Triumph Financial reports Q1 EPS 14c, consensus 34c

Reports Q1 tangible book value per share $24.42. Reports Q1 net charge-offs .05%. The company said, “Freight continues to be softer than most people predicted. We shared this in our last letter, and it continues to be our view. We are in the 24th month of the longest freight recession in history. It is a grind and there is no way to cheat the grind. We are watching many freight providers go out of business in slow-motion. Going out of business – whether quickly or slowly – is terrible and sad for those to whom it happens. The slow-motion part of this cycle is what makes it a grind. The consensus is that there will be a rebound (“stay alive until ’25”), so companies are limping along. In order for the limping to stop, we likely need to see more capacity leave the system. It is happening, but slowly. Credit noise is a steady hum in the background. Total credit expense for the quarter was just under $6 million. This is a real number and a drag on earnings. If you dig deeper; however, you will see that not all of that expense was due to deterioration in credit conditions. Some of it was due to opportunistic growth. I will go into this in more detail below. We are likely seeing the trough in the transportation credit cycle where bankruptcies and asset liquidations are increasing. This is happening both among carriers and brokers. We are likely to see some further migration in our equipment lending portfolio and the one-off reserve here and there. This will continue until the market rebounds. Earnings headwinds are real, but they are not forever. In our last letter, I addressed the two topics above. I also mentioned that we thought freight would be softer, interest rates would remain high, and credit would thus be affected. This is proving to be true. I pointed out that the first quarter is seasonally the weakest quarter for freight. Finally, I also said that we would continue to invest for the future. Some of that expense showed up this quarter and pulled TriumphPay back into negative EBITDA margin as well as affecting our overall profitability. No one at Triumph would claim that 30 basis points of ROA is worth celebrating. It’s not. We own that, but I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that we have a plan and we intend to stick to that plan even during this elongated cycle. Borrowing from our chairman’s words, we are neither distraught nor distracted. We see the opportunity to forego short-term profits to create long-term value, and we will not deviate from pursuing it. The silver lining is that this freight recession has opened doors for us that were not open in prior years.”