SVB Financial Group stock plummeted Thursday after it sold assets for a loss following a decline in deposits. The impact rippled through the banking sector, which many investors had assumed was largely insulated from recession worries and rising rates
SVB’s troubles came as the Silicon Valley-based lender was forced to sell securities to realign its portfolio in response to higher interest rates while it manages lower deposit levels from clients, many of which are in the venture capital arena and burning through cash.
SVB stock (ticker: SIVB) fell 60% to $106.04 on Thursday. The decline, the steepest among companies in the S&P 500, was the largest percentage decrease ever. Shares kept sliding in after-hours trading, down another 22%.
The selloff caused traders to take a closer look at all bank stocks—particularly their deposits—causing the KBW Nasdaq Bank Index (BKX) to fall 7.7%, its worst showing since June 11, 2020, when it fell 9%.
SVB, parent of Silicon Valley Bank, enjoyed a bull run in 2021 as it lent to venture capitalist-backed start-ups in technology, life sciences and healthcare, and even Napa Valley wineries, in an era of low interest rates and easy money.
It’s fallen on hard times since then. SVB’s stock has dropped more than 80% from its record high in late 2021 as interest rates have increased, boosting the cost of the deposits the bank uses to fund loans. The company in its press release on Wednesday said its latest actions were partly due to expectations for a continued higher interest-rate environment and partly because deposit levels have declined.
Given the current volatile economic environment, venture-capital firms have been less willing to fund start-ups—a problem for SVB, which gets deposits from VC-backed start-ups that were earlier flush with cash. As of Feb. 28, SVB had client funds of $326 billion, a decline from $341 billion at the end of last year.
“What we learned over the last 12 to 24 months is that in a fast-paced rising rate environment, customer deposit dynamics are different than what we had expected,” said Chief Financial Officer Daniel Beck in a conference call with Bank of America analysts days ahead of Wednesday’s update.
The decline in deposits forced SVB to take drastic action. After Wednesday’s market close, SVB said it sold all of its $21 billion in securities classified as available for sale (AFS), a portfolio essentially comprised of U.S. Treasury and mortgage-backed securities. It said it suffered an after-tax loss of $1.8 billion, to be recorded in the first quarter of 2023, as a result. Prices of fixed-income securities such as MBS and Treasury debt fall as interest rates go up.
The company plans to reinvest the proceeds from the sale into shorter-term debt to take advantage of rising rates. SVB also said it would raise $2.25 billion, including $500 million from private-equity firm General Atlantic and offering $1.25 billion of convertible preferred and common stock to investors.
“The sale of substantially all of our AFS securities will enable us to increase our asset sensitivity, partially lock in funding costs, better insulate net interest income (NII) and net interest margin (NIM) from the impact of higher interest rates, and enhance profitability,” SVB said.
The sale of banks’ so-called AFS securities has been a risk lurking in the market since the Federal Reserve began its efforts to lift interest rates to tamp down on inflation last year. Rising inflation has forced clients to spend down their deposits—a low-cost source of funding for banks. As that dries up, banks are forced to turn to their securities portfolio to raise capital but with bond prices down, the banks are selling those securities at a loss.
With the broader market losing its interest in high-growth stocks, it was expected that some of those worries would transfer to the venture capital space. And that they did. “Concern over a slow-to-recover VC environment have kept us cautious on SIVB shares and potentially remains a headwind as rates stay elevated,” said D.A. Davidson analyst Gary Tenner. He rates the stock at Neutral and lowered his target for the price to $200 from $250.
The concerns should linger. Moody’s, for instance, downgraded SVB Financial Group (SVB) and its bank subsidiary, Silicon Valley Bank, Thursday and changed the outlook of its ratings to negative from stable.
“SVB’s balance sheet restructure repositions its balance sheet toward asset sensitive, which will benefit profitability at the cost of realized losses on sales of investments. Nonetheless, Moody’s does not expect the environment will
recover enough for SVB to materially improve its profitability, funding and liquidity, which prompted today’s action,” analysts at Moody’s wrote.
The fear is that other banks will face the same troubles, which explains Thursday’s selling in the industry. Banks take deposits, which they then use to make loans or buy securities. If their deposits were to fall, as SVB’s did, they would be forced to sell assets at a loss.
Some observers contend the worries are overblown. SVB had a singular funding base, which made life difficult for it when start-up companies ran out of easy cash. The country’s largest banks, though, have more diverse funding sources, which should help insulate them from SVB’s problems, according to Wells Fargo Securities analyst Mike Mayo,
“[The] ‘SIVB moment’ is not fully indicative of the industry but affects sentiment,” Mayo wrote Thursday.
Sometimes, though, sentiment is all that matters.