The Bank of N.T. Butterfield & Son - Q2 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning. My name is Nick, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Call for the Bank of N.T. Butterfield & Son Limited. I would now like to turn the call over to Noah Fields, Butterfield's Head of Investor Relations.

Noah Fields (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Today, we will be reviewing Butterfield's second quarter 2024 financial results. On the call, I'm joined by Michael Collins, Butterfield's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Craig Bridgewater, Group Chief Financial Officer, and Michael Schrum, President and Group Chief Risk Officer. Following their prepared remarks, we will open the call up for a question-and-answer session. Yesterday afternoon, we issued a press release announcing our second quarter of 2024 results. The press release and financial statements, along with a slide presentation that we will refer to during our remarks on this call, are available on the Investor Relations section of our website at www.butterfieldgroup.com. Before I turn the call over to Michael Collins, I'd like to remind everyone that today's discussions will refer to certain non-GAAP measures, which we believe are important in evaluating the company's performance.

For a reconciliation of these measures to U.S. GAAP, please refer to the earnings press release and slide presentation. Today's call and associated materials may also contain certain forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by these statements. Additional information regarding these risks can be found in our SEC filings. I will now turn the call over to Michael Collins.

Michael Collins (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you, Noah, and thanks to everyone during the call today. I am pleased with Butterfield's performance in the second quarter as we achieved strong profitability supported by client-focused products and services, a stable balance sheet, diversified income, and disciplined expense management. In Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, we benefited from our market-leading bank and trust businesses, while we continued to develop our mass affluent product offerings in the Channel Islands. We also benefited from our specialized financial services offerings in the Bahamas, Switzerland, Singapore, and the United Kingdom, where we provide mortgage lending in high-end central London. I will now turn to the second quarter highlights on page four. Butterfield reported strong financial results in the second quarter, with net income of $50.6 million and core net income of $51.4 million.

We reported core earnings per share of $1.11, with a core return on average tangible common equity of 23.3% for the second quarter of 2024. The net interest margin was 2.64% in the second quarter, a decrease of four basis points from the prior quarter, with the cost of deposits rising to 189 basis points from 178 basis points in the prior quarter. Net interest margin compression has slowed this quarter as deposit cost increases modestly outpaced asset repricing. The board has again approved a quarterly cash dividend of $0.44 per share. We also continued to repurchase shares during the quarter, purchasing a total of 1.1 million shares at an average price of $33.48 per share.

The board also approved a new share repurchase program for up to 2.1 million shares through to the end of 2024, which demonstrates our continued confidence in the bank's performance and supports our capital management strategy of producing consistent and attractive shareholder returns and efficient use of capital. Yesterday, we also announced that Stephen E. Cummings, a highly qualified and experienced financial services industry professional, has joined Butterfield's board as an independent director. He is a great addition to our board and will further strengthen our governance and financial expertise, and I look forward to working with him. I will now turn the call over to Craig for details on the second quarter.

Craig Bridgewater (CFO)

Thank you. Thank you, Michael, and good morning. On slide six, we provide a summary of net interest income and net interest margin. In the second quarter, we reported increased net interest income before provision for credit losses of $87.4 million. The net interest income benefited from a higher volume of average interest-earning assets. Average interest-earning assets in the second quarter of 2024 of $13.3 billion were 1.8% higher than the prior quarter, driven by an increased average deposit volumes. The yields on interest-earning assets and Treasury assets were each up seven basis points compared to the prior quarter. The investment portfolio yielded 2.3%, which was seven basis points higher than the prior quarter, reflecting the continued reinvestment of maturities from lower-yielding securities of approximately $30 million per month.

During the second quarter, the bank continued to reinvest into a mix of U.S. Agency MBS securities and medium-term U.S. Treasuries. Average investment balances decreased by $31.6 million to $5.17 billion compared to the prior quarter, primarily due to maturities. Slide 7 provides a summary of non-interest income, which totaled $55.6 million, an increase versus the prior quarter, primarily due to higher trust fees, an increase in the equity pickup from a portfolio investment, and higher unclaimed balances that were recognized into income. These favorable changes were partially offset by lower banking and FX fees due to lower transaction volumes. Non-interest income continues to be a stable and capital-efficient source of revenue through the cycle, with a fee income ratio of 39% experienced for this quarter.... On Slide 8, we present core non-interest expenses.

Total core non-interest expenses were $90.3 million, a 3.9% increase compared to $86.9 million in the prior quarter. The increase in core non-interest expenses is primarily due to higher performance-based incentive accruals and inflationary increases in staff health care benefits. Expected additional costs from the recently upgraded core banking software, as well as some consulting and legal costs, which we do not expect to continue in future quarters. As communicated previously, we continue to expect a quarterly expense run rate of $88 million in the second half of 2024.

This contemplates the increased expenses resulting from the amortization and servicing of our new cloud-based IT investments and core banking system and branch upgrades, as well as the cost of our new team servicing the acquired book of trust clients, all while taking into consideration the expected benefit of the group-wide cost restructure announced in the third quarter of 2023. I will now turn the call over to Michael Schrum to review the balance sheet.

Michael Schrum (President and Group Chief Risk Officer)

Thank you, Craig. Slide 9 shows that Butterfield's balance sheet remains liquid and conservatively managed. Period end deposit balances increased to $12.5 billion from $12.1 billion at the prior quarter end, and $12.0 billion at the end of 2023, continuing to show the stability of our deposit base. Despite the recently elevated deposit levels, we continue to expect a medium-term deposit level range of between $11.5 billion and $12 billion. Butterfield's low risk density of 33.5% continues to reflect the regulatory capital efficiency of the balance sheet, with a lower risk-weighted residential mortgage loan portfolio continuing to represent 69% of our total loan assets.

On Slide 10, we show that Butterfield continues to have strong asset quality with low credit risk in the investment portfolio, which is now 100% comprised of double A or higher-rated U.S. government guaranteed Agency securities. Loan asset quality has also continued to perform adequately, with non-accrual loans consistent with the prior quarter at 1.5% of gross loans, a net charge-off rate of 1 basis point, and an allowance for credit losses coverage ratio of 0.5%. Our past due and accruing facilities are expected to remain somewhat elevated over the next few quarters due to a sizable legacy hospitality facility in Bermuda, working through a receivership and sale process, which we expect to conclude late this year.

The economic conditions of the markets we lend into remain favorable, and we are well collateralized with the significant majority of our loans to values below 70%. The bank actively works with borrowers to help them understand and meet their obligations, particularly if they're experiencing difficulties. On Slide 11, we present the average cash and securities balance sheet with a summary interest rate sensitivity. Asset sensitivity increased modestly in the second quarter of 2024 due to a temporary inflow of client funds, which were held in short-term assets. Net unrealized losses in the AFS portfolio, included in OCI, were $176.8 million at the end of the second quarter, in line with the prior quarter.

At current forward rates, AFS OCI is expected to improve by $50 million or 28% over the next 12 months, and $82 million or 46% in the next 24 months, allowing for reinvestment in higher yielding securities. Slide 12 summarizes regulatory and leverage capital levels. Butterfield's capital levels continue to be conservatively above regulatory requirements. While not a regulatory requirement, our TCE to TA ratio of 6.5% is at the conservative end of our target range of 6%-6.5% and is indicative of the health of the overall capital levels. I'll now turn the call back to Michael Collins.

Thank you, Michael. During the first week of July, Hurricane Beryl quickly intensified into a Category 5 hurricane with a destructive path through the southeastern Caribbean and eventually passing just south of the Cayman Islands. Cayman, fortunately, was spared a direct hit and avoided any significant damage. Our operating jurisdictions are well prepared to handle hurricanes and other natural disasters. The bank has contingency plans available to help recover quickly from any outages. We will continue to develop Butterfield's growth story organically and through M&A. We are in regular dialogue with potential sellers, participate in bid processes, and seek to acquire appropriately positioned trust or banking businesses in the right offshore jurisdictions. In the absence of M&A, we forecast long-term organic balance sheet growth rate will be in line with the blended GDP rates for our jurisdictions, which we estimate to be around 2%-4%.

In addition to organic growth, earnings per share is augmented by share repurchases over time, and we continue to focus on operating efficiency. Butterfield's ability to create shareholder value benefits from our leading market positions, a strong balance sheet, recurring fee income, improving operating efficiency, and thoughtful capital management.

... These help to generate a profitable and stable franchise, which will benefit all of our stakeholders. Thank you. With that, we would be happy to take questions. Operator?

Operator (participant)

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask the question, you may press star, then one on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from David Feaster with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

David Feaster (Director)

Hey, good morning, everybody.

Craig Bridgewater (CFO)

Good morning, David. Morning.

David Feaster (Director)

Maybe just starting on deposits. You know, the deposit growth was great to see, obviously primarily driven by the Channel Islands. I guess, first, could you just touch on what drove that increase and maybe some of the deposit trends you're seeing across your jurisdictions? And then, you know, going back to your expectations for deposits declining to $11.5 billion-$12 billion, I guess, what's driving the expectations for that decline?

Craig Bridgewater (CFO)

Yeah. Hi, David, it's Craig. So I'll start out. I think kind of over—I guess we still think that the deposit will settle between $11.5 million-$12 million. During the quarter, we saw some kind of large deposit inflows come in, but we don't expect those to stay around for a long time. So towards the end of June, we saw about kind of $300 million come in. We know that no one relates to kind of a customer that's a startup, that's gonna deploy those funds over the next couple of months. We've kind of talked about some other deposits that are actually in kind of liquidation proceedings. We still expect those to flow at some point.

And then kind of another kind of large customer deposit relates to a investment management company. So again, they would we would expect them, those to be deployed over the next few months as well. So we still think that, you know, our guidance around kind of, you know, $11.5 million-$12 million is still, is still relevant.

David Feaster (Director)

Okay.

Michael Schrum (President and Group Chief Risk Officer)

Yeah, and David, it's Michael Schrum. Just add to that. You know, if you look at the average deposit levels of $12.3 billion, you know, those, the exit run rate, obviously, or the period end balance was a bit elevated. And so, you know, we, you know, we have line of sight to a couple of large clients as Craig mentioned, and just wanted to kind of foreshadow that.

David Feaster (Director)

Okay, that's great. And then it's great to see the strength in the trust business this quarter. Sounds like somewhat due to special fees. I'm curious to some of the trends that you're seeing on the trust side, broadly. And then it looks like, you know, AUM in the trust business were up, and there was a decent decline in the custody side. So just kind of curious some of the trends there and how you think about, you know, the trust business going forward.

Michael Schrum (President and Group Chief Risk Officer)

Yeah. So David, it's Michael Schrum. As you know, we closed a Credit Suisse onboarding of the client portfolio in Singapore and Guernsey, and there's still a few clients coming in sort of after the closing, but just kind of coming in via the referral method. You know, from time to time, we do get restructuring or special reporting fees off those. I wouldn't sort of equate the AUC or AUT to the revenue on this because a lot of those underlying assets are non-financial assets and, you know, investments like shares in companies and intangibles, and they sort of get revalued from time to time, and so that can kind of jump up and down, but doesn't really relate to the revenue.

The revenue is really driven off the sort of annual fee, which is sort of the recurring bit of it, and then the special or time-based fee. So a little bit more like a law firm or consulting firm where, you know, we record the time, and then we bill that to the client. And occasionally, big families have restructuring where, new kids are added to the trust or people move jurisdictions, and so we need to rotate some of the assets around. And the whole purpose of that trust is orderly succession of assets through generations. And so we feel pretty positive about the trend. Obviously, the Credit Suisse book has really brought, you know, Singapore to a level where we are getting much more inbound referrals, so the pipeline's looking pretty good.

You know, I think, you know, the global trends in the trust business are probably a migration towards, you know, higher end. Just the cost to service a trust is going up with all the tax reporting and all the extra AML and compliance that's required around that. So, the entry point really for somebody paying our level of fees is migrating north, in terms of wealth. But there's still plenty of opportunities out there, and especially in Asia, which is probably a bit of a younger market than Europe, for example. You know, we see some maturity in that market, and that will bring extra fees to us over time.

David Feaster (Director)

Okay.

Craig Bridgewater (CFO)

And I'll just add to that. Kind of, I mean, the assets we acquired from Credit Suisse, those are performing as we expected. Kind of when we closed that, we kind of gave you some ideas around what we expect that revenue to be, and that's actually tracking kind of along those lines as well. So that's a positive. But as Michael mentioned, kind of those assets coming on board has led to an increased pipeline, particularly in Singapore, where we're seeing a lot more activity, a lot more referrals, and that's kind of given us a positive trend around the trust business.

David Feaster (Director)

Okay... That's great. And then maybe just hoping that you could touch on some of the resi mortgage trends you're seeing. It, it looks like mortgage non-accruals actually improved a bit. I'm just curious, maybe the health of what, what you—from your perspective, kind of the health of your borrowers, how are you working with those borrowers that, you know, may be struggling, and just any other trends that you're seeing in the housing market across your jurisdictions?

Michael Schrum (President and Group Chief Risk Officer)

Yeah, so it's Michael Schrum. So let's start with Bermuda. It's pretty stable in Bermuda. Rental yields are pretty good, and so, whether it's first home buyers or investment purposes, the values are holding up, and we're seeing that obviously when we see transactions in the market, and so that's good. There's always, in a small island, you know, lack of supply, you know, because by nature, the market is pretty small, and we do all the manual underwriting ourselves. Obviously, we lend on conservative parameters, and it's a well-seasoned book as well.

You know, Cayman, a bit newer, a bit more frothy in terms of recent valuations, but again, we're fairly cautious, little bit more competitive with, some of the Canadian banks in that market. But we're sort of taking our time and saying, "Look, we wanna be a consistent provider of credit into the market, and not sort of stretch at this point in the, in the rate cycle." But again, good levels of transactions, going on. So quite a lot of building going on in Cayman as well, so mixed-use condo, hospitality. We obviously prefer the sort of condo lending rather than the hospitality lending piece of that. But there's certainly a lot of activity there.

But on the flip side, we've seen recently, with rates being where they are, quite a bit of prepayment in that book as well. And, you know, so, you know, that is what it is. I think we're not really a loan growth story in that sense, but, you know, we're a consistent provider of credit on conservative underwriting guidelines internally. London, you know, continues to perform very well. You know, there's obviously been a recent election there, and so there's some noise and liquidity, you know, that is not coming to market, if you will, because people are waiting what the next government is going to lay out their policy platform around, particularly eligibility.

So people want to be resident in the U.K., but maybe non-domiciled for tax purposes. How is that going to work going forward? There's some reform that's been advertised around the landlord-tenant relationships and the leasehold relationships there, and so I think people are sitting a little bit more on the sidelines in the U.K.. But again, valuations are holding up in Prime Central London. You know, it's just taking a bit longer for inventory to turn there, really. And I think tourism in Bermuda has been good this year, so we've seen pretty good performance on the underlying resi mortgages. I think, you know, early on in the rapidly rising interest rate environment, we had some concerns coming out of COVID with the Bermuda resi book, but it's actually kind of...

We've seen some of those returning to performing, so that's a good news story there. So again, steady, sort of, we're not stretching for credit. We're seeing the loan book going a little bit backwards at this point in the rate cycle, but we expect the activity to kind of pick up again, you know, when we see rates come down a little bit.

Only place that's a little bit slow would be in the Channel Islands, simply because, you know, we've developed a good mass affluent bank with, lots of accounts now, good deposit base. We've issued credit cards, but mortgages are, are sort of flat, simply because of the, the rate structure at this point. But when rates start moving down, that, that'll pick up as well.

David Feaster (Director)

That's great color. Thanks, everybody.

Michael Schrum (President and Group Chief Risk Officer)

Thanks.

Michael Collins (Chairman and CEO)

Thanks, David.

Operator (participant)

Again, if you have a question, please press star then one. The next question comes from Tim Switzer with KBW. Please go ahead.

Tim Switzer (VP)

Hi, thank you for taking my questions. My first question is around elevated liquidity levels you guys had this quarter as deposits came in and increasing your asset sensitivity a little bit. Yeah, I know you guys have talked about deposits normalizing a little bit, but are there any other actions you guys wanna take to maybe lower the asset sensitivity over time, beyond just the normalization and liquidity?

Michael Schrum (President and Group Chief Risk Officer)

Yeah, it's a good question. It's Michael Schrum. It's a good question. We've, you know, we're just naturally asset sensitive because, you know, we're 40% lent, right? So essentially, our behavioralized deposits are, you know, seasoned over time, and the lending preference in our lending markets is for a floating rate. And so, so that gives rise to that sort of what we call structural asset sensitivity for us. But, you know, we feel pretty good about the OCI burn down, you know, path that we're on. You know, obviously, there's always discussions, you know, around should we be doing something different in the securities portfolio and re-ladder at this point. But I think at the moment, you know, we're pretty committed to the path.

We have, I think, a visibility now of a rate path or at least a direction of rate path that gives us some confidence around OCI burn down and therefore tangible book value growth. But, you know, it's something that we often discuss in terms of longer term. What is the level of fixed rate that we wanna have on the books, whether it's loans or investment securities versus floating rate? And because we don't have a lender of last resort or a central bank, we're naturally just going to have a lot of liquidity because essentially we need to manage our own treasury operations across the four different banking jurisdictions.

And so that gives rise to a further increase in sensitivity, because obviously, we test, you know, we use VaR and min-max, inflow outflows, to kind of estimate how much cash we need to hold. So I think the reality is we, you know, having been in Bermuda banks for a long time, you know, I've yet to see, you know, some structural action. But I think, you know, we're probably always gonna be a bit more sensitive, you know, through the cycle. I think the fees give us a great sort of buffer. They're very stable, capital efficient. But other than that, you know, it's an ongoing discussion, but nothing really to report.

Tim Switzer (VP)

Okay, I, I understand. That's, that's helpful. And with the expenses dropping back down to $88 million, that's a good amount of expenses dropping out of the run rate there. How should we think about the expense run rate in 2025? You know, assuming we only get a few rate cuts and knowing you guys have different levers, you’ve historically been able to pull. What are your... You know, are there any investment plans in the pipeline that might lead to some more growth back in 2025, from the $88 million level?

Craig Bridgewater (CFO)

Yeah, it's great to hear. I think if we look at expenses, kind of going into 2025, really, some-- I mean, inflation is probably the one thing that we need to be looking at as well. So kind of we do expect, you know, inc-- well, we'll see how inflation works in regards to kind of salary inflation, as well as suggested general costs of professional services as well. So again, you know, that obviously, that's kind of unpredictable at this point, depending on kind of where the rate environment goes, what we're gonna see. But, if we assume inflation is gonna be kind of at historic levels, we definitely have to apply that. In addition, we are making some investments kind of when it comes to continued investments in our IT infrastructure.

We are implementing upgraded core accounting system, going current in this year and into Q1 of next year. And once that becomes live, obviously there's gonna be increased amortization on that as well, and other kind of IT assets that we're investing in. So I think in summary, I think, you know, kind of taking that 88, which we expect to kind of get to in the second half of this year, given some of the one-offs that we did see in this quarter, and then applying, you know, a reasonable rate of inflation going into 2025. We're not expecting any significant kind of increases in headcount, or those types of things, or investments in other infrastructure.

We continue to kind of have our long-term strategy around, you know, really leveraging our Halifax Service Centre, which helps us with expense management, in the longer term.

Michael Schrum (President and Group Chief Risk Officer)

Yeah, and I think, Tim, it's Michael Schrum. The only thing I'd add to that is, you know, we're still committed to the 60% through cycle cost-income ratio. And, you know, we're roughly around there, at the moment. You know, from time to time, could be a bit higher, and we always try and look at, you know, if we see a path where, you know, revenue is dropping, you know, how do we either generate additional revenue or how do we use the cost lever? So we kind of you know, we're pretty disciplined around that process to try and get to the 60%.

Tim Switzer (VP)

Okay, great. That's really helpful. Thank you for taking the questions.

Operator (participant)

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

Noah Fields (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Nick, and thanks to everyone for dialing in today. We know it's a busy day for calls, and we look forward to speaking with you again next quarter. Have a great day.

Operator (participant)

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