Customers Bancorp reports Q3 core EPS $1.34, consensus $1.43

“Customers Bancorp (CUBI) continued to deliver on its strategic priorities to grow our franchise value through lower-cost and granular deposit inflows and diversified loan growth while we manage our operational risks,” said Customers Bancorp Chairman and CEO Jay Sidhu. “We have strong momentum as we pursue phase two of our deposit transformation strategy – remixing existing higher-cost business unit deposits and brokered deposits into core lower-cost and granular deposits. We started the year with robust pipeline within our existing businesses which has been materially enhanced by the new commercial banking teams that joined Customers in April. In the quarter, we utilized deposit growth from commercial customers of $1.1 billion to paydown $0.7 billion of higher-cost commercial and consumer client deposits. In the third quarter, these inflows were, once again, broad-based with more than 25 different channels increasing balances and 70% of channels contributing $25 million or more. Our new deposit focused commercial banking teams have opened over 3,000 new deposit accounts since joining and gathered $536 million in deposits at an interest rate of approximately 2.9% with approximately 30% being non-interest bearing. Our deposit pipelines continue to grow with an extraordinary conversion ratio. We repurchased 373,974 shares of common stock under the previously authorized share repurchase program at an average price below Tangible Book Value per share. Even with the share repurchase and balance sheet growth, our TCE / TA ratio* remained flat. Enhanced by the addition of our new banking teams, we believe we are extremely well-positioned to continue to strengthen our deposit franchise, improve our profitability, and maintain our already strong capital ratios,” stated Jay Sidhu.