Hope Bancorp, Inc. (HOPE) Q2 2019 Earnings Call Transcript
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Hope Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ: HOPE)
Q2 2019 Earnings Call
Jul 17, 2019, 12:30 p.m. ET
Contents:
Prepared Remarks
Questions and Answers
Call Participants
Prepared Remarks:
Operator
Good day, and welcome to the Hope Bancorp's Second Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded.
I would now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Angie Yang, Director of Investor Relations. Please proceed.
Angie Yang -- Senior Vice President, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate
Thank you Ian. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the Hope Bancorp 2019 second quarter investor conference call. As usual, we will begin with -- we will be using a slide presentation to accompany our discussion this morning. If you have not done so already, please visit the presentations page of our Investors Relations website to download a copy of the presentation. Or if you are listening into the webcast, you should be able to view the slides from the computer screen as we progress through the presentation.
Moving to Slide 2. I'd like to begin with a brief statement regarding forward-looking remarks. The call today may contain forward-looking projections, regarding the future financial performance of the Company and future events. These statements are based on current expectations, estimates, forecasts, projections, and management assumptions about the future performance of the Company as well as the businesses and markets in which the Company does and is expected to operate. These statements constitute forward-looking statements, within the meaning of the US Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are not guarantees of future performance. Actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed or forecasted in such forward-looking statements. We refer you to the documents the Company files periodically with the SEC as well as the Safe Harbor statements in our press release issued yesterday.
Hope Bancorp assumes no obligation to revise any forward-looking projections that may be made on today's call. The Company cautions that the complete financial results to be included in the quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2019 to differ materially from the financial results being reported today. In addition, some of the information referenced on this call today are non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our 2019 second quarter earnings release for the reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures.
Now, we have allotted one hour for this call. Presenting from the management side today will be Kevin Kim, Hope Bancorp's Chairman, President and CEO and Alex Ko, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Chief Credit Officer Peter Koh is also here with us today and will participate in the Q&A session.
With that, let me turn the call over to Kevin Kim. Kevin?
Kevin S. Kim -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Angie. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today.
Let's begin with Slide 3. In the second quarter, we noted positive trends in a number of key financial metrics. We recognized a higher level of loan production while continuing to focus on originating credits with more attractive risk-adjusted yields. We continued to do a better job in managing our deposit costs and we had substantial improvement in asset quality, which further supports that the one of credit issues that we experienced in the first quarter were not reflective of the overall health of our portfolio. From a net income perspective, we generated $42.7 million in net income during the second quarter or $0.34 per diluted share which was comparable with the $42.8 million or $0.34 per diluted share in the preceding first quarter.
Moving on to Slide 4, we also recognized increases in loan production across all of our major lending areas in the second quarter, with a particularly nice pickup in C&I originations, which is consistent with our balance sheet diversification strategy. We booked $597 million in new loan commitments and funded $504 million during the second quarter. This is up from $462 million in new loan commitments and $442 million in loans funded during the first quarter.
However, pay-offs and pay-downs were significantly higher this quarter at $599 million compared with $364 million in the first quarter. This higher level of payoffs was largely driven by aggressive pricing among mainstream banks. This aggressive pricing picked up midway through the quarter as the probability for lower interest rates increased. We took advantage of market dynamic to exit some of our lower rated credits from the bank, which Alex will discuss later in the call.
We also continued to sell loans out of our retained mortgage portfolio this quarter as we look to reposition our portfolio toward higher yielding assets. In the second quarter, we sold $50 million of loans from our retained mortgage portfolio. With the impact of higher level of payoffs and the sale of the residential mortgage loans, our total loan portfolio declined by approximately 1% from the end of the prior quarter.
Looking at the breakdown of our loan production by major category. Commercial real estate loans comprised 50% of total production this quarter. Commercial loans accounted for 35%, and consumer loans comprised primarily of residential mortgage loans accounted for 15%. We originated $253 million in CRE loans for the quarter, up modestly from $236 million in the preceding first quarter. The aggressive pricing among mainstream banks that resulted in higher payoffs also impacted our CRE loan originations, as we declined a number of deals that did not meet our pricing criteria. And the overall market for new CRE transactions continues to be sluggish, which is impacting the number of available lending opportunities for us. Looking at our C&I originations, we had $176 million in new production in the second quarter, up from $135 million in the prior quarter.
We have a nicely diversified portfolio of commercial customers and we are pleased with the consistent progress we are making in our C&I lending business. Over the past year, we have had success in two particular areas, subsidiaries of Korean companies operating in the US and supermarkets in the north eastern United States. The reputation and expertise we have built up within these areas is producing a consistent stream of new business development opportunities that has contributed to driving the higher C&I loan production that we are seeing. As a percentage of new loans, C&I continues to represent a larger component within our overall mix of loan production. In the second quarter, C&I loans accounted for 35% of our total loan production, up from 31% in the first quarter, and 23% in the fourth quarter of 2018.
Turning to our SBA business. Our total production was impacted by a number of loan that have slipped into the third quarter. We originated $37 million in SBA loans compared with $48 million in the preceding first quarter. The average rate on new SBA originations continues to be approximately 7% . And since we are retaining this production, we are seeing the positive impact on our average loan yields. Given the loans that slipped out of the second quarter, we have a strong pipeline that should lead to higher SBA loan production in the third quarter.
In terms of residential mortgage originations, we benefited from the seasonally stronger trends in the second quarter, which pushed up our originations to $74 million compared with $64 million in the preceding quarter. With the lower interest rate environment for residential mortgage loans, we have also seen an increase in refinance transactions and expect solid mortgage origination volumes in the third quarter.
We continue to see the positive impact on average loan yields from our shift in loan production strategy. The average rate on our new loan originations was 5.46% in the second quarter, down 6 basis points from the preceding first quarter, but still up considerably from our average rate on originations of last year. This is the first period since the third quarter of 2017 that the average rate on new loans has decreased quarter over quarter. This decrease in rates was primarily due to the rapidly changing rate environment with LIBOR rates moving down throughout the quarter and the five-year swap rate down by more than 50 basis points during the course of the second quarter. We believe these events led to the very aggressive pricing environment that we have been experiencing since the middle of the second quarter.
With that as an overview of our business development efforts, I will ask Alex to provide additional details on our financial performance for the second quarter. Alex?
Alex Ko -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Kevin. As I review our financial results, I will limit my discussion to just some of the more significant items in the quarter. Beginning with Slide 5, I will start with our net interest income, which totaled $117.2 million compared with $119.60 million in the preceding first quarter. The reduction was primarily due to a slight decrease in our average loan balances, coupled with lower net interest margin. Our net interest margin declined by 8 basis points to 3.31%. On a core basis, excluding purchase accounting adjustments, our net interest margin declined by 6 basis point, which was an improvement from the 7 basis point decline in the first quarter of 2019. The decline was primarily due to a 5 basis point increase in our cost of deposits. While we are still seeing a modest increase in deposit costs, we saw a significant moderation in the rate of increase this quarter. The 5 basis point increase was down from a 17 basis point increase in the prior quarter, and that reflects the progress we are making with the various initiatives we are employing to enhance our core deposit gathering and to better manage our deposit cost.
We also continued to see positive trends in the repricing gap on time deposit renewals or the delta between the CD's expiring rate and the renewal rate. During the second quarter, the repricing gap was 18 basis points, down significantly from the 50 basis point repricing gap in the preceding first quarter. The moderation of the repricing gap should lead to further improvement in our ability to manage our deposit costs going forward. Our average loan yield excluding purchase accounting adjustment was relatively flat quarter-over-quarter.
Now, with regard to our net interest margin projection for the year. in the past couple of months, the prevailing sentiment has now turned toward the expectation of interest rate cuts in 2019. If interest rates decline in 2019, this will have an adverse impact on our net interest margins.. Based on our projections, a 25 basis point decline in interest rate would initially result in a decline in our net interest margin of approximately 5 basis point to 8 basis point as loans reprice to lower rates. Some of this decline, obviously, would be offset as deposits also priced lower in the following months.
Now, moving on to Slide 6. Our non-interest income was $12.3 million, up from $11.4 million in the preceding first quarter. The primary variance from the preceding quarter was attributable to higher net gains on loan sales. During the quarter, we saw $76 million of residential mortgage loans to the secondary market, approximately 65% of which represented sales from our seasoned mortgage portfolio. We recorded $1.1 million in net gains this quarter versus $741,000 in the preceding quarter. Also, during the quarter, we repositioned a portion of our investment securities and recognized a gain of $129,000. This compares with no sales of investment security in the compatible quarters. All of our other major sources of non-interest income were relatively consistent with a preceding quarter.
Moving on to non-interest expenses on Slide 7. Our non-interest expense was $71.4 million in the second quarter, which is up by a little more than our $0.5 million from the prior quarter, but still within our projected range of expenses. We have done a good job in controlling our salary and benefit expenses, which was down by approximately 3% from the prior quarter. Our full-time equivalent employee count decreased by 21 quarter-over-quarter to 1,446 as of June 30, 2019 and was down by 45 year-over-year, but this decrease was offset by increases in a number of other expense items.
Most notably, our professional fees increased by approximately $600,000 which reflect higher expenses related to our CECL implementation efforts and ongoing investment that we believe enhance the operations of our bank. We also had a $900,000 increase in credit related expenses this quarter, which tends to be volatile line item quarter-to-quarter. The higher expense level combined with a lower level of average interest earning assets raised our annualized non-interest expense to average assets to 1.88%, up 3 basis point from the prior quarter. Looking ahead to the third quarter, we'll start to see the positive impact of our recent branch rationalization plan, which was completed at the end of the second quarter. We consolidated six branches and we'll see the benefit of a full quarter of cost savings beginning in the third quarter. This will help offset higher expenses in other areas.
Now, moving on to Slide 8. Our total deposits declined by approximately 1% from the end of the prior quarter. Although, we saw a very favorable shift in our mix of deposits. We have nice increases in all of our lower cost deposit categories, which reflect our increased focuses on core deposit gathering and initial result of our more aggressive sales effort for our treasury management services.
Our non-interest bearing demand deposits increased 2% from the end of the prior quarter, while money market deposits were up approximately 5%. As part of our deposit strategy, we have become more competitive on our money market rates, which has made them an attractive alternative to a certificate of deposits for our customers. As a result, as time deposits are maturing, we have been able to successfully convert some deposit customers into money market accounts which has been a factor in contributing to our improved deposit cost management. Given our success in other deposit gathering areas, we were also able to be more strategic in our CD pricing. This led to a decrease in our time deposit balances during the second quarter and the overall improvement in our deposit mix.
Now, moving on to Slide 9, I'll review our asset quality. As you may recall, we had noticeable increases in non-accrual loans and criticized loans last quarter that were driven by a handful of unique credit relationships that presented minimal potential loss exposures. We were confident that the underlying health of the broader portfolio was solid and the credit trends that we experienced in the second quarter provided strong support for that perspective. We had across the board improvement in all of our asset quality categories with significant declines in non-performing assets, criticized and classified loans and past due loans. The primary driver of the decline in problem loans was payoffs and paydowns, much of which resulted from our workout efforts that encourages those borrowers to seek refinancing from other banks.
Specific to the handful of problem credits that we discussed on our last conference call, we were paid off on two loans related to one large relationship that was placed on non-accrual in the first quarter. These payoffs totaled approximately $50 million. We also received a payoff on the $60 million CRE loan for mixed use condominium that was downgraded to a criticized loan in the first quarter. There was no additional deterioration in any of the other loans that we discussed on our last quarter call. The combination of payoffs and the modest inflow into our problem asset categories resulted in the strong improvement we saw in the credit metrics in the second quarter with non-accruals down by 25% and the criticized loan balance down by 9%.
We also had another quarter of very low credit losses. We had $1.4 million in net charge offs which represented just 5 basis points of average loans on an annualized basis. On a year-to-date basis, our net charge offs are just 3 basis points of average loans. Our provision for loan losses of $1.2 million increased our allowance to total loan ratio to 79 basis points from 78 basis points.
With that, let me turn the call back to Kevin.
Kevin S. Kim -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Alex. Let's move on to slide 10. While we have experienced a flatness in our balance sheet during the first half of the year, we remain positive with respect to the initiatives that we have in motion. To provide a brief recap, we have embarked on a balance sheet diversification strategy, and we expect to continue to see a favorable shift in the mix of new loan production. We are very focused on continuing to gain more traction with our deposit gathering initiatives, improving our deposit mix, and enhancing our ability to control our deposit costs. We also expect to see our good credit quality to continue and we will continue to improve our expense management.
Now, in terms of our outlook in a rapidly evolving and more challenging business environment for banks, we expect many of the positive trends we have experienced in the half of the year, will continue as we progress through the year. Given the strong pipeline we have in SBA and the consistent production we are getting in commercial lending, we expect to see stronger loan origination volumes in the back half of the year.
However, due to the highly competitive environment that is driving elevated payoffs, we are facing stronger headwinds than we initially expected at the beginning of the year. As a result, we now expect loan growth for the full year to be more in the 2% to 3% range. Now, as we announced yesterday, our Board of Directors authorized the repurchase of up to $50 million of our Company's common stock. We believe having the plan in place gives us greater flexibility to create additional value for our shareholders, especially in times of market disruption. It also enhances our ability to maintain a balanced capital allocation strategy, while providing a steady return of capital to our shareholders through our quarterly dividend. Altogether with our quarterly cash dividend that has a payout ratio in excess of 40%, our management and board are committed to delivering solid financial performance and enhancing shareholder returns.
With that, let's open up the call to answer any questions you may have. Operator, please open up the call.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
[Operator Instructions]At this time, our first question comes from Gary Tenner of D.A. Davidson. Gary, please proceed.
Gary Tenner -- D.A. Davidson & Company -- Analyst
Thanks. Good morning, everybody.
Angie Yang -- Senior Vice President, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate
Good morning.
Kevin S. Kim -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Good morning.
Gary Tenner -- D.A. Davidson & Company -- Analyst
Hey, I wanted to ask, I guess, first off, on the deposit side, you talked about some of the initiatives this quarter and kind of the repricing gap narrowing in the second quarter and I think also maybe expecting for the third quarter, but I wonder if you could actually talk about where you do expect it in the third quarter based on what you know today? And then, the follow up to that is, with the margin impact of 5 basis points to 8 basis points based on a 25 basis point cut, I wasn't clear if that was inclusive or not of the expected ability to workout deposit costs?
Alex Ko -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Okay. Gary, this is Alex. Deposit initiatives, as I indicated, we are making progresses especially for treasury management services and also our deposit cost management strategy by shifting the mixture of the deposit component, especially for lower cost deposits, DDA is increasing while we have a cannibalization between the CD and the money market. We saw reduction on the CD while those core deposit money market and DDA was increasing. So we are making good progresses in terms of our initiatives and we would like to continue to see those progresses.
Relate to repricing gap, as we said, the CD especially maturing versus the new offering rate, the gap has substantially narrowed especially for this quarter. And as you recall, last year or so, there was a rapid and a big gap between the CD maturing and the new offering rate, but I think that has come down substantially and I would expect to see the narrowing gap continue as our CD pricing will be stabilized and if the actual market rate goes down, we might be able to lower a little bit. So that repricing gap, again, I would expect to continue decrease.
Relates to margins, we did say if the case of a 25 basis point reduction, we would expect about 5 basis point to 8 basis point further compression on the margin because we see the pricing on the loan side will be kind of a pressure while not the deposit pricing can be, we can proactively manage, but we would expect to have further compression from the rate decreases.
Gary Tenner -- D.A. Davidson & Company -- Analyst
Okay. Thank you for the detail and then just one quick follow-up on the expense side. You mentioned the branch consolidation that would benefit the third quarter. I wasn't clear from your comments, it sounded like that would sort of largely be offset by growth in other areas or do you expect an actual absolute decline in operating expenses in the third quarter?
Alex Ko -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Sure. I would actually expect the run rate for the non-interest expense for the third quarter of 2019 to be approximately the same as we saw in Q2, which is around like a $71.5 million. I think we would expect slightly increase on the salary and benefits Q3. However, as we indicated, the branch consolidation, we completed the second quarter and we'll have a full benefit of those cost savings starting Q3. So, those will decrease our overhead costs about $390,000 on a quarterly basis.
And for other expenses, I don't expect after Q4 of this year any substantial professional fee increase, but for the rest of the year, we are working very hard on the CECL. And the CECL fee, we would expect to continue to be same level, elevated level for the third quarter and the fourth quarter. But again after the year end, once the CECL is completed, we would expect to have those professional fee remain flat or decrease.
So with that, we did have a little bit increase on the non-interest expense to average asset ratio in Q2, but, I think going forward, the rate, we still expect to between 1.5% [phonetic] to 1.88% going forward.
Gary Tenner -- D.A. Davidson & Company -- Analyst
All right, that's great. Thank you.
Alex Ko -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Thanks you.
Operator
Our next question comes from Chris McGratty of KBW. Chris, please proceed.
Chris McGratty -- KBW -- Analyst
Hey Good morning. Thanks for the question. Alex, if we could just go into the margin a little bit. So, working off -- I want to make sure I understand the guide. Working off the second quarter of 331 [Phonetic], I think the forward curve assumes a couple cuts this year. So that would kind of put the margin -- and exiting the year in the 315 [Phonetic] to 320 [Phonetic] range roughly. I'm interested if that scenario plays out, and your deposit costs eventually catch up to your assets, how we should think about margins entering 2020? I know it's a -- and it's a lot of assumptions need to be made, but is there -- in a static rate environment, do you get NIM -- is NIM stability kind of the goal given what you're doing with the balance sheet or do you think about the pressure or expansion one way or the other? Thanks.
Alex Ko -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, Chris. That's a really tough question to answer at this moment because so much, so many variables. As you mentioned, the rate curve and very -- all those kind of things, it does impact significantly on our projection on the net interest margin. So that's why we were comfortable giving a immediate impact of 25 basis point reduction. How is that impact in our 2019 net interest margin [Indecipherable] like a 5 basis point to 8 basis point reduction. But moving on to 2020 forecast, it's again kind of tough given the number of variables, but I think we are making a success on the deposit cost control and also core margin.
Now, we did say about the 1 basis point improvement in terms of contraction. In Q1, we had a 7 basis point reduction but in Q2 we have only 6 basis points. So we're still -- our priority is to deposit cost control. So with our health on the deposit cost control, we would like to see in 2020, there will be a better margin. But I think it's important for me to mention that our previously expectations for the second half of margin kind of turn around to improve, I think there might be some changes necessary given all the macroeconomic and the interest rate environment, we'd expect to extend that margin compression period in a few more quarters. So we will definitely see in the 2020. I'm hoping better margin, but I would like to continue to see in 2019 for margin to be further compressed.
Chris McGratty -- KBW -- Analyst
Okay. If I could add another one on the margin, the accretion outlook, it's been ticking down slowly the last couple quarters. How should we be thinking about accretion contribution the next several quarters and obviously when winter season hits, any kind of thoughts on impact there?
Alex Ko -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yeah. We have about $23 million of credit-related undiscounted accretion. If CCEL is effective in 1/1/2020, those $23 million will be added on to allowance for loan losses and we'll have a slight reduction on the accretion of those discounts which will have an impact to net interest margin, but I don't think that's a big impact to our margin.
Chris McGratty -- KBW -- Analyst
Okay. And then maybe, I'll -- one for Kevin and I'll hop out. Kevin, the buyback announcement, obviously, the balance sheet was flat to down a little in the quarter, and it sounds like the growth, whatever growth you are going to have in the balance sheet is going to be clearly be able to supported by your capital levels. So, should we think of this buyback as the flexibility or is it something where given where your stock is, analysts and investors should just assume that this is going to be executed in kind of the next couple quarters?
Kevin S. Kim -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Well, we are in a very rapidly evolving market for financial institutions and we will be actively monitoring market indicators and will do the repurchase when all the factors taken into consideration indicate that a repurchase at a given time is in the best interest of the Company and our shareholders. So, there are so many moving parts and uncertainties, but we will be quick when the right time comes. So it's hard to answer whether the execution will take place within the next few months or within the next few quarters. We will closely monitor the market situation.
Chris McGratty -- KBW -- Analyst
All right. Thank you very much.
Kevin S. Kim -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you.
Operator
Our next question comes from Matthew Clarke of Piper Jaffray. Matthew, please proceed.
Matthew Clarke -- Piper Jaffray -- Analyst
Hey, good morning.
Kevin S. Kim -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Good Morning.
Matthew Clarke -- Piper Jaffray -- Analyst
Just on the expense to average asset ratio. I just want to make sure I heard you correctly. 1.85% to 1.88% is the expectation in the upcoming quarter and wanted to get your thoughts as it relates to outlook looking beyond the third quarter, whether that we could get back down to that 1.80% to 1.85% range again?
Alex Ko -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yes, I think that's our expectation. The reason why we have a little bit of higher for this quarter was in combination of $0.5 million or so increase on the expenses, but also a denominator in the average earning asset slightly decreased. However, we are projecting our average balance will continue to go up and also the cost management is one of our priority, especially when the CECL is completed. I'm not aware of any big ticket items that would require substantial investment on the professional fee or other expense items. So, I would expect normalize after -- on two quarters and also including Q3, our run rate will be between 1.85% to 1.88%.
Matthew Clarke -- Piper Jaffray -- Analyst
Okay. And then just on SBA, any change in appetite there based on the premiums you're seeing or you're going to continue just to retain the foreseeable future?
Kevin S. Kim -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Well, as you may see, the premiums have increased in recent months and the economics of selling the loans is now back to the level where it is a more attractive option, but we will consider it in the overall scheme of our 2019 priorities that favor higher yielding loans in our portfolio and that we have not yet made any change in our strategy to retain SBA loans in our portfolio.
Matthew Clarke -- Piper Jaffray -- Analyst
Okay, and then just on the gain on sale this quarter, the margins look better. Anything unusual there or you think that's a good gain on sale margin to use going forward?
Kevin S. Kim -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Well, we have the gain on sale of our mortgage loans. If you look at that, we have the sale of loans in second quarter that includes a bulk sale from our existing portfolio and whether we will continue to sell our loans from the retained mortgage portfolio, I think, the key word is opportunistic and our decision making process for selling our retained mortgage loans.
So if you want to have a run rate for gain on sale of mortgage loans, I would probably focus on the new loan originations volume, and we have produced about $74 million in second quarter and we expect a comparable production level in Q3. So I think you should expect a lower number than the second quarter because the second quarter number included the bulk sale, and we do not know at this time whether we will have the bulk sale in the third quarter.
Matthew Clarke -- Piper Jaffray -- Analyst
Okay, great. Thank you.
Operator
Our next question comes from Tim Coffey of Janney. Tim, please proceed.
Timothy N. Coffey -- Janney -- Analyst
Thank you. Morning, everybody.
Angie Yang -- Senior Vice President, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate
Morning.
Kevin S. Kim -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Good morning.
Timothy N. Coffey -- Janney -- Analyst
Kevin, the competition for the mainstream banks that you mentioned during your prepared remarks, is that a function of banks coming down market?
Kevin S. Kim -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. We have a tremendous competition from the the national banks and money center banks, even money center banks for our customer base and I think we have a lot more competition from the larger banks than the peer space banks in terms of our lending opportunities. In terms of our deposit efforts, I think, we have severe competition from the space peers, but in terms of lending, during the several quarters, previous quarters, we see a lot more competition from the mainstream banks than the space peers.
Timothy N. Coffey -- Janney -- Analyst
Okay. And the competition from the mainstream banks, does it feel any different than it did a couple of years ago when rates were declining or is it about the same?
Kevin S. Kim -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Well, I think there are more aggressive in terms of pricing these days than they used to be.
Timothy N. Coffey -- Janney -- Analyst
Okay, great. The rest of my questions have been answered. Thank you.
Angie Yang -- Senior Vice President, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate
Thanks.
Operator
[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Tim O'Brien of Sandler O'Neill & Partners. Tim, please proceed.
Tim O'Brien -- Sandler O'Neill & Partners -- Analyst
Thanks. Just one question. I've a little follow up on the credit situation. You guys had good progress this quarter. Could you give a little color on, if the remaining workouts related to the loans that you guys talked about in the first quarter is on track to exit or resolve fairly quickly? Or what your thoughts are there for credit outlook here in the second -- heading into the second half of this year.
Peter Koh -- Executive Vice President & Chief Credit Officer
Sure, this is Peter. So, the first quarter credits that we described that popped up, I think, we really didn't see any further deterioration in any of those credits that remain. I think from the overall portfolio, look, I think we have been very proactive in identifying potential problem credits. I think as we move forward into the third quarter, there will be some just natural lumpiness in terms of quarter-to-quarter results, but I think we do anticipate credit quality to continue to improve.
Tim O'Brien -- Sandler O'Neill & Partners -- Analyst
All right. Thanks for the help.
Peter Koh -- Executive Vice President & Chief Credit Officer
Thank you.
Operator
Our next question comes from David Chiaverini of Wedbush Securities. David, please proceed.
David Chiaverini -- Wedbush Securities -- Analyst
Hi, thanks. A question on loan growth. So, you mentioned about, how you're expecting stronger originations going forward, but yet you did lower loan guidance. Now, is that a function of expecting continued elevated payoffs or is that more of a function that the second quarter was weak so we'll be kind of making up for the weakness in the second quarter?
Kevin S. Kim -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Well, first of all, I want to say that I'm not that much concerned about the flat balance of our portfolio during the first half of the year, because we don't think it is not a result of lack of new loan originations, but it is more attributable to unusually high payoffs during the second quarter. As we commented, we were able to take advantage of the aggressive lending of some other banks to move a significant amount of lower rated credits of our books during the quarter and those relationships amounted to approximately $75 million. And we don't have as many loans now that we are looking to proactively access. So, that eliminates one of the factors contributing to the higher level of payoffs during the second quarter. Although, we expect payoff levels to remain high, I don't think it's likely that they will remain at the level that we saw in the second quarter.
And at the same time, we have a stronger pipeline in SBA. We are gaining traction from our C&I efforts. So, I think our second half loan originations will be stronger than the first half of the year. So, that is why I'm not that much concerned about the flat balance of the loan portfolio during the first half of the year.
David Chiaverini -- Wedbush Securities -- Analyst
Great, thanks for that, and then a housekeeping related to that. The 2% to 3% loan growth guidance, is that period end? Like December 31, 2018 to December 31, 2019 or is that average?
Kevin S. Kim -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah, yeah. That is correct. That is correct.
David Chiaverini -- Wedbush Securities -- Analyst
Okay, thanks very much.
Operator
[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Don Worthington of Raymond James. Don, please proceed.
Don Worthington -- Raymond James -- Analyst
Thank you. Good morning, everyone.
Peter Koh -- Executive Vice President & Chief Credit Officer
Good morning.
Alex Ko -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Good morning, Don.
Don Worthington -- Raymond James -- Analyst
Maybe just to clarify or little more color in terms of the credit related costs this quarter, was that largely related to the problem assets that were cleaned up in the quarter and therefore you'd expect that to drop back down?
Alex Ko -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yeah. That is actually the fluctuating quarter-over-quarter and this quarter it happened to have a elevated level of foreclosure -- I'm sorry, the forced insurance and also kind of legal fees related to collection effort. So, as we expect to have a credit improve, those credit related expenses is naturally expected to go down.
Don Worthington -- Raymond James -- Analyst
Okay. And then, Alex, you mentioned raising the money market deposit rate. What did that go to and then what was it before?
Alex Ko -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yeah. We were very strategically had a money market pricing be competitive because we did expected some cannibalization from the CD to money market, but we were sensitive on the controlling -- the overall deposit cost. So we were competitive in the money market rate and also for competition purposes, I will refrain from the disclosing exact offering rate, but there was a slight increase on the money market rate that we offered in Q2 compared to previous quarters.
Don Worthington -- Raymond James -- Analyst
Okay. All right, thank you.
Alex Ko -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Thank you.
Operator
This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks.
Kevin S. Kim -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you once again, thank you all for joining us today, and we look forward to speaking with you again next quarter. Thank you, everyone. So long.
Alex Ko -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Thank you.
Operator
[Operator Closing Remarks]
Duration: 49 minutes
Call participants:
Angie Yang -- Senior Vice President, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate
Kevin S. Kim -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Alex Ko -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Peter Koh -- Executive Vice President & Chief Credit Officer
Gary Tenner -- D.A. Davidson & Company -- Analyst
Chris McGratty -- KBW -- Analyst
Matthew Clarke -- Piper Jaffray -- Analyst
Timothy N. Coffey -- Janney -- Analyst
Tim O'Brien -- Sandler O'Neill & Partners -- Analyst
David Chiaverini -- Wedbush Securities -- Analyst
Don Worthington -- Raymond James -- Analyst
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