First Hawaiian, Inc. (FHB) Q3 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

First Hawaiian, Inc. (NASDAQ: FHB) Q3 2021 earnings call dated Oct. 22, 2021

Corporate Participants:

Kevin Haseyama — Strategic Planning and Investor Relations Manager

Robert Harrison — Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Ravi Mallela — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Finance Group

Ralph Mesick — Vice Chairman and Chief Risk Officer, Risk Management Group

Analyts:

Ebrahim Poonawala — Bank of America Merrill Lynch — Analyst

Steven Alexopoulos — J.P. Morgan — Analyst

David Feaster — Raymond James — Analyst

Andrew Liesch — Piper Sandler — Analyst

Jared Shaw — Wells Fargo Securities — Analyst

Laurie Hunsicker — Compass Point — Analyst

Presentation:

Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the First Hawaiian, Inc. Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to hand the conference over to Kevin Haseyama, Investor Relations Manager. Please go ahead.

Kevin Haseyama — Strategic Planning and Investor Relations Manager

Thank you, Ashley, and thank you, everyone, for joining us as we review our financial results for the third quarter of 2021. With me today are Bob Harrison, Chairman, President and CEO; Ravi Mallela, CFO; and Ralph Mesick, Chief Risk Officer. We have prepared a slide presentation that we will refer to in our remarks today. The presentation is available for downloading and viewing on our website at fhb.com in the Investor Relations section.

During today’s call, we will be making forward-looking statements, so please refer to Slide 1 for our Safe Harbor statement. We may also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. The appendix to this presentation contains reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measurements to the most directly comparable GAAP measurements.

And now, I’ll turn the call over to Bob.

Robert Harrison — Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Kevin. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us today. I’d like to start with an update on the COVID situation here in Hawaii, if you turn to Slide 2. Like many places, the health of our economy is directly related to our ability to control the virus. And we’ve done a quite a good job on that. With over 70% of the population fully vaccinated, and impressive 92% of the population over age 12 has had at least one shot. We did have a surge in late August and early September related to the Delta variant, as you can see in the lower left there. That is, for the most part, come down and our new case counts are dramatically lower, a lot of capacity in the hospitals. So not a concern about that.

And the Governor has announced that we’re going to be fully welcoming back visitor starting on November 1, and really in talking to all the Mayors, both here on Oahu and the neighbor islands, all of our elected officials, they are very focused on keeping Hawaii open for tourism, and we expect to see the numbers starting to increase, and we’ve actually started to see a bit of an increase in daily arrivals starting this month. So, as the restriction start to come off, and tourists start to return, we expect more of a normalized economy as we come into the holiday season.

Turning to Slide 3. Total loans grew net of PPP paydowns, and our results were solid in the quarter, despite all the noise of the Delta variant. Deposits continue to grow in all segments, while non-interest income and expenses were stable. Credit quality remained excellent, and the diluted earnings per share was $0.50, and the Board maintained the dividend at $0.26 per share. During the quarter, we also repurchased $21.6 million of common stock under our current repurchase program.

And with that, I’ll turn it over to Ravi to go over the financials.

Ravi Mallela — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Finance Group

Thank you, Bob. Turning to Slide 4. Period end loans and leases were $12.8 billion, down $269 million from the end of Q2. Excluding the impact of PPP loans, total loans increased by $39 million. We had some good activity in several areas, but dealer flooring remained a headwind, declining another $103 million. Excluding the impacts of PPP repayments and dealer flooring balances, total loans grew about a $142 million in the third quarter. Growth was driven by increases in residential, commercial real estate and home equity. Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, we are expecting net growth in loan balances, but because of the delayed recovery in dealer flooring, we now expect total loan balances ex-PPP to be flat to up 1% for the year.

Turning to Slide 5. Total deposit balances ended the quarter at $22.1 billion, a $1.3 billion increase versus the prior quarter. This increase was driven by a $782 million increase in public deposits, and a $503 million increase in consumer and commercial deposits. The increase in public deposits was almost entirely in operating account balances. Our cost of deposits fell 1 basis point to 6 basis points in the quarter.

Turning to Slide 6. Net interest income was a $132.6 million, a $1.1 million increase versus the prior quarter. The increase in net interest income was primarily due to higher average balances of investment securities, and higher cash balances. Net interest margin was 2.36%, a 10 basis point decrease from the previous quarter. In Q4, excluding the impact of excess liquidity and PPP loan forgiveness, we expect our net interest margin to decline 2 basis points to 4 basis points.

Turning to Slide 7. Non-interest income in Q3 was $50.1 million, a $733,000 increase over the previous quarter. Non-interest income in the third quarter included a $2.3 million BOLI debt benefit. Non-interest expenses were a $101 million, a $1.6 million increase versus the prior quarter, and the efficiency ratio was 55.1%.

And now, I’ll turn it over to Ralph to go over asset quality.

Ralph Mesick — Vice Chairman and Chief Risk Officer, Risk Management Group

Thank you, Ravi. If you could turn to Slide 8, I want to provide a few comments on asset quality. We continue to see good credit performance, realized credit costs remained low, and we released provision again this quarter. Net charge-offs were $602,000 in Q3. Annualized net charge-off rate is at 6 basis points year-to-date, lower than the levels we saw in the prior two years. NPA and 90-day past due loans were marginally down this quarter to a 11 basis points, a 1 basis point decrease from the prior quarter. Criticized assets increased during the quarter, moving from 2.51% of total loans in Q2 to 2.98%. Loans 30 to 89 days past due, increased 13 basis points to 35 basis points at the end of Q3. The increase was attributed to the delay in the closing of an extension of a single CRE loan.

Moving to Slide 9. You see a roll forward of the allowance for the quarter by disclosure segments. The allowance for credit loss decreased by about $7.9 million to a $161.2 million at the end of the quarter. This level equates about 1.26% of all loans and 1.31% net of PPP loans. Our reserve for unfunded commitments increased by $3.3 million to $32.5 million. In Q3, we recorded a $7.3 million release against the allowance due to the balance changes and some improvement in consumer FICOs. Our outlook for the economy was unchanged, we anticipate the recovery started mid-year will continue, but still maintain a COVID-related overly given uncertainties that could result in higher credit losses. These uncertainties include the effects of the new virus mutations on travel and leisure activity, as well as the impacts of monetary and fiscal actions.

Let me now turn the call back to Bob.

Robert Harrison — Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Ralph. This was another solid quarter. Credit quality remained excellent. We are continuing our investment in technology to improve our digital capabilities in our customer experience, and our balance sheet is well positioned for rising rates.

And with that, I’d like to open it up and take your questions.

Questions and Answers:

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Ebrahim Poonawala with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Ebrahim Poonawala — Bank of America Merrill Lynch — Analyst

Good morning.

Robert Harrison — Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Good morning.

Ebrahim Poonawala — Bank of America Merrill Lynch — Analyst

I guess, just on loan growth, so you mentioned — for the full-year update ex-PPP, just give us a sense of one, Bob, do you think the dealer finance book has bottomed out year-end, just the pace of where you see it going back to next year understanding that all the supply chain issues may not be resolved? And what was this book at the peak on pre-pandemic? So just to guess — get a point — a reference point of how large this can go back again, maybe if you could start there?

Robert Harrison — Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Sure. Thanks, EP. Good question. In fact, saw some good news today on Automotive News that our dealer team shared with us, the Head of GMs North America business, they’re making good progress on shipping pickups. So, they’re going to start with their high-margin vehicles, and work their way from there, but these are very big companies, and they’re certainly working nonstop day and night to straighten out the supply chain.

Our peak, I’m not sure about, but kind of the latest normal number would be the end of 2019, and our dealer flooring balances were $860 million plus a little bit, and now we’re substantially less, $176 million. So, there is quite a bit of room, just this year we’re down $460 million in balances year-to-date. You can’t really pick the bottom on this, we had thought it would have already started to increase a bit, obviously, supply chain issues didn’t allow that to happen. So, we’ll be watching this along with everybody else, but hopefully, the car manufacturers will start to be able to produce in volume. And there’s still going to be a backlog, as they work through that with people that have purchased cars in advance, so it will take a little bit longer to see the balances in the flooring lines start to increase.

You are seeing even in this start [Phonetic] of today how the Head of GM was saying that they would like to see their inventory in their dealer network increase. So, all of those signs point to increased production and we’ll just see — we have to wait and see how that plays out in timing.

More broadly, loan activity, we’re seeing mainland activity being fairly strong. Our C&I usage for revolving lines has stabilized over the last few months. So that doesn’t seem to be pulling us down anymore, and residential has been strong. Kind of a, just an anecdote for this quarter that we’re in now, there is a couple of large projects here on Oahu that we’ll finish, and so we’ll see commercial real estate construction balances decline. But those will be more than made up for — by the take out loans we’re doing on the residential side on those same project. So, there’ll be some moving around we will see during the quarter, but it seems like we’re at a bottom with some potential upside. But we’ll just have to wait and see primarily on the flooring business, and see how soon that comes back.

Ebrahim Poonawala — Bank of America Merrill Lynch — Analyst

Got it. Thanks, Bob. And just in terms of economic activity, you provide some color on Slide 2 around COVID and the restrictions. Give us a sense of just how — where you think we are in terms of normalcy hospitality sector, when you think about the holiday season going into the winter? Are we all there? Are we going to be at a 80% capacity in terms of how many of the hotels would have been fully open? Just give us some perspective around that?

Robert Harrison — Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. I certainly can’t predict what the holidays will bring. But the normal shoulder season, which is what we’re in right now, September into October, we always see a drop off in tourist arrivals from summer into the fall. And then typically it builds back in the holidays as people take their vacations. I can’t think of any hotels that are still closed. I think everybody is trying to open. Certainly the major ones, and they’re adjusting their staffing depending on what occupancy is. So everybody is ready, and we’ll just have to wait and see. As we’ve talked about in previous conversations, many, many families come to Hawaii every holiday season, and we’ll just have to wait and see if they come this year, and choose to travel. But I think the hotel rooms are booked. It’s just — we have to see if people show up.

Ebrahim Poonawala — Bank of America Merrill Lynch — Analyst

Got it. And just one last question if I can sneak one for Ravi. What’s the — what was the end of period balance on PPP at the end of 3Q? And how much in fees is left to be recognized?

Ravi Mallela — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Finance Group

We have about a little over $500 million in terms of remaining balances. And sorry, Ebrahim, I missed the second part of your question there.

Ebrahim Poonawala — Bank of America Merrill Lynch — Analyst

What are the fees tied to PPP that are left tied to that $500 million balance?

Ravi Mallela — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Finance Group

It’s $14.4 million.

Ebrahim Poonawala — Bank of America Merrill Lynch — Analyst

$14.4 million. And it’s safe to assume that you expect the next two, three quarters, most of that gets forgiven?

Ravi Mallela — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Finance Group

Yeah. I think if we look at next quarter, I think the last couple of quarters is a good reflection of the pace we’ve been moving out. So I think over the next two quarters, we should be through the majority of it.

Ebrahim Poonawala — Bank of America Merrill Lynch — Analyst

Got it. Thanks for taking my questions.

Operator

Your next question comes from Steven Alexopoulos with J.P. Morgan. Your line is open.

Steven Alexopoulos — J.P. Morgan — Analyst

Hi, everyone.

Ralph Mesick — Vice Chairman and Chief Risk Officer, Risk Management Group

Good morning, Steve.

Robert Harrison — Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Good morning, Steve.

Steven Alexopoulos — J.P. Morgan — Analyst

I wanted to start and drill down a little bit on C&I. If we take PPP loans and dealer loans and we put those aside, can you talk about the change you saw in the C&I pipeline in the quarter, any notable increase in commitments? And what was line utilization? And you said it was stable.

Robert Harrison — Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Ralph, do you have the line utilization number?

Ralph Mesick — Vice Chairman and Chief Risk Officer, Risk Management Group

Yeah. It was a shed over 20%, and I think what we saw pre-COVID, it was probably around 30%, a bit probably gone down into the mid-teens at the low point. So, it’s starting to come back a bit there.

Steven Alexopoulos — J.P. Morgan — Analyst

And on commitments… Yeah.

Robert Harrison — Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. And we’re seeing some activity in the corporate area, not a huge amount, but we’re seeing some activity in that area, but it’s been muted. We haven’t seen — we’ve seen a couple of payoffs, just not that we wanted them, but it’s just that the transactions have occurred that either they went to capital markets, or mergers and acquisitions in that portfolio, but it’s been fairly stable. We haven’t seen a huge amount in new growth, a modest amount. But I think that market is there, and we’ll see if — we’ll see what the next few month spring is, deal making typically starts in the beginning of the year, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

Steven Alexopoulos — J.P. Morgan — Analyst

Okay. That’s helpful. And then maybe for Ravi, you’ve built a pretty sizable cash position here. And it looks like the guidance you’re expecting more deposit than loan growth over the near-term. Now that rates have moved up a bit, has this changed your appetite, should we expect more of that liquidity to move in to the securities book? Or do you anticipate this cash balance building further here?

Ravi Mallela — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Finance Group

We’ve — as you know, we’ve — and just looking at the data, we’ve grown that securities portfolio about a $1 billion this quarter. And it’s pretty close to $8 billion. We certainly look at the balance sheet in totality and we’d love to see loan growth kind of help us with those liquidity levels that we have currently. But it will have to take it sort of piece-by-piece. And I think we’re probably feeling pretty comfortable with our level of securities at this stage. So, I think as we start to see some of that liquidity get deployed, we’d like to see those balances come down, but at this point, we feel comfortable with our securities level, plus or minus a little bit, but we’re going to have to work through that liquidity over time.

Steven Alexopoulos — J.P. Morgan — Analyst

Okay.

Robert Harrison — Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

It is Bob, Steve. The only thing I would add to that is, you saw a large increase in the public operating accounts, is that a relationship with the various municipalities in the state has been very fluid, and just the amount of cash they have coming in and going out is hard to predict.

Steven Alexopoulos — J.P. Morgan — Analyst

Got it. Okay. And then, Bob, just a final one. I mean, just about every banks talking about wage pressure here, and I have been paying a lot of attention to the situation in Hawaii. But is that a pressure point, and could this impact your expense growth over the next year? Thanks.

Robert Harrison — Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. Great question, Steve. And we’re seeing the same — some of the same issues here. We did see our jobless rate ticked down yesterday. So it went from 7% down to 6.6%. So there is still some people looking for jobs, but there is still a lot of activity out there, a lot of people trying to hire. So there is some wage pressure, and we’ve been going through that quite frankly over the last year plus in our business. So, I’m not going to say we won’t face it. But it’s hard to predict exactly what that would be going forward.

Steven Alexopoulos — J.P. Morgan — Analyst

Okay. Okay. Thanks for all the color.

Operator

Your next question comes from David Feaster with Raymond James. Your line is open.

David Feaster — Raymond James — Analyst

Hey. Good morning, everybody.

Robert Harrison — Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Good morning.

Ralph Mesick — Vice Chairman and Chief Risk Officer, Risk Management Group

Good morning, David.

David Feaster — Raymond James — Analyst

I just wanted to — you saw some nice growth in CRE in the quarter. I’m just curious maybe where you’re seeing strength, and maybe if you could compare and contrast the US the mainland in the Hawaiian markets in — and just — also just maybe give us a pulse of the competitive dynamics that you’re seeing? We hear a lot more competition from a pricing standpoint, but also seeing some on structure and standards as well. Just curious what you’re seeing in CRE?

Robert Harrison — Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. Maybe — this is Bob, David. And maybe I’ll start, and I’ll ask Ralph to add some comments. You know what, we’ve continue to see pressure here in Hawaii on pricing. We haven’t seen it too much on structure. It’s been much more active in the mainland, primarily the West Coast where we have relationships with some direct relationships and a lot of relationships with other banks. And it just seems to be quite active that people are doing transactions out there, that we’ve been able to participate in. I expect we’ll see more volume here over time, but there will be some headwinds, as I mentioned earlier, with a couple of large projects here paying off in Q4 on the CRE construction site.

But, Ralph, anything you’d add to that?

Ralph Mesick — Vice Chairman and Chief Risk Officer, Risk Management Group

No, I would say that on the mainland where we’ve seen pretty good activity right now. Most of what we’re doing there is sort of institutional quality-type real estate, institutional-type players. So I think in terms of weakening of terms, it’s not that a big of an issue as it would be maybe in the smaller loan market.

David Feaster — Raymond James — Analyst

Okay. That’s helpful. And then maybe just touching on fee income, and getting some of your thoughts on the puts and takes there. Just on card fees which have pretty much recovered back to where we were in the trust and the trends you’re seeing there. And then just, I appreciate the color on the BOLI benefit, but have seen several other banks add the BOLI. Just curious your appetite for BOLI here too?

Robert Harrison — Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Please, Ravi, go ahead.

Ravi Mallela — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Finance Group

So, I think, maybe I’ll just take them in pieces, David. This is Ravi. I think it’s been nice to see the credit card and debit card fee income pick up as we’ve seen quite a bit of activity here over the summer. We saw, I’d just characterize it as a small dip as a result of, as Bob mentioned, sort of going into the shoulder season, and maybe a little bit of impact of the Delta virus and activity. But again, strong numbers there and we expect — that’s a trend pretty consistently with what we’ll hopefully see in the rest of the year in the vacation season.

I’d say with trust and investment income, it’s been very strong and very stable. And I would say the core pieces of income coming from the trust and investment income side has been really from recurring revenue sources, which has been a good sort of solid consistent place of growth for us, for — let’s say, the last year, year and a half.

Just talking a little bit about BOLI, from our perspective, we’re probably from a capital perspective sort of at the top end for the amount of BOLI that we can have in our portfolio. So, we don’t expect to add to the BOLI portfolio itself. But we expect it to perform pretty well over time, and pretty consistently at least in this environment.

David Feaster — Raymond James — Analyst

Okay. That’s helpful. That’s great color. And then just last one from me. Asset quality has been phenomenal. You guys do a great job there, just wanted to touch on the modest uptick. I mean, it’s small, but just the uptick in criticized in past-due balances and give us your thoughts on overall asset quality here?

Ralph Mesick — Vice Chairman and Chief Risk Officer, Risk Management Group

Dave, this is Ralph. The increase in the criticized loans was $62 million, and really that was around, I think about five credits — shared national credits that got downgraded during the exams that are conducted at the agent [Phonetic] banks. We look at those credits. We don’t see much loss potential there. These companies have really good financial flexibility, sound businesses, and I think it really sort of a different perspective maybe that the regulators had from the banks. So, nothing, I don’t think really happening there. I think those trends that we’ve seen kind of continue to improve.

And then on the past due side, that was really kind of an administrative delinquency on one loan, and we’re at 35 basis points. So, just one loan could create quite a bit of a change in that — in the statistics.

David Feaster — Raymond James — Analyst

Was there anything within those five credits that was any trends or any — similar industries or was it just kind of one-offs?

Ralph Mesick — Vice Chairman and Chief Risk Officer, Risk Management Group

No, they’re kind of in those higher-risk areas. Actually, the trends are probably improving. So, it was — but the regulators come in annually and they look at those deals and — they were downgraded to special mention, which essentially means there is potential weakness. And I think not necessarily a well-defined weakness. And again, we downgraded those credits, we have reserved for those credits. So we’re pretty comfortable with the asset quality picture right now.

David Feaster — Raymond James — Analyst

Okay. That’s helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from Andrew Liesch with Piper Sandler. Your line is open.

Andrew Liesch — Piper Sandler — Analyst

Good morning, everyone.

Robert Harrison — Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Good morning.

Ralph Mesick — Vice Chairman and Chief Risk Officer, Risk Management Group

Good morning.

Andrew Liesch — Piper Sandler — Analyst

Just want to touch on expenses here, pretty well controlled, and I know you pushed out the timing of the conversion into next year. It sounds like there might be some inflationary pressures. But how should we be looking at the expense base and expense growth for next year? I think you’re guiding to 7% for 2021 which all seems reasonable. I mean, how should we look at it going into next year?

Ravi Mallela — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Finance Group

Andrew, this is Ravi. I’ll comment a little bit on that. Typically, we don’t provide 2022 guidance yet. But I’ll make some comments about sort of what we — how we see the future in terms of our expense profile. Bob alluded to sort of inflationary pressure that we’ve seen, particularly in wages, in particular in some very specific categories that are high in demand. So that’s one area. I think we’ve talked about this in the past, our continuing investment in technology. So, I think part of our goals for the future, and we continue — we’re going to continue to invest in technology to be competitive.

Another area just to talk about is just the core. I think we’ll see as we get closer and closer to the implementation of core, we’re going to see training cost, they will continue on. And when we eventually go live, we will see that the capitalization of the development cost start to roll into the expense line in the form of amortization of the core itself. So, that’s some guidance are clear — not guidance, but just some color on where we think things are going for the future.

Andrew Liesch — Piper Sandler — Analyst

Got it. Makes sense. Is there any timing that you can provide on the conversion?

Robert Harrison — Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Andrew, this is Bob. We’re looking at the first half of next year still, and trying to pull that in. We’re feeling very good about where we’re at. But since we’ve delayed it, we don’t want to teaks [Phonetic] ourselves by being too specific, but we’re feeling very good about where we’re at, and the progress we’re made. And we didn’t want to do it in the fourth quarter, candidly, because it just didn’t seem like a good idea relative to year-end.

Andrew Liesch — Piper Sandler — Analyst

Understandable. Makes sense there. And then, just with the rapid deposit growth, some of that’s the public funds that may go the other direction at some point, but that put some pressure on capital ratios. How should we be looking at the buyback? I know you guys have want to be consistent with share repurchases. But how should we be looking at that asset growth versus a buyback right now?

Robert Harrison — Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. Maybe I can start on, this is Bob, and ask Ravi if you has any comments as well. It’s something we’re looking at in our budgeting process clearly. We’re hopeful that we’ll see loan growth and come back in next year with just some of the lines of credit that we have both for our corporate customers, and certainly our flooring line customers, and that that amount of capital that we’re holding above our target will kind of get absorbed into the loans portfolio through risk-weighted assets, and in that planning process we’re going to look at our profitability. We know that we’ve been a very steady capital return Bank, and that’s something that’s very important to us. Certainly, the dividend is critically important to us, and we’re not seeing there any changes in that, and we’ll just have to decide how much capital we’ll have left after we’re investing in our technology, and look to maintain the share repurchase program. But we don’t have any idea at this point what the level would be or what we’re looking out on that. Ravi?

Ravi Mallela — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Finance Group

I didn’t have anything to add.

Andrew Liesch — Piper Sandler — Analyst

Got it. Well, hey, thank you for taking the questions, and I’ll step back.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Jared Shaw with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Jared Shaw — Wells Fargo Securities — Analyst

Hi. Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking the questions.

Robert Harrison — Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Good morning.

Jared Shaw — Wells Fargo Securities — Analyst

Maybe shifting — looking at loan growth, to hit that target for the 1% ex-PPP growth this year, it seems like you’re seeing a ramp up in fourth quarter. How should we be thinking about reside mortgages as part of that? Certainly, grown as a percentage of the overall portfolio. Is that going to be a bigger part of the lending story going forward?

Robert Harrison — Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. Jared, good morning. This is Bob. Certainly, for fourth quarter, we’re going to see a bump in residential for no other reason other than those is actually three large projects completing that are in the — actually, a couple of them in escrow now. As far as residential loans, we’ve approved for customers that will be closing in the next several weeks as those projects are completed. And so, that by itself will be a pretty significant boost on top of the normal volume that goes through. So, like many places, we’re seeing a little bit of a slowdown and refinance and pickup. However then, when these projects completed and new purchases, but in addition to that, we have this kind of special one-off situation with these three projects completed. So, residential should be quite strong in Q4.

Jared Shaw — Wells Fargo Securities — Analyst

Okay. Thanks. And then shifting to the reopening of the state, you touched on a little bit the labor market. But is there enough labor capacity in the state to sort of handle a full reopening? Or will that require maybe some return of few who may left the state at the beginning of COVID?

Robert Harrison — Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

To be honest, I don’t have a great answer for you on that, to be determined. We had our unemployment rate came in was at 2% or something before, at the low point. And now we’re at 6.6% — 2%, 2.5%, below 3%, and now we’re at 6.6%, so it’s still quite a few workers out there that are looking for jobs. And will that be sufficient to absorb the demand of the return to tourism? I don’t know, to be candid with you.

Jared Shaw — Wells Fargo Securities — Analyst

Okay. And then just finally for me, when you’re looking at the NIM guidance, Ravi, and you’re saying excluding the excess liquidity, what is the excess liquidity that we should be thinking of at this point?

Ravi Mallela — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Finance Group

It’s hard to say.

Jared Shaw — Wells Fargo Securities — Analyst

[Speech Overlap] dollar value there. Yeah.

Ravi Mallela — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Finance Group

Yeah. It’s hard to say. I think, last quarter it was about 8 basis points impact of excess liquidity. If we start to see some of those, as Bob mentioned, those public deposits move off. Certainly, the impact of excess liquidity coming from that part of the deposit base will decline. But we’ve also seen pretty good strong growth in commercial and consumer deposits, sort of really depend on what happens in the next quarter or two.

Jared Shaw — Wells Fargo Securities — Analyst

Okay. Thanks. Thanks a lot.

Operator

Your next question comes from Laurie Hunsicker with Compass Point. Your line is open.

Laurie Hunsicker — Compass Point — Analyst

Great. Thanks. Good morning.

Robert Harrison — Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Good morning, Laurie.

Ralph Mesick — Vice Chairman and Chief Risk Officer, Risk Management Group

Good morning, Laurie.

Laurie Hunsicker — Compass Point — Analyst

I wondered if you could just give us a little color that $2.1 million in litigation costs, what that was?

Robert Harrison — Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. I can touch on that. This is Bob. Good morning, Laurie. And that’s just some commercial dispute we had with a vendor, and we didn’t feel they are performing to our expectations. And so, unfortunately, it got into litigation, but we should have that resolved, we’re hopeful very soon.

Laurie Hunsicker — Compass Point — Analyst

Okay. And then when I look at that other, other expense line, the $16.2 million, even netting out that $2.1 million, it’s still looks high, was there any other one-time items in that bucket to think about?

Ralph Mesick — Vice Chairman and Chief Risk Officer, Risk Management Group

Nothing specific, Laurie. I mean, a lot of small little things, in particular, a couple of catch-up items that we have, but nothing specific.

Laurie Hunsicker — Compass Point — Analyst

Okay. And then, I guess, if we were to think about where that line would run, is it going to run closer to sort of $13 million a quarter give or take? Or how should we think about that?

Ralph Mesick — Vice Chairman and Chief Risk Officer, Risk Management Group

It’s hard to say. There is a lot of, sort of small items that are in that line. I think, $13 million isn’t such a bad number in terms of what we expect it to be. But it will just depend on sort of one-time items that might show up in the quarter itself.

Laurie Hunsicker — Compass Point — Analyst

Okay. Great. Thanks. That’s helpful. And then tax rate, how should we be thinking about that for next year?

Ralph Mesick — Vice Chairman and Chief Risk Officer, Risk Management Group

I think, barring anything else that happens out there with respect to policy. I think relatively consistent with where we are, maybe trending a little bit downward. We continue to engage in low-income housing tax credits as an opportunity to manage our effective tax rate. And so, as we sort of roll into new opportunities there, we’ll start to see that tick down a little bit. But that takes time as we build that portfolio.

Laurie Hunsicker — Compass Point — Analyst

Okay. Great. And then, last question from me, deferrals. I didn’t see a deferral update in your deck or in your press release. I’m hoping you can give us the number. I know it was incredibly low last quarter at $35 million. Just wondered if you had an updated number on that.

Ralph Mesick — Vice Chairman and Chief Risk Officer, Risk Management Group

Yeah. I think what’s left now, Laurie, this is Ralph, is about $16 million.

Laurie Hunsicker — Compass Point — Analyst

$16 million. Okay. And do you by chance have a split in terms of what’s commercial versus what’s [Speech Overlap]?

Ralph Mesick — Vice Chairman and Chief Risk Officer, Risk Management Group

Yeah. I don’t, but it’s almost exclusively residential mortgage.

Laurie Hunsicker — Compass Point — Analyst

Perfect. Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn it over to Kevin Haseyama.

Kevin Haseyama — Strategic Planning and Investor Relations Manager

Thank you. We appreciate your interest in First Hawaiian. And please feel free to contact me if you have any additional questions. Thanks again for joining us, and enjoy the rest of your day.

Operator

[Operator Closing Remarks]