Axos Financial, Inc. (AX) Earnings Call Transcript

[Operator Instructions] The call is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Johnny Lai, Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and Investor Relations at Axos. Thank you, Johnny. You may begin.

Great. Thank you. And good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for your interest in Axos. Joining us today for Axos Financial, Inc.'s first quarter 2027 financial results conference call are the company's President and Chief Executive Officer, Gregory Garrabrants, and Executive Vice President, Derrick Walsh. Gregory and Derrick will review and comment on the financial and operational results for the quarter ended September 30, 2026, and we will be available to answer questions after the prepared remarks. Before I begin, I would like to remind listeners that prepared remarks made on this call may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties, and that management may make additional forward-looking statements in response to your questions. Please refer to the Safe Harbor Statement found in today's earnings press release and in our investor presentation for additional details. This call has been webcast, and there will be an audio replay available in the Investor Relations section of the company's website located at axosfinancial.com for 30 days. Details for this call were provided on the conference call announcement and in today's earnings press release. Before handing this call over to Gregory, I'd like to remind listeners that in addition to the earnings press release, we also issued an earnings supplement. All of these documents can be found on our Investor Relations website. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Gregory.

Thank you, Johnny. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I'd like to welcome everyone to Axos Financial's first quarter fiscal 2027 earnings conference call for the quarter ended September 30, 2026. I thank you for your interest in Axos Financial. Our core business fundamentals remain strong with double-digit year-over-year growth in our net interest income, non-interest income, ending loan and deposit balances, earnings per share, and book value per share. We continue to manage our interest rate risk well with net interest margins expanding by 10 basis points linked quarter to 4.64%. We remain well positioned for a higher-for-longer interest rate environment with de minimis unrealized losses in our securities portfolio and a $50 million unrealized gain in our loans held for investment. We closed the Capital One deposit acquisition in September, adding approximately $1.8 billion in IRA savings and CDs. Additionally, our non-interest income growth has been broad-based with contributions from our banking and lending businesses driving a 3.1% sequential increase to $63.8 million in the quarter ended September 30, 2026. Other highlights in the quarter include net interest income increased 4.2% linked quarter, and 13.8% year-over-year, driven primarily by a sequential improvement in our net interest margin and the Verdant acquisition that closed in September 2025, respectively. Ending loan balances were $25.9 billion at September 30, up by $316.6 million quarter-over-quarter. Strong originations were offset by higher levels of payoffs in single-family mortgage and warehouse, multifamily, and small-balance commercial real estate. We syndicated approximately $290 million of our capital call originations prior to the end of the quarter as we continue to build our capacity to agent a wider variety of deals. Excluding capital call syndications, our net loan balances were up by over $600 million this quarter. Elevated levels of prepayments resulted in prepayment penalty fee income increasing from $650,000 in Q1 of 2026 to $6.8 million in Q1 of 2027. Banking and service fee income was also up significantly year-over-year due to the addition of non-interest income from Verdant and rental income from our future corporate office building. Non-interest expenses were $195.4 million for the three months ended September 30, 2026, down by approximately $10.5 million linked quarter. Our efficiency ratio was 49.46% in the quarter ended September 30, 2026, up slightly from the corresponding period a year ago, primarily due to higher depreciation and amortization expense from the four acquisitions we closed in the past year. Our securities business had a solid quarter. Advisory fee income increased by approximately 10% year-over-year and contributed over $10 million in broker-dealer fee income in the current quarter. Net income was approximately $129.6 million in the quarter ended September 30, 2026, up 15.4% from the $112.4 million in the prior year's first quarter. The diluted earnings per share were $2.25 for the quarter ended September 30, 2026, compared to $1.2 million in the prior year's first quarter, representing a 16% year-over-year increase. We repurchased $7 million of common stock during the three months ended September 30, 2026, at an average price of $86.92 per share. From October 1 through October 23, we repurchased an additional $7 million of Axos common stock. We have approximately $112 million remaining in our current share repurchase authorization. Total originations for investment, excluding single-family warehouse lending, were $5.7 billion for the three months ended September 30, 2026, compared to $4.2 billion in the first quarter of fiscal 2026. Loan growth was strong in commercial real estate specialty lending, real estate lender finance, equipment finance, and other auto. Jumbo single-family, multifamily, and small-balance commercial loans were down by approximately $150 million quarter-over-quarter combined due to elevated levels of payoffs. Capital calls, which had been a strong growth area over the prior three quarters, saw ending loan balances decline by $345 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2027, with over $290 million of that decline resulting from our decision to sell down several deals that we agent. We expect capital call balances to resume growth in the December quarter. Closing of a few large loans we anticipate in the September quarter are expected to fund and close in the December quarter this year. Loan demand remains strong. Pipelines are up across several lending categories, making us confident that we will generate loan growth in the low-to-mid teens on an annual basis in fiscal 2027. Average loan yields for the three months ended September 30, 2026, was 7.48% up by 11 basis points from the prior quarter. Average loan yields for non-purchase loans were 7.38%, and average yield for purchase loans were 11.5%, which includes the accretion of our purchase price discount. The FDIC purchase loans continue to perform, and all loans in that portfolio remain current. New loan interest rates for the September quarter were 7.1% in single-family residential mortgage, 6.6% in multifamily, 7% in C&I lending, and 7.8% in our auto portfolio. Ending deposit balances were up 14% year-over-year to $25.4 billion as of September 30. Demand, money market, and savings accounts represent approximately 94% of total deposits, increased by 14.5% year-over-year. We have a diverse mix of funding across a variety of business verticals, with consumer and small business representing 61% of total deposits, commercial cash, treasury management, and institutional representing 15%, commercial specialty representing 15%, Axos Fiduciary Services representing 5%, and Axos Securities at 4%. The Capital One IRA deposit acquisition closed September 21, adding approximately $900 million of savings deposits and $900 million of time deposits. We deployed some of the Capital One deposits by proactively reducing wholesale and other non-core deposits in the September quarter. With a strong loan pipeline, we expect to deploy the majority of the excess liquidity from the Capital One deposits by the end of calendar 2026. Ending non-interest-bearing deposits were approximately $3.6 billion on September 30, 2026, down slightly from $3.8 billion as of June. The linked-quarter change in non-interest-bearing deposits was primarily due to the decline in Axos Securities cash sorting deposits. Client cash sorting deposits ended the quarter at $1.5 billion, and at the end of the quarter down from $1.7 billion at June 30. In addition to our Axos Securities deposits on our balance sheet, we had approximately $450 million of deposits off-balance sheet at partner banks. We continue to add new clients in our small business, cash, treasury management, and specialty deposit businesses. Total non-interest-bearing deposit accounts increased from approximately 58,000 as of June to over 60,000 as of September. Our lending and deposit businesses are well positioned for continued profitable growth. Approximately 75% of our loans are floating and reprice in 30 days or less with any change in the index rate. Given the dynamic nature of our loan portfolio, we have more flexibility than most other banks to quickly adjust to changes in the macroeconomic and interest rate environment. Our diverse sources of funding provide granular deposits across a variety of consumer, small business, commercial, and specialty accounts. We continue to make incremental progress on deposit cross-sell across a variety of our lending channels. Our recent deposit acquisitions provide us with incremental liquidity to support our budget of double-digit loan growth aspirations. We expect to migrate approximately $700 million of deposit balances from ARC's clients held at partner banks to Axos over the next few quarters. We expect our net interest margin to stay flat over the next few quarters. Our balance sheet remains asset sensitive, and we expect the benefit from a full quarter of the 25-basis-point September Fed rate hike to be largely offset by a full quarter of excess liquidity from the Capital One deposits in the quarter ended December 31, 2022. We also expect some of the incremental margin benefits as the remaining lower-rate single-family and multifamily mortgages originated prior to the Fed rate hike are replaced with higher yielding loans. In March 2027 quarter and beyond, we anticipate the lag in deposit repricing to counter a significant increase in the cost component of the margin benefits from the next few potential rate hikes. The quality of our loan book remains strong despite two isolated charge-offs we took this quarter. Net charge-offs were 109 basis points compared to 25 basis points in the prior quarter. The increase in the quarter reflected two non-performing C&I loans we had allocated specific reserves for in the prior quarters. So these losses were largely covered by existing loan loss reserves. The borrowers of the two cash flow loans were in different industries with fundamental and regulatory factors specific to each being the primary contributor to the deterioration in their underlying businesses. Excluding those two charge-offs, annualized net charge-offs to average total loans and leases were eight basis points in line with nine basis points last quarter, which excluded a specific credit charge-off last quarter. 99.2% of our loans are current as of September 30, 2026. Total non-performing assets were $157.5 million, down slightly from June 30. Non-accrual loans declined $1.7 million, including a $5.2 million decline in C&I and held roughly flat elsewhere. Real estate loans represent more than half of our total non-accruals as of September 30. Non-accruals and classified assets remain low across the majority of our real estate-backed and structured credits, and the weighted average loan-to-value of our real estate loans is 50%. We continue to actively monitor and manage loans and take conservative approaches with respect to downgrades and charge-offs. Loans 90 or more days past due declined 17% to 0.51% of loans, and classified loans declined approximately 19% since June 30, 2026. Non-performing assets to total assets was 51 basis points, down two basis points from June 30 and 13 basis points from September 30, 2025. We believe we are well-reserved overall with specific reserves for a small number of loans that are classified as non-accrual or substandard. Our allowance for credit loss covers 196% of non-accrual loans as of September 30, 2026. We had another quarter of double-digit year-over-year growth in non-interest income. Our sources of asset and transaction-based fees have expanded over time. Total non-interest income for the three months ended September 30, 2026, was $63.8 million, up 97% year-over-year. Banking and service fees in Q1 2027 were $35.2 million compared to $10.8 million in the year-ago quarter. Verdant was the primary contributor to the year-over-year increase in banking and service fees. Prepayment penalty fees were $6.8 million compared to $0.7 million in Q1 2026, reflecting higher repayments in our commercial lending businesses. In our securities business segment, advisor fees were up year-over-year due to higher asset and transaction-based income. Total assets under custody or administration increased $5 billion year-over-year to $48 billion. Net new assets were approximately $195 million in the quarter ended September 30, 2026, bringing the net new assets to $1.3 billion in the last four quarters. Cash sorting deposits on and off balance sheet decreased by approximately $200 million linked quarter due to the advisors deploying excess cash. Securities borrowed and securities lending volumes were up in Q1 2027 compared to Q4 2026 due to increased market volatility. Pre-tax income was $10.3 million in the three months ended September 30, 2026, up approximately 24% from $8.3 million in the corresponding year-ago period. We successfully closed four acquisitions over the past 12 months. Each acquisition provided tactical and strategic benefits across different Axos businesses. The Capital One and Genius Bank deposit acquisitions added over $4 billion of consumer deposits and 132,000 new accounts in a demographic that closely resembles our existing consumer client base. We have generated incremental checking relationships with Genius Bank customers, and we are evaluating ways to cross-sell brokerage and digital wealth management products to Capital One's IRA savings and CD customers. Verdant added $1.2 billion in leases and a seasoned credit sales and operations team with deep expertise and relationships across six targeted verticals when the acquisition closed in September 2025. In the first 12 months since Verdant joined Axos, we have been able to deepen our relationships with key vendors, dealers, and distributors and improve the overall efficiency and profitability in our equipment leasing business. Additionally, the Verdant team added expertise in syndications and securitizations, which will allow us to generate incremental fee income in the equipment leasing and other commercial lending businesses. ARC is a modern technology platform that serves small businesses nationwide. We are focused on integrating their platform into our banking infrastructure to provide clients with seamless technology and banking experience. Once the integration is complete, we'll be able to migrate deposits from new and existing customers at Axos Bank to Axos Bank, adding another source of low-cost deposits. We are actively looking at ways to leverage Axos Bank's deal flow and lending relationships to drive higher volume into ARC's digital debt marketplace. We see the debt marketplace as another way to deepen our relationships with small business clients and generate fee income without taking incremental credit risk. Furthermore, we believe we can leverage the technology and third-party integrations and entitlements ARC has built as a foundation for other consumer and commercial banking services to accelerate our strategic roadmap. ARC brings a talented team of product sales and software engineers who will help us enhance these development efforts. Our ability to generate above-average returns and growth provides us with multiple opportunities to deploy excess capital. In the last 12 months, ending September 30, 2026, we funded over $3 billion of organic loan growth, added roughly $1.2 billion in leases and on-balance sheet securitizations from Verdant, closed the Genius Bank, Capital One, and ARC Technologies acquisition, and repurchased approximately $29 million of Axos common stock. We remain highly profitable, generating a return on average assets of 1.72% and a return on average common stockholders' equity of 15.66% in the three months ended September 30, 2026. We have consistently achieved industry-leading returns through a variety of interest rate cycles while investing prudently in product technology, marketing risk, and people across each of our businesses. We have invested significant time and resources to establish and refine our AI governance, training, and deployment. The speed and scale and productivity improvements we have seen in various AI projects continue to exceed our expectations. As we deploy AI deeper into every part of our organization, we see exciting opportunities to deliver more value to our clients, business partners, and team members. Now I'll turn the call over to Derrick, who will provide additional details on our financial results.

Thanks, Gregory. A quick reminder that in addition to our press release, a 10-Q was filed with the SEC today and is available online through EDGAR or through our website at axosfinancial.com. I will provide some brief comments on a few topics. Please refer to our press release and our SEC filing for additional details. Non-interest expenses were approximately $195 million for the three months ended September 30, 2026, down by $10.5 million from $206 million in the three months ended June 30, 2026. Salaries and benefit expenses were up by approximately $2 million in the linked quarter due to the addition of ARC Technologies and one additional payday in the September quarter. Data and operational processing expenses were up $1.5 million quarter-over-quarter on increased investment in technology, including the continued deployment of AI across the enterprise. Depreciation and amortization expenses increased by $2.4 million linked quarter, reflecting the amortization of newly acquired intangibles from our acquisitions and depreciation of an infrastructure refresh and expansion. Excluding the $21 million legal accrual in the prior quarter, non-interest expenses in the three months ended September 30, 2026, were up by approximately $10 million linked quarter due to the items I referenced above. As a reminder, we conduct our annual merit-based compensation reviews in September and see the full-quarter impact starting in the December quarter. Overall, we expect our expense growth to normalize as efficiencies are gained through AI, and we maintain our 30% cap on personnel plus professional fees growth as a percentage of revenue growth. Provision for credit losses was $24.5 million in Q1 2027 compared to $17.9 million in Q4 2026. The provision for credit losses in the quarter was primarily driven by specific reserves in the C&I portfolio, partially offset by a less severe economic outlook. Going forward, we expect to maintain the loan loss reserve where we are currently in the 1.1% to 1.2% of total loans and leases. Turning to capital, over the last few months, we repurchased approximately 160,000 shares of common stock for $14 million and currently have $112 million remaining in our share repurchase authorization plan. At 9/30, our Tier 1 leverage ratio increased 21 basis points to 10.15%, and our total ratio increased 42 basis points to 14.81%. I'll wrap up with our loan pipeline and growth outlook. Our loan pipeline is robust at approximately $2.8 billion, consisting of $782 million of single-family residential jumbo mortgage, $30 million of SFR gain on sale, $195 million of multifamily and small-balance commercial, $71 million of auto and consumer, $1.7 billion of commercial loans. We expect loan growth to accelerate from the Q1 2027 levels as a result of growth across several lending businesses. We continue to target low-to-mid teen organic loan growth in our fiscal year ending June 30, 2027, excluding any potential acquisitions. We deployed some of the Capital One deposits to reduce higher cost funding and plan to use the remaining in combination with growth in our consumer and commercial banking deposits to fund our future loan growth. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Johnny.

Thanks, Derrick. Operator, we're ready to take questions.

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question is from David Chiaverini with Jefferies LLC. Please proceed with your question.

On the net interest margin, nice expansion in the quarter. Sounds like there's some durability to it in coming quarters. I guess in terms of the puts and takes, you mentioned about asset sensitivity, but the lag in deposit repricing could counter the benefits of the asset sensitivity. And then there's the dynamic around the Capital One deposits and the excess liquidity. Can you talk through some of those puts and takes? And if we don't get rate hikes that the forward curve is implying, what would that end up doing to the outlook?

Hey, David. Yes, so for the excess cash and deposits from Capital One, so that'll add approximately a $700 million average asset or excess cash, which is obviously a lower earning asset than our loan yields. And so that's the primary drag for this December quarter. And then what the prepared remarks were saying was that as you look forward, while that drag will be on the NIM this coming quarter, as you get beyond that, that kind of covers that timeframe where deposits start to catch up. And it's a highly competitive deposit environment right now in the industry. So I think that's fairly consistent with maybe what you've heard on other calls. And then from a net interest income standpoint, we are expecting some of that expansion for this coming quarter. It's just that from the NIM perspective, when looking at that percentage ratio, that will be what will be more flattish.

And then I wanted to ask on credit quality, about the loans, the C&I loans that were charged off. How long had you been kind of working out those loans? I'm wondering whether this was kind of a sudden change in the performance of these borrowers or if this had been in the works for a while.

With respect to one, we had charged off. That was the large charge-off that occurred, was it two quarters ago or last quarter? Which one? That was a couple of quarters. Right. So, yeah, so we had charged that off. We had reserved it several quarters ago. And the nature of the performance was such that we felt like it was the right thing to do to just go ahead and take that charge-off rather than just simply reserve for it. The other was also reserved for a while. And the performance there had, you know, been known to us for several quarters. We don't feel— we feel like we have a pretty good read on the portfolio, and then we're reserving as we see deterioration in those credits. And so we had created the reserves when we saw any weakness several quarters ago.

Our next question is from David Feaster with Raymond James.

Hi, good afternoon, everybody. Hey, David. I wanted to touch on the lending side. I'm just curious. You've got such a broad reach and are in so many different asset classes. You talked about the ability to flex certain ones up when things are doing better and vice versa. How's demand from your perspective as rates are rising? Have you seen any of that? Have you seen any shifts in your pipelines or are even things starting to fall out of the pipeline? I know there's some headline, you know, some risk in the mortgage, you know, from rising rates, but curious what you're hearing from clients and what segments you're seeing the best opportunities right now.

Yeah. As you said, because we have such a broad array of lending businesses, I'll have to go through each one. Interestingly, although I clearly— single-family mortgage demand is generally down, the securitization for 30-year mortgages, which are our primary competitor in the jumbo space, have actually gapped out pretty decently. And with the rise in the 10-year, that's actually made our business a little more competitive. So we have a larger pipeline there than we've had in a really long time. Now, how much of that pulls through is an interesting question, because there's escrow cancellations, things like that on the purchase side. But that pipeline is actually pretty decent. You know, I think that in some cases, some of the lenders that use us for back leverage when rates are high, rates go up, they look at it and they see if they have a pref rate that they feel like it's not that much of a difference in the carry between calling capital, let's say, and utilizing a line. There might be some pressure there. You know, frankly, what happened in this quarter, with a relatively lower loan growth, is we had several— well, quite a few, a few more payoffs than we thought. We had several loans that we expected to close that got pushed to this quarter where we expect growth to be better. And then we have been trying to develop our syndication business in the cap call area specifically, because as those lines get more efficiently priced, and we've been having a lot of luck keeping those clients. And so the syndication partners that we have wanted to get their assets level increases prior to the quarter end. So we syndicated almost $300 million of our capital call production in the quarter, which also impacted the end of period loan growth. But in general, we feel pretty good about loan growth getting back to where we hope to be this quarter. It'll be pretty broad-based, and we feel like there's even some upside there, based on the fact that some of these assets rolled, but I don't want to get ahead of ourselves because I do think that when rates rise, sometimes a lot of these folks, the decision to put leverage on something is somewhat discretionary. And so on the margin, they may think differently.

Okay, that's helpful. And then, look, you've closed a couple of deals. I know it's still early days, right? I mean, they haven't been closed that long, but we've talked about some of the cross-selling opportunities that you've identified across really all three of them. I guess, first off, how's retention been as these are closed? And how's cross-selling, and where are you, you know, kind of where are we at in the integration and the timeline for cross-selling, and where do you see the most opportunities?

Yes, well, I think on the Genius side that the checking account cross-sales has been going well. The Cap One deal is a little too early to tell. We do think over time that because most of those accounts were kind of interesting in the sense that they were IRA kind of checking and savings accounts that some of the managed portfolio robo-style products will be interesting to them. That's a little early to tell. On the ARC side, we think that the main benefit there is that the platform is so much more robust than our current small business platform, which is adding quite a few customers every month and quarter, that there'll be a lot more opportunity there as we provide that platform to our small business clients to help them grow. And then, you know, with Verdant, there's been a lot of synergy between that business and the floor plan finance business, because obviously the front side of vendor leasing is a vendor who has inventory on a floor plan. So that's been a really nice synergistic opportunity there.

Okay, that's helpful. And then, you know, just with ARC, maybe a higher level question. You know, with ARC and some of the tech lending, I know there's a lot of folks in the industry that are worried about, you know, a bubble in tech, just given the amount of capital being thrown at it and the significant buildout, you know, as well as the ripple impacts that AI could have on some of the other tech companies. I just wanted to get your thoughts on that at a high level. You know, where you play in venture lending and tech lending and what you're seeing in that space at this point.

What ARC's platform is specifically, and then I'll answer the question more broadly. ARC's platform was specifically a deposit competitor to a Brex and a Mercury, and it was really about a feature-rich Treasury management style platform that would enable Treasury management for smaller and mid-tier clients that maybe aren't well suited for larger treasury management platforms. So that had the $700 million of deposits. They're at partner banks now. They're going to migrate over when we get that platform integrated into our core, into our ecosystem. ARC also had, I think, a pretty unique platform that they built, which was essentially using AI. And they have quite a few lenders, well over 150 lenders who have signed up to that platform that are, some are bank lenders, but most are non-bank across a pretty wide spectrum. It does skew a little bit into the venture lending side. And ARC effectively acts simply as a broker and as a deposit taker. So, if a venture client comes to ARC, the client will get the deposit services through the ARC platform, and then they will, if they want debt, they would have that debt provided by a third party with ARC acting on a brokerage capacity. So in that case, you get the benefit of the deposits and you don't have the loan risk. Now, what we specifically do on balance sheet and venture lending is essentially nothing. We don't really do venture lending. We have the only real exposure there would be in back leverage facilities to the types of clients to the large venture lenders where you have 50 assets in a pool and you're looking at their performance, you know, in that pool and you have borrowing bases and percentage advance rates and concentration limits and those kind of things. So, you know, with respect to software lending, which I would classify, let's say, as non-venture-based, let's say, established, positive EBITDA companies, you know, we have relatively little of that. We don't have absolutely zero, but it's not very common. And the reason why is that although there certainly are areas where the SaaS apocalypse and whatever you want to call it, are overstated, AI really is changing the dynamic in a lot of these products, and so you know, many of them will take advantage of that, others will be threatened by it. And so really do a lot of direct software lending where that SaaS-oriented software lending. All right. That's terrific. Thanks, everybody. Thank you.

Our next question is from Gary Tenner with D.A. Davidson. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you. Good afternoon. I wanted to ask a follow-up on the asset quality bit. It looks like non-accruals in the C&I segment went down like $5 million. So, could you talk about inflows into non-accrual there following the charge-offs in the quarter?

Yes, there are a couple of other credits that we've also have specific reserves on that were placed on non-accrual this quarter. One of them is backed. It is a C&I loan technically, but it's mostly backed by real estate. And we have the real estate value on a recent appraisal at the loan balance. So we don't think there'll be much in loss there. And then we have another cash flow loan that we're going to be able to get back to the state that we have reserves on, but is on non-accrual for this period. That loan has placed on non-accrual this quarter. Okay, and is that loan potentially greater loss content than the commercial, than the other one, the first one? Yes. I think it has definitely higher potential loss content there. It's an operating business. It has asset value. It's doing things that they need to do to right the ship, but I wouldn't say it's riskless for sure. And we've put a decent size reserve on it.

Okay. Thank you. And then just on the prepayment penalty fee income, the last two quarters highest, you know, it's been since what fiscal '22, probably. So any— I know there's not massive visibility here, but any thoughts kind of on that trend continuing for any period of time?

Yeah, I don't think it's going to. I think it's going to fall this quarter. We, you know, I don't, I don't, I think that it's obviously a little bit difficult because, you know, the book is so relatively large, but I don't think it'll repeat this quarter. And I think loan growth will be better this quarter. And those two things are related, of course.

Yes, okay. Thank you. And just if I could sneak in a last question here. The deposits, the ARC-related deposits that'll come over. What kind of rate would those be ascribed?