Preferred Bank Q2 2026 Earnings Call

Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jeff Haas of Financial Profiles. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, Cole.

Hello, everyone, thank you for joining us to discuss Preferred Bank's financial results for the second quarter ended June 30th, 2026. With me today from management are Chairman and CEO Li Yu, President and Chief Operating Officer Wellington Chen, Chief Financial Officer Edward J. Czajka, Chief Risk Officer Nick Pi, and Deputy Chief Operating Officer Johnny Hsu. Management will provide a brief summary of the results, then we will open up the call to your questions. During the course of this conference call, statements made by management may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements are based upon specific assumptions that may or may not prove correct.

Forward-looking statements are also subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors relating to Preferred Bank's operations and business environment, all of which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond the control of Preferred Bank. For a detailed description of these risks and uncertainties, please refer to the SEC required documents the Bank files with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC. If any of these risks materialize or any of these assumptions prove incorrect, Preferred Bank's results could differ materially from its expectations as set forth in these statements. Preferred Bank assumes no obligation to update such forward-looking statements. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Mr. Li Yu. Please go ahead. Thank you.

Thank you all for joining our conference phone call. Good morning. We are pleased to report that our net income for the second quarter of 2026 was $33.5 million, or $2.78 a share. This number compares favorably with the previous quarter and same quarter previous year. It also exceeded our internal budget. For this quarter, we have been quite focused on the resolution of troubled assets. Non-performing loans during the quarter has been reduced $70 million, or 41.5%. Likewise, the criticized loans has been reduced by $90 million, or 34%. With the large reduction in classified assets, or criticized loans, the reserve requirement on these items has been reduced. Therefore, our provision expense for the quarter is $1.2 million. Looking ahead at June 30th, we still have three more non-performing loans totaling $60 million scheduled to be resolved in the second half of 2026.

However, as each one of them is involved in its own bankruptcy case proceeding, the exact timing of the resolution will be at the mercy of our legal system. This quarter, we have satisfactory or good loan production activities. Loan increased $125 million, or 2% in quarter basis. If you count in We also made up the $70 million loan we sold. The actual origination effort was quite good. On the deposit side, it only increased $52 million, or 4.8% in quarter basis. We are well aware nationwide, all banks or the entire banking industry is reporting stiff competition in deposits. Going forward, this will also be our focused area. Net interest margin was 3.73%, favorably affected by the interest recovery. Our efficiency ratio was steady at 32% under currently inflationary environment.

All these underlying activities make us feel pretty comfortable about our operations, and we're optimistic regarding the remainder of the year. Thank you very much. I'm ready for your questions.

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a 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 for the first question. Our first question today will come from Matthew Clark with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning.

I guess first on the loan yields, nice interest recovery there. Stripping that out, it looks like loan yields maybe reset to about 7%, barring additional recoveries. I guess, maybe any comments on loan pricing, whether or not you can kind of hold that yield if the Fed stays on hold, or you think there's some incremental pressure there?

I will first let Warren answer that, okay? I weigh that on. Okay.

Well, the market is very competitive. We try to squeeze every 10 basis points, 25 basis points out of each transaction. We're at the mercy of a lot of our competitors who are still out there offering much lower rate that it just doesn't make sense. Having said that, a lot of uncertainties in the market, that's why we want to make sure that we are disciplined enough to continue to take on the loan that give us a certain quality loan. Again, quality loan that give us a type of return that we need to continue our earnings.

Well, Matthew, every bank every year is crying for loan competition. It's become a standard language nowadays. We're very fortunate. I guess because we turn over more stones. We get a little better yields than our peer group. That probably can verify that by the call reports there.

Okay, great. On the deposit pricing side, sounds like from the release that there was some upward pressure on deposits throughout the quarter. Do you have the cost of deposits in the month of June? Maybe remind us of the CDs that you have coming due over the next two quarters and the roll off, roll on rates.

Two quarters. You threw me a curve ball there, Matthew. First off, the cost of deposits. Total deposits was 306 as of the month of June. Cost of interest-bearing deposits was 344. The cost of total deposits has been held in check not necessarily by the rate environment, but by the fact that somewhat we're seeing a slight change in the mix of our deposits. We've seen some decent growth in DDA, which has certainly helped keep deposit costs down. In terms of going forward, we have $1.5 billion maturing in the Q3 of total CDs at an average rate of 380. Those will likely come back on at a slightly higher rate than 380. I don't have the fourth quarter roll off.

That's okay. Okay. NIM probably resetting back down to the low 350s is fair here in the 3Q?

On an adjusted basis, it was 360 for Q2. When you strip out the noise with respect to the interest recoveries, it was 360. Yeah, we would expect probably mid 350s for Q3.

Okay. Last one for me, just on the expense run rate. Relatively flat this quarter. The outlook there in the second half.

Yeah. We were a little disappointed with respect to non-interest expense this quarter, Matthew. Professional services, mainly legal fees, were elevated because of the large relationship that we're working through right now that Mr. Yu touched on. In terms of going forward, I would say Q3 is going to be fairly flat to Q2. Might be a little better.

Let's hope. These things, everything start to catch up in cost, okay? It's just getting simply every same service, same item is costing maybe more nowadays.

Great. Thanks again. Our next question will come from Gary Tenner with D.A.

Davidson. Please go ahead. Thanks.

Good morning. Just wanted to ask about loan growth. It sounded like you guys have a fairly constructive outlook for the back half of the year, if I interpreted that correctly. Could you kind of talk about maybe expectations around that?

Okay. Well, obviously Q2 was very strong.

As Mr. Yu mentioned, without the sale of the two notes, net growth would have been closer to $180 million.

Actually $194 million. That's after a large payoff activities. Actually the new loan origination rate, things just bouncing around, partially affected by interest rates movement in the Fed level, okay? I still remember in early spring, in springtime, the whole country is anticipating rate cuts. There's a lot of optimism going forward and people getting to the deal based on, in the case of C&I activity or in the case of real estate, based on a new cap rate, they want to come into deal. Suddenly things take a change in June, and everybody is talking about, oh, there will be rate increases in July. With July's call report, where is it? We see a lot of hesitation on the customer side.

At least they get the deal delayed or just not going forward as fast as it used to be. That, and the much increased level of activities from the non-bank lenders, their competition, we think that going forward in the third quarter certainly will be a lot tougher than second quarter. Whether it will recover in the fourth quarter and it will become a lot, we just have to be very flexible and take opportunity as it comes. I don't know if that answered your question or not because that's about all we can do.

Yeah, no, I appreciate the thoughts on that. Thank you. Our next question will come from David Feaster with Raymond James.

Please go ahead. Hey, good morning, everybody.

Good morning, David. Look, the loan origination trend, it's extremely encouraging.

I'm curious, how much of this is really a function of improving demand versus increasing productivity from your team? Just kind of where are you seeing strength? How's the pipeline shaping up? Again, how is demand across your footprint?

Well, from my angle, I see in the second quarter the increase in demand. I just mentioned early in the quarter, there's a lot more optimism in our customers level than it is today regarding the rate of cost they have to pay. Obviously the same level of optimism is not there anymore compared to the springtime. How is the pipeline shaping up? How do you see the activities going forward? Can you guys answer that?

You want to take a shot first?

Yeah. I'll chime in. I have some ideas.

David, the pipeline's still pretty good. I think opportunities are still out there to review deals, and we're getting a lot of deals that we are looking at. Not all of them seem to make sense from a combination of a pricing standpoint or what have you. The pipeline is still pretty vibrant. It's just we're seeing more deals right now.

Okay. As I mentioned earlier, loan demand is high out there, but it's the quality loan demand that we're looking for.

Every quality loan demand, we are more competitive because every bank out there or private lender, they all want those type of loans, or maybe not private lender. We try to squeeze every penny out, squeeze another 10 basis points or maybe 20 basis points, whatever, a little bit here and there. Our production team, they work very hard, keep turning stone, keep turning up quality loan demand, and then we have to, again, be disciplined, be very selective. Having said all that, to repeat what we did in the second quarter, as Mr. Yu say, well, we always try to do our best to build a loan portfolio that's profitable and sustainable.

Okay. We touched on the deposit pricing competition. The NII growth you saw this quarter was great, and that obviously helped with the funding cost side and on the margin as well. I'm curious, how do you think about, again, with this competitive backdrop, how do you think about your ability to drive core deposit growth going forward?

That is also a mandate within our internal operation. Realizing that everybody is doing the same thing and realizing we've got one more situation that is really affecting us, which is the stock market, and especially the opportunity that AI stock is providing to the general public. We see many customer is investing their excess cash into the stock market today as compared to the old days, where saving in the bank used to make something make them comfortable. The trend is that everybody is joining the stock market now. This is another competition level that we're facing right now. We just have to try our best to improve our mix of deposit level.

Okay. The cost you just have to pay whatever is out there.

Yeah. Maybe kind of just to that point, maybe a philosophical question. How do you think about NII growth relative to the margin here? I know in the past you've discussed and you look at the margin is an output, not an input, right? I'm curious, is that still the philosophy? Whether you're willing to compete. You talk about paying what you're going to pay. Are you willing to compete on pricing and sacrifice some margin to drive NII growth? Just help us think through the margin trajectory as we look forward kind of in this rate environment.

Frankly speaking, that this bank has traditionally give up a lot of opportunity that our loan office bring to us, okay? Because many of the loans that bring over does not meet a rate requirement, which because that the deposit we have to pay, we like to be little more selective in our rates, okay? I mean Competition, low cost competition is never our answer to all situation. When you do too much, then you load your balance sheet with all kinds of low rate loans, okay? It's hard to get out of it. I guess we all see several cases that cause some of the, even the bank failure. We are very careful that try to stay, first of all, hopefully asset sensitive, that will keep us deposits and loan rates aligned, okay?

Number two is situation, select the rate of the loans we think is proper for us. The price come to us, we become little bit selective sometimes.

David, I'll just add to that. You and I have had this discussion many times. We focus more on net interest income growth as opposed to managing to the margin. The margin's simply a mathematical output of how well we executed.

Okay. Again, you're operating with a healthy margin. I'm just kind of curious if we're willing to sustain it there, if we're focused on expanding it as we kind of look beyond that, the fourth quarter and beyond.

I'm sorry, was there a question in there?

It was an open-ended statement, I guess.

Yeah. I mean, what it is, we've already talked about there's differential in loan yields on payoffs versus new origination. Pricing is tight. Deposit pricing is difficult. Those obviously all lead to, those kind of all point to some compression in the margin going forward, and probably on into next year.

That's helpful. Thanks, everybody. Our next question will come from Tim Coffey with Brean Capital.

Go ahead. Thanks. Morning, everybody.

Just getting back to the deposit question and the competition. I guess your first half of the year on deposit growth, you're running kind of low single digits. Is that a reasonable run rate for the full year?

We hope not. We'd certainly like to increase that. As we've talked about before, and Tim, you know this, there's no pipeline for deposits. That's the real challenge in not necessarily knowing what's coming three months, two months down the road. We just have to continue to work. I think the, as I said, the growth in DDA, on a year-to-date basis is very encouraging. We'd like to continue to work toward that end, for sure.

Okay. How should I think about your loan or deposit ratio? Because it does seem like you've got some room to kind of potentially hold it at the current level. Is there any appetite to take it higher?

Well, right now we're running about 95%, okay? It bounce around a bit in there. Internally that we are both feel comfortable with that particular situation. I guess short-term, we can let it rise a little bit, long-term, we like to keep that ratio. We think liquidity for us is very important.

Right. Okay. Got it. On the allowance, it's running at the low end of kind of the historical range, say six years or so. Say everything remains kind of the way it is right now. No changes to really kind of the inputs that determine a provision at this point. Do you feel the need to kind of refill the bucket?

I think Nick probably should answer that. The question was, do we want to, in terms of Sure ALL to the total loan?

Yes. For Q2, our ratio is 1.22% of the total loan. Based on the current credit quality trend of the bank, as you know, Q2, we have a lot of resolutions. Credit trend is heading in the right directions. We do reserve quite a sizable reserve on the Q side as well in terms of the covering the current uncertainties regarding our inflation reserve, high employment, all those kind of things. We believe for the upcoming quarters, it should be still stay approximately at the similar level of the reserve at this moment. Definitely, if there's any changes, we will adjust that right away in order to adjust our assumptions for our reserve side.

Okay. Great. Then just my last question has to do with capital. Say loan growth doesn't pick up the way you're anticipating. Would you consider getting back into the market for buying back shares?

Yes. Obviously, that would be one of the use of the capital items that was continuous under evaluation going forward.

Great. Okay. Those are my questions. I appreciate your time. Thank you.

Thank you, Tim. This will conclude our question and answer session.

I'd like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Liu for any closing remarks.

Thank you so very much. I hope that we can continue to report results and exercise only our expectation, okay? Thank you. The conference is now concluded.

Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines at this time.