Cathay General Bancorp Q2 2026 Earnings Call

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Cathay General Bancorp's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. My name is Asha, and I'll be your coordinator for today. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Following the prepared remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to participate in this portion of the call, please press star followed by one at any time during the conference. If assistance is needed any time during the call, please press star followed by zero, and a coordinator will be happy to assist you. Today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay at www.cathaygeneralbancorp.com. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Georgia Lo, Investor Relations of Cathay General Bancorp. Please go ahead. Thank you, Asha, and good afternoon.

Here to discuss the financial results today are Mr. Chang Liu, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Al Wang, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, we wish to remind you that the speakers on this call may make forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 concerning future results and events, and that these statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. These risks and uncertainties are further described in the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2025, at Item 1A in particular, and in other reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time. We caution you not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements.

Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date of which it is made. Any step that's required by law, we undertake no obligation to update or review any forward-looking statements to reflect future circumstances, developments, or events or the occurrence of unanticipated events. This afternoon, Cathay General Bancorp issued an earnings release outlining its second quarter 2026 results. To obtain a copy of our earnings release as well as our earnings presentation, please visit our website at cathaygeneralbancorp.com. After comments by management today, we will open up this call for questions. I will now turn the call over to our President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Chang Liu.

Thank you, Georgia. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. I will begin on slide four. We delivered strong financial performance in the second quarter, reporting net income of $92.2 million or $1.37 per diluted share. Net interest income increased to $200.9 million and net interest margin expanded to 3.48%, marking the eighth consecutive quarter of NIM expansion. This reflects our continued focus on managing funding costs in a competitive environment. During the quarter, we completed another securities repositioning as part of our ongoing balance sheet optimization efforts. The transaction resulted in a $10.6 million loss on sale but will improve future earnings and will further support margin expansion. Credit quality remains strong, reflecting disciplined underwriting. Net charge-offs declined while criticized and classified asset levels improved. Our reported efficiency ratio increased to 41.5% from 40.4% last quarter, primarily due to higher low-income housing tax credit amortization.

On an adjusted basis, the efficiency ratio was 37.0% compared to 36.9% in the prior quarter. Capital management remains an important part of our overall strategy. We continue to operate from a strong capital position, which gives us the flexibility to support growth, return capital to shareholders, and optimize our funding profile. During the quarter, we repurchased 242,000 shares at an average cost of $58 per share. In addition, our board recently approved an increase in our share repurchase authorization from $150 million to $200 million, subject to regulatory approval, reflecting our continued focus on disciplined and prudent capital returns. Separately, we intend to redeem a portion of our outstanding trust-preferred securities as part of our ongoing capital and balance sheet optimization efforts, which are expected to reduce our funding costs and improve recurring earnings. From an operating standpoint, we saw improved momentum as the quarter progressed.

Loan growth accelerated during the second quarter, and we continue to see healthy client activity and a solid pipeline heading into the second half of the year. These trends contributed to continued growth across the balance sheet while maintaining strong liquidity and capital levels. I will now turn the call over to Al to walk through our second quarter results in more detail. I'll provide some closing comments before we open up the call to Q&A.

Thank you, Chang. I'll start with our balance sheet on slide five. Period-end loans of $20.6 billion grew 2.2% linked quarter, supporting continued growth in interest income. Period-end deposits increased 1.9% linked quarter to $21.1 billion. While year-to-date deposit growth remains modest at $167 million or 0.8%, quarterly deposit growth accelerated meaningfully during May and June, reflecting improved momentum entering the second half of the year. Capital levels remain strong, with regulatory capital ratios well above minimum requirements and internal operating targets. While tangible book value per share increased 3% linked quarter and 10% year-over-year. Slide six breaks down our average loan and deposit mix. Average loan balances increased 1% linked quarter on an annualized basis, while the composition remained relatively stable and well-diversified. CRE concentration of 277% declined one basis point and continues to stay below regulatory guidelines. Average deposits increased 2% linked quarter on an annualized basis.

Non-maturity deposits increased while time deposits declined during the quarter, resulting in a more favorable funding mix and lower concentration in CDs. Our uninsured deposit ratio remained stable at 45%. Slide seven illustrates the strong liquidity, credit, and interest rate risk profile of our AFS securities portfolio. In June, we sold $160 million of lower yielding securities and recognized a $10.6 million loss as part of our ongoing balance sheet optimization efforts. The proceeds were reinvested at significantly higher yields, resulting in an earn back of less than 3.5 years while maintaining substantially the same duration and credit profile. Including this transaction, year-to-date, we have sold $371.7 million of lower yielding securities and reinvested $341.8 million into higher yielding investments.

These repositioning activities have an aggregate earn back period of approximately 3.1 years and were executed with no meaningful change to the portfolio's overall duration or credit profile. The portfolio remains highly liquid and defensively positioned. Duration is approximately two years. Roughly two-thirds of the projected cash flow is expected to return within the next 12 months, and more than 95% of the portfolio is backed by U.S. government agencies. Unrealized losses continued to decline during the quarter, benefiting from our ongoing balance sheet optimization efforts. On slide eight, net income of $92.2 million increased 6% linked quarter, driven by net interest income and lower provision for credit losses, partially offset by higher non-interest expense and higher income tax expense. I'll discuss each of these drivers in more detail on the following slides. Slide nine summarizes our yield and funding costs.

Net interest income reached $201 million, increasing $7 million from the prior quarter, driven by higher average earning assets, continued net interest margin expansion, and day count. Net interest margin expanded five basis points to 3.48%, reflecting continued improvement in funding costs, partially offset by narrower loan spreads. Slide 10 highlights non-interest income. Non-interest income increased $0.7 million from the prior quarter. Results included an $11.7 million gain on equity securities, largely offset by the $10.6 million loss on the available for sale securities related to our investment portfolio repositioning activities. Excluding these notable items, non-interest income was $20.3 million compared to $19 million in the prior quarter, reflecting growth of approximately 6%, including continued growth in wealth management.

Moving to slide 11, non-interest expense increased to $92.3 million this quarter from $86.7 million last quarter. The increase was primarily driven by $3.1 million of higher amortization expense on our low-income housing tax partnerships following the receipt of updated fund financial statements. Excluding this and other non-core expenses, adjusted non-interest expense was $81.9 million. Our adjusted efficiency ratio remains stable at 37% compared to 36.9% last quarter. Turning to slide 12, credit quality remains strong, with improvement across several key metrics. Net charge-offs declined to $1.8 million. Classified loans decreased $10 million, and criticized loans improved by $103 million during the quarter. The allowance for loan loss increased at $10 million to $219 million or 1.06% of gross loans, primarily reflecting loan growth.

Turning to slide 13, capital levels remain strong and well above regulatory minimum requirements. As part of our ongoing capital and balance sheet optimization efforts, we plan to redeem approximately $54.1 million of the $119.1 million of outstanding trust preferred securities, representing the redemption of our highest cost issuances. In addition, we completed a review of certain regulatory capital reporting treatments, resulting in an increase of approximately 20 basis points to our risk-based capital ratios. I'll wrap up on slide 14 with our outlook. We continue to expect full-year loan growth in the 3.5%-4.5% range. Given the slower than expected deposit growth during the first half of the year, we have revised our full year deposit growth outlook to 3%-4%.

Our NIM and NII outlook now assumes a 25 basis point rate increase in September. Even with that updated rate outlook, we remain confident in achieving our full year NIM target of 3.4%-3.5%. We are maintaining our adjusted non-interest expense growth outlook at 3.5%-4.5%, and we now expect our effective tax rate to be between 21% and 22% for the year, reflecting our updated earnings outlook. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Shane.

Thank you, Al. Overall, we're pleased with our performance for the first half of the year. We expanded net interest margin, delivered solid earnings, increased shareholder returns through both dividend increases and expanded share repurchase capacity, and continue to maintain strong capital levels. Looking ahead, we are entering the third quarter with good momentum. Activity accelerated meaningfully during the second quarter, and we remain focused on executing our financial objectives while maintaining our disciplined approach to growth, capital, and expenses. With that, we can now open it up for questions.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question at this time, please press the star then one key on your touchtone phone. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question. You may then return to the queue. If your question has been answered and you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press star then two. To prevent any background noise, we ask that you please place yourself on mute once your question has been stated. The first question comes from David Chiaverini with Jefferies. Please go ahead. Hi, thanks for taking the questions.

Wanted to start on net interest margin. You reiterated the 3.4%-3.5%. Can you talk about the puts and takes within that range? What could take you to the high end, the low end? You mentioned about how a rate hike is now assumed in there. Any commentary around that? Yeah.

I would say on the loan side, our loan yield dropped by about 4 basis points last quarter. We had an elevated level of interest recoveries and prepayment penalties last quarter, and that was about three and a half million or about 6 basis points of NIM. This quarter, it was about $2 million or 4 basis points of NIM. Kind of equalizing that out, loan yields would have been roughly flat. We think that'll continue to flatten out and as rates rise, hopefully that'll go the other direction and begin to expand at some point later in the year. On the deposit side, we're seeing, like everybody else, a lot of competition for deposits. We're happy that we were able to expand and reduce our deposit cost by 10 basis points last quarter.

I would say a lot of that had to do with pricing, a lot of that had to do with mix as well. We, particularly in this last quarter, did a great job of growing kind of lower cost deposits. Our time deposits kind of from a volume perspective, were relatively flat, but we were able to grow kind of non-interest bearing and savings and so on. A lot of that kind of reduction in deposit costs was mix, but some on the rate side as well. As we kind of look at next quarter and then the coming quarters, we do see pressure coming. We do have about $3.3 billion-$3.4 billion of CDs rolling off at a 3.54% rate. We think we'll replace those and it'll be probably a slightly higher yield than that.

There's going to be pressure, I think there's still room from an NIM perspective that I think it's probably more months than quarters at this point. We think there'll still be some room for expansion as we go forward in the year. Obviously, Dave, a hike in September is going to put a little more pressure, but we still think we're pretty confident that we'll still be in the range.

Got it. Al, last part of your comments, you mentioned about NIM expansion. I'm assuming that's on a core basis excluding some of the excess kind of income that you got this quarter. Since we're at 3.48 and you're calling for 3.40-3.50, is it fair to assume we could see a little bit of pressure on the NIM getting back into the middle of that range? Just want to make sure I'm hearing you correctly.

We're fortunate that we seem to have some of those recoveries and prepayment penalties every quarter. On a core basis, we would have been at 3.44% this past quarter. Again, I still think in the coming quarter, we still think even on a core basis, there's some room for improvement. Again, it's going to become smaller and smaller as we go forward. I think, depending on how well we can manage spreads and manage our deposit costs, we'll see even more pressure, obviously, in the fourth quarter. I'm not sure at this point whether we'll see an expansion in the fourth quarter, but certainly we're pretty confident we'll be in the range either way.

Great to hear. Just one quick one. Non-interest bearing deposit mix. How should we think about that? Could it be stable? It looks like about 17%. How should we think about that going forward?

Yeah, I think we're very happy that that went up. We're not projecting in our numbers and our NIM projections that we're going to grow on a relative basis of that. I can tell you that through the first 21 days of July, we've grown deposits $240 million. We're very happy about that. Although most of that is kind of equally distributed between money market, savings, and time. Again, not bigger growth in the last 2, 3 weeks on non-interest bearing. I think it's safe to say what we projected is the mix is about the same as where we left off in Q2.

Very helpful. Thank you. The next question comes from Matthew Clark with Piper Sandler.

Please go ahead. Hey, good morning.

Good afternoon, sorry. On the securities loss trade that you did, can you give us the pickup in yield that you got?

Yeah. The second quarter trade was about $161 million. Those securities were yielding about 3.15%, then 152 we put on at about 5.31% for the $10.6 million loss. That's about a three-and-a-half year earn back. A little over $3 million of NII a quarter. That's going to be, let's call it on a run rate basis, one basis point for margin. If I take a step back and I combine both loss trades from this year, it's about $8.5 million of annual income lift going forward and $3.1 million with the combined $26 million loss. I think that'll be more of a three basis point NIM impact lift going forward.

Okay. The timing of that in the quarter?

It was late. The first quarter impairment loss was traded in early April. We saw the full quarter from the first trade, or most of it. The second trade was in the second half of June. We didn't see much in the way of benefit from this last trade. We'll see the full effects for both going into next quarter.

Okay. It sounded like there's maybe a little bit of incremental pressure on loan yields, assuming we don't get a hike. Correct me if I'm wrong. On the deposit side, it sounds like there's maybe a little bit of upward creep going forward. Just trying to square that with your expectations for maybe a little bit of NIM lift here in the near term.

Yeah, I think, like I said, on an apples-to-apples basis, ex the interest recoveries and prepayment penalties, it's about flat on the loan side. I would say that there was a little more pressure on C&I and on construction, which those balances fell also. I can tell you that our origination rates for CRE and mortgage are higher than our spot rates. We feel like that's going to give us some tailwind, and obviously the overall rate environment should help as well. Again, we're projecting to be flattish. Hopefully, there's an inflection point later in the year and that we actually expand on the loan side. Obviously, over time, a hike could help, right? Depending on what happens to the long end of the curve.

On the deposit side, again, when we look at the CDs that are rolling off, the current pricing on CDs, as you know, is higher. It's fairly high. There's a lot of competition out there. There'll be some pressure on the CDs as they roll over.

Okay, thanks. The last one, just on the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit amortization that we should be using going forward on a quarterly basis.

Yeah. We got updated statements, and it implied a little bit higher. I think next quarter we're looking around $8 million of expense based on the schedules we have and the tax credits. Probably settling into around maybe a little under $10 million after that going forward quarter.

Okay. Thank you. Once again, if you have a question, please press star then one.

The next question comes from Gary Tenner with D.A. Davidson. Please go ahead. Thanks.

Good afternoon. I wanted to ask about the kind of loan outlook. You didn't change the guide at all in terms of the full year number. Was the second quarter, do you characterize it as kind of pent-up demand after a slower first quarter? Could you talk about the pipeline going into the third quarter? If you're seeing a reduction in activity, just given some of the macro uncertainty that's out there right now.

Sure. Gary, I think we were surprised as well on the first quarter being a little bit flat, but I think honestly it's just kind of pulling all of that stuff through in the second quarter. I think Q2 numbers were certainly better. We saw a little bit more C&I activity. Residential mortgage was up slightly but still a little flat. The CRE side kind of came up, even though construction went down a little bit. I think just kind of pulling that through, I think it was just a little more challenging the first quarter, and we saw the bulk of it in the second quarter. Looking ahead in Q3, honestly, I think we see pretty strong numbers so far. For the first three weeks of July, we've seen $200 million in bookings for the loans. That's a huge plus for us.

I think the bulk of that is actually more CRE business pulling through. Some of that is perhaps refi-ing some apartment deals and the multifamily stuff and some retail. We're seeing some of that activity that's kind of becoming more frequent to our coming into the portfolio. That's where the bulk of the growth is.

Okay. Appreciate that. On the allowance, obviously a bit higher provision just because of the growth you had this quarter than I think what I had in the model. The three basis point increase in the allowance from 103 to 106, was that a function of anything in the portfolio? Was it the Moody's forecast? What was the driver there?

No. We kept the economic scenarios kind of intact. Just from a geopolitical perspective, it is still pretty uncertain out there. That stayed intact. It was really, I would say about, of the $10 million, roughly $5.5 million was due to loan growth. There was about $3 million due to just specific reserves. We had a CRE property that we were specifically reserving for that came off. There is actually a sale agreement for that property where we will have zero losses. That was a little pick-up, and it was offset by a CRE multifamily that we put up some incremental reserves for. Net-net, that was $3 million for the incremental reserves. And then we did a little bit of housekeeping on one of the Q factors. It contributed another $1.5 million.

The $10 million is $5.5 million for growth, $3 million for specific reserves, and another $1.5 million for Q factors.

Got it. Thank you. Once again, if you have a question, please press star then one.

The next question comes from Kelly Motta with KBW. Please go ahead. Hey, good evening.

Thanks for the question. Turning to capital return, it's clearly been a part of the Cathay story for a while now. As part of the release, you upped the buyback authorization. It looks like buybacks this quarter were relatively on the lighter side. I'm wondering, given where the stock is, your appetite here, going forward, just given your very healthy levels of capital. Thanks. Yeah, part of the lightness was that we didn't get the formal nod from the regulatory approvals until kind of later.

It was, I think, the very end of April type of timeframe. That partially contributed to that. We expect to pick up the purchase activity as we go through the rest of the year. Now, the upsizing of the $50 million is really the way that we structured the program the last several years is that we've had, like, the $150 million the last couple of years have been planned as and approved as $135 million for 2026 and then $15 million for 2027. It was similar last year as well. What that meant is that we didn't really have much dry powder when we got into the first quarter.

For whatever it's worth, the bank stocks generally have been kind of, and stocks in general, there's kind of opportunity in the first quarter, in March in particular. We wanted to make sure we had dry powder going into year-end. I'd probably expect a similar pace to last year through the duration of this year, but also to be in the market in the first quarter as well, more so than we've been in the past.

Thank you for your participation. I will now turn the call back over to Cathay General Bancorp management for closing remarks. Please go ahead. I want to thank everyone for joining us and for your interest in Cathay.

We look forward to speaking with you at our next quarterly earnings release call.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation in today's conference. This concludes the presentation. You may now disconnect.