Mechanics Bancorp ($MCHB)

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Mechanics Bancorp First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would like now to turn the call over to Nathan Duda, Chief Financial Officer of Mechanics. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining our earnings conference call. With me here today are C.J. Johnson, our President and CEO; and Carl Webb, our Executive Chair. The related earnings press release and earnings presentation are available on the News and Events section of our Investor Relations website. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that any forward-looking statements are subject to those risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated future results. Please see our safe harbor statements in our earnings press release and in our earnings presentation. All comments expressed or implied made during today's call are subject to those safe harbor statements. Any forward-looking statements made during this call are made only as of today's date, and we do not undertake any duty to update such forward-looking statements, except as required by law. Additionally, during today's call, we may discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe are useful in evaluating our performance. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measure can also be found in our earnings release and in the earnings presentation. C.J., let me hand it over to you.

Thank you, Nathan, and good morning. We appreciate everyone joining our call and for your interest in Mechanics Bancorp. I'll kick things off today and we'll summarize the highlights of our first quarter performance. I'll also provide another strategic update on the bank before handing things off to Nathan to review our financials in more detail. Carl, Nathan and I will then open up the call for your questions. With that, let's turn to Slide 4. We had a productive first quarter, reporting $44.1 million in net income. On a fully diluted basis, our earnings per share was $0.19, and our tangible book value per share ended the quarter at $7.53 with $0.40 per share of dividends paid to investors in Q1. As anticipated, this was another noisy quarter, so I'll walk you through some of the major items. First, we recorded a $6.5 million provision entirely related to qualitative CECL factors tied to geopolitical uncertainty stemming from the Iran war. Importantly, this was not driven by any specific credit deterioration within our loan portfolios. Asset quality metrics remained strong, and I'm pleased to report that we had 0 basis points of net charge-offs when you exclude our auto net charge-offs. Our runoff auto portfolio, by the way, is also performing well as it winds down. This provision was a conservative response to the heightened global risk of the Iran war and its potential impact on the U.S. economy, particularly given higher oil prices. Second, we incurred just under $5 million of merger-related expenses as we continue to work through the final phases of our HomeStreet integration. These costs were in line with our expectations and are nearing completion. The third noncore item was a $1.7 million tax provision related to the remeasurement of our deferred tax assets due to a lower anticipated effective tax rate moving forward for the company. For forecasting purposes, we expect our effective tax rate to be approximately 26.5% in 2026, but this could still move around a bit. When you adjust for the noncore items, it adds up to $53.8 million of core net income for the quarter, representing a core ROAA of 1% and a core ROATCE of 13%. The first quarter is always the seasonally weakest for us for both noninterest expenses and core deposits. On the deposit front, our seasonality primarily stems from our $860 million of food and ag deposit customers who see large inflows in December and outflows in January. This quarter, $137 million of our nonmaturity deposit decrease was from these customers, which is normal course activity. Otherwise, core deposits were roughly flat. Importantly, we did see a $640 million reduction in CD balances during the quarter. This was deliberate as we continue to hold the line on CD pricing and let hotter money from legacy HomeStreet customers leave the bank. When we modeled the merger over a year ago, we expected $1 billion in CD runoff by the end of the second quarter of 2026. However, runoff has been greater than anticipated, and we now expect $1.4 billion cumulative reduction in CDs with overall Mechanics CD balances expected to stabilize at a $2.0 billion run rate. This implies an additional reduction in CDs of just under $150 million in Q2. Notably, the vast majority of CDs leaving the bank were from single account households and our core deposit retention through the merger has been very strong. Also, nearly all of our CDs have repriced once at our lower rates and have maturities of 7 months or less. While this elevated time deposit runoff has a negative impact on earnings, it's higher risk, low ROE noncore money that's better to not have in our bank. Getting a bit smaller also generates excess capital, which provides strategic flexibility. Staying on the topic of risk reduction, legacy HomeStreet construction loans also decreased nearly $100 million during the quarter, as we made the strategic decision to let certain business go that we felt wasn't priced appropriately relative to the credit exposure we were taking as a bank. In general, competition for loans and deposits remains quite stiff. And we are okay getting a bit smaller in the near term to minimize risk to the company and position ourselves for long-term success. Our total assets are now $21.4 billion with total gross loans of $13.9 billion, total deposits of $18.2 billion and tangible shareholders' equity of $1.7 billion. We remain 100% core funded with no broker deposits or FHLB borrowings at 3/31, and I'm pleased that we paid off $65 million of high-cost senior debt in March that was acquired from legacy HomeStreet. Primarily because of the Iran war provision, our ACL grew 5 basis points this quarter to 1.13% of loans and now totals $157 million. Our allowance is also a very robust 2.95x our total nonperforming assets as of 3/31 with NPAs generally flat for the quarter. Our capital ratios remain healthy with a 13.9% CET1 ratio and an 8.7% Tier 1 leverage ratio. Our cost of deposits was 1.28% in the first quarter, down 15 bps from Q4, and our spot cost of deposits at 3/31 was 1.21%. Our NIM was 3.61% for the quarter, up 11 bps sequentially, and our CRE concentration ratio was 348%. Turning to Slide 5. I'd like to provide you with an update on some of the key strategic initiatives happening at the bank. I'm very happy to report that we successfully converted all legacy HomeStreet customers onto our core banking platform the final week of March. This major milestone was achieved, thanks to a tremendous amount of planning and hard work from all our employees. We will substantially complete our merger integration during the second quarter and expect to realize significant additional expense synergies moving forward as we will not be paying 2 core providers, other redundant contracts will be terminated and final headcount reductions occur. We remain on track to deliver on our budgeted cost synergies from the merger and reiterate our prior guidance of achieving an annual run rate noninterest expense, excluding CDI of approximately $430 million by the fourth quarter of this year. The $130 million sale of our DUS business line to Fifth Third has taken a bit longer than expected, but we have a high degree of confidence that it will close in the second quarter. Given the pending DUS sale, our first quarter earnings and our modestly smaller balance sheet, we will have significant excess capital, and we expect to pay approximately $0.70 per share in dividends in Q2, subject to regulatory and Board approval. The merger integration is almost behind us after a very full year of work and the build-outs of our wealth, commercial banking and treasury sales teams are substantially complete. It will be nice to move past integration work and focus entirely on growing each of our core business lines with a technology road map for the bank that is increasingly focused on leveraging AI tools to improve enterprise productivity. As for the big picture, we expect a relatively flat NIM for the next 2 to 3 quarters as auto loan runoff remains a drag and our deposit costs stop declining given we no longer expect any Fed rate cuts, and our CD repricing moderates. Our NIM should begin expanding again in early 2027 as the impact of auto fades, driven by legacy Mechanics Bank earning asset repricing, which will continue to occur over the next 5 years and will provide a tailwind to earnings growth. We now expect to deliver a 17% to 18% ROATCE and a 1.3% to 1.4% ROAA in 2027 and beyond with a projected GAAP net income range of $275 million to $300 million for 2027. Our earnings guidance has been reduced primarily due to removing 2 Fed rate cuts from our projections, as well as from a modestly smaller balance sheet due to the lower CD balances. We also expect outstanding construction loans to decline to roughly $300 million over the rest of the year versus $500 million previously. Let's move to Slide 6, which shows an overview of Mechanics Bancorp today. Again, we have $21.4 billion in assets with 166 branches and very competitive deposit market share. We are the fourth largest community bank in both California and on the West Coast with a branch map that's nearly impossible to replicate. We fully expect Mechanics to be a high-performing bank despite taking very little risk with our earning asset strategy. On the left-hand side of the page, we compare Mechanics to all publicly traded banks, $10 billion to $100 billion in assets, which, including us, now has 77 banks in the comparative group. As you can see, our cost of deposits for the first quarter was 1.28% versus the median of 77 banks of 1.76%, giving us a rank of #10. And I expect our cost of deposits to continue to drop in the second quarter before flattening the remainder of the year. Next, our noninterest-bearing deposit mix is 36%, which is third out of 77%, up one spot from a quarter ago and the greatest store of value for our company. Our CET1 ratio of 13.9% ranks 19th and our risk-weighted assets to total assets is just 59% versus the group median at 76%, which is the second lowest out of our 77 competitor banks nationwide. Despite this low risk profile, our expected 2027 ROATCE of 17% ranks 8 out of the 77 banks, which would be exceptional. Finally, our 2027 efficiency ratio is now projected to be approximately 50%, which ranks 22nd out of 77 despite our operating in higher cost markets and with the majority of our deposits comprised of small balance consumer accounts. Slide 7 is key to our investment thesis and another way of visualizing some of the important statistics from Page 6. The strength of our deposits and the efficiency with which we run our bank, both from an expense and a capital management standpoint, will allow us to post very strong returns despite having nearly the lowest risk mix of assets in the country. These charts provide a great visual in my opinion, especially the risk-weighted assets to total assets comparison. In fact, we expect our risk-weighted assets as a percentage of total assets to continue to come down over time as our auto loans run off and our CRE concentration ratio is managed below 300%. While we will pay substantial dividends in the first half of 2026, we expect moving forward that our dividend payout ratio will be closer to 80% of net income as we retain some capital to support core growth and preserve strategic optionality. To wrap up my section, let's turn to Slide 8. This slide summarizes our investment highlights. First and foremost, we have very strong market share across the West Coast with a branch footprint that's nearly impossible to replicate. We also expect to have very strong profitability due to our top-notch deposits and efficient business model despite taking very little credit risk. We are 100% core funded with no wholesale borrowings or broker deposits and are highly capitalized with a very liquid balance sheet with 70% loan-to-deposit ratio forecast for 2027. We are efficient with our capital and plan to pay out substantial dividends, which would imply a very attractive yield at today's share price. There's also firm alignment between our public and private investors as Ford Financial Fund owns 74% of the company. Finally, we have an experienced management team with a strong operating and M&A track record. Overall, the future prospects for Mechanics are quite bright, and I'm looking forward to finishing the job with the HomeStreet integration and moving on to the next chapter of growth for our great company. With that, let me turn the call over to Nathan to dig into more detail on our first quarter results. Nathan?

Thank you, C.J. Starting on Slide 10. For the first quarter, net interest income declined $3.9 million or 2.2% to $179 million compared to $183 million in the fourth quarter of 2025. Our net interest margin expanded 11 basis points to 3.61%, driven primarily from the reduction in deposit costs from the $640 million runoff of higher cost legacy HomeStreet CDs. First quarter interest income included $12.7 million of discount accretion on loans acquired in the HomeStreet transaction, and we have approximately $150 million of remaining discount on those loans as of March 31, 2026. Lastly, the earning asset mix shifted modestly during the quarter, reflecting lower cash balances as CDs continue to roll off. Turning to Slide 11. Noninterest income declined $57.5 million or 73% to $21 million compared to $78.5 million in the linked quarter. As a reminder, the fourth quarter included a $55.1 million bargain purchase gain related to the write-up of the DUS intangible assets acquired in the HomeStreet merger. Excluding that item, underlying noninterest income declined $2.4 million quarter-over-quarter, primarily driven by lower trust fees, lower gain on sale of loans and reduced BOLI income. Turning to Slide 12. Noninterest expense increased $0.9 million or 0.7% to $130.4 million compared to $129.5 million in the fourth quarter. Merger-related expenses totaled $4.8 million, up modestly from $3.5 million last quarter and were primarily comprised of professional services and severance costs. Excluding these onetime merger expenses, noninterest expense declined $0.4 million versus the linked quarter. The efficiency ratio increased to 61.6% compared to 46.7% in Q4, reflecting the absence of the prior quarter bargain purchase gain rather than any deterioration in underlying operating efficiency. Turning to Slide 13. Loan interest income declined $12.9 million or 6.7% to $181.2 million and loan yields declined 9 basis points to 5.25%, driven by slightly lower contractual yields and reduced discount accretion. Multifamily and single-family residential yields declined modestly by 6 and 3 basis points, respectively. The CRE concentration ratio increased to 348% at quarter end. During the quarter, we originated $546 million of loan commitments, predominantly in SFR and other consumer categories and sold $54 million of loans, primarily DUS multifamily and residential real estate. Turning to Slide 14. Our commercial real estate portfolio remains well diversified and continues to reflect our long-standing focus on lower-risk multifamily lending. Multifamily represents approximately 70% of the total CRE portfolio with an average loan size of $3.8 million, an average LTV of 56% and an average debt coverage ratio of 1.55x. The remainder of the CRE portfolio is broadly distributed across retail, office, industrial, hotel and mixed-use categories, each with modest exposure and conservative credit characteristics. At the end of the first quarter, our CRE concentration was 348%, which would be 101% when excluding our multifamily portfolio. We also continue to manage down the higher risk segment of the legacy HomeStreet portfolio. During the last 6 months, we made progress reducing our HomeStreet syndicated loan exposure with balances declining from approximately $142 million at September 30, 2025, to about $58 million at March 31, 2026. During the first quarter, we sold roughly $9 million of unpaid principal balance or $18 million of commitments of legacy HomeStreet C&I syndications at par, and we ended the quarter with no exposure to nondepository financial institutions. Turning to Slide 15. You can see both legacy Mechanics asset quality trends and the impact of the HomeStreet merger. Mechanics has historically maintained excellent credit quality with minimal non-auto charge-offs and a very low level of nonperforming assets. As shown on the slide, the majority of our historical charge-offs were auto related. And as mentioned earlier, that portfolio is in runoff and continues to outperform expectations. As a reminder, the increase in the non-auto charge-offs in the fourth quarter of 2025 was due to a charge-off of a legacy HomeStreet acquired loan that has specific reserves established and the actual charge-off was slightly lower than the original anticipated loss. At March 31, nonperforming assets represented 0.25% of total assets, modestly higher from 0.23% in the fourth quarter. The increase reflects the impact of lower loan balances in total and a slight increase in the non-auto nonperforming assets of $2 million. Loan loss reserves to loans held for investment were 1.13% at quarter end compared to 1.08% in the prior quarter. The increase in the allowance reflects the incorporation of qualitative factor adjustments, including a $6.35 million pretax provision driven by the heightened economic uncertainty related to geopolitical developments. Turning to Slide 16. Securities interest income increased $3.5 million or 7% to $53.1 million from $49.5 million in the fourth quarter. The increase was driven by higher yields on the portfolio, which increased by 11 basis points to 3.97% as compared to the fourth quarter. The increase in the portfolio's yield was due to the full quarter impact of the $650 million of securities purchased in the fourth quarter of 2025 at accretive yields to the portfolio. The overall securities portfolio decreased by $83 million in the first quarter due to paydowns and a $33 million reduction in fair value due to higher interest rates. Turning to Slide 17. Total deposits declined $782 million during the quarter, driven by a $640 million reduction in higher cost time deposits and $232 million reduction in noninterest-bearing demand and $137 million of seasonal non-maturity deposit outflows, partially offset by money market growth. This mix shift and balance reduction contributed to a $10.7 million or 15% decline in the deposit interest expense compared to the prior quarter. The total cost of deposits improved to 1.28%, down 15 basis points from the prior quarter, driven primarily by the continued runoff of the higher cost legacy HomeStreet time deposits. Spot cost of deposits at March 31 was 1.21%, reflecting ongoing repricing benefits. Noninterest-bearing deposits represented 36% of total deposits, continuing to support our low-cost funding profile. Turning to capital and liquidity on Slide 19. We remain very well capitalized with a 13.9% CET1 ratio and an 8.7% Tier 1 leverage ratio at March 31. Available liquidity totaled approximately $16.3 billion. Book value per share at quarter end was $12.61 and tangible book value per share was $7.53. During the first quarter, we paid a $0.40 per share dividend on our Class A common stock. As C.J. discussed earlier, we expect the $130 million sale of our Fannie Mae Delegated Underwriting and Servicing or DUS business to Fifth Third to be approved and closed shortly. Pro forma for that transaction, we expect to have approximately $165 million of excess capital, which we intend to return to shareholders through a special dividend of approximately $0.70 per share in the second quarter, subject to regulatory and Board approval. That concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, please open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Woody Lay with KBW.

I wanted to start on the net interest margin. And just based off the spot rate of deposits you gave, I'm a little surprised margin would be flat or relatively flat next quarter. Could you kind of just walk through the puts and takes to that, to the flat margin over the next couple of quarters and kind of the glide path we need to see in order to hit the $275 million to $300 million of net income in 2027?

Woody, I'll take that. I'll start with and maybe let Nathan comment as well. I think, yes, the spot cost of deposits is down, and that will provide a bit of a tailwind. But the -- I think we expect our deposit cost to be kind of not quite at 1.21%, probably a little higher than that for the quarter overall as we really are through most of our CD repricing. We also have kind of a bit of a day count issue with the first quarter in February and how we do some of our yields, the 3.61%, especially in February, which is a short month, is a bit elevated. So that gets some of it. I do think we now -- again, we're very liability sensitive. We're going to add a bit more disclosure around that in our next investor deck in the second quarter, but we do have -- of our $18 billion of deposits, $10 billion is at basically 1 basis point, noninterest-bearing or very low cost. But we do have $7 billion that's at 2.85% today. And so it's bit of a bifurcated deposit base. And so not getting the rate cuts, having a flat forward curve is a bit of a negative for us, clearly. And we do have about $3 billion -- basically just about $4 billion of floating rate assets. So there's a $3 billion gap between our rate-sensitive liabilities and our floating rate assets, and we've been working to narrow that gap. It has come down, it will continue to come down. But that's putting some of the pressure on the margin during the year, especially as we still have $600 million or so of auto loans at a 6.5% yield. Those are running off to 0. That's putting pressure on the margin. The offset is we've outsourced the expense for that. And as those loans run off, our NIE continues to proportionately run off with that as well. We have $12 million right now that we're paying. And so as those balances run down, the $12 million also comes down. So the offset to the margin impact is going to show up in noninterest expense. Nathan, do you want to add anything to that?

Yes, I think you covered most of it. A couple of other items I would add is you gave updated guidance on the construction land balances, which is one of our highest-yielding assets. So there's an impact there. In addition, we have seen interest-bearing transaction costs tick up. Part of that is some of the CD runoff from HomeStreet. Strategically, we've been pushing some of that into interest-bearing transaction. And so we expect that to tick up during the second quarter, along with everything else that you discussed already.

Got it. And then maybe just with some of the moving pieces, is there kind of a margin range you expect in 2027 in order to achieve the NII run rate you expect?

Yes, I'd say probably 3.7%, 3.8% in '27 would be my estimate. Obviously, that's -- it's still a ways down the road and things can change. So I hesitate to give too much there. But what I do know is we're 100% core funded and our deposit costs should be pretty stable, especially when we -- if we can grow core deposits, which we think we can do. I think our deposit costs should remain pretty stable once we get through the second quarter. And we have, I'd say, at least $5 billion of low-yielding legacy Mechanics assets that are hangover from the COVID era, that will continue to amortize, prepay, cash flow reprice. We're going to add some disclosure around that as well in the second quarter, but that's going to be a tailwind. And that's going to come. That's happening. And so that will push our margin higher every year for the next 5 years. And so this run rate, this would eventually be a bank that's north of a 4% NIM. And there's levers we can pull to accelerate that. We are going to be continuing to generate excess capital as we're a little smaller. And we've got low-yielding loans, low-yielding securities. We may consider a restructure on some of that. It would be small. The other thing we're going to do eventually, Woody, is we're eventually going to sell these auto loans. And so that will be -- I don't know when that will be, but it's going to be back half of this year, early next year. We're still going to try to determine the ideal timing of it, and that will be -- we may take a modest loss when that occurs, but it will be a pickup to earnings for sure, so -- because that's still -- that's losing us money at the moment as we continue our runoff. So there's a lot of levers we can pull. And the underlying earnings power of this bank is very strong, thanks to our great deposits. And we haven't embedded any of that kind of stuff in our guidance.

Yes. No, that's really helpful. Maybe just shifting over to the balance sheet real quick. As you noted, some of the deposit runoff is coming a little bit more than expected. And I think you said there's another $150 million of planned CDs from HomeStreet that's coming off next quarter. Once we kind of get through that tranche, how are you thinking about the size of the balance sheet? Should it remain pretty stable at those levels? Or just given the sale of the auto -- potential sale of the auto portfolio, could we see some additional shrinkage in the back half of the year?

No, I think once we get through any remaining CD reductions in the second quarter -- and again, the first quarter is also the seasonal low for deposits with us. Every quarter, that's the case. Every first quarter, that's the case. So we expect core deposit growth, not -- we've always -- we think we should grow 2%, 3%, 4% a year in line with our economies and we've got a ton of focus at the bank on growing core deposits. And so the noncore stuff is basically all out. If we sell auto loans, we'll get the proceeds and reinvest somewhere else. So the assets won't -- that won't change the size of the balance sheet. So I view this as very close to the low and we should be growing. We're budgeting to grow. We think we've got momentum there on deposit pipelines and stuff like that. So I would not expect much, if any, more balance sheet shrinkage, maybe a bit in the second quarter, but that should be the within the year.

Got it. And then maybe just last for me. You all noted in your opening remarks, 80% payout ratio in '27 that provides some capital to be strategic with. And as you noted, you could look at restructures, but I was also just interested in your thoughts on additional M&A from here, especially once we get past the official core conversion?

Carl, do you want to take that one?

I think that you have to look at our past to somewhat predict our future. We've always been extremely acquisitive. We're always looking at situational opportunities. Obviously, the opportunities have to be within our footprint. We're not looking to really expand our West Coast footprint, and we don't want to do an M&A transaction simply to get bigger. It has to make us better. And I think the overlay to that is making us better with an M&A transaction, it's harder and harder and harder. You heard the 1.28% deposit cost for the quarter and the 1.21% spot rate. We protect these deposits judiciously. And I'm not talking about our time deposits, and the story there is we've run those down intentionally. But it really gets harder and harder to move the needle. And I'm not saying that we have to buy another bank or acquire another opportunity that has a like deposit cost, but we think the value of a bank -- the franchise value of a bank is demonstrated predominantly by its liability structure and its deposit cost. And so we have to take that into consideration. And frankly, there just aren't a lot of banks out there. We're always looking. There are a scant few opportunities that we constantly monitor. And I think something in our favor is we're trading at a pretty good multiple. So all I can say is we're keen to the opportunity set. We're always looking. I would say just being extremely transparent. There is nothing right now on the front burner, and that's simply because there is nothing more important for our bandwidth today than getting this integration right. We've only acquired HomeStreet, which significantly increased our size and our footprint, what is it, 8 months ago. And we're now in the midst of getting our cost out and C.J. spoke to the conversion. Those are the very important things that we've got to get done and get right first, and we're getting in the later innings of doing that. And then we'll certainly see what's out there.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question is from Dave Rochester with Cantor.

Back on your comments on growth in core deposits. It sounds like you feel pretty good about doing that through the end of this year. I was curious, just given the headwinds in auto and construction, if you think you could still grow the loan book this year? And I'm just trying to triangulate into an NII trend with a stable NIM. It kind of sounds like you're still expecting NII to grow through the end of this year as well with whether it's loan growth or securities growth through the end of the year, just given that you're growing core deposits. Just wanted to get your thoughts on that?

Yes, I think from a loan growth standpoint, we expect to grow our consumer loans. We had modest growth in single-family. We expect that to pick up throughout the year. And mortgages, HELOCs, we've seen good demand and growth in those verticals, also our lending against the cash surrender value of whole life policies through our partner Inclined, that's growing pretty rapidly. We're now at, I think, $600 million plus, $670 million of drawn balances. We expect that over the course of the year to get to $1 billion drawn and really like that business from a risk-adjusted return standpoint, especially given its short duration and a good counter to that gap I talked to earlier of our floating rate-sensitive deposits versus our floating rate assets. So the consumer should grow. We've talked before about our construction that we expect those balances to go -- to decrease around $300 million. A lot of what we've -- the homebuilder team that came over from HomeStreet does a great job. They really are a strong team. But that business is -- it was thinly priced in some areas, and we're getting it deliberately a little bit smaller. So that will be a bit of a headwind through the year. But it will -- we're derisking and not doing construction lending, which can be obviously -- goes great for a while and then it can go the other way very quickly. So I think that's prudent. And on commercial real estate, I think we're originating loans, but the plan is still to get that below 300%. And so I'd kind of model us at -- over the next couple of years, getting both in your sense. There will be a modest decrease in outstanding multifamily CRE. C&I should be -- we deliberately sold some of the syndicated loans that HomeStreet had, that's part of the balance reduction there. We -- That should be close to a midyear and should be starting to grow again. So I don't know, Nathan, Carl, anything else you want to add to that? I...

I would add color there. Just one other comment, C.J., and that is the market, it is extremely -- and I know everyone says the same thing, and we've been monitoring earning releases and some have had loan growth -- modest loan growth. But I'd say the competitive landscape on both term and pricing is as thin and as tight as I've ever seen it. And we are -- I'd just say we're tough on credit. And I think that would be an opinion shared by probably a lot of our lenders that are out in the market today. It is -- you're seeing some things out there that I think may trend to this thing just getting really, really competitive to the extent that it's probably not all that healthy, particularly as it relates to term, which I equate to underwriting. And then credit spreads are extremely tight. And so my way of thinking is not the time to necessarily be pressing the accelerator too hard for loan growth and the overlay of our CRE concentration. We have to be very mindful of that.

Okay, appreciate that. Are you, at this point, still expecting NII growth from the first quarter through the end of the year? Or is it more stable along with the margin?

It should be pretty stable, I would say, for a couple of quarters and start to pick up. The balance sheet, again, is going to be getting a little bit smaller in the second quarter and then should start to grow, but the growth will be modest. I'd kind of guide the stable NII and then picking up, and I think, pretty materially in '27.

And you mentioned the upside in the margin as you get into the early part of '27. Where are you seeing that roll-on, roll-off differential in the earning asset buckets you have at this point?

Yes, I mean we have, I think, a lot of lower-yielding mortgages. I think our legacy Mechanics single-family is probably a low 4s coupon. A fair amount of that is starting to prepay, amortize, coming back on the books at, call it, 6%. Multifamily, we've got $2.4 billion, or north of $2 billion of multifamily loans that yield low 4s in aggregate. That business today is closer also to 5.75% to 6%. That will -- that entire book will reprice or is all adjustable, 5%, 7%, 10%, it was mostly originated in '21 and '22. By '32, it will all have reset to market rates closer to 6%. And so there's a lot of tailwinds there. We also have an HTM portfolio that's a drag. It's $1.3 billion today, yielding 1.61% and $100 million of that amortizes a year. So slower, longer duration, but over time, will continue to be a tailwind. So I think it's -- there's a lot of upside to the bank over time. It just -- as time passes, we'll have a natural tailwind just from that occurring. And this year will be a bit more flat though, just given the flat -- no Fed cuts and the final drag of auto. And we'll make up for some of that in our pretty substantial expense reductions that are coming here in the second quarter and third quarter.

Yes, I mean it looks like between now and the fourth quarter, you're looking at, at least a $10 million reduction on a quarterly run rate basis on expenses, right? How much of that are you expecting to get in 2Q?

Yes. We're at $474 million ex CDI annualized in the first quarter. We expect to get to $430 million by the fourth quarter. That's $44 million. So yes, over $10 million quarterly. In the second quarter, we should see, I don't know, maybe a lot. I don't know the exact number, but it's going to be a significant amount of cost reductions coming off and that will persist into the third quarter. By the fourth we'll be there.

Good. That's really good. Maybe just switching to the fee side for a minute on the Trust business. You guys were opening an office in Delaware. Sorry if I missed you mentioning it. I think it was this quarter. I was just wondering if that were up and running, if you could just remind us what that does for you guys and what other expansion you're planning in that business going forward, that would be great?

Yes. We got a little bit delayed. It's now expected to open in May. So we're almost there on the Delaware Trust business. We have some demand waiting for us to open that. That should -- that's a major step for our Wealth group. So that's exciting, but it has been delayed 1 quarter. And yes, I think overall, we -- our build-out of the team is complete. We've got a great team. Really almost everyone came over from -- at least a number of folks came over from First Republic after that. [ Failed ], right, in our backyard. And so we've been laying the groundwork. We've been very busy with the integration, with the merger, and we've picked up some private bankers and new clients from HomeStreet on the deposit side through it. And I think there's opportunity on the Trust and Wealth side to continue to grow. So I'm very much optimistic that, that business will continue to grow and be a very accretive business line for us. But it has been -- the Trust business did take longer than we thought, but we're on the finish line.

Great. Maybe just one last one on capital. You mentioned the big payout, obviously, next quarter. I think it was $165 million of excess that you're looking at. Does that get you down to your target 8.25% Tier 1 leverage? Or do you keep a little bit of extra there for what you said in terms of flexibility going forward? How are you thinking about that?

Yes. I think the way we've been managing capital is 8.25%, but 1 quarter in arrears. And so it's more effectively like 8.5% to 8.6% leverage this quarter, we're at 8.7%. To your comment, we actually are going to have excess, I think, my rough math is maybe $35 million this quarter that we're not paying out in dividends. I mean our dividend is going to be close to $160 million, $162 million this quarter, but there's still some that we're holding back, and we'll think about how best to use that. But -- And that will persist as we go into the third quarter due to the kind of a lag on leveraged assets as the bank gets a bit smaller, leverage assets kind of take a quarter to catch up fully. And so we'll have some excess capital. And the bank -- the other thing I'll point out is there's a lot of CDI amortization that doesn't show up in GAAP earnings, but it does compound in capital generation for the bank. So that's another source of kind of excess capital that we create above and beyond the actual GAAP net income. So something else to think about.

There are no further questions at this time. This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending, and you may now disconnect.