Bank OZK (NASDAQ:OZK) Q3 2022 Earnings Conference Call October 21, 2022 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Jay Staley - Director of IR & Corporate Development

George Gleason - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

Cindy Wolfe - Chief Operating Officer

Brannon Hamblen - President

Tim Hicks - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Stephen Scouten - Piper Sandler

Timur Braziler - Wells Fargo

Catherine Mealor - KBW

Matt Olney - Stephens

Jennifer Demba - Truist

Brian Martin - Janney

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Bank OZK Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Jay Staley, you may begin.

Jay Staley

Good morning. I'm Jay Staley, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development for Bank OZK. Thank you for joining our call this morning and participating in our question-and-answer session.

In today's Q&A session, we may make forward-looking statements about our expectations, estimates and outlook for the future. Please refer to our earnings release, management comments and other public filings for more information on the various factors and risks that may cause actual results or outcomes to vary from those projected in or implied by such forward-looking statements.

Joining me on the call to take your questions are George Gleason, Chairman and CEO; Brannon Hamblen, President; Tim Hicks, Chief Financial Officer; and Cindy Wolfe, Chief Operating Officer. We will now open the lines for your questions. Let me now ask our operator, Kevin, to remind our listeners how to queue in for questions.

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Stephen Scouten with Piper Sandler. Your line is open.

Stephen Scouten

I guess maybe if we could start with the repayments seen this quarter, obviously, down about $1 billion quarter-over-quarter and I know that can be somewhat episodic and hard to predict, but I took the commentary in the management comments is somewhat of a positive that you don’t think it will necessarily be the highest year on record. So can you tell me what you guys are seeing there and what might be driving the reduction in repayments? Is it less opportunity for your customers to refinance out? Or what kind of dynamics are going on there?

George Gleason

Brannon, do you want to take that?

Brannon Hamblen

Absolutely. Absolutely, Stephen. Thanks. Good to talk to you. Certainly, you identified one of the issues. Obviously, the finance markets, whether it be bridge or permanent lending markets are affected as the interest rates have moved to the degree that they have. So I would say that while we have repayments from a number of directions, including the sale of for-sale product condos and on a lesser level, obviously, lots in single-family homes, the refinance market is a big part of what takes out our loans. So that has slowed down. We are still seeing those. Obviously, it was a material payoff quarter, but not perhaps as heavy as we had expected. And I think as we stated in our comments, we would expect at least for the foreseeable future that it may not be as heavy.