A swath of regional banks said they expect to earn less from their loan businesses this year after the biggest bout of industry turmoil in more than a decade slammed smaller US lenders.
(Bloomberg) — A swath of regional banks said they expect to earn less from their loan businesses this year after the biggest bout of industry turmoil in more than a decade slammed smaller US lenders.
KeyCorp and Fifth Third Bancorp were among those that cut their outlooks for net interest income as they spend more to attract and retain deposits, prompting shares of both banks to slide. At Zions Bancorp, the outlook was lower than expected, with analysts including DA Davidson’s Peter Winter cutting share-price targets in response.
The announcements contributed to a drop in regional-bank stocks, with Zions down as much as 7%.
Still, firms including Fifth Third and Truist Financial Corp. showed that the quarter’s most closely watched gauge — deposit levels — largely held steady during a period in which customer withdrawals contributed to the collapse of three of their competitors. None of the midsize banks that reported results so far unveiled new deals with investors to bolster their balance sheets, as some felt compelled to do in March.
“The acute crisis is behind us, so we’re not expecting any additional bank failures,” Wedbush analyst David Chiaverini said. “That said, there are several headwinds facing the banks in coming months, including higher funding costs and slowing loan growth, and looking out to next year should lead to higher credit costs as the economy slows or enters recession.”
Results from First Republic Bank, which was rescued at least temporarily by a consortium of 11 banks last month, won’t arrive until Monday.
What is clear is that the same interest-rate hikes that led to the March turmoil are going to eat into bank profits for the rest of the year. Huntington Bancshares Inc. was also among banks that lowered outlooks for net interest income in 2023.
NII tracks how much a bank makes on loans and other interest-bearing assets after subtracting what it pays out on deposits and other interest-bearing liabilities. Corporations and consumers are opting to park funds in higher-returning vehicles, including money market funds, rather than lower-yielding bank accounts, forcing lenders to compete more for those funds.
For 2023, changes to NII forecasts include:
Zions predicted “moderately decreasing” NII, after previously forecasting it would increase.
“All banks probably underestimated the deposit betas,” said Citizens Financial Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Bruce Van Saun, referring to the rate banks pay on deposits. “Before we had the turmoil with the bank failures, it was already clear that there was more rate sensitivity on the part of depositors who saw where rates had moved to and had alternatives.”
Higher interest rates typically help banks by juicing the profitability of lending, with the benefit of higher rates passed along to clients at a lag. But the pace of the Federal Reserve’s increases has pressured banks, forcing them to pay up more on their short-term borrowing while also eroding the value of their securities portfolios.
Those portfolios typically serve as a backup source of liquidity for banks, but the unrealized losses have made it harder to turn them back into cash without taking a hit in times of heavy withdrawals, as selling at a loss eats into capital. That’s what ended up pushing cryptocurrency-friendly Silvergate Capital Corp. to voluntarily liquidate, and led to bank runs at Signature Bank and SVB Financial Group’s Silicon Valley Bank.
Those collapses pushed the Fed to create a facility that allows banks to post underwater bonds as collateral and borrow against them at face value. While support from the central bank may provide firms with the liquidity they need for now, it won’t be able to salvage profits weighed down by the rate environment.
“The fact that they have reasonable earnings, I don’t find that terribly informing,” said Michael Roberts, a finance professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Balance sheets will instead be more informative, he said, because they could show whether regional banks can stomach outflows in coming quarters. “As they have deposit withdrawals, that’s going to put pressure on the asset side of the balance sheet.”
(Updates with NII changes in box after ninth paragraph.)
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