Western Alliance Bancorp Q3 2007 Earnings Call Transcript

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2007-10-19 14:48:27.0

Tags: Western Alliance Bancorporation

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) And we will take our first question with Christopher Nolan with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Christopher Nolan - Oppenheimer

Good afternoon. Hello. Hal, does the turbulence in the credit market affect your planning for securitizations? Have you guys started considering alternative plans if you cannot access securitization markets?

Hal Erskine

Well, the first criteria will be credit worthiness, and that is something that is very important. We have six phases, the pre-approval of the group we sign who we market to in that group's list. We will do a lot of modeling to not necessarily market every single person on the list.

Third, who applies, we will have both an automated and judgmental review of all aspects of their credit quality. And then we will review everybody at least once and probably more times in terms of who we give a card to in the credit line. So that will be the first criteria that's important to securitization.

And then yes, of course, the securitization market, I would not want to be trying to securitize the sub-prime credit card business right now. But that first criteria is credit worthiness. And then second, the good part about having Western Alliance as our partner is -- and I will let Dale speak to this as well. There is no balance sheet issue relative to our growth for at least as far as in almost two years' worth of our growth. So from that point of view, I think we are not desperate to have a securitization. But we feel the first thing we will have to do is put on good credit and I don't think these credit prices will last forever either.

Dale Gibbons

Yes, we believe we can take about $1 billion of credit card receivables, which would get us to maybe a sweet spot in terms of the size to affect the securitization without having a kind of significant haircut for being a quasi odd lot.

And so, we will be able to do that, and then maybe run $500 million to $1 billion on our balance sheet, prospectively, as we build a securitization reputation.

Christopher Nolan - Oppenheimer

So that just basically uses your existing capital generation run rate, right?

Dale Gibbons

Correct.

Christopher Nolan - Oppenheimer

Okay. And should we expect, given these hot prospects then the comments that PartnersFirst is performing better than expectations in the startup phase and that the expenses related to it in 2008 will be greater than $0.02 a share -- $0.02 a quarter I mean?

 

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