BancFirst Corporation (BANF) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. We are called to order. And welcome to the BancFirst Corporation Shareholders Meeting. My introductory comments will be very brief. We all look back at the unwinding of the pandemic stimulus. And while the stimulus run-up was a challenge in its own way, quantitative tightening is probably even more of a challenge to the banking industry. I'm proud to say BancFirst Corporation, navigated both sets of challenges very well. David Harlow will make comments specifically about the performance of the company at the end of the meeting. So we will proceed with our business. Randy, would you provide proof of notice of the meeting?

Yes. I have a certified copy of the notice of this meeting that was mailed on April 11, 2024, to shareholders of record as of March 28, 2024. On the record date, there were 32,966,678 shares of common stock outstanding, and I also have a list of the shareholders as of the record date.

Okay. Thank you. Is there anyone present or on the conference call who intends to vote in-person. None noted. If that changes [Technical Difficulty] would you just, we would like to know, during the meeting, if you changed your mind. Randy, do we have a quorum?

Yes, we do have a quorum present. The number of shares represented by proxy or in-person is 29,044,828 shares, which is 88.1% of the shares outstanding, so a quorum is present.

All right. Since quorum is present, the meeting is hereby declared convened. Proposal #1 is to elect 17 directors as nominated by our Board of Directors, which functions as a nominating committee of the whole for 1 year term. I need to read the nominees?

It's up to you.

Oh, good. I'm not going to read the nominees and they were in the proxy. And I'm sure everybody poured through that for every [Technical Difficulty]. So is there any discussion of the proposal? Hearing none. Would you please report the results of the election?

Yes. So I'm pleased to report that 27,209,232 shares voted for all of the directors, which is 93.68%. And so obviously, none of the directors received less than a majority of the shares voted.

And I think it's important to point out that, that percentage includes broker non-votes, basically is a no.

That's correct. They're not counted as, yes. So essentially, they are no.

Okay. And in general, this is not specifically accurate, but in general, when you add all those broker non-votes back, it pushes this us up by 3.5% or 4%. So you end up, give or take, 98%, 98% plus change on most of these -- so as we go through these proposals, mainly, a, if you want to add back broker non-votes to the tune of 3.5% or 4%, which already good numbers become even better at that point. Okay. So proposal #2, to amend the BancFirst Corporation Directors deferred stock compensation plan as described in the proxy statement. Any discussion of this proposal? Randy, would you please report on the voting?

Yes. In this case, this vote is measured as a percentage of shares outstanding, which, of course, will be a lower percentage. But there were 27,530,535 shares voted for the proposal, which is 83.51% of the shares outstanding.

And that means it has been approved. So let's look at that 83%. That includes not only broker non-votes. That includes non-vote. This is of all shares outstanding voted or not, which is a requirement for these kinds of changes in the -- what is it we're voting on the Director's compensation.

Yes. So it's the amendment to the deferred stock compensation plan.

So that is actually a good number when you factor in the votes that didn't even get cast. All right. Proposal #3 to ratify FORVIS as the company's independent registered public accounting firm. Audit Committee selected FORVIS to continue as our independent registered public accounting firm for 2024. They've served as our auditors for 11 years now. Greg Wedel is Chairman of the Audit Committee. Greg, any comments. Yes. Yes. They easily are the winner in terms of the highest percentage. So I doubt if he has much to worry about. But George, any comments from you? Thank you, George. Any discussion of this proposal. Randy, would you report the results?

In this case, this item is noted by total shares outstanding also. But FORVIS is the winner by land slide of the largest number of votes. It's 28,951,659 shares voted for their appointment, and that is 87.82% of the total shares outstanding, so it has been approved.

All right. The advisory vote to approve executive compensation. Any discussion of this proposal. All right, Randy?

So this is a matter that we vote on each year, and it's required under securities regulations and proxy rules now. And it is an advisory vote on our executive compensation levels and our plans. In this case, there were 27,489,508 shares voted for the advisory vote, which is 94.65% of the shares represented here at the meeting. Again, it's measured a little differently.

Back up to the -- only excluding the broker non-vote. So that was a strong outcome there. All right. So the proposal has been approved, which means all the proposals were approved with good percentages. I'll ask one more time. Are there any comments, questions from any of the attendees either in-person or online. All right. David Harlow, would you make some final comments.

I will work to be as brief as David was on the opening comments, but just a few things for overall, the company has continued to perform well. '23 it was a very good year for us first quarter of '24 was, we were at $1.50 a share and the consensus was $1.39 at a good beat in the first quarter. And what happens then is they adjust you up. We have a good first quarter. So I'll speak to that in a minute. But -- so overall, what's kind of contributing to our performance, really good loan growth, probably ahead of what we had anticipated. Through April we're up $246 million, up to $7.9 billion in loans, up 3.2%. So very good loan growth. Deposit growth, since when all of the, back in spring of '23 with the bank failures, we have finally reached positive shift mixing shift in the mix from DDA and interest-bearing. So we are now back to above where we were in total deposits. Now the mix has certainly changed. But good deposit growth. Our margin has continued to hang in there very good for a couple of reasons. One, the loan growth that we just mentioned. And also as loans are repricing, beginning to reprice those 3- and 5-year fixed loans that began to reprice. And we've had some securities mature. So out of the securities portfolio where we had some lower yielding securities that are now moving into Fed funds at 5.25%. So that's helped our margin. We were actually at 3.71% for the first quarter of '24 on our margin and with fourth quarter '23 we're 3.67%. So actually had some improvement in margin, which for the industry, that is kind of an outlier. So that very good performance on our margin. Our noninterest income continues to perform well, absent Durbin. This is our first full year of the impact of the Durbin Amendment, and that's [indiscernible] million pretax number for us. But outside of -- so we will -- our noninterest income will be down in '24 because of the full year Durbin. But our other noninterest income items like our trust business, our insurance business, our treasury business, all growing very nicely and continue to perform well there. Asset quality is still very, very good. We aren't seeing any systemic kind of movement in our classifieds. I think we have always historically performed better than peers through tougher times. We anticipate if things do get tougher, we will perform better again. So asset quality, very good. Our capital level is obviously very, very strong. however you want to measure it. We continue to grow tangible book value per share at a good pace and our asset quality -- I mean our capital level is very, very strong. One thing I think through our regulatory filing, you know, we switched to the Federal Reserve as our primary federal regulator from the FDIC. And we're just kind of getting into that. And our -- we were at a conference yesterday down in Dallas, Tuesday and Wednesday with the Federal Reserve for the regional banking companies that we're a part of now between $10 billion and $100 billion. And so really some -- there's change there for us in our first for that [ foray ] and experience. The fed has been very positive, kind of what we had hoped for. I think still more to come there. I think we're really trying to get our kind of regulatory footing to understand what the expectations will be, not only for BancFirst, but for Pegasus and Worthington and the company overall. But early returns very positive there. I think we're pleased with that change. Our liquidity is still very, very strong, over $2.2 billion with the Fed, little less than 20% liquidity. But we don't have -- and speaking about our liquidity and our deposits, we don't have any broker deposits, no listing deposits, still continue to be funded by our core deposits in our community banking system. So very, very strong there. Our outlook for the remainder of the year, I think, is reasonably positive. Everybody is still waiting on what the ultimate outcome will be with the economy, when or if, Fed will begin to reduce rates in the second half of the year, we will see. But I feel like we're very, very well positioned regardless of what happens with our strong balance sheet, our fortress balance sheet and whatever kind of opportunities present themselves here in the next half of the year and into '25, we'll be ready for it. So Dave, those are my comments, unless there are questions.

Okay, I'll ask one more time. Are there any other questions from any of the attendees, either online or in-person. Well, thank you all for being here. And seeing no further questions, I'll declare the meeting adjourned.