FVCBankcorp, Inc. (FVCB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to the Annual Meeting of Shareholders of FVCBankcorp, Inc. Please note that today's meeting is being recorded. Following each motion, and after the business portion of the meeting, we will have a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to turn today's meeting over to David Pijor, Chairman and CEO of FVCBankcorp, Inc. Mr. Pijor, the floor is yours.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is David Pijor. I am the Chairman and CEO of FVCBankcorp, Inc. It is my honor and privilege to welcome each of you to the Annual Meeting of FVCBankcorp. I will serve as Chair of the Annual Meeting. Since it is now after 4:30 p.m., I will call the meeting to order. Jeff Mathias of the company's independent registered public accounting firm of Yount, Hyde & Barbour, PC is attending the meeting today. Also present is Scott Richter, Esquire, the company's Legal Counsel from the law firm of Williams Mullen. Before proceeding to the business of this meeting, I would like to thank each of you for attending this virtual annual meeting today. In addition, I'd now like to introduce your bank's executive management team. Patricia Ferrick is our President; Todd Dempsey, our Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer; Bill Byers, Executive Vice President and Chief Lending Officer of the bank; Michael Nassy, Executive Vice President and Chief Credit Officer; Sharon Jackson, Executive Vice President and Chief Banking Officer; and Jennifer Deacon, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Jennifer Deacon will act as the inspector of elections for this meeting. The agenda at today's meeting consists of 2 items: first, the formal determination of a quorum, and second, the consideration of 2 items: the election of directors, and the ratification of Yount, Hyde & Barbour, PC as the company's independent registered public accounting firm to audit the 2023 financial statements of the company. In a few moments, I'll ask Ms. Deacon to report on the number of shareholders represented in person or by proxy at this meeting. As we proceed with the business of the meeting, the votes will be computed, and Ms. Deacon will report those votes to me. Thank you for voting early. This has been a great help to us. Let me point out that if you have already voted by proxy, it will simplify the vote count if you allow your proxy to remain in effect since it has already been tabulated. Accordingly, shareholders who have already mailed or electronically submitted a proxy are requested not to vote again unless they wish to change their vote from the way they mark their proxies. If any shareholder in attendance today intends to vote during the meeting and has not already voted by proxy, let me do so in a few minutes electronically as shown on the screen. The polls for voting on each of these 2 items are now open through the electronic web portal. Ms. Deacon will now report on the mailing of the notice of this meeting and the presence of a quorum.

This meeting is held pursuant to printed notice mailed out on April 6, 2023, to each shareholder of record on March 24, 2023, who is entitled to vote. A list of shareholders entitled to vote at this meeting is available on the web portal to shareholders who have logged into the meeting with an authenticated control number. All documents concerning the call and notice of the meeting, including the Secretary's affidavit concerning mailing, will be filed with the records of the meeting. The count of holders of shares of the company's common stock immediately prior to the commencement of this meeting indicated that the holders of 15,058,573 shares of the company common stock were in attendance at the meeting or represented by proxy. This represents 85% and a majority of the total votes eligible to be voted at this meeting and a quorum.

Thank you, Jennifer. I hereby declare a quorum present at the meeting. This meeting is duly constituted and officially convened. I would now like to proceed with the business of this annual meeting. There are 2 items for consideration. The first item is the election of directors. The shareholders have received proxy statements regarding the proposed directors. The following directors of FVCBankcorp, Inc. have been nominated to serve until the 2024 Annual Meeting of Shareholders or their successors have been elected and qualified: Marc N. Duber, Patricia A. Ferrick, L. Burwell Gunn, Meena Krishnan, Scott Laughlin, Thomas L. Patterson, David W. Pijor, Devin Satz, Lawrence W. Schwartz, Sidney G. Simmonds, Daniel M. Testa, Phillip R. Wills III, Steven M. Wiltse. At this time, I will entertain a motion to elect these directors to a 1-year term to the Board of Directors. I have a motion made by Patricia Ferrick and a second by Jennifer Deacon. There were no other nominations made in accordance with the bylaws. Therefore, I declare the nominations for directors are closed. Are there any questions concerning this first item? You may submit questions or comments at any time by clicking on the message icon. Having no questions being presented, we will turn to the second matter. The second item for consideration is the ratification of the appointment of Yount, Hyde & Barbour as the company's independent registered public accounting firm to audit the financial statements of the company for the year ended December 31, 2023. The proxy materials contain information regarding Yount, Hyde & Barbour. At this time, I'll entertain a motion to ratify the appointment of Yount, Hyde & Barbour as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for 2023. I have a motion made by Patricia Ferrick and a second by Jennifer Deacon. Are there any questions concerning the second item? You may submit questions or comments at any time by clicking on the message icon. I've received no questions. The polls are now closed. Will the inspector of elections please report on the final results of the voting?

Yes. Thank you. The ballots and proxies have been counted. The nominees for director have each been elected by the affirmative vote of the majority of the shares voted for each director. The appointment of Yount, Hyde & Barbour, PC has been ratified by the affirmative vote of approximately 99% of the shares voted.

I, hereby, declare that each of the director nominees has been duly elected, and the appointment of Yount, Hyde & Barbour, PC has been ratified. I would now like to briefly report on the financial performance of the bank during 2022. During 2022, the financial performance of FVCBank improved across almost all economic measures. Slide 3, which should be in front of you, contain certain key financial highlights of the year ending December 31, 2022. As you will note, total assets increased 6.4% over the year. Total loans increased a significant 22.3%. Deposits declined modestly by 2.8%. Our net income increased to a record high of $24,980,000, an improvement of almost 14% year-over-year. Our operating efficiency improved also during the year from 55.49% in 2021 to 50.62% in 2022. Slide 3 also shows the location of our branches as well as our new -- our loan production office, which we recently moved to its new location in Towson, Maryland. This LTO supports our lending teams in the bulk of our markets. Slide 4 lists the 5 pillars of our business strategy. This has not changed over the last couple of years, but I note that technology, the fifth pillar, was there remains a significant focus of FVCBank last year and today. We use technology to enhance our customers' experience to deliver a broader range of products and services, to improve our bank's internal processes and efficiencies and to differentiate our bank from the peers in our -- in the DMV. A number of technology initiatives FVCBank has deployed in order to achieve these goals are listed on Slide 5. I would like to specifically mention 3 of these technologies. Our automated borrowing-based certificate process permits our government contractor clients to complete the underlying collateral document, known as the BBC in the government contracting world, in minutes rather than hours or days. This is a unique customized software tool which gives FVCBank a decided advantage over our competitors in this highly competitive industry. We recently announced Lightning Lending, our new AI-driven small business lending platform to make the process of obtaining a small business loan of less than $500,000 fast and easy. We partnered with a leading tech company to offer this product to new and existing customers in the DMV. We are the first and only bank in this market to offer this sophisticated lending product to small businesses. Finally, I would note that the bank's successful rollout of enterprise-wide data analytics as a result of our partnership with analytics company, KlariVis. Through various dashboards, all officers of the bank are provided daily information, which each of them requires to connect their functional responsibilities. We calculate significant internal cost saves with KlariVis, while providing immediate information to our bankers necessary to communicate and respond to client requests. Slide 6 and 7 illustrate key trends in the growth and profitability of FVCBank since 2017. Slide 6 tracks our balance sheet growth over the last 5 years. Our 5-year compounded annual growth rate of total assets is 17.4%. The same 5-year CAGR for total loans is 15.7%. Our total deposit annual growth over this period is 12.7%. Slide 7 tracks several key earnings and profitability measures. The pretax pre-provision income of FVCBank has grown significantly over these years from $15.7 million in 2017 to $33.7 million in 2022. As I mentioned earlier in my remarks, the bank's operating efficiency ratio has improved in each year since 2019, reaching a record low of 50.4% last year. Slide 8 lists the current executive team of FVCBank. This team, including myself, has over 210 years of combined experience in banking in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Our team has a strong history of collaboration and effective management as a result of the lengthy period of years we have worked together at FVCBank. Slide 9 lists the current members of the Board of Directors. We are pleased to have recently added a new member to our Board, Mr. Marc Duber of the Bernstein Companies. Mr. Duber joined as a Director of the company in October 2022. Since 2019, Mr. Duber has served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of American University, his alma mater in Washington, D.C. He's previously served as a member of the Board of MedStar Health, Inc., the parent corporation of Washington Hospital Center. Slide 10 lists a few of the characteristics which contribute to and describe our well-diversified commercial loan portfolio. Our 16 loan officers average over 20 years of experience. Together, they originated approximately $574 million in total new loans during calendar 2022. Our loan portfolio is diversified, in part as a result of the small average loan balances. For example, out of a total loan portfolio of $1.84 billion, our average commercial loan is $1.89 million and our average C&I loan is only $432,000. Slide 11 describes our strong core deposit base. We believe it is a significant strength of our bank that approximately 75% of our commercial borrowers have a deposit relationship with us. At 12/31/22, we carried $1.25 billion in commercial deposits across 7,230 accounts. FVCBank also held over $103 million in public deposits at year-end. Our deposits are well diversified over our customer accounts. On 3/31/23, we carried a low amount of uninsured deposits of 32.5% of total deposits. This figure represented a significant improvement over the year-end figure. The next 3 slides, starting with Slide 12, summarizes certain relevant financial highlights from the first quarter of 2023, ending on March 31, 2023. FVCBank remains well capitalized with total risk-based capital in excess of 13.5% at March 31. For the first quarter of this year, total deposits increased by approximately $80 million or 4% from the year ending figure. Slide 13 lists the company's liquidity position as of March 31, 2023. A total of $765 million in total liquidity was reported available. This amount is significantly in excess of the total uninsured deposits of the bank by approximately 123%. Also listed on Slide 13 is the increase in the bank's combined allowance for credit losses as a result of the new accounting standard to 1.11% over the bank's total loans, excluding its mortgage warehouse loans. The last slide I will refer to, Slide 14, summarizes the improved credit metrics of the bank's loan portfolio. As of the end of the first quarter of 2023, the company recorded a minor net recovery, while nonperforming loans to total loans remained at 0.19%. Now my favorite part of the meeting, I would like to identify the award for the -- 2023 Burwell Gunn Citizenship Award. As many of you are aware, FVCBank identifies one or more nonprofit organizations to fund -- to award funds from this award to support these organizations' ongoing efforts to help the communities they serve and we serve. This year's recipient is S-P-A-R-C. SPARC provides essential day programs for adults with disabilities at 5 locations in Northern Virginia. They offer the same supportive structure and continued education that its participants enjoyed in school and provide a variety of educational services in the form of leisure learning that allows participants to work on life skills by socializing with the community of peers. The SPARC Day is filled with activities that presume confidence and appeal to each individual's interest. They set the stage for learning fields and habits that improve life for their club participants and their families. With an inspiring vision to support the families of adults with disabilities, FVCBank is proud to award the 2023 Burwell Gunn Citizenship Award to SPARC. If there is no other business, this concludes the formal business of our meeting. At this time, I would like to take any questions. Again, you may submit questions or comments by clicking on the message icon. I would like again to express my sincere appreciation to those shareholders who have joined us today as well as to those who have submitted their proxies but who were not able to attend. The continued success of our bank is attributable in large part by the continued support of our shareholders. At this time, I would like to entertain a motion for adjournment. Patricia Ferrick has made the motion, and this was seconded by Jennifer Deacon. I declare the motion carried, and the meeting adjourned.

This concludes the meeting. You may now disconnect.