Provident Financial Holdings, Inc. (PROV) Earnings Call Transcript

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the Provident Financial Holdings First Quarter of Fiscal 2027 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand the conference over to Donavon Ternes, President and CEO. Donovan, please go ahead.

Thank you, Rebecca. Good morning. This is Donovan Turnas, President and CEO of Provident Financial Holdings. And on the call with me is Peter Fan, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I have a brief administrative item to address. Our presentation today discusses the company's business outlook and will include forward-looking statements. Those statements include descriptions of management's plans, objectives or goals for future operations, products or services, forecasts of financial or other performance measures and statements about the company's general outlook for interest rates, economic and business conditions. We also may make forward-looking statements during the question-and-answer period following management's presentation. and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from those discussed today. Information on the risk factors that could cause actual results to differ from any forward-looking statement is available from the earnings release that was distributed yesterday, from the annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended June 30, 2026, and from other SEC filings that are filed subsequent to the Form 10-K. Forward-looking statements are effective only as of the date that they are made, and the company assumes no obligation to update this information. To begin with, thank you for participating in our call. I hope that each of you has had an opportunity to review our earnings release that we distributed yesterday, which describes our fiscal -- or our first quarter of fiscal 2027 results. In the most recent quarter, we achieved modest loan growth of approximately $4 million, primarily in our portfolio of single-family loans. We originated $45.4 million of loans held for investment, a slight decrease from the $46.4 million originated in the prior sequential quarter. loan principal payments and payoffs declined to $40.8 million, a decrease of 6% from the $43.5 million in the June 2026 quarter. Loan prepayment activity declined in the current interest rate environment as refinancing opportunities are less favorable. We continue to make adjustments to our underwriting requirements within certain loan segments to support disciplined sustainable growth in origination volume. Despite the volatility in the market, our loan pipeline has remained stable, suggesting that our loan origination volume in the December 2026 quarter will remain within the range of recent quarters which has been between $29 million and $46 million. We would also expect to see continued moderation in loan prepayment activity. Our credit quality remains strong -- you will note that nonperforming assets were just $504,000 or 4 basis points of total assets at September 30, 2026, and essentially unchanged from $505,000 at June 30, 2026. Additionally, there were no loans in the early stages of delinquency at September 30, 2026 indicating no emerging credit issues. We continue to closely monitor commercial real estate loans, particularly loans secured by office buildings but we believe based on our borrower profiles and collateral characteristics that these loans will continue to perform in accordance with their terms. We have outlined these characteristics on Slide 13 of our quarterly investor presentation, which shows that our exposure to loans secured by various types of office buildings is limited to $33.3 million or 3.2% of loans held for investment. You should also note that we have only 3 CRE loans that totaled $424,000 maturing in the remainder of fiscal 2027. We recorded a $777,000 provision for credit losses in the September 2026 quarter. The provision recorded in the first quarter of fiscal 2027 was primarily attributable to an increase in the expected life of the loan portfolio, resulting from higher market interest rates which reduces the incentive for borrowers to prepay. The allowance for credit losses to gross loans held for investment was 64 basis points at September 30, 2026 and increased 7 basis points from 57 basis points at June 30, 2026. Compared to the sequential quarter ended June 30, 2026, our net interest margin increased 11 basis points to 3.32% for the quarter ended September 30, 2026, comprised of a 20 basis point increase in asset yields partially offset by a 9 basis point increase in funding costs. For the quarter ended September 30, 2026, our average cost of deposits increased 11 basis points to 1.47%, while our cost of borrowings decreased 3 basis points to 4.01%. The September 2026 quarter net interest margin was augmented by approximately 10 basis points as the result of a Federal Home Loan Bank special cash dividend. The net deferred loan cost amortization associated with loan payoffs in the September 2026 quarter compared to the average of the previous 5 quarters, positively impacted the net interest margin by 1 basis point compared to a positive impact of 3 basis points in the June 2026 quarter. New loan production is being originated at higher mortgage interest rates than the weighted average rate of the existing loan portfolio. The weighted average rate of loans originated in the September 2026 quarter was 6.9%, compared to the weighted average rate of 5.43% for loans held for investment as of September 30, 2026. In the December 2026 quarter, our adjustable rate loans are repricing at interest rates that are higher than their current interest rates. We have approximately $116 million of loans repricing to an interest rate that we anticipate will be approximately 65 basis points higher to a weighted average interest rate of 7.21% and from the current interest rate of 6.56%. I would note that the opportunity to reprice maturing wholesale funding downward is largely behind us. We have approximately $104.9 million of Federal Home Loan Bank advances, brokered certificates of deposit and government certificates of deposit maturing in the December 2026 quarter at a weighted average interest rate of 3.94%. Given the current interest rate environment, we expect to reprice these maturities somewhat higher. All of this suggests that any net interest margin expansion, adjusted for the Federal Home Loan Bank special cash dividend in the September 2026 quarter will be something less than recent prior quarters. Our FTE count at September 30, 2026, was 160 compared to 164 1 year ago. We continue to look for operating efficiencies throughout the company to lower operating expenses. Operating expenses were $7.6 million in the September 2026 quarter, a slight decline from $7.7 million in the June 2026 quarter. Our short-term strategy focuses on disciplined balance sheet growth by expanding our loan portfolio. We believe this approach is well suited to the current economic environment and the normalized yield curve. During the September 2016 quarter we made progress on the execution of this strategy, maintaining our loan origination volume while benefiting from a more moderate level of loan prepayments. We exceed well-capitalized capital ratios by a significant margin, providing flexibility to execute on our business plan and capital management goals. We believe that maintaining our cash dividend is very important. We also recognize that prudent capital returns to shareholders through stock buyback programs is a responsible and effective capital management tool. To that end, we approved a new 5% stock buyback plan on October 22, 2026. During the September 2026 quarter, we repurchased approximately 86,000 shares at a total cost of $1.6 million. combined with approximately $880,000 of cash dividends paid to our shareholders. Total capital returned to shareholders represented approximately 158% of the September quarter's net income. We encourage to review our September 30 investor presentation that has been posted to our website. You will find that we included slides regarding financial metrics, asset quality and capital management, which we believe will provide additional insight on our solid financial foundation supporting the future growth of the company. We will now entertain any questions that you may have regarding our financial results. Thank you. Rebecca?

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Adam Kroll with Piper Sandler.

I'm on for Matthew Clark. Maybe just starting out on loan growth, it looks like balances held pretty steady and some small origination volume during the quarter. But I guess I'd be curious to hear how pipelines are shaping up so far this quarter. And if you expect any potential change in prepayments with the drop in rates since the end of the quarter?

Sure. So we started the quarter with pipelines relatively similar to where they were during much of the September quarter. We are entering, however, in the December quarter and the beginning of the March quarter. The holiday season which there is typically drops with respect to loan origination volume unless the country is in a refinance position where interest rates are such that refinance activity is elevated. That is not the case today. In fact, we would expect our loan payoff volume to decline from what we saw in the September and June quarters, for instance, has risen to a point where it really is a small percentage of total mortgages outstanding that are in the money with respect to the ability to refinance at a lower rate. So on that side, we think payoffs will come down. That will help growth. But additionally, we are entering the core season, if you will, with respect to origination activity because we're entering the holiday season. Nonetheless, we do expect that we will be able to gin up some growth in the December quarter and perhaps in the March quarter.

Got it. I appreciate the color there. Maybe moving to the margin. Obviously, you have some nice tailwinds on the loan repricing side of things. But maybe if I could get an updated outlook or how you think the margin will perform and walk through sort of your deposit beta assumptions if we were to get a couple of more rate hikes.