First Citizens BancShares - Q2 2023
August 3, 2023
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, welcome to the First Citizens BancShares Q2 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you need to press star one on your telephone keypad. If you require operator assistance during the program, please press star, then zero. As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for this conference call, Ms. Deanna Hart, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin.
Deanna Hart (SVP of Investor Relations)
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our Q2 Earnings Call. Our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Frank Holding, President Peter Bristow, and Chief Financial Officer Craig Nix, will provide Q2 business and financial updates today. During the call, we will reference our investor presentation, which you can find on our website. Our comments will include forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause our results to differ materially from expectations. We assume no obligation to update such statements. These risks are outlined for you on page three. We will also reference non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these measures against the most directly comparable GAAP measures are found in section five of the presentation. Finally, First Citizens is not responsible for and does not edit nor guarantee the accuracy of earnings transcripts provided by third parties. I will now turn it over to Frank.
Frank B. Holding Jr. (CEO)
Thank you, Deanna, and good morning, everyone. Before we get into Q2 results, I'd like to start by saying that the SVB acquisition is going very well, and we're pleased with our progress integrating SVB's clients and associates into First Citizens. I'm also pleased to announce that we've appointed Marc Cadieux, a 30-year veteran of SVB, as President of SVB's Commercial Banking Business. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Mark leads a team of more than 1,000 experienced and talented bankers nationwide who are dedicated to the innovation economy. We're fortunate to have Mark as a part of the First Citizens senior leadership team. Starting on page 5, we've announced another quarter of solid financial results, which were amplified by the SVB acquisition. We reported adjusted earnings per share of $52.60, exceeding our expectations.
We delivered top-quartile return metrics, generating an adjusted return on equity of 16.5% and return on assets of 1.5%. Our net interest margin expanded 69 basis points to 4.1%, and our adjusted efficiency ratio came in below 50% for this quarter. Deposits continued to be a huge focus for us, generated, for us, growing by 3.2% on an annualized basis. In addition to deposit growth, our commercial and general bank segments posted solid loan growth. We finished the Q2 with a CET1 ratio of 13.4%. Since year-end, we've accreted 228 basis points of capital from the SVB acquisition and 69 basis points from retained earnings.
While we continue to build capital to support clients and drive organic growth, our goal is to operate with efficient levels of capital defined by our target ranges. At the present time, we are operating over the top end of our target ranges for all of our risk-based capital ratios. We will continue to pause share repurchases this year as we focus on SVB integration and get more clarity around the impacts of the new proposed capital rules. As for pending regulation, we are tracking the potential new requirements to ensure operational readiness. As part of this work, we've established a team whose mandate is to develop plans to expedite implementation once final rules are established. Thanks to these proactive actions and our strong risk management framework, we are well positioned to manage through any changes and address them exponentially or expediently, excuse me.
In addition to capital, our liquidity position remains strong and stable, driven by our focus on core deposit gathering and a conservatively managed investment portfolio. We also remain focused on managing credit prudently. While we experienced an increase in net charge-offs this quarter, the majority of the increase related to the SVB portfolio that were anticipated and reserved for in day one acquisition accounting. We remain encouraged by the resiliency of our clients in the face of elevated inflation and rising interest rates, and we look forward to continuing to supporting them. Turning to page 6, we continue to make progress on SVB integration efforts and are excited by the early signs of collaboration and partnership we are seeing among our teams....
Since we acquired SVB on March 27th, our focus has been on stabilizing the business. As Peter Bristow will discuss shortly, we've made excellent progress on this front. We continue to focus on providing consistent and high-touch service to our clients and getting back to what SVB does best: lending to the innovation economy and bringing its participants together. Internally, we've been hyper-focused on retaining SVB talent. An important step was in the naming of the SVB leadership team and ensuring that they have the tools to provide associates support and reiterate our commitment to the innovation economy. Externally, our stabilization efforts focused on client outreach. Our associates have dedicated countless hours to communicating to clients that they continue to expect what made SVB special to remain, including the high level of service, specialization, ability to anticipate challenges, and the resources to provide meaningful solutions.
This outreach has paid off as we've seen continued deposit stabilization in the SVB portfolio since April. Currently, we are moving forward with the remaining pillars of our integration process, and let me quickly run through these with you. First, we continue to advance our strategic assessment work. Having completed an initial round of strategic assessments led by the business lines, we are now leveraging those insights to identify strategic initiatives and key integration activities. In doing so, we're ensuring that the key processes and practices that have been instrumental to SVB's differentiated offering remain in place. These strategic assessments also inform our integration efforts, which we continue to make progress on. As a part of this work, we're developing and executing on detailed integration plans that prioritize maintaining SVB's unique leadership role and ongoing support for the innovation economy.
Finally, we are ensuring regulatory readiness through our large bank program. After the CIT merger, we established the large bank program oversight team, as a centralized function within our risk management organization. This team provides dedicated oversight of the work needed to meet heightened regulatory expectations and ensure sound business practices for large financial institutions. Post SVB, this team is working to identify potential gaps and implementing plans to remediate them. Turning to page seven, we remain focused on executing against our core strategic priorities, which are the building blocks for long-term, sustainable value generation and are at the core of everything we do. As a result, I'm, I'm confident that we are well positioned to support our clients and customers, grow our balance sheet profitably, and deliver strong results.
Before I turn it over to Peter, I want to thank all of our associates for their hard work and unwavering commitment to our shareholders, clients, customers, and communities. I'm proud of what we've accomplished and will accomplish moving forward. Now I'll turn it over to Peter Bristow to provide an SVB business update. Peter?
Peter M. Bristow (President and COO)
Thank you, Frank, and good morning, everyone. Turning to page 8, I want to reiterate what Frank said. I'm incredibly proud of the progress we have made in integrating SVB and reestablishing it as an undisputed leader in the innovation economy. Our team has done tremendous work on that front. I won't cover all the details outlined on this slide, as many of the points echo comments Frank just made, but I do want to provide concrete examples on the progress we are making. Our bankers have reached out to a considerable number of clients over the past few months. We are encouraged by the success we are seeing in reestablishing relationships with the clients who left in March. To support this effort, we've initiated a comprehensive outreach campaign to touch each of our approximately 30,000 clients.
We've also embarked on a major print web campaign, including full pages in The Wall Street Journal and New York Times, to reinforce to our clients that we're fully committed to the innovation economy and ready to serve their needs with tailored product offerings. I want to highlight some numbers that demonstrate the success we've seen so far. We have approximately 1,500 clients whose funds dipped below 10% of their March eighth amount, who have recommitted and now have some portion of their funds back at SVB. We also now have over 90% of our core borrowers, borrowers either meeting deposit requirements or working in good faith with us to meet them. These sales efforts have been noticeable on the balance sheet.
Our deposits have largely remained steady since the end of April, maintaining in the $40-$41 billion range, despite the limited fundraising activity in the broader venture capital market and our clients' ongoing cash burn. While our loan balances have declined, this is primarily related to the short-term nature of our global funds banking portfolio, which is down given reduced broader market activity, as well as the lagged effect of being out of the market for a few months in early 2023. We are encouraged by the robust pipelines in this business, we are back in the market for new production.
While we see challenges in the broader market for the remainder of 2023, as venture capital investment is below the levels of the past few years, we are well poised to capture client funds once investment levels begin to increase, likely in late 2024 and into 2025. Despite competitors more actively entering the innovation space, competitive advantages, including our long-standing client relationships and our breadth and depth of offerings, continue to differentiate us. Importantly, we are hearing positive client feedback around our reinforcement of SVB stability, now backed by the strength of First Citizens and our unique tailored offering that our clients have come to know and love. Clients are eager to learn more about the vision for the First Citizens and SVB partnership.
We also remain excited about the opportunities that SVB products and services provide for our legacy First Citizens clients. We believe there are opportunities to expand deposit and suite products to our CIT commercial clients. Complementing our early success in the SVB integration are our team's efforts in the broader commercial banking business, where strong momentum continued in the Q2. The lending portfolio, led by industry verticals in our commercial finance group, grew by $901 million to $13.8 billion, with strong performance across the portfolio, including healthcare, tech media and telecom, energy, and maritime, just to name a few. We were also pleased to welcome Jim Hudak back as the President of the Commercial Finance Group. Jim brings more than 20 years as a commercial finance executive, including overseeing CIT's commercial finance business for over a decade.
We are confident his leadership, insights, and expertise will be invaluable as we continue to grow our commercial portfolio. We also continue to see strong performance in our middle-market banking organization as we explore attractive market opportunities. Our rail business delivered another strong quarter with utilization remaining above 98%. Finally, on the wealth side, we are planning to leverage SVB's strong wealth footprint in the Northeast and California to expand our wealth coverage, building on our strong business and commercial relationships in Southern California, and expanding services for our existing CIT legacy CIT clients in the Northeast. On page 9, we show the deposit and loan trends for the SVB segment starting on March 27th through June 30th. Notably, we have not seen material declines in legacy SVB deposits since our Q1 disclosure using April 30th data.
This is in spite of venture investment remaining subdued and more aligned with 2018, 2019 levels. The stabilization that we've seen in our deposit balances is a testament to the client outreach and effort the team has put in to reassure them that despite the turmoil in March, SVB is not going anywhere and is more secure than ever. It also demonstrates that SVB's unique value propositions remains attractive to clients. Moving on to loans. As we noted on our Q1 call, we anticipated a drag on loan growth, given more subdued lending activity in the innovation economy. The primary driver of the decline in our loans this quarter was a $6.8 billion reduction in global fund banking, which was expected. Global fund banking has historically been one of the primary drivers of growth at SVB.
However, starting in 2022, with what has been called the Great Reset, the pace of venture capital activity slowed considerably. Consequently, these venture capital firms are investing less, which reduces their needs to use our capital call lending facilities. Now, midway through 2023, private equity and venture capital investors face a dynamic environment because of various macroeconomic factors, many of which are carryovers from 2022. Some, such as inflation and a depressed public market, appear to be resolving. Others, however, are persistent, such as high interest rates and low initial public offering activity. These challenges are having a direct impact on the private market investment landscape, resulting in a difficult exit environment, lower fundraising numbers, and fewer deals. Nevertheless, we are continuing to focus on the areas we can control and believe that the rest will follow.
We continue to focus on client engagement as we remain patient and continue to be there for our clients. We believe, in the fullness of time, we will successfully win back additional deposits and loans as clients restore faith and trust in the business and, of course, us. Turning to page 10, we provide additional information on SVB trends in terms of assets, off-balance sheet client funds, and assets under management. I won't spend much time on this today, but wanted to provide this to you for reference. In closing, it's clear that there are a lot of opportunities for the combined company. I want to echo Frank's appreciation to, for all of our associates. Your continued dedication has put us in a strong position to continue growing the business, enhancing relationships, and delivering best-in-class solutions and services to our clients.
With that, I'll turn it over to Craig Nix.
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Okay, thank you, Peter, and thank all of you for joining us today. On page 12, we summarize high-level themes from our Q2 results. The power of the SVB combination was on full display during the quarter, with return metrics exceeding our expectations. Meanwhile, the adjusted efficiency ratio significantly improved to sub 50%, thanks to strong net interest income growth and better-than-expected recognition of cost synergies. From an asset quality standpoint, overall credit performance continued to normalize, with net charge-offs increasing to 47 basis points, with most of the sequential increase related to SVB charge-offs that were expected and reserved for as of the merger date. Our exposure to office-related commercial real estate is limited, and our overall credit metrics remain resilient.
Moving to the balance sheet, while loans declined sequentially due to an expected decline that Peter mentioned in global banking, global fund banking portfolio, the general and commercial bank segments grew loans at annualized rates of 12.6% and 10.5% respectively. Our commercial and business clients continue to be resilient in the face of economic headwinds. Deposits grew sequentially at an annualized rate of 3.2%, driven by core deposit growth in the direct bank. As Peter just mentioned, we were pleased to see stabilization in the SVB deposit base during the quarter. Finally, our balance sheet position remains strong. We continue to build capital through solid earnings, in turn, supporting our clients to drive organic earning asset growth.
As Frank mentioned in his comments, we anticipate operating above our target capital ranges for the remainder of 2023 as we continue our pause of stock repurchases while we focus on SVB integration and gain clarity on the new proposed capital rules. Turning to pages 13 and 14, Q2 GAAP net income to common shareholders was $667 million, or $45.87 per share. Our Q2 GAAP results were impacted by the full-year impact of the SVB acquisition, the full quarter impact, sorry, as well as $55 million adjustment to the preliminary bargain purchase gain. On an adjusted basis, net income to common shareholders was $765 million, or $52.60 per share, yielding an annualized ROE of 16.46% and ROA of 1.49%.
On page 14, we provide two condensed income statements. The table at the top of the page represents our reported GAAP results. The table at the bottom supplements those results showing net income adjusted for notable items. The section in the middle of the page summarizes the impact of notable items to derive the adjusted results from the reported results. Page 15 provides detail with respect to notable items for the relevant quarterly and year-to-date periods. During the Q2, these adjustments had the net impact of adding $6.73 to GAAP EPS. Turning to page 16, net interest income of $1.96 billion increased by $1.1 billion over the linked quarter, mostly due to the impact of the SVB acquisition.
Net interest margin increased by 69 basis points due to the full quarter impact of accretion from the SVB combination, a higher yield on earning assets, partially offset by an increase in deposit costs. Our loan yield increased by 149 basis points, 64 basis points of which was related to accretion income. Meanwhile, deposit costs increased by 44 basis points, representing a cycle-to-date beta of 30%. Page 17 provides a roll forward of net interest margin from the sequential quarter and from the same quarter in the prior year for your reference. Moving to page 18, we remained asset sensitive during the quarter, with a negative 100 basis points ramp and rate negatively impacting net interest income by 5.7%. We continue to prioritize liquidity risk management by intentionally keeping a larger cash balance due to the current macroeconomic environment.
However, we have begun to put some of the excess cash to work in short duration U.S. Treasuries to soften some of the asset sensitivity. On page 19, we provide information on our actual and expected deposit betas. 54% of our deposits exhibit lower betas, with the remainder exhibiting moderate to higher betas. Our cumulative beta through the Q2 was 30%, which was higher than our previous forecast, driven by changes to interest rate environment as rates have stayed higher for longer. Given this and the competitive environment for deposits, we expect our cumulative beta to increase to 36% by the end of the Q3 as deposit costs catch up from recent rate increases, and we raise additional deposits in our more rate-sensitive direct bank channel.
Over the interest rate hiking cycle, we forecast our cumulative beta will be approximately 39%, up 5% from our previous estimate, which is due in part to rates higher for longer, as well as increasing our balances in the higher cost direct bank to reduce our wholesale funding reliance. On page 20, adjusted non-interest income increased by $153 million over the linked quarter due to the impact of the SVB acquisition and continued momentum in our legacy fee-generating business lines such as rail and card. The impact of SVB includes a $50 million increase in client investment fees, earnings for managing off-balance sheet client funds, and a $28 million increase in international fees related to customer foreign currency transactions. In addition, other service charges increased $22 million, primarily due to unused line of credit fees in the SVB segment.
Service charges on deposits and cardholder services income both increased $20 million from higher volume associated with the full quarter impact of the acquisition. These increases were partially offset by small declines in other non-interest income spread across several smaller line items and a decrease in BOLI income, given our strategic early surrender of BOLI policies in the Q4 of 2022. On page 21, adjusted non-interest expense totaled $1.2 billion, a $525 million increase over the linked quarter, representing the full quarter impact of the SVB acquisition. Our adjusted efficiency ratio showed significant improvement during the quarter, dropping from 57.55% to 49.65%. For your reference, page 22 outlines our adjusted non-interest income and expense composition for the Q2. Page 23 shows balance sheet highlights and key ratios.
I'm not going to cover this in detail, but I would like to direct your attention to the fact that we drove TBV per share growth of $39 per share during the quarter, while increasing our liquidity position by $8.5 billion. Turning to page 24, loans declined by $7.4 billion in the SVB segment, which drove down our total loan balances compared to the linked quarter. As Peter mentioned, our global fund banking portfolio experienced elevated draws at the end of March, and as a result, we anticipated higher level of paydowns during the Q2. Approximately 50% of the $7.4 billion decline was related to elevated draw repayments. The challenges facing the venture capital industry are having a direct impact on the private market investment landscape, resulting in a difficult exit environment, lower fundraising numbers, and fewer deals.
New draws on existing lines were muted in April and May, given uncertainty in the industry post-March events. However, we did see commitment activity for existing clients pick up in the month of June, as Peter mentioned. Despite industry headwinds, our legacy First Citizens portfolio continued to experience solid growth, including $1.4 billion or 12.6% annualized growth in the general bank and $749 million or 10.5% annualized growth in the commercial bank. Page 25 shows our loan composition by type and segment for your reference. Page 26 shows the deposits increased by $1.1 billion or 3.2% on an annualized basis from the linked quarter. We experienced $10.4 billion in growth in the direct bank, partially offset by a decline in SVB deposits.
We have worked diligently to leverage the direct bank channel to increase balances to help fund loan growth in the general and commercial bank segments and to support legacy SVB. We do anticipate continued deposit growth in the direct bank through the end of 2023, albeit at a slower pace. While this channel is higher cost compared to the traditional branch network, it enabled us to reduce more expensive FHLB borrowings by approximately $6.1 billion during the Q2. Importantly, while SVB deposits declined $8.4 billion sequentially, the majority of this occurred in April. As Peter noted, we have worked to stabilize the franchise by performing outreach to key innovation economy partners and detailed market analysis to understand misconceptions, so we can more quickly and effectively address them.
We have also worked hard to keep client-facing team members in seat and in front of our clients. As a result of these efforts, we have not seen a material change in deposit balances since we last reported, with SVB deposits remaining approximately $41 billion as of June 30th. Our cost of deposits increased by 44 basis points during the quarter up to 1.68%. The increase is representative of the impact from the Fed rate hikes and our need to raise rates to stay competitive with our peers. The deposit composition by type, segment, and insured, uninsured breakdown are showed on page 27. On page 28, our balance sheet continues to be funded predominantly by deposits. We made progress this quarter, right sizing this as deposits increased to 78% of total funding, up from 75% last quarter.
The FHLB borrowings we initiated in previous quarters had call features. We decreased those borrowings by approximately $6 billion this quarter, which is reflective of the deposit growth I just spoke to. Over the medium to long term, we plan to continue to drive the non-deposit concentration metrics lower by focusing on core deposit growth. On page 29, credit quality metrics continued to normalize. Net charge-offs totaled $157 million or 47 basis points for the quarter, up from $50 million or 27 basis points in the Q1. The increase in charge-offs was primarily the result of $97 million in net charge-offs in the SVB segment. $85 million of which were reserved for at the acquisition date.
In the general and commercial bank segments, net charge-offs were fairly consistent with prior quarters, with most occurring in the large office real estate and small ticket equipment leasing portfolios. We guided to a net charge-off range of 35-45 basis points on our last call, as we identified a few large innovation credits that would be and were charged off during the quarter. While we do expect some continued stress in the innovation portfolio, given the depressed levels of market funding, we don't expect quarterly charge-offs to remain at these levels. Some of these loans are large and the charge-offs can be lumpy. Moving to the bottom of the page, the nonaccrual loan ratio increased 10 basis points from the sequential quarter to 0.7%. The increase was primarily concentrated in real estate finance within the commercial bank segment.
This is where our largest general office exposure is, which continues to be impacted by remote work dynamics, elevated interest rates, vacancy rates, lease rates, capital requirements, and near-term maturities. Our allowance ratio increased by 7 basis points to 1.23% during the quarter. Page 30 provides a roll forward of our ACL from the linked quarter. The largest driver of the increase in the ACL was deterioration in macroeconomic forecasts related to declining CRE index values in both the baseline and downside scenarios. Other factors, such as portfolio mix and credit quality, also contributed to increases in reserves, but on a much smaller scale. These increases were partially offset by lower loan balances in the SVB segment and adjustments to fair value discounts on loans acquired from SVB.
As depicted on the bottom left-hand corner, the ACL provides 2.6 times coverage of annualized quarterly net charge-offs and covered nonaccrual loans 1.8 times. On pages 31 and 32, we highlight our total non-underoccupied CRE exposure, which was 12.8% of total loans at quarter end, with general office loans totaling $2.8 billion or 2.1% of total loans. Page 32 includes information on the general office portfolio, which is well diversified geographically, with limited exposure to some of the hardest hit markets, including San Francisco, Chicago, and New York, which on a combined basis totaled $403 million, or 14% of the total general office portfolio.
As we shared on our last call, of the $2.8 billion in general office loans, the most significant credit risk is in our commercial bank, which had general office loans totaling $1.1 billion at the end of the quarter, representing less than 1% of total loans. This portfolio consists primarily of Class B reposition and bridge loans, and it's where we have seen deterioration in past dues, criticized assets, and charge-offs. We are carrying an ACL on those loans of 9.02%, compared to an ACL on the overall general office portfolio of 4.44%. Reserves on both of these portfolios increased over the prior quarter due to increased specific reserves, as well as deterioration in the CECL macro forecast. Most of the remaining general office exposure is in the general bank.
This portfolio is more granular in nature, with smaller average loan size and some level of guarantor support or strong credit tenants under long-term leases. We have not seen material deterioration in this portfolio to date. On page 33, our capital position remains strong, with all ratios above or in the upper end of our target ranges. At the end of the Q2, our CET1 ratio was 13.38%, and our total risk-based capital ratio was 15.84%. The 85 basis points increase in our CET1 ratio was primarily the result of continued net income growth. Before I discuss our outlook, page 34 demonstrates that we continue to operate with a strong balance sheet and solid capital and liquidity and credit quality positions. I'll conclude with our 2023 outlook on page 36.
The second column lists our Q2 2023 results for each metric. The numbers for non-interest income and expense are adjusted for notable items. Column three provides our guidance for the Q3 of 2023, and column four for the full year. Moving to loans, we expect that loans will remain essentially flat to the Q2 ending balances. We anticipate further declines in the global fund banking business from lower levels of venture capital investments, slower capital deployment, and higher interest rates, as well as the lagged impact of being out of the market for the early months of 2023. We do see flat to modest declines in our tech and life sciences business as market activity continues to be depressed.
As a result, we expect SVB loan balances to be in the mid $50 billion range by year-end, down from $59 billion at the end of the Q2. The declines in GFB will be largely offset by mid single-digit % growth in the general commercial banking segment, as we expect continued momentum in our branch network, industry verticals, middle market, and equipment finance lines of business. Moving to deposits, we expect a low single digits % decline. While we're encouraged by the stabilization of SVB deposits since April, we anticipate that SVB clients will continue to experience a level of cash burn that exceeds funds sourced from fundraising.
It's worth noting that we expect broader market VC funding to remain subdued in the range of $30-$40 billion per quarter for the remainder of 2023, which is significantly down from prior years. Consequently, we're projecting a $4-$6 billion decline in the SVB deposit book through the end of the year. That said, we are laser focused on actively partnering with our existing portfolio clients, and the SVB team is working diligently to retain and win back balances, which we believe will partially offset some of this natural runoff. We are expecting the SVB decline to be partially offset by a $3 billion increase in direct bank deposits. Moving to interest rates, our forecast follows the implied forward curve. We forecast that the Fed funds rate has peaked at 5.5%.
From there, we anticipate the effective rate will remain unchanged through the rest of 2023 and into the beginning months of 2024. On to net interest income. While we expect the absolute level of margin and net interest income to remain elevated, we do expect them to begin to decline in the coming quarters compared to the Q2. This will occur as the pace of accretion moderates and we see continued pressure on deposit pricing. Accretion income had an approximate 50 basis points impact on our margin in the Q2, and absent the impacts of accelerated loan repayments and due to the recognition of accretion on shorter duration loans, we expect this to moderate to the 30-35 basis points range in the coming quarters.
The impacts of lower accretion and higher deposit costs will be partially offset by higher loan and investment yields. We anticipate our full cycle beta increasing to 35%-40%, up from our previous estimate of 30%-35%, which is due to rates higher for longer, leading to increased competitive pressure on deposits, as well as the sizable increase in our direct bank from what was close to $19 billion at the end of the Q1, to an expected mid-$30 billion range by year-end. We project net interest income in the Q3 in the range of $1.8-$1.9 billion.
At the same time, we are raising full year net interest income to a range of $6.4-$6.6 billion, reflecting strong Q2 results, as well as the margin dynamics I previously mentioned. On the net charge-offs, we expect Q3 annualized and full year net charge-offs to be in the 35-45 basis points range. Despite most of the portfolio performing well, we expect to see charge-offs concentrate in the commercial bank, general office, real estate, and small equipment leasing spaces. While we do expect some continued losses in the innovation portfolio, given the depressed levels of market funding, we don't expect the quarterly level of charge-offs to remain at Q2 levels. We expect SVB net charge-offs in the range of 30-40 basis points in the coming quarters.
Given the size of the credits in both the legacy CIT and SVB portfolios, charging off one or two more large credits than anticipated can have a sizable impact on the overall quarterly net charge-off ratio, could ultimately take us to the higher end of our 35-45 basis points range. To non-interest income. On an adjusted basis, we expect $420-$450 million in non-interest income in the Q3. We were reassured on the level of SVB-related non-interest income in the Q2, see this total contribution settling in at approximately $140-$150 million per quarter, or roughly $560-$600 million on an annual basis.
On an apple-to-apple basis of the SV businesses that were acquired, this was closer to $300 million per quarter in 2022. We are expecting the run rate to be slightly less than half of that, given client attrition, especially in some of the off-balance sheet suite products. With respect to legacy First Citizens, we still have momentum in our wealth and rail businesses. While maintenance expenses are expected to increase in rail, utilization increased to over 98%, and for the past 3 quarters, renewal rates have been at or above 120% of the previous quarter's rate. Moving to non-interest expense, we do not include expected acquisition expenses related to SVB, estimated at $650 million, with approximately 60% recognized in 2023 and the remainder in 2024. Approximately $380 million this year.
For the remainder of 2023, we anticipate adjusted non-interest expense will move lower to the $1.15-$1.2 billion range per quarter as we further recognize cost saves. We do expect a one-time $30 million FDIC assessment to be recognized in the Q3. This expense will be considered notable and is not included in our adjusted non-interest income forecast. Expense forecast, sorry. We made meaningful progress on our path to achieving cost saves in the range of $650-$780 million by the end of 2024, pushed slightly ahead of the schedule this quarter, primarily due to efficiency reductions in the back office.
At this juncture, we expect to have taken over $400 million out of the expense run rate by the end of 2023, putting us slightly above 50% of the high end of our cost synergies estimate. As a reminder, most of the synergies will be driven by consolidation of redundant or duplicate back-office processes, processes and systems as we remain focused on supporting the existing front lines of business and their clients. Moving forward, we expect to maintain our efficiency ratio in the low 50s, slightly higher than the Q2, as lower margin is partially offset by continued recognition of cost saves.
The income taxes, we expect our corporate tax rate to be in the 26.5%-27.5% range, in line with our previous update, as our revenue distribution is heavily weighted to higher tax jurisdictions such as California and New York, and our preexisting tax benefits are spread amongst a much larger pre-tax income base. For 2023 EPS, we previously guided to an adjusted range of $150-$161 per share. The range was derived from GAAP earnings, subtracted out the after-tax one-time impacts of the SVB acquisition, including the preliminary bargain purchase gain, the Day-Two CECL adjustment, and estimated SVB-related acquisition expenses. Based upon our updated forecast, we would guide to a new adjusted range of $156-$167 per share.
The change from prior guidance is primarily related to higher net interest income projection, given the absolute rate environment, partially offset by higher provision expense. Expenses are also slightly favorable to our previous forecast as we pulled slightly ahead on merger synergies. This forecast excludes the preliminary bargain purchase gain, the Day-Two CECL impact, and the expected $30 million FDIC assessment, as well as approximately $380 million of expected acquisition expenses in 2023. To conclude, we're excited about our future prospects and believe that we are well positioned to continue delivering long-term value to our shareholders, clients, customers, associates, and communities. With that, I will turn it over to the operator for instructions for the question-and-answer portion of the call.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question or a comment at this time, please press star and then the one key on your touchtone keypad. As a courtesy to others on the call, we ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up, and then return to the queue if you have any additional questions. If your question has been answered and you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press the pound key. We'll pause for one moment to compile our Q&A roster. Our first question today comes from Brady Gailey from KBW. Brady, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Brady Gailey (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Hey, thank you. Good morning, guys.
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Good morning.
Brady Gailey (Managing Director of Equity Research)
I wanted to start with the share buyback. I understand the reasons why the buyback doesn't make sense for you guys for the back half of this year. You know, when do you feel like you'll have the clarity needed to, you know, more seriously consider a share buyback? It doesn't sound like that'll be until next year in 2024.
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
That's, that's a correct assumption. We will be submitting a capital plan next year, and we will consider the potential impacts of these regulatory changes on our capital ratios. We'll certainly be considering a share repurchase plan in that capital plan. We would not resume repurchases in 2023. We would anticipate, all things go well, that we resume in 2024.
Brady Gailey (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay. Then I, I know we've talked about the lower risk weighting from the loss share assets from Silicon Valley being a benefit to common equity tier one of about 200 basis points. You know, how, how fast do you expect to see that? Like, are, are we talking a matter of quarters, or is this a longer term, you know, matter of, of years where we see that, a slow increase in risk-weighted assets?
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Yeah, Brady, we are burning those over a three-year period, which really approximates the, the life of the loans that are subject to loss share. In our capital projections, we have it burning off straight line over three years.
Brady Gailey (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay. just lastly for me, you know, accretable yield was around $240 million in the Q2, so a really, really large amount. How do you expect that to trend for the next few quarters?
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
We're expecting it to drop to 160, the 160 range in the Q3 and the 150 range in the fourth.
Brady Gailey (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay, great. Thanks, guys.
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question today comes from Stephen Scouten from Piper Sandler. Steven, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Stephen Scouten (Analyst)
Yeah, thanks a lot. Good morning, everyone.
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Morning.
Stephen Scouten (Analyst)
I guess I, I missed a little bit of your response there, Craig, on the, on the share repurchase. I guess my, my follow-up to that or question would be: Is that kind of an internal decision as you evaluate those capital, the new capital requirements, or was there any sort of regulatory pushback on the desire to, to do a repurchase here in 2023?
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Yeah, it was an internal decision.
Stephen Scouten (Analyst)
Got it. Okay. Then on the,
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Go ahead, I'm sorry.
Stephen Scouten (Analyst)
No, no, no, that's great. On the large bank team that you guys have, implemented, trying to find these gaps and so forth, has there been anything material identified to date that you can speak to, or is that still pretty early stages as they look to, you know, identify any of these gaps or planning, remediation?
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Yeah, we, we really don't have any significant gaps. We have identified gaps, but they're not things that we can't overcome. I think, you know, we are well on our way to, you know, meeting the requirements of a Category Four bank. Our risk management program meets the expectation for a large bank program, and it is prepared to expand it to include the SVB businesses. We feel like we're in really, really good shape there.
Stephen Scouten (Analyst)
Okay, great. Really last thing for me is just if I look at the and the non-interest revenue guide within the slide deck, it implies a little bit of downside, I guess, from here. Are there any specific categories where you expect to see declines in the back half of the year? What's kind of embedded within that, that guidance there?
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Well, if you're looking at just the PPNR, in general, if you start with net interest income, it's really the impact of that lower accretion. Going forward, to the headline margin will decline, although ex accretion, we still are seeing some lift in earning assets. That's the most significant factor. We are guiding slightly down from the Q2 on non-interest income, that's really FX fees and down due to lower global fund banking business and some off-balance sheet decline, you know, management fees for declines in off-balance sheet funds managed.
Those two, those two things are, are pretty much the factor there in the lower PPNR, but we're really pleased where that's where we're gonna turn out from a, from a PPNR standpoint and a net income standpoint in the, the next two quarters.
Stephen Scouten (Analyst)
Great. Thanks, Craig. Thanks for taking my questions. Appreciate it.
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question today comes from Kevin Fitz-Simmons from D.A. Davidson. Kevin, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Kevin Fitzsimmons (Analyst)
Hi, good morning, everyone.
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Good morning.
Kevin Fitzsimmons (Analyst)
I'm just curious, as you look longer term, obviously, the loan-to-deposit ratio got impacted by the deal. So now, you know, not, appearing from a top level as quite as liquid as it once was. What, what do you aspire for that ratio to be longer term? How do you see it trending? Do you see it trending down into the 80s, or, or are you very comfortable with it where, where it is right here?
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
We don't really believe that a loan-to-deposit ratio of 95% higher is sustainable. Where we would target that would be sort of in the mid-80s, if I had to put a number on it. When you look at sort of our, sort of our earnings asset mix, we like where the percentage of loans is to earning assets. It's really focusing in on the, on the right-hand side of the balance sheet and replacing borrowing to core deposit growth. That would be, that would be our goal. Right now, loans sitting at around 69% of earning assets is right where we like it. In fact, we'd like it to be 70-74, in conjunction, though, with an 85% loan-to-deposit ratio.
Kevin Fitzsimmons (Analyst)
Got it. I apologize, apologize if I missed this before. The mix shift that's going on with deposits, it looked like non-interest bearing obviously came down at a good clip, and probably a lot of that's due to SVB. Where and when do you see that settling, Craig, that percentage of non-interest bearing?
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Well, in the rate cycle terms, I think, you're right. I mean, we entered the quarter 39% non-interest bearing. We exited at 32. I mean, ultimately, you know, in normal business cycles, we like to see our non-interest bearing around 40%. Where it was coming into this transaction is a good spot for us. Beyond that, we like to see core checking around 65%, then which includes NOW accounts and non-interest bearing. Right now we're around 50%, and that's totally due to the rate environment. We see that optimizing as the interest rate environment moderates going forward.
Kevin Fitzsimmons (Analyst)
Got it. One, one last one for me. What, what is the rough % of the direct bank right now of total deposits? Do you have any upper limit on what you want that to be, or do you view that as just, if that's better than borrowing, you're willing to take that up?
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Yeah.
Kevin Fitzsimmons (Analyst)
With no upper limit?
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Direct bank is 20 it's around 20% of our deposit base. The branch network remains overwhelmingly the largest concentration, around 40%. We do see those deposits as core. Obviously, they're a little bit more expensive, but they are, you know, at, at the margin, less expensive than FHLB borrowing, so. 91% of those deposits are insurers. We, we view those as core deposits, acknowledge they're more expensive than branch network deposits.
Kevin Fitzsimmons (Analyst)
Right. I, and I guess as, as the rate environment, evolves, maybe over time, those would get replaced, in a different rate environment by branch-based deposits. Sounds reasonable?
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
That, that sounds reasonable.
Kevin Fitzsimmons (Analyst)
Okay. All right, that's it for me. Thank you very much, guys.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question is from Brian Foran from Autonomous Research. Brian, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Brian Foran (Analyst)
Good morning. Maybe on that loan-to-deposit point, I mean, what would be like a rough timeline to get back to the, the mid-80s in your mind, or a range? You know, are we talking multiple quarters, or multiple years, or somewhere in between?
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Yeah, it, it's, it's multiple years, and, and it's sort of tethered to the, to this, this note with the FDIC. I, I would, I would put it out 3 to 4 years to get that ratio into that range.
Brian Foran (Analyst)
Okay. You know, I know it's too early for 2024 outlooks and guidance, but just when you think about the Q4, I, I think everything ties out to about $1.8 billion reported and $1.65 billion accretable yields, if I got all your comments right. You know, is that, is that $1.65 billion kind of a, a base to work off of in your mind, or there's still, you know, obvious puts or takes? You know, I guess, is that like a, a stabilized run rate that then maybe you could sustain or grow off of in your mind, or is there still some pressure to, to think about in the first half of 2024?
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Well, in 2024, you know, if you look at the forward curve, there's 5 rate cuts projected next year. Given our asset sensitivity, we would have both declining net interest income and absolute dollars and in margin if that was to occur. Although, I think our margin will be very respectable compared to peers, even in that environment. I would work off of the 1.8-1.9 base, and then consider what 5 rate cuts might do on the back half of 2024.
Brian Foran (Analyst)
Got it. Okay. Thank you very much.
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Yep, thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question is from Christopher Marinak, from Janney Montgomery Scott. Christopher, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Christopher Marinak (Director of Research)
Hi, thanks. Good morning. Wanted to follow back up, Craig and team, on the liquidity. If you look at the liquidity information you've given us, would you already be kind of at the full LCR, if that's imposed on the new capital guidelines?
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Yes, I, I think we would exceed it.
Christopher Marinak (Director of Research)
Okay. That's, that's what I thought. I just wanted to verify that. Great. Well, thanks for that information there.
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Yeah.
Christopher Marinak (Director of Research)
Is there anything that you are doing or have done here the last several months about sort of retaining staff? Is there anything, you know, kind of different that you've implemented now that you've had a full quarter to integrate SVB?
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Are you speaking with respect to SVB or just in general?
Christopher Marinak (Director of Research)
Really SVB. Thanks.
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
We have retention and severance payments promised in terms of our merger costs that I just mentioned. We do have retention. Peter, I think we're doing a great job keeping our revenue-producing bankers in place. All of that's sort of accrued and in the run rate. Feel like we're doing really well with retention.
Christopher Marinak (Director of Research)
Great. Okay, thanks for that. Then just final thing for me is, did the unfunded commitment reserve change at all, or was that stable in the quarter?
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
It was fairly stable. It declined, like $12-$15 million range.
Christopher Marinak (Director of Research)
Perfect. Okay, great. Thank you for taking all of our questions.
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Before we take our next question, just like to remind everyone, to register a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Our next question is from Brody Preston, from UBS. Brody, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Brody Preston (Equity Research Analyst)
Hey, good morning, everyone. I think I'm last, which is good because I've got a handful of questions. Wanted to ask if you have to go through CCAR in 2024, and you know, how much more in expenses do you think you need to build for the enhanced regulation?
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
The, the expenses are baked in. We, we have the resources, although we're constantly hiring talent. The numbers we talk about in terms of run rate include heightened expenses to meet the regulatory standards.
Brody Preston (Equity Research Analyst)
Okay. Do you have to go through CCAR in 2024?
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
2024, we have to submit a capital plan to the Fed, so we're subject to the capital plan rules. 2025, we become CCAR a CCAR bank, but given our Category 4 size, we will not submit CCAR until 2026.
Brody Preston (Equity Research Analyst)
Got it. Thank you for that. On the loss share agreement, do you happen to have a dollar amount on the estimated, like, total amount covered by the loss share? For the $97 million NCOs, do you recover any of that from the loss share?
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
It's it's, Robert's telling me it's 64-
Peter M. Bristow (President and COO)
Around $64 billion.
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
-billion. The, the, the first loss tranche is $5 billion, and we don't anticipate losses nearing that, so we don't anticipate reimbursements from the FDIC for charge-offs.
Brody Preston (Equity Research Analyst)
Got it. What drove the extra $52 million of, of NCOs from SVB above the $45 million that you ID'd last quarter? Like, was any of it on the cusp of being okay, but you decided to move on from something?
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
In terms of our charge-offs? Yeah.
Brody Preston (Equity Research Analyst)
Yeah, yeah. Just the, the additional, you know, you, you called out $97 million SVB-related NCOs.
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Right.
Brody Preston (Equity Research Analyst)
Last quarter, you had flagged $45 million specifically in the deck. I was just wondering, you know, what, what drove you to move on from the other 52?
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
We didn't decompose the $11 million delta.
Brody Preston (Equity Research Analyst)
Okay.
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
The charge-offs were $96. We reserved for $85. The other $11 would be in the general reserve.
Brody Preston (Equity Research Analyst)
Yeah, I was talking more to the. You had called out $45 specifically that you had reserved for last quarter that was planning on being charged off, but you charged off, you know, $85 that you had reserved for this quarter. I was just wondering what the like, if there was any reason for that?
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
45 was a large single charge-off, but we had 85 reserved against the ones that, the 97 that charged off during the quarter.
Brody Preston (Equity Research Analyst)
Got it. Okay.
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Got it.
Brody Preston (Equity Research Analyst)
Just on the SVB deposit base, the non-interest bearing levels, I was wondering how those changed since May. You gave the 3/31. The overall deposit balances were flattish since May. I just wanted more insight on the mix since that May 5th date that you gave in the last quarter's deck.
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Are you talking SVB?
Brody Preston (Equity Research Analyst)
Yeah, specific to SVB.
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
The non-interest... I don't have that information sitting in front of me, but in terms of non-interest bearing, we started at $35 billion on SVB, and at the end of the quarter, we were at $21 billion.
Brody Preston (Equity Research Analyst)
Got it. Okay.
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Yeah.
Brody Preston (Equity Research Analyst)
Do you happen to have the, the spot interest-bearing deposit costs at quarter end, Craig?
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Oh, wait, you have that handy. I can... I'm looking it up right now. I know I have it, it's just a matter of time. Our cost of deposits at the end of the Q2 was 1.68%.
Brody Preston (Equity Research Analyst)
Okay. I also wanted to ask on the, on the off-balance sheet client funds, what drove the decline from the $79 billion that you had in April? I guess, how did that trend through June, and now through July? Also the, the fee rate looks a little bit lower than legacy SVB was, so I wanted to better understand what was driving that.
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
The balances we've included in the presentation, so I'm flipping to those. Off-balance sheet client funds, came in at $88 billion, and ended the quarter at $70.
Brody Preston (Equity Research Analyst)
Yeah. I was just wondering if you had any insight as to, as to what drove them, what drove them lower, you know, from the April level.
Peter M. Bristow (President and COO)
This is Peter. Again, this is sort of what I talked about, the overall sort of reflection of what's going on in the space in terms of venture capital investment. You're not seeing a lot of inflows there. But the fact that we have the 60 or 70 of off balance sheet has been fairly consistent, and I think it's a really good reflection of the fact that a lot of those clients are still here and still do, you know, choosing us for their business. They're just moving more off balance sheet as opposed to into the bank. To me, it's a sign of strength.
Brody Preston (Equity Research Analyst)
Got it. Okay. I just had two last ones. The previous guide, when I kind of took what your EPS guide was last quarter and then backed out the moving parts, it kind of indicated that you expected a $650 core provision for the year. Is that still a good level to be thinking about for core provision, excluding the day two CECL?
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Did you say 650?
Brody Preston (Equity Research Analyst)
Yeah.
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Million?
Brody Preston (Equity Research Analyst)
That's what I kind of backed into.
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
I think it's about $400 for the year.
Brody Preston (Equity Research Analyst)
For the year? Okay, cool. Thank you for that.
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Yeah.
Brody Preston (Equity Research Analyst)
And then the-
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Yep.
Brody Preston (Equity Research Analyst)
The last one was, Craig, you know, you guys, you know, it, it's, it's such a small portion of the loan portfolio now, that Class B office that you inherited from CIT. I think the $1.1 billion is, is what's with the commercial bank, and, you know, so it's less than 1% of loans. You know, we saw another, you know, large, large bank in Capital One just kind of move on from their Class B and C office portfolio and put it in held for, held for sale. They took a big charge-off on it this quarter. You know, is there, is there any thought around doing something similar and just saying, like, "You know, it, it's a credit overhang and we don't really want to deal with it. We've got plenty of capital, plenty of reserves. Let's just move on from it?
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Yeah, we don't have any plans to do that.
Brody Preston (Equity Research Analyst)
Got it. Cool. Thank you very much for taking all my questions, everyone. I appreciate it.
Craig L. Nix (CFO)
Yeah. Thank you, Brody.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. This is all the questions we have today, so I'd like to turn the call back to your host, Deanna Hart, for any closing remarks.
Deanna Hart (SVP of Investor Relations)
Thank you, everyone, for joining us today on our quarterly earnings call. We appreciate your ongoing interest in our company, and if you have further questions or need additional information, please feel free to reach out to the investor relations team. We hope you have a great day.
Operator (participant)
Thank you, everyone, for joining today's call. You may now disconnect your lines and have a lovely day.
