"Our financial results have been adversely impacted by the historically significant increase in short-term interest rates by the Federal Reserve during 2022," said Mark K. Mason, HomeStreet’s Chairman of the Board, President, and Chief Executive Officer. "This dramatic increase in rates last year resulted in significant reductions in loan demand, particularly in single family mortgage. Accordingly, our loan volume and gain on loan sales activities declined significantly from 2021 levels. Additionally, our interest sensitive deposits declined as customers moved funds to higher yielding products both at our Bank and at other banks and brokerage firms. Attractive rates on Treasury securities and non-bank money market funds have also created meaningful competition. During the last six months we have taken a number of steps to reduce the pressure on our funding base, including: (i) significantly reducing our level of loan originations; (ii) introducing promotional priced deposit products which allow us to attract and retain deposits without repricing our existing interest-bearing deposit base; and (iii) entering into $1 billion of fixed-rate Federal Home Loan Bank advances in the fourth quarter. We extended the maturities of $1 billion of FHLB advances to hedge the still unknown risk associated with increasing interest rates and an unknown terminal Federal Funds rate. These pressures on our funding base have resulted in reductions in our net interest margin which are expected to continue but trough in the first quarter of 2023. We expect this to be the low point in our net interest margin assuming short-term interest rates stabilize in the first quarter and we complete our acquisition of three California branches in the first quarter. In addition to the above, we have taken steps to reduce staff levels in line with our reduced loan production activity and reduce controllable expenses to the extent possible without damaging our business. In this regard, full time equivalent employees ended the year at 913, down from 970 at the beginning of the year. Despite the above challenges, we believe we are positioned to resume growing our balance sheet and increasing our earnings once short-term rates stabilize and uncertainty is removed from the interest rate markets."
Published first on TheFly
