Byline Bancorp, Inc. (BY) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

We welcome you to the Annual Stockholders' meeting of Byline Bancorp, Inc. I'll be acting as Secretary of this annual meeting and have been duly appointed as Inspector of Election of the meeting. At this time, I'd like to turn the meeting over to the Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer of Byline Bancorp, Inc.; Mr. Roberto Herencia.

Thank you, Ana, and good morning to all. Welcome to Byline Bancorp's 2021 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. My name is Roberto Herencia. I am the Executive Chairman of the Board and CEO of Byline Bancorp, and I would like to call this annual meeting to order. We wish we could be celebrating this meeting in person, but we continue to place the highest priority in keeping people safe and healthy even as COVID recedes. And we do our best to fight the pandemic. We welcome you all today at our virtual annual stockholders' meeting. Joining me on the line today is Alberto Paracchini, Director and President of the company; Lindsay Corby, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of the Company; and Ana Casanueva, Director of Legal and Secretary of the Board. Also in attendance today are our fellow members of the Board of Directors, Mary Jo Herseth, Antonio del Valle Perochena, Phillip Cabrera, Steven Kent, Bill Kistner, Bob Yohanan and Steven Rull. I would also like to recognize the participation of Chad Flaherty and Gabe Nachand, representatives of Moss Adams LLP, the company's independent registered public accounting firm. The word unprecedented seemed to increasingly lose its meaning over the past 12 months. But looking back on the prior year, which included the effects of a global pandemic, an economic crisis, collapsing of interest rates, racial injustice, protests and political upheaval, it was certainly an unforgettable year. We have always believed that our business and team are exemplary. But this year, in particular, we were inspired by the continuous ways we saw our colleagues go above and beyond, both personally and professionally. We managed to find safe ways to serve our customers and local business communities when they needed us the most. We also strengthened our capital position. We built our loan loss reserves. We resume growth. We manage our expenses and we continue to invest in our business and people. The past year brought national attention to the way in which structural and systemic module of racism perpetrates racial inequities. At Byline, we chose to double our efforts within our own diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives to ensure that we're doing the work to make Byline a safe and welcoming place for all of our employees and customers. We are proud of the momentum we are building, and are committed to making meaningful improvements in this area year after year. To activate our vision, we've created internal programs and assign resources to help drive change and growth. We formed the DEI Council and 5 employee resource groups, were also formed as employee led bodies, all of us committed to long-term transformative change. We remember those we've lost personally and professionally over the past year, including our dear friend and long-time Board Director, Jaime Ruiz Sacristán. And we continue to be grateful for the hard work and contributions of all of our Board of Directors. Recently, Bob Yohanan announced his intent to retire from the Board when his term ends, today at the end of the shareholders' meeting. Having served as a Director since 2018, Bob has been extremely valuable during his time at Byline, including supporting the acquisition of First Bank & Trust in Evanston, which he founded in 1995. His 50-plus years of banking experience, insight and knowledge will be missed by all of us on the Board and throughout the bank. We wish Bob and his wife, Joan, well in this new chapter and his very well-deserved retirement. We are enthusiastic about the year ahead. And remain confident in our ability to optimize what we see in the horizon. I now have the distinct pleasure of leaving you with our Director and President of the company, and the CEO of Byline Bank, Alberto Paracchini.

Thank you, Roberto, and good morning, everyone. I am Alberto Paracchini. I'm a Director and the President of the company. As you all know, the COVID-19 pandemic created many challenges for all of us. In March of 2020, we transitioned many of our staff to a work-from-home model and made significant investments in our branch network to safely serve customers and employees throughout the pandemic. We work with our employees to ensure they and their families were healthy and safe, and increased our paid time off policy to take into consideration illness, recovery, increased caregiver duties and required quarantine periods. Additionally, as the economy ground to a halt, we quickly mobilized a dedicated team and process to help provide more than $635 million in funding to small businesses through the SBA's Paycheck Protection Program. By the end of the year, PPP loans comprised 12% of our overall loan portfolio, and we processed over 3,700 applications with more than 1,200 loans working their way through the forgiveness process. Our average PPP loan balance was $169,000, and 74% of these loans were for less than $150,000, which truly supports the small businesses that make up the backbone of our economy and their local communities. In addition, we continue to monitor ways we could help in our local communities such as supporting local restaurants through over $45,000 in Gift Card Purchase Programs to help them through the pandemic. Now I'd like to provide you with some additional numbers for 2020. Over the past year, we reported net income of $37.5 million or $0.96 per diluted share, which was largely impacted by an elevated provision for loan and lease losses as a result of the pandemic. Our margin was 3.8% despite the significant interest rate compression and challenges to the economy that we saw and lived throughout 2020. Lastly, our efficiency ratio improved as a result of solid cost management to 58.4%. We reported $4.8 billion in total deposits and saw a $483 million increase in noninterest-bearing deposits by year-end, partially driven by PPP customers and increased liquidity due to market conditions and the various government stimulus programs. We ended 2020 with $103 million [Audio Gap] A portion of these savings, we will seek to reinvest back into technology, particularly in our online and mobile banking platforms. Overall, our deposit mix has never been more attractive with just over 37% of our deposits being made up of noninterest-bearing funds. Our pretax preparation return on assets was low in the beginning of 2020 due to the pandemic, but increasingly improved as we ended the year at 1.75% or 1.83% as adjusted. We successfully decreased our cost of interest-bearing deposits from 1.31% at the end of 2019 to 54 basis points by the end of 2020, which when paired with our improved deposit mix, helped us to maintain our margins despite ongoing revenue pressure from the interest rate environment. Last year, we also originated just under $400 million in SBA loans despite the disruption we saw at the beginning of the year. And our total loans and leases stood at $4.3 billion, with our originated loans increasing by $832 million at the end of 2020. We were aware of the uncertainty brought upon us by the pandemic and raised $75 million of regulatory capital in the form of subordinated debt to enhance our capital position. Our capital remains strong with a 16% total capital ratio at the end of 2020. In January of 2021, our Board authorized the doubling of our dividend from $0.03 per quarter to $0.06 per quarter per share, and the reinstatement of our stock buyback program. We entered 2021 with $2.5 billion in liquidity, which we believe gives us great flexibility to evaluate future opportunities. Last year, we also issued over $122 million in community development loans, dedicated $7.5 million in new community development investments, sponsored 23 financial literacy sessions, and our employees contributed 1,265 volunteer hours. We also worked directly with our customers to understand their circumstances and find ways to navigate the challenging environment together. This included more than 2,000 payment deferrals with active deferrals, representing only 2.6% of total loans and leases by the end of 2020. And that's an example of one of the many ways we supported our businesses during a challenging year. With that, I would like to turn the call back over to our Chairman, Roberto Herencia.

Thank you, Alberto. We're very proud of the way the company and the management team responded to the challenges and how we position Byline for great opportunities ahead of us here. As is our custom, we will conduct the business portion of this meeting first and answer questions at the end of the meeting. [Operator Instructions] The first formal item of business is the election of 8 directors of nominees to serve a 1-year term until the 2022 Annual Meeting of Stockholders or until their successors are fully or duly elected and qualified. The Board of Directors recommends a vote for each nominee to the Board. The second formal item of business is the ratification of the appointment of Moss Adams LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2021. The Board recommends a vote for the ratification of the appointment of Moss Adams. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Ana Casanueva to report on the results of the 2 formal items of business.

Thank you, Roberto. The company's record show that stockholders owning in excess of a majority of the outstanding shares of the company's common stock entitled to vote at the meeting are present in person or by proxy. As a result, I declare that a quorum is present at the meeting. I would now like to read and seek approval of the minutes of the company's 2020 Annual Meeting of Stockholders.

Ana, I, Roberto Herencia submit a motion to waive the reading of the minutes and approve the minutes of the 2020 meeting.

I, Lindsay Corby, second the motion.

Thank you. The minutes of the 2020 Annual Stockholders meeting are approved. They will be available for your review at the office of the Secretary of the Board of Directors. We will now proceed with a description of the matters properly brought before today's meeting. The first item of business is the election of 8 directors nominees to server a 1-year term until the 2022 Annual Meeting of Stockholders or until their successor are duly elected and qualified. The following persons have been nominated by the Board as nominees for election as Directors of the company and the meeting: Roberto Herencia, Phillip R. Cabrera, Antonio del Valle Perochena, Mary Jo S. Herseth, Steven P. Kent, William G. Kistner, Alberto J. Paracchini and Steve M. Rull. Directors are elected by plurality of the votes of the shares present in person or represented by proxy at the meeting and entitled to vote on the election of directors. Accordingly, the Director nominees receiving the most votes of the holders of Byline's common stock will be elected as directors. I, Ana Casanueva, as Inspector of Election, declare that each of the Director nominees has received a plurality of the votes of the shares of Byline's common stock, and each director nominee has been duly elected to serve a 1-year term until the 2021 -- until the 2022 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. The second item of business is the ratification of the appointment of Moss Adams LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2021. Approval of this proposal requires the affirmative vote of the holders of a majority of the shares of Byline's common stock present in person of represented by proxy at the meeting and entitle to vote on the proposal. As Inspector of the Election, I declared that majority of the shares of Byline's common stock have voted in favor of this proposal, and therefore, Moss Adams LLP is appointed as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2021. The final voting results of the matters properly brought to your attention at this meeting will be reported in a Form 8-K to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission within the next 4 business days. I would like to turn the meeting over to Roberto Herencia, Executive Chairman of the Board and CEO.

Thank you, Ana. We have no other formal items of business to be conducted at the meeting. And accordingly, I am adjourning the formal part of the meeting. We will now move to the question-and-answer session where questions of general nature may be addressed. [Operator Instructions]

Thank you, Roberto. At this time, I don't see any questions being asked, so we can adjourn the meeting.

Okay. Well, I would like to -- on behalf of the Board of Directors and the speakers today, I would like to thank you for your time and participation, obviously, for your interest in Byline Bancorp. The meeting is now duly adjourned. Thank you, again.