Axos Financial Q2 2026 Earnings Call - Strong organic loan growth offsets lower FDIC accretion, Verdant lifts fee income

Conference Operator: Greetings and welcome to the Axos Financial second quarter 2026 earnings call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. The question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Johnny Lai, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Investor Relations. Thank you, Johnny. You may begin.

Johnny Lai, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Axos Financial: Thanks, Alicia. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for your interest in Axos. Joining us today for Axos Financial’s second quarter 2026 financial results conference call are the company’s President and Chief Executive Officer, Greg Garrabrants, and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Derrick Walsh. Greg and Derrick will provide prepared remarks on the financial and operational results for the quarter ended December 31st, 2025, then open up the call for Q&A. Before I begin, I would like to remind listeners that prepared remarks made on this call may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties, and that management may make additional forward-looking statements in response to your questions. Please refer to the safe harbor statement found in today’s earnings press release and in our investor presentation for additional details.

The call is being webcast, and there will be an audio replay available in the investor relations section of the company’s website located at axosfinancial.com for 30 days. Details for this call were provided on the conference call announcement and in today’s earnings press release. Before handing the call over to Greg, I’d like to remind listeners that in addition to the earnings press release, we also issued an earnings supplement and 10-Q for this call. All of these documents can be found on axosfinancial.com. With that, I’d like to turn the call over to Greg.

Greg Garrabrants, President and Chief Executive Officer, Axos Financial: Thank you, Johnny. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I’d like to welcome everyone to Axos Financial’s conference call for the quarter ended December 31st, 2025. I thank you for your interest in Axos Financial. We had an outstanding quarter across a variety of growth, credit, and profitability metrics. We generated $1.6 billion of net loan growth link quarter with broad-based growth across several asset-based lending areas, commercial specialty, and equity finance verticals. A 19 basis point link quarter increase in net interest margin, a link quarter improvement in our non-performing assets and net charge-off ratios, and a 23.3% year-over-year increase in earnings per share. We continue to generate high returns as evidenced by the over 17% return on average common equity and the 1.8% return on assets in the three months ended December 31st, 2025.

Other highlights in the quarter include net interest income was $331.6 million for the three months ended December 31st, 2025, increasing by approximately $41 million linked quarter, or 14%. Net interest income growth benefited from balance growth across single-family mortgage warehouse, commercial specialty real estate, equipment finance, and fund finance. We had one FDIC loan prepay this quarter, resulting in approximately $17 million of interest income benefit. Excluding that benefit, net interest income was up $23 million, or 8%, from fiscal Q1, 2026, to fiscal Q2, 2026. Net interest margin was 4.94% for quarter ended December 31st, 2025, up 19 basis points from 4.75% in the quarter ended September 30th, 2025. Excluding the impact from the early payoff of an FDIC purchased loan and the impact from the burdened balance sheet securitization, our net interest margin was 4.72%, roughly flat from the prior quarter.

We continue to maintain our best-in-class net interest margin with or without the benefit of the accretion from loans purchased from the FDIC. Non-interest income increased by approximately $21 million quarter-over-quarter due to higher banking service fees, broker-dealer fee income, and prepayment penalty fees. This was the first quarter with non-interest income and non-interest expense contributions from Verdant. Non-interest income from Verdant was approximately $18.9 million in the quarter ended December 31st, 2025. Total non-accrual loans to total loans declined 13 basis points link quarter, resulting in our non-accrual loans to total loan ratio improving from 74 basis points as of September 30th, 2025, to 61 basis points as of December 31st, 2025. Non-performing assets declined in single-family mortgage, multifamily, and commercial mortgage, and stayed roughly flat in commercial real estate and C&I non-real estate lending categories.

Net income was approximately $128.4 million in the quarter ended December 2025, up 22.6% from $104.7 million in the prior year’s second quarter. Diluted earnings per share was $2.22 for the quarter ended December 31st, 2025, compared to $1.80 in the prior quarter, representing a 23.3% year-over-year increase. Total originations for investments excluding single-family warehouse lending were $5.6 billion for the three months ended December 31st, 2025, representing an increase of 35% linked quarter, or nearly 140% annualized. Commercial real estate specialty lending, equipment leasing, asset-based lending, and single-family warehouse had strong organic originations and net loan growth this quarter. Single-family mortgage ending balances were roughly flat, an improvement from net attrition we experienced over the past three years. Average loan yields from non-purchased loans for the three months ended December 31st were 7.63%, roughly flat from the prior 7.66% in the prior quarter.

Average loan yields for purchased loans were 23.32%, which included the accretion of our purchase discount. Purchased loan yields for the quarter ended December 31st benefited from one FDIC loan prepayment, resulting in approximately $17.1 million of purchase discount accretion that we recognized in interest income. The FDIC purchased loans continue to perform, and all loans in that portfolio remain current. Ending deposit balances of $23.2 billion were up 44.3% linked quarter and up 16.5% year-over-year. Demand, money market, and savings accounts representing 96% of total deposits as of December 31st increased by 17% year-over-year. We have a diverse mix of funding across a variety of business verticals, with consumer and small business representing 52% of total deposits, commercial, cash, treasury management, and institutional representing 22%, commercial specialty representing 15%, Axos Fiduciary Services representing 5%, and Axos Securities, which is our custody and clearing, representing 5%.

Average non-interest-bearing deposits were approximately $3.5 billion in the quarter ended December 31st, compared to $3 billion in the prior quarter. Client cash sorting deposits ended the quarter around $1.1 billion, up modestly from the September quarter. In addition to our Axos Securities deposits on our balance sheet, we had approximately $460 million of deposits off balance sheet at partner banks. We remain focused on adding non-interest-bearing deposits from our custody, clearing, fiduciary services, and commercial, cash, and treasury management verticals. Our consolidated net interest margin was 4.94% for the quarter ended December 31st, compared to 4.75% in the quarter ended September 30th. We closed the Verdant acquisition on September 30th, adding approximately $430 million of loans and leases and approximately $780 million of on-balance sheet securitizations.

While the leases are generally accretive to loan yields, the secured financing had a 3 basis point negative impact on our net interest margin in the quarter ended December 31st. One FDIC purchased loan paid off in the December quarter. The net impact from the early FDIC purchase loan payoff and the Verdant secured financing was a 22 basis point boost to this quarter’s net interest margin. Given the payoffs and maturities in our FDIC purchased loans, we expect net interest margin accretion from the FDIC purchased loans to be 10 to 15 basis points going forward. The diversity of our lending channels provides us with the flexibility to maintain strong loan growth and credit performance while managing our best-in-class interest margin. Verdant had a strong quarter as part of Axos, contributing approximately $130 million of net loans and operating leases in the December quarter.

We have already identified several opportunities to deepen our relationship with existing Verdant vendors and dealers, as well as accelerate growth in a few existing verticals that were previously constrained by capital and size limitations when Verdant was under private ownership. Demand in our commercial specialty real estate, fund finance, and lender finance real estate and non-real estate verticals remains strong. We are making steady progress growing our loan pipelines in newer lending verticals such as floorplan and middle market lending. Taking all these factors into consideration, we are confident that we will generate loan growth by low to mid-teens on an annual basis this year. Given the robust loan growth in the December quarter, we entered January with approximately $800 million higher starting loan balances than the average balances from the prior quarter.

We also expect to grow loans in the $600 million-$800 million range this quarter. This strong organic loan growth is allowing us to offset the lower level of accretion that we expect to receive going forward on the FDIC purchased loan portfolio. As a result of strong prepayments and scheduled maturities, the level of regular accretion we expect going forward per quarter on the Signature FDIC loan purchase is approximately $6.5 million. Excluding the one-time gain on the Signature prepayment in this quarter, we received approximately $9 million of Signature FDIC accretion in the December quarter, resulting in a forward-looking reduction of scheduled accretion of approximately $2.5 million. In essence, we have replaced a significant percentage of our Signature loan accretion income with stable core net interest income.

Additionally, the March quarter has 2 fewer days, resulting in approximately 2% net interest income reduction as compared with the three other quarters. Finally, we achieved around a 90% downward beta managing the last 50 basis points of rate cut, resulting in a potential 5-6 basis point reduction in our signature adjusted margin in the March quarter relative to the December quarter. Although some of this reduction may be offset by non-renewals of lower margin loans and slightly higher average margin of new originations, given the robustness of our loan demand. We had a strong increase in non-interest income as a result of the acquisition of Verdant’s operating leases.

While we expect that the Verdant loan balance growth is going to be approximately $150 million per quarter, the percentages that are operating leases, which will generate incremental fee income rather than interest income, will fluctuate from quarter to quarter depending on the structure of the individual transactions. The credit quality of our loan book continues to be strong, and our historical and current net charge-offs remain low. Total non-performing assets improved by approximately $19 million linked quarter, representing 56 basis points of total assets compared to 64 basis points in the prior quarter ended September 30th. Non-performing assets declined by approximately $9.7 million in multifamily and commercial mortgages and by $11.9 million in single-family mortgage. Total non-accruals and C&I lending were largely unchanged from the prior quarter.

We do not anticipate a material loss from loans currently classified as non-performing in our single-family, multifamily, or commercial real estate loan portfolios. Net charge-offs to total assets were down 7 basis points linked quarter and 6 basis points year-over-year to 4 basis points for the three months ended December 31st. We remain well reserved from our current loan levels for credit loss, with our allowance for credit loss to non-accrual loans equal to 215.8% at December 31st. Axos Securities, which includes our correspondent clearing and RIA custody business, had a good quarter. Total assets under custody or administration increased by $43 billion at September 30th to $44.4 billion at December 31st. Net new assets for our custody business were nearly $1 billion in the December quarter and $2 billion for the first six months of fiscal 2026.

Strong organic asset growth and operational improvements contributed to operating income from the security segment, improving from $7.8 million in the second quarter to $9.7 million, but $7.8 million in Q2 of 2025 to $9.7 million in Q2 of 2026. We continue to expand the scope and scale of artificial intelligence across the firm to a wide range of businesses and functional units. We are well positioned to use artificial intelligence to increase operating leverage across the enterprise. We are deploying artificial intelligence throughout the software development lifecycle. These AI-enabled tools allow us not only to review, document, and update code at a faster pace with fewer resources, but they will also allow our team to take on more projects concurrently without the need to increase the pace of new hires or offshoring.

Our commercial lending team has expanded the utilization of AI in various credit underwriting and portfolio management workflows, significantly improving the productivity of manual repetitive tasks. We are enhancing our ability to perform more robust compliance and risk monitoring at reduced costs. We continue to evaluate M&A opportunities to augment growth from existing businesses and team liftouts. We successfully completed the acquisition of Verdant Commercial Capital, a vendor-based equipment leasing company at the end of the September quarter. Verdant’s focus on originating small and mid-ticket leases nationally in six specialty verticals is a great addition to our commercial lending franchise. Their strong risk-adjusted returns, history of low credit losses, tech-enabled service model, and the entrepreneurial spirit of the team members are a great strategic fit for Axos. We are making good progress integrating the team systems and processes.

We also have spent time with the vertical and functional leaders to identify and prioritize strategic and operational initiatives that will help deepen our relationship with our clients and increase revenue, growth, and profitability. Over the next 6-12 months, we will more systemically develop cross-sell opportunities for deposits and floor plan lending to a larger set of strategic dealers and OEMs. With a strong start and a solid pipeline, we expect Verdant to achieve EPS accretion at the mid to high end of our initial projection of 2%-3% accretion in fiscal 2026 and 5%-6% accretion in fiscal 2027. I’m excited about the opportunities that we have to maintain our positive momentum in fiscal 2026 and beyond.

Our strong and growing capital, diverse lending, deposit and fee income capabilities, operational and credit risk management culture positions us well to capitalize on organic and inorganic growth opportunities. As we make additional progress on various technology and process enhancement initiatives, I remain optimistic that we can deliver positive operating leverage while investing in businesses, systems, and people. Now I’ll turn the call over to Derrick, who will provide additional details on our financial results. Thanks, Greg. A quick reminder that in addition to our press release, our 10-Q was filed with the SEC today and is available online through Edgar or through our website at axosfinancial.com. I will provide some brief comments on a few topics. Please refer to our press release and our SEC filing for additional details.

Non-interest expenses were approximately $184.6 million for the three months ended December 31st, 2025, compared to $156.3 million in the three months ended September 30th, 2025. Verdant added approximately $7.8 million in salaries and benefits expenses and $14.8 million in depreciation and amortization expenses. Separately, we had a $7 million increase in other general and administrative expenses related to an accrual for the core clearing acquisition. Excluding the Verdant-related expenses and the one-time accrual, non-interest expenses were roughly flat quarter over quarter. We are committed to keeping our salaries and benefits and professional services expense growth at 30% of our revenue growth or lower on an annual basis. As we mentioned last quarter, we acquired approximately $1 billion of loans and leases and $213 million of fixed asset operating leases in the Verdant acquisition, which closed on September 30th, 2025.

As of December 31st, $702 million remain as on-balance sheet securitizations. In the quarter ended December 31st, 2025, we recorded $24.3 million of interest income from loans and leases and $14.1 million of non-interest income from the operating leases. Turning to the consolidated entity, total non-interest income for the three months ended December 31st, 2025, was $53.4 million, an increase of 65% from the $32.3 million in the prior quarter. Aside from the $18.9 million non-interest income from Verdant, we saw growth in both broker-dealer and advisory fee income compared to the link quarter. Provisions for credit losses were $25 million in the quarter ended December 31st, 2025, compared to $17.3 million in Q1 of 2026.

The primary driver of the quarter-over-quarter increase in provision for credit losses was robust loan growth across our commercial lending categories, which carry a higher provision for each dollar of net loans added compared to single-family and multifamily mortgages. We also added approximately $2.8 million to our provision for unfunded commitments related primarily to our commercial real estate specialty and C&I lending businesses during the quarter. I’ll wrap up with our loan pipeline and growth outlook. Our loan pipeline remains healthy at approximately $2.2 billion as of January 23rd, 2026, consisting of $598 million of single-family residential jumbo mortgage, $75 million of single-family gain-on-sale mortgage, $200 million of multifamily and small balance commercial, $82 million of auto and consumer, and $1.2 billion across commercial.

We expect the combination of strong originations from our commercial lending businesses, growing contributions from incubator businesses such as floorplan and middle market lending, and slowing prepayments in our multifamily lending businesses, and the incremental contributions from the Verdant equipment finance business to drive loan growth in the low to mid-teens year-over-year over the next year. With that, I’ll turn the call back over to Johnny. Thanks. Alicia, we’re ready to take questions. Thank you. We’ll now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation code will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star key.

One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of David Chiaverini with Jefferies. Please proceed. Hi. Thanks for taking the questions. So I wanted to start with the net interest margin outlook. I think I heard you right, that the normalized level was 4.72 and that you expect a 6 basis point decline. So that would imply 4.66. Just wanted to confirm that I heard that right was the first part. And then could you also talk about how much the average remaining life of the FDIC purchase loans? Yes. So with respect to the first question on interest margin, that’s correct. I do think because we’ve had so much robust loan demand, as I said, that I’ve been able to kind of push up average spreads a little bit.

But I think a good conservative approach would be to assume that you’re going to have that 5-6 basis point decline in the adjusted margin just based on the robust growth we had. We did well on the deposit side, but we did, I think, pretty well on the down beta, but that’s where that is. And then with respect to the Signature side, it’s almost like 3 or 4 more years, right? Correct. Yeah. About 3 or 4 more years. So that’s 6.5. It’s relatively steady, right? It’s a little more, it’s because of just the way the accounting is. So obviously, we could have either theoretically, you could have a loss in the portfolio, which we haven’t had yet, but you could, or you could have a prepayment, which would then accelerate that.

And then we would describe what the otherwise then new level of accretion would be per quarter. Great. Thanks for that. And in terms of you alluded to potential team liftouts, can you talk about a pipeline there and what you’re seeing? Well, I think we’ve done a decent number of team liftouts. And in a lot of cases, those teams are now adding people where they see opportunities on a more individual basis. So although we clearly look at acquisitions, we look at teams, I think we’ve really done a lot there in the last year. The floor plan team, the tech team, some other geographic teams. And so I think we’re probably more likely now in the coming quarter to be a little more focused on developing or the coming quarter is a little more focused on developing those teams, adding where necessary.

So we’ve kind of made those investments, and we want to see them kind of come to fruition, get a little more mature. Great. And then last one for me is just on the portfolio acquisition front. Similar question. Is there much of a pipeline there, or are you seeing many portfolios for sale? On the loan side, we have such robust organic growth through our own channels that we’ll see small ones, but I don’t really think that’s going to be a massive part. I haven’t really seen a lot of those. And when they are, they come up. They’re sort of a bunch of low-rate multifamily loans where people are trying to pretend that they’re not as marked as they should be or whatever. But there’s always interesting deals.

I mean, we’re across the spectrum going on, and we are always spending our time thinking about those and making sure we’re in a deal flow. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kyle Peterson with Needham & Company. Please proceed. Great. Good afternoon, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. I wanted to start off on the growth outlook. Great to hear the commentary and good to see the balances and the pipelines both looking really good. But in terms of moving forward to kind of support that low- to mid-teens outlook here, should we expect more of the same, some of the strength, whether it’s CRE specialty, warehouse, leasing, and some of these other things?

Is it more of the same, or are there other parts that you are thinking will become more attractive, or you see additional opportunities in the next couple of quarters here? Yeah. I think that obviously CRESL was heavy growth this quarter. We don’t expect that. We expect it to be a little more balanced next quarter. Fund finance continues to do well. We expect non-real estate lender finance maybe to have a little bit better quarter. Floor plan will kick in. Floor plan will start to kick in. So yeah, I think it’s going to be pretty balanced. And I think Verdant is they’re a bit of a seasonal business. They tend to have a bigger fourth quarter, and first quarter is slower. It’s just the way that leasing business is. But we still expect that they’re going to be $150-$200 of growth, including all their segments.

At least that’s what their current projection is. So I think it’s going to be pretty balanced. I feel really good about the balance we have across the groups now. Got it. That’s really helpful. And then as a follow-up, wanted to touch on fee income. I know there’s some pieces moving around with Verdant, and I think there’s some seasonality from some paper statements and stuff. But I guess stripping out that seasonality from that, is this a good run rate moving forward for fee income with Verdant in the fold? Obviously, I know there can be some moving on rates, but in a more stable rate environment, would this quarter be a good jumping-off point? Yeah. I think that’s right, Kyle. I think we did have the paper statement fee.

That was about $1.5 million this past quarter, so impactful, but not overly impactful by any means. But as the Verdant income, we expect to be generally consistent through that non-interest income line item and maybe some small growth there as they grow originations. But it’s only about 20% or even a little shy of that of their portfolio. So that comes through in operating leases. And there’s nuances to that with the accounting and as far as the classification as to what hits operating and what hits the net interest income line item. But I think this is a good jumping-off point. Okay. That’s really helpful. Thanks for taking my questions, and nice quarter, guys. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of David Feaster with Raymond James. Please proceed. Hey, good morning, everybody, or good afternoon, I guess. Hey, David.

How are you doing? Long night for you, huh? I know, yes. Hi, Greg. I got a high-level one for you. I mean, you guys have more going on than any other bank that I know. I mean, you got a ton of growth engines. You got a lot of irons in the fire, if you will, that you’re developing, businesses that you’re incubating. From your standpoint, what are you most excited about today that you’re working on that you think could be maybe most impactful to the business? Yeah. It’s an interesting question. I mean, I’ll dodge it, then I’ll answer it. I think one of the reasons that we have continued to do as well as we have for as long as we have is that we do have that balance.

And so that balance allows us to have strong growth, but not actually have rushed growth in anything. So if you really look at the underlying businesses, any one of those businesses isn’t growing at a crazy speed usually, but the combination of all of those businesses together end up generating a reasonable level of growth. So in a lot of respects, a lot of the infrastructure that’s necessary for those businesses to succeed and to grow and to get operating leverage really relies on a common data infrastructure, common Salesforce platform that allows us to track what’s going on with our teams and all those kinds of things. So there’s a balance that’s been created intentionally as a result of that diversity.

That being said, I think where I’m really excited is that I’ve always felt like we’ve had so many better ideas technologically than we were able to fund and that a lot of our fintech competitors, because of the nature of how they were able to run money-losing operations for such long periods of time and were measured by clicks or eyeballs when we would be measured by, "Oh my gosh, a penny here and a penny there." Right? And then now with what I’m seeing with the platforms, just with respect to AI and code development, I really do see a bending of that cost curve with respect to our ability to do a lot more development.

So the ability to be able to rapidly respond to customer needs through really staying close to the customer from a platform perspective and then being able to react in more real time to those needs on those platforms, I think is going to be really impactful. And it’s not. I can feel and taste it in a way that I haven’t been able to just based on what I see the speed of some of the things that we’re able to do in the new AI software development life cycle. So I think that’s what will be the biggest change and the most exciting change because then you really can innovate in interesting and unique ways.

And that’s something that really a lot of that innovation has not been limited by our ideas, but it’s more been limited by just kind of attempting to balance all the different cost structure factors with the other growth in the businesses. Okay. That’s helpful. And I also wanted to touch on the expansion in CRESL this quarter. Obviously, growth was massive. You alluded to don’t run rate this level of growth this next quarter. Could you just touch on what changed to drive that? Was this just a lot of demand? Did payoffs and paydowns slow, or did you move upstream a bit and have a few larger deals? I’m just kind of curious if you could talk about what drove the strength. The paydown issue was significant.

And what had really happened there is we’re still if you think about these deals as three-year kind of average lives, there was still we had just done some kind of pulling back in certain areas around that time. And so there were some gaps, and you could see it, and you could kind of predict the enhanced prepays, right? And so if you think about those COVID timeframes, think about the length of the deals, there were just timeframes where we just weren’t sure where things were going, and we were more cautious. But then you just ended up having little prepay bulges throughout there. So that’s one. And then sometimes this just happens. There were some deals that got pushed in different quarters, and some went early, and it ended up being larger than it was. I don’t know, Derrick, if you have anything you wanted to mention.

No, I think, yeah, the repayment headwind that we had talked about for the last year slowing is basically the one-word answer, repayments. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. That’s great. And then, look, when you’ve got that kind of growth, I mean, funding it is not easy. And so your ability to fund loan growth has been really impressive. It looks like it was primarily within specialty deposits and commercial where you were able to drive a lot of deposit growth. Could you touch on maybe within those segments, where are you seeing the most opportunity and where you’re having the most success driving that growth? Sure. We did have a good deposit growth quarter, and we’re a little sensitive about being maybe as aggressive with the rate reductions that we would normally drive because we’ve been driving not only to 100% beta, but to an actual neutral NII.

And we were able to achieve that pretty much on every rate decline to date. And I think we did a pretty good job here on that side too, but I did advise on that. I think that when we look forward, a 7,800, even maybe a little bit more growth number, that number feels good for us from what the organic side looks like. And that probably comes 60%-ish from consumer and then the rest of it from the commercial and security side with really balance across a lot of different areas. Everything from HOA and title and escrow and just regular operating deposits and all those things, they’re all contributing, and those are continuing to allow us to grow.

So I mean, frankly, dealing with down rate environments when you’re doing as aggressive deposit repricing as we are with respect to prior neutralization of NII-ish differences and then 100% plus betas that are associated with that, that does make growth a little harder. But I think having a little bit of stability there, even if it’s for a few quarters, will be helpful. I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary. We could still handle rate declines, but that’ll be helpful. And obviously, loan growth this quarter was above what we expect to achieve. We’ve given numbers that it’s going to be half that roughly or something or around that. So that obviously is much more in line with what our organic capabilities are on the funding side. Okay. That’s helpful. Thanks, everybody. Great quarter. Thank you. Thanks, David. Thank you, David. Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Gary Tenner with D.A. Davidson. Please proceed with your question. Thanks. Good afternoon. I just wanted to ask a follow-up on the Verdant impact on the fees and expenses. It sounds like the addition on the fee side, was there a greater percentage of their existing assets that were classified as operating leases than maybe expected that drove that larger fee component this quarter? I don’t think so. I think we had the $200, a little over $200 million that we classified as operating leases last quarter. I think if reflecting back what we might have done was given a net kind of impact of the impact between the depreciation and the fee income and not the gross impact. And so I probably could have done a better job of breaking that gross impact and those line items out for everyone.

So that might be. I’m not sure if that’s what you’re referring to, Gary. Yeah. Yeah. That might be it, Derrick. So then as we’re, I know you gave kind of the expectation that you’re kind of looking to hold expense growth to about 30% of revenue growth. But as we’re thinking about the interplay, Verdant specifically, between the fee and expense side, that pace of depreciation and amortization growth relative to the pace of fee growth, what would be, is there a level to be thinking about on how those move together? Yeah. And just to clarify that, the 30% refers to the salaries and related costs and professional services combined. So those two segments of the non-interest expenses. So that’s where that doesn’t incorporate the depreciation aspect.

But the depreciation will be relatively consistent as we look forward here, maybe a small amount of growth just from new assets that are originated, and that will align generally with increases as well on the fee income side. But the run rate of that depreciation line item, this is kind of that new run rate for it. Okay. Got it. And then just one other expense question, Derrick. You had mentioned a $7 million increase to G&A. What was that related to? I missed the comment there. That was related to that we have subordinated loans that we made a claim on back to the clearing matter about seven years ago, and our claim on that was denied. And so that’s where the additional $7 million is our estimate of expense that we expect to incur as a relation to that.

And that’s a one-time item that was related back to that issue we had all those years ago. Okay. Great. Appreciate the color there. And then, Greg, just in terms of the Qualia partnership that you announced a short while ago, can you kind of characterize the opportunity that you see for that partnership? Yeah. I think it’s significant. They’ve been a really great partner. We’ve been exploring just different ways to work together. They’re a very innovative financial technology company. And so they obviously are a leader in the escrow space, which helps us. And they have a financial technology that’s utilized by a significant part of the escrow industry. And so we have a couple of territories that are exclusive right now to that. And I’m not going to get too much into that, but I think it’ll be helpful on the deposit side.

And that’s an interesting specialty deposit vertical. And they’re quite an innovative company. And we’ve got some ideas of stuff to do with them. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kelly Motta with KBW. Please proceed. Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for the question. Maybe circling back to the loan growth guidance, I appreciate that this is particularly strong and to not run rate this CRESL strength. But with your low, mid-teens guidance reiterated, I just wanted to clarify is that I think that was supposed to be for the balance of the year ex Verdant off of this very high level of growth in your second quarter. Does your guidance imply a slowdown in the second half? It seems like pipelines are strong. So just trying to square that thing out. Well, yeah. No, I understand where you’re going with that.

I mean, I think we also said, just trying to be a little more clarity, we think it’s around 600-800 this quarter. Could it be a little higher? Yeah, I think lower is unlikely, but that would be not a bad number range. And I don’t really think we’d think that’s going to change in the next quarter after that. But it’s always hard to have visibility out that far. But I mean, I think we feel pretty good about that. And that does include Verdant. And it also includes me being able to be a little bit tougher on lower rate deals, which is a potential, but I think it’s a difficult upside to quantify and maybe one that doesn’t materialize with respect to margin. So I wouldn’t put it in the numbers, but it’s potentially there.

Because frankly, I mean, this is more about where we want to grow from a capital perspective, where we want to grow from a liquidity perspective. And so all that comes together. And I think that 800-ish kind of range, a little lower, a little more, is around where we think we can be. Got it. That’s really helpful. Thank you for the clarity. It seems like Verdant has been a really nice home run with those folks producing really well. And you touched on some of the synergies you expect from there. I mean, would you expect their pace of growth to kind of continue at the strength that’s been here? Just maybe talking a bit more about if the flexibility or balance sheet has enabled them to be more active or if there’s kind of a pull through of that pipeline. Thanks. Yeah. No, thank you, Kelly. Yeah.

Well, so I do believe that for some of their clients, really great clients they have, I mean, some big corporations and folks that have really great credit profiles, big municipalities, things like that, they were very limited with respect to their ability to serve those clients at the capacity that they have the capability of doing. And so we do add that. It is a little bit of a cyclical business just from a standpoint of the fourth quarter tends to be a little heavier. And in general, I think that sentiment is right. The teams are getting along extremely well. They’re a good cultural fit. I think they see the benefit of being here and integrating with the team.

Not only are they getting more tech support and help, but they were able to become immediately profitable based on the refinancing of their subordinated debt and of their lines of credit, which were from JP Morgan, other big banks. And to get deposit funding is obviously really helpful. So yeah. And then I think also, I mean, frankly, I did not expect this. They’ve been enthusiastically selling deposits, and that’s actually been working, which I’m kind of surprised by, which is cool. I thought that. But I think they’re not only going full bore for us, but it helps to add it to the comp plan, I guess. And then yeah.

And then I think that obviously the floor plan business, they’ve introduced some floor plan transactions because, I mean, they’ve got a lot of salespeople out there talking to a lot of dealers, and those dealers also have floor plan needs. So that’s really beginning. We’ve got a couple of referrals there, but I do think that that ability to think about that technologically over time can result in some interesting synergies because obviously they’re part of the same ecosystem on a supply chain side with what’s being housed on a floor plan line is eventually sold to a client that could be financed through Verdant. So I think that’s an interesting exactly how that works and how we bring that together, we’re working through. But I think there are a couple of cool synergistic businesses there. Got it. Thanks for the color. I’ll step back. Yeah. Thank you, Kelly.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I’d like to pass the call back over to management for any closing remarks. Great. Thanks for everyone’s interest. And we’ll see you at the upcoming conferences. Take care. Thanks, everybody. This concludes today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.