increase in non-interest expense, excluding the FDIC special assessments. This does include some railcar refurbishment costs that we're expecting in the back half of the year, and that's one of the things that's going to drive that increase. I'll make a brief comment on the year-over-year increase in compensation expense.
Most of what you're seeing in the P&L is really driven by some fluctuations in liability classified share awards that are driven by changes in, you know, volatility in the company's stock price and some reversal of expense in the prior year for awards that didn't vest. Core salary expense is really only up about 2%. The ETR, I'd expect to be around 26.5 going forward, excluding discrete items. CET1 from a capital perspective, CET1 was stable at 11.6% this quarter compared to last quarter, and TCE to TA increased to 7.4%. That's all I have. I'm going to turn it over to Raj for closing comments, and then we'll take your questions.
Rajinder P. Singh (CEO)
I think, listen, like I said at the beginning of the call, couldn't be happier with, you know, the way the quarter turned out, and looking forward, very optimistic when I look at the pipeline. So, all is well and happy, and we'll be glad to take questions. We'll turn it over to the operator for Q&A.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Will Jones from KBW.
Speaker 4
Hey, great. Good morning, guys.
Leslie Lunak (CFO)
Morning, Will.
Speaker 4
So, first of all, congrats on the nice quarter. I just wanted to start on deposits. I mean, it's impressive what you guys are doing on the non-interest bearing front. You know, growth was, you know, really nothing but spectacular this year. It sounds like there's continued optimism and that the pipelines still look good, but, you know, maybe in the second half of the year, we might see a little bit of seasonality kind of dampen that. And, maybe the easier way to think about non-interest bearing for the year is maybe just a full year growth rate. And, you know, if you look at what you guys have already done, you're already, you know, approaching 20% growth for the year.
Is there just a broader target for what you see non-interest-bearing do this year in terms of just maybe a growth rate?
Rajinder P. Singh (CEO)
I think, non-interest DDA, what we're shooting for is, you know, comfortable double-digit growth, but not, you know, 20, 30% growth. That's, you know, when you take out seasonality, you take out sort of the ups and downs of any given quarter, having mid-teens type of growth is, you know, very hard to deliver, by the way, and especially in this environment. But if the environment stays, as is, and our pipelines stay as healthy as they are, and you know, we should be able to get, you know, somewhere between 13, 14, 15, 16%, DDA growth. That's what we, you know, would be a long-term projection. Now, the reality is that, rates will not stay the same. Things will move around, and that can have a pretty big impact.
I'll give you a very simple, just one example of one of our LOBs, which is the title business. When there is a mortgage refi boom, you will see that get supercharged. Right now, all the growth that is coming is really from getting market share. But the market itself, the wider market, is very depressed because originations are at historic lows. When mortgage originations start to kick up, I don't know when that will be, a year from now or 10 years from now, who knows? But whenever they do, you will see those average account balances grow, and not much we'll have to do but except to sit here and enjoy the growth.
So, but putting aside what the interest rate gods will do, just the speed at which business is growing, I would say, you know, we're shooting for double-digit in DDA growth. You know, I've said we want to get back to 30%. We're at 29. We were 27, I think, last quarter.
Leslie Lunak (CFO)
Yeah.
Rajinder P. Singh (CEO)
So we're making progress towards getting back and capturing that hill, which is now within grasp, and then eventually getting back to our high water mark, which was, I think, 34%.
Leslie Lunak (CFO)
Thirty-four, yeah.
Rajinder P. Singh (CEO)
You know, that'll be a good goal for sometime next year.
Leslie Lunak (CFO)
Yeah, just to recap, from here through the rest of the year, I would expect just modest growth, given the seasonal tailwinds and headwinds.
Rajinder P. Singh (CEO)
Yeah.
Speaker 4
Okay. Well, that's very helpful. Well, great work on the non-DDA front. And Leslie, I appreciate that, you know, the margin guidance is still kind of unchanged in that high 2% range, but you know, just as we look at the loan side in particular, you know, you can kind of see the remake happening where core C&I and CRE is seeing strong growth, and we have that runoff and, you know, mortgage and then 1-4 family still happening. As you grow that core C&I and you run off, you know, mortgage, what is kind of that trade-off in yield? I guess, in other words, what is the new loan yield you guys are receiving versus what's running off?
Leslie Lunak (CFO)
I mean, call it around 8%, 7.5%-8% on most of the new production. And, you know, the resi portfolio yields in the mid-3s, so there you go.
Speaker 4
As you know, you guys continue to target that high single-digit range for, you know, kind of core loans, you know, is it fair to assume that we will continue to kind of see, you know, maybe that 5-10 basis point increase in loan yields going forward?
Leslie Lunak (CFO)
I mean, that seems reasonable, yes.
Rajinder P. Singh (CEO)
I just want to go back and make one more point about deposit growth. The deposit growth that you're seeing is really five years of effort in the making. And you know, it's not something we did last quarter or even last year. This is many years of working on product and technology and going to market, which is paying off today. It's not like we hired a bunch of guys last quarter, and they brought this business in. We really did not do that. I talked about bringing Ernie in, but that was not-
Leslie Lunak (CFO)
He didn't bring in any deposits yet.
Rajinder P. Singh (CEO)
No, he's not knocking on doors. That's not the hire. We could have gone that way. We did see a lot of producers over the last year, from, you know, all the usual names, but we did not choose to do that. This is more a long-term, 4-5-year strategy that is now coming into its own and is helping us. So just a point.
Tom Thomas M. Cornish (COO)
Well, I would also add on the loan yield side, if we look at the pipeline going forward, and we kind of look sort of opportunity by opportunity between, you know, what's approved, what's accepted, term sheets and things of that nature, I, I think that the pricing market remains fairly good. We're not seeing, you know, too much differential, you know, in terms of yields. Obviously, virtually all banks are trying to put more, you know, emphasis on growing the C&I business versus growing other parts of their book. But I think, you know, as we look at a good quality pipeline, Q3 into early Q4, you know, we're seeing a fair bit of firmness, you know, in the yield on loans right now.
Speaker 4
Yeah. Okay. That's, that's great. And job well done, guys. That's it for me.
Rajinder P. Singh (CEO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Timur Braziler from Wells Fargo.
Speaker 4
Hi, good morning.
Leslie Lunak (CFO)
Morning.
Rajinder P. Singh (CEO)
Morning.
Speaker 4
Maybe just following up on that line of questioning for, for DDA. Raj, you kind of alluded to the future opportunities within the title business, and I apologize if I missed this in the prepared remarks, but can you just kind of go through where the DDA growth has been coming from in the first half of the year, and then maybe frame what the opportunity in the title business might look like if we do get some rate relief and increased mortgage activity?
Rajinder P. Singh (CEO)
Yeah. That's predicting what will happen when there is a refi boom. It's a little hard. It could be, you know, 20%-30% lift in just average deposit balances, but it's, I'm guessing at best. I will say that the growth that you saw this quarter was broad-based. Having said that, title business was the biggest grower this quarter and also the biggest beneficiary of seasonality. But I would also like to point out the HOA business has also been growing very well. We organized that into a separate business line about three or four years ago and invested in technology over there, also over the course of last two years. So they're seeing the benefit of that.
And we did some 1 or 2, you know, added to the sales team a couple of times last year. Not a lot of people, but just, you know, a couple of people here and there, and they are all of that investment is paying off. So the HOA business also is far ahead of its budget for the year, such as just the way NTS, our national title business is. But we're seeing benefits in New York as well. And in New York, the story has been a little bit about the disruption in the marketplace that has given us an opening to pick up some core business. And in Florida, you know, it's a healthy market, so that also grew this quarter.
Now, there are a couple of things that shrunk also this quarter, but those are seasonality trend, trends in the other direction, but that's not DDA. That was municipal, which is largely a money market business that, you know, that grows in the fourth quarter, but shrinks in the first, you know, second and third quarter. So, so that went the other way. So there, there are a lot of moving parts, but overall, I'll say it was broad-based growth. Yes, the title business was, was probably the biggest contributor and also the biggest beneficiary of the seasonality trends, but they'll also hurt the most in the fourth quarter when seasonality goes the other way.
Tom Thomas M. Cornish (COO)
I would add that we also saw a good increase in the corporate banking deposit business in the quarter, which is virtually all kind of transactional business, and it was across all of the geographies that we're in. So, you know, it was a combination of both kind of specialty businesses and broad geography businesses.
Speaker 4
... Okay, great. And then just again a follow-up on the title business specifically. What are those balances today that are sitting in DDA? And then just to kind of frame the opportunity, maybe what was the balance of those accounts? What rates were lower?
Leslie Lunak (CFO)
So, we really don't disclose that kind of detail about deposit balances by line of business. You know, in the aggregate, though, I think the title business is around $4 billion, and most of that's DDA, but I don't have those exact numbers in front of me, and we don't typically make that kind of public disclosure.
Speaker 4
Understood. Okay. And then just one last one for me. Just looking at some of the degradation in the office portfolio over the last couple of quarters, and appreciate the comments on, you know, the qualitative reserve last quarter, moving into the quantitative this quarter. I guess, is it really just the lease abatements that's the biggest issue right now that you're seeing within the office book? And as you sit here today, assuming, you know, other commercial categories kind of stay stable, how should we think about the reserve on the office portfolio, maybe relative to what you're seeing for the trends in the last couple of quarters?
Leslie Lunak (CFO)
Yeah. I'll comment on the reserve, and then I'll let Tom add a little bit of color around the book. Nothing we are seeing is outside of our expectations of what we've been expecting to happen. You know, we've been telling you for several quarters now that, you know, some of these loans are gonna have issues. We didn't know which ones. Now we kind of know which ones. And that this is exactly in line with our expectations for what was gonna happen in the office book, and the reserve is at about 2.5%, and we feel like that's where that's adequate.
Tom Thomas M. Cornish (COO)
Yeah, I would say that if you look at the overall performance of the office portfolio and the overall occupancy, debt service coverage and debt yield numbers, you know, it points to a portfolio that overall is doing well. Now, there will be a couple of spots within it that there will be very asset-specific, you know, deals that, you know, have a challenge. I would say, predominantly it's lease-up rent abatement issues that impact DSCR, you know, early on, because during the abatement periods, the building is physically occupied, but it's not economically occupied because it's not contributing to NOI. There are, you know, the one building Raj mentioned in New York is a building that's gone through renovation. We have two renovation buildings in New York, and those two have to go through a lease-up period and then an abatement period.
So there are a couple of asset specifics that are in the portfolio, but overall, if you, you know, go through, you know, all 98 loans that I have in front of me, you know, the vast majority of them are performing very well.
Speaker 4
Great. Thanks for that color. Appreciate it.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Our next question comes from the line of David Bishop from Hovde Group.
Speaker 5
Good morning.
Tom Thomas M. Cornish (COO)
Hey, David.
Leslie Lunak (CFO)
Morning, Dave.
Speaker 5
Hey, Raj, Leslie, and Leslie, specifically, I know we spoke about this, but there's been a lot of, you know, I guess, agita, you know, angst about maybe the commercial CMBS market here, and I know you have some exposure there. Just curious how you're feeling about that portfolio these days, in relation to what's been out in the press there. Are you seeing any sort of, you know, risk of impairment? Just curious how that's holding up overall.
Leslie Lunak (CFO)
Yeah. So, you know, yes, collateral losses have increased in the CMBS market, but we are seeing no risk of impairment whatsoever in our portfolio. All of our holdings are extremely well enhanced. We rigorously stress test each and every one of those securities on at least quarterly basis, and we don't see any potential signs of impairment at all at this time because of the level of credit enhancement that we have, and we do monitor it on a deal-by-deal basis very rigorously.
Speaker 5
You, you guys avoid the single asset, single tenant investments there?
Leslie Lunak (CFO)
Correct. Yes. Thank you for asking. We have no single asset, single borrower exposure.
Speaker 5
Got it. And then, Leslie, just quick, I think I missed it, the operating expense guidance, how should we think about that in the back half of the year? It sound like there could be some escalation-
Leslie Lunak (CFO)
Yeah
Speaker 5
-and expenses.
Leslie Lunak (CFO)
Yeah, still mid-single-digit increase year-over-year in the aggregate, so no change to-
Speaker 5
No change?
Leslie Lunak (CFO)
No change to our guidance. And I just made the point that one of the things that's gonna drive that is some railcar refurbishment that'll happen. But no change in our overall guidance.
Speaker 5
Great. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Steven Alexopoulos from J.P. Morgan.
Speaker 6
Hey, good morning. It's Alex Lau on for Steve.
Leslie Lunak (CFO)
Good morning, Alex.
Speaker 6
I have a question, a follow-up on the DDA, and the Title Solutions business. In terms of the seasonality for that business, is last year's seasonal trends a good period to model after, or has anything changed in that business that would result in last year in not being a good data point to refer to?
Rajinder P. Singh (CEO)
... I think you could use that. Probably the best year that you could probably peel that would be last year.
Leslie Lunak (CFO)
Yeah.
Rajinder P. Singh (CEO)
Yeah, I would say that, yeah. Last year was probably as typical a year.
Leslie Lunak (CFO)
Yeah. Barring, as Raj said earlier, something happening in the rate markets-
Rajinder P. Singh (CEO)
Yeah
Leslie Lunak (CFO)
that, you know.
Rajinder P. Singh (CEO)
Yeah.
Leslie Lunak (CFO)
But all else held equal, that makes sense.
Speaker 6
Got it. And how much of the growth in the title solutions business this year has been from gaining market share versus some seasonality?
Rajinder P. Singh (CEO)
I will say, I'll give you... That business is growing at mid-teens level, if you take out the seasonality. In terms of new relationships that we're adding on and in terms of, balances, evened out for seasonality, it's about mid-teen growth, growth rate. We're bringing in about 40-45 clients per quarter.
Speaker 6
So that means-
Rajinder P. Singh (CEO)
That would equate to about a 15%-18% increase in the overall client base. Yeah.
Speaker 6
Great, color. Thank you. And then my last one, how big is your deposit pipeline for treasury management at quarter end, and how does that compare to the prior quarter?
Rajinder P. Singh (CEO)
It's very similar. It really hasn't, you know, from beginning of this year to now, as closing in the pipeline, new ticks go into the pipeline, so it really hasn't changed that much.
Leslie Lunak (CFO)
That pipeline has actually been pretty consistent for some time. It tends to get replenished at about a pretty constant rate.
Speaker 6
Okay, thanks for answering my questions.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Ben Gerlinger from Citi.
Speaker 7
Hey, good morning.
Rajinder P. Singh (CEO)
Good morning.
Leslie Lunak (CFO)
Hey, Ben.
Speaker 7
Apologize up front. There's a lot of calls in on this morning, so-
Leslie Lunak (CFO)
Yeah.
Speaker 7
You guys seem to have a pretty good quarter. So I'll read the transcript while you're talking, but, is there— have you guys given any indication of kind of overall capital deployment, whether it be share repurchase or potential down the road for continued outsized loan growth? I'm just trying to get a sense of how you guys are thinking about capital, given that your share price is still fairly compressed. It's had a good rebound here, but also, you also had a good quarter for growth, and the Southeast in general just seems to have a better economic backdrop.
Rajinder P. Singh (CEO)
Yeah, we Leslie and I were working on the board agenda for August, actually just yesterday, and I told her to add a section on capital discussion. So, listen, we're looking at, you know, a pretty happy set of facts here. We're seeing some growth opportunity. We're seeing capital build up, and my first choice is always to actually deploy the capital and grow it profitably. If we're not able to see that for a sustained period of time, then we think about buybacks. And then, of course, in the back of our mind is always the environment, if you know, it is conducive to buybacks or not.
And also, you've heard us in the past that we are very sensitive to all our stakeholders, especially the rating agencies, who are quite sensitive about capital returns. So we're gonna keep all of that in mind. We'll have a discussion in August, and I don't wanna get ahead of myself and say something that, you know, I'm not authorized yet by the board, but we'll have a discussion like we've had in the past. But right now we're out on the sidelines. Maybe in August, we'll do something or maybe later in the year. But right now, you know, I'm looking at a decent pipeline, and if we can actually deploy this capital, that would be the best thing, best outcome.
Speaker 7
Gotcha. Um-
Rajinder P. Singh (CEO)
Yeah.
Speaker 7
Are you-
Rajinder P. Singh (CEO)
The thing about it, this year, this year, we've given guidance that balance sheet will not grow, for, you know, from beginning to the end of the year, and I think, you know, give or take, we'll probably end up at that level. But I want to grow eventually, right? We're not growing is no fun. So, you know, Leslie will kill me if I start talking about next year, so I won't. But I wanna, you know, get back in the growth business.
Speaker 7
Gotcha. Are you able to say what day the board meeting is, so I know what day to normally?
Leslie Lunak (CFO)
No. Nope.
Speaker 7
Okay.
Leslie Lunak (CFO)
If anything happens, there'll be a press release.
Speaker 7
Yeah, but I think sounds good. I'll just try to get in front of it by about 4 minutes. All right. Well, I appreciate the time. Thank you.
Rajinder P. Singh (CEO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. At this time, I would now like to turn the conference back over to Raj Singh for closing remarks.
Rajinder P. Singh (CEO)
Like I said, you know, India winning the World Cup was the big cherry on a pretty decent Sunday. We're very happy with the way the quarter turned out. We're very optimistic as we look to the future. Thank you for your time this morning, and call us if you have any more detailed questions. Otherwise, we'll see you or talk to you again in three months. Bye.
Operator (participant)
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.