Hope Bancorp Q1 2026 Earnings Call - Manubank Acquisition Drives Strategic Pivot Toward Commercial Banking

Myron, Conference Operator: Good day. Welcome to the Hope Bancorp 2026 1st quarter earnings conference call. All participants will be in the listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal an operator by pressing star key followed by 0. After today’s presentation, there’ll be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star and then 1 on your touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, you may press star and then 2. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Maxim Oliven, Investor Relations Manager. Thank you. Over to you.

Maxim Oliven, Investor Relations Manager, Hope Bancorp: Thank you, Myron. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the Hope Bancorp Investor Conference Call for the first quarter of 2026. As usual, we will be using a slide presentation to accompany our discussion this morning, which is available on the presentations page of our investor relations website. Beginning on slide 2, let me start with a brief statement regarding forward-looking remarks. The call today contains forward-looking projections regarding the future financial performance of the company and future events. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. Actual outcomes and results may differ materially. Hope Bancorp assumes no obligation to revise any forward-looking projections that may be made on today’s call. In addition, some of the information referenced during this call today includes non-GAAP financial measures.

For a more detailed description of the risk factors and a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures, please refer to the company’s filings with the SEC as well as the safe harbor statements in our press release issued this morning. Presenting from management today will be Kevin S. Kim, Hope Bancorp Chairman, President, and CEO, and Julianna Balicka, Hope Bancorp Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Peter J. Koh, Bank of Hope President and Chief Operating Officer, is also here with us as usual and will be available for the Q&A session. With that, let me turn the call over to Kevin S. Kim. Kevin?

Kevin S. Kim, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, Hope Bancorp: Thank you, Maxim. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Our first quarter 2026 results reflected strong year-over-year growth in net income, revenue, loans, and deposits driven by organic growth and the strategic benefits of the Territorial Bancorp acquisition. Quarter-over-quarter, our pre-provision net revenue grew, supported by improved efficiency and continued progress in lowering our cost of deposits. Beginning with slide 3, you will find a brief overview of our results. Net income for the first quarter of 2026 totaled $30 million, up 40% year-over-year from $21 million in the prior year period. Quarter-over-quarter, net income decreased from $34 million, reflecting higher provision for credit losses and income taxes, partially offset by growth in pre-provision net revenue.

Pre-provision net revenue for the first quarter totaled $47 million, up 43% year-over-year from $33 million and up 1% quarter-over-quarter from $46 million. The provision for credit losses increased in 2026 first quarter, primarily reflecting higher net charge-offs due to the successful resolution of problem loans. This quarter, criticized loans decreased $26 million or 7% from the prior quarter. The effective tax rate was higher in the first quarter of 2026 as the 2025 fourth quarter tax provision benefited from true-up items. On March 31, 2026, we announced the accretive acquisition of the commercial banking unit of SMBC MANUBANK, which we will refer to as Manubank throughout this call.

We expect the transaction to close in the second half of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals and the satisfaction of other customary closing conditions. We are very excited about this transaction, which aligns with our key priorities of building our commercial banking capabilities, expanding our reach among middle market and multinational clients, and growing our core deposit franchise. We believe Manubank will deepen our presence in the Greater Los Angeles market and add a highly complementary commercial banking platform, including diversified middle market lending, franchise finance, and specialty deposit verticals, such as trust and estate banking. The pending transaction will bring a unique opportunity to combine SMBC Manubank’s Japanese banking division with our established Korean subsidiary banking group, creating a differentiated, scaled platform to serve Asian multinational businesses operating in the United States.

From a financial perspective, the pending acquisition is expected to add approximately $2.5 billion in Commercial and Industrial and commercial real estate loans and $2.7 billion in deposits, of which only approximately 3% are CDs and which we anticipate will contribute a lower overall cost of deposits. We project this transaction to be meaningfully accretive to earnings in 2027, strengthen our recurring core earnings power, and improve our profitability, including returns on equity through an efficient deployment of capital without the issuance of new shares. In addition, we will establish a collaboration and partnership agreement with SMBC, which is expected to create meaningful opportunities to expand our services to a broader global multicultural customer base. Overall, this is a highly attractive transaction that we believe will support our progress toward achieving our strategic objectives. Moving on to slide 4.

During the quarter, we returned capital through a repurchase of approximately 604,000 common shares, totaling $7 million and representing about 0.5% of total shares outstanding. We have $29 million of remaining capacity under our existing authorization, which we intend to deploy opportunistically. Our board of directors declared a quarterly common stock dividend of $0.14 per share, payable on or around May 22, 2026 to stockholders of record as of May 8, 2026. Under the terms of the definitive agreement, the pending Manubank acquisition will be settled in an all-cash transaction and is expected to result in a net cash benefit to Hope. On this slide, you can see our optimized pro forma capital ratios, and we are anticipating a tangible book value earn back period of approximately two years.

The pro forma Tangible Book Value dilution would come from the creation of the Core Deposit Intangible and the net impact to equity from balance sheet marks and acquisition-related charges. Continuing to slide five. Loan balances were essentially stable linked quarter. At March 31, 2026, gross loans totaled $14.74 billion, compared with $14.79 billion in the prior quarter. Year over year, gross loans increased at 10% from $13.34 billion at March 31, 2025, reflecting the impact of the Territorial acquisition and organic residential mortgage growth. As we enter the second quarter, our loan pipelines are strong and building, reflecting improving production trends and increased activity across our markets. On the deposit side, deposits were $15.73 billion at March 31, 2026, growing 1% quarter over quarter.

Non-maturity interest-bearing deposits were up 3% and non-interest-bearing demand deposits were up 0.5%. Higher cost CDs were intentionally run off. Year-over-year, deposits increased 9%, primarily due to the Territorial Bancorp acquisition. With that, I will ask Julianna to provide additional details on our financial performance for the first quarter. Julianna?

Julianna Balicka, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Hope Bancorp: Thank you, Kevin. Good morning, everyone. Beginning on slide six, our net interest income totaled $124 million for the first quarter of 2026, up 23 from the first quarter of 2025, and a decrease of 3% from the prior quarter. Quarter-over-quarter, the decrease in net interest income reflected the impact of the lower day count in the first quarter and a modest decrease of 0.4% in average earning assets in which average loans were up but other earning assets declined. The first quarter of 2026 net interest margin was 2.90%, unchanged quarter-over-quarter. The impact from decreased loan yields was more than offset by lower deposit costs. Year-over-year, our net interest margin expanded 36 basis points from the first quarter of 2025.

The increase was primarily driven by improvement in our funding costs. The cost of our average interest-bearing deposits decreased 77 basis points to 3.37% in the first quarter of 2026, down from 4.14% in the first quarter of 2025, equivalent to a deposit beta of over 100% relative to the decline in the federal funds target rate over the same period. The full impact of the Fed funds target rate cuts is still benefiting us with the continued repricing of time deposits. In the first quarter of 2026, we originated time deposits at a blended rate of 3.62%, down from a blended rate of 3.99% on our maturing CDs. On slide 7, we present the quarterly trends in our average loan and deposit balances and our weighted average yields and costs.

On to slide eight, where we summarize our non-interest income. For the first quarter of 2026, non-interest income totaled $17 million, down $1 million compared with $18 million in the prior quarter and up $1 million compared with $16 million for the first quarter of 2025. The quarter-over-quarter decrease in non-interest income was primarily due to less gains on the sale of investment securities and lower customer-level swap fee income. The latter of which reflected less underlying transaction activity in the first quarter. During the first quarter of 2026, we sold $53 million of SBA loans compared with $46 million sold in the fourth quarter of 2025. We recognized SBA gains from sale of $3 million for the first quarter of 2026, up approximately $700,000 from the fourth quarter of 2025.

Moving on to non-interest expense on slide nine. Our non-interest expense totaled $94 million in the first quarter of 2026, down from $99 million in the fourth quarter of 2025. The sequential quarter decrease reflected continued expense management discipline. Year over year, non-interest expense increased from $84 million in the first quarter of 2025, primarily due to the inclusion of Territorial’s operating expenses. The efficiency ratio for the first quarter of 2026 improved to 67%, down from 68.2% in the prior quarter and down from 72% in the year ago quarter, demonstrating continued positive operating leverage alongside disciplined expense management. On to slide ten. I’ll review our asset quality, which has continued to steadily improve and reflected a quarter-over-quarter reduction in non-performing loans. This was primarily driven by successful resolutions of problem loans.

At March 31, 2026, criticized loans totaled $325 million, down 7% quarter-over-quarter and down 28% year-over-year. The sequential quarter improvement included a 23% reduction in special mention loans and a 2% reduction in classified loans. The criticized loan ratio improved to 2.22% of total loans at March 31, 2026, down from 2.39% at December 31, 2025, and down from 3.36% at March 31, 2025. Net charge-offs were $11 million for the 2026 first quarter or annualized 29 basis points of average loans, compared with 10 basis points annualized for the prior quarter and 25 basis points annualized for the year ago quarter.

Reflecting the linked quarter change in net charge-offs, the 2026 first quarter provision for credit losses was $9 million, up from $7 million for the 2025 fourth quarter. The allowance for credit losses totaled $155 million, and the coverage ratio was 1.06% at March 31st, 2026, compared with $157 million and a coverage ratio of 1.07% at December 31st, 2025. With that, let me turn the call back to Kevin.

Kevin S. Kim, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, Hope Bancorp: Thank you, Juliana. Moving on to the outlook on slide 11. We present our updated management outlook for the full year 2026, including the preliminary impact of the pending ManuBank transaction, which we expect to close in the second half of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals and the satisfaction of other customary closing conditions. We expect loan growth of over 20% between December 31, 2025 and December 31, 2026, reflecting the impact of the ManuBank transaction and organic growth. Relative to our assumptions at the beginning of the year, we are moderating CRE loan growth ahead of the transaction close to manage pro forma loan concentration. Our current pipelines are strong and building, and we anticipate commercial and residential mortgage loan growth will continue to be robust in 2026.

We anticipate year-over-year total revenue growth to be at the higher end of our 15%-20% range for the full year of 2026, assuming one quarter of contribution from the pending ManuBank transaction. The incremental revenue from ManuBank would be partially offset by the impact from the aforementioned slower commercial real estate loan growth. We assume no Fed funds target rate cuts in 2026. We anticipate unchanged pre-provision net revenue growth, excluding notable items, at a range of 25%-30% for the full year 2026. This includes a quarter’s worth of impact of ManuBank’s operating expenses. We anticipate the benefits of cost savings from the ManuBank transaction will begin from 2027. Accordingly, we project the ManuBank transaction to be meaningfully accretive to 2027 earnings.

We continue to assume a steady asset quality backdrop and a full year effective tax rate between 20% and 25% in 2026. With that, operator, please open up the call for questions.

Myron, Conference Operator: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star and then one on your touchtone phone. If you’re using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before asking the question. Participants are requested to please restrict your questions to two per participant. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star and then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble a roster. We have the first question from the line of Gary Tenner from D.A. Davidson. Please go ahead.

Gary Tenner, Analyst, D.A. Davidson: Thanks. Good morning. I wanted to ask about the repurchase activity in the quarter. Could you characterize the forward appetite here and, you know, whether you’ve got a, you know, updated target payout ratio or target capital levels we should be thinking about?

Julianna Balicka, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Hope Bancorp: That will depend on capital generation and growth opportunities. We will continue to evaluate opportunistic repurchases within that framework. We still have capacity under our share repurchase authorization, and we already purchased $7 million of shares since it was refreshed last quarter. That’s where we stand today, and we regularly review our capital allocation priorities. The use of capital to repurchase our shares will be opportunistic.

Gary Tenner, Analyst, D.A. Davidson: Okay. Appreciate that. Julianna, can you provide the purchase accounting benefit for the quarter?

Julianna Balicka, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Hope Bancorp: Not material.

Gary Tenner, Analyst, D.A. Davidson: Not materially different than last quarter or just in dollars not material?

Julianna Balicka, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Hope Bancorp: Not materially different quarter-over-quarter. It’s about similar. It’s $4 million.

Gary Tenner, Analyst, D.A. Davidson: Okay. Thank you.

Julianna Balicka, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Hope Bancorp: I mean, I believe I’ve answered this question in prior quarters. It might have been even your question. With the Territorial transaction, right, these residential mortgage loans are long-dated loans. It’s a long-term portfolio. The purchase accounting benefit is going to be a steady benefit of each quarter for a number of years as opposed to when you do a commercial loan acquisition where it’s a much shorter weighted average life of the portfolio. It’s a much more, there’s much more fluctuation to purchase accounting benefit.

Gary Tenner, Analyst, D.A. Davidson: I appreciate that. I just wanted to confirm the number. Thank you.

Myron, Conference Operator: Thank you. We have the next question on the line of Matthew Clark from Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Matthew Clark, Analyst, Piper Sandler: Hey, good morning, everyone. Thanks for the questions. Wanted to start on the expense run rate. Some pretty good improvement here from the fourth quarter. Just wanted to get a sense for whether that’s sustainable and what a normalized run rate might be here in the first quarter.

Julianna Balicka, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Hope Bancorp: Thank you, Matt. This quarter, you saw some good expense management. I would say, I’ll go back to our comments about expenses for the full year of 2026 relative to last quarter when we gave, we made comments around the 4th quarter as a jump-off point for a run rate. You know, the 1st quarter was a good quarter with some good expense control. I would anticipate that as our production strengthens and our revenue growth strengthens throughout the year, the expenses will tick up from there. Overall, we’ll stay within the original comments that we made for you last quarter with full year growth, you know, that we talked about.

Matthew Clark, Analyst, Piper Sandler: Got it. Okay. Are you opting out of the CECL double count with the acquisition?

Julianna Balicka, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Hope Bancorp: We are still going to evaluate.

Matthew Clark, Analyst, Piper Sandler: Okay. Okay. Then just a spot rate on deposits if you have it. I know there’s gonna be you know, an incremental benefit from CD repricing, but just thoughts on deposit cost outlook with the fed on hold.

Julianna Balicka, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Hope Bancorp: Sorry, could you repeat the second part of your question?

Matthew Clark, Analyst, Piper Sandler: Just the deposit cost outlook, you know, with the Fed on hold and competitive pricing on the CD side.

Julianna Balicka, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Hope Bancorp: Right. Our CDs are continuing to reprice, as we quoted in our script about how much pickup we’re getting each quarter. When we look at our deposit cost outlook for the rest of the year, each quarter, we see about five to seven basis points of interest-bearing deposit cost reduction just from the mathematics.

Matthew Clark, Analyst, Piper Sandler: Yep. Got it. Thank you.

Julianna Balicka, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Hope Bancorp: Just to refresh on the CECL double count, we, in our 10-K and Q, you would have seen that we already adopted, the ASU for Territorial transaction.

Matthew Clark, Analyst, Piper Sandler: Okay. Thanks again.

Myron, Conference Operator: Thank you. Participants, if you have a question, please press star and then one. We have the next question on line of Kelly Motta from KBW. Please go ahead.

Kelly Motta, Analyst, KBW: For the question. Maybe to kick it off with loan growth. Your guidance implies that some pullback in commercial real estate with an eye to manage those concentrations. Can you provide any color into Q1 was down a little bit? I’m wondering if that was in anticipation of signing this deal, kind of what you were seeing in terms of payoffs and kind of strategically moving forward your organic outlook for resi and commercial as you manage ahead? Thanks.

Julianna Balicka, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Hope Bancorp: I think that for our outlook, organic outlook, kind of looking forward, I would say on a full year basis, I would expect our organic loan growth to be mid-single digits, and it would come from C&I and residential mortgage. C&I, of course, being the higher percentage loan grower. I would expect flat CRE balances.

Kelly Motta, Analyst, KBW: Okay. That’s pretty helpful. Can you remind us your pro forma CRE concentration for SMBC MANUBANK?

Julianna Balicka, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Hope Bancorp: It’ll be something in the 320% range, depending on where the final balances land.

Kelly Motta, Analyst, KBW: Got it. That’s helpful.

Julianna Balicka, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Hope Bancorp: Let me add to.

Kelly Motta, Analyst, KBW: Becky, go ahead.

Julianna Balicka, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Hope Bancorp: We’ll land at the pro forma concentration. It is our belief and we are planning for organically growing into that. Although we are slowing down CRE loan growth ahead of the transaction, we also don’t foresee the closing to be anything disruptive and be able to grow into that concentration within a fairly reasonable timeframe.

Kelly Motta, Analyst, KBW: Got it. That’s very helpful color. Point of clarification on your guidance. I believe you said that you have about a quarter of SMBC MANUBANK, like a quarter’s worth of results. I know the close is in the second half of the year. Could you just provide what’s baked into the guidance in terms of how much the timing earlier in the second half of the year versus the end? I just, I want to make sure I’m modeling that-

Julianna Balicka, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Hope Bancorp: Oh, yeah.

Kelly Motta, Analyst, KBW: appropriately.

Julianna Balicka, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Hope Bancorp: Yeah. There’s nothing more complicated to that other than just plugging in a close at the midpoint of the second half of the year for simple arithmetic. The close will come when it comes in the second half of the year. Obviously, we would like to close, earlier than later. For the pure mathematics of an outlook, we’re just doing it mid of second half.

Kelly Motta, Analyst, KBW: Got it. That’s helpful. Maybe last question from me, just to slip it in. Net charge-offs were up a little bit, although you did have improvement in NPAs and I believe criticized. Can you provide any color and overview as to what you guys are seeing in the book and anything you’re incrementally watching more? Thank you.

Peter J. Koh, President and Chief Operating Officer, Bank of Hope, Hope Bancorp: I’m sure this is Peter. Yeah. Net charge-offs I think are a little elevated this quarter. It’s, it’s up and down a little bit, but still within kind of the reasonable range that we’ve been expecting. A lot of these represent sort of previously identified credit concerns that we are cleaning up right now. Overall, we feel very good about asset quality. I think you see continuing improvement in asset quality trends. The NPLs were down and criticized assets have been coming down sequentially quarter-over-quarter. Overall, I think we’re in good shape in terms of credit.

Kelly Motta, Analyst, KBW: Great. Thank you so much.

Peter J. Koh, President and Chief Operating Officer, Bank of Hope, Hope Bancorp: Thank you.

Myron, Conference Operator: Thank you. We have the next question in line of Tim Coffey from Brean Capital. Please go ahead.

Tim Coffey, Analyst, Brean Capital: Thank you. Morning, everybody.

Peter J. Koh, President and Chief Operating Officer, Bank of Hope, Hope Bancorp: Morning.

Tim Coffey, Analyst, Brean Capital: Yeah, Julia, what were the new loan yields, the yields on the new loans in the quarter?

Julianna Balicka, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Hope Bancorp: The yields on the new loans were, approximately, 6.4%.

Tim Coffey, Analyst, Brean Capital: Okay. Kind of on the organic margin. I think the conventional thinking was that we’d see expansion going into the back half of this year. Is that still a reasonable expectation?

Julianna Balicka, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Hope Bancorp: Well, if the Fed funds stays flat and we continue to have improvement on our cost of deposits from the repricing of CDs, and if interest rates stay flat for loan yields, all else equal, then you would see margin expansion because the earning asset side would not come down with rate cuts. In fact, it would benefit because the backbook of our low-yielding CRE loans would continue to mature and reprice to market rates, and we’re continuing to improve our cost of funds.

Tim Coffey, Analyst, Brean Capital: Okay. Great. The rest of my questions have been asked and answered. Thank you.

Myron, Conference Operator: Thank you. That was the last question. I would like to turn the conference back over to the management for any closing comments.

Kevin S. Kim, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, Hope Bancorp: Thank you. In summary, with our continued progress across our key strategic priorities and the addition of a compelling strategic transaction, we believe we are well positioned to continue building momentum and delivering long-term value for our stockholders. In closing, I would also like to thank our colleagues for their ongoing dedication and commitment, which remain critical to the execution of our strategy and the strength of our organization. Thank you all again for joining us today, and we look forward to speaking with you next quarter. Bye, everyone.

Myron, Conference Operator: Thank you. The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.